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Monthly Archives: February 2014

Hello, everyone!  It’s so nice to be back in  Bloglandia for a while.  It feels like it’s been a long and….interesting….winter, and I’ve never been more grateful for great books to read and things to write.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASpeaking of things to read….my publisher just sent me a few extra ARCs of my next Amanda Carmack mystery (Murder at Westminster Abbey, book two of the Kate Haywood Elizabethan Mysteries, out in April).  So let’s give them away today!  I have 4 copies, so 4 commenters will be winners.  And now I’m diving back into revisions for The Book That Will Never End (affectionately called, of course…)

 

 

See more at Amazon

Murder at Westminster Abbey-1

1559. Elizabeth is about to be crowned queen of England and wants her personal musician Kate Haywood to prepare music for the festivities. New to London, Kate must learn the ways of city life…and once again school herself as a sleuth.

Life at the center of the new royal court is abuzz with ambition and gossip—very different from the quiet countryside, where Kate served Elizabeth during her exile. Making her way among the courtiers who vie for the new queen’s favor, Kate befriends Lady Mary Everley. Mary is very close to Elizabeth. With their red hair and pale skin, they even resemble each other—which makes Mary’s murder all the more chilling.

My own website (sadly behind on updates, which are getting done this weekend, but lots of Elizabethan info and pics…)

So what have you been doing this winter???  Read anything good lately?  what will do you when (if) it warms up??  Do you like mystery series with a recurring character?  (I’m finding I love getting to stay with Kate for multiple books and see how she grows and changes.  She gets a bit of romance in this book, too….)

As I’m working on finishing up Lucy and Thrale’s story (Sinclair Sisters, Book 2) I’m researching boxing and the like. I came across this interesting article: Hazlitt’s Prizefight Revisted, Pierce Egan and Jon Bee’s Boxiana-Style Perspective by David Snowdon posted at Romantic Textualities. Make a note, because it’s a fascinating article.

Which is not what my post is about. My post is about this book by John Bee:

Sportsman’s Slang, a New Dictionary of Terms used in the Affairs of The Turf, The Ring, The Chase, and The Cock-Pit; with Those of the Bon-Ton and The Varieties of Life, Forming the Completest and Authentic Lexicon Balatronicum et Macaronicum, particularly Adapted to the use of The Sporting World for elucidating Words and Phrases that are Necessarily, or Purposely, Rendered cramp, mutative, and unintelligible, outside their respective Spheres. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Whimsies, With Tart Quotations, And Rum-Ones; With Examples, Proofs, And Monitory Precepts Useful and Proper for Novices, Flats, and Yokels. Editio altera.

Let’s call it Sportsman’s Slang for short, eh?

Here’s a definition that answered a long-held question of mine (In the text, this is all one paragraph, but that’s too visually dense so I have added paragraphs for readability:

Bon ton: highflier Cyprians and those who run after them; from Bon–good easy–and ton or tone; the degree of tact and tension to be employed by modish people; frequently called ‘the ton’ only. Persons taking up good portions of their hours in seeking pleasure are of the Bon-ton, as stage actors and frequenters of play houses, visitors at watering-places officers &c. &c. See Haut ton.

In Paris they are both called Le bon genre. The appellation is much oftener applied than assumed. High life, particularly of whoredom: he who does not keep a girl or part of one, cannot be of the Bon ton; when he ceases, let him cut. Bon ton is included in haut-ton, and is French for that part of society who live at their ease, as to income and pursuits, whose manners are tonish, and who, like other divisions of society, employ terms of their own, which rather sparingly they engraft on the best King’s English. Mascul. et Fem.

Terms which denote the ton: ‘The go, the mode, or pink of the mode; bang-up, the prime of life, or all prime; the thing, the dash, and a dasher; quite the Varment–a four-in-hand, a whip, a very jarvy; a swell, a diamond of the first water.’ None can expect to attain perfection in all these unless he could obtain the same assistance that Faustus had, viz. Leviathan; and then he could not begrudge to meet the same end.

OK, so the phrase I have often wondered about is “Diamond of the First Water” as applied to a person. This is the first time I’ve seen the phrase in period literature. Mind you, here it’s used with a definite note of, shall we say ironic contempt? But here, we do not see the term specifically applied to a woman, and if it were, we might be excused for thinking Bee meant to imply a whore.

At any rate, I’ve wondered if the phrase might be a Heyer-ism, but if it is, she had some period authority for it. In fact, as I’ve been scanning through this, there are so many phrases I recognize from Heyer and her successors that I began to think she must have had this book in her library.

Are there phrases you’ve often wondered about?

Edited to Add!

There are dozens of uses of “Diamond of the First Water” with respect to jewelry and many that, in the same breath, mention giving that jewelry to a mistress who expects such a gift, but also many that apply the term to things that are not diamonds– and from there it’s really not hard to imagine applying the phrase to a woman. And, there are some. In the one below, we see a rather racy application of the term from dialog in a play which I include here because it made me laugh.

From Dissipation: A Comedy in Five Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal, by Miles Peter Andrews, 1781.

EPHRAIM: What ish impossible! There ish your friend Lady Rentless that I wash more intimate with than you are Maisher Alderman, for all you are my Lord’s captain.

