J. A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings: georgian england

Showing posts with label georgian england. Show all posts

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 24: Living Decoration: The Ornamental Hermit

Over at the EFHA blog, I discuss a most curious trend in the Georgian England.

For the Georgian landowner who has everything: the ornamental hermit.

Friday, April 19, 2013

A Return to Meryton: An interview with Maria Grace

1) Please tell us about All the Appearance of Goodness (or pray tell, if you would).

All the Appearance of Goodness is the third part of the Given Good Principles series. The first two parts set the backstory for the hero and heroine, this book is the story of their meeting. It works as a standalone, although many prefer reading the full series.

Here’s a brief story blurb:

What is a young woman to do? One handsome young man has all the goodness, while the other the appearance of it. How is she to separate the gentleman from the cad?

When Darcy joins his friend, Bingley on a trip to Meryton, the last thing on his mind is finding a wife. Meeting Elizabeth Bennet changes all that, but a rival for his affections appears from a most unlikely quarter. He must overcome his naturally reticent disposition if he is to have a chance of winning her favor.

Elizabeth’s thoughts turn to love and marriage after her sister Mary’s engagement. In a few short weeks, she goes from knowing no eligible young men, to being courted by two. Both are handsome gentleman, but one conceals secrets and the other conceals his regard. Will she determine which is which before she commits to the wrong one?

2) What got you interested in revisiting Pride and Prejudice?

It was one of those things that just happened. At the time, I was a college professor and in the course of some research I was doing, I happened across several Jane Austen Fan Fiction communities and got hooked. I ‘lurked’ a lot and never had any intentions of writing anything of my own. Reading the stories posted there was a welcome break from the intense academic reading I was doing at the time. Little did I know, my creative juices were getting a fresh kick start in the process.

3) Unlike many works that revisit Austen's characters and settings, this book doesn't explore Pride and Prejudice from a different POV or give us a sequel, it's more a retelling of the story with rather different takes on some of the characters and their interactions. Why did you choose this approach?

The Given Good Principles series is more of a ‘what if’ story than a retelling or a sequel. My academic background is in sociology, economics and psychology, so I find myself drawn to understanding why characters behave and react as they do. This naturally leads to wondering how a situation might be different if key components were different.

About this same time, I experienced a personal situation in which two influential individuals I was associated with did not behave in line with the beliefs they espoused. The end results were extremely painful for me. In the process of dealing with the fallout from the situation, I recalled the line from near the end of Pride and Prejudice where Darcy notes that he was given good principles as a child, but left to follow them in vanity and conceit.

I got to wondering how the people in my own life, and the character Darcy could have been taught to follow their ‘good principles’ effectively and what difference that might have made. Though real life doesn’t find solutions so easily, I was able to conceive of a believable way Darcy might have been different, through the introduction of Mr. Bradley, curate of the Kympton living mentioned as being part of the Pemberley estate. Mr. Bradley is a wise sage who all but refuses to give advice. Instead he prefers to challenge people, especially Darcy wrangle with difficult issue and come to conclusions that they do not always like. In truth, he is the sort of person I hope to be some day.

4) Historical writing, even in a already defined setting, requires knowledge of the period. Please tell us a bit about the research that goes into your writing process.

It is a good thing that graduate school left me with a love of research! Even more important, after two years researching a master’s thesis and four spend researching my doctoral dissertation, if there was one thing I knew how to do, it was research.

Using MS One Note (which is part of most MS Office packages and people don’t even know they have!) I have extensive electronic notebooks for my research collection. For printed matter, I have either scanned it in or typed the relevant passages in. On-line materials I have links to the original sites and relevant segments and pictures copied into my files. I have sections of everything from food, etiquette, language ad expressions, transportation, taxes, military, money, legal system, medicine, mourning…I could go on and one. Each entry is tagged with words I might use to search for the topic so I can find it when I need it.

Early on it felt like I spent and equal amount of time researching as I did writing. It has gotten a little better now, but I am reluctant to try to write in any other historical period now since I would have to start the whole process over again.

