A Regency Timeline 1791 Revisited and a new Regency Novel-The Heir
The Regency Timeline
My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1797.
Now I have the 1791 Timeline again. I went back added a significant amount of graphics. I will be doing this with all the years I previously posted and then ensuring that the new years have a lot of graphics as well.
I have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture. I especially like how the Duchess of Alba by Goya looks a lot like Cher.
My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein
as well as the Chronology of CULTURE y Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. 
What Happened When by Carruth. I also have added a Dorling Kindersley book 
, History of the World.
I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.
Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.
We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.
Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.
After the Regency Timeline, I plan to do a short addition on Regency Prime Ministers. They always come up in my research and I think we need a page where we can find out all about them in one place. Then, the Edwardian Timeline. I am thinking the years 1890 to 1918 (The end of WWI)
Regency Assembly Press 1791 Tineline
The Writing LIfe
I finished the Murder Mystery with our erstwhile Magician. I am looking for first draft readers to spot check me on their reception to the plot. The magic, the hyperbole. Did I give away the mystery or is it worth the time and investment in it.
Now onto the next project which is a Regency.
I enclose a few paragraphs from the first draft first chapter.
Chapter 1
The house, Combe Edinsley, was a bustle. As only a house with far too many servants could be when a commotion took them and everyone thought they were off on some important task.
Every year, after the winter festivities, the house was this way. Time to pack everything up so the transition to London could be completed. The Earl of Bath wanted to be in London for the first seating of the House of Lords. That was, he wanted the London home open and all in Town to know that he was back in residence and he would be in the second row, as was his wont, during every preceding conducted in Lords.
Henry Lennox, the eighth Earl had spent the first five years after his wife died in near seclusion at Combe Edinsley. He had found it difficult to face the matter. And face the daughter that his wife had left behind. Annabella, who had placed a pillow around her head to stop the noise that the house was creating, had been five when her mother had died. Ten, when she had told her father that things had come to exceedingly dire straits. That Combe Edinsley was becoming out of fashion and should he not attend to the matter, cobwebs would surely form in, of all places, the large portrait that Gainsborough had done of her mother.
Considered one of his last great works and done just a few years before the artist died, it was certainly a noteworthy piece. One that the house staff, would never let a cobweb grow on. Annabella had pointed out to the Earl an analogy for his life. She then said that she would soon be of an age where she would need mothering and that he was in need of an heir. That if he did not beget himself a wife to mother her, then she would have no idea what was expected of her. Annabella pointed out that the Earl could return to society, or that he could marry the governess, also quite acceptable as she liked her governess.
The Earl smiled and went for a long ride on his favorite horse. When he returned he mentioned that he did of course have an heir, her cousin Seabstian whose education at university he had just begun to pay for.
Annabella had not liked that, “Who is this man that I have never met, to take your money to benefit himself.”
Annabella remembered her father’s answer and the hole incident. “He is my heir, and though your mother and I had plans to give you several siblings such was not the case.”
“It is why you must remarry. Ms. Elizabeth told me all about that the house and title will go to your son, but you have no son.” Ms. Elizabeth was her governess, and though she was so much older than Annabella, Annabella did think her quite pretty and brave as well. Quite acceptable to marry her father, even though he was a peer, and she was just the daughter of a vicar.
“I have no son, but I do have an heir. He is the grandson of my father’s cousin. My grandfather’s brother was the brother of this man’s great grandfather if I have it right. He is Sebastian Lennox and a credit all say. If he is not to be my heir, I understand that Sebastian has two other brothers, one already serving aboard ship in the navy as a midshipman, as the father of these boys had also served as a ship’s officer. The second brother expects I believe that I shall buy him his commission with the army.”
Annabella knew that she had no smart thing to say that would not have had her father giving her a scold. She had not liked getting such from her father when she had been ten. Now, she expected to get such from him quite often. “Father, if you remarry then certainly you will have a son. I will have a brother and a mother and it will be wonderful.”
When her father returned from his ride, he announced that with the fortnight, he would have chosen his bride and then the next day went to Town. It was a days ride at most from their lands in Somerset. It was so, the sister, of his great friend Sir Lambert Marlowe, Lady Emily had accepted his suit and they were to be married.
The banns were read twice, and then Lady Emily ran off to Gretna Greene and married another. Annabella had quite decided that she did not like Lady Emily at all. Annabella, found that Lady Emily was not worthy of any forgiveness for her actions. The Earl of course forgave the woman.
