Monthly Archives: March 2014

Helau! – Carnival in Germany

Updated on October 15, 2022 by Sandra Schwab

A big thank you to the Riskies for letting me step in as a temporary contributor to their blog! For my debut, I’m showering you with confetti, for today is the last day of carnival, the “fifth season,” here in Germany. “Carnival in Germany???” some of you might say. “Do Germans have a sense of humor?” If you fall into this group, you have to be very brave now because what I’m going to show you will shock you exceedingly.

There will be a lot of confetti.

And Mr. Johannes Gutenberg wearing a fool’s cap.

Since the Middle Ages the weeks before Ash Wednesday, the start of lent in the Catholic calendar, have been used for celebrations and fool’s days during which the traditional social order was turned upside down. The instutions and rituals of the Church were parodied in “ass masses” and the choosing of a “pseudo-pope”.

In many German areas these carnival customs were lost after the Reformation since the Protestant church got rid of the days of lent before Easter. In Catholic areas, however, carnival continued to be celebrated. In the towns the festivities were organized by the guilds, while the nobility gave masked balls in their palaces and estates. Carnival masks and costumes became more and more intricate and elaborated and were influenced by the Italian commedia dell’ arte.

The modern forms of carnival can be traced back to the years of political restoration in Germany during the early nineteenth century. Modern carnival emerged as a middle-class effort with strong elements of political and military satire. This satirical tradition lives on most strongly in the Rhenish Carnival, which is celebrated particularly in the areas around Mainz, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, the three strongholds of this type of carnival. It is characterised by parades and sessions (“Sitzungen”), which are show events combining song, dance, and comical speeches. The largest of the parades traditionally take place on Rose Monday, the Monday before Ash Wednesday.

In Mainz, the first carnival parade was organised in 1837 by local merchant Nicolaus Krieger, who thought this might be a good way to transform the “vulgar” customs of the common people into something more genteel and something that would attract tourists. (Good thinking, Nick! These days thousands of people not only take part in the Rose Monday parade, but several hundred thousands of people also line the streets.)

In the same year, in 1837, another merchant, Johann Kertell, founded the first of the Mainzer guards, the Ranzengarde (= the Fat-Belly Guards). The guards are the most obvious example of military satire in the Rhenish Carnival, for their costumes are modelled on uniforms of real regiments stationed in the area during the nineteenth century.

In the context of the Rhenish carnival, the guards are responsible for protecting Prince Carnival and for escorting the eleven members of the fool’s committee that oversees the carnival sessions. Just like many real military regiments, the carnival regiments have musical bands, and in Mainz they also have a special carnival march, the Narhalla March, a musical parody of a march composed by Adolphe Adam for his opera Le Brasseur de Preston in 1838. Motifs from that opera were used by one of the founding members of the first carnival club in Mainz, the Mainzer Carneval-Verein (MCV), for a carnival march that was first performed in 1840.

(In this video you can listen to the march at the beginning of the Mainzer TV session of 1985, where it was played when members of all the guards of Mainz escorted the fool’s committee to the session)

I leave you with one last image from the Rose Monday parade – these are the Meenzer Schwellköpp (the swell heads) – and return to my current WIP (also known as Aaaaaaaargh!!!!! or sob), which I need to finish before carnival will be buried tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Posted in Former Riskies, Guest, History | Tagged carnival, Sandra Schwab | 14 Replies

Traffic Woes in Nineteenth-Century London

Updated on October 15, 2022 by Sandra Schwab

It’s Sandy again. After telling you all about the joys of Rhenish carnival in Germany in my last post, I’d like to take you back to nineteenth-century London, home of many heroes and heroines in historical romance, in today’s post.

We might like to think that our traffic woes — traffic jams, incomprehensible bus routes, or mad drivers – are a product of our modern age, but we couldn’t be more wrong. Traffic, the state of the roads, and, later, public transport caused already the people in the nineteenth century countless woes. Londoners in particular were well acquainted with traffic jams.

Partly, this problem was caused by the sheer numbers of carriages, carts, and cabs that drove on London’s streets each day and that were joined by countless pedestrians, all kinds of street sellers, and livestock. Add to that some omnibuses, which became a common sight in London from 1829 onwards, when George Shillibeer’s first two horse-drawn buses took up their service. Thanks to Shillibeer’s success, other companies followed and within two decades serval bus services and routes had been established in London. Bus drivers and passengers were the butt of the joke in many Punch cartoons – and many points that the magazine ridiculed are certainly familiar to modern users of public transport. 🙂

The traffic problem in London was not helped by the state of the roads: many of them were unpaved and / or full of holes (the cartoon is again from Punch).

But even as more and more roads became paved in the course of the century, they did not necessarily become easier to navigate. For example, in the 1840s the newspapers were full of reports of accidents caused by the slippery wooden pavement in some parts of the metropolis. The following snippet is from Lloyds Weekly London Newspaper, Sunday, 11 May 1845:

Indeed, accidents on the Strand became so numerous that one month later, in June 1845, it was decided that the wooden pavement between Bedford Street and Charing Cross should be replaced by granite.