5) What do you find particularly interesting and appealing about the late Georgian period vs. other periods of English history?
The Georgian/Regency era is a period of major social upheaval. It is a transition period leading up to the industrial revolution which changed everything forever. People during this era were trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world and cope with a rewriting of the society as they knew it. Needless to say I find it fascinating.

6) Please tell us briefly about your other works.
The first two of the Given Good Principles series, Darcy’s Decision and The Future Mrs. Darcy, tell the story of the main characters coming to grips with their character flaws before they meet in the third book.

7) Where can readers find out more about you?

My website, Random Bits of Fascination is my online home (AuthorMariaGrace.com). I’d love readers to stop by and pay a virtual visit.

You can also catch up with me on Facebook (facebook.com/AuthorMariaGrace), Twitter (@WriteMariaGrace), English Historical Fiction Authors (EnglshHistoryAuthors.blogspot.com), and Austen Authors (AustenAuthors.net).

8) Where can readers find your books?

My author’s page on Amazon lists all my books on that site: amazon.com/author/mariagrace

The Future Mrs. Darcy and All the Appearance of Goodness are also available on Nook at Barnes and Noble.

IndieBound.org and BooksAMillion.com carry my paperbacks.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 22: The Handsome Master of Acids: Sir Humphry Davy

The original version of this post appeared on the English Historical Fiction Authors Blog.

Often when thinking about the late Georgian Era and the Regency Period, it’s easy to fixate on the many cultural and political changes that occurred. Controversial and charismatic men like Lord Byron challenged social mores, and decades of war, in the form of the Napoleonic Wars, presented an ever-present additional stress to a country that was already undergoing rapid change due to industrialization partially facilitated by many other legal and social changes, such as land reform.

Sometimes lost in discussions of aspects of the period such as industrialization is that the late Georgian Era was also a time of impressive scientific progress. It is easy, in the light of modern genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and control of nuclear power to be dismissive of the achievements of these “natural philosophers” who set the stage for the massive advances in science and technology that define the modern human condition such as Sir Humphry Davy.

He was born into a respectable, though untitled and not particularly wealthy family in 1778 in Penzance. As a young child both at home and school, he quickly demonstrated above-average intelligence, concentration, dedication, and attention to detail, all traits that would serve him well. He also had the fortune, while as a student, to have as an early mentor one, Robert Dunkin. Though Mr. Dunkin’s background was more business than anything, he had a keen interest in many areas of burgeoning interest in natural philosophy, and, in particular, inculcated in young Sir Humphry the principles of the experimental method and exposed to him devices such as the Leyden Jar (a sort of primitive capacitor that can store static electricity) and other apparatuses that would kindle an interest in electricity and exploring the principles behind electrochemistry. He would remain friends with and discuss scientific principles with Mr. Dunkin even after leaving his tutelage.

After the death of Sir Humphry’s father in 1794 (he was fifteen at the time), the boy was apprenticed to a surgeon. This proved fortuitous for his growing interest in chemistry, as it gave him a ready supply of reagents with which to experiment, not, if some of the anecdotes and statements of the time are accurate, with the greatest attention to personal safety.

A chance encounter with Davies Giddy, a member of the Royal Society, led to Sir Humphry’s introduction to a number of men of science and engineering. He was given the chance to experiment in more dedicated and well-equipped laboratories and exposure to certain electrochemistry phenomenon that were being actively explored at the time, such as the galvanic corrosion (due to the copper and iron construction) of floodgates in the city of Hayle. Though there was initially some resistance by his surgical master (who wanted Davy to stay as a surgeon in Penzance) Davy would eventually leave Penzance with Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a physician and writer.

In 1798, Sir Humphry joined the Pneumatic Institute, a research center founded by Dr. Beddoes to study the medical applications of newly discover gases (particularly oxygen and hydrogen). Well at the Institute, Sir Humphry spent a particular amount of time studying nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas), but, unfortunately, the potential as anesthesia seems to have escaped him (as it would many others) for several decades. Again, while at the Institute, he continued to not always practice what would we consider modern safe experimental practice and nearly killed himself more than once in the pursuit of knowledge. Indeed, in later years, he damaged his vision due to an accident with a laboratory acid experiment.

