Widows

You may remember that Eliza Harper Pierce, the next sister to gain her hero in this series, is a widow. One member of Sabrina’s Dames and Dukes asked what privileges widows had that unmarried ladies didn’t, so I thought I’d answer that. For one thing, Society looked the other way when a widow took a lover, as long as she was discreet. Nothing illustrates that more than a biographical sketch in the February 1810 La Belle Assemblee (page 59; read it for yourself here). It touted the Duke of Devonshire’s new wife, Lady Elizabeth Foster. What it didn’t mention was that Devonshire had made an honest woman of Lady Elizabeth after she’d been his mistress, living in his household as his wife’s closest friend, for decades. The first half of that time she was separated from her husband, and the second half, she was widowed. La Belle Assemblee mentions her only living son by her first husband, but doesn’t mention her two additional illegitimate children by the duke. She must have been discreet enough. Or perhaps the fact that her new husband was a duke was the deciding factor!

Calendar Houses

Halstead Hall is inspired by Knole in Kent. Both are calendar houses, which means their elements come in numbers you’d find in a calendar. Knole has 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances, and 7 courtyards. How does an owner even keep track of 365 rooms? Knole was once a palace, and many of its 17th century elements and furnishings have been preserved, which is understandable. While all the other lords were fixing up their grand country houses in the 18th and 19th centuries, I’m sure the lords who lived in Knole (there were several) couldn’t face the daunting task of renovating such a huge mansion! Anyway, I have pics of Knole on my Pinterest page for Hellions of Halstead Hall, if you’d like to see it. Or, since the National Trust now owns the place, you can go here to get a brief history and see some pics. Meanwhile, below are some lovely paintings of the house from the Victorian period.

New Orleans Creole

You may not know this but my husband is a New Orleans Creole, with his family going back more than two hundred years in Louisiana. One of his ancestors is Bernard de Marigny, who lived in New Orleans during our beloved Regency period in England. A wealthy Creole landowner, Bernard had so many offspring by his mistresses that he named a street “Good children” (Rue Des Bon Enfants, later changed to St. Claude). He also invented craps, the dice game, which is based largely on hazard, the British dice game, which he learned while spending time in England. But my husband has the only blue blood in our family, I’m afraid. I’m a mutt with Cajun, Irish, and English (or possibly Welsh) blood, and who knows what else!

All Sizes

Lady Diana Harper, the heroine in my new Designing Debutantes series, is statuesque (which I always wanted to be, but I’m too short). In her case, it means she’s not only tall but shapely. We have many misconceptions about history, but one of the biggest ones is that people were, as a general rule, thinner than we are. As Loretta Chase pointed out in a talk at a writer’s conference, we look at period garments and think, “Oh, how thin they were. Look at how small their waists were.” We extrapolate from that to assume that all Regency women were that small. What we don’t consider is that the gowns most often kept by women were their debut or wedding gowns, which come from periods in our lives when we’re at our smallest. Their everyday gowns were repurposed to make them more fashionable or handed down to the servants, who handed them down to the rag and bone shops. So we don’t get as many examples of the typical gowns of a matron. But all you have to do is look at a few satirical prints from the period to see plenty of women of all sizes, with big bottoms or thick waists or small breasts. (Check out this famous one by Thomas Rowlandson.) People are people, regardless of the historical period.

Conservatories

Many country houses had conservatories, but they could be as different as the families who lived there. The one pictured has lots of plants and plenty of space for socializing. Some had only a few plants; some were like inside forests. It was a way of nurturing exotic plants year-round, since essentially conservatories were greenhouses attached (sometimes) to the main houses. We’d probably call them sunrooms now. If you’d like to see a large detached one, check out the pics on my Pinterest page (Regency Tidbit board) for the one at Syon House. I’ve been there! It was built right around the Regency period.

Origin of Names

One question I get asked a lot is where I get the names for my characters. Mostly, I get them from a book: The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names (Christian names are first names, the name given at the baby’s baptism/christening). I consider myself fortunate to have been able to buy a copy years ago, since it’s now been long out of print. In addition to telling the origin and meaning of the name, it gives the periods when the name was popular and makes it clear when a name didn’t come into being until later.

But I also use the book to check a name’s suitability after I’ve picked a name for some other reason. For example, in Thorn and Ophelia’s story, I picked Mr. Juncker’s name from a Danish girlfriend I had in graduate school named Juncker. I wanted it to be German-sounding, and Juncker originated as a German surname. I also have a tendency to use Shakespearean names since I like Shakespeare’s works. Sometimes, a name just leaps into my head, and I use that one. But before I make it permanent, I always check for it in—you guessed it—The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names!