ALDERMAN: You intimate with my Lady? Why she’s the very pink of the mode, makes fashions for the whole town, gives entertainments to the whole town, sits up all night. Why, drill me, but she’s a diamond of the first water.

EPHRAIM: Aye; I love the diamond of the first water and have got the possession of most of them.

I have a cold and so this post is about …. Regency Remedies from my 1815 New Family Receipt Book.

General Rules for The Preservation of Health


1. Avoid, as much as possible, living near Church Yards.

check!

2. Valuable concise Rules for preserving health in Winter.

a. Keep the feet from wet.

check!

b. avoid too plentiful meals.

uh oh…

c. drink moderately warm and generous, but not inflaming liquors.

OK, this confuses me a little but I’m going to assume that my morning coffee overdose fits the bill.

d. Go not abroad without breakfast.

Hmm. I have my cereal when I get to work…

e. Shun the night air as you would the Plague.

I am indoors right now!

f. Let your house be kept from damps by warm fires.

I’m counting the AC. Is a fire ever anything but warm? I guess he means a fire big enough to warm the room.

Preventive of autumnal Rheumatisms

For the sake of bright and polished stoves, do not, when the weather is cold, refrain from making fires. There is not a more useful document for health to the inhabitants of this climate, than “Follow your feelings.”

I was baffled by this for some time. I finally realized this means, don’t avoid making fires because you want to keep your stove bright and polished.

I always follow my feelings, so SCORE!

Does anyone one else think the author worked on this and finally said, What the hell else can I say about not getting antumnal rheumatisms? oh fuck it. Follow your feelings!
 

My feelings right now are, how soon before the cold meds kick in?

snowdrops in sparkly snow

So we’re dealing with yet another cold snap in upstate NY. I’m ready for spring, even though I haven’t gotten out onto the ski slopes yet, due to my daughter’s college search and a three week long sinus/flu/something-or-other. I can still enjoy spring skiing. That means having to adapt to snow that goes from ice in the morning to slush in the afternoon, but it also means shorter lift lines and warmer weather. So come on spring!

I do get a sense of thaw in the surge of creativity I’m feeling and seeing all around me.

I’m close to finishing some rather major improvements to Lord Langdon’s Kiss, my first book which I plan to reissue in April. I’m also brainstorming a bunch of new story ideas. When I ran the free promo for my sexy novella, Lady Em’s Indiscretion, a reader asked if I planned to put it out in paperback. I replied that it seemed too short; I’d have to write a couple more and make it into an anthology. She and others really liked the idea, and that same evening ideas for a prequel and sequel poured into my mind. I’m also starting to think about new full-length stories, possibly a series.

I’m not the only one. I was so happy to hear that Amanda is coming back from a rough patch. I’m also delighted that Gail has been able to spend more time on her writing—you’ll hear more about that from her later. Another friend has a new book out, and yet another is getting ready to launch a steampunk series.

This all makes me very happy.

How about you? What is everyone up to? Any signs of spring in your life?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

This is a repeat of a post from February 11 a few years ago, which was the birthday of William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) who is credited with being the inventor of photography.

As with many scientific discoveries, the bits and pieces of evidence–optical and chemical–were lying around for some time, and it took an enquiring mind to put them together.

The optical side of photography was provided with the Camera Obscura, which had been around for centuries as an aid to drawing. Leonardo da Vinci used it, and his contemporary Daniel Barbaro described it thus:

Close all shutters and doors until no light enters the camera except through the lens, and opposite hold a piece of paper, which you move forward and backward until the scene appears in the sharpest detail. There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately colour it from nature.

An early sci-fi novel by Charles-Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche (1729-1774), Giphantie, predicted the invention of photography.

For centuries people had been aware that some colors bleach in the sun, but it wasn’t clear whether this was the effect of heat, air, or light. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle, a founder of the Royal Society, reported that silver chloride darkened with exposure. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Thomas Wedgwood of pottery fame experimented with capturing images but couldn’t make them permanent.

The first successful picture was made with an eight hour exposure by Joseph Niepce in 1827, using material that hardened on exposure to light–he named it a heliograph. Rejected by the Royal Society, Niepce went into partnership with Louis Daguerre, who reduced the exposure time to half an hour and discovered that salt stabilized the image, and invented the daguerrotype.

Interestingly, neither Niepce nor Fox Talbot could draw, which is why they were so interested in artificial means of producing images. Niepce was forced to look elsewhere to continue his interest in lithography when his artist son went to war in 1814 (and may have died at Waterloo–something I couldn’t confirm). Fox Talbot continued his own experiments, successfully producing his first photograph of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey,Wiltshire, in 1835.

The photograph at the top of this post is also by Fox Talbot, showing Nelson’s column under construction in Trafalgar Square in 1843.

He nicknamed his cameras mousetraps.

In 1844-46 he published a collection of photographs, The Pencil of Nature (get your mind out of the gutter), demonstrating that this technology had both artistic and practical possibilities–in inventorying possessions, creating likenesses, and possibly also being of use in the legal system. He reminded readers:

The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation.

If Talbot Fox had been born earlier, or if he had been a particularly precocious teenager, we might have had photos of the Regency. So, the kickass question. Imagine you’ve gone back in time with your digital camera carefully concealed in your capacious muff or elegant reticule (or, okay, tucked inside your stays):

Who or what would you photograph?

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