He also published several scientific studies and continued his intense work into electrical conductors and galvanic electrochemical reactions. In addition, he had the time to establish connections with a variety of men of influence, both scientific and otherwise, including James Watt (the Scottish master of the steam engine whose work was pivotal to the industrial revolution) and poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

With the establishing of the Royal Institution, a major multi-disciplinary research organization in London, Sir Humphry made the move to London and, as it were, the big time. His youth, handsome looks, and dramatic public lectures that included flashy chemical demonstrations quickly turned his lectures into a popular event. He also qas not one to downplay the perceived importance of his own work, as can be seen from this excerpt from an 1801 lecture on galvanism:

“The relations of galvanism to the different branches of physical science, are too numerous and too extensive to be connected with the preceding details; and, although in their infancy, they will probably long constitute favourite subjects of investigation amongst philosophers, and become the sources of useful discoveries…

The connexion of galvanism with philosophical medicine is evident. The electrical influence in its common form, as excited by machines, has been employed with advantage in the cures of diseases; in a new state of existence it may possibly be possessed of greater and of different powers.”

For several years, Sir Humphry explored electrochemistry and gas chemistry. Among other things, he was the first to isolate magnesium, potassium, boron, and barium. Although he did not discover chlorine (that honor belongs to the Swedish chemistry Carl Scheele), he gave the substance its current name and also proved several important facts about chlorine, such as the fact that pure chlorine contains no oxygen, would have important impacts on the formation of acid-base chemistry.

In 1812, his various contributions to science had earned him a knighthood (thus he finally actually become Sir Humphry). He married and along with his wife traveled to the Continent in 1813. He was also accompanied by his assistant, a man who would go on to be another pivotal figure in science, Michael Faraday. Unfortunately, in later years, Sir Humphry's ambition and suspicion would cause him to have a falling out with Faraday (who, among other things, he accused of plagiarism).

During the next couple of years in Europe, he received a medal from Napoleon (yes, that Napoleon) for his scientific work, demonstrated iodine was an element and proved diamond was pure carbon.

When he returned to England in 1815, he worked on a number of projects, including improved coal mining lamps with wire gauze that would not leak gas into the environment, which, unfortunately may have inadvertently lead to increased mine-related deaths by encouraging workers to probe more deeply into areas of mines they would have previously avoided due to safety concerns.

He also expanded on his acid-base theories to classify acids as substances with metal-replaceable hydrogen groups and bases as substances that formed water and a salt when combined with an acid. These definitions are not as specific as the more modern Lewis and Bronsted-Lowry Acid-Base definitions but were useful enough to help facilitate a considerable amount of brilliant electrochemistry and acid-base chemistry in the decades after Davy’s death.

For those of you unfamiliar with chemistry, please note that the number of realms that electrochemistry and acid-base chemistry touch are vast. Indeed, for the latter, proper understanding of acid-base chemistry is critical for everything from understandings of drugs and biochemistry to industrial manufacturing. Obviously, Sir Humphry did not fully develop our understanding of this area, but he made very important contributions to the areas for others to build on.

In 1819, his continued contributions to science were recognized by the awarding of a baronetcy (an inheritable non-peerage title, unlike knighthoods which are non-inheritable non-peerage titles). It should be noted this put him above, at the time, higher in honors for science work than even the master of physics, Sir Isaac Newton.

He died in 1829 from a heart problem. Although Sir Humphry’s name is less recognizable to many than someone like Michael Faraday, his work was important and influential and echoes even today in the twenty-first century in a wide variety of applications ranging from hybrid cars to sensor design.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 21: Gambling, The Profitable (and Costly) Vice

Although I covered some of this material when I discussed whist, I've written an article for the EFHA blog with a slightly more expansive discussion of gambling in Regency England.

Please check it out at the EFHA blog.

Monday, September 24, 2012

The Next Big Thing: A Woman of Proper Accomplishments

EFHA associate Mary Thornell tagged me in a recent meme. Usually, I'm not all that into these sorts of things, but even I can cut loose now and again. So, here I go then:

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1. “What is the title of your work in progress?”

A Woman of Proper Accomplishments

2. “Where did the idea come from for the book?”