The Truth about Marriage

My favorite part about doing research is stumbling over real stories of people. We tend to have misconceptions about the past: Everyone married only once and died young is a popular one. The last part in particular isn’t true, because the data used to determine life expectancy factors in all the many children who died of illnesses that we now vaccinate for—polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. Here’s a case in point. The Duke of Leinster and his wife, one of the famous Lennox sisters, Emily, had 19 children. Of them, only 10 survived to adulthood. One died on the day of her birth although I couldn’t discover if she was stillborn. The last child was actually Emily’s illegitimate son by William Ogilvie, the tutor to her eldest son, although her duke husband claimed him. After her husband’s death, she married Ogilvie and had 3 more children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. She lived to the ripe old age of 82 and he died at 91. He was 18 years younger than she, but they lived happily together for 40 years. She must have been one amazing woman, and he must have been an amazing man. The woman bore 22 children in all. How incredible is that?

Illegitimacy

My Royal Brotherhood series is about three illegitimate sons of the Prince of Wales, whose term as Regent is what gave the period the name of “Regency.” Two of the three sons are actually considered legitimate by the laws of the time, so those two are able to have titles. English law dictated that if a child was born into a marriage, the father was legally the husband, no matter what he might say about it. And of course there was no way to tell in that period that the child was of a different father. Also, having a child by the Prince of Wales wasn’t exactly frowned upon, especially if the husband looked the other way. In fact, I loosely based Marcus, Viscount Draker and the hero of the second book, on George Lamb—fourth son of the first Viscount Melbourne—who was widely rumored to be Prinny’s son. It didn’t seem to have hurt him—George married a duke’s daughter!

Marriage

The concept of my series may seem farfetched: a woman marrying (and burying) three dukes in rapid succession (really, two dukes and a duke’s second son who becomes the duke) and having an assortment of children by them. But real-life debutante Elizabeth Gunning proved that it really was possible to marry well more than once. After taking society by storm as an actress, Elizabeth wowed London’s gentlemen with her beauty and talent. As a result, she ended up married to the Duke of Hamilton and bore him three children. After he died, she was briefly engaged to the Duke of Bridgwater before the engagement fell through. Then she married the Marquess of Lorne, who later inherited his father’s title of Duke of Argyll, and bore him five children. Eventually George III made her Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon in her own right. That’s quite a string of marital (and otherwise) successes for an actress!

Conservatories

Many country houses had conservatories, but they could be as different as the families who lived there. The one pictured has lots of plants and plenty of space for socializing. Some had only a few plants; some were like inside forests. It was a way of nurturing exotic plants year-round, since essentially conservatories were greenhouses attached (sometimes) to the main houses. We’d probably call them sunrooms now. If you’d like to see a large detached one, check out the pics on my Pinterest page for the one at Syon House. I’ve been there! It was built right around the period of my book.

Home Renovation

Even before the Regency, house renovation was becoming quite the thing. Horace Walpole took a nondescript cottage and redid it from the ground up to make it into the Gothic Revival villa Strawberry Hill. Some time after him, the first Duke of Northumberland renovated Syon House, but couldn’t finish because he ran out of money. You’d never be able to tell to look at it (yes, I’ve visited it; it’s lovely).

Letter Writing in the Regency

Letter-writing was a favorite Regency pastime — albeit a pricey one. The recipient bore the cost of delivery, which was calculated by the distance the courier had to travel. Long-winded epistles faced surcharges: the cost doubled for a second sheet of paper. People became quite crafty in using every bit of space a sheet of paper afforded. Some ladies were known to write horizontally, vertically and diagonally across the page. Envelopes didn’t exist, so letters were folded and sealed with a dab of melted wax.

James Hemings

As y’all know, I occasionally base my characters—both main and secondary—on real historical figures I read about. One of those will make his first appearance in Eliza’s book. He’s a well-known French chef and a man of color who works for Elegant Occasions. I was inspired by a man I’d read about recently: James Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings. He’s credited with introducing Americans to snow eggs and his version of mac and cheese, among other things. He learned about similar foods while training in France to be a chef, the first American to do so. He excelled to such a degree that he became chef de cuisine at the Hôtel de Langeac, Jefferson’s private residence, and the first American diplomatic embassy while he was in Paris. My character is French, not American, but he too has risen to prominence in England, as many French chefs did. He’ll also be in Verity’s book, which I’m presently plotting.

