Catherine Curzon's Blog, page 19
June 29, 2017
A Brief (and not at all definitive) Overview of the Menagerie
It's a pleasure to welcome JL Ashton, author of Mendacity & Mourning, with A Brief (and not at all definitive) Overview of the Menagerie!
---oOo---
One can set a hundred scenes in sitting rooms and ballrooms, on Oakham Mount or in the shrubbery. But if an author has placed her characters in London, there are so many interesting locations ripe for plot twists and full of potential conversations. After all, in London, there was excitement to be had at museums and theaters, opera houses and menageries.
Darcy? Are you with us, man?” Richard’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Miss Bingley was enquiring about Georgiana.”Darcy sat up a little straighter. “Pardon me. My mind had drifted to an issue with the harvest at Pemberley, and I recalled I must send a letter to the duke about our change in plans. My visit will be delayed at least a week.”Miss Bingley looked pleased by his news. “How is dear Georgiana?”“My sister is quite busy with her aunt. During our stay in London, I hope we shall attend the menagerie. In her letters, Georgiana has written of a collection of foreign animals. The tiger and the constrictor are of particular interest.”“Oh, Lizzy saw the tiger!” Miss Bennet’s face lit up in excitement. “She said it was quite fascinating, if not a bit melancholy.”While Darcy absorbed the happy news and began forming a query about Miss Elizabeth, he heard Miss Bingley titter.“A wild cat prone to melancholy? A fierce and bloodthirsty beast such as that has no such feeling.”In a cool voice, his eyes fixed firmly on Miss Bingley, Richard replied, “I have seen animals feel many things: fear, excitement, joy. Dogs are happy creatures. Horses love to run, but in the face of danger or loud noises, they are frightened. A wild, untamed creature cannot be happy in the city with the cries of children breaking the peace and the eyes of the multitude upon him.”“Oh, this makes me sad,” Miss Catherine said in a small voice.“It does, indeed,” Bingley exclaimed. “But to see it makes it real and not a creature of myth and legend.” He smiled when Miss Bennet met his eyes and nodded.“Yes, Mr. Bingley,” she said softly. “It does.”Darcy watched as his cousin’s eyes roved over the couple as though assessing the field that lay before him. Shrugging, Richard sat back and enquired as to the whereabouts of Hurst.Mrs. Hurst averted her eyes as her brother revealed that her husband had met a hearty ragout he deemed the finest of his life but lost the battle. Richard chuckled. “He best not be in the militia or the navy if his stomach is so delicate.”“Ah, I believe it was the quantity he ate rather than the quality of the dish,” Bingley asserted. “Four servings. And soup, a pudding, and a tart.”“He is resting upstairs,” Mrs. Hurst added.Richard coughed out a laugh. “Well. He stands tall in my esteem, even while lying abed.”
Before the London Zoo opened, the menagerie visited by Darcy, Elizabeth and Georgiana in Mendacity & Mourning was the sort of traveling collection of unusual and exotic animals that visited London and other European cities. It was, for many, a walk on the wild side.
Showcasing and exhibiting animals began with William the Conqueror, who established a royal menagerie, including lions and camels, at Woodstock Manor near Oxford. This tradition was maintained by his successors, who received exotic animals as gifts from foreign rulers. It was Queen Elizabeth I who first allowed the public to view the royal menagerie. By then it had been moved to the Tower of London, where visitors could pet the lion cubs that played in the grounds. Entry was free to anyone who brought a dead cat or dog to supplement the animals' diets.In 1773, to compete with the royal menagerie, showman Gilbert Pidcock (or Pidock, by some accounts) opened his own collection of exotic animals at the Exeter Exchange (or ‘Change) on the Strand. The ‘Change was designed with an arcade and small shops on the first floor, and lodgings above. Over time, the upper floor apartments began housing a menagerie formed by Pidcock, who promoted his collection with newspaper ads; in one, he assured the public his wild animals were "so well secured, that the most timorous may approach them in safety.”In 1812, the animals at the Exeter ‘Change included a Bengal tiger, a hyena, a lion, a jaguar, a sloth, a camel, monkeys, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, an elephant, an ostrich, a cassowary, a pelican, emus, cranes, an eagle, cockatoos, elks, kangaroos, and antelopes. “Chunee” the elephant was the star attraction of the menagerie. After arriving in England in 1809, he performed on stage, entertaining audiences in Covent Garden. He often was paraded in the street outside the menagerie. But in February 1826, Chunee killed one of his keepers and, for safety reasons, was put down. Without the elephant, attendance dropped and the Exeter ‘Change was demolished in 1829.
By that time, menageries were not found only in the City. Shoemaker George Wombwell recognised that interest in wild animals, and the populace to pay to see them, went beyond London’s borders. In 1810, he founded one of the first travelling menageries; by 1839 it had 15 wagons of animals and a brass band. His menagerie inspired circuses to start using animals in their shows, but the main attractions remained in London. In 1828, as Victorian interest in natural science grew, the London Zoo was founded in Regents Park. Run by The Zoological Society of London, the collection was open only to members. However, exclusivity had it price. With a large collection of animals—including many inherited from the Royal Menagerie—that were costly to feed and maintain, the zoo opened to the general public in 1897. The curiosity of thousands could now be sated.JAFF writers are not the only ones to utilize London’s menageries and zoo in their stories. Fans of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach might remember that James Henry Trotter was orphaned when his parents were killed by a zoo escapee. “Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped form the London Zoo… They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat.”Menageries and zoos…still a walk on the wild side.
Thank you so much for hosting me and Mendacity & Mourning here at A Covent Garden, Catherine!
Mendacity &Mourning By J. L. Ashton
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gossip in possession of misheard tales and desirous of both a good wife and an eager audience need only descend upon the sitting rooms of a small country town in order to find satisfaction. And with a push from Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins sets alight a series of misunderstandings, rumours, and lies that create obstacles to a romance between Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.
This slightly unhinged romantic comedy follows Darcy as he sets off to find himself a wife and instead finds himself pulled into the mire of his aunt’s machinations and his own fascination with Elizabeth, whom he believes betrothed to another. As Meryton judges him the grieving groom of Anne de Bourgh and a caddish dallier with the hearts of others, Darcy must ferret out the truth behind his cousin’s disappearance, protect his sister from the fretful fate of all Fitzwilliam females, and, most importantly, win Elizabeth’s heart.
Author Bio:
Jan Ashton didn’t meet Jane Austen until she was in her late teens, but in a happy coincidence, she shares a similarity of name with the author and celebrates her birthday on the same day Pride & Prejudice was first published. Sadly, she’s yet to find any Darcy and Elizabeth candles on her cake, but she does own the action figures.
Like so many Austen fans, Jan was an early and avid reader with a vivid imagination and a well-used library card. Her family’s frequent moves around the U.S and abroad encouraged her to think of books and their authors as reliable friends. It took a history degree and another decade or two for her to start imagining variations on Pride & Prejudice, and another decade—filled with career, marriage, kids, and a menagerie of pets—to start writing them. Today, in between writing Austen variations, Jan lives in the Chicago area, eats out far too often with her own Mr. Darcy, and enjoys membership in the local and national chapters of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Mendacity & Mourning is her second book with Meryton Press. She published A Searing Acquaintance in 2016.
FacebookPinterest Twitter JanAshtonBlog
Buy Links:
Mendacity & MourningA Searing Acquaintance
Blog Tour Schedule:
06/19 Babblings of a Bookworm; Vignette, GA06/20 My Jane Austen Book Club; Author/Character Interview, GA06/21 Half Agony, Half Hope; Review, Excerpt06/22 From Pemberley to Milton; Guest Post, Excerpt, GA06/23 More Agreeably Engaged; Vignette, GA06/24 Just Jane 1813; Review, GA06/25 Margie’s Must Reads; Guest Post, GA06/26 Of Pens and Pages; Review, Excerpt, GA06/27 Tomorrow is Another Day; Review, GA06/28 Austenesque Reviews; Vignette, GA06/29 My Vices and Weaknesses; Character Interview, GA 06/30 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life; Guest Post07/01 Darcyholic Diversions; Author Interview, GA07/02 Laughing With Lizzie; Vignette, Excerpt, GA07/03 Diary of an Eccentric; Review
---oOo---
One can set a hundred scenes in sitting rooms and ballrooms, on Oakham Mount or in the shrubbery. But if an author has placed her characters in London, there are so many interesting locations ripe for plot twists and full of potential conversations. After all, in London, there was excitement to be had at museums and theaters, opera houses and menageries.
Darcy? Are you with us, man?” Richard’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Miss Bingley was enquiring about Georgiana.”Darcy sat up a little straighter. “Pardon me. My mind had drifted to an issue with the harvest at Pemberley, and I recalled I must send a letter to the duke about our change in plans. My visit will be delayed at least a week.”Miss Bingley looked pleased by his news. “How is dear Georgiana?”“My sister is quite busy with her aunt. During our stay in London, I hope we shall attend the menagerie. In her letters, Georgiana has written of a collection of foreign animals. The tiger and the constrictor are of particular interest.”“Oh, Lizzy saw the tiger!” Miss Bennet’s face lit up in excitement. “She said it was quite fascinating, if not a bit melancholy.”While Darcy absorbed the happy news and began forming a query about Miss Elizabeth, he heard Miss Bingley titter.“A wild cat prone to melancholy? A fierce and bloodthirsty beast such as that has no such feeling.”In a cool voice, his eyes fixed firmly on Miss Bingley, Richard replied, “I have seen animals feel many things: fear, excitement, joy. Dogs are happy creatures. Horses love to run, but in the face of danger or loud noises, they are frightened. A wild, untamed creature cannot be happy in the city with the cries of children breaking the peace and the eyes of the multitude upon him.”“Oh, this makes me sad,” Miss Catherine said in a small voice.“It does, indeed,” Bingley exclaimed. “But to see it makes it real and not a creature of myth and legend.” He smiled when Miss Bennet met his eyes and nodded.“Yes, Mr. Bingley,” she said softly. “It does.”Darcy watched as his cousin’s eyes roved over the couple as though assessing the field that lay before him. Shrugging, Richard sat back and enquired as to the whereabouts of Hurst.Mrs. Hurst averted her eyes as her brother revealed that her husband had met a hearty ragout he deemed the finest of his life but lost the battle. Richard chuckled. “He best not be in the militia or the navy if his stomach is so delicate.”“Ah, I believe it was the quantity he ate rather than the quality of the dish,” Bingley asserted. “Four servings. And soup, a pudding, and a tart.”“He is resting upstairs,” Mrs. Hurst added.Richard coughed out a laugh. “Well. He stands tall in my esteem, even while lying abed.”
Before the London Zoo opened, the menagerie visited by Darcy, Elizabeth and Georgiana in Mendacity & Mourning was the sort of traveling collection of unusual and exotic animals that visited London and other European cities. It was, for many, a walk on the wild side.
Showcasing and exhibiting animals began with William the Conqueror, who established a royal menagerie, including lions and camels, at Woodstock Manor near Oxford. This tradition was maintained by his successors, who received exotic animals as gifts from foreign rulers. It was Queen Elizabeth I who first allowed the public to view the royal menagerie. By then it had been moved to the Tower of London, where visitors could pet the lion cubs that played in the grounds. Entry was free to anyone who brought a dead cat or dog to supplement the animals' diets.In 1773, to compete with the royal menagerie, showman Gilbert Pidcock (or Pidock, by some accounts) opened his own collection of exotic animals at the Exeter Exchange (or ‘Change) on the Strand. The ‘Change was designed with an arcade and small shops on the first floor, and lodgings above. Over time, the upper floor apartments began housing a menagerie formed by Pidcock, who promoted his collection with newspaper ads; in one, he assured the public his wild animals were "so well secured, that the most timorous may approach them in safety.”In 1812, the animals at the Exeter ‘Change included a Bengal tiger, a hyena, a lion, a jaguar, a sloth, a camel, monkeys, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, an elephant, an ostrich, a cassowary, a pelican, emus, cranes, an eagle, cockatoos, elks, kangaroos, and antelopes. “Chunee” the elephant was the star attraction of the menagerie. After arriving in England in 1809, he performed on stage, entertaining audiences in Covent Garden. He often was paraded in the street outside the menagerie. But in February 1826, Chunee killed one of his keepers and, for safety reasons, was put down. Without the elephant, attendance dropped and the Exeter ‘Change was demolished in 1829.