I've always had a long fascination with the English Regency period. At the same time, I'm a bit of a fantasy nerd. A few years back I entertained the idea of injecting a bit of magic into the Regency, but I was under the impression there wouldn't be much interest in such a book outside my own fevered imagination. I stumbled upon several, though, and that convinced me it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I was heavily influenced by some of the more adventure-driven Georgette Heyer narratives. I want a bit of period romance, with a touch of adventure and magic.

3. “What genre does your book fall under?”

Depends on who you ask. I've been calling it Regency paranormal romance. Some might call it historical fantasy. There's a bit of an alternative history element because of the introduction of magic into the setting (by Benjamin Franklin, no less!), but it's not really about exploring historical divergences is as much as playing around with a romantic narrative that seems plausible in a Regency England that has a bit of magic (even if the people in the story insist, insist, and insist some more that they aren't doing magic).

The only reason I'm not totally set on calling it a paranormal romance is although the center-point is the growing romance between characters, and there is a happy romantic ending with smooching and all that (yes, this is a old-fashioned "sweet" romance; no bodices are ripped), certain elements aren't totally wrapped up by the end. So, arguably, it's not a true "Happily-Ever-After" as much as a "Happy Right Then." Mostly, that's because it's the first part of trilogy with a plot. I'll talk more about that in a bit.

4. “Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?”

Oh, I honestly don't know.

5. “What is the one sentence synopsis for your book?”

Helena Preston, rthe daughter of a rural gentleman of modest means, finds her romantic interest in a gentleman scholar of spiritus, the rare ability to imbue life into objects, complicated by his possible involvement with a criminal.

6. “Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?”

I'm still exploring my options at this time.

7. “How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?”

It took about three months to write the first draft. That was...a while ago. I've gone through many drafts since then.

8. “What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?”

I think if people like books like The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, or Shades and Milk and Honey, they would probably enjoy my book, though there's a bit more of an adventure element in my book than something like Shades.

I was trying to be more "Heyer adventure with magic" and not so much "Austen with magic."

9. “Who or what inspired you to write this book?”

Oh, just my twin interests in Regency England and fantasy, and the various fine examples of the historical Georgian fantasy that I encountered several years back.

10. “What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?”

Despite the inclusion of magic and the alternative history elements (among other things, the Americans lost the Revolution), I've actually strived very hard to make this book accurate to the Regency period. That might seem absurd given the present of magic, but I thought it'd help with versimilitude. I've studied the period extensively, including primary source letters and materials, and try to capture period-appropriate social details, references, et cetera.

I even went so far as to check that almost every word I used in the book, both in the narrative and in the dialog existed at the time of the story (1811) and also did my best to use it appropriate to the context of the time. It's surprising what was around then that meant exactly the same as today and what common words and even greetings weren't around back then.

Initially, I even went so far as to try and closely model my dialog patterns after period dialog, but several beta readers found it more distracting than immersive, so I've admittedly modernized the syntax a bit. I sprinkle in Regency slang here and there, but not so much that it's distracting (I hope).

This is actually the first of a trilogy. Each book will involve a different main lead and be a romantic adventure continuing in the backdrop of an increasingly heating up Napoleonic Wars that are unfolding slightly different than they did in our history due to increasingly sophisticated use of weaponized spiritus.

The second book will focus on the Helena Preston's flightly francophile friend, Cassandra, and the third book will focus on Helena's more uptight younger sister, Sophia.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 20: A Shocking Catalogue of Human Depravity: Patrick Colquhoun's cataloging of London Crime

This is part of my continuing series on Regency England and Georgian England. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please check out my archive here.

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Preventive policing and crime statistics seem obvious tools to us today, but in the final years of the 18th-century, Patrick Colquhoun helped introduce the concepts into the discussions of early police reform efforts in London.

Over at the English Historical Fiction Authors Blog, I discuss Colquhoun and his treatise on crime that he declared a "shocking catalogue of human depravity."

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 18: Guerrillas and the Peninsular War: What's the French Word for Ulcer?

This is part of my continuing series on Regency England and Georgian England. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please check out my archive here.

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Napoleon's failures in Russia are well-known, but even before that invasion, the "unstoppable" French Imperial Army struggled in the Peninsular War against another set of foes that weren't helped nearly as much by the weather.