Prawlongs

You’ll probably be wondering, when Eliza’s book comes out in late March and prawlongs are mentioned several times, what exactly are prawlongs? Basically, they’re nuts or orange flowers or lemon or orange rinds coated once or twice in caramelized sugar. Sounds yummy, right? I’m not sure why pralines came to be called prawlongs, but they did. Just see Frederick Nutt’s 1807 cookbook, The Complete Confectioner, which has several recipes (although they contain no ingredient amounts; I haven’t had much luck finding that anywhere). The prawlongs I find most interesting are the pistachio ones, since they came in two colors—red and white. Here’s the red recipe:

Foods of England

Accidentally His is my foodie book, if there ever was one. After all, food is Verity’s life. In the process of researching, I’ve discovered this wonderful site called The Foods of England Project, which contains 60 out-of-print historical cookbooks, and thousands of recipes and dishes, with their histories. One of the dishes I used for the book is Mussel and Onion Stew, which is Rafe’s favorite. It comes from the West Country, which is where Rafe grew up and Verity’s father still lives. I’m not fond of mussels myself (which is odd, because I like just about every other shellfish), but I stumbled across the recipe and thought it might be fun to include. And there’s Duke’s Custard at the end of the book! (Literally—it shows up in the epilogue, but I call it trifle because that’s really what it is.) Now, that’s one I’d love to try.

Chocolate

While chocolate as we know it didn’t really exist in the Regency, there was a confectioner named Guglielmo Jarrin who created eggs out of rock sugar. He also had a recipe for created transparent hollow eggs of sugar that could then be filled with yellow cream so they resembled real eggs ala Cadbury Crème Eggs. I wish I could have seen these. They sound so cool! But there’s no way I could make them, even if I could find the lead moulds for them. If you want to try, however, you can check out The Italian Confectioner, available in its entirety online at Google Books.

Fried Potatoes (French Fashion)

Potatoes have long been a staple of both English and Irish cooking. Still, I was surprised to find a Victorian-era recipe for “Fried Potatoes (French fashion)” which is what I would consider potato chips. Check out Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (online at http://www.mrsbeeton.com). She talks about thin slices of potato fried in oil—if that’s not potato chips (or crisps, in British English), I don’t know what is. Mrs. Beeton was a Victorian lady who gathered household tips and recipes into the aforementioned book, which was published by her husband. I’d like to try the “Potato Snow” recipe. It sounds interesting (and far better than the real snow everyone has been experiencing).

Historic Foods – Pie

Thanksgiving is coming and to me that always means good food! Specifically pie. I love pie, both the savory kind and the sweet kind, but I rarely eat it because of all the carbs. Except on Thanksgiving and Christmas, that is. My English/Irish blood (as opposed to my Cajun blood) must be showing because the English/Irish like pie, too. They eat more savory ones than we do, but you can still find sweet pie recipes in the Regency. At Christmas, it would have been mincemeat pie primarily. It’s not the favorite of Cass from Seduction on a Snowy Night, if you’ll recall, but I like it. I remember my half-Irish grandmother in St. Louis making it every year. Here’s a nice history of mincemeat pie and a period recipe. And if you’re interested in other historic foods (although mostly from the early Georgian and the Victorian periods), you can’t go wrong with Historic Food.

Ice Houses

Most people assume that ice didn’t exist in summers during the Regency, but the wealthy did have access to it. Ice houses were big, deep wells where ice harvested from nearby frozen lakes (or sometimes ordered and brought in from the Arctic) was kept through the year. A well-built ice house could keep ice for as long as 18 months, which is pretty amazing. That’s how the famous Gunther’s in London managed to provide ice cream throughout the summers.

Ices and Ice Creams

There’s a scene in The Bachelor where Joshua, Gwyn, and Gwyn’s mother Lydia eat ice cream at Gunter’s. The wealthy did actually eat ice cream in summer during our period, using ice either shipped in from Norway or cut and placed in their own ice houses. Gunter’s was only the most famous purveyor of ices and ice creams. But the flavors were unusual by our standards. Muscadine ice was a lemon water or white currant ice scented with elderflowers. Flowers were popular flavors—lavender, bergamot, jasmine, and orange flower, for example—but there were also burnt filbert, rye bread, parmesan cheese, and tea flavors! One of these days I’m going to try my hand at some Regency ice cream. But I’ll skip the rye bread flavor!

Seafood

The English in our period were quite fond of seafood. My period cookbooks have recipes for such things as smoked fish soup, mackerel pie, fried anchovies, collared eel, and even boiled crayfish (yes, they have crayfish in England). You don’t find recipes for periwinkles and whelks because they were common food for the common people. But they’re mentioned in the famous cookbook by Mrs. Beeton (1861), where she has a table of how much seafood of every type was sold that year in London. Apparently, Londoners ate 4 million whelks (compared to half a million crabs and a million lobsters) and an astonishing 304 million periwinkles!