By that time, menageries were not found only in the City. Shoemaker George Wombwell recognised that interest in wild animals, and the populace to pay to see them, went beyond London’s borders. In 1810, he founded one of the first travelling menageries; by 1839 it had 15 wagons of animals and a brass band. His menagerie inspired circuses to start using animals in their shows, but the main attractions remained in London. In 1828, as Victorian interest in natural science grew, the London Zoo was founded in Regents Park. Run by The Zoological Society of London, the collection was open only to members. However, exclusivity had it price. With a large collection of animals—including many inherited from the Royal Menagerie—that were costly to feed and maintain, the zoo opened to the general public in 1897. The curiosity of thousands could now be sated.JAFF writers are not the only ones to utilize London’s menageries and zoo in their stories. Fans of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach might remember that James Henry Trotter was orphaned when his parents were killed by a zoo escapee. “Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped form the London Zoo… They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat.”Menageries and zoos…still a walk on the wild side.
Thank you so much for hosting me and Mendacity & Mourning here at A Covent Garden, Catherine!
Mendacity &Mourning By J. L. Ashton
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gossip in possession of misheard tales and desirous of both a good wife and an eager audience need only descend upon the sitting rooms of a small country town in order to find satisfaction. And with a push from Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins sets alight a series of misunderstandings, rumours, and lies that create obstacles to a romance between Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.
This slightly unhinged romantic comedy follows Darcy as he sets off to find himself a wife and instead finds himself pulled into the mire of his aunt’s machinations and his own fascination with Elizabeth, whom he believes betrothed to another. As Meryton judges him the grieving groom of Anne de Bourgh and a caddish dallier with the hearts of others, Darcy must ferret out the truth behind his cousin’s disappearance, protect his sister from the fretful fate of all Fitzwilliam females, and, most importantly, win Elizabeth’s heart.
Author Bio:
Jan Ashton didn’t meet Jane Austen until she was in her late teens, but in a happy coincidence, she shares a similarity of name with the author and celebrates her birthday on the same day Pride & Prejudice was first published. Sadly, she’s yet to find any Darcy and Elizabeth candles on her cake, but she does own the action figures.
Like so many Austen fans, Jan was an early and avid reader with a vivid imagination and a well-used library card. Her family’s frequent moves around the U.S and abroad encouraged her to think of books and their authors as reliable friends. It took a history degree and another decade or two for her to start imagining variations on Pride & Prejudice, and another decade—filled with career, marriage, kids, and a menagerie of pets—to start writing them. Today, in between writing Austen variations, Jan lives in the Chicago area, eats out far too often with her own Mr. Darcy, and enjoys membership in the local and national chapters of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Mendacity & Mourning is her second book with Meryton Press. She published A Searing Acquaintance in 2016.
FacebookPinterest Twitter JanAshtonBlog
Buy Links:
Mendacity & MourningA Searing Acquaintance
Blog Tour Schedule:
06/19 Babblings of a Bookworm; Vignette, GA06/20 My Jane Austen Book Club; Author/Character Interview, GA06/21 Half Agony, Half Hope; Review, Excerpt06/22 From Pemberley to Milton; Guest Post, Excerpt, GA06/23 More Agreeably Engaged; Vignette, GA06/24 Just Jane 1813; Review, GA06/25 Margie’s Must Reads; Guest Post, GA06/26 Of Pens and Pages; Review, Excerpt, GA06/27 Tomorrow is Another Day; Review, GA06/28 Austenesque Reviews; Vignette, GA06/29 My Vices and Weaknesses; Character Interview, GA 06/30 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life; Guest Post07/01 Darcyholic Diversions; Author Interview, GA07/02 Laughing With Lizzie; Vignette, Excerpt, GA07/03 Diary of an Eccentric; Review
June 23, 2017
The Exile by Don Jacobson
It's a pleasure to welcome Don Jacobson, author of The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque!
---oOo---
Of Pride & Prejudice, Supporting Characters, and The Wardrobe
Consider these words:
“I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!”The three sentences are simple, no? Yet, if you read them closely, you will be able to discern much about the person thinking them, her situation and the context in which they passed through her head.I will readily admit that your context will be a key element in the deductive process. If you are or have been the parent of a teenager, you likely have heard this passing over the lips of your “l’il darlin’” any of a number of times from age twelve to nineteen. If your happy youth is still thrilled to be around you, just wait. And, when would such utterances be most likely to occur? When you denied her the car keys? No, that would have sparked a rejoinder like, “You are so unfair. You always let (pick the name of the older sib) have the car. You’re treating me like a baby!” This is punishment time. And she understands that her elderly tormenter knows she is in the wrong. What could he possibly know about love? He is ancient…at least fifty years old! Thus, she is not convinced her crime deserves exile. But, so deep is her wish to escape to a place where she can be her own person, to be in charge of her own life, that she is willing to endure exile from her family. Better to fly away than face the music.How like a teenager.How like Kitty Bennet.How fertile the ground for The Wardrobe!The fourth Bennet daughter was sketched quite lightly by Ms Austen. Kitty coughed nervously when faced with uncomfortable situations, hid in Lydia’s shadow, and giggled like a teenager. The bigger question is not ‘Why did Austen write her that way?’ but rather ‘Why was Kitty the way she was?’ What shaped her past? What will shape her future?Having stood in front of a class of bookish Marys, speechless Georgianas, terrified Kittys, and overly-impressed-with-themselves Lydias, I continue to be amazed at how accurately Austen portrays adolescent girls (boys have their own categories). Would that she had likewise informed us of what went on in the eighteenth year that acted as a veil through which her negative caricatures had to pass to become (possibly) sensible women like Lizzy and Jane.We know that Austen’s portraits of the girls—from Mary to Maria, Kitty to Georgiana—was exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Many JAFF authors have fixed upon Kitty’s artistic talent. This may be a process of elimination. Lizzy plays (at whatever level Lady Catherine may believe) and sings, but embroiders only passably. Lydia is the clotheshorse. Jane rests at the side of the family portrait serenely embroidering. Mary attacks the pianoforte with Wagnerian zeal. What is left to Kitty but painting and drawing? In The Exile, art is used as the modus operandi, much as music served for Mary in The Keeper. Yet, Kitty, although a year older, is characterized as always being led around by Lydia. Many argue that she was Lydia’s accomplice. Her coughing suggests a nervous constitution exacerbated both by her mother’s constant nattering as well as a desire to be anywhere but where she is at the moment. There are likely deeper traumas hidden under her compliant nature that will explain her behavior between the ages of six and seventeen. These are the underlying frame-work for Kitty’s story in The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque. This novel explores how Kitty Bennet sheds her fears and worries and takes control of her life.
Centering A Series Around Secondary Characters
I realize that some readers may find The Bennet Wardrobe series to be too far away from the centerline (ODC) of traditional JAFF stories. I do love “Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam” tales and plan to write many once The Bennet Wardrobe is complete. But for now… In 2014, a vale through which I was passing set my “what if” brownies to work. What if the other characters actually were three-dimensional?Perhaps it was one of the Caroline Variations I was reading at the time that inspired me to wonder if she had always been a grasping shrew, sneered at by all, lessers and betters alike. A small excerpt from Volume 1 of the Bennet Wardrobe, The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, offers a thought.“…Your Excellency and Mrs. Adams, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, Miss Bingley and Miss Bennet?”Mrs. Adams brightened and reached out to Caroline. “Oh, Miss Bingley—you are Miss Bingley now, I assume because your sister has married—it has been far too many years since I saw you last. Addie will be thrilled to know that we met you. How are you doing, dear?”Caroline visibly came to life at Mrs. Adams’ greeting. This was an unspoiled part of her life, laid down before Darcy ever came into her ken, before the considerations of the ton and its artificial expectations and snobbery had taken advantage of her sense of inferiority. With the Johnsons, Caroline did not have to fight to fit in. When she smiled back at Louisa Adams, years were stripped away from her face. She chatted briefly with her old friend.”
My first JAFF writing happened late one night in a motel room in Connecticut where I was staying with my family after a visit to my failing mother. The sheets of scratch pad are carefully folded away for an as-yet-to-be-written work. This fragment was a letter from Caroline Bingley to Jane apologizing for her behavior and thanking her sister-in-law for putting up with her for the past several years. Caroline had decided to change her life and leave Regency Britain to make a fresh start in the United States. As such, she was presuming upon her friendship with Louisa Johnson Adams, another daughter of trade, to accompany her as the couple returned to Washington City where Mr. Adams was to become Secretary of State in 1817. Change —the heart of Pride and Prejudice—was what Lizzy and Darcy experienced in full over the course of the masterpiece. The letter from Caroline, thrown up by my subconscious at a difficult time, lit the way to the idea that all of the sisters (and Thomas) were actually heroes in waiting. Ms Austen just did not have the literary reason to create an epilogue to P&P that would tell their stories.I dealt with Mary’s growth after the weddings in late 1811 in Volume 1 of The Bennet Wardrobe Series: The Keeper. Kitty’s story is told in The Exile. Thomas will stand for his family in The Avenger while Lydia will wander the dusty paths of Northwestern France in The Pilgrim.The Bennet Wardrobe is an alternative tale in the Jane Austen Universe. While the characters are familiar, I have endeavored to provide each of them with an opportunity to grow into more natural personalities, although not necessarily in the Regency. If they were shaped or stifled by the conventions of the period, the time-traveling powers of The Wardrobe helped solve their problems, make penance, and learn lessons once they had overcome the inner demons by giving them a chance to escape that time frame, if only for a brief, life-changing interlude.Would it have been possible for them to do so staying on the Regency timeline? Perhaps. However, something tickled my brain—maybe it was my youthful fascination with science fiction meeting my adult love for the Canon—that threw the idea of the Wardrobe up in front of me. Now my protagonists could be immersed in different timeframes beyond the Regency to learn that which they needed to learn in order to realize their potentials and in the process carry the eternal story of love and change forward to even the 21st Century.The Wardrobe Series is currently projected as six books to realize the grand arc of the Wardrobe’s Plan.Please enjoy the following excerpt from The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque.
