Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

The Joy of Plot Bunnies. I mean Anecdotes.

Updated on January 19, 2016 by Isobel Carr

Gaming at Brooks’s Club: 19th century
Thomas Rowlandson
c. 1810-1815

I stumbled across a very entertaining book from 1828 while doing a bit of research about Gentleman’s Clubs in London: The Clubs of London; with anecdotes of their members, sketches of character and conversations. It’s exactly the kind of fodder I love for my books. There’s just something delicious about working a bit of real gossip or happenstance into a book, especially if it’s funny our outrageous!

The first anecdote is that of Sheridan (the actor) being inducted into Brookes’s [sic]. His friends has proposed him several times, but he had continually drawn one black ball during the voting. Determined, his friends marked all the black balls to discover who it was that was excluding him, and then they all arranged to distract that member during the next vote to prevent his being present. It absolutely worked and even the man himself came to find the trick they pulled amusing once it was over and done with.

The second story deals with the induction of a man that was actually blackballed by EVERY member and yet managed to bully his way into membership. He was a notorious duelist and when told that after several rounds of voting he had still received a blackball, he charged into the room and demanded of each individual if THEY had been the one to blackball him. No one was willing to say yes, lest they be challenged to a duel and killed by the manic, so they let him stay. He was never admitted again, but he freely boasted everywhere that he was a member.

I can easily see either of these anecdotes shanghaied and used in a book, especially in one of the popular series that stars the owner of a club or a group of men who belong to one. I haven’t written a balloting scene in my Legion of Second Sons series, but now I very much want to. I just have to find a way to make it germane to the story. I can easily see either story being a good way of setting up an enmity between a hero and an antagonist. And it could be a fun way of exploring “politics-lite” since I have been assured that many readers find the actual politics a bit dry, LOL!

What do you all think? I love the idea of the hero standing up to the duelist and saying that of course he blackballed him and I can think of all kinds of ways this could come back to haunt him …

Posted in History, Isobel Carr, Places, Plot bunnies, Regency, Research | 4 Replies

New Year’s Resolutions–To Bid Farewell to Scandal?

Updated on January 8, 2016 by Elena Greene

I was googling around to see if people during the Regency might have made New Year’s resolutions and found confirmation in a delightful post from The Snug Blog. The author found a 1792 etching “A Long String of Resolutions for a New Year – Design’d by G.M. Woodward” including satirical sketches of people making various resolutions including the one shown here.

I imagine they probably had a similar success rate to what people have now. Googling further, I found statistics saying that about 8-12% of those making New Year’s resolutions end up succeeding. Maybe it’s not so bad–at least those 8-12% made it, and for the rest, there’s always next year.

The problem is that starting a new calendar doesn’t mean I’ve left the baggage of the previous year behind. All the things that hindered me in the past may still be there. Any resolution that doesn’t take those things into account isn’t going to go far.

Also, if I feel the need for a change, I don’t want to wait until the New Year to start it. And if I backslide, I’m also not going to wait until the next year to start over. It’s only through setbacks and recoveries, by stringing together small successes day by day, that my larger goals have ever been met.

So I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions as such, although I do think it’s good to take time to reflect on how life is going and whether I’m living as authentic a life as I can.

The small steps I’ve been taking recently toward creative recovery include going to a coffee shop a few times a week to work on a new novella. I’m nearly done with the first draft and more importantly, I’m enjoying it.

Baby steps.

How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Have you made any? What helps you succeed?

Elena

Posted in Regency, Research, Writing | Tagged new year, new years resolutions | 6 Replies

Christmas Rant and Some Music

Updated on December 9, 2015 by Elena Greene

Long time visitors to the Riskies know I have a complicated relationship with Christmas. I detest the whole commercial aspect and I also despise the idea that the season magically fixes things. However, I embrace the season in my own way—which is to accept the darkness as well as the light.

Each year, I think of people who are lonely, and of the various wars, large and small, raging through families and countries. Right now it feels as if the whole world is bleeding, and it seems that every day brings more heartbreak.

I know some people like to look away, to lose themselves in a blaze of Christmas lights, of shopping, even of obsessing about “not being ready” for Christmas. (What does “ready” really mean?)

My own way of coping is to allow the sadness in as well as the joy. Music is one of the ways I can stay in touch with both.

This year I found another version of the Coventry Carol, arranged by Ola Gjeilo, performed by the CORO Vocal Artists. Its haunting melody helps me find that stillness where I can feel the heartbreak and then let it lead me toward whatever healing action I can take for myself and others.

