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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

From the Cutty Sark to ereaders

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This month the Cutty Sark in Greenwich will be opened to the public once more. The 1869 ship has been in dry dock in Greenwich for over 60 years but a disastrous fire in 2007 closed it for repairs and a facelift. Go here and check out amazing pics of the new display and the collection of restored figureheads beneath. We’ve been talking this week about the Titanic and even a merchant ship like the Cutty Sark was a huge structure–the wonderful new display shows the extent of the ship underwater. I wish I could be there on 26th.

I also wanted to follow up on Carolyn’s post yesterday about the TBR pile. I don’t have one. But I do have a TBR collection on my Kindle, as well as many books that I got a page into and archived. I suppose it’s what happens when you lurk mostly around the free or $3.99 or less than pile. (Pile? See, we don’t even have the language for ereading.) I think I’ve bought maybe four or so ebooks that I adore and will read again. But after buying the Kindle and using it almost exclusively for my commute reading and sometimes my bedtime reading since last summer, I’m now yearning for real books. I want that experience of looking over the cover and the back cover blurb and feeling the heft of a real book in my hands. I want to go lurk around the library. I really, really miss the library. I want to go to a bookstore for something other than expensive coffee or birthday cards or a quick fondle of the new releases. (And I received a couple of B&N gift cards as late xmas/birthday presents so soon I’ll be able to do that.)

Yes, I’m feeling nostalgic for recycled tree products. Or am I? I think what I’m missing, still, is my local Borders and the community I experienced there, learning how to write and meeting other writers, signing, talking to strangers about books.

Now as you probably know, the life cycle of mass market paperbacks is incredibly wasteful, books periodically stripped of their covers to be returned and the pages shredded and recycled, while more are shipped to the retailers. If you read a lot, then an ereader makes more sense ecologically, but the manufacture and destruction of an ereader take a lot of energy. The Sierra Club has published an article on the environmental impact of real books vs. ereaders.

On the other hand the sentimentality about “real” books can be pretty silly as Paperwork Blog says:

When you ask people their opinions regarding e-readers vs. real books you find that there is a small section of society that can only be described as the Complete Collection of Literary Dickheads. They will talk about printed novels in an over-romanticised way and for some reason tend to focus on the physical act of turning the pages, the smell of books and how these can’t be replicated by digital versions. That may be true, but turning the pages of a novel isn’t an integral part of the story, it’s just something that you have to do.

Techfanatix has a nice, thoughtful piece about initial suspicion leading to enthusiasm leading to … indifference: “Did I mention that the experience isn’t half as fun as reading a real book?” I’m afraid that I too may be falling out of love with my Kindle.

I like this article from PureVision too:

There are just some things that I would not think twice about doing with a regular paperback that I would never do with a portable electronic device. Reading in the bath is example #1. Leaving it out whenever and wherever is #2. Reading in bed is a lot more uncomfortable and slightly ridiculous with a laptop or iPod. Not to mention some of the other uses that go beyond actually reading. What if I needed to start a fire in a worst-case survival situation and needed paper to get it going? What if I found a rare herb and wanted to preserve it by pressing it between pages of a book? What if I needed a makeshift doorjamb? The list goes on and I’m pretty sure in most of these scenarios, my $10 paperback would be more handy than an expensive e-reader.

So where do you stand on this issue? Are you with the Complete Collection of Literary Dickheads? Passionately involved with your ereader? Somewhere in between? Or looking to start an emergency fire?

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My Regency “friend” Harriet, Part II

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Last week I blogged about the Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville and how I could relate to her feelings about the fashionable life versus family life. We’ve sometimes talked here about what we would ask Jane Austen if some time machine made it possible for us to meet. I think I’d be so intimidated that I would either clam up or start babbling like Miss Bates (and probably end up as a comic secondary character in her next work). Harriet feels more like someone I could drink tea and gossip with, though like Jane Austen, she could indulge in a bit of snark:

“It is said here that Mr. John Grefuhle is to marry Emily Rumbold. He is
immensely rich, good-looking and gentlemanlike, and quite English in his manner and language. I hope he will, for she is a good girl, I believe, and she has tried all Europe in vain for a husband.”