Chapter XXXIIIla Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 9, 1892The Renoir Likeness
The words from the Founder’s Letter echoed through Henry’s mind as he stepped from the cab in front of la Galerie Durand-Ruel in la Rue Laffitte. There was an urgency pulling on his sensibilities that he could not ignore.Why did She…the Lady of the voice I have heard in my dreams all these years…beg me to act with all due speed? How does she know my sister? Oh, if only I could have seen her face during those weeks by the beach. What am I seeking?He adjusted his fedora with a tug on the brim, pushed his dark glasses up his nose with a stiffened forefinger, shot his cuffs from the sleeves of his medium grey suit jacket, and strode across the sidewalk to number 16, a modest building which he knew, from the stenciled addresses on crates carefully unpacked at Matlock and Selkirk throughout his childhood, contained treasures beyond measure. A liveried employee awaited his approach. With nary a flicker of his eyes, the attendant opened the door through which Henry passed into a cathedral of art.Giant scenic canvases by Monet elbowed for attention with the dancers of Degas and the workers of Pissarro. Then there were walls of Renoir. Riots of noonday color competed with the dimness of russet sunsets and misty dawns. There was much to overwhelm the senses, but little that would clearly explain why he had been directed to this spot in Paris upon such short notice.A young man, obviously one of the gallery’s assistant managers, dressed in a pitch-colored suit that accentuated the bleached whiteness of his shirtfront, slid soundlessly across the birch-stained floorboards. He skillfully sized up Henry’s obvious wealth, pegging him as a man of substance and not one of the nouveau riche Américains seeking six feet of painting to cover a blank spot on a wall above a sofa. Preferring to conduct his business in his native tongue, Henry reached into his vest and pulled out his card, presenting it to the attendant English side up. The young fellow’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. He instantly recognized the name of one of Monsieur Durand-Ruel’s best customers…now obviously extending across two generations!He quickly assumed a deferential attitude and inquired, “Ah, Monsieur le Compte…how may we at la Galerie Durand-Ruel be of service to you? Are you perhaps seeking one of Maître Monet’s latest? He is now studying haystacks and the ways in which the quality of light changes with the seasons.”While Henry appreciated the manager’s eagerness, he was seeking only information and Durand-Ruel himself, he believed, would be his best source.“I do thank you for your attention, M’sieur, however, I would ask if you could inquire if Monsieur Durand-Ruel would be available to meet with me. I come on a matter of great urgency and some delicacy,” Fitzwilliam said.Disappointed that he would not be writing a sales slip for one of the wealthiest art buyers in Britain, but also professional enough to understand that fulfilling even this small commission could result in great rewards for the gallery and, perhaps, himself, the functionary bade Henry to take a seat in a comfortable armchair facing an American grouping of Cassatt and Whistler. Then he hurried away into the rear of the gallery.❖❖❖Paul Durand-Ruel was now in his in his 60th year. He had spent the better part of the past two decades discovering and promoting the fleet of radicals who had by now been grouped under the moniker “Impressionists.” Finding customers willing to take a risk on unproven and controversial artists had been challenging, leaving him often to despair that his gamble would ruin his family. Then the Americans discovered Impressionism. They silenced French derision with dollars sending countless Monets, Renoirs, Degas, and Sisleys across the Atlantic. When his assistant presented the Earl of Matlock’s card, the dealer immediately rose, tossed a soft drape over a painting on an easel adjacent to his desk, and followed the youngster back onto the main floor. The Fitzwilliams and the rest of the Five Families had been mainstays on Durand-Ruel’s list since his earliest days. Yet, the Countess rarely came to the gallery except when she would be in Paris for her annual…how did she put it…ah yes…“museum crawl.” But that would have been in August when the Fitzwilliams repaired to Deauville. For her son to suddenly appear unannounced in early May…well, that was unusual.The bluff impresario crossed the skylight-illuminated room to where the young man stood with his nose about three inches away from Cassatt’s Woman Standing, Holding A Fan.“Her understanding of womanhood is astounding, is it not? You may wish to move quickly on that one, my Lord. I have a wealthy Philadelphian coming in tomorrow. I plan to suggest that he repatriate Ma’mselle Cassatt’s painting,” Durand-Ruel playfully stated.Henry spun and, with a large smile, stuck out his hand, “I am also certain that you have a few other little gems that you will attempt to foist off on Cousin Jonathan, you old thief.”Durand-Ruel guffawed causing his assistant to glance over sharply as the Monsieur was never loud—especially not in these hallowed halls.When his mirth had quieted, Durand-Ruel gazed intently at the Earl, “Perhaps, my young friend, we should go into my office where you will feel more at ease.”Once the two men had settled in armchairs beneath a Monet haystack, and pleasantries had been exchanged, Henry explained what he was about. Durand-Ruel was puzzled as to how he could be seen as being able to provide the slightest assistance in the case of Fitzwilliam’s missing cousin. However, Henry was insistent that he could not reveal what forced him to dash from London to Paris.After the two men had spent a desultory quarter hour poking and prodding the mysterious case of the lost heiress, Durand-Ruel leaned back and shot a look at Henry.“I do not know if I should be amused or confused, my Lord. You come here searching for a woman. Of that species, I have hundreds, but all are of oil on canvas or pigment on paper. If you could be satisfied with that, I would end your quest in a moment and send you home with five, making myself all the richer.“However, you want one of flesh and blood. Of that, I have none.“Perhaps we are pursuing this problem in the incorrect manner. Here I am, a purveyor of art, yet I have not asked you about the appearance of this young lady.”Fitzwilliam had the grace to blush when he realized that in his enthusiasm he had neglected to do that which had been done with hundreds of waiters, hotel managers, shop girls, and porters. He speedily pulled a small pasteboard folder out of an inner pocket and presented it to his friend.Durand-Ruel flipped open the cover and gazed down at the photograph in his hand. His eyes widened and he gave a small gasp. He looked at the young aristocrat.“Where did you get this photograph, my friend?” he whispered.Surprised at the older man’s reaction, Henry slowly replied, “I have had this particular print for over two years. Miss Bennet sat for it when she passed through Berlin after her graduation. When she stopped at Menzel’s studio, she encountered the young American Stieglitz who offered to take her portrait.”Momentarily diverted from his surprise by his critical appraisal of the image, Durand-Ruel murmured, “Such control of light and shadow. This young man has a future.”Then more firmly, “I fear I surprised you, my Lord. The reason shall become clear in a moment…for you see, even though I have never met your Miss Bennet, I have assuredly seen her before…in fact not more than a half hour ago.”With that, he stood and walked over by his desk.Henry started and sat absolutely upright. “You saw her? Where? When?”With a puckish grin, Paul Durand-Ruel, ever the showman, turned the easel he had been studying earlier and, resting a hand near the top of the shrouded artwork, said, “Here is one of those gems I just received from my dear Pierre-Auguste. I was going to sell it to that rich American tomorrow. Perhaps you would rather acquire it for your collection.”
And with a flourish he pulled the violet silk away.
---oOo---
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque Media KitBy Don Jacobson
Beware of What You Wish For
The Bennet Wardrobe may grant it!Longbourn, December 1811. The day after Jane and Lizzy marry dawns especially cold for young Kitty Bennet. Called to Papa’s bookroom, she is faced with a resolute Mr. Bennet who intends to punish her complicity in her sister’s elopement. She will be sent packing to a seminary in far-off Cornwall. She reacts like any teenager chafing under the “burden” of parental rules—she throws a tantrum. In her fury, she slams her hands against the doors of The Bennet Wardrobe. Her heart’s desire?I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!As Lydia later said, “The Wardrobe has a unique sense of humor.”London, May 1886. Seventeen-year-old Catherine Marie Bennet tumbles out of The Wardrobe at Matlock House to come face-to-face with the austere Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, a scion of the Five Families and one of the wealthiest men in the world. However, while their paths may have crossed that May morning, Henry still fights his feelings for another woman, lost to him nearly thirty years in his future. And Miss Bennet must decide between exile to the remote wastelands of Cornwall or making a new life for herself in Victorian Britain and Belle Époque France.ArkansasAustenFan reviews “The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey”:
What an amazing historical novel that has a paranormal Wardrobe, which transports members of the Bennet-blood-family into the future and back… Don Jacobson is a master storyteller weaving English history into the lives of the P&P characters in a unique way. This book is not light, fluffy reading. It is an intriguing novel that would make a wonderful mini series on BBC much like Downton Abby.
Author Bio:
Don Jacobson has written professionally for forty years. His output has ranged from news and features to advertising, television and radio. His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. He has previously published five books, all non-fiction. In 2016, he published the first volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series—The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, novel that grew from two earlier novellas. The Exile is the second volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series. Other JAFF P&P Variations include the paired books “Of Fortune’s Reversal” and “The Maid and The Footman.” Jacobson holds an advanced degree in History with a specialty in American Foreign Relations. As a college instructor, Don teaches United States History, World History, the History of Western Civilization and Research Writing.He is a member of JASNA-Puget Sound. Likewise, Don is a member of the Austen Authors collective (see the internet, Facebook and Twitter). He lives in the Seattle, WA area with his wife and co-author, Pam, a woman Ms. Austen would have been hard-pressed to categorize, and their rather assertive four-and-twenty pound cat, Bear. Besides thoroughly immersing himself in the JAFF world, Don also enjoys cooking; dining out, fine wine and well-aged scotch whiskey. His other passion is cycling. Most days from April through October will find him “putting in the miles” around the Seattle area (yes there are hills). He has ridden several “centuries” (100 mile days). Don is especially proud that he successfully completed the AIDS Ride—Midwest (500 miles from Minneapolis to Chicago) and the Make-A-Wish Miracle Ride (300 miles from Traverse City, MI to Brooklyn, MI).
Contact Info: (Link is embedded in the name)
Website
Amazon Author Page
Goodreads Author Page
Twitter
Buy Links:
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle ÉpoqueThe Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey
Blog Tour Schedule:
06/15 From Pemberley to Milton06/16 My Jane Austen Book Club06/17 Just Jane 181306/19 Diary of an Eccentric06/20 Savvy Verse and Wit06/21 Darcyholic Diversions06/22 My Vices and Weaknesses06/23 Babblings of a Bookworm06/24 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life06/26 Interests of a Jane Austen Girl06/27 So little time…06/28 Laughing With Lizzie
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Of Pride & Prejudice, Supporting Characters, and The Wardrobe
Consider these words:
“I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!”The three sentences are simple, no? Yet, if you read them closely, you will be able to discern much about the person thinking them, her situation and the context in which they passed through her head.I will readily admit that your context will be a key element in the deductive process. If you are or have been the parent of a teenager, you likely have heard this passing over the lips of your “l’il darlin’” any of a number of times from age twelve to nineteen. If your happy youth is still thrilled to be around you, just wait. And, when would such utterances be most likely to occur? When you denied her the car keys? No, that would have sparked a rejoinder like, “You are so unfair. You always let (pick the name of the older sib) have the car. You’re treating me like a baby!” This is punishment time. And she understands that her elderly tormenter knows she is in the wrong. What could he possibly know about love? He is ancient…at least fifty years old! Thus, she is not convinced her crime deserves exile. But, so deep is her wish to escape to a place where she can be her own person, to be in charge of her own life, that she is willing to endure exile from her family. Better to fly away than face the music.How like a teenager.How like Kitty Bennet.How fertile the ground for The Wardrobe!The fourth Bennet daughter was sketched quite lightly by Ms Austen. Kitty coughed nervously when faced with uncomfortable situations, hid in Lydia’s shadow, and giggled like a teenager. The bigger question is not ‘Why did Austen write her that way?’ but rather ‘Why was Kitty the way she was?’ What shaped her past? What will shape her future?Having stood in front of a class of bookish Marys, speechless Georgianas, terrified Kittys, and overly-impressed-with-themselves Lydias, I continue to be amazed at how accurately Austen portrays adolescent girls (boys have their own categories). Would that she had likewise informed us of what went on in the eighteenth year that acted as a veil through which her negative caricatures had to pass to become (possibly) sensible women like Lizzy and Jane.We know that Austen’s portraits of the girls—from Mary to Maria, Kitty to Georgiana—was exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Many JAFF authors have fixed upon Kitty’s artistic talent. This may be a process of elimination. Lizzy plays (at whatever level Lady Catherine may believe) and sings, but embroiders only passably. Lydia is the clotheshorse. Jane rests at the side of the family portrait serenely embroidering. Mary attacks the pianoforte with Wagnerian zeal. What is left to Kitty but painting and drawing? In The Exile, art is used as the modus operandi, much as music served for Mary in The Keeper. Yet, Kitty, although a year older, is characterized as always being led around by Lydia. Many argue that she was Lydia’s accomplice. Her coughing suggests a nervous constitution exacerbated both by her mother’s constant nattering as well as a desire to be anywhere but where she is at the moment. There are likely deeper traumas hidden under her compliant nature that will explain her behavior between the ages of six and seventeen. These are the underlying frame-work for Kitty’s story in The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque. This novel explores how Kitty Bennet sheds her fears and worries and takes control of her life.
