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Category: Regency

The Look Of Love

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I have a new “guilty pleasure” book for you. The Look Of Love: Eye Miniatures From The Skier Collection, the catalogue of the Birmingham (Alabama) Museum of Art’s exhibit of eye miniatures dating from the 1780s to the 1820s.

Jo Manning, author of My Lady Scandalous, the biography of famous courtesan Grace Elliot, and of many fine Regency romances, contributed fictional vignettes about certain eye miniatures, imagining the circumstances of the creations of the jeweled pieces of art. The addition of these vignettes to the catalogue seemed an inspired idea, because the identities of most of the subjects in the collection are unknown.

Apparently it was George IV, then Prince of Wales, who commissioned the first eye miniatures. When the Prince secretly married the Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, they exchanged miniatures of their eyes, painted on ivory and set in jewels, as tokens of their love. Soon it became the fashion for lovers and loved ones to bestow these tiny portraits of a single eye, made into brooches, pendants, even rings, on their favored ones. It was the perfect love token for clandestine lovers–one eye was enough to spark the memory of the person, but not enough for another person to identify whose eye it was.

Some eye miniatures were not secrets. They might be gifts between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, betrothed couples. Some were sad mementos of a loved one who died. But the identities of so many miniatures that were gifts from secret lovers are lost to us.

What remains are beautiful, sometimes spooky, images set in gold, surrounded by gems, or decorating tortoiseshell boxes. Some of the jewelry include woven locks of hair on the underside of the miniature. One includes the miniature of a hand; others, inscriptions such as “Esteem the giver.” One of the most unusual settings is a tiny image of an eye on a toothpick box. Another, in the book but not in the exhibit, is an eye painted onto a porcelain teacup.

These were gifts whose only purpose was to convey love. What an inspiration for romance writers and readers!

Read Jo Manning’s guest blog on the exhibition at Number One London.
Here’s an article on the exhibition from Vanity Fair.
More information on eye miniatures from Antiques Roadshow.
Preview of a scholarly article from Jstor.

I found an artist who will paint an eye portrait, but I think one of us (Amanda???) once found someone else who accepted commissions for eye miniatures.

Have you read (or written) about eye miniatures in any Regency Historicals?

 

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , , | 9 Replies

“A dreadful accident”

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I’ve been reading the Letters of Harriet Countess Granville, daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who married Viscount (later Earl) Granville. She moved in the highest circles, lived an active social life in England and abroad, for her husband served as ambassador to France for intervals between 1824 and 1841. There are lots of interesting tidbits in her letters and I’ll probably talk more about them in future posts.

This week I’d like to talk about how often she wrote about the dangers of carriage travel.

At one point she writes to her sister:

“Let me warn you of Alconbury Hill, that is, of a horse there that will not back. Off we pelted from the middle of a hill with a curl at the bottom, and would not stop for ages. In short, Granville owns that we were run away with. I never met with such a dreadful danger before.”

In another letter she writes:

 

“As I was turning into Berkeley Square I met four soldiers carrying a litter covered with a sheet. I asked Samuel what it was. He said they were carrying a dead man home. I tried to avoid it, but the people got round me and I was obliged to stop whilst they passed quite close to me. I asked one of the crowd how it had
happened and he said he had been squeezed by a mob in Pall Mall. A sort of nervous horror made me scarcely able to get on, when I saw Granville Somerset galloping up to me. He said, ‘You must have seen Worcester’. ‘No.’ ‘You must, they were taking him this way.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘They say he has had a dreadful accident, and I am going to my mother.’ I leave you to imagine with what feelings I almost ran to Brook Street. Here I found the lobby full of soldiers and servants, the men standing by the litter, and the Duke of Beaufort above, leaning his arms and head on the banisters. To end my story, they found him on examination only stunned, and severely bruised, but not dangerously hurt. I staid whilst they shaved and probed the head. He had been bled on the spot eighteen ounces by a surgeon who fortunately passed at the time. My first account was incorrect. His horse took a fright, ran away and threw him out of his gig against a door-post.”

I’m not sure which is scarier, the thought of being crushed in a mob, thrown from a gig, or being bled 18 ounces. It’s clear that life in London was not all balls and lobster patties.

In historical romance, we authors sometimes use carriage accidents to kill people off, usually so someone can inherit something: a title, wealth, debts or other serious responsibilities. I’ll admit to killing off the hero’s parents in one book, in an accident going down Kirkstone Pass in the Lake District. My husband and I drove down that pass while on vacation. Later, when I read a historical account of an accident there, I wasn’t surprised. It must have been quite treacherous during the Regency and probably still is, in bad weather.

Other times we use carriage accidents in a more fun way, to force our characters into situations where they’re forced to get to know one another better. Georgette Heyer used the combination of a snowstorm, a curricle-and-pair and a donkey to strand the hero and heroine of Sylvester at a secluded country inn.

What I think is great about these plot devices is they are totally believable. Much as I love horses—I used to ride regularly—some can be a bit nuts, and even the gentlest horse can be spooked. I’ve only once been run away with. Though I managed to stay calm and in the saddle until the horse tired, but it brought home the dangers of the sport to me in a very real way.

To me, the occasional horse-related accident in romance feels realistic, far more so than scenarios in which the hero’s black stallion gallops for hours without rest or teams of horses transport characters from London to Cornwall in less than a day.

Here’s a great page I found at the Regency Collection on the dangers of carriage travel, which apparently ranged from floods and snow to escaped lionesses.

What do you think of horse-related accidents in romance? Do you find them realistic, or do you think they’re overused? Any favorites?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

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Tapped. Out.

