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Monthly Archives: July 2011

Bold Women In History

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Last week, I went to a follow-up appointment with the surgeon, and one of the things I had to do was fill out a post-op questionnaire all about how I’m doing since I came home. One of the questions asked if the patient was suffering feelings of depression, and I realized something very important–I’ve actually been feeling very happy, eager to go out and have fun even. I guess a near-brush with disaster will do that, or maybe it’s a compensation for missing out on RWA, lol. But it led me to do something I always said I would never, ever do–sing karaoke. It was a friend’s birthday party Saturday, and well, one thing led to another, and next thing I knew I was singing “California Gurls.” Keep in mind that I have a terrible singing voice and am very sensitive about it, but when it was all over I realized it was actually kinda fun. Liberating.

So now I am on a “Make The Most Of Life” campaign. Every week I am going to try something new, just to help me remember life should be an adventure. I will post what I find to do (as long as it’s PG-rated…)

And when I was looking for topics for today’s post I found out that July 12 is an anniversary for one of my very favorite Bold Women in history–Dolley Madison, First Lady of the US from 1809 to 1817, who died on that day in 1849 after a long and very eventful life. She seemed appropriate to talk about today. I first “met” Dolley when we got an assignment to do a report on a figure in American history in the 5th grade. I found a book about her in the school library and loved her immediately! She was all the things I wished I could be.

She was born Dolley Payne into the Quaker Payne family on May 20, 1768, one of 8 children, and grew up in Virginia until 1783 when her family sold the family slaves and moved them to Philadelphia, where his business promptly failed and he died in 1792, leaving Dolley’s mother to run a boarding house to take care of the family. She married lawyer John Todd in 1790 and had two sons with him, but he and their younger child died in a yellow fever epidemic only 3 years later. In May 1794 she met James Madison, who had been admiring her from a distance, through their mutual friend Aaron Burr. At first glance they were a strange couple. James was 17 years her senior, a longtime bachelor, short and quiet, while Dolley was tall, buxom, and supremely outgoing, but they fell in love and were married in September of that year. She was then cast out of the Quaker church, which freed her to pursue her love of the latest fashions (especially elaborate hats and turbans!)

In 1797, James retired from the House of Representatives and took Dolley and her son to live at his home at Montpelier in Virginia, where they planned to live a quiet, private life. Fate intervened when Thomas Jefferson asked James to be his Secretary of State in 1801 and the family moved to the brand-new capital Washington DC. James became the 4th president in 1809, and Dolley really came into her own. She was a great First Lady, known for being very fashionable and giving fabulous parties. She redecorated the White House to reflect its stature, and was also very intelligent, shrewd, and charming, renowned for her ability to bring quarreling factions together and smooth quarrels at a very hotheaded time. (Too bad we don’t have her around now…)

Her most famous moment came during the War of 1812, as the British Army converged on DC and the populace fled. Alone at the White House, Dolley packed up vital papers and insisted on making sure the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington was saved before she left for safety herself. As she later wrote to her sister, “Our kind friend Mr. Carroll has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. The process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out….. It is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen from New York for safe keeping. On handing the canvas to the gentlemen in question, Messrs. Barker and Depeyster, Mr. Sioussat cautioned them against rolling it up, saying that it would destroy the portrait. He was moved to this because Mr. Barker started to roll it up for greater convenience for carrying.”

And another account of her perilous journey, “The friends with Mrs. Madison hurried her away (her carriage being previously ready), and she, with many other families, retreated with the fleeing army. In Georgetown they perceived some men before them carrying off the picture of General Washington (the large one by Stewart), which with the plate was all that was saved out of the President’s house. Mrs. Madison lost all her own property. Mrs. Madison slept that night in the encampment, a guard being placed round her tent; the next day she crossed into Virginia, where she remained until Sunday, when she returned to meet her husband.”

She was a beloved figure for the rest of her husband’s presidency, and indeed for the rest of her life. James died in 1836 after 42 years of marriage, and even though Dolley was plagued by worries over her n’er-do-well son for the rest of her life, she lived in DC and entertained and enjoyed life until her own death in 1849.

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Recovering Part Two

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So, what have I been doing this week (besides missing all the fun at RWA!)?? I have been:

1) Watching far too much TV. Until the last couple of days, it was hard to concentrate on books, so I was mostly reading fashion magazines and watching copious amounts of television. DVDs of every Austen and Bronte adaptation I have, North and South (for the 161st time), Top Gear, True Blood, and marathons of Say Yes to the Dress and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (how did I miss this show before??? Those dresses are a whole new dimension of crazy), until I started yelling at the people on the screen and had to turn it off.

