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Category: Risky Regencies

Juneteeth

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Sorry this post is late, but in the fog that is our current existence, I hadn’t processed that my post day was Juneteenth until last night. So I scraped the “historical tea” post I had planned and got up to write up something new today.

The Emancipation Proclamation


I think we’re all familiar with the Emancipation Proclamation. I was always taught that by this act, Lincoln freed “the slaves”. But this was not true. He freed only the enslaved people in the Confederacy, and there were slave states that stayed in the Union or were under Union control at the time. Enslaved people in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, parts of Louisiana, and those counties of Virginia that were soon to form the state of West Virginia were not freed January 1, 1863, but had to wait until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December of 1865.


In the District of Columbia, compensated emancipation had been enacted in April of 1862. The District’s 900-odd slaveholders were forced to free their slaves, with the government paying owners an average of about $300 for each (it also paid each emancipated slave $100 if they agreed to immigrate to Haiti or Liberia), so the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply there, either (which is important it terms of the Fugitive Slave Act still being enforce for those still enslaved in the Union states and controlled territories).


And as we know, the proclamation was unenforceable in the states that seceded, leading to enslaved people to remain in bondage until the Union gained control. In Texas, General Gordon Granger announced federal orders on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all people held as slaves in Texas were free. And today we celebrate that delayed justice.


So Happy Juneteeth. May you and yours be safe in these uncertain times, and may justice prevail in the many cases of state-sanctioned violence against black citizens that we’re still seeing today. If you’d like to support a black author and read a great Juneteeth story, I highly recommend Kianna Alexander’s historical novella Drifting to You.


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Black Lives in Regency England

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This week has been one of drama, tragedy, and protest following the death of George Floyd from the choke hold of a Minneapolis policeman. Floyd’s last words were, “I can’t breathe” and they became a rallying cry all over the nation and the world while thousands of people demonstrate to show, once and for all, that BLACK LIVES MATTER. To acknowledge this important piece of history in the making, I am going to tell about some Black lives in the Regency.

If you read our books, it is sometimes easy to imagine that the Regency was inhabited by a homogenous group of White people. That was not the case. Especially in the cities, the population was diverse. Some articles estimate as many as 15,000 Black people in England at that time. Most were servants, but they could also be tavern owners, tradespersons, businessmen, sailors, musicians–all walks of life.

Joseph Antonio Emidy, sold into slavery as a child, eventually became a virtuoso violinist who performed, taught music, and composed many works. He lived in Cornwall, had been married, and fathered eight children.

Dido Elizabeth Belle was the topic of the 2013 movie, Belle. Her mother had been a slave; her father, the son of a baronet. As a baby, her care was entrusted to her uncle, the 1st Earl of Mansfield and she was brought up as a member of the family and inherited enough money from the earl to see to her comfort for life. The earl’s will also specifically documented her freedom. She married a Frenchman who might have been a gentleman’s steward. They had two sons.

William Davidson was the natural son of the Attorney General of Jamaica and a Black woman. At 14 he traveled to Scotland to study law, but after being apprenticed to a Glasgow lawyer, he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy. After his discharge, he started a cabinet making business which eventually failed. He eventually became involved in radical politics and was one of the Cato Street conspirators. He was executed for that crime.

Tom Molineaux and Bill Richmond were both former slaves who had success as professional boxers.

Cesar Picton was enslaved from Africa at about 6 years old. He became an exotic page boy to Sir John Phillips a baronet and became a favorite of the family. With a legacy of one hundred pounds from Lady Phillips, Picton set himself up in business as a coal merchant. He became wealthy and died a gentleman.

These are only a few of the diverse Black people who lived during “our” time. I found several examples of others. Most were once slaves or were born to slaves, but against great odds developed successful lives and deserve their place in history.

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Happy May Day (and more)!

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Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu;
Groweth sed
and bloweth med,
And springth the wode anu;
Sing, cuccu! (words from a 13th century song)

Happy May 1st 2020! I’ve been steeped in May Day customs recently as my next book to be released (which alas I am STILL finishing) revolves around the preparations for May Day in the village of Little Macclow. LORD OF HER HEART is a prequel to my December 2018 Christmas book, Lord of Misrule. If the book was ready now, this post would be a great way to call your attention to it!