Centering A Series Around Secondary Characters
I realize that some readers may find The Bennet Wardrobe series to be too far away from the centerline (ODC) of traditional JAFF stories. I do love “Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam” tales and plan to write many once The Bennet Wardrobe is complete. But for now… In 2014, a vale through which I was passing set my “what if” brownies to work. What if the other characters actually were three-dimensional?Perhaps it was one of the Caroline Variations I was reading at the time that inspired me to wonder if she had always been a grasping shrew, sneered at by all, lessers and betters alike. A small excerpt from Volume 1 of the Bennet Wardrobe, The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, offers a thought.“…Your Excellency and Mrs. Adams, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, Miss Bingley and Miss Bennet?”Mrs. Adams brightened and reached out to Caroline. “Oh, Miss Bingley—you are Miss Bingley now, I assume because your sister has married—it has been far too many years since I saw you last. Addie will be thrilled to know that we met you. How are you doing, dear?”Caroline visibly came to life at Mrs. Adams’ greeting. This was an unspoiled part of her life, laid down before Darcy ever came into her ken, before the considerations of the ton and its artificial expectations and snobbery had taken advantage of her sense of inferiority. With the Johnsons, Caroline did not have to fight to fit in. When she smiled back at Louisa Adams, years were stripped away from her face. She chatted briefly with her old friend.”
My first JAFF writing happened late one night in a motel room in Connecticut where I was staying with my family after a visit to my failing mother. The sheets of scratch pad are carefully folded away for an as-yet-to-be-written work. This fragment was a letter from Caroline Bingley to Jane apologizing for her behavior and thanking her sister-in-law for putting up with her for the past several years. Caroline had decided to change her life and leave Regency Britain to make a fresh start in the United States. As such, she was presuming upon her friendship with Louisa Johnson Adams, another daughter of trade, to accompany her as the couple returned to Washington City where Mr. Adams was to become Secretary of State in 1817. Change —the heart of Pride and Prejudice—was what Lizzy and Darcy experienced in full over the course of the masterpiece. The letter from Caroline, thrown up by my subconscious at a difficult time, lit the way to the idea that all of the sisters (and Thomas) were actually heroes in waiting. Ms Austen just did not have the literary reason to create an epilogue to P&P that would tell their stories.I dealt with Mary’s growth after the weddings in late 1811 in Volume 1 of The Bennet Wardrobe Series: The Keeper. Kitty’s story is told in The Exile. Thomas will stand for his family in The Avenger while Lydia will wander the dusty paths of Northwestern France in The Pilgrim.The Bennet Wardrobe is an alternative tale in the Jane Austen Universe. While the characters are familiar, I have endeavored to provide each of them with an opportunity to grow into more natural personalities, although not necessarily in the Regency. If they were shaped or stifled by the conventions of the period, the time-traveling powers of The Wardrobe helped solve their problems, make penance, and learn lessons once they had overcome the inner demons by giving them a chance to escape that time frame, if only for a brief, life-changing interlude.Would it have been possible for them to do so staying on the Regency timeline? Perhaps. However, something tickled my brain—maybe it was my youthful fascination with science fiction meeting my adult love for the Canon—that threw the idea of the Wardrobe up in front of me. Now my protagonists could be immersed in different timeframes beyond the Regency to learn that which they needed to learn in order to realize their potentials and in the process carry the eternal story of love and change forward to even the 21st Century.The Wardrobe Series is currently projected as six books to realize the grand arc of the Wardrobe’s Plan.Please enjoy the following excerpt from The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque.
Chapter XXXIIIla Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 9, 1892The Renoir Likeness
The words from the Founder’s Letter echoed through Henry’s mind as he stepped from the cab in front of la Galerie Durand-Ruel in la Rue Laffitte. There was an urgency pulling on his sensibilities that he could not ignore.Why did She…the Lady of the voice I have heard in my dreams all these years…beg me to act with all due speed? How does she know my sister? Oh, if only I could have seen her face during those weeks by the beach. What am I seeking?He adjusted his fedora with a tug on the brim, pushed his dark glasses up his nose with a stiffened forefinger, shot his cuffs from the sleeves of his medium grey suit jacket, and strode across the sidewalk to number 16, a modest building which he knew, from the stenciled addresses on crates carefully unpacked at Matlock and Selkirk throughout his childhood, contained treasures beyond measure. A liveried employee awaited his approach. With nary a flicker of his eyes, the attendant opened the door through which Henry passed into a cathedral of art.Giant scenic canvases by Monet elbowed for attention with the dancers of Degas and the workers of Pissarro. Then there were walls of Renoir. Riots of noonday color competed with the dimness of russet sunsets and misty dawns. There was much to overwhelm the senses, but little that would clearly explain why he had been directed to this spot in Paris upon such short notice.A young man, obviously one of the gallery’s assistant managers, dressed in a pitch-colored suit that accentuated the bleached whiteness of his shirtfront, slid soundlessly across the birch-stained floorboards. He skillfully sized up Henry’s obvious wealth, pegging him as a man of substance and not one of the nouveau riche Américains seeking six feet of painting to cover a blank spot on a wall above a sofa. Preferring to conduct his business in his native tongue, Henry reached into his vest and pulled out his card, presenting it to the attendant English side up. The young fellow’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. He instantly recognized the name of one of Monsieur Durand-Ruel’s best customers…now obviously extending across two generations!He quickly assumed a deferential attitude and inquired, “Ah, Monsieur le Compte…how may we at la Galerie Durand-Ruel be of service to you? Are you perhaps seeking one of Maître Monet’s latest? He is now studying haystacks and the ways in which the quality of light changes with the seasons.”While Henry appreciated the manager’s eagerness, he was seeking only information and Durand-Ruel himself, he believed, would be his best source.“I do thank you for your attention, M’sieur, however, I would ask if you could inquire if Monsieur Durand-Ruel would be available to meet with me. I come on a matter of great urgency and some delicacy,” Fitzwilliam said.Disappointed that he would not be writing a sales slip for one of the wealthiest art buyers in Britain, but also professional enough to understand that fulfilling even this small commission could result in great rewards for the gallery and, perhaps, himself, the functionary bade Henry to take a seat in a comfortable armchair facing an American grouping of Cassatt and Whistler. Then he hurried away into the rear of the gallery.❖❖❖Paul Durand-Ruel was now in his in his 60th year. He had spent the better part of the past two decades discovering and promoting the fleet of radicals who had by now been grouped under the moniker “Impressionists.” Finding customers willing to take a risk on unproven and controversial artists had been challenging, leaving him often to despair that his gamble would ruin his family. Then the Americans discovered Impressionism. They silenced French derision with dollars sending countless Monets, Renoirs, Degas, and Sisleys across the Atlantic. When his assistant presented the Earl of Matlock’s card, the dealer immediately rose, tossed a soft drape over a painting on an easel adjacent to his desk, and followed the youngster back onto the main floor. The Fitzwilliams and the rest of the Five Families had been mainstays on Durand-Ruel’s list since his earliest days. Yet, the Countess rarely came to the gallery except when she would be in Paris for her annual…how did she put it…ah yes…“museum crawl.” But that would have been in August when the Fitzwilliams repaired to Deauville. For her son to suddenly appear unannounced in early May…well, that was unusual.The bluff impresario crossed the skylight-illuminated room to where the young man stood with his nose about three inches away from Cassatt’s Woman Standing, Holding A Fan.“Her understanding of womanhood is astounding, is it not? You may wish to move quickly on that one, my Lord. I have a wealthy Philadelphian coming in tomorrow. I plan to suggest that he repatriate Ma’mselle Cassatt’s painting,” Durand-Ruel playfully stated.Henry spun and, with a large smile, stuck out his hand, “I am also certain that you have a few other little gems that you will attempt to foist off on Cousin Jonathan, you old thief.”Durand-Ruel guffawed causing his assistant to glance over sharply as the Monsieur was never loud—especially not in these hallowed halls.When his mirth had quieted, Durand-Ruel gazed intently at the Earl, “Perhaps, my young friend, we should go into my office where you will feel more at ease.”Once the two men had settled in armchairs beneath a Monet haystack, and pleasantries had been exchanged, Henry explained what he was about. Durand-Ruel was puzzled as to how he could be seen as being able to provide the slightest assistance in the case of Fitzwilliam’s missing cousin. However, Henry was insistent that he could not reveal what forced him to dash from London to Paris.After the two men had spent a desultory quarter hour poking and prodding the mysterious case of the lost heiress, Durand-Ruel leaned back and shot a look at Henry.“I do not know if I should be amused or confused, my Lord. You come here searching for a woman. Of that species, I have hundreds, but all are of oil on canvas or pigment on paper. If you could be satisfied with that, I would end your quest in a moment and send you home with five, making myself all the richer.“However, you want one of flesh and blood. Of that, I have none.“Perhaps we are pursuing this problem in the incorrect manner. Here I am, a purveyor of art, yet I have not asked you about the appearance of this young lady.”Fitzwilliam had the grace to blush when he realized that in his enthusiasm he had neglected to do that which had been done with hundreds of waiters, hotel managers, shop girls, and porters. He speedily pulled a small pasteboard folder out of an inner pocket and presented it to his friend.Durand-Ruel flipped open the cover and gazed down at the photograph in his hand. His eyes widened and he gave a small gasp. He looked at the young aristocrat.“Where did you get this photograph, my friend?” he whispered.Surprised at the older man’s reaction, Henry slowly replied, “I have had this particular print for over two years. Miss Bennet sat for it when she passed through Berlin after her graduation. When she stopped at Menzel’s studio, she encountered the young American Stieglitz who offered to take her portrait.”Momentarily diverted from his surprise by his critical appraisal of the image, Durand-Ruel murmured, “Such control of light and shadow. This young man has a future.”Then more firmly, “I fear I surprised you, my Lord. The reason shall become clear in a moment…for you see, even though I have never met your Miss Bennet, I have assuredly seen her before…in fact not more than a half hour ago.”With that, he stood and walked over by his desk.Henry started and sat absolutely upright. “You saw her? Where? When?”With a puckish grin, Paul Durand-Ruel, ever the showman, turned the easel he had been studying earlier and, resting a hand near the top of the shrouded artwork, said, “Here is one of those gems I just received from my dear Pierre-Auguste. I was going to sell it to that rich American tomorrow. Perhaps you would rather acquire it for your collection.”
And with a flourish he pulled the violet silk away.
---oOo---
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque Media KitBy Don Jacobson
Beware of What You Wish For
The Bennet Wardrobe may grant it!Longbourn, December 1811. The day after Jane and Lizzy marry dawns especially cold for young Kitty Bennet. Called to Papa’s bookroom, she is faced with a resolute Mr. Bennet who intends to punish her complicity in her sister’s elopement. She will be sent packing to a seminary in far-off Cornwall. She reacts like any teenager chafing under the “burden” of parental rules—she throws a tantrum. In her fury, she slams her hands against the doors of The Bennet Wardrobe. Her heart’s desire?I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!As Lydia later said, “The Wardrobe has a unique sense of humor.”London, May 1886. Seventeen-year-old Catherine Marie Bennet tumbles out of The Wardrobe at Matlock House to come face-to-face with the austere Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, a scion of the Five Families and one of the wealthiest men in the world. However, while their paths may have crossed that May morning, Henry still fights his feelings for another woman, lost to him nearly thirty years in his future. And Miss Bennet must decide between exile to the remote wastelands of Cornwall or making a new life for herself in Victorian Britain and Belle Époque France.ArkansasAustenFan reviews “The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey”:
What an amazing historical novel that has a paranormal Wardrobe, which transports members of the Bennet-blood-family into the future and back… Don Jacobson is a master storyteller weaving English history into the lives of the P&P characters in a unique way. This book is not light, fluffy reading. It is an intriguing novel that would make a wonderful mini series on BBC much like Downton Abby.
