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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Another place–Genesee Country Village and Museum

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In reading the last post about favorite places, I thought of how long it has been since I have gone to a magical spot just for me. I love historic places, and they are great food for the muse.

I’ve been to a few places in the past that I loved. Here is one: The Genesee Country Village and Museum. It is a living history museum in Mumford, N.Y., just 20 miles from Rochester, and its focus is the 19th century.

url: http://www.gcv.org/index.shtml

More than a historic village, it has activities, classes, scheduled events, gardens, a nature center, an art gallery, and a carriage museum. But in my particular experience, the stand-out event was the day I attended a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The Union troops mustered in the town square. It was a hot July weekend, and I remember with a little of the thrill I felt then when the sky rumbled overhead. The men cheered–and soon we were standing in a pouring torrent.

I took shelter on the front porch of one of the houses with other visitors and waited for the event to start. We heard the approach of the confederate troops from the edge of town and the distant sount of musket fire…the battle grew closer, and then the union troops were retreating through the town in front of us, in the pouring rain and the fog of black powder smoke, the soldiers nothing but hazy figures, running, reloading, firing, calling out, falling–and of course as they do in reinactments, getting up and running again–but I ignored that part. It felt eerily as though I were really there in Gettysburg.

It did not pour on any of the days of battle (July 1-4, 1863) but it was overcast with some thunder and light rain. But something about the scene that day seemed so utterly real to me. It is something the hazy photographs I took do not quite bring back, but the memory of the feeling I had is more than enough.

Has anyone else had such a transporting moment? I wonder how many of us are historical site buffs who read and write Regencies? I’d be willing to bet most of us are…

Laurie

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One of my favorite places–William Herschel Museum, Bath

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I find a lot of people don’t know about this museum in Bath, so naturally whenever I get the opportunity I spread the word. It’s the home of the astronomer William Herschel, and where he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 (I mean, through a telescope. He didn’t find a major planet lying around among the old newspapers, which is the sort of thing, on a less celestial scale, that happens in my house). Herschel’s story is fascinating. He was a refugee from Hanover and a musician (you can buy recordings of his works), and traveled around England for a time as an itinerant music teacher before settling in Bath. There, one of his pupils paid him with a telescope, and he figured out he could make a better one. So he did. His sister Caroline joined him in England and was also an astronomer, and after the discovery of Uranus many famous names flocked to his observatory at 19 New King St. Eventually King George III invited him to move near Windsor to continue his work there.
The house is gorgeous and intimate–on a much smaller and modest scale than the houses of the Royal Crescent, for instance, and beautifully restored (I kidnapped a pic of the music room–note the “wall to wall” carpeting–actually long strips of carpet, and the intricate wallpaper) and full of Herschel’s books, furniture, and telescopes. His laboratory still features the cracked flagstones from a mishap of 1781. There’s also a charming garden, with a replica of his telescope.
I only discovered this museum the last time I visited Bath and I’ve been in love with it ever since.
Anyone else care to share their favorite place?
Janet

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Luddites and Labor Day

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Happy Labor Day, everyone!

Today the USA celebrates Labor Day, a national holiday that celebrates the American worker.

In the late 1800s several states celebrated Labor Day, but it was only after a number of workers were killed by U.S. military and U.S. marshals during a Pullman Strike, that congress made Labor Day a national holiday.

Worker unrest was not unusual during the Regency, of course. I’ll bet you’ve come across mention of the Luddites more than once when reading Regency-set historicals.

The Luddites were also protesting workers. They were English textile craftsman who protested by destroying the mechanized looms that were operated in factories by unskilled workers. Their name came from a young apprentice loom worker named Ludd or Ludham, who, when chastised by his superior, smashed his stocking frame with a hammer. Twenty-two years later, in 1811, Ned Ludd or Captain Ludd, or King Ludd, appeared in Nottingham, the leader of a protest. Soon he was reported to be on the move from one industrial center to the next, inspiring protesters, drilling secret armies at night, his face ghostly white, carrying a pike in his hand.

Problem was, Ned Ludd was a fiction. He was not a real person at all but a symbol. The officials believed in him; a militiaman reported actually seeing him.

Besides having a fictional leader, the Luddites poked fun by producing officious-sounding dispatches. They invoked the name of Robin Hood in their quest for social justice. They also marched as “General Ludd’s wives”wearing women’s clothing.

The Luddites, though, were serious about their protests. Unlike how their name is used today, their complaints were not that the mill owners were replacing hand looms with more more advanced technology. The Luddites wanted those advanced machines to be run by skilled workers earning a fair wage, not unskilled, low-paid workers producing shoddy goods.