However, instead I’m going to beg your indulgence, as today I am starting a month-long “write-in” to do a deep dive into finishing that book and working on several of my other works-in-progress, under the auspices of my local writers group. While writing a new blogpost could ramp up my starting word counts, that’s not really the point of the exercise. <g> So instead, please enjoy a May Day post I originally shared here five years ago, when May 1st also fell on the first Friday!

For most of us, today is not an official holiday, but given its long history, I think it ought to be. Who’s with me? Bonfires? Dancing? Flowers? What’s not to like? In medieval times it was a huge holiday. And while celebrating it was not prevalent among the fashionable during Regency times, many of the traditions were still observed in the rural villages of England, and especially in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I think it is more fun to talk about than say, the opening of Trout Fishing Season today, or that today (Friday before the 1st Monday in May) is also the traditional “private viewing day” for the start of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition!

Celebrating this date, or the night before, has traditions in cultures and belief systems that date back into the mists of time, even before the Romans and their spring Floralia festival. The ancient Celts welcomed summer on the eve of May 1st (which is why “Midsummer” falls on the solstice in late June), with the festival of Beltane. The smoke from Beltane fires was supposed to have protective powers, so there are many traditions built around passing through the smoke, including jumping over the flames, and taking home embers or ashes to spread the luck.

Early Irish texts relate that the Druids would build two fires, and that cattle would be driven between them to purify them and protect them before putting them out to summer pastures. The fires connect symbolically to the sun, an essential ingredient for a successful agricultural and pastoral season. Wiccans celebrate Beltane, so the night’s association with witches is understandable.

The night before May 1st in Germany is Walpurgisnacht, also called Hexennacht (literally “Witches’ Night”). Celebrations usually include bonfires and dancing. There is some evidence the “Witches Night” association in Germany may be of a much later date than the Christian saint St Walpurga for whom the festival is named: the 17th century German folk tradition of a meeting of sorcerers and witches on May Day eve is influenced by the descriptions of witches’ sabbaths in 15th and 16th century literature, and was embraced by authors such as Faust and Thomas Mann. But Walpurgisnacht actually dates back to the 8th century, and has more to do with us than you might think.

St Walpurga was English. Did you know that? She was born in Devonshire, of a family of the local aristocracy. Her father was St. Richard the Pilgrim, one of the under-kings of the West Saxons, and her mother was Winna, sister of St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany. Walpurga’s two brothers were saints, too!

She was educated at Wimbourne Abbey in Dorset, before she ended up in Germany, where she and her brothers were sent to help their uncle working among the pagan Germans. She could read and write, and wrote a biography of her brother Winibald and also an account of his travels in Palestine. Because of these ancient works, she is often called the first female author of both England and Germany. Her festival is May 1st because that is the date she was canonized by the church.

The most common pagan-derived May Day customs practiced in various parts of Europe involve various ways of “bringing in the May” –an excuse to spend as much of the day outdoors as possible. In medieval times, May Day was a true holiday, a day of rest from labor and for celebrations, with much time spent in the fields and woods, searching out blooms (or lovers’ trysts). The “May” meant any kind of tree or bush in bloom by May 1st. (This was easier before the calendar change of 1752, of course.) Hawthorne is the acknowledged favorite, but sycamore, birch, and rowan trees are in the running among others.

Ways of bringing it in included bringing branches, used to decorate the homes or left on doorsteps, or an entire May Bush, or May Tree, decorated with ribbons and ornaments and displayed outside the home or in a public place. It could also mean bringing flowers, and weaving them into garlands to be displayed. In many places, especially in Germany and England, the crowning achievement was bringing a tall Maypole, to be erected as the focus for games, the selection of a May Queen, and ritualistic maypole dances honoring fertility.

Considered to be a vestige of tree-worship, the intention was to bring home, or bring to the village, the blessings of the tree-spirit. When the church was unsuccessful in banning these celebrations, they tried to make the custom connected to Easter. Did you know that those Easter egg trees people use as table centerpieces connect all the way back to pagan May Trees? J 

The picture at the top shows my local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) friends (and me) dancing around a maypole on a lovely (but windy) day in May a few years ago. Did you ever do something like this in school? After declining in the 18th century, May Day customs were resurrected by the Victorians, and these “new” traditions are now revered as old and time-honored, very common all over England.