“Mr. Chichester has fallen deeply in love with Lady Harriet Butler, and it is supposed will propose at my ball. Edward Montagu whips up a little love and
despair upon the occasion, which will do none of them any harm.”

And here’s a character sketch I found intriguing. It feels like a spoof of our typical cynical Regency rake:

“I admire F. Lamb perhaps more than I like him. I think him uncommonly agreeable and clever, but he sees life in the most degrading light, and he simplifies the thing by thinking all men rogues and all women ——-. He looks old and world-beaten, but still handsome. He seems to enjoy being here, and sport, food
and sleep fill up his time. At any spare moment he reads ‘The Heart of Midlothian’, of which he says: ‘Why, if you wish for my opinion, I think it the worst novel I ever read.’”

What historical Regency personage would you like to chat with?

Elena

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Culloden Memories

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Today marks the 266th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle to be fought on British soil and the battle that ended the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie gathered forces from Ireland, the Highlands and Lowlands to fight for the restoration of the English monarchy to the Stuarts. His forces, exhausted from a long march and short on rations met those of the Duke of Cumberland on the Culloden Moor on April 16, 1746. The battle was bloody and short, lasting only an hour. The Jacobite forces were decimated, the wounded slaughtered, and the survivors hunted down, imprisoned and executed. This harsh treatment of the enemy earned the Duke of Cumberland the name of “The Butcher.”

Bonnie Prince Charlie was pursued throughout Scotland with a price on his head of £30,000, but he managed to escape and make his way back to France. Subsequent to the battle, efforts were made to break up the clan system and highland dress was forbidden.

Ironically, it was a visit by George IV in 1822 that would restore a sense of Scottish identity and unify the Highlanders and Lowlanders in the common symbol of the kilt and tartan.

During the Regency there would still be a few people alive who endured the battle first-hand and others whose grandparents or parents were alive then. I wonder what the Regency era aristocracy knew of the battle. Did they think of it as we might WWII? What did the Scots think? Did they harbor resentment for what happened 60 years before?

I suspect for the Scots, emotions about the battle still ran high. A few years ago I mentioned to two friends of mine, both of Scottish descent and both writing Scottish Historicals, that my great great paternal grandmother was a Campbell. Well, this did not impress them at all. It turns out that the Campbells fought on the English side of the Battle of Culloden. My friends still considered them traitors.

What do you think Regency era Englishmen and Scots thought about each other and about the battle?

(Take a peek at my new bookcover and enter my website contest!)

 

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Kisses on Paper

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A while back, I picked up Kisses on Paper at a library book sale. It’s a collection of love letters by women, edited by Jill Dawson, and contains a number of letters from our period. They certainly bust any stereotype that ladies of the period were meek, demure and lacking in sex drive.

Jane Clairmont, also known as Claire Clairmont, spent a summer with the Shelleys and Byron and conceived a strong passion for Byron. Here she writes to him to arrange and overnight tryst and awaits nearby for his answer.

“Have you then any objection to the following plan? On Thursday Evening we may go out of town together by some stage or mail about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have arranged every thing here so that the slightest suspicion may not be excited. Pray do so with your people.”

“Will you admit me for two moments to settle with you where? Indeed I will not stay an instant after you tell me to go. Only so much may be said and done in a short time by an interview which writing cannot effect. Do what you will, or go where you will, refuse to see me and behave unkindly, I shall never forget you. I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance. Having been once seen, you are not to be forgotten.”

Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer in women’s rights, engages in an affair with Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny. A few romance novels have mentioned her (usually as an inspiration for the heroine) but I wonder how many romance readers know about this original and passionate woman.

“You can scarcely imagine with what pleasure I anticipate the day, when we are to begin almost to live together; and you would smile to hear how many plans of employment I have in my head, now that I am confident my heart has found peace in your bosom. Cherish me with that dignified tenderness, which I have only found in you; and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling, which has sometimes given you pain. Yes, I will be good, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state which rendered life a burthen almost too heavy to be borne.”

“But, good night! God bless you! Sterne says that is equal to a kiss—yet I would rather give you the kiss into the bargain, glowing with gratitude to Heaven, and affection to you. I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm. I will be at the barrier a little after ten o’clock tomorrow.”

