Juliet Waldron's Blog, page 2
January 25, 2016
Miss Gottlieb Remembers
January 27th
"Mozart, Ich liebe dich. I love you. Love you."
"Come, Nanina Nightingale. Come and give your poor old Maestro some of your ‘specially sugary sugar."
My mouth on his‑‑the friction produced warmth and sweetness, with a decided undertone of the expensive brandy he liked, flowing from his tongue to mine. I slid my arms across the brocade of his jacket, none too clean these days, and swayed a slender dancer's body against him.
Let me assure you that my sophistication was assumed. It really doesn't matter - then, or now. I was young, foolish, and drowning in love. I was seventeen. He was thirty five.
I believed he knew everything--that he could see right through me with those bright blue eyes. He probably could. He'd been my music master--and, more--my deity, ever since I'd met him, in my ninth year...
January 8, 2016
The work-a-day trials of a young clerk
Ordinarily, he would have defended himself, but this was an important customer, so, instead, he only twisted and ducked. The ham fist struck his back, almost knocking the breath out of him as he wrenched free.
“I’ll teach you to talk back!”
It had not been because of anything, really, but simply because the fellow was in a foul mood. He’d entered the store in a rage and passed it along in the casual fashion a man might kick a cur in the street. Mr. Cruger watched from the back, but made no move to interfere.
The customer is always right. Especially this son-of-a bitch! And Cruger’s absolute indifference to right or wrong, is the best the filthy snake can do….
At quitting time, Alexander was off down the beach. He hated his life and everyone in it.
“God help me, or even the Devil.” He spoke aloud, feeling supremely daring. “When the next war comes, I shall jump ship and run straight to it.”
There was a special place to which Alexander went whenever he wanted to be alone. It was a rough trek through a forbidding grove of twisted manchineel and then up a brush-covered headland. After a slow ledge-to-ledge descent down the cliff face, he’d reach an outcrop a mere twenty feet above high tide, but hidden from anyone above.
Today, all he wanted was to stretch out, to listen to the boom of the waves. He anticipated a rare moment of fantasy, one that involved sailing away, maybe to some distant war, or maybe to America to see his friend Ned Stevens...
~~ Juliet V. Waldron
http://www.julietwaldron.com
Historical novels with grit and passion
December 7, 2015
ANOTHER WIFE'S TALE
Alexander Hamilton has been my hero since I was a ten year old, which means I’ve been imagining him for a long time. When I decided to finally write “his” book, I’d just finished a novel about Wolfgang A. Mozart, as told by his wife.
It would be a familiar approach, I thought, to tell the Hamilton story from the same womanly angle. Or, so I thought—until I realized I didn’t know much about Alexander’s wife, Betsy.
Was she just another Colonial Dame? Well, Not exactly. That the big house in Albany where Elizabeth Schuyler been brought up was “American with a difference.”
Historical fiction readers are familiar with the customs of the Scots, Irish and English immigrants. But New York school children—me among them—also learned about the Dutch, who had given place names all along the Hudson and founded NYC, as well as inspiring Washington Irving to write his winking ghost story: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Although Betsy’s father, Major General Philip Schuyler, successfully “English-ified” himself, she probably learned Dutch at her Daddy’s knee. (During the Revolution, she and Baron von Steuben would find it their common language.) Hamilton’s wife, my novel’s heroine, had been born and raised in a folkway which retained some notable differences from those of her downstate, predominantly English, sisters.
Miss Schuyler’s female Dutch ancestors enjoyed rights greater than those of any other European women. They were full legal persons, a position American women would not enjoy again until the early 20th century. They could own property and conduct business, enter into contracts and buy and sell for their own profit. Some of the richest families in old New York could trace their fortune back to the business savvy of one of these “She Merchants.”
In Holland, and, briefly, in later New Amsterdam (now NYC) a woman could chose a unique form of marriage which kept her financial dealings and property permanently separate from her husband’s. Although these exceptional rights withered away after the English took over in 1664, there remained a certain independence and self-reliance in these Dutch women.
Dutch women, even the wealthy ones, remained inclined to hands-on. They were taught how to cook and garden, how to spin, to keep fowl, to weave and sew—as well as keep household accounts. An old family friend, James McHenry, wrote tellingly to Hamilton: “Your wife…has as much merit as your Treasurer as you have as Treasurer of the wealth of the United States.”
It was no secret who kept afloat the daily affairs of this often-preoccupied Founding Father.
