Five More Pinterest Boards You Should Know

Have you searched online for pictures recently? Chances are at least some of the results led you to Pinterest, and for good reason. The site has more than 50 billion pins, quite a few from museums, re-enactors, and readers. I covered some earlier, but here are a few more related to the 19^th century you should know.

Historical romance author Cheryl Bolen has assembled an amazing collection of interiors and exteriors in Georgian homes of England. Droolworthy! 

Regency author April Kihlstrom’s collection focuses more on clothing and pastimes, as well as an eclectic collection of boards on such things as knitting and Downs Syndrome. 

Likewise, historical romance writer Kristin Koster’s collection is wide-ranging and intriguing. Her Regency landmarks board is particularly useful. 

Stay-at-home mom and veteran pinner Lynn Ann has a beautiful board of Regency garb, much of it made today. 

I’ve been trying to collect pictures around the theme of a Regency summer house party.  Billiards, anyone? And I’ve recently started a board dedicated to cowboys.

And, ahem, my Sailing Ships Ahoy board now has 143 pictures of tall ships. Just saying.

Any boards you’d like to recommend?

Blast from the Past: Nineteenth Century Bad Boys, Part I: The Disreputable Duke

July is a busy month in the Doyle household, so I'll be taking a break this week...in the meanwhile, have fun with this post from 2008. I should see about a few new Bad Boy posts...hmm.... 

First, I feel like I should make a disclaimer here…unlike a lot of females, I have zero interest in what we today call “bad boys” and what our counterparts in the 19th century called rogues or rakes. I just don’t get the attraction…but I know a lot of women do…and did.

Princess Victoria definitely appreciated a good bad boy. In 1837 the seventeen-year-old began to take notice of a second cousin of hers who had come to London and could be seen at fashionable balls and the opera and out with his friends in Kensington Gardens. His name was Charles, Duke of Brunswick and he was a nephew of the late Queen Caroline, wife to George IV…and what made him a bad boy was that he’d been booted out of his duchy of Brunswick as being “unfit to rule” and his younger brother installed as reigning duke. It seems his seven-year rule was marked by corruption and poor judgement, and when he reacted to political unrest in France by clamping down on reform in his own country, he was not-very-politely shown the door. Though he tried many times to interest other European governments in helping him retake his country, no one ever did.

So he spent most of his time in London and Paris, being attractive. He wore his dark hair long and shaggy, had dark, fierce eyebrows, and a romantically military moustache. Vic was fascinated, and sketched him from memory (yes, she drew the above picture!) as well as recording sightings of him in her diary:

[at a ball] “He was in a black and dark blue uniform with silver; his hair hanging wildly about his face, his countenance pale and haggard; I was very sorry I could not see him de pres for once, that I may really see if he is so ferocious looking.”

[out walking in Kensington Gardens] “He is, I think, very good looking, for we passed him close, though I was told by a lady who had seen him at Almacks, that he was not so, but I don’t think she saw him very close, and perhaps he looks handsomer by daylight and with his hat on. He was very elegantly dressed.”

Of course, nothing ever came of Victoria’s interest in her exiled cousin, and he slouched about Europe for most of his life, collecting diamonds as a hobby and dying in Geneva in 1873.

Live, from RWA National: Well, Not Quite

I’m back from the Romance Writers of America^TM National Conference. Normally Marissa and I blog “live” from there, but this year, I collected all the interesting tidbits and brought them back with me. And I wasn’t even over weight on my luggage!

The day before Conference starts, I usually attend the Beau Monde mini-conference. The day-long affair brings together writers of Regency romance to share their knowledge and love of the period. This year was no exception, with fascinating talks on ciphers, madness, the medical profession, and sailing ships, to name a few. Speakers included Cheryl Bolen, Patricia Coleman, Louisa Cornell, Laurie Alice Eakes, Georgie Lee, and Ella Quinn, with a keynote by the tremendously talented and often hilarious Jade Lee.

That evening brought the Beau Monde soiree, where ladies (and gentlemen) danced and played period card games, and learned who won the Royal Ascot (the chapter’s contest for unpublished manuscripts). The winner this year, Elizabeth King, hails from New Zealand. She also won RWA’s most prestigious contest for unpublished manuscripts, the Golden Heart, in the historical category. This lady will be one to watch!