Some of these letter writers showed their strength in more conventional ways, by asserting their rights within their relationships.

For financial reasons, Maria Bicknell and the painter John Constable had to wait five years to marry. Although she apologizes for the advice she gives him, I suspect the apology is more a matter of form.

“Believe me, I shall feel a more lasting pleasure in knowing that you are improving your time, than I should do while you were on a stolen march with me round the Park. Still I am not heroine enough to say, wish, or mean that we should never meet. I know that to be impossible. But then, let us resolve it shall be but seldom; not as inclination, but as prudence shall dictate. Farewell, dearest John—may every blessing attend you, and in the interest I feel in your welfare, forgive the advice I have given you, who, I am sure are better qualified to admonish me. Resolution is, I think, what we now stand most in need of, to refrain for a time, for our mutual good, from the society of each other.”

Here Charlotte Carpenter writes to Sir Walter Scott, early in their relationship:

“Before I conclude this famous epistle, I will give you a little hint—that is, not to put so many musts into your letters—it is beginning rather too soon; and another thing is, that I take the liberty not to mind them much, but I expect you [to?] mind me.”

And here is an excerpt from a sweet letter from Mary Wordsworth to William, delicately alluding to their first night together.

“Dearest William! I am sorry about thy eye—that it is not well before now, & I am sorry for what causes in me such pious & exulting gladness—that you cannot fully enjoy your absence from me—indeed William I feel, I have felt that you cannot, but it overpowers me to be told it by your own pen I was much moved by the lines written with your hand in one of D’s letters where you spoke of coming home thinking you ‘would be of great use’ to me—indeed my love thou wouldst but I did not want thee so much then, as I do now that our uncomfortableness is passed away—if you had been here, no doubt there would have existed in me that underconsciousness that I had my all in all about me—that feeling which I have never wanted since the solitary night did not separate us, except in absence…”

I rather love this picture of the two of them!

Who are some of your favorite women of the Regency? Any favorite couples who might (or might not) be inspiration for romance?

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

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The Death of Lord Byron

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Last week marked the 188th anniversary of Lord Byron‘s death on April 19, 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece.

Byron had sailed to Greece to lend his support to the fight for Greek independence. Byron used some of his own funds for the rebel forces and even assumed command of part of the rebel army even though he had no military experience. Before the expedition could sail for the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, Byron fell ill. He was treated with bloodletting, as was the treatment of the day, and he probably contracted sepsis from the unsterilized equipment. On this date he died of a violent fever.

One wonders why Byron embarked on this trip to Greece in the first place. Did he fancy himself a rebel hero, able to lead armies to victory? Was it ego? Or was it a genuine desire to help, like Sean Penn in Haiti or George Clooney in the Sudan, Angelina Jolie and Ben Affleck for the Congo?

After Byron’s death his friends commissioned a statue which they wanted to place in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. The Abbey refused it, due to Byron’s notorious reputation, as did the British Museum and other places. The statue finally found a place in Trinity College’s Wren Library where it stands today.

I think of Byron as the first superstar. In 1814 his poem, The Corsair, sold ten thousand copies on the first day; twenty-five thousand in the first month and this was without the internet!!!! He received hundreds of letters from women fans, including some that invited sexual encounters. Just like fans today, the women rhapsodized about his portrait as well as his poems.

I think my 19th century ink drawing (shown here) is of Byron and I like to fancy that a lovesick fan drew it.

Many of Byron’s fan letters allude to understanding his wounded soul. A man with a dark side greatly in need of reforming became known as a Byronic hero. We still adore such heroes in our romance novels today, don’t we?

No matter what one might think of his character, Byron was a great poet, deserving of the lasting fame his work has achieved.
An example:

So We’ll Go No More A-roving
By Lord Byron

So, We’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have a rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

If you had been a young Regency lady, do you think you would have been one of Byron’s swooning fans? Do you have a favorite Byron poem or a favorite line from a Byron poem?

Don’t forget to enter my new contest for a chance to win the Diamonds of Welbourne Manor series!

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged | 6 Replies