2) Feeling much better, almost human again. I went to Sunday brunch and a friend’s 4th of July pool party (though no bikinis for me the rest of this summer!), and had a whole new appreciation for things like that. Life is good.

3) Drinking chocolate milkshakes, which are the only thing that really tasted good until recently and are probably a big part of my new-found appreciation for the world! Milkshakes are awesome.

4) Being really, really glad I didn’t need surgery in the eighteenth century, when things wouldn’t have gone quite so well. I have a reproduction of a 1712 pamphlet titled “Treatise of the Operations of Surgery” and let me tell you, that is some scary stuff. Their advice for painkillers during surgery is basically a stiff drink and bite down on a piece of wood. And with no x-rays and CT scans their best guess for when and where to perform a surgery was to rely on the weather. For instance:

“A favorable season for an operation is either Spring or Autumn. In the Spring, the blood is revived with greater heat whilst in the Autumn blood is cooler. In the Winter the cold…hardens transpiration and the blood has not the vivacity required to animate our bodies.”

Good to know. There is also this quite terrifying site with photos of old surgical tools, if you’re curious….

All told, I’m glad I got to go to a modern operating room with a nice painkiller drip afterward.

What have you been doing this week?

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The Riskies Welcome Michelle Willingham!

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Welcome back to Risky Regencies, Michelle! Tell us about your new book Seduced By her Highland Warrior…

Seduced by Her Highland Warrior is the second book in my MacKinloch Brothers series. It features the clan’s chief, Alex MacKinloch, who is fighting to rebuild his clan’s fortress after they survive a battle with the English during the Scottish Wars of Independence. He’s estranged from his wife after they lost their infant son. In grieving, they grew apart and though they love each other, they’ve become virtual strangers. Laren found solace for her grief in making stained glass, and it’s a secret she’s kept from her husband. Alex tried to remain strong and focus his efforts on keeping the clan together, and he’s never faced the grief over losing their child. Together, they must work through the past to rebuild their childhood love.

I love the idea of a heroine who works with stained glass–what was the research like for that?

The research was fascinating! I visited a glass studio in Damascus, Maryland, called Art of Fire (http://www.artoffire.com). Bruce taught me how hot the furnaces needed to be to melt the sand, ash, and lime together and how to blow glass (it took around eight hours for the fire to be hot enough). It meant that I had to create a secondary apprentice character to keep the fires tended for the heroine. I also used On Divers Arts, a medieval treatise written by Brother Theophilus, a monk who lived during that era and documented the procedures for making glass. The ash used in the sand and lime mixture was typically from a beechwood tree. Brother Theophilus describes that when melting the glass, it is first clear, then a flesh tone several hours later, and finally, a purple color hours after that. Oxidation helped achieve the colors, and they later discovered that minerals such as silver, iron, and manganese could be added to the raw materials to bring out the various tints.

My heroine, Laren MacKinloch, became their clan priest’s apprentice in secret, and when the priest died, she continued his craft with an apprentice of her own. In glassmaking, she finds her own worth. She also builds her own stained glass windows, from the colored glass she’s made.

What were some of the challenges of a story that starts in the middle of a broken relationship?

Since the hero and heroine were already married and had children together, some of their story is told in flashback sequences, so the reader can learn how their marriage broke apart after the death of their son. I wanted to write about characters who genuinely loved one another, but who had grown so far apart, they didn’t know how to rebuild what was lost. Laren’s shyness makes it hard for her to be the wife she thinks a clan chief needs—a “take-charge” heroine. She loves her husband but doesn’t know how to bridge the distance. Alex is frustrated because she’s kept secrets from him, but when a greater enemy threatens them, Laren’s glass holds the key to helping them all.

And what’s next for you???

I wanted to return to my Victorian series, to write the third book in the trilogy—The Accidental Prince. It’s set in my fictional kingdom of Lohenberg and it’s a Cinderella reversal, where Prince Charming loses his throne and has to live like a commoner while he tries to win the heart of his own princess. It releases in June of 2012. In the meantime, I’m currently finishing another Scottish medieval for the MacKinlochs. The hero of this book, Callum MacKinloch, lost the ability to speak while he was a prisoner of war, and it’s been quite a challenge to handle the “dialogue!”

I’d love to offer up a signed book or a Kindle copy of Seduced by Her Highland Warrior today. Have you ever worked with stained glass before? What’s a hobby you enjoy? Just tell me what you love to do in your spare time, and we’ll draw a winner from the comments.

