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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Margaret Fuller – Not Quite Regency, but….

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I have to thank Carolyn for telling us about Chambers Book of Days. Whenever I’m at a loss as to what  to blog about, I check the Book of Days.

Today’s entry had an obscure Regency connection, but I couldn’t resist.

In 1850 on this day Margaret Fuller died.

Margaret Fuller, who was born in 1810 (my Regency connection), was an American journalist, critic and author, best known for her book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the first major American feminist work. She achieved many firsts: The first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard; first woman editor of the transcendental journal, The Dial; first full-time literary critic of the New York Tribune; its first female editor; its first female foreign correspondent.

The story of her life as written in the Book of Days just charmed me. If we wrote a heroine like Margaret Fuller no one would believe her.

Chambers introduces Margaret this way:

“Every student of American society has noted the wide diffusion of intellectual ability, along with an absence of genius, or the concentration of eminent mental gifts in individuals. There is an abundance of cleverness displayed in politics, letters, and arts—there is no want of daring and ambition—but there is a strange lack of originality and greatness. The same is true of the feminine side of the people. A larger number of educated women, able to write well and talk well, it would be difficult to find in any European country, but among them all it would be vain to look for a Madame de Staël, or a Miss Martineau. Perhaps those are right who cite Margaret Fuller as the fairest representative of the excellences, defects, and aspirations of the women of New England.”

I guess Chambers didn’t think a lot of Americans…Or of women.

Here is Chambers’ description of Margaret:

…rather under the middle height, with fair complexion and fair strong hair, of extreme plainness, with a trick of perpetually opening and shutting her eyelids, and a nasal tone of voice. She made a disagreeable impression on most persons, including those who subsequently became her best friends; and to such an extreme, that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame, for she had many jealous rivals….When the first repulse was over, she revealed new excellences every day to those who happily made her their friend.

Can you imagine writing a character description like that?

There is no doubt that Margaret Fuller was an exceptional woman of any era, but she also had a romance that was at least unusual. When in Italy, she met an Italian count, Count Ossoli, who Chambers says was

“a poor Roman noble, attached to the papal household. Concerning him she wrote to her mother: ‘He is not in any respect such a person as people in general expect to find with me. He had no instructor except an old priest, who entirely neglected his education; and of all that is contained in books he is absolutely ignorant, and he has no enthusiasm. On the other hand, he has excellent practical sense; has been a judicious observer of all that has passed before his eyes; has a nice sense of duty, a very sweet temper, and great native refinement. His love for me has been unswerving and most tender.'”

Although Chambers says she married Count Ossoli, Wikipedia says there is no evidence that they married. Margaret apparently notified her mother of the union when she’d had a child by Ossoli.

Ossoli went on to fight in the revolution for Italian unity and Margaret nursed the wounded, but the rebellion failed and Margaret decided to return to America even though a fortune teller told Ossoli to “beware the sea” and Margaret had a premonition that 1850 would be a year when something dreadful would happen to her.

Chambers writes:

In spite of gloomy forebodings, they set sail from Leghorn in a merchant-ship. At the outset of the voyage, the captain sickened and died of confluent small-pox in its most malignant form. Ossoli was next seized, and then their infant boy, but both recovered, though their lives were despaired of. At last the coast of America was reached, when, on the very morning of the day they would have landed, 16th July 1849, the ship struck on Fire Island beach. For twelve hours, during which the vessel went to pieces, they faced death. At last crew and passengers were engulfed in the waves, only one or two reaching the land alive. The bodies of Ossoli and his wife were never found, but their child was washed ashore, and carried to Margaret’s sorrowing mother.

A sad end to a remarkable woman who led an unbelievable life.

Have you come across any real characters whose lives are more unbelievable than fiction? Do you have any favorite women heroines from history?

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Girls Rock in Any Era

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Last week my daughter volunteered at a summer program called Girls Rock. This is a terrific program for girls ages 8 to 18 where the goal is teaching self-confidence, empowerment, leadership, and team-building, all through teaching the girls how to play in their very own rock ‘n roll bands. Saturday was the culmination, a rock concert. The girls performed before, an enthusiastic crowd of friends, family, and my dh and me!

