She Doesn’t Look a Day Over 180, Does She?

Cake? Check.

Party hats? Of course.

Two hundred candles? Umm...maybe we ought to call the fire department, just in case... ☺

This coming Saturday is the 200^th birthday of my favorite British monarch, one who should bewell known by now to NineteenTeen readers.

We’ve learned about theextraordinary circumstances surrounding her birth, her rather lonely upbringing, the challenges she faced as she grew ever closer to the throne during her uncle’s(King William IV) decline, and her triumphal ascension as Queen Regnant shortlyafter her eighteenth birthday...as well as some of her early missteps. Sometimes controversial, often admirable, always fascinating (how often has a woman come to embody a historical era?)...let’s wish Queen Victoria a very happy 200^th birthday!

And in case you want your piece of birthday cake home-baked...try this recipe for a Victoria Sponge, which was evidently one of her favorites for afternoon tea, courtesy of the New York Times:

Enjoy! And eat a slice for Her Majesty!

Happy Birthday, Kristy J. Manhattan

It has been said it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a team to produce a book too. My beloved husband challenged me to finish my first book and encourages me to keep writing. Friends like my dear Marissa celebrate successes and commiserate failures. But through each book, through every plot, every good and bad cover, every praising or complaining review, there has been one person who has always been by my side.

Kristy J. Manhattan.

I call Kris my critique partner, but that isn’t a very good description of the many ways she influences my books. For one thing, she rarely asks me to critique her work even though she is a talented writer herself. (She wrote 1,000 words yesterday. I cheered.)

For another thing, she does far more than critique. She serves as a sounding board for plots and characters, helps me think through issues, and offers advice about career plans and hopes. She was my guide the first time I went to England (she’d been there before--that's her outside the assembly rooms in Bath). She read every book aloud to me while I checked the text back in the day when we had to hand proof (as in the publisher would send a manuscript that had been rekeyed and the author was responsible for ensuring that every letter had been transferred over correctly). And she serves as my first reader, the one who lets me know when I get it right and when I might have gotten it wrong.

She pointed out when my heroine’s eyes inexplicably changed color in the middle of the story.

She noticed when my characters bought two horses and somehow rode away on three.

She catches typos, grammatical errors, and plot holes (though I try to give her very few of any of these).

Because of her love of cats, she’s coaching me through my upcoming series that features a mysterious employment agency owner and her matchmaking feline Fortune.

Her support gives me confidence to send my books to a publisher and to let them loose into the world through self-publishing.

If you enjoyed any of my stories, chances are Kris helped make it that polished jewel.

Today is her birthday. I wrote this post to let her know how much I value and appreciate all her efforts on my behalf over the years. Here’s to many more stories to come, Kristy J. Much love.

It’s Jane Austen’s Birthday, But You Get the Presents

Authors of past centuries may continue to be read, revered, studied and debated long after their deaths, but I don’t think there’s one who has such a passionate popular following as a genteel but wickedly humorous spinster from a quiet corner of Great Britain who wrote only six completed novels and a handful of lesser and unfinished works.

Yes, you all know who I’m talking about. ☺

Can't you just picture them all huddled over their phones?

This coming Saturday (that's December 16) will be the inimitable Jane Austen’s 242^nd birthday. Well into her third century, she continues to delight readers with her characters’ matrimonial adventures and misadventures...and inspires the question, “How would things have been different for the Bennett sisters if they’d had a good dating app?" The BBC thinks they might have an answer...

   

On a slightly more serious note, research into The Divine Jane’s work and life continue—not only on the content of her work, but how she put it together. There’s a saying among writers that writing is revising, and it’s very true: the books you see on bookstore shelves have been written, re-written, revised, polished, edited, and possibly re-written and revised and polished again. For us spoiled writers of the 21^st century, our trusty computers make it a relatively easy process (well, except for getting the actual words right!) But for authors in the benighted pre-computer era, revising their work was a chore: what did you do when, say, you decided that a paragraph had to be inserted into an existing manuscript page?  Well, if you were Jane (and others on her era, I presume), you wrote it down on a separate piece of paper and pinned it to the original manuscript in the spot where it was to be inserted. Between crossing out words and sentences and writing in new ones and pinning in longer additions, it’s easy to understand why an important part of preparing a manuscript was sitting down with a large stack of paper and copying the whole thing—making a “fair copy”—before sending it off to the publisher.

I’ll bet Jane would have loved Post-it notes...

Regency Fabrics, Part 16

Here’s another post in our ongoing series on Regency fabrics.

As I have in previous posts, I’ll be examining actual fabric samples glued into several earlier editions of Ackermann’s Repository, samples supplied by the manufacturers and published by Ackermann in order to boost the British cloth-making industry at a time when exporting British goods to Europe was almost impossible because of the Napoleonic war. I'll give you a close-up scan of each sample, the published description if available, and my own observations of the color, weight, condition, and similarity to present-day materials, to give you as close a picture as possible of what these fabrics are like.

Today’s three samples are from the October 1810 issue of Ackermann’s Repository. The overall condition of my copy is moderate; while the physical integrity of the fabric samples is good, there’s a lot of spotting on the top sample that obscures the pattern somewhat—mildew, perhaps? The other two samples are in good condition.

Here we go!

No. 1 and 2. A most lively and appropriate furniture print, from Mr. Allen’s 61, Pall-Mall, adapted principally for drawing room curtains and sofas. Boudoir draperies have a most pleasing effect when composed of this article. The most happily contrasted linings are, shades of green, blue, and purple, with variegated fringes to correspond.