I didn’t actually go to the soiree myself. I let my “cousin” Sir Reginald attend in my place. Here he is partnering Jes Lyons, an assistant at Prospect Agency. I hear she was an excellent dancer!

I must admit that the hotel was amazing, with lots of overstuffed chairs along the marbled walks for sitting and catching up with old friends and making new ones. And the pool! So beautiful, by day and by night.

I took in a number of workshops at the Conference, but I slipped away one evening to see the sailing ships in the harbor. You see, the San Diego Maritime Museum was only a mile or so walk from the hotel along the boardwalk, with the ships right up against the walkway. I didn’t reach the museum in time to go inside, but I certainly took my time ogling the ships. The Star of India, built in 1863, is the oldest iron-hull merchant ship still sailing. The HMS Surprise is a replica of a 20-gun frigate built in 1757 and was used in the film Master and Commander with Russel Crowe. Le sigh.

All in all, it was a productive, insightful, delightful trip, though I found myself wishing that a certain dear author had been at my side. Here’s hoping for next year!

Have You Upped a Swan Today?

Well, have you? This is the official week for it, after all. Get out there and up those swans!

All right, I’ll settle down now. Swan Upping is the traditional census-taking of Mute Swans on the River Thames, wherein swans are rounded up, checked for bands or banded, and released. The king or queen of England, by ancient law and custom dating back to the middle ages, owns all unmarked swans in England. And since the twelfth century or so, the swans who live on the Thames have been counted and marked by the Royal Swan Upper to enforce that ownership (though two ancient groups, the Worshipful Company of Vintners and the equally Worshipful Company of Dyers also have some swan related rights and participate as well.) Swans were once reckoned something of a delicacy, after all, and having one on your banquet table was something of a status symbol that the Crown thought ought to mostly belong to it.

Of course, no one today, even the Queen, eats swans. Even so, the annual Swan Upping is still carried out, though today it’s more a matter of monitoring the mute swan population’s health than making sure the peasants aren’t eating above themselves. While there’s still some ceremonial involved in the form of natty uniforms and rowing skiffs, the actual handling of the swans is managed by the Royal Swan Warden, a professor of ornithology from Oxford University. And yes, it's not completely an odd holdover from the past: Swan Uppings in the 1980s revealed a drop in population that was found to be caused by swans swallowing lead fishing weights. The weights were banned in the Thames, and the population happily rebounded.

So...happy Swan Upping week!

Blast from the Past: Hermits Weren’t the Only Ones in the Woods

I’ll be playing, er I mean learning and networking at the Romance Writers of America annual conference this week, but I promise to come back with lots of good insights to share. In the meantime, enjoy this post, updated slightly from when it was originally published in August 2011.

Contrived rustic landscapes were only one way nineteenth century young ladies and gentlemen discovered nature. The period saw a rise in the appreciation of natural beauty for beauty’s sake. Where once the pockets of wilderness around England had been seen by the fashionable as backward hamlets in their otherwise civilized isle, now they saw the lofty peaks, verdant valleys, and thundering freshets worthy to visit, to view, and to capture in word and drawing. And one of the most popular areas to appreciate nature, then and now, was the Lake District.

The Lake District boasts a collection of rocky mountains, deep clear lakes, and crystal streams found nowhere else in England. It had already achieved some popularity with the more outdoorsy types who enjoyed walking along the paths and shores. However, when the romantic poet William Wordsworth authored a Guide through the District of the Lakes (anonymously in 1810 and under his own name in 1820), even those usually content with indoor pursuits took notice.

Wordsworth had been born and went to school in the Lake District, and his time away from it only made him appreciate it further. He wrote some of his most famous poems while at Dove Cottage in Grasmere with his sister Dorothy and spent much of his married life in a house in Rydal. His love of the area glowed in his guide. Take this from early in the piece:

“When the sun is setting in summer far to the north-west, it is seen by the spectator on the shores or breast of Winandermere, resting among the summits of the loftiest mountains, some of which may be half or wholly hidden by clouds, or by the blaze of light which the orb diffuses around it; and the surface of the lake will reflect correspondent colors through every variety of beauty, and through all degrees of splendor.”