Dutch women were also not so quick to hand their babies—messy, inconvenient creatures—off to servants or slaves for nursing and day care. Despite the then common water-borne and childhood diseases, Mrs. Hamilton bore eight children and raised every one of them to adulthood, something of a feat in those times.
The more I learned about her, the more she impressed me, this quiet, domestic woman behind the man. Betsy lived to be 97. Into her early 90’s, she continued to perform her duties as co-founder of the first New York City orphanage, a cause dear to her heart. She remained determined that ‘Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.’” In this aim, she never wavered, preserving his state papers and facing down those who had been Hamilton’s political enemies. The Hamilton’s marriage was on both sides a tale filled with heroism.
~Learn more about Elizabeth’s life and the “odd destiny” of her beloved Alexander--immigrant, genius, and nation builder, in A Master Passion~~
In print and “e”
Sources:
Jean Zimmerman’s The Women of the House, Mariner Books, 2007
David Fischer Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, Oxford University Press, 1989
Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York, GP Putnam & Sons, 1894
November 22, 2015
Turkey Day, 1964
The first turkey I ever cooked myself was in 1964. I was a young married, an ex-student, as was my husband. We were living in a dismal basement apartment in NYC, with a front window whose view was the back of the building’s garbage cans. Needless to say, we kept the blinds closed. We shared a bathroom with some elder ladies who we never saw, but who, no matter how loudly I scrubbed the tub after using it, would come in as soon as I’d left and wash the entire bathroom all over again. I suppose I can’t blame them, for lots of people in the city lived in fear of all manner of dangerous unknowns.
We’d managed to buy the turkey, a small one, although it took some financial planning to get the cash together, as I didn’t have a job. Only my husband, Chris, did. As a nineteen year old with zero skills, it didn’t pay much and rent took most of that. As for me, I’d left the hospital I’d been working in back in Philadelphia and come to NYC in order to be with him. Plus, I was violently morning sick—to the 9th degree. I mean, Rosemary, in “Rosemary’s Baby,” had nothing on me. The only things I could reliably keep down were weird cravings: green pea soup, white bread, grapefruit and sardines. Anything else—upchuck! Maybe that’s why the invisible ladies next door were so diligent about scrubbing our shared bathroom.
On the big day we cleaned up our turkey as I’d seen my parents do, slapped it in a big bakeware pan that we’d found in the kitchen, turned the oven to 350 and then walked over to Broadway to see a little of the Thanksgiving Day parade. We were so far uptown that there wasn’t much to see, but there were bands and high school kids from out of town feeling really proud of themselves, and people wrestling with a couple of balloons—my favorite, Dino the dinosaur—being dragged about in the gusty wind. The other big moment was seeing Fess Parker of Davy Crocket fame, waving and smiling from the back of an open car. Like a zillion children from my generation, he’d been my hero back in the fourth grade. I’d wept while watching the Walt Disney show the night “Davy” died at the Alamo.
Now that child’s life seemed incredibly distant. Chris and I looked at each other. We were married, pregnant and close to broke. Whether one or either of us would ever get back to college—and how the heck we would manage it--was still up in the air. Nobody's parents were happy. With all this drama swirling through our minds, the parade, so very pointedly for little kids, got tiring fast.
We turned and walked back through the wind, weak November sun, and grimy uptown streets to our little pad. When we got there, the place was redolent with roast turkey and baked potatoes. The bird made snapping noises as the juice splattered about inside the oven, casting a kind of smoky pall around the kitchen. We decided that this must mean it was cooked. Chris fetched it out, and lo and behold, it was done, all crispy, juices running clear. I was a little surprised that I was, for the first time in months and all of a sudden—genuinely hungry. It was quite a fine meal, our first Thanksgiving—meat, potatoes, squishy store bread and a freshly opened can of cranberry sauce.
Who knew I’d be remembering it fifty-one years later?
~~Juliet Waldron
See all my historical novels at:
http://www.julietwaldron.com
November 2, 2015
CEMETERY STREET
The first house I remember well was on Cemetery Street. The high windows of our little 1850’s brick house had a view of the historic local cemetery, complete with the sunken stones of the early settlers and poor folks, as well as Victorian obelisks and rich-family crypts. It was all sheltered by a fine stand of tall hardwoods—maples, beech, sycamore, Kentucky bean trees, and oaks.
