A Caricaturist’s Guide to the Season

I recently discovered a fascinating cartoon online, originally from Harper’s Bazaar in 1870, but entirely apropos for the earlier nineteenth century. Take a look at this:

The Coming Season offers a wealth of insight into how at least this particular artist (and the editor who approved the drawing to run) saw the London Season.

In the four corners and center, the caricaturist imagined the five types of ladies who might be taking part in society this Season: the debutante (“Coming out”), the lady on her second Season (“Came out last Season”), the seasoned campaigner (“Not shelved yet”), the lady who has weathered a few too many Seasons (“Didn’t come out yesterday”), and the lady who is determined not to be back next year in a single state (“Will conquer or die”). And it seems to me that everyone except the debutante is showing more skin. Hm.

But the smaller pictures are even more interesting:

• The older woman studying a peerage guide (“The Dowager’s Stud Book”)
• Her counterpart musing on the sort of husband she wants for her daughters (“Four girls to commoners, the fifth must have a coronet”)
• The young lady between them with what appears to be a monstrous bouquet nearly as large as she is
• The young lady giddily tossing her books in the air as she leaves the schoolroom for Society
• The young lady dipping a deep curtsey in “A royal salute”
• Her counterpart tossing out shoes and boots as she searches for the perfect item (“Apropos de bottes”).

Two that most intrigue me are in the lower middle, left and right. One is a collection of beauty instruments labeled “Engines of War.” I recognize curling irons (when they really were made of iron and heated over a flame such as in a lamp to curl your hair), powder puff, comb, hairpins, and possibly a makeup brush for rouge, but I’m not entirely sure about the zigzagged piece running through. My grandmother had something like it that pulled her hair back from her face and held it in place. Any other suggestions?

Finally, the sketch opposite it across the picture shows a braided something kicking a hamburger-patty-shaped something off the ledge. As the picture is supposed to show changing fashions, I can only conclude that braided false hair pieces had overtaken false buns in 1870.  

All in all, an interesting take on the Season. Which part is your favorite?

Must be the Season

We have a lot of seasons these days. There are the four seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall. Then there’s the television season, which seems to fall in many different periods depending on the network, fill-in-your-favorite-sports seasons, and the holiday season, which is fast approaching. In early nineteenth century England, of course, there was only one Season. Or was there?

We’ve talked about the Season, that time between Easter and the beginning of hunting season (another season!), when the aristocracy flocked to London. Young ladies made their debuts. Marriages were contracted. Almack’s held its famous balls. And Parliament sat.

That, more than anything else, drove the Season. Your dear papa or older brother must take his seat in the Lords, and you came along to see and be seen. But you see, Parliament didn’t always sit just in the spring and summer months.

Older Regency romance novels talk of the Little Season, but many of us authors have looked in vain at period sources to discover what and when that might be. My theory is that the Little Season happened in the fall, when Parliament happened to sit later or arrive earlier than usual.

For example, in 1812, Parliament adjourned on July 30, but a general election was held in October. The newly elected in the House of Commons took their seats on November 24 and continued sitting with the House of Lords until July 22, 1813. Likewise, Parliament began sessions on November 4, 1813, and adjourned July 30, 1814. I cannot imagine every gentleman left family behind the entire time or huddled together over a pint without a ball or two to liven things up. This fall/winter time in London may have been what has been deemed the Little Season.

But at the moment, we seem to be in another type of season entirely. A sale season. Marissa mentioned Tuesday that her award-winning story, Skin Deep, is on sale through today. My publisher has put 500 of its books, including my A Convenient Christmas Wedding on sale for $1.99 from October 7 through 10.

It also so happens that my Art and Artifice, the second book in my Lady Emily Capers, parts of which were published as La Petite Four, is on sale for 99 cents through October 14.

Lady Emily dreams of joining the famous artists of the Royal Society for the Beaux Arts until her longtime betrothed Lord Robert declares his intent to marry her, immediately. What can the fellow be thinking! And why is handsome Bow Street Runner Jamie Cropper dogging Lord Robert’s steps, and Emily’s?  It’s up to Emily to use her art to uncover artifice and discover whether Lord Robert has something up his sleeve besides a nicely muscled arm. Along the way, a duke’s daughter might just form a perilous passion for a most unlikely suitor.