Turtle Soup

Turtle soup was common on menus in England going back to before the Regency. It had to always be included as a dish for the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, and was so popular (and so expensive) that the English even developed Mock Turtle Soup for those who couldn’t afford turtle meat. Mock turtle soup was traditionally made with a calf’s head, so if the idea of eating turtle makes you gag, you might like the mock version even less. Personally, having eaten plenty of it in New Orleans, I enjoy the real thing.

Valentine’s Day Lottery

In researching my scene for The Truth About Lord Stoneville, I found the most interesting Regency-era Valentine’s Day tradition: a lottery (I used it in the book, too). On Valentine’s Day evening, young people would draw names out of a hat to discover who would be their valentine for the coming year. It was supposed to be a predictor of matrimony. I did have some trouble understanding the logistics, since everyone drew a name. What if Mary drew George’s name, while George drew Joan’s? I wasn’t quite sure how that worked, so I . . . er . . . altered it a little. Call it poetic license, if you will. I still think it sounds like fun . . . unless, of course, you don’t draw the person’s name you want for a valentine.

May Day: Jack-in-the-Green

You may have scratched your head at the part of Eliza’s book about the Jack in the Green. It’s not as commonly known a May Day custom as the maypole, for example, but it does play a part in the festivities. Primarily for chimney sweeps, it was part of the usual May Day processions: The sweeps dressed up like bushes or trees (!!) and danced (or staggered, depending on their degree of drunkenness) down the street. Apparently, May Day was sometimes called Chimney Sweepers’ Day. I have no idea why. But here’s a fun picture of a Jack-in-the-Green and his drunken companions (colorized by the print owner).

Jack in the Green certainly does seem appropriate for celebrations of the coming of spring. You can read more about the custom here.

New Year’s Superstition

Why must I not bitch and moan about my back and neck pain? Because a big superstition connected to New Year’s Day in Regency England was that whatever you did on New Year’s Day, you were doomed to repeat for the entire year. Our Regency foremothers would particularly suggest that you avoid cleaning your house (you might sweep out your good luck, not to mention having to spend the coming year sweeping), getting into debt, leaving your cupboards bare (which might foretell poverty in the new year), and crying (which means you’ll be sad all year—duh!). Definitely do kiss your beloved (well, that one is probably more modern). And be sure to open your doors and windows just before midnight to let out the old year and beckon in the new one.

Holiday Music

It’s a bit early to talk about the holidays, but since my Christmas story is coming out any day now (and decorations are already showing up in places), I figure y’all will forgive me. Most people are unaware that many of our most popular Christmas carols don’t date back very far. “Silent Night” was first composed in 1818 and didn’t make it to other countries until decades later. “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” and “Away in a Manger” are mid-Victorian. All of our secular carols are from the 20th century and on. So instead of putting a carol in my Christmas story, I put phrases from an assortment of carols from all periods into the mouths of my unwitting characters. There are nine of them. Have fun finding them!

New Year’s Traditions

Although the U.S. has several New Year’s Day traditions, especially involving certain meals eaten for good luck, there was no such equivalent in most of Regency England. For that, we have to go farther north. While most of the English were engrossed in the countdown to Twelfth Night (on January 6th), those who lived up north joined the Scots in having big parties on Hogmanay. Hogmanay is New Year’s Eve and also spills over into New Year’s Day in its traditions. You may have heard of first-footers, who vied to be the first person to cross the threshold of a friend’s house in the New Year, and thus were bringers of good luck for the year. Gifts were carried in and distributed—salt, coal, shortbread, whisky, black bun (food and drink for the guests), and other items that might bring luck. But you probably don’t know about local customs—people bringing a decorated herring into the house (Dundee) or roaming the streets swinging fireballs (Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire) or baking special cakes (St. Andrews). I could go on, but suffice it to say, the Scots really knew how to celebrate the new year!

New Year’s Day

According to William Hone’s period tome, The Every Day Book, New Year’s Day in London was primarily celebrated with small social gatherings and the wearing of new clothes (out of a superstition that not doing so was unlucky—which Mr. Hone disparages). He also says, “The only open demonstration of joy in the metropolis, is the ringing of merry peals from the belfries of the numerous steeples, late on the eve of the new year, and until after the chimes of the clock have sounded its last hour.” I think I’d prefer that to fireworks.

Valentine’s Day

The Risk of Rogues takes place partly on St. Valentine’s Day, which was celebrated even then. Before Christmas cards became a thing in the Regency, St. Valentine’s Day cards were exchanged with loved ones. These were usually handmade and decorated, although in 1815, companies started mass-producing Valentines. In the Victorian age, a class of cards called “mocking Valentines” (“vinegar valentines” in the U.S.) started to be produced. Essentially, they insulted the person who received them. Can you imagine getting one of those in the mail? Especially since, at this time, it was the receiving party who paid the postage. Talk about adding insult to injury! Anyway, you can see a variety of Valentines from the period on my Pinterest page.