Author Bio:
Don Jacobson has written professionally for forty years. His output has ranged from news and features to advertising, television and radio. His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. He has previously published five books, all non-fiction. In 2016, he published the first volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series—The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, novel that grew from two earlier novellas. The Exile is the second volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series. Other JAFF P&P Variations include the paired books “Of Fortune’s Reversal” and “The Maid and The Footman.” Jacobson holds an advanced degree in History with a specialty in American Foreign Relations. As a college instructor, Don teaches United States History, World History, the History of Western Civilization and Research Writing.He is a member of JASNA-Puget Sound. Likewise, Don is a member of the Austen Authors collective (see the internet, Facebook and Twitter). He lives in the Seattle, WA area with his wife and co-author, Pam, a woman Ms. Austen would have been hard-pressed to categorize, and their rather assertive four-and-twenty pound cat, Bear. Besides thoroughly immersing himself in the JAFF world, Don also enjoys cooking; dining out, fine wine and well-aged scotch whiskey. His other passion is cycling. Most days from April through October will find him “putting in the miles” around the Seattle area (yes there are hills). He has ridden several “centuries” (100 mile days). Don is especially proud that he successfully completed the AIDS Ride—Midwest (500 miles from Minneapolis to Chicago) and the Make-A-Wish Miracle Ride (300 miles from Traverse City, MI to Brooklyn, MI).Contact Info: (Link is embedded in the name)
Website
Amazon Author Page
Goodreads Author Page
Buy Links:
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle ÉpoqueThe Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey
Blog Tour Schedule:
06/15 From Pemberley to Milton06/16 My Jane Austen Book Club06/17 Just Jane 181306/19 Diary of an Eccentric06/20 Savvy Verse and Wit06/21 Darcyholic Diversions06/22 My Vices and Weaknesses06/23 Babblings of a Bookworm06/24 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life06/26 Interests of a Jane Austen Girl06/27 So little time…06/28 Laughing With Lizzie
June 19, 2017
Gadding About All Over
From saucy kings to Jane Austen, wild boys and insane monarchs strapped to punishment chairs, I'm talking about all thing long 18th this year; come along and have a listen!
Catherine's Forthcoming Events
The Scandalous George IV, Cannon Hall, West Yorkshire, 7th July TICKETS
Join me for an evening of tales delving into the scandalous life of George IV. It has everything with its illegitimate children, scheming mistresses and even a strapping Italian solider. Lots of scandal and “three people in this marriage” as another Princess of Wales once said…
An Evening with Jane Austen , Jane Austen Festival, Bath, 10th September 2017 TICKETS
A magical evening with Jane Austen’s most memorable characters, from the comic absurdity of the Dashwoods to the heartfelt passion of Wentworth and Anne, not to mention the charming duplicity of the notorious Mr Wickham! With Caroline Langrishe and Adrian Lukis, alongside period musical entertainment from Rosie Lomas and Camilla Pay. The evening will be introduced by historian and author, Catherine Curzon.
Jane Austen and the King of Bling , Jane Austen Festival, Bath, 11th September 2017 TICKETS
This lively talk delves into the sometimes shocking, always scandalous, private life of ‘the first gentleman of England’. It suggests why Austen boldly declared she ‘hated’ this monarch even after she was his honoured guest at London’s most prestigious address. The other side to this saucy Sovereign was a man who championed Jane Austen and her works which secured the Regent his very own dedication from the author he adored.
The Mad King and the Coronation Chair, Stamford Georgian Festival, 23rd September 2017 TICKETS
The madness of George III is legendary. Restrained, gagged, blistered and plied with leeches, the king suffered humiliating and brutal treatment at the hands of those who were charged with his care. In a country wracked by upheaval both at home and abroad, the monarch’s madness left Britain in turmoil whilst, imprisoned at Kew, he ranted and foamed at the mouth.
The Curious Story of Peter the Wild Boy, Stamford Georgian Festival, 24th September 2017 TICKETSIn 1725, hunters led by King George I captured a feral child in the forests of Germany and took him home as a pet. Nicknamed ‘Peter the wild boy’ the little boy became a novelty at court and was brought to England to entertain and amuse the royals. Living in palaces, adored by princesses and heralded as a celebrity, Peter was a curiosity to thrill seekers and scholars alike. Yet when the glamour faded, what became of Peter the wild boy and, more to the point, where did he come from?
An Evening with Jane Austen , Stamford Georgian Festival, 24th September 2017 TICKETS
Join us for a magical evening in the company of Jane Austen’s most memorable characters introduced by Catherine Curzon and performed by actors Caroline Langrishe, star of such BBC favourites as Lovejoy and Judge John Deed and Adrian Lukis, a familiar face from the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and ITV’s Downton.
Catherine's Forthcoming Events The Scandalous George IV, Cannon Hall, West Yorkshire, 7th July TICKETS
Join me for an evening of tales delving into the scandalous life of George IV. It has everything with its illegitimate children, scheming mistresses and even a strapping Italian solider. Lots of scandal and “three people in this marriage” as another Princess of Wales once said…
An Evening with Jane Austen , Jane Austen Festival, Bath, 10th September 2017 TICKETS
A magical evening with Jane Austen’s most memorable characters, from the comic absurdity of the Dashwoods to the heartfelt passion of Wentworth and Anne, not to mention the charming duplicity of the notorious Mr Wickham! With Caroline Langrishe and Adrian Lukis, alongside period musical entertainment from Rosie Lomas and Camilla Pay. The evening will be introduced by historian and author, Catherine Curzon.
Jane Austen and the King of Bling , Jane Austen Festival, Bath, 11th September 2017 TICKETS
This lively talk delves into the sometimes shocking, always scandalous, private life of ‘the first gentleman of England’. It suggests why Austen boldly declared she ‘hated’ this monarch even after she was his honoured guest at London’s most prestigious address. The other side to this saucy Sovereign was a man who championed Jane Austen and her works which secured the Regent his very own dedication from the author he adored.
The Mad King and the Coronation Chair, Stamford Georgian Festival, 23rd September 2017 TICKETS
The madness of George III is legendary. Restrained, gagged, blistered and plied with leeches, the king suffered humiliating and brutal treatment at the hands of those who were charged with his care. In a country wracked by upheaval both at home and abroad, the monarch’s madness left Britain in turmoil whilst, imprisoned at Kew, he ranted and foamed at the mouth.
The Curious Story of Peter the Wild Boy, Stamford Georgian Festival, 24th September 2017 TICKETSIn 1725, hunters led by King George I captured a feral child in the forests of Germany and took him home as a pet. Nicknamed ‘Peter the wild boy’ the little boy became a novelty at court and was brought to England to entertain and amuse the royals. Living in palaces, adored by princesses and heralded as a celebrity, Peter was a curiosity to thrill seekers and scholars alike. Yet when the glamour faded, what became of Peter the wild boy and, more to the point, where did he come from?
An Evening with Jane Austen , Stamford Georgian Festival, 24th September 2017 TICKETS
Join us for a magical evening in the company of Jane Austen’s most memorable characters introduced by Catherine Curzon and performed by actors Caroline Langrishe, star of such BBC favourites as Lovejoy and Judge John Deed and Adrian Lukis, a familiar face from the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and ITV’s Downton.
June 14, 2017
The Scandalous George IV
Join me for a look at the scandalous love life of George IV in the gorgeous Cannon Hall!TicketsJoin us for an evening of tales from author Catherine Curzon on the marriage of George IV and his wife. It has everything with its illegitimate children, scheming mistresses and even a strapping Italian solider. Lots of scandal and “three people in this marriage” as another Princess of Wales once said…
Includes a glass of Prosecco, Paid Bar£12 per person14+ Parental GuidanceDETAILS DATE: July 7 TIME: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm COST: £12 WEBSITE: http://www.cannon-hall.com
Includes a glass of Prosecco, Paid Bar£12 per person14+ Parental GuidanceDETAILS DATE: July 7 TIME: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm COST: £12 WEBSITE: http://www.cannon-hall.com
June 6, 2017
An Orphan of the Regiment
It's my pleasure to welcome Jude Knight, to discuss the fate of children born to camp followers in the Peninsular War. Don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win an eBook of A Raging Madness!
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To modern ears, the term camp follower may imply someone who follows an army in order to ply one of the oldest of trades.For most of history, the meaning was far broader. A camp follower was any civilian who provided services to an army on the move. From the Crusades to the Crimean War, this group included blacksmiths, surgeons, cooks, launderers, nurses, and sutlers. And, for just as long, the wives of soldiers have filled at least the last four roles.
Anthonie Constantijn Govaerts - The Sutler
During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British Army regulations specified the number of wives of ordinary soldiers who could travel with the regiment and receive an army ration. The number may have varied by regiment—I’ve seen four wives per one hundred soldiers, and also six. In a regiment of 1500 men, that’s somewhere around 75 wives. Off to war with the men. In this post, it’s the children who interest me. Technically, wives with children couldn’t sail with the regiment, though some may have done so anyway. But wives and husbands in army camps do what wives and husbands do anywhere else, and in any posting of more than a few months, children would start to arrive. Their stories are hard to find. They were the sons and daughters, usually, of people who didn’t write letters or keep diaries, and they weren’t army, so were seldom referred to in military logs and dispatches. Their presence is hinted at with tantalising glimpses. For a start, they were assigned one quarter of the full ration given to a soldier. One ration for a soldier. Half a ration for his wife. One quarter for each child. No wonder the few brief mentions include stories of women and children falling behind the line of march.One of the worst impediments to the free movement of the host came from the unhappy practice that then prevailed of allowing corps on foreign service to take with them a proportion of soldiers' wives… They were always straggling or being left behind, because they could not keep up with the long marches the army often had to take. [Sir Charles Oman]Pregnancy was seldom mentioned, unless women gave birth. For example, during the retreat from Corũna in the Peninsular War, a number of pregnant women gave birth, one to twins.
John Everett Millais – L’Enfant du RegimentAnd tragic deaths might also get a line or a paragraph.A soldier's wife had sought shelter beneath his (a dead drover's) cart, but she, too, was lying lifeless;· and the tragic part of it was that child, who was still alive, was whimpering and trying to find nourishment at her frozen breasts! One or two officers had the child taken from her, and wrapping it in a blanket, carried it away. [August Schaumann]So what happened then?The army had a system for sending widows back to England, though their half portion and their husband’s pay stopped as soon as the man died, and many widows chose to stay and speedily remarry (because in England they would be destitute). But the army didn’t offer such options to orphans.
The memoirs tell us that boys were sometimes adopted, by individual soldiers or by the regiment. But what happened to the daughters and the rest of the boys? A charitable fund , perhaps, if some officers’ wives took up the cause? And a trip back to England to an army orphanage? Or adoption by another camp follower with a kindly heart? That might be the best they could hope for, and a chance to grow enough to join the army as a boy soldier or the camp followers as a young bride.
A Raging Madness
Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to pretend he has married such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. Alex understands his supposed wife never wishes to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. Perhaps she will learn to bear him. In their masquerade of a marriage, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they expected. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by a malicious enemy. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save their lives and give their love a future.About the Author
Jude Knight’s writing goal is to transport readers to another time, another place, where they can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, delight in a happy ending, and return from their virtual holiday refreshed and ready for anything.She writes historical novels, novellas, and short stories, mostly set in the early 19th Century. She writes strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you’ll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour.
Website and blog: http://judeknightauthor.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JudeKnightAuthor/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudeKnightBooks Pinterest: https://nz.pinterest.com/jknight1033/ Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JudeKnightGoodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8603586.Jude_Knight Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Jude-Knight/e/B00RG3SG7I
Buy the BookJude Knight’s book page: http://judeknightauthor.com/books/a-raging-madness/Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/717569 iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/a-raging-madness/ Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-raging-madness-jude-knight/1126227273 Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07111TCLR ExcerptKerridge was alone when she brought Ella’s evening dose of laudanum. Presumably Constance believed that Ella was still under the influence of the measure forced down her throat this morning, and would swallow Kerridge’s without offering a struggle. Constance was nearly right.Even though Ella had managed to dribble at least part of what she secreted in her cheeks onto the pillow without Constance noticing, she was still mazed. Another dose would take her under, but Kerridge resented being forced to a task so beneath her dignity as a dresser, and would do no more than make sure the liquid arrived in Ella’s mouth. She would not insist on waiting until Ella swallowed, would not pinch her nose and hold her jaw shut.Being too meek would be suspicious. Ella turned her head away from the spoon, her teeth clenched shut, but yelped at Kerridge’s sharp pinch and the dresser immediately forced the spoon into Ella’s mouth.Glaring sullenly, she stopped struggling, and the dresser withdrew the spoon, stretching her thin lips into a smug smile.“There, Lady Melville. This would go more easily for you if you would just do as you are told,” she said.