You know, it's always the season to read.

1810, What a Year It Was: The Derby

One of the big events of the London social season didn’t actually take place in London at all, but twenty-ish miles south of the metropolis, in the small town of Epsom located on the rolling, grass-covered terrain of the North Downs. I am speaking, of course, of the Epsom Derby, the undisputed Queen of horse races.

Epsom was known first as a spa town—the source of the purgative Epsom Salts—beginning early in the 17^th century, and the infirm (and not-so-infirm) of London and beyond tottered there throughout the next decades to drink the water from one particular spring. Horse-racing was first mentioned as taking place there early in the century—perhaps as a pastime for the healthy young members of families who accompanied older relatives visiting the spring. I can totally understand the attraction of galloping across the miles of open, green grassland! During Cromwell’s time racing was forbidden, but was back in force when King Charles II regained his throne; Samuel Pepys noted a visit there during which he saw Nell Gwyn, the king’s cockney mistress, having a merry time, and the King himself often attended races. By the 1680s there was an official course clerk, and fifty years later, twice-yearly race meetings were taking place.

Then, in 1778, the Earl of Derby (that's him at left) and a group of friends including Sir Charles Bunbury, the playwright Richard Sheridan, and politician Charles James Fox, hatched the idea of a new race for three-year-old fillies, over one and a half miles (most races at Epsom were in the two-to-four mile range), naming it The Oaks, after Lord Derby’s nearby house. In 1780 they added a second race, for both colts and fillies, over one mile (soon expanded to one and a half); Lord Derby and Sir Charles flipped a coin for the honor of naming this new race, and Derby won the toss—and so The Derby was born. Sir Charles probably wasn't too upset—his colt Diomed became the Derby's first winner.

The races soon became popular; several shorter races over the course of the meet made for more excitement among the viewers (and thus more bets placed!), which of course had the effect of drawing more than just the racing crowd, so that eventually a sort of country fair atmosphere took over, which in turn drew more crowds (helped by the location’s proximity to London.) A verse declaims,

On Epson Downs, when racing does begin

Large companies from every part come in.

Tag-rag and Bob-tail, Lords and Ladies meet,

And Squires without Estates, each other greet.

Bets upon bets; this man says, ‘Ten to one.’

Another pointing cries, ‘Good sir, tis done.’

Our friend Prinny, the Prince Regent, was one of those spectators; in the 1790s he built the first permanent structure at Epsom, the Prince’s Stand (a larger grandstand would finally be built in the 1830s). By the Regency, the Derby was an established “event” of the season, and an audience of thirty to forty thousand was the norm.

1810’s Derby, run on June 7, was no exception, drawing the usual hordes of racing enthusiasts from the lowest to the highest. What set it apart was the horse who would win that day, a three-year-old colt with “the lowest and longest, and most-double jointed horse, with the best legs...and worst feet I ever saw in my life," according to his groom.

Whalebone, owned by the Duke of Grafton, was running only his second formal race ever; he’d won the Newmarket Stakes just the month before. But despite his unprepossessing looks, he was a grandson (grandcolt?) of the mighty sire Eclipse, and went out favored to win...and win he did, leading the field throughout the race. Though his subsequent career was a checkered one, with a pattern of grand wins followed by disappointing losses then back to wins, his greatest victories came after he retired to stud: he was the progenitor of champions straight through into the 20th century and beyond—not bad for a horse described by a contemporary as “shabby”!

The Shocking Truth About Almack's

We’ve talked before about the magical Season in London, when a young lady made her debut in polite society for the first time. Once you were “out,” you could attend balls, hold parties at your own house, and, if you were lucky, visit Almack’s. I recently had cause to dig a little deeper into the workings of the mighty club, and I was a little surprised at what I found.

Almack’s, as we’ve also discussed, was that bastion of society often referred to as the Marriage Mart. A club dictated by women was a novelty in a society that still largely catered to the gentleman. The lady patronesses of Almack’s determined who was allowed to attend each ball held on Wednesday nights during the Season.