With some exceptions–the killing of a mill owner, for one–the Luddites confined their protests to damaging looms. Far more violence was inflicted upon the Luddites than they caused. Several were hanged, however, and more were transported to Australia. The last protest was in 1816.

Today when you are watching your parade or eating your hot dog, remember the Luddites and drink a toast to Ned Ludd!

What’s your favorite Labor Day activity?

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The pugnacious cuckow

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Last week was shoe-shopping; this week my activities were more nature-oriented: a hike (in more practical shoes) at the nearby Waterman Nature Center and reading my latest research find, A Selborne Year: ‘The Naturalist’s Journal’ for 1784. It’s one annual installment of the journal kept for 26 years by Gilbert White, curate, gardener and naturalist, who lived in Selborne, a village in Hampshire not far from where I am setting my current work-in-progress. The edition I own has lovely illustrations by Nichola Armstrong.

I like incorporating glimpses of nature and seasonal details into my writing. So A Selbourne Year is a positive treasure-trove. Here are some typical entries:

Apr 3. Rain. The ever-green trees are not injured, as about London. The crocus’s are full blown, & would make a fine show, if the sun would shine warm. (On this day a nightingale was heard at Bramshott!)

July 10. Grey, & pleasant. Gale, sun. The hops damaged by the hail begin to fill their poles. Thatched my hay-rick. Cherries very fine. Grapes begin to set: vine leaves turn brown. The young cuckow gets fledge; & grows bigger than it’s nest. It is very pugnacious. Cool.

This is just the sort of detail I love!

I find it interesting that Jane Austen had so little detail about the English countryside; perhaps she expected her audience to be too familiar with the subject to find it interesting. But it goes along with the general lack of descriptions in her books (we only know Elizabeth Bennett has “fine eyes” for instance, but her hair and eye color are left to the imagination). No matter; Austen’s characterization and dialogue are brilliant enough to stand on their own.

It is possible to go to the opposite extreme, I suppose. Friends and I were discussing Tolkien over beer (I love having friends with whom I can discuss Tolkien over beer!) and one said his descriptions of various imaginary settings went on too long. Those long descriptions always worked for me, though, because I like to visualize settings as I read. Tolkien’s description of Ithilien made me yearn to go there, although I would settle for the New Zealand film locations.

In my own writing, I try to strike a balance. I know too much description wearies some readers so I use it in service of the characters and the story. In my current mess-in-progress, the hero has spent much of his life in India and war-torn Spain and Portugal; a green and fertile England holds a special meaning for him. However, he may just enjoy hearing a bird sing; my heroine, the daughter of a naturalist much like Gilbert White, will know if it’s a lark or a thrush.

How much descriptive detail do you like in stories?

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

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No More “Captain of the Men of Death”

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If you follow my Diane Gaston Blog, you will know that my father-in-law was hospitalized last week necessitating my quick trip to Williamsburg where the dh’s parents live. It turned out he had pneumonia and a flu virus, but they had feared he had one of those antibiotic resistent “superbugs.” Not the case, thank goodness.

After two days of hospital treatment, my father-in-law came home on antibiotics and was really in pretty good shape, up and around, alert, only a little slowed down physically. His illness made me wonder, though, what it might have been like if he’d lived in Regency times.

In 1918, Dr. William Osler, the father of modern medicine, called pneumonia the “captain of the men of death.” Indeed, it is now thought that a great portion of the 600,000 deaths in influenza pandemic of 1918 were due to bacterial pneumonia which took over after the flu virus compromised the immune system.

In Regency times, pneumonia was called “peripneumony”or inflammation of the lungs. It was treated with bleeding, at least until the patient was able to expectorate. After bleeding blisters were applied. Blistering was the practice of applying plasters to the skin with caustic substances that caused blisters. The blisters would pull the diseased humors from the body and then would be drained. Other treatments included enemas, sweating, and, probably most effective, concoctions that would promote coughing or “expectoration.”

I’m always appalled at how the treatments of illness in these early times seemed to put more strain on the body than would provide relief. (Although we now know bloodletting is an effective treatment for a few very specific conditions) Luckily today we have antibiotics and immunization to combat pneumonia so that it is no longer the “captain of the men of death.”

Have you come across any alarming treatments used during Regency times?

Stop by my website and see my newest bookcover – for Born to Scandal coming out December, 2012. Read a sneak peek.

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