About the author: Michelle Willingham is the author of over a dozen historical romance novels and novellas. Visit her website at: www.michellewillingham.com for more information about her books and excerpts or interact with her on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/michellewillinghamfans .

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Discoveries

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Happy Tuesday, everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Here we are now in Day 27 of 100+ temps, so I am staying in the AC and drinking lots and lots of iced tea. But I’m also on my “try new things” campaign, which meant I went out on a date with a new man last night (definitely something different!) and am going back to yoga class today for the first time since the surgery. Every day feels more and more “normal” again, and I love it. I’m also on a blog tour with authors Paula Quinn and Sue-Ellen Welfonder (look at my blog for dates–lots and lots of giveaways!)

While I’m trying to stay cool, I’m also making my way through a huge TBR pile of both fiction and non-fiction. One of the books I forgot I bought is Jonathan Downs’s Discovery at Rosetta: The Stone That Unlocked the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. If you’re read some of my posts here, or my “Muses of Mayfair” series, you know I’m fascinated by archaeology and ancient myths, so I happily settled down to read this last week. And I found out July 19 is the anniversary of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone….

The Rosetta Stone is a pretty dull-looking black granite stele inscribed with a decree issued by Ptolemy V in 196 BC, but it’s inconspicuous appearance belies its enormous importance–since it’s inscribed with the decree in 3 different scripts (ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic script, and ancient Greek) it was the key to beginning to understand hieroglyphs, which had been a mystery before that.

Originally displayed in a temple, it eventually found itself part of the building materials of Fort Julien near Rashid (Rosetta), where it was discovered by a French soldier in 1799. Luckily Napoleon had taken not only military to Egypt, but a group of 167 scholars and experts known as the Comission des Sciences des Arts to study the history and culture of the region. (This group had a long and colorful experience in Egypt, but that’s another story…). The stone fell into British hands in 1801 and has been in the British Museum since 1802. The first translation of the Greek text appeared in 1803, but it was 20 years before Jean-Francois Champollion announced the initial decipherment of the hieroglyphs. Like many objects, it’s a source of conflict to this day…

For more information, you can visit the Britsh Museum’s site (but I warn you–this site can be a total time suck!)
What are some of your favorite things you’ve come across in museums? How are you staying out of the heat this summer??

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Pleasure Bound

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First of all, I have been so turned around lately with everything that is going on that I almost forgot I have a Harlequin Historical Undone story out in August!!!! Unlacing The Lady in Waiting is set at the court of Mary Queen of Scots, and was so much fun to write, so I’m excited to see it out now, and with such a yummy cover. (see more info and how to order here…) I’ll talk more about it next Tuesday and give away a free download!

And lately I have been reading every non-fiction book I can find about the Victorian era for my next Laurel McKee series (book one, One Naughty Night will be out in June 2012…), and right now I’m in the middle of a great read. Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism by Deborah Lutz is one of the works that has really opened my eyes to the truth of the period, which belies its rule-bound surface and myths and shows the bubbling cauldron of massive change and rebellion underneath, personified by artists, poets, and explorers like Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Richard Burton (among others). It’s fascinating stuff, and perfect for my research on a series that centers around an artsy, scandalous family that stands just outside the reach of propriety.

From the cover copy: In this stunning expose of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, revealing how they uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric; the struggle for women’s emancipation, the dissolution of formal religions, and the pressing need for new forms of sexual expression.

I especially enjoy the way the author describes the many figures of this movement in a way that brings them to life and centers them in their world. One especially fascinating person I don’t know a great deal about (except for her appearance in paintings) is Jane Morris, wife of William Morris and lover of Rossetti and others: She fashioned herself into a bold character, making living a creative act…Jane too could play at Byronism. Taking the part of a mysterious, gravely silent cipher, she seemed to others to hide a brooding interior and a tormented, unknowable past. She topped it off with a secret sexual life, unusual for a woman of her time. Designing, dying, and sewing her own clothes, Janey shunned the current ultra-feminine fashions with their crinolines, corsets, and bustles for medieval art robes….

And, since it is yet another day of 100+ temps here and my mind seems friend along with my lawn (and because I just like them), let’s look at some pretty Pre-Raphaelite paintings!






Do you enjoy the Pre-Raphaelites? What’s your favorite painting by them? Anything surprising about history you’ve discovered through reading? And how are you staying out of the heat?? (I finally got to see the new Harry Potter movie this weekend–it was fabulous, but a little sad it’s all over now…)

Posted in Former Riskies, Jane Austen | Tagged , , | 8 Replies