On the more joyful side and in the spirit of the Regency, here’s a version of the Gloucester Wassail and the Holly and the Ivy by the Waverley Consort, with assorted interesting Georgian and Regency imagery. The Gloucester Wassail was first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928, but it believed to date back to the Middle Ages, so it could definitely have been part of a Regency Christmas. An early mention of The Holly and the Ivy is in a book dated 1823, and the lyrics are reprinted in an 1861 collection, A Garland of Christmas Carols, where it is stated that it was found in “an old broadside, printed a century and a half since” (around 1711), so this is another carol that our Regency characters might have sung.

Here’s the refrain from “The Gloucester Wassail”:

Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to visit some of my posts from past years about traditional Christmas music that hasn’t been used to sell cars, watches, or anything else:

Holiday Music, Traditional and Reinvented

Antidote for Carol of the Bells

Carols and Winners

What are your favorite carols?

Elena

Posted in Music, Rant, Regency, Research | Tagged Christmas carols, Christmas music, Gloucester Wassail, The Coventry Carol, The Holly and the Ivy | 6 Replies

John Carr Architect

Updated on December 7, 2015 by diane

I’ll bet if I say “Robert Adam” most readers and writers of Regency romance will know that he was a famous architect who greatly influenced architecture, interior design, and furniture design of the times–mostly Georgian times, but I imagine my Regency characters in houses designed by Adam all the time.

On my England trip last year, though, I learned of another architect of the same period, even more prolific than Adam–John Carr.

John Carr designed Basildon Park, one of the houses we visited on the Duke of Wellington Tour and one I blogged about here shortly after. He, too, was a neoclassicist like Adam.

If you saw this, would you guess it was by Robert Adam?

It’s an interior of Basildon Park by John Carr.

Carr was born in Yorkshire and decided to remain there rather than settle in London, thinking there was plenty of wealth in the area to support his business. He lived into his eighties and produced an incredible number of projects.

Tabley House is another house designed by John Carr similar to Basildon Park.

One characteristic of both these houses is that you have to go up stairs to reach the front entrance which is on the first floor, not the ground floor. I thought that was rather grand when we visited Basildon Park.

In my current work in progress, Genna’s story in the Scandalous Summerfields series, I used Basildon Park as my model for Summerfield House. It was especially helpful to find floor plans online.

There was one famous house that both John Carr and Robert Adam designed–Harewood House near Leeds.

Carr designed the building and Robert Adam, the interiors. Adam also slightly altered Carr’s exterior, including internal courtyards.

Who is up for visiting all these houses? Don’t you sometimes wish we really had a Transporter like in Star Trek?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged Basildon Park, Harewood House, John Carr, Robert Adam, Tabley House, Transporter | 3 Replies

Christmas Pudding or Omigosh I Missed Stir Up Sunday

Updated on November 30, 2015 by diane

First of all, congratulations to Teresa B., winner of It Happened One Christmas. Stay tuned for other guests and giveaways!

Here’s a blog that I originally posted on Dec 5, 2011. It (slightly altered) seemed perfect for today!

Stir Up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent begins, when, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the prayers begin:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Traditionally, the prayer read at Church was supposed to remind cooks that they should mix up their Christmas pudding.

This year Stir Up Sunday would have been on Nov 22, so I am a week late and my pudding will not be ready for Christmas. To us Americans, pudding is some chocolate or vanilla or banana custard-like dessert, but English pudding is a mixture of lots of different ingredients, including some grain product.

In the Regency, meats such as beef or veal could be added to sugar, raisins, sherry, lemon, orange, prunes (the dried plums that give plum pudding its name), cinnamon, cloves, brown bread, and such unfamiliar (to me) ingredients as cochineal (a food dye made from insects), suet, sack (a wine from the Canary Isles), hock (another wine), and treacle (a sugar syrup).

Into the mixture was stirred a coin (for wealth), a ring (for marriage) and a thimble (for blessedness. Each member of the family stirred the mixture and made a wish. The mixture was then boiled in a cloth for hours, and hung on a hook to dry until Christmas.

On Christmas day, the pudding was covered with warm brandy and set aflame, making it a dramatic and exciting addition to the Christmas dinner.

If you would like to make a Christmas pudding for your Christmas the Regency way, you are too late, because it has to age to get the best effect and flavor. But never fear! Modern technology comes to the rescue:

What special “pudding” (aka dessert) do you make for the holiday season?

Posted in Regency, Research, Winner announcement | Tagged christmas pudding | 2 Replies