---oOo---
To modern ears, the term camp follower may imply someone who follows an army in order to ply one of the oldest of trades.For most of history, the meaning was far broader. A camp follower was any civilian who provided services to an army on the move. From the Crusades to the Crimean War, this group included blacksmiths, surgeons, cooks, launderers, nurses, and sutlers. And, for just as long, the wives of soldiers have filled at least the last four roles.
Anthonie Constantijn Govaerts - The SutlerDuring the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British Army regulations specified the number of wives of ordinary soldiers who could travel with the regiment and receive an army ration. The number may have varied by regiment—I’ve seen four wives per one hundred soldiers, and also six. In a regiment of 1500 men, that’s somewhere around 75 wives. Off to war with the men. In this post, it’s the children who interest me. Technically, wives with children couldn’t sail with the regiment, though some may have done so anyway. But wives and husbands in army camps do what wives and husbands do anywhere else, and in any posting of more than a few months, children would start to arrive. Their stories are hard to find. They were the sons and daughters, usually, of people who didn’t write letters or keep diaries, and they weren’t army, so were seldom referred to in military logs and dispatches. Their presence is hinted at with tantalising glimpses. For a start, they were assigned one quarter of the full ration given to a soldier. One ration for a soldier. Half a ration for his wife. One quarter for each child. No wonder the few brief mentions include stories of women and children falling behind the line of march.One of the worst impediments to the free movement of the host came from the unhappy practice that then prevailed of allowing corps on foreign service to take with them a proportion of soldiers' wives… They were always straggling or being left behind, because they could not keep up with the long marches the army often had to take. [Sir Charles Oman]Pregnancy was seldom mentioned, unless women gave birth. For example, during the retreat from Corũna in the Peninsular War, a number of pregnant women gave birth, one to twins.
John Everett Millais – L’Enfant du RegimentAnd tragic deaths might also get a line or a paragraph.A soldier's wife had sought shelter beneath his (a dead drover's) cart, but she, too, was lying lifeless;· and the tragic part of it was that child, who was still alive, was whimpering and trying to find nourishment at her frozen breasts! One or two officers had the child taken from her, and wrapping it in a blanket, carried it away. [August Schaumann]So what happened then?The army had a system for sending widows back to England, though their half portion and their husband’s pay stopped as soon as the man died, and many widows chose to stay and speedily remarry (because in England they would be destitute). But the army didn’t offer such options to orphans.The memoirs tell us that boys were sometimes adopted, by individual soldiers or by the regiment. But what happened to the daughters and the rest of the boys? A charitable fund , perhaps, if some officers’ wives took up the cause? And a trip back to England to an army orphanage? Or adoption by another camp follower with a kindly heart? That might be the best they could hope for, and a chance to grow enough to join the army as a boy soldier or the camp followers as a young bride.
A Raging Madness
Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to pretend he has married such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. Alex understands his supposed wife never wishes to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. Perhaps she will learn to bear him. In their masquerade of a marriage, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they expected. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by a malicious enemy. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save their lives and give their love a future.About the Author
Jude Knight’s writing goal is to transport readers to another time, another place, where they can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, delight in a happy ending, and return from their virtual holiday refreshed and ready for anything.She writes historical novels, novellas, and short stories, mostly set in the early 19th Century. She writes strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you’ll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour.Website and blog: http://judeknightauthor.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JudeKnightAuthor/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudeKnightBooks Pinterest: https://nz.pinterest.com/jknight1033/ Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JudeKnightGoodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8603586.Jude_Knight Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Jude-Knight/e/B00RG3SG7I
Buy the BookJude Knight’s book page: http://judeknightauthor.com/books/a-raging-madness/Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/717569 iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/a-raging-madness/ Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-raging-madness-jude-knight/1126227273 Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07111TCLR ExcerptKerridge was alone when she brought Ella’s evening dose of laudanum. Presumably Constance believed that Ella was still under the influence of the measure forced down her throat this morning, and would swallow Kerridge’s without offering a struggle. Constance was nearly right.Even though Ella had managed to dribble at least part of what she secreted in her cheeks onto the pillow without Constance noticing, she was still mazed. Another dose would take her under, but Kerridge resented being forced to a task so beneath her dignity as a dresser, and would do no more than make sure the liquid arrived in Ella’s mouth. She would not insist on waiting until Ella swallowed, would not pinch her nose and hold her jaw shut.Being too meek would be suspicious. Ella turned her head away from the spoon, her teeth clenched shut, but yelped at Kerridge’s sharp pinch and the dresser immediately forced the spoon into Ella’s mouth.Glaring sullenly, she stopped struggling, and the dresser withdrew the spoon, stretching her thin lips into a smug smile.“There, Lady Melville. This would go more easily for you if you would just do as you are told,” she said.
May 31, 2017
A Regency Picnic at Claremont: 24 June 2017
On Saturday 24th June, the nineteenth century returns to Claremont Landscape Gardens for an epic, costumed evening of music, games and promenades. Bring a picnic and a bottle, and for the full experience, don your fanciest dress (or breeches!) and join the a parade around the lake.If you remember Claremont's fêtes champêtres in years gone by, you'll know just how fun it is to spend the evening in fancy dress. Go the whole hog and make or hire a Regency dress, or keep it simple and make a hat from a mat. After all, a Regency soirée is a great excuse to indulge in a posh picnic just like the Georgians!
You can let your hair down like an aristocrat with a game of Pall Mall on the amphitheatre, whilst nine-pins and quoits will also be provided for your pleasure. There’ll be live music throughout the evening and a chance to take a scenic row across the lake. If that’s all a little too energetic, sit for a portrait in front of Princess Charlotte’s tea-house.
At half past six, ladies and gentlemen in costume are invited to take the air on a grand promenade around the lake before taking supper, though budding Mr Darcys are requested to refrain from taking a dip!
Find out more at https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/claremont-landscape-garden/lists/regency-picnic-at-claremont-landscape-garden
May 30, 2017
Mistress by Sophie Turner: Competition Winners
I'm delighted to announce that Rayvness79 and Rae Stricklin are the winners of the Mistress by Sophie Turner giveaway! Please comment below with your email addresses (these won't be made public) so Sophie can arrange to get your prizes to you.
Congratulations and thanks to all who entered the giveaway.
May 18, 2017
Mistress: A Pride and Prejudice Variation
It's a pleasure to welcome Sophie Turner, to discuss the matter of Jane Austen's widows; don't forget to comment for your chance to win a copy of Sophie's book!
---oOo---
Thank you so much for hosting me here, Catherine! I’m really excited to do my first guest post on your blog and share what it was like to write Elizabeth as a widow in my new book Mistress: A Pride and Prejudice Variation, with Parts Not Suitable for Those Who Have Not Reached Their Majority.
Mistress is a story that essentially ate my brain over the course of November, 2015, to the point where I almost unofficially did National Novel Writing Month (the story at that time fell short of true novel length, but in the time since, the gaps left during that flurry of initial writing have been filled in).
I had been considering writing a Pride and Prejudice variation with more adult content for some time, but I wanted it to be something different than what we often see in this genre and in romance generally – the experienced man and the virgin young lady. In order to do that without giving her some sort of ruinous present or past, that meant Elizabeth needed to be a widow.
But making her a widow created its own set of complexities that I needed to work through. Austen’s work includes an array of widows: Would Elizabeth be left near genteel destitution, like Mrs. Bates? Would she revel in her position, money, and power, a la Lady Catherine de Bourgh? She certainly didn’t seem the type to become a scheming Lady Susan, but perhaps circumstances would have required her to do so. Circumstances could even have required her to follow Mrs. Clay’s arc, and become a mistress.
None of these was quite the path I took Elizabeth down. Yes, Mistress does encompass both meanings of the word, but not in a Mrs. Clay or Lady Susan sort of manner.
The thing about widows during that time was that they could run a full gamut, from those who had married for financial security and entirely lost it after the death of their husbands, to those who possessed complete security and freedom. This was a time when any fortune and property a woman possessed went to her husband upon their marriage, and when women themselves were considered to be the property of their husbands. This makes marriage sound rather unappetizing, but married women at least had greater freedom to travel and to be in the company of men than unmarried women.
Truly the most free, in Georgian society, was the widow who had been left in good financial circumstances. She had control of her own money, she could be alone in the company of a gentleman, she could correspond with a gentleman without being engaged to him, and she could even embark upon an affair with minimal consequences, provided she was discreet. When Mr. Darcy takes a widowed Elizabeth out driving in his phaeton for several days in a row, there is no scandal, merely gossip to feed the rumor mill. This would have been very different for a Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
And it was this sort of widow I wanted Elizabeth to be – one with power, fortune, and control over her own choices. She is a rarity in that she is a young and beautiful widow with these things: death due to childbirth made widowers of her age far more common than widows. With the Longbourn estate now in her hands, she does not need to – indeed, she adamantly does not intend to – remarry. She’s had a very miserable time of it in her first marriage, having been required to submit to the will of someone who does not respect or appreciate her.
All of this means that even the deepest love may not be enough to compel her to marry, and I found this gave her courtship with Darcy a different power dynamic. She has a secure future, and control of her own life, which brings a great degree of risk to any prospect of remarrying. Yes, Darcy still has Pemberley to offer, but this is a different offer to a woman worth 40,000 pounds (the value of Longbourn), rather than 1,000 pounds. Once marriage vows were said in that era, they were generally for life: only the rich could afford divorce, and even then, it was quite scandalous and could only be brought forward by the husband.
That, in itself, makes widowhood very different during this era than it is today. In the Georgian era, while there were, of course, beloved spouses who died, the death of a spouse was the easiest (and for most the only) way to escape a bad marriage. Such is the case for Elizabeth, whose knees give out upon learning of her husband’s death; this is mistaken by the neighbourhood as a collapse in grief, not relief. Elizabeth may not hold Lady Susan’s callous attitude towards the death of a spouse, but she still feels the benefit of it.
Darcy certainly has his work cut out for him. In order to win Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, he has to win so many facets of her: her heart, mind, soul – and yes, body. The latter, as the adult-ness of this story indicates, proves to be the most challenging. And yet, because Elizabeth is a widow, this is far less scandalous than it would have been if she was unmarried. Instead of the experienced man and the virgin young lady, we have a well-read-but-minimally-experienced man and an experienced-but-it-was-a-bad-experience lady.
Will Darcy succeed, and convince her to embark upon a second marriage? The answer to that is at the core of Mistress.
Readers interested in learning more about the widows and widowers depicted in all of Austen’s works should give a read to this excellent analysis.
And readers interested in winning your choice of either the ebook or paperback of Mistress should comment below! Two winners will be randomly selected from the comments.SaveSave
---oOo---
Thank you so much for hosting me here, Catherine! I’m really excited to do my first guest post on your blog and share what it was like to write Elizabeth as a widow in my new book Mistress: A Pride and Prejudice Variation, with Parts Not Suitable for Those Who Have Not Reached Their Majority.
Mistress is a story that essentially ate my brain over the course of November, 2015, to the point where I almost unofficially did National Novel Writing Month (the story at that time fell short of true novel length, but in the time since, the gaps left during that flurry of initial writing have been filled in).
I had been considering writing a Pride and Prejudice variation with more adult content for some time, but I wanted it to be something different than what we often see in this genre and in romance generally – the experienced man and the virgin young lady. In order to do that without giving her some sort of ruinous present or past, that meant Elizabeth needed to be a widow.