I often climbed up on the couch and peered out the window across the street to see a funeral in progress, the black cars, the black dresses, hats and sad, slumped demeanor of the mourners. At certain times of year, people arrived and filled the place with flowers—Memorial Day, particularly. We often walked there, Mother and I, with whatever dog we had, sharing the peace with our silent underground neighbors.
Always having an active imagination, I drew many pictures of the cemetery, my notions about the underground life of the dead, so thickly tucked away just across the street. My parents, of course, found that a little odd, but it seemed perfectly straightforward to me.
All those husbands and wives that I’d seen, their gravestones sitting side by side, I figured, were still there, only now confined to a spot beneath the ground. I always drew little rooms, with tables with decorative flowers on top, and sofas and chairs, a picture on the wall and, sometimes, even a pet.
I thought it must be a little lonely and boring for them to never be able to go outside anymore, to be staying forever in that underground haven, which was all I could make out of the much talked about “heaven.” It made perfect sense, when I first heard about ghosts, that the dead might wish to come out and walk around in the cemetery. I spent a lot of night times looking out the front window around twilight, hoping to see one. After all, I took walks there, under those aged trees, listening to the birds and breezes, and it was always pleasant.
Imagine an Egyptian queen enjoying her own little room inside the pyramid, playing Backgammon for eternity.
For the early part of my childhood, I lived in that rural Ohio town, with a close-knit family around, which made all holidays great fun, but Halloween was special in its own way. My younger cousin, Mike, and I were often dressed to compliment each other—one year we were cowboy and cowgirl, on another we were Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy. Once we were Spanish dancers, complete with hats with bobbles dangling beneath the brims. My cousin, now a big time politician, had in childhood a pronounced lisp. I remember him carefully explaining to someone who’d asked that we were “’Panish-tan-sers.” Our costumes were hand-made by grandmas and loving aunts and we showed them off at what seemed to us an exciting costume parade for children which was held annually at the high school.
I also remember one night of trick-or-treating with some older children who lived up the road, away from the cemetery. They were the kind who weren’t entirely to be trusted with a smaller kid who wasn’t a family member. That night's costume had been spur of the moment, so my mother had turned me into a ghost in an old sheet with a pillow case head. The head, as we ran door-to-door in the darkness, kept slipping, so I couldn’t see. I was gamely trying to keep up with their longer legs in the darkness, but they only laughed and ran ahead. I remember falling and rolling head-over-heels down the steep grade next to the last house on the block, splintering the warm popcorn ball I’d just been given. Then I had to untangle myself from the sheet. After I escaped from that, though, I was surrounded by night. The only porch light seemed about a mile away. It was so scary to be left alone in the darkness that I abandoned my goodies and ran home as fast as I could.
~~Juliet Waldron
SEE ALL MY HISTORICAL NOVELS:
http://www.julietwaldron.com
Find my books in print and e at all major outlets.
October 13, 2015
A GIFT FROM THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER
"...It was several days before we were permitted to ride. As usual, True Thomas came to accompany us. He lifted Anne onto her Precious, and made certain the saddle was tight by surreptitiously punching the pony in the stomach. Precious coughed, stamped a back foot and glared, but she had a naughty trick of bloating her stomach, and this would let the saddle slip.
I climbed from the mounting block onto the little strawberry pony, mine to ride with my mistress. Every time I did this, I wanted to pinch myself. Horseback was an experience a peasant rarely enjoyed. Horses were for the wealthy. Ox carts or "shanks mare" sufficed for my low kind.
As I gathered up the reins and adjusted my seat, Thomas appeared at my side.
"Gotten yourself up, have you?"
Anne, in a hurry to escape the confines of Middleham bailey, had already started off.
I began to say that I had been getting myself up for the last year, when I realized it was a ruse. Thomas had something in his hand, something he wanted me to take.
"For you, Rosalba," he whispered softly, "from a young Lord who says he will miss you, too."
I gazed in astonishment at an enameled white rose, a pendant strung on a fine strand of braided silver thread.
"Thomas--" I began.
"My Lord of Gloucester prays you will take special good care of Lady Anne," Thomas interjected. Then, with a wink and a knowing look, he added, "Further, the duke also says you are to understand that this is a gift and no wage."
For a "Downstairs" view of the romance of Richard of Gloucester and Anne Neville: ROAN ROSE
Readers say:
..."If you are a fan of all things Richard III, as I am, don't pass this one up."
"...I loved the strength of this woman..."