What surprised me was the entire process. As gleaned from various sources, some of which are not first-hand, it seems that when a mama knew she was bringing her daughter to London for the Season, she might write to a patroness and request vouchers in advance. The patronesses thus had a pretty good idea of who was going to be out and about that year. But no patroness would issue vouchers unless she visited the prospective attendee or otherwise knew that young lady personally. Then the patronesses met together and discussed potential candidates.

Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall at one of those meetings.

“I met with Miss Charming this week. She is utterly delightful. We must have her.”

“Tsk—not a bit of it! Her mother is a harridan, and I cannot like her wardrobe.”

“Oh. Pity. What about Miss Newvoriche? She is polite above all things.”

Shudder. “No. Her grandfather was a coal merchant.”

Gasp! 

And it wasn’t just the ladies who waited with great trepidation to hear whether they had been chosen. Men too had to be issued vouchers to attend. And attendance could still be denied even after you’d received vouchers if your behavior was found lacking for any reason.

There also appears to have been some sort of rule on the number of people in a single family who could be granted vouchers. Some sources say two; others three. Vouchers were non-transferrable, meaning that if you couldn’t go one week you couldn’t just hand your ticket to another person.

I couldn’t help wondering what would happen in a family with two daughters on the ton in one year and a socially astute mother. Which daughter would be denied tickets? How would that make her feel? What might she do to convince the patronesses to change their minds?

Particularly when attending Almack’s meant everything, even catching a French spy.

Dropping hints? Guilty. Stay tuned, because later this month, I’ll tell you more about what Ariadne Courdebas did to earn tickets to Almack’s after Eloquence and Espionage, Book 4 in my Lady Emily Capers, debuts on June 22.

Blogging from National, Part 3

Okay, so the RWA National Conference is now a week over, but we had so much to report between it and now that we thought we should wrap things up for you. I was so impressed with the Newport Mansions that I kind of skipped over a few things, like going to the ball.

You see, the RWA National Conference is my Season, just as so many ladies in the nineteenth century enjoyed the Season in London. It’s a time to visit with old friends and make new ones, to dress up in pretty clothes, to see the sights and learn new things, and to feel like a member of the “in” crowd for a short time. And just like the Season, it’s a time to go to soirees and balls. Every major publisher puts on some kind of event to honor their authors, but the very best, in my humble opinion, is the Harlequin party.

This year it was a tremendous crush, my dears, held at the Waldorf-Astoria and themed the Black and White Ball. Everyone dressed in black and white, and some of the dresses were worthy of the red carpet! Here’s my old friend Jenna Mindel (Season of Dreams), new friend Christine Johnson (The Matrimony Plan), me, and Dream (Love Inspired’s talented social media guru) in our party togs.

And a look at the crowded dance floor, with about 198 women and 2 men all rocking out. Too much fun!


Unfortunately, the event was so crowded that only select authors were allowed to bring guests, so Marissa couldn’t join me this year. {pout}

Alas, the Season was too soon over, but Marissa invited me to her very own house party on Cape Cod! After our detour to the Newport Mansions, we arrived in the Chatham area. Sometimes I bemoan the fact that our town is short on history. Most of the homes here date from the 1950s. Imagine my delight in visiting towns started in 1712 or earlier with extant homes still in existence!

What else I learned in Cape Cod:

• Cape Cod houses really come from Cape Cod. They were everywhere! I adore the design and enjoyed seeing all the ways people made them unique, from different shutters and doors to flower boxes and gardens. Then there were the grander homes, like the one at the top of this post, named Hydrangea Walk.


• To sail properly, you not only need sea legs but a sea butt. I knew enough to sit down in the sailboat Marissa’s family owns, but that didn’t stop me from sliding right off onto the floor at the first turning. I decided to stay there. You can still take great pictures from the deck. :-)


• The dark of the moon is really dark at sea. We motored over to Pleasant Bay to watch the fireworks (which were fantastic!). But coming back, with a thin sliver of moon and hazy clouds obscuring the stars, the night quickly turned to pitch. It was extremely disorienting. As I’m currently writing my second book in the Everard Legacy miniseries and my hero is a sea captain, I wondered how he dealt with the absolute lack of sight. I also got to experience how it feels to run aground, when our boat got stuck in the shifting sand bars of the bay and we had to wait an hour for the tide to raise us off.