My comments: I will confess that my first impression of this pattern was a memory of the little circular gummed reinforcement labels for three-hole punched paper (remember those?) The fabric itself is very finely and evenly woven, with a smooth glazed chintz finish and sufficient weight to mean this fabric definitely draped well. But, um, paired with green, blue, or purple lining? Not in my boudoir, thank you very much!

No. 3. This is an article very superior of its order, forming a neat and delicate intermediate kind of robe, and procured at the most modest expence [sic], being offered from 8s. to 14s. the dress, at Millard’s, in the city. The proprietor of this fashionable resort, which we have had occasion to notice in the foregoing numbers of our Repository, has, we are informed from the best authority, succeeded in forming connections with the great commercial cities in Russia, India, China, South America, Germany, France, Spain, Scotland, and Ireland; and thus rendered the establishment a grand depôt of every article which in elegance or utility can render a mansion comfortable or attractive, as far as relates to the requisite and ornamental furniture for drawing-rooms, eating and sleeping-rooms, nursery, &c. Ladies’ dresses of every degree, and of a superior description, as well as those for general use, are exhibited in abundance; and selections for forming new establishments made be readily made, and executed without delay. Here the nobility and gentry, the merchant, the country trader, and the public, are regularly supplied; and we cannot withhold the just portion of merit which belongs to the proprietor, whose persevering industry, ingenuity, and taste, have completed a depot on so vast and useful a scale. The assemblage of valuable India shawls, and of those manufactured in this country, are, we understand, immense in this establishment.

My comments: Well, it might have been nice to know a little more about the fabric and a little less about the industrious and ingenious (and unnamed!) proprietor in whose establishment this superior article could be purchased! It’s a very fine (and sheer—would definitely require a lining) muslin striped with a thin double line, of red and and white, twilled. Very dainty for a morning dress, I’m sure. Oh—did you notice the reference to the fact that the proprietor appeared to be trading with France? I would have thought that the little matter of being at war with that country might have interfered with trade, but evidently not!

No. 4 is a neat and appropriate article for gentlemen’s waistcoats, and is styled silk toilonet. It is ¾ yard wide, and sold by Messrs. Smith and Ash, fancy waistcoat warehouse, Prince’s-street, Soho, facing Coventry-street. The taste, utility, and reasonableness of this article, are too obvious to need further comment.

My comments: Hmm. I can’t help suspecting that further comment wasn’t forthcoming because the actual samples hadn’t been delivered to Ackermann’s offices before print time, but maybe I’m being cynical. It’s a curious fabric, without any modern counterpart that I can think of: heavier in weight, rather stiff, and in texture somewhere between flocked (like a velvet) and sueded, but not particularly soft to the touch. There’s a bar pattern woven in at wide intervals, of a single thread each of charcoal, brick red, and white. 

And did you think I forgot? The winners of our commenter drawing from my birthday party post last week are...

For the $25 Amazon gift card, veedham!
and for one of my print books (your choice),  mamafrog!

Ladies, if you would, please contact me via marissa @ marissadoyle dot com (removes spaces etc.etc.) so we can arrange for you to receive your prizes. Thank you all for commenting...and reading NineteenTeen!

(Oh, and a postscript: this is the last week By Jove will be on sale for 99 cents, so if you've been dithering on picking it up, now's the time to grab it before the price goes back up. You can snag it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple's iBookstore, and Kobo, as well as at Book View Cafe's own store (in both epub and mobi formats.)

Happy 195th Birthday to You!

This coming Saturday marks the 195th birthday of one of my favorite historical persons: I refer, of course, to HM Queen Victoria.

Since I’ve—ahem!—written about her frequently enough here over the years, I thought it might be fun to give a little quiz to make sure you’ve all been paying attention. Answers can be found in past NineteenTeen posts...or you can wing it and see just how much of a QV enthusiast you are. Are you game? Here we go! Answers (with links) will be posted at the end, so no peeking!

1. True or False: Victoria’s father died before she was a year old, leaving her to be brought up by her mother, a German princess.

2. True or False: The Queen was briefly engaged to Prince William of Orange (The Netherlands) but changed her mind and called off the marriage because she did not wish to have to spend time away from England as queen.

3. True or False: Victoria designed her own wedding dress, which can still be viewed in the London Museum.

4. True or False: Her Majesty was briefly addicted to the chewing of betel-nuts, a temporary fad at court in 1838, and could out-spit her prime minister, Lord Melbourne.

5. True or False: The Queen was one of the first women to use chloroform to help get through childbirth, much to the dismay of certain conservative groups in the medical community of the time who felt that women should not be permitted any abatement of labor pain.

6. True or False: Victoria was passionately fond of parrots as pets, and had several throughout her lifetime who were said to amuse her very much with their comments about Mr. Gladstone.

7. True or False: In her old age, The Queen had several servants from India, of whom she was immensely fond and who taught her the rudiments of Hindi.

*******Answers*******

1. True. Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent, died of pneumonia when she was only eight months old.

2. False. That was her cousin, Princess Charlotte, who died in 1817.

3. True. It’s amazing how tiny it is!

4. False. That was my tricksy April Fool’s Day post from 2008. :)

5. True. She used chloroform for her last two pregnancies, and was roundly abused by the medical journal The Lancet for doing so.

6. False. Actually, Victoria was a dog lover, and the first thing she did on arriving home after her coronation was to give her spaniel, Dash, a bath.

7. True. Unlike other members of her family and household, Victoria was remarkably color-blind for her time...and my goodness, I haven't written about her Indian servants yet, have I? Look for that in an upcoming post. :)

Okay...so how did you do?