Back to Top

Monthly Archives: June 2007

Why I don’t write Victorians

Updated on by

This past weekend we attended the Eurocar 2007 show at the Lorenzo State Historic Site in Cazenovia, NY, arriving in our vintage Mini of course.

Built in 1807 by John Linklaen (of Dutch origin), house is furnished with items from the Regency through the Victorian eras. There’s a virtual house tour on the website. A treat is the carriage house with a mini museum including a collection of antique carriages and sleighs, a few close to “our” time period. It’s definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

I toured the house with my children last year but this year we had the pleasure of participating in a “Victorian Fashion Show” in which the presenter dressed my oldest daughter as if she were going for a drive. Some of the things she said made me wonder but I’m by no means an expert on period clothing, especially Victorian. I’m curious to learn what some of our clothing experts think.

Here’s my daughter after donning drawers, chemise (tucked in–is that right?) and corset. The corset itself I know to be inaccurate, because it happens to be the same modern one I wear under my Regency gown. It weirded me out a bit to see it on my daughter! She laced it in front, too, which isn’t how this corset is designed to be worn and I thought most corsets still laced in the back during the Victorian era. I think maybe it was just easier to do it that way. The point was made that corseting was used to achieve a particular look. As it was 85 degrees out and humid, I’m grateful she did not tighten it too much!

The next layers included petticoat, hoops, another petticoat and bustle pad. The presenter said they might wear as many as 10 petticoats and that the full weight of the clothing might be something around 40 lb, which seems staggering to me. If true, this seems quite brutal, especially in summer.

The other thing she said, as she completed my daughter’s toilette with dress, shawl, bonnet and parasol, was that women were not supposed to show any skin other than the face and hands. Hence the long sleeves and high neck of the gown. By this point I was worrying I’d have to sprinkle water on my kid to revive her, but she did look cute!

Comparing to the Regency (check out
Kalen’s dressing the Regency heroine page) the initial layers of clothing aren’t very different. But without the profusion of petticoats, the hoops, etc…, the Regency lady’s clothing load would be far lighter. And at least she was allowed to show some neck and arm, allowing some body heat to escape if necessary!

As I said, I’m not sure everything in this presentation was precisely correct but it does generally match what I’ve read about the Victorian era. I like to be very active but I’m also a bit prone to heat exhaustion, so I’d have a lot of trouble putting a heroine into this sort of clothing. If I ever wrote a Victorian heroine, she’d have to be a rebellious, Bohemian type and flout at least some of these clothing conventions!

How about you? Can you get over these sorts of things when reading/writing Victorian set romance? Any interesting sites you recommend visiting that are closer to home for most of us than England?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 25 Replies

THE ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE: Grammar

Updated on by

Right now, I’m in London. So, while I am (hopefully) having fun there, I hope this post is a bit of fun for you, wherever you are.

Excerpted from THE ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE: Or, Young Man & Woman’s Best Friend, by George Stapleton, published in London in 1797. (The actual title is about twenty times as long as that, actually — perhaps one day I’ll make a blog post of nothing but the title of this book.)

On THE PARTS OF SPEECH:

[words] are divided into eight parts of speech, called noun, pronoun, verb, participle, adverb, conjunction, preposition and interjection…

Nouns are divided into Nouns Substantive, and Nouns Adjective. A noun substantive is the thing itself; as, a man, a boy, a girl; and the adjective expresses the qualities or properties of a thing, as handsome, poor, &c. For if any one should say “I see a handsome, or a poor,” he would not be understood, unless a substantive be added, as “I see a handsome woman, or a poor man.”

Adjectives, in reality, are only the modificatives of nouns; though in one view they may be considered as nouns, viz. as they do not so much represent a quality of circumstance of the object, as the object itself, clothed with that quality of circumstance: nor must it be omitted, that a noun adjective frequently becomes a substantive; for as its nature is to express the quality of an object, if that quality happen to be the object itself spoken of, then it becomes a substantive.

Thus if I say, “a good intention,” the word good is an adjective, representing the intention as clothed with the quality of goodness; but if I say, “the good is to be chosen,” it is evident that good is here the subject spoken of, and consequently is a noun substantive.

On PUNCTUATION:

…indeed, there is scarce any thing in the province of grammarians so little fixed and ascertained as this.

Some of them lay down grammar rules for it; but as a mere grammarian is a mere blockhead, their rules are not worth attending to.

Few precise rules can be given which will hold, without exception, in all cases, but much must be left to the judgment and taste of the writer.

There you go. I bet you never knew before that an adjective is just one type of noun. Or that a grammarian is a blockhead. (Though some of you may have suspected the latter.)

Next week…the truth about Europeans, as seen by Stapleton. (Same Risky Time, same Risky Channel!)

And remember — the first Tuesday of the month is the Jane Austen Movie Club! (July’s movie: the 1995 version of PERSUASION. Please join us!)

Cara
Cara King, blockhead extraordinaire

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 11 Replies

Waterloo, A Very Near Run Thing

Updated on by


Bow your heads in honor of the 47,000 brave men who fought and perished June 18, 1815, 192 years ago today at the Battle of Waterloo: 15,000 British, Belgian, Dutch and German soldiers; 7,000 Prussians; 25,000 French. Inconceivable numbers of men lost in a battle that changed history.