Eleven acts performed. Two were girl djs but the rest were “bands” who each performed songs that the girls had written themselves under the guidance of volunteers like my daughter. One of the popular rock ‘n roll venues in Washington, DC, the 9:30 Club, donated the space, so the girls could really feel like rock stars. It was a great, positive experience for all. As you can see by the photo.
So I got to wondering…What was the equivalent in the Regency era?
Most aristocratic young ladies learned to play music, perhaps on the pianoforte or, like one of the Musgrove girls in Persuasion, the harp. And like Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice, they might be asked to perform at dinner parties and for the family.
I could conceive of a young peoples party where the young ladies, and perhaps some young gentlemen, as well, gather around the pianoforte and sing popular songs of the day. Or a family entertaining themselves in the evening in the same way.
I’m reasonably certain that learning to perform music in the Regency was not an exercise in self-empowerment or leadership, but very well might have been confidence and team-building.
In my fantasies, if I wasn’t a romance novelist, I’d love to be a torch singer in an upscale piano bar in New York City. In reality, I did perform in the chorus in musicals in community theater as a teenager. I even sang Pony Boy in my high school senior play.
I think there is something about performing music that is special. And I have to think that is true in any era.
What do you think?
Did you ever perform music? Did you feel special doing it?
Mariel Covendale in A Not So Respectable Gentleman? attends a musicale….I’m just saying. The book is out now!
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The Colours of the Regency

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Last week, I had painters in sprucing up my kitchen, the master bathroom and the hall. I chose relatively quiet colors for the latter two. Pale blue for the bathroom to match the adjoining bedroom, a color I find very restful. A warm, slightly caramel cream for the halls, because I think a neutral color gives the eyes a resting place in between more colorful rooms. (My kids’ rooms are very colorful.)

I got bold with the kitchen. When we first bought the house, the walls were covered in a hideous 70s avocado green textured wallpaper that didn’t suit our Colonial style house. We got rid of that but then my husband and I couldn’t agree on what to do next. I found a botanical border that went well with the Portmeirion china we’d bought at the seconds shop in England and I wanted to paint the walls green, with stripes. Having been raised in a home that was all neutrals, I really wanted to try some color but my husband balked at so much green. We ended up using the border but leaving the walls white. It looked bland from the start and got worse over time. I do NOT recommend painting a kitchen white if you are a messy cook or have kids! Anyway, this summer I finally got my way and I’m very pleased with the result.

Although white was very popular for clothing during the Regency, it was very rare for it to be used on walls. As it turns out, people during the Regency weren’t afraid of color either.

One of my favorite books on Regency décor, Regency Style by Steven Parissien has a chapter on “Colours and Coverings”. He writes that “In spite of the increasingly large number of colours available, however, one colour was predominant in the principal interiors of Regency Britain: red.” D. R. Hay, in his Laws of Harmonious Colouring wrote that ”a proper tint of crimson is the richest and most splendid colour for the walls of a room”. It was often used for dining rooms and was also considered “the best ground for pictures”. Here’s the famous red dining room designed by Sir John Soane.

Green was also popular and much used in drawing rooms and libraries. Here’s a room I like very much: the Morning Room at Pickford’s House, a late Georgian house in Derby.

Bedrooms were supposed to be “light, clearing and cheerful” and were often blue, so my pale blue bedroom is very much in the Regency spirit. I also like the bedchamber below, from  Royal Crescent No.1 in Bath.

According to Parissien, yellow was controversial although it was sometimes used. ‘Drab’ colors (more subtle shadings of green, gold and brown) were also popular. Now, those sound like 70s colors to me!

So how about you? What are your favorite Regency colors or interiors? Which colors do you like best for decorating? Have you experimented with color, and how did it turn out?

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

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These are the voyages of the Steamboat Enterprise…

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One of my current projects is an as-yet-uncontracted historical romance set mostly in America in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans. And the first thing I realized as I developed the idea was just how little I know about my own country’s early 19th century history. What I do know is patchy. I learned a good bit about the War of 1812 researching my 2012 book, An Infamous Marriage, but my focus was on the war in and around Canada. Partly because of that research, I know Tecumseh, but he died in battle before this story started. I’ve learned about Cherokee history and the Trail of Tears–my husband’s family is Oklahoma Cherokee–but that doesn’t directly touch this story, either.

