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Category: Regency

To The Sea – Brighton’s Royal Pavilion

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When my children were young, this was the time of year we would always spend a week at the beach. My In-laws then owned a condo at North Myrtle Beach, SC, and every year we would vacation there. It was a great condo, right on the beach, on the third floor and facing the ocean. It had three bedrooms and two full baths, plus a screened in balcony. We went there so many years that it felt like home and North Myrtle Beach was nearly as familiar as our neighborhood.

During the Regency, the Prince Regent also owned a “beach house.” His house was at the beach resort town of Brighton and he, too, “vacationed” there.

The Prince first visited Brighton in 1783 at aged twenty-one, in the company of his fast-living uncle, The Duke of Cumberland, partly to escape the constraints of his father’s court and partly for health reasons. His physicians thought sea-bathing would ease the swelling of glands of his neck. By 1786 he purchased a modest Brighton residence and shortly thereafter he hired Henry Hollard to build him a grander residence, a neo-classical structure with a central domed rotunda surrounded by Ionic columns. His residence was nearby the villa where he’d installed Mrs. Fitzherbert, his secret wife.

The Prince’s presence in Brighton was a boon to the town’s economy. Soon the fashionable world followed him to Brighton, and more elegant residences were built for them. Brighton remained the fashionable place for the elite to spend their summers. During these years the Prince hired architect P. F. Robinson to expand the beach house. He also purchased the land around what was named the Marine Pavilion. The stable he had built between 1803 and 1808, in the Indian style, soon dwarfed the pavilion. There was nothing to do but make his beach house even grander.

By this time (1815) the Prince had became Prince Regent, and he hired John Nash as the architect to redesign the exterior. The Prince Regent wanted the house built in an Indian style, like the stables. Nash had never traveled to India, but he was inspired by drawings in William and Thomas Daniell’s four volume Oriental Scenery and the result is the building as it appears today.

The interiors of the Pavilion were designed by Frederick Crace and Robert Jones and their rooms are a remarkable sight to see. I was lucky enough to visit the Royal Pavilion in 2003 and walked through those rooms. These images can’t quite do them justice. The house was completed in 1823. By that time the Prince had become King George IV.

The Royal Pavilion, in my opinion, is the perfect beach house, because it is decorated in a style you’d never live with at home. It just skirts the boundary between beautiful and tacky (but lands mostly on the beautiful side).

Amanda, remember that the Royal Pavilion does weddings! You could be married in the Grand Saloon and have your wedding sit-down in the dining room!! I’d so totally come for it!

Where is your favorite beach vacation? And do you think Amanda should be married in Brighton at the Royal Pavilion?

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Extreme Weather, 1814 Style

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Today the news will be filled with weather reports, as we in the US discover if Tropical Storm Isaac turns into a hurricane and if it will hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, where Katrina did such devastating damage in 2005.

For my blog today, I went looking for extreme weather during the Regency period. And I found it! What amazing synchronicity.

Almost 198 years to this day, a storm figured in the burning of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.

On August 19, 1814, British warships sailed up the Patuxent River. The British army disembarked in Maryland and defeated the American forces at the Battle of Bladensburg.  The British marched on to Washington, D.C. on August 24, while government officials and residents fled the city, including, at the last minute, the First Lady, Dolley Madison, who rescued the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington.

Unfortunately for the British, there were no representatives of government left in the nation’s capitol to surrender, so, after eating a dinner meant for Dolley Madison’s party in the White House, the British admiral gave the order to burn the public buildings of the city. The White House and Capitol were still burning on August 25 when a severe thunderstorm struck. It is thought that a  tornado tore through the city, catching the British troops by surprise. Several soldiers were killed in the storm’s destruction, and the storm stopped the further spread of the fire.

Afterward the admiral asked a Washington lady, “Great God, Madam! Is this the kind of storm to which you are accustomed in this infernal country?”

“No, sir,” the lady replied. “This is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city.”

The British left hours later, returning to their ships, which had also suffered damage in the storm.

There is a more detailed account of the storm here.

Interesting note for those of us who love books. The Library of Congress which was then housed in the Capitol, was destroyed by the fire. One year later, Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress to replace the lost books. More about Jefferson’s library here.

Are you in Isaac’s path? If so, stay safe. Do you have any storm memories? I remember driving in every direction after Hurricane Agnes, looking for a way to get home that wasn’t blocked by water.

I’ll select yesterday’s winner after midnight tonight. So there is still time to comment on guest Laurel Hawkes’ blog for a chance to win.