"...Powerful Sense of Time and Place"
"...Waldron certainly knows her history...Yet despite its accuracy ... Roan Rose is ultimately a book about character..." Meredith Whitford, Author of "Treason."
http://www.julietwaldron.com
September 30, 2015
Another Wife Speaks
Was she just another Colonial Dame? Well, Not exactly. The big house in Albany where Elizabeth Schuyler had been brought up was “American with a difference.”
Historical fiction readers are familiar with the customs of the Scots, Irish and English immigrants. But New York school children—me among them—also learned about the Dutch, who had given place names all along the Hudson and founded NYC, as well as inspiring Washington Irving to write his winking ghost story: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Although Betsy’s father, Major General Philip Schuyler, successfully “English-ified” himself, she probably learned Dutch at her Daddy’s knee. (During the Revolution, she and famous family friend Baron von Steuben would find it their common language.) Hamilton’s wife, my novel’s heroine, had been born and raised folkways which retained some notable differences from those of her downstate predominantly English neighbors.
Miss Schuyler’s female Dutch ancestors enjoyed rights greater than those of any other European women. They were full legal persons, a position American women would not enjoy again until the early 20th century.
They could own property and conduct business, enter into contracts and buy and sell for their own profit. Some of the richest families in old New York could trace their fortune back to the business savvy of one of these “She Merchants.”
In Holland, and, briefly, in later New Amsterdam (now NYC) a woman could chose a unique form of marriage which kept her financial dealings and property separate from her husband’s. Although these exceptional rights withered after the English took over the colony in 1664, there remained a certain independence and self-reliance in these Dutch women.
Even the wealthiest ladies were inclined to hands-on. They were taught how to cook and garden, how to spin, to keep fowl, to weave and sew—as well as keep household accounts.
An old family friend, James McHenry, wrote tellingly to Hamilton: “Your wife…has as much merit as your Treasurer as you have as Treasurer of the wealth of the United States.” It was no secret who kept afloat the daily affairs of this often-preoccupied Founding Father.
Dutch women were also not so quick to hand their babies—messy, inconvenient creatures— to servants or slaves for nursing and day care. Despite the then commonly fatal water-borne and childhood diseases, Mrs. Hamilton bore eight children and raised every one of them to adulthood, something of a feat in that era.
The more I learned about her, the more she impressed me, this quiet, domestic woman behind the man. Betsy lived to be 97. Almost to her last breath, she performed her duties as co-founder of the first New York City orphanage, a cause dear to her heart.
She also remained determined that ‘Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.’” In this aim, she never wavered, preserving his papers and facing down important men who had been Hamilton’s political enemies with calm dignity.
~Learn more about Elizabeth’s life and the “odd destiny” of her beloved Alexander--orphan, immigrant, genius, and nation builder, in:
A Master Passion
In print and electronic format
Sources:
Jean Zimmerman’s The Women of the House, Mariner Books, 2007
David Fischer Hackett’s Albion’s Seed, Oxford University Press, 1989
Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York, GP Putnam & Sons, 1894
Mary Elizabeth Springer, Elizabeth Schuyler, A Story of Old New York, 1903
September 9, 2015
A War Time Wedding at the Schuyler's
Here's the story of a wedding that took place just before Christmas in a country deep in it's first civil war.
*****************************************
"....The wedding took place in the yellow parlor in front of a crackling hearth. The Dutch Reformed minister performed the ceremony and everyone who was anyone for miles around attended. The room was packed with patriot gentry, all turned out in their finest wigs and lace. The young men present were almost universally in blue and buff.
Hamilton had gone to the expense of outfitting himself anew before the trip north and today he looked resplendent in a crisp new uniform. The epaulets of Lieutenant Colonel gleamed on his shoulders; his chest was crossed by the green sash worn by the aides de camp of a commanding general. His hair had been powdered, but not quite enough to extinguish a gingery glitter. Everyone agreed; he looked overwhelmingly handsome.
“If Mama hadn’t had all these months to prepare, I’m afraid my little sister would look like a hen pheasant beside that beautiful fellow.” Angelica whispered waspishly to the only woman present she considered her peer, tall blonde Arietta van Corlear. Diamond earrings flashed against creamy necks as the belles approvingly surveyed the lithe figure of the groom.
Still, few others present would have agreed. For the ceremony, Betsy had been transformed into a perfect, fashion plate angel. She had submitted to wearing a wig (sent through enemy lines from Philadelphia), which provided her with a tumble of snowy curls. Beneath this, her olive skin, black eyes, and long dark lashes made a magnificent contrast. Mama had insisted upon applying a delicate lamb’s wool brush of rouge to her high cheekbones, which hollowed the Dutch fullness. Her dress was a cream-colored sacque trimmed with lace and white satin bows.