Kind of makes you want to go there, doesn’t it? His words certainly had that affect on the gentry and aristocracy of nineteenth century England, many of whom built summer homes along the lakes and streams.

Growing up as I did near the mountains and seas of the Pacific Northwest, and having returned to live there now, I feel a particular affinity for the Lake District. I have set several of my Regency romances there, including portions of The Marquis’s Kiss, An Honorable Gentleman, and the Everard Legacy series. 

Now you know another entry on my ever-growing bucket list of places to visit in England!

Bits and Bobs

Any Pokemon fans out there?

Anyone who is even slightly acquainted with Pokemon will know about the one called Eevee, a cute little fox/cat-like critter who is genetically extroverted and can evolve into a multitude of equally cute little fox/cat-like forms, all of which have names ending in –eon. There’s Vaporeon and Jolteon and Flareon and Umbreon andandand...you get the idea.

Well, my daughter presented me with the latest Eevee evolution, and this kid knows me well.  Meet...NAPOLEON!!!

Two hundred and one years ago today, Napoleon was on his final journey on French soil, which he would depart forever on July 15. This little guy, though, won’t be leaving my writing room.

I’m going to ask her if she’ll design me a Wellingteon next. ☺

Holding your Horses

Fans of Georgette Heyer and Regency-set books in general frequently feature heroes (and sometimes heroines) who are adept at “handling the ribbons”, or driving a vehicle, be it a handsome barouche, a dashing curricle, or a semi-suicidal high perch phaeton “to an inch.” I can’t be the only one in this mostly horseless era to wonder what that was like...and here’s a video that can give us a flavor. Just wonderful!

Lights...Camera...Action!

The word on the street (or more accurately, the blogosphere) is that a movie version of one of Georgette Heyer’s funniest and best-loved novels, The Grand Sophy, is in the works.

Yes, you heard me correctly—a Georgette Heyer movie.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this—some books are just so wonderfully crafted that being chopped, pushed, and prodded into movie form until they’re unrecognizable is positively criminal (*coughcoughWinter’sTalecough*), and I would hate to see The Grand Sophy butchered to fit some director’s “vision.”  On the other hand, if it’s done right—IF!—it could be awesome.  If you’re interested in following this story, try here and here...I know I’ll be keeping an eye on it!

 

Those Crafty Coopers

Most of my earlier stories are set in Regency England, but, the last few years, I have enjoyed writing about other portions of the 19^th century, both in location and time. When I first read Renee Ryan’s Stand-In Rancher Daddy, the first in the Lone Star Cowboy League: The Founding Series set of stories (out now), I was intrigued to see her place two businesses along Main Street that I wouldn’t have thought to include in my book, A Rancher of Convenience, which finishes the set in September. What were these businesses?

Coopers.

I’d heard the term, but I had to do research (yes, any excuse to do research J) on what they actually did and why they would be so sorely needed in a Wild West town.

Coopers make barrels, casks, tubs, hogsheads, and other things that carry liquids and dry goods safely over great distances or store them for long time periods. They can also make wooden pails and tubs for daily use in households. They cut, dress, and curl staves of the correct size for whatever application, arrange them in a circle, then drive wooden (perhaps hazel or ash) or iron rings over the ends to form the correct shape, including adding a bottom and top as needed. They can also drill holes to add a spigot or to hook in a metal handle.

The cooper’s barrels, in particular, were highly important crossing the ocean. According to the Book of English Trades, barrels full of coarse wool or hats were sent from England to the West Indies and returned full of rum or sugar. The records at Fort Nisqually in Washington Territory indicate that barrels of molasses were used to cushion panes of glass sent from England to the Pacific Coast for windows. The worker charged with cleaning the glass when it arrived got a bonus—he could keep the molasses he scraped off!

I could see why coopers would be needed in Little Horn, Texas, in 1896. Ranchers would need barrels to hold supplies being taken on cattle drives. Farmers would need barrels to store goods or transport them to market farther East. Then there are the pails and tubs needed to hold water for various purposes on the frontier.

Today the cooper’s work is in high demand in the wine industry. As wine is now a key export of Washington State, there might end up being two such businesses in some of our towns as well.

Who knew?