Although I’m American, my family background is English & German. When I was growing up, my sister and I used to make May baskets, decorated with real and/or paper flowers and containing candy, fudge or brownies, and we would deliver them on May Day to our grandparents who lived in town, or friends and neighbors. We’d leave it on the doorstep, ring the bell and hide. A vestige of the old blooming branches and flowers left on doorsteps in ancient days? Who knew? Adding chocolate was an admirable modern improvement, don’t you think?

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Online Artist’s Way

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The Artist’s Way is a program for unblocking creativity developed by Julia Cameron. It’s not just for artists, musicans, writers, etc… It can help anyone who wishes to live a more creative life.

Back in 2002, I did The Artist’s Way for the first time, and it helped me through an episode of writer’s block. Recently, I facilitated a group of friends through the program, meeting mostly at my house, though our last meeting was on Zoom. At our last meeting, we decided that since everyone had gotten so much out of the program, and given the state of the world, we would mentor people through the program again in a Facebook group.

Over 100 people have now joined the group! If you would like to join us, you can request to join the Facebook group, Artist’s Way Sacred Circle. And here’s a link for acquiring the book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.

Wishing you all peace and hope.

Elena

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Sharpe is Back!

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We recently signed up to stream Britbox and, oh, happy days! One of the offerings is the BBC’s Sharpe Series. I haven’t watched Sharpe in years and I’ve been having a great time binging on some young Sean Bean and the Napoleonic War. What could be better?

I dished on the Sharpe series in an old Risky Regency blog and my thoughts are pretty much the same then as now. Here they are, edited for now.

Richard Sharpe, for those of you who may not know, is a fictional soldier in the Napoleonic War, created by Bernard Cornwell in a wonderful series of books, adding new stories beyond those depicted in the tv series. Sharpe is a marvelous character and Cornwell does a masterful job of giving us such rich detail about the war and the time period, so that you actually feel as if you are there, experiencing it with Sharpe.

The BBC series Sharpe is played by Sean Bean, a very sigh-worthy choice.

Here is what Sean Bean’s Sharpe website said about the BBC series at the time of my original blog in 2006:

“The films are based on the Napoleonic campaign novels, and follow Sharpe and his “Chosen Men” (riflemen who are trusted crack shots). Sharpe has been promoted from the ranks, very unusual in its day, so he has the resentment of the “gentlemen” officers, and also that of the men, who assume he is no better than them. He is promoted after saving Wellington’s life, and is often sent on dangerous missions, along with the Chosen Men, due to his skills and bravery.

In the first film, Sharpe’s Rifles, we are introduced to the Riflemen who will become the Chosen Men, and Sharpe has to forge both respect and friendship with their soon-to-be Sergeant, Patrick Harper. The later films show how cohesive a fighting force these few men become, they think and act as one. The last film to be made was Sharpe’s Waterloo, depicting the great battle.”

I was first introduced to Sharpe years ago through the Chivers Audiobook versions. William Gaminara narrated, and his deep, sexy voice truly enhanced the experience. I can still hear him say, “Sharpe swore.” Unfortunately, I no longer can find those versions. I recently started listening to another audiobook version of Sharpe’s Waterloo read by a different narrator. Not quite the same, but good enough.

Sean Bean is also not the Sharpe I visualized while listening to those audiobooks years ago. In fact, almost all the cast of the BBC version are not the people Cornwell gave to my imagination. Furthermore, I think of the BBC shows as “Sharpe Lite.” The shows meld elements of several of the books into one story, but cannot give the richness of detail that is in the books. Another point–these were not high budget productions, so rather than a cast of thousands, you get a cast of….dozens.

Cornwell also is no romance novelist. His Sharpe is actually quite stupid in love, which is quite frustrating, but even unsatisfying romance elements were not enough to keep me from loving the books, the character, the life of the Napoleonic soldier.

And the Sharpe films, for all that they are not being the Sharpe of my imagination, are still wonderful. If you don’t get Britbox, you can also buy the Sharpe films from Amazon and, I presume, other outlets.

Enjoy!
Diane

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