Greeting Cards

Did you know that the first British pre-printed greeting cards were valentines and not Christmas cards? Before the late Georgian era, people were sending elaborate hand-made valentines, with actual fabric lace and ribbons and other pretty trimmings. In 1797, a book was even released to provide unpoetical gentlemen with valentine sentiments: The Young Man’s Valentine Writer. In fact, handmade valentines out-sold pre-printed ones until the Victorian age began. It’s no wonder, when artists like Elizabeth Knipe Cobbold were creating intricate cut paper valentines with their own hand-written poetry, like this one on my Pinterest Guide to Regency valentines.

Regency Valentines

Regency Valentines were much the same as ours, except that they were home-made, because commercially produced cards weren’t yet available. Well, that’s sort of true. The decorations could be your own, but as usual, not everyone could come up with a good verse for their Valentine. So you could get books to tell you what to write. My favorite is Hymen’s Rhapsodies, or Lover’s Themes. A collection of original Valentine Verses Written expressly for this Work, for Gentlemen to Address Ladies in Sonnets, Superior to Any Other. Phew! That’s a long title. But at least you knew what you were getting when you bought it. There was even a book that gave you verses for various trades! And the author of the book, the title page of which is pictured below? It’s “Love.” Yes, Love itself wrote the book. Anyway, if you’d like to see some Regency-era valentines, you can visit my Pinterest page for them. You might also be interested in my guide to making your own Regency valentines. Have fun! For more Regency tidbits, click here.

A Valentine’s Day Limerick

You may not be aware, but it was considered unseemly for a Regency gentleman to write letters to a young lady or vice-versa. Communication was supposed to go through the parents. That didn’t stop ladies from checking the mail while Papa was preoccupied, of course, so papas were particularly careful on Valentine’s Day, which was when gentlemen (and rogues) sent valentines. Thus it was with some enjoyment that I read an old blog by Two Nerdy History Girls (authors Loretta Chase and Susan Holloway Scott) about a father who intercepted a couple of “obscene” Valentines before they could horrify his daughters. I found the original letter to the editor concerning this event and was greatly amused. Today the equivalent would be dirty pics in Messenger. In my day it was obscene phone calls. Apparently, in the regency, “depraved” valentines contained what were probably the equivalent of bawdy limericks. But I still wish I knew exactly what was in those valentines, don’t you?

April Fool’s Day

April Fool’s Day (aka All Fools’ Day) goes back at least to the 17^th century in England. In 1698, someone invited lots of people to go see a fictitious “washing of the white lions” at the Tower of London (where they used to keep the menagerie). It worked so well that some bright fellow in 1860 decided that the prank deserved a repeat and actually sent out invitations to the “washing of the white lions.” Several people showed up, only to find that there were no longer any lions at the Tower, much less any that needed washing.

Easter

Easter was a time for visiting family. Remember the long visit Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam make to Lady Catherine? It happens at Easter. While Easter celebrations didn’t yet include bunnies and chocolates, dyed hard-boiled eggs were part of them. Since eggs were generally given up for Lent, the excess hen eggs were saved by being boiled. They were even part of a traditional English Easter past-time called “egg rolling,” where people rolled their dyed, boiled eggs down hills to see who could roll theirs the farthest.

May Day

May Day has been celebrated throughout the United Kingdom for centuries, although the festivities had started dying out a bit during the Regency. Still, Jane Austen mentions the neighborhood maypole blowing down in a storm, and the Hampshire Chronicle speaks at length about the celebrations in 1815, which involved couples dancing in or on a flower-laden bower (I couldn’t picture this from the description). See this blog for more about these citations. Other parts of May Day included crowning a May Queen, and the more obscure practice of leaving small May baskets of treats for people.

Oktoberfest

Recently, I was surprised to discover that Oktoberfest goes back to before the Regency. I had no idea. In fact, the first celebration was in Munich, Bavaria (now considered part of Germany) in 1810 (when Thorn’s book is set and a year before the official Regency period begins). It began as a celebration of the marriage of the Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The wine and beer flowed, and there were performances by choirs and children in costume. But the main event was a grand race of thirty horses. Those elements have been part of it ever since, along with other typical festival events, and it’s been canceled only twenty-four times out of the 209 years it’s been held (for example, it was cancelled in 1813 because of the Napoleonic wars, and in 1854 due to a cholera epidemic). So you would be perfectly at home if you celebrated Oktoberfest in your Regency costume!

Halloween

The Regency contained little in the way of Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) celebrations. Although the holiday is essentially descended from Celtic celebrations of Samhain, the period marking the end of summer and beginning of harvest, it didn’t have much place in Regency England. But the bonfires associated with Samhain became part of the Guy Fawke’s Day revelry, which occurred on November 5^th and was meant to celebrate the arrest of an insurgent in 1605 England. So there was still plenty of trickery going on around All Hallow’s Eve.