But making her a widow created its own set of complexities that I needed to work through. Austen’s work includes an array of widows: Would Elizabeth be left near genteel destitution, like Mrs. Bates? Would she revel in her position, money, and power, a la Lady Catherine de Bourgh? She certainly didn’t seem the type to become a scheming Lady Susan, but perhaps circumstances would have required her to do so. Circumstances could even have required her to follow Mrs. Clay’s arc, and become a mistress.
None of these was quite the path I took Elizabeth down. Yes, Mistress does encompass both meanings of the word, but not in a Mrs. Clay or Lady Susan sort of manner.
The thing about widows during that time was that they could run a full gamut, from those who had married for financial security and entirely lost it after the death of their husbands, to those who possessed complete security and freedom. This was a time when any fortune and property a woman possessed went to her husband upon their marriage, and when women themselves were considered to be the property of their husbands. This makes marriage sound rather unappetizing, but married women at least had greater freedom to travel and to be in the company of men than unmarried women.
Truly the most free, in Georgian society, was the widow who had been left in good financial circumstances. She had control of her own money, she could be alone in the company of a gentleman, she could correspond with a gentleman without being engaged to him, and she could even embark upon an affair with minimal consequences, provided she was discreet. When Mr. Darcy takes a widowed Elizabeth out driving in his phaeton for several days in a row, there is no scandal, merely gossip to feed the rumor mill. This would have been very different for a Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
And it was this sort of widow I wanted Elizabeth to be – one with power, fortune, and control over her own choices. She is a rarity in that she is a young and beautiful widow with these things: death due to childbirth made widowers of her age far more common than widows. With the Longbourn estate now in her hands, she does not need to – indeed, she adamantly does not intend to – remarry. She’s had a very miserable time of it in her first marriage, having been required to submit to the will of someone who does not respect or appreciate her.
All of this means that even the deepest love may not be enough to compel her to marry, and I found this gave her courtship with Darcy a different power dynamic. She has a secure future, and control of her own life, which brings a great degree of risk to any prospect of remarrying. Yes, Darcy still has Pemberley to offer, but this is a different offer to a woman worth 40,000 pounds (the value of Longbourn), rather than 1,000 pounds. Once marriage vows were said in that era, they were generally for life: only the rich could afford divorce, and even then, it was quite scandalous and could only be brought forward by the husband.
That, in itself, makes widowhood very different during this era than it is today. In the Georgian era, while there were, of course, beloved spouses who died, the death of a spouse was the easiest (and for most the only) way to escape a bad marriage. Such is the case for Elizabeth, whose knees give out upon learning of her husband’s death; this is mistaken by the neighbourhood as a collapse in grief, not relief. Elizabeth may not hold Lady Susan’s callous attitude towards the death of a spouse, but she still feels the benefit of it.
Darcy certainly has his work cut out for him. In order to win Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, he has to win so many facets of her: her heart, mind, soul – and yes, body. The latter, as the adult-ness of this story indicates, proves to be the most challenging. And yet, because Elizabeth is a widow, this is far less scandalous than it would have been if she was unmarried. Instead of the experienced man and the virgin young lady, we have a well-read-but-minimally-experienced man and an experienced-but-it-was-a-bad-experience lady.
Will Darcy succeed, and convince her to embark upon a second marriage? The answer to that is at the core of Mistress.
Readers interested in learning more about the widows and widowers depicted in all of Austen’s works should give a read to this excellent analysis.
And readers interested in winning your choice of either the ebook or paperback of Mistress should comment below! Two winners will be randomly selected from the comments.SaveSave
May 15, 2017
The Jane Austen Project
It's a delight to welcome Kathleen Flynn, author of The Jane Austen Project, for a delve into the lives of Regency servants!
---oOo---
When I got the idea to write about some time travelers who go in search of Jane Austen, one concern was how her world would strike someone not native to it. What was the texture of everyday existence, and how could I depict it?
One crucial difference is how so many tasks of daily life – heating and lighting our homes, keeping our bodies and our clothes clean, getting food on the table – have become infinitely less laborious in our world. We have electricity and running water; they had servants, at least people wealthy enough to afford them did. And even those pretty far down the economic ladder, like the Bates household in Emma, would have had at least a maid of all work. That would seem strange to many of us today -- having people around all the time who know such intimate details of your personal habits. True, lots of relatively well-off families have a nanny, or someone who comes by to clean the house, but this must have been considerably more intense. They’d be emptying your chamber pot, overhearing your conversations at dinner. How would my time travelers handle this? Arrived in 1815, they are posing as wealthy newcomers to London, an orphaned brother and sister in their 30s who have sold their family’s coffee plantation in Jamaica. When I visited house museums of the period, I tried to envision their house, and wondered about their imaginary servants. How many would they need; how would the household tasks be divided? And since they don’t know anyone and cannot get recommendations through word of mouth, how will they find them? What were servants paid, and how often? Did they all generally live in the house with their masters, even in town?
I spent pleasant hours in the reading room of the New York Public Library with volumes like Housekeeping in the 18th Century and The British Abigail, but felt I was still nibbling around the edges of facts I needed. Then a blog post by a writer of historical fiction sent me on the trail of an out-of-print book not in NYPL’s collection, which I was able to find used through Amazon.
When The Complete Servant arrived in the mail, I couldn’t believe my luck. A 1989 reprint of a work first published in 1825, it was written by two retired servants who’d started as footboy and maid-of-all-work, rising through the service ranks all the way to the top: house-steward and housekeeper. In its own time it was a guide both to servants and their employers, some of whom would have been new to wealth, unsure how to manage a household as large as the one they found themselves in charge of. For someone in the early 21st century trying to imagine domestic life of 200 years earlier, it was solid gold.
After a modern introduction by a professor of economic and social history, there’s the original introduction by the co-authors with some heartfelt advice to both employer: “The mistress of a family will always recollect that, in all cases, the welfare and good character of her household depends on her own active superintendence” and employee: “The virtue of silence is highly commendable, and will contribute greatly to your ease and prosperity.”
Then we get a series of chapters on each kind of servant, starting with the housekeeper and ending with the under gardener, dealing with, among others, the kitchen maid, the lady’s maid, the young lady’s maid, the servant of all work, the butler, the under butler, the valet, the footman and the hall porter – 33 such chapters, outlining the duties of each and the typical salary range. Of course, only the grandest houses would require 33 kinds of servants, so the book also suggests how some jobs may combine, like “Groom and Valet, or Footman.”
Interspersed with descriptions of the servants’ duties is practical advice relevant to the job in question. The part devoted to the “Chamber Nurse” (which was not a full-time servant, but someone called in at times of illness) has sections on how to get rid of warts, how to “extinguish fires which may have caught the clothes” (a serious danger in a world of open flames and long cotton skirts) and “A method of restoring life to the apparently drowned.” The cook’s chapter has a list of “principal herbs, or vegetables used in English salads” (a sophisticated lineup including sorrel, watercress and chervil) and recipes for various sauces. It has advice about managing the fire: “Judicious cooks will perform their culinary operations with much less coal than those who erroneously believe that the greater the fire, the greater the dispatch.”
At this, and at many other points, I was struck by what a large array of practical skills have been effectively lost to time, though we like to imagine ourselves as much more advanced than the people of 1815. Who could even start a fire with a flint and steel today, let alone cook an entire meal with the unpredictable heat of an open hearth? Impossible not to be amazed by all these forgotten people, our ancestors in possession of their now-forgotten skills, who kept the drawing rooms warm, the horses fed and shod, the wool carded, the butter churned and the stagecoaches running.
And this is not the end to the glories of The Complete Servant. Tables at the beginning offer guidance as to how many and what kind of servants one might be expected to have, according to a family’s income and size. My time travelers had to be wealthy enough to interest the gregarious London banker Henry Austen as potential customers as well as friends, yet not so rich that he would consider them too grand to introduce to his sister Jane, when she came to visit him in the fall of 1815. In the £1000 to £1500 annual income range, maybe, thus requiring something like: “Four Females and three Men; viz -- A Cook, Two Housemaids, a Nursey-Maid or Other Female Servant; a Coachman, Footman, and a Man to assist in the Stable and Garden.”
Jane Austen’s novels are notable for being faithful to small details of everyday life and yet not getting bogged down in them. Her contemporary readers would have immediately grasped the significance of, say, Henry Crawford owning a barouche in Mansfield Park vs. Henry Tilney having a curricle in Northanger Abbey. (I would think of it as something like a Land Rover vs. a Mini-Cooper convertible.) They would have understood why Mrs. Norris of Mansfield Park was so pleased with the housekeeper at Sotherton because she did not serve wine at the second table and turned away two housemaids for wearing white gowns. (The second table was where the lower-ranking servants ate. To me, the most fascinating implication of this was that Sotherton’s more important servants apparently did expect wine with their meals. White gowns indicate that the housemaids were imitating the fashions of those above them in social rank, a tendency The Complete Servant also sternly warns against.) But even though most modern readers would miss such nuances, their enjoyment of Jane Austen’s wit and psychological insight is not decreased.Anyone writing a story set in the distant past faces knows the challenge of capturing the flavor of its strangeness without over-describing. In my excitement after discovering The Complete Servant, I put in a great detail of fascinating (to me at least) details about household management that some early readers gently pointed out were excessive, and slowing down the action. I went back and took most of them out. Yet I had a sense I’d not before, of feeling more firmly anchored in the world of 1815, of having a sense of the world beyond the page. I can only hope readers will too.
The Jane Austen Project, due out on May 2, 2017, is available as an e-book, a paperback, and an audiobook. Here are some buy links:AmazonBarnes and NobleBooks-a-MillioniBooksIndieboundOn Twitter at @AustenProject, on the web at kathleenaflynn.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kathleenaflynnauthor. Email newsletter signup at https://tinyletter.com/kathleenaflynn.
About the author
Kathleen A. Flynn grew up in tiny Falls Village, Conn., the daughter of an electrician and a kindergarten teacher. Currently a copy editor at The New York Times and resident of Brooklyn, Flynn has taught English in Hong Kong, washed dishes on Nantucket, and is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. The Jane Austen Project is her first novel.
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When I got the idea to write about some time travelers who go in search of Jane Austen, one concern was how her world would strike someone not native to it. What was the texture of everyday existence, and how could I depict it?
One crucial difference is how so many tasks of daily life – heating and lighting our homes, keeping our bodies and our clothes clean, getting food on the table – have become infinitely less laborious in our world. We have electricity and running water; they had servants, at least people wealthy enough to afford them did. And even those pretty far down the economic ladder, like the Bates household in Emma, would have had at least a maid of all work. That would seem strange to many of us today -- having people around all the time who know such intimate details of your personal habits. True, lots of relatively well-off families have a nanny, or someone who comes by to clean the house, but this must have been considerably more intense. They’d be emptying your chamber pot, overhearing your conversations at dinner. How would my time travelers handle this? Arrived in 1815, they are posing as wealthy newcomers to London, an orphaned brother and sister in their 30s who have sold their family’s coffee plantation in Jamaica. When I visited house museums of the period, I tried to envision their house, and wondered about their imaginary servants. How many would they need; how would the household tasks be divided? And since they don’t know anyone and cannot get recommendations through word of mouth, how will they find them? What were servants paid, and how often? Did they all generally live in the house with their masters, even in town? I spent pleasant hours in the reading room of the New York Public Library with volumes like Housekeeping in the 18th Century and The British Abigail, but felt I was still nibbling around the edges of facts I needed. Then a blog post by a writer of historical fiction sent me on the trail of an out-of-print book not in NYPL’s collection, which I was able to find used through Amazon.
When The Complete Servant arrived in the mail, I couldn’t believe my luck. A 1989 reprint of a work first published in 1825, it was written by two retired servants who’d started as footboy and maid-of-all-work, rising through the service ranks all the way to the top: house-steward and housekeeper. In its own time it was a guide both to servants and their employers, some of whom would have been new to wealth, unsure how to manage a household as large as the one they found themselves in charge of. For someone in the early 21st century trying to imagine domestic life of 200 years earlier, it was solid gold.