Over at the English Historical Fiction Authors Blog, I discuss the guerrilla forces that gave Napoleon such trouble.

Friday, April 13, 2012

An Autumn Duchess in Georgian England: An interview with Lucinda Brant

Today I'm talking with Georgian period author Lucinda Brant, one of my associates from the English Historical Fiction Authors Blog.

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1) Tell us about your most recent book.

AUTUMN DUCHESS: A Georgian Historical Romance is the third in my Roxton Series (though it can be read as a stand alone). The story revolves around the widowed Antonia, Dowager Duchess of Roxton, and how she overcomes the devastating loss of the love of her life to find love again. It’s three years since the death of the Duke and she’s still wearing mourning. Her son is worried for her sanity. Bursting into Antonia’s life is East India Merchant Jonathon Strang, a man who has great self-belief. He knows what he wants and will do what it takes to get it. He’s a self-made man who doesn’t conform to Polite Society’s rules and doesn’t care what others think of him. Antonia instantly captivates him, and her happiness becomes paramount to all other considerations.

Antonia is the heroine of NOBLE SATYR, Book 1 in the Roxton Series, so readers tell me I was very brave to write Antonia’s story after the death of her beloved Duke, but also, they have thanked me for doing so. I felt compelled to write her story because I always wondered in stories where the heroine is much younger than the hero, as is the case in NOBLE SATYR, what happens when the much older hero dies and she is left alone? In AUTUMN DUCHESS, the situation is reversed; Antonia has this younger man falling at her feet, and she is all at sea!

2) Can you tell us a little about how you went about developing your female lead, Antonia? Did you have a particular inspiration for her?

In NOBLE SATYR Antonia is much younger than her first husband, the Duke of Roxton. She is full of life and optimism, and in love with the Duke. She wants him and won’t hear any argument against the union. She believes their marriage is fated. In Book 2 MIDNIGHT MARRIAGE, which is about Antonia and Roxton’s eldest son Julian and his arranged marriage to an heiress, Antonia is a confident, mature woman – a duchess, a wife and a mother, but she is still playful and joyous and is the glue that binds the family together. Despite the Duke’s ailing health, she believes he is an unstoppable force. So by Book 3, AUTUMN DUCHESS, three years after her Duke’s death, Antonia’s life has unraveled completely and she is in a very dark place. It takes a very special hero to bring her back into the light.

3) This is the third book in your Roxton series. Can you tell us a little about the series? Does a reader need to start with book 1 or can they step into book 3?

There are 6 or 7 books planned for the Roxton Series, which follows the lives of one aristocratic family, their cousins and friends from the 1740s up until the mid 1780s. I will stop short of the French Revolution, which I don’t like at all. Each book can be read as a standalone. You don’t need to read them in order either. But to have the total “Roxton immersive experience” read them in order. I have had readers begin with Book 2 MIDNIGHT MARRIAGE and also begin with BOOK 3 AUTUMN DUCHESS, and then read the other books in the series, and it hasn’t interfered with their reading enjoyment.

4) You've written five books in Georgian England. What is it about Georgian England that you find so appealing?

You think this would be the easiest question to answer for a Georgian Junkie such as myself, but it isn’t! I have always loved history and studied to be a historian/political scientist at university but from a young age it was the Georgian era that had me hooked. Perhaps I lived there in a previous life?

The 18th Century is a time of great change and adventure. Continents were being discovered; there were still unchartered waters. Steam power, the birth of manufacturing – mass production, the beginning of the consumerist society, people moving to cities yet it was still an agrarian society, so there was still lots of green spaces surrounding London and Paris. It was the birth of humanism, naturalists and naturalism, science experimentation, societies for arts, sciences and literature were founded at this time. New plants, animals and food were being discovered. Oh and I must mention the clothes! Absolutely gorgeous fabrics, wonderful shoes, men in lace, velvet and high-heeled shoes – the first truly metrosexual males, and those outrageous wigs! What fun!

5) We live in a populist age. Status and titles are often viewed with a critical eye. Despite that, readers continue to gobble up tales of the past about titled aristocrats. Why do you think that is?