Guy Fawkes Day

By now, you may have already read The Secret of Flirting, so you might be curious about my depiction of Guy Fawkes’ Day, especially if you’re English. Nowadays, it’s mostly an excuse to set off fireworks and light bonfires and to celebrate with family, but that wasn’t true in our period. This was right before the Reform Act of 1832, when a lot of class conflict existed. The Fifth of November, the anniversary of when the Gunpowder Plot was thwarted, became an excuse for rioting, day and night. Asking a penny for “the Guy” was also popular as boys went around with their effigies of Guy Fawkes and collected money for fireworks that night. I tried to incorporate as much of that in The Secret of Flirting as I could. You know me—I love a holiday!

I found some fascinating research on Guy Fawkes Day. Check out this article I pinned to The Secret of Flirting board on Pinterest to find out more about this drunken and sometimes destructive “holiday.”

Christmas Traditions

The hanging of greenery was the most common Christmas custom practiced by folks in the Regency. Dating back before our era was the custom of hanging a “kissing bough.” It could include not just mistletoe, but holly, ivy, rosemary, bay leaves, and laurel leaves. It was essentially a big ball of greens. And every time a gentleman kissed a lady (or a maid or a dowager or any female), he had to remove one of the mistletoe berries. Once the berries were gone, no more kissing was allowed. What great fun! If you’d like to see some actual kissing boughs, as well as prints of the kissing going on beneath them, be sure to check out my Pinterest page for What Happens Under the Mistletoe.

One thing that comes from England is fruit cake (our version of plum pudding), and there’s both goose and turkey in Scrooge’s story. Also, the Yule log and the hanging of holly, ivy, and mistletoe are English. You can thank those ancient Celtic druids for mistletoe—they loved it in their winter celebrations. No one is entirely sure whether the Yule Log originated in Anglo-Saxon times or much later, in the 17^th century (the first English reference to it is dated from then), when someone brought the custom over from Europe. But it tended to be a regional phenomenon in our period. Those in North England called it the Yule Clog, and it was generally started from a piece of the previous year’s log that was kept all year to bring good luck and protection from evil to the household.

Christmas Meal

You may think I’m beginning a bit early to think about the Christmas meal, but I’m right on time according to British tradition. I’m writing this on the Thursday before Stir-up Sunday (this year on November 22nd), which is the day everyone in Regency England would have been “stirring up” their Christmas plum pudding. I’m sure plenty of you already know this, but British plum pudding is more like our U.S. fruitcake in its consistency and ingredients. What we call pudding is what the Brits would call custard or blancmange … but I digress. Stir-up Sunday always falls on the Sunday before Advent Sunday. There’s a complicated reason for why it’s called Stir-up Sunday, having to do with the Anglican liturgy, but the upshot of it is that plum pudding has to be prepared and cooked well in advance, and apparently it takes a lot of people to stir it up. (It sounds a bit like churning butter to me, and that’s hard.) After all, you need to have some strength left in your arm for hauling Yule logs and a Christmas tree!

Christmas

The Dickensian Christmas is pretty close to how a Regency Christmas was, since Dickens was born early in the Regency period. There are no trees or stockings in A Christmas Carol, just lots of food, dancing, Christmas carols, and party games as well as greenery. Much of what we think of as an English Christmas did not come into being until the Victorian age. Christmas trees come from Germany, and the Dutch brought Sinterklaus to America long before Santa ever showed up in London.

That’s true of stockings as well, which is why I showed them as an anomaly in ’Twas the Night After Christmas (set in 1826). After Lady Devonmont reads the American poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (aka “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), she decides it would be great fun to make stockings. But the custom of hanging them was practiced in America long before it started being practiced in England, because it was brought there by Dutch and German immigrants. The first reference I can find to it in England is in 1854. Eventually it became a big part of a Victorian Christmas.

Twelve Days of Christmas

The whole “Twelve Days of Christmas” song comes from the twelve days between Christmas Day and January 6^th (Epiphany). In the Regency, Christmas was more of a religious celebration but Twelfth Night (either January 5^th or January 6^th—no one seems to agree which “night” it is) was a party. They had Twelfth Night Cake or what we call “king cake” in New Orleans. There were parlor games and balls, and a good time was had by all. Maybe that’s why the last four days of the song are about lords leaping, ladies dancing, pipers piping, and drummers drumming. Partay!!

Twelfth Night

For Twelfth Night in Regency England, the custom of choosing a king and queen from whomever got the bean and pea in the twelfth-cake evolved into choosing characters out of a hat to pretend to be for the evening, a sort of masquerade. In some cases, they wore masks and the person was required to remain in character the entire night. Sounds like fun to me.