We are both back home and back to our usual writing schedules. We hope you enjoyed our adventures as much as we did. Look for more of our usual types of posts next week. And please continue commenting. We love hearing from you! Comments through next Tuesday, July 12, will be included in the drawing for an Irresistible Earl prize packet. I’ll announce the winner on Friday, July 15.

And You Thought Life Was Busy Now

Sometimes I feel like I’m being stretched in sixteen directions at once. Motherhood, writing, moonlighting in my old profession, volunteering at church, trying to help parents, being there for friends, wait, wasn’t I supposed to exercise somewhere in there? Many have said that the pace of life has increased dramatically in the last decade.

But they never saw the schedule for a young lady on her first season.

Marissa and I have written previously about the importance of going up to London after Easter each year to see and be seen. This was your chance to find the young man of your dreams, to chart your future. I’ve no doubt it was every bit as exciting as the stories told in books.

But think about it. Here you are, a young lady of sixteen or seventeen. Up until now, you’ve most likely been at home with perhaps a governess to teach you to read, write, calculate, embroider, and do other useful things. Perhaps you were one of the few who went to an exclusive girls school and learn deportment and dancing as well. Either way, your days have been fairly orderly, predictable, and staid.

Then you arrive in London. In short order, you have to shop for fabric, find a modiste, and get your gowns and riding habits made (and fitted and fitted again). You need hats, gloves, boots, shoes, muffs, tippets, scarves, pelisses, mantles, evening capes, and reticules to go with your new gowns, not to mention corsets, chemises, and morning robes. You have a maid to style your hair. Once you’re properly attired, you may get up early and don your fetching new riding habit to ride in Hyde Park then come home and change to eat breakfast while looking through all the invitations that arrived yesterday while you were out. Hm, if you’re to attend Lady Badgerly’s musicale, you’ll need one more set of gloves to match that new gown. So you change again and out you go shopping. You come back home victorious for nuncheon and then you may change again to go pay calls or accept calls from all your new friends. Some considered it bad form to stay more than 15 minutes at any one house, so you bobbed all over the West End visiting and being visited. Kiss, kiss. How lovely to see you. Do call again soon.

Back home in time to change for dinner, and then perhaps to change again before heading out to a ball or the opera. You also have to find time to practice your singing or playing (you must show off at musicales yourself, you know), read whatever's in vogue so you can speak intelligently, and study the ladies' magazines so you can stay up to the minute in fashion. Then there were horse races, river regattas, Venetian breakfasts (which are actually in the afternoon), cricket matches, court galas, scientific lectures, art exhibits, concerts, and the theatre, not to mention all the sights of London, like Vauxhall Gardens, the Egyptian Hall, the British Museum, the Elgin Marbles, and a must-see visit to the Panoramic View of St. Petersburg, a very large painting at Mr. Wigley’s Great Room.

Remember that the Season ran from after Easter to the middle of August, at best five months and often less. During that time a young lady might be expected to attend over 50 balls, 75 parties, 30 dinners, and two dozen breakfasts, with all the dressing, undressing, redressing, primping, curling, and shopping required to support them. And in the middle of all that she was expected to find, attract, get to know, and become engaged to her future husband.

And I thought I was stretched! Phew!

Author Interview: Sarah MacLean!

We're taking a quick detour from our series on dancing to welcome author Sarah MacLean, author of the forthcoming The Season, just out from Orchard Books. Today we're featuring an interview with Sarah, so have fun and be sure to leave a comment in order to be entered in a drawing to win a signed copy of Sarah's book!

Nineteenteen: You're among fellow history geeks here, so tell us--what first turned you on to history and historical fiction? And what drew you in particular to the Regency/early 19th century period?

Sarah: I happened to be one of those kids who was surrounded by history buffs. Aside from my parents, who are European (father, Italian; mother, British) and therefore were incredibly committed to making sure that I knew and loved our family's history, I also had teachers and librarians and an older sister who were always putting great historical novels in my hands and incredible historical tales in my head. I went through phases...By high school, I was obsessed with historical fiction. I would become enamored of whole eras and read any- and everything I could get my hands on that related to them. I went through phases—the Civil War, Medieval England, the Vikings, the Italian Renaissance. And then, in the 11th grade, I found Jane Austen. And I was hooked. Here was an author (a woman no less!) who went against everything that had been written before and who birthed a genre of literature. She made romance fun . . . and funny . . . and real. Her heroines were cheeky and ironic, her heroes dark and brooding and arrogant to a fault. The combination of the two, for the teenager I was then and the twenty-something I am now, was electric. After that, I just wallowed in Regency literature. There's such a rich collection of it, that I never ran out, never got bored. And now...I get to add to that collection. Which is pretty awesome.

