Monthly Archives: January 2017

The Return to the Follies, or, Writing Regency Again

Updated on October 15, 2022 by Sandra Schwab

Happy New Year, dear Riskies readers!

I’m sorry I’m late with my very first post of the year; I meant to write it on Wednesday evening after walking the doggies. But as I was about to fall asleep after walking the doggies, I crawled into bed instead. But I think at the moment, it’s still Wednesday in California, so this totally counts as a Wednesday post, right?!?!?!

So — new year, new beginnings. For me, this means working on a brandnew story. Since I finished The Centurion’s Choice, I have been trying to tackle something new, yet nothing quite gelled. Not the Roman novella set in Caledonia, and definitely not the Victorian novella set in the north of England. It took me a while to realize that either story would be just too gritty for my current frame of mind. So finally I decided a return to Regency England might be at order.

Oh. My. Gosh.

There is something soothing about falling back into the familiar rhythms and patterns of Regency England, something extremely liberating about being able to just concentrate on the story instead of doing a heap of research beforehand and during writing. And if I do need to look something up again, all it takes is a quick look into one of my research books.

And did I mention the garden follies?!?

The Return of the Earl, the story I’m working on, is set almost exclusively on a big estate in the country, which means I get to describe a lovely landscape garden once again — AND ALL THE GARDEN FOLLIES!!!!

I adore garden follies. They are the best things.

In the past, I typically consulted my books on great houses and great houses when building a lovely estate for one of my characters, but this time around I just let it zip. Only after a while did I realize I was describing places I had visited myself, specifically Harewood House near Leeds.

My (still nameless) estate has the same imposing entrance gates…

…and once you’re through the gates, you’re greeted by lovely meadows (with nary a house in sight!)

It’s only as you drive (or walk) on…and on…and on…that the landscape dips to form a valley — and there it finally is: the house.

The similarities continue behind the house: Harewood has a large, beautiful south terrace…

…which offers a nice view across the landscape garden.

And when you walk down the path to the balustrade at the end of the terrace, you get this view of the landscape garden:

And you will find exactly the same view and exactly the same meadow, gently sloping down to the large lake, in The Return of the Earl. 🙂

If you would like to follow my creative journey with this story, check out my Instagram account, where I am posting status updates for my main characters.

Posted in Former Riskies, Places, Plot bunnies, Regency | 4 Replies

Georgian Housekeeping

Updated on January 18, 2017 by Isobel Carr

As a writer and a historical re-enactor, one of my favorite things is researching the minutia of everyday life. It’s all well and good to know when a major battle took place and who was king, but really, my characters are more likely to be concerned with removing a stain from a carpet or managing the dairy maids (especially as I’m currently working on a book with a country setting where the heroine is burrowing into the estate like a tick and making it all her own).

I just found a great new resource to aid me (and my heroine) in this endeavor: The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman (1776). It’s a tiny little book put out by the National Trust (God bless the National Trust!) that contains one gentry woman’s notes about housekeeping and managing servants as well as foresection that gives lots of additional information to help you understand what might otherwise be obscure in her directions. It also reinforces information that I’ve read elsewhere indicating that servants had become very had to retain by this point. One of the reasons for the book was the fact that most of the maids appear to have stayed less than two years, even though the pay seems to have been on the generous side and the fabrics chosen for their clothing above the quality usually provided.

The servants mentioned include a housekeeper, cook, laundry maid, housemaid, and various obscure mentions of male servants providing occasional assistance. We also know there was a governess (based on the bills section). Mrs. Whatman does not appear to have had a lady’s maid of her own. All reference to the care of her clothing mentions the housekeeper and the maids. Apparently the housemaids were seen as having a great deal of free time when their actual work was done and they could thus be employed in a plethora of other capacities about the house.

To touch back on my last post about clothing storage, when the book mentions the schedule for closing the curtains/shutters to keep the sun off the furniture, the “mahogany presse” in every bedroom is specifically mentioned and one specific reference is made to a servant’s bed in the “little dressing room” adjoining one of the bedrooms.

It also contains prices, and oh how we all love prices! Susanna was married to wealthy man who owned multiple paper mills (but who appears to have lived more as a gentleman, concerned with improving and expanding his estates than a manufacturing baron). Essentially, we’re dealing with a man who might well have been Bingley’s father. His income was £6000 a year (£4700 of which was from the mills). His expenditures were only £1500 a year (which may well explain how one of his children married into the local aristocracy).

He purchased an ancient manor house with 86 acres which adjoined his estate, as well as another paper mill from the Earl of Aylesford for £7423 and then spent an additional £5000 refurbishing and outfitting the house. To put this money into perspective, he had a portrait of Susanna done by Romney (a prominent painter of the day) which cost £25.

Under BILLS, we learn that in 1781, food cost £222. Other household bills totaled 325. Sevants’ wages and clothes came to £211, the stables to £184, and Susanna received £105 in pin money. Mr. Whatman’s own personal expenses came to £143.

Is there anything about historical housekeeping that either baffles or intrigues you?

Posted in Research | Tagged housekeeping, Susanna Whatman | 3 Replies

Who needs an excuse for trifle?

Updated on January 13, 2017 by Elena Greene

My daughters and I have a tradition of trying new recipes out for New Year’s Eve dinner. This year, I’d planned to try a new macaroni and cheese recipe (with smoked gouda, bacon, and peas) followed by a chocolate brownie and raspberry trifle. But I was feeling under the weather and so we just made the main dish and had ice cream for dessert.