Escapism. Titled aristocrats had money, mansions and nothing better to do with their time than spend their fortunes and swan about at each other’s parties. Everyone knew everyone else, servants took care of your every need and tenants took care of farming your land and bringing in an income. Use historical facts wisely, add a dash of high drama, beautiful clothes and a lovely romance and there’s the mix for an historical romance.

Today, Celebrity is the new aristocracy as far as people watching is concerned. Celebs have lifestyles most of us can only dream about – so too with the aristocracy in the 18th Century Fabulous houses, fabulous furniture, and fabulous clothes, being waited on and pandered to. We expect celebrities to act in a certain way too. We want them to be always smiling for the camera, being gracious, signing every photo put in front of them; so, too, in the 1700s when aristocrats, particularly at the French Court, were expected to dress and behave in a particular way. When Marie Antoinette decided she did not want to deal with Court etiquette and took time out at her Petite Trianon, it wasn’t only the aristocrats at Court who complained, but the people in Paris saw this as a dereliction of her duty as a Queen of France. She was letting down the entire population. So too when celebrities decide they want to be left alone – the media complains, you read about it in magazines and it sometimes even makes the 6 o’clock news! There is that expectation that public performance is a requirement of status.

6) The Georgians were like us in many ways, but also different. In the course of doing research for your various novels, what is the single most bizarre thing you learned about Georgian England?

You can’t get more bizarre than shaving off your eyebrows and wearing false eyebrows made of mouse fur! Thick eyebrows were the go in the 1700s and so if your eyebrows were too thin or were patchy then you would thicken them up by pasting on a strip of mouse fur. Charming!

And then there is the wearing of a merkin (pubic toupee). Merkins date to the mid 1400s and were quite common in the 1700s. Merkins, too, were made from mouse fur. Pubic lice were rife and so many a lady, fed up with constant itching, would shave off their pubic hair and wear a merkin to cover their modesty (remember this is the era before underpants!). Prostitutes were frequent wearers of merkins, used to cover the signs of a sexually transmitted disease, gonorrheal warts or syphilitic pustules. And in the days before penicillin, mercury was used as a cure, which lead to hair loss. So merkins covered a multitude of sins!

Since the late 20th century and beyond with Brazilian waxing now quite common, merkins are more widely known and used, particularly in the film industry where actors and actresses may be required to wear a merkin to add body hair if the film requires it, or just to cover their modesty.

Of course I write historical romance, so although I strive for historical accuracy is many areas I can be elastic and choose to use a 21st Century lens to filter out other less savory aspects of Georgian society. However, I do allow the seedier side of Georgian life to creep into my historical mysteries.

7) Other than the bizarre, is there anything you found that surprised you or was rather unexpected given the context of the time?

Very early on in my days of researching the 1700s I was surprised by the lack of understanding of the stages of growth from child to adulthood. If you survived to the age of 5 you then instantly became a little adult and were expected to act and dress like an adult. There was no concept of childhood and the teenage years, as we know it. Boys were breeched at age 7 and put into miniature versions of an adult male’s clothes – frockcoat, breeches and stockings. Girls were put into stays and gowns from around the age of 5. If you were a child from a poor family, at the age of 5 you were sent out to work with your older brothers and sisters; there was no expectation of playtime and no schooling. Naturally, many parents and families loved their children dearly, but still there was a lack of understanding of a child’s development. One theory for why parents treated children in a distant way was the high mortality rate. Over half of all babies born died before the age of 3! That’s a truly surprising and very sad statistic.

And if we can return below the navel for a moment... I was about 12 years old when I read that there was no such garment as underpants for women (and many men didn’t wear drawers either). No underpants! No covering under your gown from the knees up. Despite the many layers of a gown and quilted petticoats, a woman’s nether regions must have been freezing in winter. And there was no going outdoors if it was particularly windy weather!

8) What are you working on right now?

I’ve begun writing Book 4 in the Roxton Series DAIR DEVIL. And I am excited to announce that Book Two in my historical mystery series, DEADLY AFFAIR has just been published on Amazon as an eBook. So on to writing Book 3 DEADLY PERIL. Busy writing days ahead!

Thank you so much for having me as a guest on your blog, J.A.!