Nineteenteen: So give us the data dump on your about-to-be-released (next week!) debut, The Season--what is it about, and what inspired you to write it?

Sarah: The Season is the story of seventeen-year-old Lady Alexandra Worthington, who is sharp tongued and strong willed and positively loathes dress fittings—exactly the opposite of what a lady should be in Regency London. Alex, along with her BFFs, Vivi & Ella, can't seem to sit idly by drinking tea and embroidering. Instead, she gets herself tangled up in a dangerous mystery—involving a dead earl and potential treason. The Earl of Blackmoor is mysteriously killed, and the girls team up to help his son, Gavin (who happens to be totally dreamy), to uncover the truth about his father's death. As the mystery unravels, Alex and Gavin grow closer, and Alex finds herself losing her heart. But her girls are there to the end to make sure everything goes her way. The book is the result of my triple threat of obsessions: romance, YA and the Regency. When faced with those things, it's hard to imagine writing any other book than The Season. That, and the fact that Alexandra came into my head clear-as-crystal, like an avenging queen . . . I had to write her out of there.

Nineteenteen: What were the best parts about writing it, and what proved to be less fun?

Sarah: I loved writing The Season from beginning to end...the research, the character development, the story itself...I had a complete and utter blast. But my favorite parts were definitely the scenes involving all the girls. Alex, Ella and Vivi have this intense and wonderful friendship that reminds me so much of the friendships that I have been blessed with over the years. They're teasing and funny and supportive and, I hope, great models for real-life friends.
As for what was less fun, revisions weren't the easiest thing in the world...but once they were over, the book was infinitely better than it had been in first-draft form...so much so that now I look forward to revising!

Nineteenteen: How do you think teens in the 19th century and teens now differ or resemble each other?

Sarah: I think, fundamentally, they're incredibly similar. The things that define "teen" resonate through history. I think friendships were vitally important in the early 1800s, this is something we see clearly in the writings of Austen, and now it's no different. Parents' wishes and expectations are still so important--in 1800, it was about who you'd marry; now it's about what college you're going to. And, for girls especially, your whole world revolved around making a sound match. Anyone who has ever been a teenager knows that sure hasn't changed. The good thing is, marriage isn't the defining characteristic of teenage girls anymore. And that's a huge step in the right direction.

Nineteenteen: If you could visit Regency London for one day, what place would you visit or person would you like to have a glass of ratafia with?

Sarah: Oh, I'd go straight to Vauxhall Gardens. And then shopping on Bond Street. And then sneak into Parliament. And then have tea with Aunt Jane.

Nineteenteen: You've signed to write three adult historical romances for Avon--many congratulations!! Do you think you'll come back to writing more YA books after that?

Sarah: Thanks! It's really exciting to be immersed in the Regency for multiple audiences...I'm still pinching myself about the Avon books...even though the whole thing is rather terrifying! But, absolutely I'm coming back to YA sometime soon. After all, both Vivi and Ella deserve to have their stories told...and I think they'll just nag at me until I tell them...so there will be more YA for sure.

Nineteenteen: Anything else you'd like to tell our readers? And where can our readers go to learn more about you and The Season?

Sarah: It's preaching to the choir, I think, but one of my biggest concerns about the state of YA today is how little historical fiction there is out there--not just Regency historicals, but historicals altogether. So, I'd just say, keep reading it...because history is such rich fictional food!
I'm always happy to answer questions from readers. You can find me at http://www.blogger.com/www.macleanspace.com/, or email me at sarah (at) macleanspace (dot) com.

Thanks for talking to us, Sarah!

Don't forget to comment if you want to be entered to win a signed copy of The Season. And come back on Friday, when Sarah will be back for more Regency-inspired fun!