Hog Heaven
MANY thanks to la marquise de, here on LiveJournal, for the recommendation of Annik Pailharde-Galabrun's
The Birth of Intimacy
, which I immediately went out and added to my research collection. An immensely technical analysis of eighteenth-century notaries' inventories of the contents of houses, with chapters on the composition of apartments and lodgings: 48% of Parisians studied lived in one room, or one room with either an "annex, hovel [???], niche or alcove" attached... And a number of these places DID have kitchens on the third story (4th story in American terms) rather than the ground-floor.
a) I LOVE this kind of thing!
b) I love 18th-century Paris.
c) It means I won't have to do major fiddling when the manuscript for Ran Away comes back because my guesses and extrapolations from that French book on pre-industrial apartment kitchens were correct, and I've portrayed the lodgings of Ben and Ayasha in Paris correctly.
I am insanely inquisitive about peoples' living-arrangements in other times and places. As a writer you get that way, especially if you write mysteries. COULD Suspect A have gotten from the kitchen door to the east dormer in the attic in time to shoot the victim as he rode out through the stable gates? (How accurate was the clock, if the household possessed one? How else would you have told the time? How accurate was Suspect A's rifle (or longbow, depending on the date) and how good a shot was Suspect A?
When I'd go out to eat in the French Quarter, I was always looking for excuses to slip away and check out the rest of the building that the restaurants were located in: what were the stairs like up to the attics? How big is the courtyard? How big are the rooms leading off it? Is there another way out of the courtyard or the house? Where would the servants have slept?
I've found this curiosity about physical space - probably one of the chief attributes of any mystery writer - carries over into all my writing, fantasies and media tie-ins as well. (Do Han and Leia's children have their own wing in the palace? How close is it to the main rooms? What does the main reception-room look like? IS there a cafeteria on the Enterprise?) (I got in a big arguement with the Approvals Loop on that one...)
a) I LOVE this kind of thing!
b) I love 18th-century Paris.
c) It means I won't have to do major fiddling when the manuscript for Ran Away comes back because my guesses and extrapolations from that French book on pre-industrial apartment kitchens were correct, and I've portrayed the lodgings of Ben and Ayasha in Paris correctly.
I am insanely inquisitive about peoples' living-arrangements in other times and places. As a writer you get that way, especially if you write mysteries. COULD Suspect A have gotten from the kitchen door to the east dormer in the attic in time to shoot the victim as he rode out through the stable gates? (How accurate was the clock, if the household possessed one? How else would you have told the time? How accurate was Suspect A's rifle (or longbow, depending on the date) and how good a shot was Suspect A?
When I'd go out to eat in the French Quarter, I was always looking for excuses to slip away and check out the rest of the building that the restaurants were located in: what were the stairs like up to the attics? How big is the courtyard? How big are the rooms leading off it? Is there another way out of the courtyard or the house? Where would the servants have slept?
I've found this curiosity about physical space - probably one of the chief attributes of any mystery writer - carries over into all my writing, fantasies and media tie-ins as well. (Do Han and Leia's children have their own wing in the palace? How close is it to the main rooms? What does the main reception-room look like? IS there a cafeteria on the Enterprise?) (I got in a big arguement with the Approvals Loop on that one...)
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