Large society events could also prove disruptive for traffic. Don’t we all love those splendid ball scenes in Regency romances? Ah, but how do our heroes and heroines (not to speak of the countless other guests) get to those balls? They come by carriage, of course. And if 100 or 200 or even more people try to get by carriage to the same place at the same time, you inevitably end up with an interesting traffic situation. In addition, the following cartoon by Richard Doyle (also from Punch) (yes, I do love Mr. Punch *g*) suggests that the arrival of guests for a ball provided a nice spectacle for common people (which couldn’t have helped with the traffic):

And as to the parking situation, London’s inns might have had underground stables, but multi-storey car parks nineteenth-century London did not have – alas. During a ball or other great events carriages were thus often simply left standing in the streets and created major obstructions. For example, in July 1839, when the dress rehearsal for the Eglinton Tournament was held in the garden of the Eyre Arms in St. John’s Wood, about two thousand people (most of them members of the aristocracy and the gentry) came to watch the spectacle. “To give some idea of the number of persons present,” the Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser writes, “it is but necessary to state, that the whole of the adjacent roads and streets, for nearly half a mile round, were lined by carriages three or four deep.” What joy!

Posted in Former Riskies, Guest, History, Research | 7 Replies

A Lock of Wellington’s Hair

Updated on March 31, 2014 by diane

I’m still gathering comments for Anne Gracie’s giveaway, so if you want a chance to win The Winter Bride, check out yesterday’s blog.

Kristine Hughes of Number One London sent me this article about an upcoming auction at Christies, which includes a gold bracelet containing a lock of the Duke of Wellington’s hair.

The auction is selling heirlooms belonging to the Marquess of Londonderry and Baron Raglan, whose ancestors have connections to Wellington. Lord Castlereagh, later to become the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, was Foreign Secretary during the Napoleonic Wars. He was also Wellington’s friend. The 1st Baron Raglan was married to Wellington’s favorite niece. The article includes interesting pieces of the family histories.

Baron Raglan must sell the heirlooms to pay for the upkeep of Cefnilla Court, the family property. The Marquesses of Londonderry sold their family estate years ago. It is now a hotel. It is not explained what prompted the current sale of these items.

The gold bracelet is valued at somewhere between 1500 and 2500 pounds. Affordable? At least more affordable than Robert Lefèvre’s Portrait of the Emperor Napoleon (£80,000-£120,000).

Would you pay 2500 pounds ($4160) for a lock of Wellington’s hair???? (I am tempted!)

Don’t forget to scroll down and comment on yesterday’s blog for a chance to win Anne Gracie’s The Winter Bride.

And speaking of the Number One London blog, come back next monday when I interview Kristine and Victoria Hinshaw on their upcoming Duke of Wellington Tour!

Posted in Risky Regencies | 5 Replies

Anne Gracie and The Winter Bride

Updated on March 28, 2014 by diane

Anne Gracie is our guest today to tell us all about her latest, The Winter Bride, second book in her Chance Sisters Series. It was just announced that Anne’s first book in the series, The Autumn Bride, is a RITA finalist for Best Historical!

Here’s what reviewers are saying about The Winter Bride:

“Gracie has created a wonderful cast of characters…lively dialogue and tender emotions compel readers to relish every moment of the developing romance” —RT Book Reviews

“Charming…thoughtful and tender.” —Publishers Weekly

“…another delightful, emotionally complex romance…a romantic winner, with Gracie’s typical witty charm and sweeping emotion.” —Kirkus Reviews

Anne will be giving away a copy of The Winter Bride to one lucky commenter, chosen at random.

Anne! Welcome back to Risky Regencies.

Tell us about The Winter Bride and the Chance Sisters series.

The Chance sisters series are about four girls who come together in Regency-era London. Two are real sisters, but, being orphans and without any means of support, they band together to become a family, “sisters of the heart” rather than by blood. When they meet an elderly aristocratic old lady who is in an even more desperate situation than they are, they rescue her—and their fortunes change for the better. That happened in The Autumn Bride, the first book in the series.

Now we have — surprise surprise — The Winter Bride. This is Damaris’s story — she was raised in China as the daughter of a missionary, and came back to England as a penniless young woman. With secrets in her past, she has no desire to marry; a cottage of her own — security and safety— is all she wants.

Freddy, our hero, is a lighthearted rake, an elegant bad-boy with no interest in marriage. In line to inherit his father’s title, he’s rich, well connected and a catch. Freddy is pursued by muffins – his term for the kind of respectable, eligible girls bent on marrying and reforming him.

To keep the muffins at bay, Freddy offers Damaris a cottage in exchange for pretending to be his fiancée for a visit to his parental home. Of course it backfires.

What is risky about The Winter Bride?