Twelfth Night – King Cake

One Mardi Gras custom that New Orleanians have in common with the people of Regency England is that of the King Cake. In the Regency it was served on Twelfth Night (January 5th), the night before Epiphany (January 6th), but in New Orleans it’s served on Epiphany/Kings’ Day (or as it’s called in some Catholic countries, Three Kings’ Day, for the Three Wise Men). In both Regency England and modern-day New Orleans, the cakes have something hidden inside—a bean or a coin for Twelfth Night cakes and a plastic baby for King Cakes. If you get the slice of a Twelfth Night cake containing the bean or coin, you’re designated king for the party. If you get the baby in a New Orleans King Cake, you have to bring King Cake to the next party (in offices, someone generally brings a King Cake every Friday, and sometimes every day, beginning on January 6th and going until Mardi Gras!). After Mardi Gras comes Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. As you might imagine, after living in New Orleans for years, I felt quite at home with Regency England’s celebration of Twelfth Night and Epiphany!

Boxing Day

The term “Boxing Day” actually shows up during our period, but the concept of giving a “box” to the poor or to those in service began much earlier, at least as far back as the Middle Ages. I read an account from the mid-18^th century that described a man with a comfortable income giving anywhere from a shilling to a half-a-crown to servants and several merchants he had dealings with. On a large estate, the owner might give boxes of food and other gifts to each tenant and servant. It mirrors the American practice of offering Christmas gifts to public servants or business associates, except that in countries which practice it, it occurs the day AFTER Christmas.

Somerset

If you’re wondering how a man can inherit a dukedom from his distant cousin, take a look at the Duke of Somerset’s family tree (you’ll have to click “show”). The dukes of Somerset bounced all around that tree. The 8th duke was the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the duke whose title was previously inherited by his distant cousin, the 7th duke. I think. My eyes started glazing over when I tried to figure out what cousin that would make them. Lots of removes. Look up primogeniture and you will understand why only certain males in the tree could inherit the dukedom. It’s fascinating stuff, but so complicated it makes me reluctant to tackle my own family tree, which isn’t nearly as illustrious. I’m pretty sure King Henry VIII is not one of my ancestors!

Bridgewater

Geoffrey from A Duke for Diana is partly inspired by an actual duke who was responsible for countless canals in England: the Duke of Bridgewater (I kid you not—that was his name). He was dubbed the “Canal Duke” because he had so many of them built or expanded. Interestingly, he never married. He was engaged to the Dowager Duchess of Hamilton (the former Elizabeth Gunning, noted society beauty), but broke it off. The Dowager Duchess went on to become the wife of a marquess who became the Duke of Argyll (so she was married to two dukes and engaged to one), and she also gave birth to four dukes (only two dukedoms, though). Thus, SHE is the inspiration for Lydia, the mother of the three dukes in the Duke Dynasty series. Hey, I take my inspiration where I find it!

Business Ventures

A Duke for Diana’s Elegant Occasions isn’t as farfetched as you might think. Although it was frowned upon for aristocratic women to be “in trade,” certain types of business ventures were tolerated in such ladies. A well-known one was hiring oneself out to “sponsor” a young lady for her debut. Normally, a woman’s mother or other close relative presented her at the Queen’s drawing room for the first time. But what if the young lady is an orphan and all her female relations are dead or not interested? Then she could actually hire a respectable lady of rank to present her. I just chose to . . . expand the practice a bit. Of course, there were the usual impoverished ladies who became governesses or companions, but there were also ladies who supported themselves by designing for Wedgwood (Lady Templeton, Lady Diana Beauclerk), along with novelists (lots of those), artists (a surprising number of those), and even a sculptor or two. I stumble across them so often that I keep a list!

The Importance of Pencils

Today I’m going to talk about pencils, because the quill gets all the attention for Regency writing implements. But seriously, I had to do so much research to figure out why people lick the tips of pencils before they start writing (because I wanted my heroine to do it, naturally), that I figured I would fob some of my knowledge off on you. The answer to that question is complicated, but the fluid does make certain kinds of pencils write better. Anyway, you may already know that the writing part of pencils isn’t made of lead, but of graphite. The pencils in the Regency were probably from graphite sawn from a large deposit discovered in Cumbria, England, in the 1500’s. Pencils in England continued to be made from that deposit until the 1860’s. The pencils in Germany, however, were made from a mix of graphite powder and clay developed by a German at the end of the 1700’s. Fun fact: during the Napoleonic Wars, the French couldn’t get pencils from England or from Germany (both were their enemies), so a French officer in Napoleon’s army independently invented his own graphite powder and clay mixture to enable the French to have pencils. Who knew that pencils were so important?