The following year, acting as if the matter had never occurred, he married Ms. Elisabeth. Seven years of marriage and there was no sign of a child. Countess Elizabeth had despaired that there ever would be. The last few years past, she had also been ill on several occasions.
Right after the last celebrations of the season she had been ill, and then as the dreaded day came when the house was thrown in upheaval, she had recovered to oversee the matter. As always, Annabella was sure the housekeeper, Mrs. Drake would be ordering one thing, and the Countess, who once was well below Mrs. Drake as governess, would order the staff to do something else.
Annabella loved the Countess, but her father had made a grave error when he had listened to Annabella and had not married someone from his own class. The Earl was well out of his league in raising a child, which Annabella now suspected, was why he had followed her instructions regarding marrying the governess when Lady Emily had run off.
Lady Emily had sought on occasion to make amends for the humiliation she had done the Lennox family, no doubt at Sir Lambert’s urging. There had been a strain between her father and Sir Lambert ever since. Annabella and the Countess had never allowed the Earl to take up Lady Emily’s card, nor had they ever called upon Lady Emily. Such just could not be done. The snub had been too deliberate on her part when she ran off to Greta Green. And now there was no force in heaven or on earth that could reconcile that woman to the Lennox family.
Though one should pity Lady Emily, Annabella would allow. Her husband did not live in wedded bliss for more than three months before he challenged a man to a duel, and was killed in it. Lady Emily was left a widow and no child emerged, she soon enough was left with little society beyond that of the Marlowe family and some few other friends of Sir Lambert and the Earl that did maintain a friendship still with the lady.
A mistake of the heart for a moment by Lady Emily and she was denied the love that Annabella was sure to have given her as her stepmother. Now that love lavished on Lady Elizabeth, where it was wasted for the Countess had fears that she did not deserve it.
There was a knock at the door, and then a maid entered without waiting for instructions. It meant that Annabella had remained in bed much too long. The servants would indulge their betters for only so long, and then they would take matters into their own hands. Now Annabella could speak first to Mary, but Mary was not going to speak to Annabella. The maid first placed a tray down on a small side table near the bed. It had a pot of tea, toast or scones depending on what Mrs. Hayes had sent up, jams for the breads, and perhaps some fruit, or a cup of oatmeal. If Annabella wanted anything more to eat, she would have to dress and go downstairs.
Mary had gone the large, nine foot high draperies and pulled them aside. Even if Annabella had asked her to stop, or ordered her to do so, it would do little good. Mrs. Drake had the staff well trained. Even the Earl would not escape his draperies being hauled back once the clock read the ninth hour. A peers family did not lie in bed all day unless they were ill. The only such thing that Mary would stop her singleminded attempt to bring the day’s brilliance into the room.
“I have left the red dress out for you.” Annabella hated that dress. Which is why Mary chose it, of course. Not to punish her, but wearing it today, meant that it would not be packed to go to London.
It meant that it would stay back at Combe Edinsley to be laundered. She would not see it again till August. It was a great kindness. One day, the dress might even disappear to the poor basket and be distributed to the less fortunate families who were tenants on the estate.
Annabella reached for the tray of food and juggled it onto the bed. She poured herself a cup of tea and thought about dressing to join her father and stepmother in the breakfast room, or to just eat what was before her and then summon back the maid to help her dress. Her abigail would help her with her hair and she would be presentable to join the Countess in the day room for an hour or two before something else came up for her to do.
The Earl had certainly made plans to spend the day out of the house, having mentioned before that the last place that it was intelligent to congregate would be Combe Edinsley. Last year he had spent skulking about the sables, telling the head groom that it was important his best show horses made it to Town. Then of course they did not. Or rather the horses did, but the Earl ignored them the entire season. And he had forgotten to send a riding horse from the stables to town for her or the Countess, who had rather spent time in her carriage. A visit had to have been made to Tattersalls to secure a good mount for Annabella.
For while his lordship liked to be seen in the House of Lords, Annabella had liked to be seen in the Park. She was not horse mad, but she did like to ride, and the Park was where one did so. Though most rode to be observed by the other members of the Ton. Annabella rode to get exercise, the wind splashing her face with its buffets made such moments free of thought of what occurred at St. James Square, the site of their London home, or Combe Edinsley when she rode about the demesne.