Freddy isn’t the usual kind of romance hero — he’s very much a beta hero — a lightweight, funny rake, and women often get the better of him. Even Damaris’s employer says this of him:

“Tomcat in gen’leman’s clothing, that’s what ’e is—a rake through and through.”
“Rake? You thought—”
Mrs. Jenkins snorted. “I knew what he was the instant I clapped eyes on him! Dressed like that in his fancy duds at this hour of the mornin’. The cheek of ’im, thinking he could seduce away one o’ my girls in broad daylight.”
“But he wasn’t—”
“Bless you, my dove, you’re too young to recognize a Wicked Seducer when you see one, and I grant you that one is an ’andsome devil, and charmin’ as an oiled snake, I have no doubt!” She fixed Damaris with a gimlet eye. “But it don’t do for a girl like you to catch the eye of a gentleman, take it from me. He’ll soften you up with sweet words and little gifts and . . . and poetry, and you’ll think ’e’s ever such a nice fellow, then in the twinklin’ of an eye, he’ll ’ave your skirts over your ’ead, and there you’ll be, rooned forever!”
“But Mrs. Jenkins—”
“Rooned forever!” Mrs. Jenkins repeated firmly. “And we don’t want that, do we? Now, I’ve given him a piece of me mind—blistered ’is ear’oles good and proper, I did—and if ’e knows what’s good for ’im, he won’t be back to bother you again, so let’s get to work.”
Damaris nodded and resumed her seat at the bench. She had to press her lips together to hide the smile that kept threatening to break out. She could just imagine Mr. Monkton-Coombes’s face when he was confronted with Mrs. Jenkins, four foot eight of Righteous Indignation.

But Freddy comes into his own, and grows into a hero I hope readers will love.

You asked fans on Facebook to pick a favorite The Winter Bride book cover – North America or Australia? Which one won?

I think the Australian one, by a whisker. But why not let the Riskies readers decide?

Share with us one memory of your own “sisters of the heart.”

I’m the baby in my family and am far in age and geography from my blood sisters, but I have some wonderful friends who are my “sisters of the heart.” I have two friends I went to school with and we’ve celebrated every birthday since we were fifteen, and been there for each other for all that time. And right now I’m away with a group of writer friends who are very much my “sisters of the heart” — we go away for a week each year and write, and in between, there’s email and phones. We’ve been there for each other through death, divorce, illness and for all the joyful occasions. I love my “sisters of the heart.”

What do you like best about the writer’s life?

The wonderful friends I’ve made, some of whom I’ve only met in person several times. And it’s a blessing to be able to have the stories that blossom in my head come out as books and have readers enjoy them.

What is next for you?

You probably find this surprising, but I’m working on a book called . . . wait for it . . .The Spring Bride. (You’d never have guessed that title, would you? )
This is Jane’s story, but her hero is a surprise — a bit of a wild card.

Thanks so much for letting me visit, Riskies and Diane. I’m currently writing The Spring Bride, and since I know so many people are desperate for winter to be gone, here’s a question: what do you most love about Spring?

Remember. I’ll give a copy of The Winter Bride to someone who leaves a comment.

Diane here. Be patient. Anne is “Down Under” and may be asleep when you comment. She’ll drop by when daylight reaches Oz.

We’ll select a winner and announce on Wednesday.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest | Tagged Anne Gracie, The Autumn Bride, The Winter Bride | 42 Replies

Romance Series and Giveaway!

Updated on March 27, 2014 by Elena Greene

While my critique partners and beta readers have been reviewing Lord Langdon’s Kiss, I’ve been working on another project: reuniting my “Three Disgraces” Regency series in an ebook bundle.

Comment on this post for the chance to win one of 5 copies on either Kindle or Nook. (Apple and Kobo are still in the works.)

The Three Disgraces includes reissues of The Incorrigible Lady Catherine, The Redwyck Charm, and Saving Lord Verwood. Although many Regency ladies were educated by governesses at hom, my three heroines met at one of those select schools for girls we sometimes read about. Although they’re very different in terms of birth, interests and temperament, none of them quite fit in for various reasons. And so they developed a warm friendship while defending themselves against the catty set at the school.

I had so much fun writing this trilogy. I didn’t really plot ahead, other than coming up with the issues each heroine would have to deal with and what sort of hero would challenge her the most. Somehow it all came together. I’ve mostly written standalone books, but I have to admit it’s also a lot of fun to spend some time with characters you loved in a previous book, and help beloved secondary characters get their own stories.

Now I’m contemplating another series. This one involves more characters over a longer period of time, so I’m thinking I should maybe plan a little. Luckily, I have a writers’ retreat coming up which will be a perfect time to brainstorm.

Do you enjoy series? Why or why not? And for my fellow authors, how much planning do you do up front for your series? Any tips and tricks?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Posted in Giveaways, Reading, Writing | Tagged romance series, Saving Lord Verwood, The Incorrigible Lady Catherine, The Redwyck Charm, The Three Disgraces | 20 Replies