Embalming

In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d talk about something rather grisly: embalming. Although it wasn’t popular in the Regency, the rich did tend to do it, especially since it enabled them to have open caskets for public funerals. So Olivia has a legitimate concern when she worries that if Grey’s father was embalmed, she might not be able to tell if he was poisoned. Every undertaker had different embalming methods at this time. How do I know? Because I stumbled across a very interesting source—Civil War era undertakers who shared their “recipes” for embalming fluid in The Era formulary: 5000 Formulas for Druggists! Most of the embalming ones contain arsenic in the form of arsenious acid. Eventually, formaldehyde replaced arsenic in embalming fluid, but that happened after the Civil War. You can find the entire formulary here.

Guns during Regency

Guns during the Regency were sometimes things of beauty, like the one I describe in The Bachelor that Thorn offers to Joshua as payment for his being bodyguard to Gwyn. If you want to see what it looked like, I based it on an actual set of dueling pistols, a picture of which is on Pinterest here and here. I also have an image of Joshua’s seven-shot flintlock pepperbox pistol, made by Henry Nock of London around 1800, which looks big enough to use as a club after you run out of loaded barrels. Of course, it would take you a while to run through them all since the barrels had to be turned by hand! My Pinterest page for the book also features a number of blades in canes, pistol canes . . . everything you need to be a bodyguard.

Where did we get the term “Regency”?

Do you know where we get the term “Regency” for the period? (If you do, you can hum “God Save the Queen” while I explain.) It covers the time when the Prince of Wales, George Augustus Frederick (aka Prinny), stepped in as Regent for his father, King George III (aka the King George Americans fought against because of his taxation policies aka Mad King George), because he was, well, unable to run the country. So technically the Regency Period began in 1811 and ended in 1820, 200 years ago this month, when George III died and George IV became king. But for purposes of looking at periods in terms of their culture, fashions, ideas, etc., many people consider the Regency period to stretch from either 1783 or 1795 to 1830 or 1837 (when Victoria came to the throne). That’s why there’s such a wide range of dates in our books!

Embalming

In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d talk about something rather grisly: embalming. Although it wasn’t popular in the Regency, the rich did tend to do it, especially since it enabled them to have open caskets for public funerals. So Olivia has a legitimate concern when she worries that if Grey’s father was embalmed, she might not be able to tell if he was poisoned. Every undertaker had different embalming methods at this time. How do I know? Because I stumbled across a very interesting source—Civil War era undertakers who shared their “recipes” for embalming fluid in The Era formulary: 5000 Formulas for Druggists! Most of the embalming ones contain arsenic in the form of arsenious acid. Eventually, formaldehyde replaced arsenic in embalming fluid, but that happened after the Civil War. You can find the entire formulary here.

Officer Commissions

In both The Secret of Flirting and The Risk of Rogues I mention that Hart sold his commission. In case you don’t know what that means, during the Georgian, Regency, and partway through the Victorian periods, the British army (but not the British navy, apparently) used a system by which gentleman could buy a commissioned officer rank, beginning at cornet or ensign, and then purchase commissions to rise in rank (up to the rank of colonel). These commissions weren’t cheap, by any means (go to this page about officer’s commissions to see the costs). A commission as a cornet cost 450 pounds in 1837, which is equivalent to 38,000 pounds now ($50,473.88). And you can well imagine how much it cost to become a major. So Hart, a younger son of a rich marquess, could easily go up the ranks to captain. That’s why you always hear about younger sons of rich men going into the military. Once they decided to retire, they could sell their commissions for the total amount of money they spent and have a nice nest egg. That’s what Hart did. It’s more complicated than I’m making it sound (some regiments, like the Royal Artillery, used merit for advancement, and there were other restrictions), but this is the system in a nutshell. Now you know why some of those officers were so young (and incompetent).

Spies & Spycraft

The truth about spying in the Regency is we know little about it. I’ve seen raging debates on author websites in which authors both proclaimed it didn’t really exist and proclaimed the opposite (see the debate here). I would imagine that the point of having spies is not to have them be noticed. Ahem. Anyway, aside from the book mentioned in the comments of the debate, there is also The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes about Sir George Scovell, who was knighted for breaking the French codes. Colquhoun Grant very famously sent intelligence to Wellington as he sneaked around Paris, having escaped his captors. There is some possibility that Mary Nesbitt, too, was a spy. As a courtesan and artist’s model who later became a merchant banker’s wife, she was supposedly sent to France during the Revolution to move in diplomatic circles and report back to English prime minister William Pitt. So, yes, there’s some evidence of spies. Enough for me to use in a book, anyway!