So I’m now in all-out research mode. Since I’m writing a road romance, I can’t just learn New Orleans. I have to learn about everywhere my hero and heroine would pass through on their way to safety–including what transportation methods and routes actually existed back then in what was still largely frontier country. When I mentioned this to my husband, who’s far more up on the history of technology than I am, the first thing he said was, “Steamboats.”

Now, when I hear “steamboat,” I picture something like the musical Show Boat, or maybe Mark Twain or the Civil War. (Told you the history of technology is one of my weak points!) But because I trust my husband’s instincts, I immediately started looking into it…and discovered that 1815 was just at the dawn of steam travel on the Mississippi. When my story opens, the Enterprise was in New Orleans.

Enterprise

She’d come all the way downriver from Pennsylvania, bringing much-needed supplies for Andrew Jackson’s army. During the rest of the winter and early spring, she mostly shuttled between New Orleans and Natchez. Later in the year she earned fame by sailing all the way upriver (up rivers, plural) to her Pennsylvania home port. Though the journey took many months, it was a portent of the future. Before steamboats, travel upriver on the Mississippi was impractical–rivermen would float down on flatboats, barges, or canoes, then abandon their boats and walk or ride overland to their homes in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, or other points north.

Once I found out there was a steamboat–and one named Enterprise!–I had to set my hero and heroine aboard her. They’ll get off at Natchez, though, and take the Natchez Trace…which is a story for a future blog.

Have you ever stumbled across a piece of history that wasn’t what you expected it to be? And do you have any historica blind spots like mine for technology?

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Picturesque

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Last weekend, I took my girls camping at Salt Springs State Park in Pennsylvania, one of our favorite nature spots. On a 90 degree day, the swimming hole in the creek is pure heaven. I took a lot of pictures, some in an attempt to capture the beauty of the place and some to help remember how much fun we had.
During the Regency, learning to sketch was part of a typical young lady’s education and it would come in handy while traveling for pleasure, serving a similar purpose that cameras do now. Of course, if one lacked the talent or inclination to draw, prints were also often available from professional artists, just as post cards are now.
In the late 18th century Edmund Burke developed a theory of the beautiful and the sublime, the “picturesque” being a synthesis of the two, uniting conventional beauty with the “horror” of rough elements like mountain crags. William Gilpin continued along this thread, writing treatises and taking people on tours through the countryside. Those who could not take the Grand Tour, either due to limited means or current political situation, were encouraged to enjoy the more accessible pleasures of picturesque locales including the Lake District and Scotland.
An interesting tidbit I found while researching this post was that tourists often used a “Claude Glass” (named after the artist Claude Lorraine), a darkened and slightly convex pocket mirror that created a more “picturesque” version of whatever was viewed in it.  Sometimes they even used this mirror when sketching. I’m not surprised, because I already knew that period sketches of places often took some romantic license.  Just compare the above image of Crummock Water in the Lake District by T. Allom with a modern photo of a similar view. I enjoy this sort of romanticized landscape and collected a number of prints like this while I was in England. On the other hand, the Lake District is lovely enough without trying to make it look like the Alps!
A different reason for trying to capture images is to preserve memories of events involving family and friends.
The closest Regency equivalent to family snapshots that I’ve found is Mrs Hurst Dancing and Other Scenes from Regency Life 1812-1823. It’s a collection of watercolor sketches by Diana Sperling, annotated by Gordon Mingay. It’s a wonderful record of everyday life of the rural gentry, their labors and their pleasures. Pictures have captions like “Papering the saloon at Tickford Park”, “The finding of the lost sheep!” and “Charles Sperling picking up his sister Isabella who had rolled off her donkey.” I can imagine the Sperlings and their friends looking through these sketches the same way we sometimes look at and laugh over old photo albums.

Do you enjoy photography or sketching? What are your favorite subjects? Do you have a preference for romanticized images or realistic?

Elena
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