Having the ingredients around (but really, who needs an excuse for something like this), I finally made the trifle this last weekend. It is delicious! I would definitely make it again, especially for a party as it looks festive and it makes a lot (though we are not getting tired of it)! Here’s the recipe: Bigger, Bolder Baking: Chocolate Raspberry Trifle. You could use your own brownie recipe for this, but I used the recommended Best Ever Brownie Recipe and will likely be making that again, too.

This recipe just popped up on my Pinterest feed, so I pinned it because chocolate and raspberries is one of my favorite combinations. Now it’s also making me think about the history of this type of dessert.

Although the word “trifle” has been used for desserts longer, the trifle as we know it (layers of cake, custard and cream, often with fruit or jam) became popular during the 18th century. Syllabub, which could be a dessert on its own or used as part of a trifle, is cream whipped with fruit juice and/or alcohol.

Here’s a cool NY Times article on the evolution of trifle.

Martha Lloyd, Jane Austen’s friend and eventually sister-in-law, lived with Jane Austen at Chawton and carried on many of the responsibilities of housekeeping. Here are recipes for trifle and syllabub from her collection of recipes. The Jane Austen Cookbook has a modernized version I will have to try, maybe for another blog post.

The recipe calls for Naples Biscuits, and I found a recipe for Naples biscuits at History Hoydens, where they are described as similar to Lady’s Fingers.

Here are a few other period recipes I found which I may want to try sometime:
Whim Wham, a Scottish Regency trifle (such a fun name, and it has Scotch in it), and a
trifle recipe from the Mrs Beeton (1861).

In my googling, I also ran across some delicious-sounding modern variations: a tipsy trifle with peaches and cream and pumpkin and gingerbread trifle.

Have you ever made a trifle? Do you have a favorite recipe?

Elena

Posted in Food, History | Tagged syllabub, trifle | 5 Replies

Cover Reveal & an Unusual Topic -Cheetahs!

Updated on January 6, 2017 by Gail Eastwood

Happy 2017! I had hoped to give you a date for the re-release of The Magnificent Marquess, but I am finishing up my revisions and still aiming for the end of this month or early February. I just can’t sit on my new cover any longer –take a look!! (click on images to see them bigger)

The hero in this book has lived in India for most of his life, and besides some loyal Indian servants who chose to come with him to London, he also has brought his pet cheetah, Ranee. She is the cause of some trouble right at the beginning of the story. And while you might not think the topic of cheetahs is very connected to the Regency, let me show you how it is!

When this story was first published by Signet back in 1998, some readers didn’t realize that in the early 19^th century there were still (or ever had been) Asian cheetahs in India. They are gone from India (the cheetahs, not the readers) and are very nearly extinct now even in the Middle East, where they used to roam freely. I was very distressed recently to read that cheetahs of every kind are now considered endangered. But in 1816, that was not the case.

In India, cheetahs were often trained for hunting. They are, after all, the fastest animal on the planet. It almost seems like cheating!! Just because the British were in India where the climate was quite unlike that at home doesn’t mean they were about to give up their treasured leisure pursuits. But not all cheetahs were suited to it, and that is the case with Ranee, who is much happier as a pampered companion.

Of course, Ranee is fictional, and I went with my belief in “what could have been” when I wrote this story. Have you ever read or written something in a story that seems reasonable based on research, even though you couldn’t document that anyone ever did it? Isn’t it exciting when later you stumble across information that supports it? It’s so much easier to do research now!

The Internet was just blossoming back when I wrote the original version of this book. At that time I did not find any actual cases of cheetahs being brought to London. But do you know who had one? George III! And the artist George Stubbs took time off from painting horses long enough to paint a picture of it. Here it is:

It breaks my heart that the king’s cheetah eventually ended up in the zoo at the Tower of London, such a sad fate for a magnificent animal born to run. How long it survived there I have not been able to find out. Even though this happened some 60 years before my story takes place, pre-Regency, the king and many other people from that time were still alive during the Regency and might have remembered poor Sultan, or at least saw Stubbs’s painting exhibited at the Royal Academy.

I still haven’t been able to access much information about Sultan or even the later history of the Stubbs painting, and now I would love to know more. If you’ve ever run across this or know of an accessible source, please share!

In the meantime, please let me know in the comments what you think of my new cover? I always wished Signet had included Ranee in the original one. I hope by next month I’ll be letting you know the new version of the book, revised and expanded, is out and available!! Happy New Year, everyone! P.S. If you are interested in learning more about cheetahs, there’s a fascinating blog that follows the story of one rescued cheetah from cub-dom to adulthood (click on any of the cheetah pix on the site’s homepage, or go here for a single post: http://sirikoi.blogspot.com/2013/09/sheba.html or here for a nice narrative version of Sheba’s story: http://www.care2.com/causes/cheetah-raised-by-humans-who-loved-her-enough-to-set-her-free.html Also here’s a link to the recent information about how endangered these beautiful cats have become today (with some more lovely photos): http://www.care2.com/causes/worlds-fastest-land-animal-is-now-racing-extinction.html

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Posted in History, Plot bunnies, Regency, Research, Risky Book Talk, Risky Regencies, Writing | Tagged Book covers, books, Gail Eastwood, Reading and Writing, Regency, research, The Magnificent Marquess | 12 Replies