When I first decided to write Regency historicals, I immersed myself in as much of the history as I could. My library had a nice collection of audiobooks, and I used to listen to them driving to and from work. One of those books was Waterloo: Day of Battle by David Howarth (published in Great Britain under the title A Near Run Thing: The Day of Waterloo, 1968).

Waterloo: Day of Battle tells the story of Waterloo through the eyes of the soldiers who fought in it, making it a very personal story, very real and emotional. Howarth says the individual soldier experienced the battle “half-blinded by gunsmoke, half-deadened by noise, and either half-paralyzed by fright or driven to a kind of madness by exaltation and the hope of glory.” It is a wonderful book, available used on sites like Allbookstores.com

There are some good online sites that tell of the battle:
Waterloo for the Uninitiated – June 18th 1815
Wikipedia
or more in depth
BritishBattles.com The Battle of Waterloo

From BritishBattles.com I’ll show some highlights of the battle memorialized in paintings. You can purchase some of these prints at Art.com

Early in the battle the British cavalry, including the Scots Greys shown here, charged the French, at first overwhelming the French, but intoxicated with their success, they advanced too far and did not hear or heed the bugles to retreat. French Cavalry, fresh in the battle, soon cut them off. The regiments were almost completely destroyed.


On the western side of the Allied line was the chateau and farm of Hougoumont, 3,500 men were charged with the defense of Hougoumont to protect the Allied forces from being outflanked by the French. Hougoumont was one part of the battlefield that Napoleon could see clearly and perhaps it is for that reason he poured many French resources in attempting to take it, unsuccessfully.

French General Ney ordered his cavalry to attack what he thought were retreating Allied troops, but he found instead solid British squares, and though his cavalry attacked again and again, the squares held. The movie Waterloo , starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon; Christopher Plummer as Wellington, shows an wonderful aerial recreation of this cavalry attack.


In spite of the brave, heroic, and stubborn British forces, the day might have gone to Napoleon had not the Prussians under General Blücher arrived in time.

After the battle, two square miles were covered with those 47,000 dead and dying, their shrieks and cries could be heard throughout the night as more horror assaulted them. Looters, primarily from the British and Prussian armies plundered the dead and killed the dying for their loot.

Throughout Howarth’s Waterloo: Day of Battle, he weaves a love story. Colonel Sir William De Lancey, on Wellington’s staff, had married Magdalene Hall three months earlier and she had followed him to Belgium. When word came to her that he was wounded, she searched for him and found him in a cottage near Mont St, Jean, no more than a hovel. She stayed by his side, nursing him for eleven days. At his request she lay next to him one night. The next day he died in her arms.

Read more about Lady de Lancey in Lady de Lancey at Waterloo by David Miller.

What are your favorite Waterloo books or websites?

There are some terrific fictional accounts of Waterloo, as well. What are your favorites?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 9 Replies

Free Associating Saturday

Updated on by

Tonight, thanks to Megan’s Good “Romance in the Workplace” advice, I’m going on a date! There’s this guy at (you guessed it!) work that I’ve had a crush on for a while. But I’ve been too shy to do anything about it, because: A) I’m always too shy to ask someone out, B) Well, duh, I work with him, even though he’s in a different department, C) He’s younger than me, and oh-so cute (he looks kind of like Adrian Grenier, hence the picture). But, at Megan’s urging, I went for it, and tonight we’re going out to a wine bar! (BTW, I read in Marie Claire magazine–speaking of Megan–that Adrian plays in a “country/glam-rock/ukulele” band in his spare time, which just makes him more adorable). Now I have to decide what to wear…

Speaking of what to wear (and also of Adrian Grenier, who played Anne Hatheway’s boyfriend in Devil Wears Prada, and AH plays Jane Austen), I got the Jane Austen Centre Newsletter a few days ago. There’s an article about a costume from the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice up for sale here. It might be kind of fun to own a film costume, but: A) it costs more than $6000, money that could go far in my ‘research travel fund’, B) it’s really quite ugly, C) who could wear it besides Size Double Zero Keira? If I was going to spend thousands on a movie costume, I can think of a few I would much rather have. There are at least 3 from Marie Antoinette, the lacy green dress Gwyneth Paltrow wears to Box Hill in Emma, and the purple striped travel suit and big hat from Titanic (I still lust for that hat).

I also learned from the JAC newsletter quiz that the Austen character I most resemble is–Marianne Dashwood! I took a similar quiz a few months ago with the same result. I was kind of hoping I’d become more Lizzy Bennet-ish in the meantime, but oh well. I will just go write a dramatic poem about it!

Now, I’d better go and practice my eyeliner-applying skills for the Big Date (just bought a supposedly “user-friendly” eyeliner from Clinique, plus a gorgeous new Chanel nail poilsh called “Heatwave”–a sort of mix of pink, coral, and red, with a shimmer). Is there a particular movie costume you’d like to own? And which Austen character are you?

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 17 Replies