If you are near Raleigh/Durham, NC, on Wednesday Aug 29, I’m going to be doing a reading from A Not So Respectable Gentleman? at Lady Jane’s Salon. I’d love to see some Risky readers there!

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Happy birthday, Mary Shelley

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I’m recycling a post from a few years ago about Mary Shelley, whose birthday it is today.


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on this day in 1797, the daughter of radicals Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Well-educated and not particularly happy at home (there was some friction between Mary and her stepmother Mary Jane Clairmont), it was only natural that when a handsome young poet showed up, she’d fall in love and run off with him. Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, who later had a torrid affair with Byron, accompanied them to Europe.

Shelley already had a wife, Harriet, but these were the heady days of sex, opium, and the sonata form. Godwin, his radical sexual politics put to the test, became estranged from his daughter.

In the summer of 1816, Shelley, Mary, and Byron were in Switzerland and it was there, in response to a challenge to tell the best ghost story, Mary started to write Frankenstein. After Shelley’s death in 1822 she returned to England and supported herself as a writer until her death in 1851, penning short stories, essays, poems, and reviews, and several other novels.

I’m not doing justice at all to Mary’s adventurous, unconventional, and sad life, so I encourage you to read a book that does–Passion by Jude Morgan. It’s about the women who became entangled with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, beautifully written, and with a wonderfully strong sense of time and place. It’s also a very sad book–if you know anything at all about these people, you’ll know everything ended badly, particularly for the women.

Have you read this book or any other book, fictional or biographical, about the Godwins, Mary, Shelley, Byron et al? Do you have any recommendations?

In blatant self promotion, you can enter a contest at Goodreads to win a copy of Hidden Paradise, which recently got this wonderful review at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Go for it.

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Accessory Vices

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A few days ago I went into DSW to the clearance section looking to see if I could replace some everyday sandals that have gotten a bit ratty this summer. I didn’t find my sandals, but I came out with these. They begged me to take them home with me; they fit, they’re my favorite color and they’re sparkly. Just right for running around Price Chopper!
I don’t know if I would have had a shoe thing during the Regency. Ladies’ shoes tended to be simple, kind of like ballet flats we might wear now. Here is an example from the Northampton Central Museum, found on the footwear page at Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion (one of my favorite online resources on Regency costume). These shoes are circa 1810 and leather, so not quite as delicate as they might look. Styles became plainer (and more round-toed) as the era progressed. Although flats are cute, there is just not enough variety for me to want to collect them.
I suspect that hats were the accessory vice of choice for many Regency ladies. However, many styles of hat that I like on other people don’t look good on me. So I rarely wear hats, but when I do, I have a simple crocheted wool hat for winter and a straw cloche for summer. I wouldn’t be able to pull off any of these elaborate styles from 1811. I’d end up wearing something small and simple. Cute, but one or two would be enough.
So my vice of choice would probably be jewelry. I probably have even more pairs of earrings than shoes, though that isn’t as expensive as it  sounds. I like costume jewelry best; it’s often as pretty as the “real” stuff and I don’t have to fret about losing it.
During the Regency, I think I would be happy with paste and pinchbeck. Paste was the term for a type of glass that was cut to resemble gemstones. It takes a better eye than mine to distinguish the stones in these earrings from diamonds.
Pinchbeck was an alloy of base metals that looks enough like gold to please me. I’ve long admired this set of earrings from www.georgianjewelry.com, one of my favorite places to window shop for my heroines.
Do you have any accessory vices? If you were a Regency heroine, how would you spend your pin-money?
Elena
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Back to the Regency

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Currently, I’m working on a Regency-set historical featuring the Most Stunning Man Alive and a woman who is–not. In fact, she is renowned for her bad clothing sense, so much so the MSMA has problems speaking properly when he is near her.

It’s so much fun! And it allows me to indulge in all those color combinations I’m pretty sure I rocked back in the ’70s–teal and fig, for example, or many bright patterns.

Tom-Hardy-Wuthering-Heights

My hero isn’t quite Beau Brummell, but he is not as outrageous as the heroine.

One of the best parts about writing something like this is the etymology–I found I was able to use the word ‘oxymoronic,’ while I couldn’t say someone was in the limelight (1826, so close!).

I love language, a love no doubt fostered by my dad, who had Francis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue around the house when I was growing up, long before I knew what the Regency was or that I would one day be a writer.

So I’m off to get some more words in on the current book, but am wondering–do you have a favorite word or words? Do you have words you misuse? (mine are brackish and miasma).

Megan

 

 

Posted in Regency, Risky Book Talk, Writing | Tagged | 9 Replies