When she entered the room upon the arm of her father, a number of Hudson valley cousins suffered unanticipated pangs of regret. Was this radiant bride really their own sweet, plain “Little Saint Bess”?
“They make a lovely couple.” Peggy sighed and slipped an arm around the waist of her younger cousin, Eliza van Rensselaer. Peggy had earlier confided to Miss van R. that she herself was secretly “a little in love with that rascal Alexander.”
The hordes of tow-headed children were cautioned, and the fire in Mrs. Schuyler’s eyes was sufficient to convince the most rambunctious that she meant business.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, a plain gold band, an heirloom from long ago Amsterdam, was slipped onto the bride’s delicate finger. The old-fashioned lace veil that had belonged to Grandmother Angelica Livingston Van Rensselaer was turned back, and Colonel Hamilton, in his blue and buff uniform, gave his lovely blacked-eyed Betsy a worshipful kiss.
Mrs. Schuyler leaned on her husband’s arm. She, too, was radiant. Within, the baby she carried stirred restlessly, awakened by the triumphant emotion which coursed through her mother like the Hudson in full flood. To see a beloved daughter handed properly from father to husband, married in the midst of this sea of relations, was a supreme moment...."
~~ Juliet Waldron
A MASTER PASSION
Find more at:
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August 23, 2015
From Award Winning "Genesee"
...Next, they had gone into the set of a country dance. To take three dances in a row with the same partner was a breach of propriety that had set fans fluttering on every side.
They flaunted convention still further, and walked the circular path that ran around Aunt Kitty's garden. A yellow moon, past full, was clearing the woods on the crest of the eastern shore.
Their pace was a little fast, for the night was chilly and they were both, in spite of the dancing, full of nervous energy. Jenny felt ready to jump out of her skin. Alexander seemed to be in the same condition.
In the darkness, here and there, they'd catch sight of other couples, sitting upon garden benches, leaning against each other or unabashedly embracing. It was cold, early in the year for strolls in the moonlight, but there were a lot of blue and buff uniforms here, young men who were soon leaving to fight.
"I don't know what to say to you, sir," she finally said, ignoring the polite gambit he'd made about the beauty of the scene.
Alexander halted. She gazed up at him, at his thin handsome face in the moonlight, wondering what he would do.
In the next moment he'd clasped her in his arms, swept her close and kissed her. In the chilly darkness his mouth was warm and eager.
What temptation, the wanting to let her arms go around his shoulders, the wanting to let him kiss and taste, do what he'd done at her grandparent's house! Instead, she kept her palms against the rough wool of that uniform jacket, held him in check.
Feeling her reticence, he ended the kiss, although he kept his arms around her slender waist. "What's the matter?" he breathed.
"You mustn't just – just – kiss me like that," she protested.
His strong arms held her close. "Why not?" he murmured, his lips grazing her cheek. "Don't you like me to?"
"Liking's not the point."
"Since when is liking not the point of kissing?"
"Do let me go," she whispered, trembling. "I can't think of what I mean to say."
She saw him smile. He did, however, obediently relinquish the embrace, although not his hold upon her hands.
From another pair of lovers, hidden somewhere nearby, came a gasp. Below, fine golden scales of moonshine shimmered upon the bosom of the river.
"All right, Miss," he said. "Out with what you mean to say."
"That– I don't generally ... I mean – I haven't ever – I mean that no one..." Jenny stammered. "Ah – that you may not just – "
He pulled her close again. "Even," he whispered, "even if you haven't ever – even if no one has had the sense – even if I must not assume – I believe that a girl as beautiful as you must be kissed and kissed very often and very thoroughly. I look upon it as a duty."
"Rubbish," she gasped, attempting severity, though it wasn't easy with that hard young body pressed so ardently against hers. "Stop teasing!"
~Juliet Waldron
In e and print
`Action, Adventure and Romance during the Revolution~
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May 9, 2013
Latest Interview
As has been said, "The past is never gone. Why, it's not even past." That's been a life-time theme for me, always having a ghost or two about the house and
an idea or two in my head.
A lovely teaser, too, with the cover of my latest 18th Century Viennese story of dangerous love:
Nightingale
http://bwlpp.blogspot.com/