After a modern introduction by a professor of economic and social history, there’s the original introduction by the co-authors with some heartfelt advice to both employer: “The mistress of a family will always recollect that, in all cases, the welfare and good character of her household depends on her own active superintendence” and employee: “The virtue of silence is highly commendable, and will contribute greatly to your ease and prosperity.”
Then we get a series of chapters on each kind of servant, starting with the housekeeper and ending with the under gardener, dealing with, among others, the kitchen maid, the lady’s maid, the young lady’s maid, the servant of all work, the butler, the under butler, the valet, the footman and the hall porter – 33 such chapters, outlining the duties of each and the typical salary range. Of course, only the grandest houses would require 33 kinds of servants, so the book also suggests how some jobs may combine, like “Groom and Valet, or Footman.”
Interspersed with descriptions of the servants’ duties is practical advice relevant to the job in question. The part devoted to the “Chamber Nurse” (which was not a full-time servant, but someone called in at times of illness) has sections on how to get rid of warts, how to “extinguish fires which may have caught the clothes” (a serious danger in a world of open flames and long cotton skirts) and “A method of restoring life to the apparently drowned.” The cook’s chapter has a list of “principal herbs, or vegetables used in English salads” (a sophisticated lineup including sorrel, watercress and chervil) and recipes for various sauces. It has advice about managing the fire: “Judicious cooks will perform their culinary operations with much less coal than those who erroneously believe that the greater the fire, the greater the dispatch.”
At this, and at many other points, I was struck by what a large array of practical skills have been effectively lost to time, though we like to imagine ourselves as much more advanced than the people of 1815. Who could even start a fire with a flint and steel today, let alone cook an entire meal with the unpredictable heat of an open hearth? Impossible not to be amazed by all these forgotten people, our ancestors in possession of their now-forgotten skills, who kept the drawing rooms warm, the horses fed and shod, the wool carded, the butter churned and the stagecoaches running.
And this is not the end to the glories of The Complete Servant. Tables at the beginning offer guidance as to how many and what kind of servants one might be expected to have, according to a family’s income and size. My time travelers had to be wealthy enough to interest the gregarious London banker Henry Austen as potential customers as well as friends, yet not so rich that he would consider them too grand to introduce to his sister Jane, when she came to visit him in the fall of 1815. In the £1000 to £1500 annual income range, maybe, thus requiring something like: “Four Females and three Men; viz -- A Cook, Two Housemaids, a Nursey-Maid or Other Female Servant; a Coachman, Footman, and a Man to assist in the Stable and Garden.”
Jane Austen’s novels are notable for being faithful to small details of everyday life and yet not getting bogged down in them. Her contemporary readers would have immediately grasped the significance of, say, Henry Crawford owning a barouche in Mansfield Park vs. Henry Tilney having a curricle in Northanger Abbey. (I would think of it as something like a Land Rover vs. a Mini-Cooper convertible.) They would have understood why Mrs. Norris of Mansfield Park was so pleased with the housekeeper at Sotherton because she did not serve wine at the second table and turned away two housemaids for wearing white gowns. (The second table was where the lower-ranking servants ate. To me, the most fascinating implication of this was that Sotherton’s more important servants apparently did expect wine with their meals. White gowns indicate that the housemaids were imitating the fashions of those above them in social rank, a tendency The Complete Servant also sternly warns against.) But even though most modern readers would miss such nuances, their enjoyment of Jane Austen’s wit and psychological insight is not decreased.Anyone writing a story set in the distant past faces knows the challenge of capturing the flavor of its strangeness without over-describing. In my excitement after discovering The Complete Servant, I put in a great detail of fascinating (to me at least) details about household management that some early readers gently pointed out were excessive, and slowing down the action. I went back and took most of them out. Yet I had a sense I’d not before, of feeling more firmly anchored in the world of 1815, of having a sense of the world beyond the page. I can only hope readers will too.
The Jane Austen Project, due out on May 2, 2017, is available as an e-book, a paperback, and an audiobook. Here are some buy links:AmazonBarnes and NobleBooks-a-MillioniBooksIndieboundOn Twitter at @AustenProject, on the web at kathleenaflynn.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kathleenaflynnauthor. Email newsletter signup at https://tinyletter.com/kathleenaflynn.
About the author
Kathleen A. Flynn grew up in tiny Falls Village, Conn., the daughter of an electrician and a kindergarten teacher. Currently a copy editor at The New York Times and resident of Brooklyn, Flynn has taught English in Hong Kong, washed dishes on Nantucket, and is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. The Jane Austen Project is her first novel.May 9, 2017
The Essentials of Georgian Landscape Gardening
It's a delight to welcome an old friend back to the salon today; please do enjoy this look at the essentials of Georgian Landscape Gardening by Claire Cock-Starkey.
I'll be posting a full review of Claire's marvellous new book, The Golden Age of the Garden, later this month but, with half the book still to go, I'm delighted to report that it's another wonderful, essential read!
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The Essentials of Georgian Landscape Gardening
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a golden era of garden design in England – the Renaissance formal gardens with their elaborate geometric hedges, clipped lawns and ordered planting made way for the more naturalistic style of the landscape garden. Designers such as William Kent, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton, inspired by nature, transformed the English landscape.During the Georgian period the English garden became a subject for intellectual debate, with writers and thinkers discussing the national landscape. Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) was one of the most influential tomes on English gardening, helping to frame the ideas of the landscape garden:‘Gardening, is the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landskip [landscape] painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy, a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to spots from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials.’
Uvedale Price
Essayist Uvedale Price (1747–1829) and artist, cleric and writer William Gilpin (1724–1804) were both preoccupied with the idea of the picturesque, a recently coined term which at that time applied to a view which might invite the landscape painter to capture it. Uvedale Price considered many aspects of nature in his An Essay on the Picturesque (1796): ‘Among trees, it is not the smooth young beech, or the fresh and tender ash, but the rugged old oak, or knotty wych elm, that are picturesque; nor is it necessary they should be of great bulk; it is sufficient if they are rough, mossy, with a character of age, and with sudden variations in their forms. The limbs of huge trees, shattered by lightning or tempestuous winds, are in the highest degree picturesque; but whatever is caused by those dreaded powers of destruction, must always have a tincture of the sublime.’ With this background of intellectual discussion on the nature of beauty many contemporary gardeners took these ideas and began to apply them to gardening, ushering in a style more sympathetic to nature, and yet carefully planned to lend variety and interest. One of the innovations which characterises Georgian era gardens was the use of the ha, ha!:‘The capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe first thought was Bridgman’s) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fossès – an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha’s! to express their surprize at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk . . . I call a sunk fence the leading step, for these reasons. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing and rolling, followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.’ – The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening by Horace Walpole (1780)By opening up the views to the fields beyond it allowed the garden to become part of a wider landscape. This idea informed the design of the garden itself with serpentine paths allowing the visitor to wander through the garden, greeted with a new vista at every turn.
PainshillThe Georgian landscape garden although inspired by nature it was very much planned by man. A fashion for building ruined follies, secluded hermitages and decaying bridges persisted, providing moments of drama in the garden or places of contemplation. Bodies of water were also popular, from a modest fountain to the dramatic cascades and jet d’eaus seen at gardens such as Chatsworth.Trees were planted in groves, belts and clumps (something Uvedale Price took great dislike for, remarking somewhat churlishly ‘But the great distinguishing feature of modern improvement, is the clump; whose name if the first letter was taken away, would most accurately describe its form and effect.’). The effect of planting trees in this way was to delineate the garden and draw the eye, great thought went into the planting of these groves and clumps, ensuring variety of form and colour.Landscape gardening reflects the Georgian’s changing relationship with the national landscape – no longer did people want unnatural and artful formal gardens, instead they wanted large open parks, ridings and ornamented farms which allowed visitors to meander at their leisure. Landscape gardens provided an idealised version of English pastoral scenes, a style which has proved enduring as attested by the famed gardens at Chatsworth, Blenheim, Painshill and Stowe which still reflect their Georgian designs.
The Golden Age of the Garden by Claire Cock-Starkey published by Elliott & Thompson is released on 4 May 2017.
Picture credits: Portrait (c. 1799), oil on canvas, of Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet (1747–1829), by Sir Thomas Lawrence, (1769–1830)
Engraving of Painshill by William Woolett, 1760s
I'll be posting a full review of Claire's marvellous new book, The Golden Age of the Garden, later this month but, with half the book still to go, I'm delighted to report that it's another wonderful, essential read!
---oOo---
The Essentials of Georgian Landscape GardeningThe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a golden era of garden design in England – the Renaissance formal gardens with their elaborate geometric hedges, clipped lawns and ordered planting made way for the more naturalistic style of the landscape garden. Designers such as William Kent, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton, inspired by nature, transformed the English landscape.During the Georgian period the English garden became a subject for intellectual debate, with writers and thinkers discussing the national landscape. Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) was one of the most influential tomes on English gardening, helping to frame the ideas of the landscape garden:‘Gardening, is the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landskip [landscape] painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy, a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to spots from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials.’
Uvedale Price
Essayist Uvedale Price (1747–1829) and artist, cleric and writer William Gilpin (1724–1804) were both preoccupied with the idea of the picturesque, a recently coined term which at that time applied to a view which might invite the landscape painter to capture it. Uvedale Price considered many aspects of nature in his An Essay on the Picturesque (1796): ‘Among trees, it is not the smooth young beech, or the fresh and tender ash, but the rugged old oak, or knotty wych elm, that are picturesque; nor is it necessary they should be of great bulk; it is sufficient if they are rough, mossy, with a character of age, and with sudden variations in their forms. The limbs of huge trees, shattered by lightning or tempestuous winds, are in the highest degree picturesque; but whatever is caused by those dreaded powers of destruction, must always have a tincture of the sublime.’ With this background of intellectual discussion on the nature of beauty many contemporary gardeners took these ideas and began to apply them to gardening, ushering in a style more sympathetic to nature, and yet carefully planned to lend variety and interest. One of the innovations which characterises Georgian era gardens was the use of the ha, ha!:‘The capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe first thought was Bridgman’s) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fossès – an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha’s! to express their surprize at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk . . . I call a sunk fence the leading step, for these reasons. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing and rolling, followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.’ – The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening by Horace Walpole (1780)By opening up the views to the fields beyond it allowed the garden to become part of a wider landscape. This idea informed the design of the garden itself with serpentine paths allowing the visitor to wander through the garden, greeted with a new vista at every turn.
PainshillThe Georgian landscape garden although inspired by nature it was very much planned by man. A fashion for building ruined follies, secluded hermitages and decaying bridges persisted, providing moments of drama in the garden or places of contemplation. Bodies of water were also popular, from a modest fountain to the dramatic cascades and jet d’eaus seen at gardens such as Chatsworth.Trees were planted in groves, belts and clumps (something Uvedale Price took great dislike for, remarking somewhat churlishly ‘But the great distinguishing feature of modern improvement, is the clump; whose name if the first letter was taken away, would most accurately describe its form and effect.’). The effect of planting trees in this way was to delineate the garden and draw the eye, great thought went into the planting of these groves and clumps, ensuring variety of form and colour.Landscape gardening reflects the Georgian’s changing relationship with the national landscape – no longer did people want unnatural and artful formal gardens, instead they wanted large open parks, ridings and ornamented farms which allowed visitors to meander at their leisure. Landscape gardens provided an idealised version of English pastoral scenes, a style which has proved enduring as attested by the famed gardens at Chatsworth, Blenheim, Painshill and Stowe which still reflect their Georgian designs.The Golden Age of the Garden by Claire Cock-Starkey published by Elliott & Thompson is released on 4 May 2017.
Picture credits: Portrait (c. 1799), oil on canvas, of Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet (1747–1829), by Sir Thomas Lawrence, (1769–1830)
Engraving of Painshill by William Woolett, 1760s