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I approach writing my weekly Risky Regencies posts as I do my fiction writing: I let my mind wander and seize on something that seems like it might go somewhere. Usually, it works, at least enough for me to get something tapped out on the keyboard.

But today? I am Tapped Out. I officially have NO IDEAS for this post. Which means, unfortunately for you all, I’ll have to let my mind wander as I type, not just show the finished product.

Yesterday, my son, my father and I went to the Bronx Zoo, which is truly spectacular. It made me think about what zoos were like in the Regency–pretty pathetic things, I think, and I am pretty sure they were called “menageries,” not zoos, and can you imagine how poorly the animals were treated? Horses were treated well, they had to carry the Men on their Important Hunting Expeditions, after all, but other animals did not get very good treatment. No wonder our heroines always befriend cats and dogs and the like.

I was also thinking about what made a plot good–sure, there’s that catch in the throat when you’re not quite sure the author is going to live up to the expectations of a romance, and are they really going to get together, because sheesh, it sure seems like there’s no way they can get out of this mess, not without a lot of deus ex machina. And when they do, you’re almost pathetically grateful to the author for making us breathe easier. Mary Balogh is the queen of this, and she makes my heart stop almost every time I read one of her books. Who does that for you?

And the weather–our heroes and heroines did not have the benefit of central air, heat, or Polartec fabric. It’s gorgeous here on the East Coast now, and the crocuses are starting to spring up and the weather will be in the 70s today, and it fills one (meaning me) with a feeling of enthusiasm and joy. I wonder if our heroes and heroines felt the same, only moreso, because they were confined inside their drafty houses? Or did they combat their winter lassitude by doing all sorts of outdoorsy things that put a sparkle in their eyes and a healthy pink blush in their cheeks? Did they even talk about seasonal depression?

Now, here’s the class participation part: When your mind wanders, what does it wonder about? What authors make your breath catch in your throat? And is it Spring where you live? If so, what’s the part you like the best about Spring?

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Posted in Reading, Regency, Writing | Tagged , , | 6 Replies

Beer, glorious beer!

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Alfie Dolittle, who sings this in MY FAIR LADY, definitely would have agreed with Cobbett’s analysis of why beer is better than tea.

Put it to the test with a lean hog: give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and he will repay you in ten score of bacon or thereabouts. But give him the 730 tea messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing else, and he is dead with hunger, and bequeaths you his skeleton, at the end of about seven days.

Proof positive. At least, that beer can fatten you like a hog. Did we really need Mr. Cobbett to tell us that?

I used to be exclusively a wine drinker, but I fell in love with English ale during the three years my husband and I were on international assignment in England. The first time we walked across the road to the Fox and Hounds, our neighborhood pub in Funtington, West Sussex, my husband ordered a pint of Ruddles Best Bitter. Intrigued by the deep color, I took a sip. He had to order himself another. Some time after that, we joined the Campaign for Real Ale and used their Good Beer Guide and Good Pub Food Guide to help us plan our weekend excursions.

Now I no longer have any excuse for the mistake of having a Regency hero dash angrily into a pub and order lager. (I cringe a little when I read such scenes, but won’t go as far as book-flinging.) During the Regency, they would have drunk “real ale”. Here’s CAMRA’s definition:

Real ale is beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

Real ale is also known as ‘cask-conditioned beer’, ‘real cask ale’, ‘real beer’ and ‘naturally conditioned beer’.

Here are a few of the terms to describe varieties and styles of real ale:

  • bitters: well-hopped, copper-coloured, stronger versions are called “best” or “special”
  • pale ales: premium bitters that are not pale, just lighter than brown ales
  • India Pale Ale: pale ales adapted for transport to India, stronger, more heavily hopped
  • brown ale: reddish-brown to dark brown, somewhat sweet
  • mild: usually dark brown, lightly hopped
  • stout: extra-dark, almost black, strong flavored
  • porter: also dark, but lighter-bodied than stout.

Here’s one of my favorites: Morland’s Old Speckled Hen (the website explains how this ale was named). Fortunately for me, it is not impossible to find on this side of the pond.

Have you tried real ales? If so, what are your favorites? If not, it’s worth trying if only to better one’s understanding of Regency beverages. Anything for research, I say. 🙂

Elena, beer connoisseur and tea slut, hoping Cara will not cut my acquaintance 🙂

LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee
www.elenagreene.com

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Evil, Evil TEA

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William Cobbett, round about 1821, wrote:

The drink, which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been tea. It is notorious, that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutricious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases to shake and weaken the nerves.

Okay, so far, I slightly agree with Cobbett. Lack of sleep — yeah, if you drink more than you’re used to, or you drink late in the day, it can cause insomnia! But “shake and weaken the nerves”?

Cobbett continues:

It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for a moment and deadens afterwards.

Laudanum, which is opium dissolved in alcohol, being compared to tea??? Dude, what have YOU been drinking???

It is impossible to make a fire, boil water, make the tea, drink it, wash up the things, sweep up the fire-place and put all to rights again in a less space of time, upon an average, than two hours. . . . Needs there any thing more to make us cease to wonder at seeing labourers’ children with dirty linen and holes in the heels of their stockings?

There you have it, kiddies! The poor are wretched not for any of the commonly held reasons (e.g. because they are poor, or because they are lazy, or because no one who labours in the fields from dawn to dusk has time or energy to darn stockings) but because they drink too much TEA!!!!

You heard it here first.

Cara
Cara King, Tea Drinker Extraordinaire
for more weird period details, see www.caraking.com

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , | 7 Replies