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Thanks, Lucinda.

You can see more from Lucinda at her website and Pinterest: www.lucindabrant.com and http://pinterest.com/lucindabrant/.

AUTUMN DUCHESS can be purchased from Amazon.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

English Secret Agents and Sprawling Continental Espionage--Not 007, but 1812: An interview with historical fiction author M.M. Bennetts

Today, I'm talking with historical fiction author M.M. Bennetts about her latest novel of espionage during the Napoleonic Wars, Of Honest Fame.

1) Tell us about your book.

The novel is titled, Of Honest Fame, and it opens on a summer night in 1812 as a boy sets fire to a house in Paris before escaping over the rooftops. Carrying vital intelligence about Napoleon’s Russian campaign, he heads for England. But landing in Kent, he is beaten nearly to death.

The Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, is desperate for the boy’s information. But he is even more desperate to track down the boy’s assailant – a sadistic French agent who knows far too much about British intelligence network.

Captain George Shuster is a veteran of the Peninsula, an aide-de-camp to Wellington, now recalled from the continent and struggling to adjust to civilian life. Thomas Jesuadon is a dissolute, living on the fringes of society, but with an unrivalled knowledge of the seamy underside of the capital. Setting out to trace the boy’s attacker, they journey from the slums of London to the Scottish coast, following a trail of havoc, betrayal, official incompetence and murder. It takes an unlikely encounter with a frightened young woman to give them the breakthrough that will turn the hunter into the hunted.

Meanwhile, the boy travels the breadth of Europe in the wake of the Grande Armée, witnessing at first hand the ruination they leave behind and the awful price of Napoleon’s ambition.

2) If there's one constant throughout the history of mankind, it's warfare. What attracted you to the Napoleonic Wars versus other periods of struggle?

Well, until about 1917 or so, the Napoleonic wars were universally referred to as The Great War. It was the first World War and it was total war, unlike the conflicts of the seventeeth and eighteenth century. It stunted or eliminated the industrial revolution across the Continent, but as a by-product turned Great Britain into the premier industrial and naval power of the 19th century. It swept away national borders and traditional governmental structures (many of which had been around since the Middle Ages) across the Continent and brought Russia as a power-player into western politics for the first time. And it took the lives of over probably six million people--that's more than half the population of Britain at the time. It took Europe 100 years to recover the population levels it had had in 1789. It was a man-made catastrophe such as the world had before never seen.

But it wasn't the warfare that first captured my imagination. It was the architecture.

I'd been specialising as a mediaevalist, with a particular focus on Quattrocento Italy which is also a period of great upheaval--religious, intellectual, artistic, political...and I was living on a large estate where the big house was one of Robert Adam's first designs, before he came south to England. And I was popping down to Edinburgh, which is a gorgeous Georgian city, about once a fortnight...

And so there I was, sitting in front of the coal fire, preparing for my orals with everything ever written about Quattrocento Roman churches by Palladio open in front of me and there, hidden amongst the books, I had John Summerson's Georgian London. I already had, if you will, a mental 'in' with the period. I had intended to be a concert pianist until not too long before that, and I had lots of Beethoven in my repertoire, so you might say, in that sense, I already understood how they thought. Music is the great open door for getting inside the heads of those who've gone before us.

At the same time, I'd been reading Dorothy Dunnett's sequence of novels set in 16th century Europe and I was agog. She combined all the disciplines and all the countries--art, music, poetry, politics, diplomacy, economics, the war against Suleiman the Great's empire--and put them together to present life as a whole. And I thought, that's it. I want to do that. I want to write books like that! (I must have some terrier blood in my ancestry somewhere, because I just started reading and researching absolutely everything I could find on the period and not letting go of the trail.)

3) What inspired you to focus on the typically lesser-known espionage battles rather than the grand field campaigns or the desperate guerrilla struggles of the Napoleonic Wars?

Well, this is a very funny thing. Until just recently--like about five minutes ago--all British histories or historical fiction ever looked at was either the Peninsular campaign as led by Wellington, or the Royal Navy as led by Nelson. Which isn't surprising. These are tales of great heroism and derring-do. And who wants to read about disasters like the Walcheran campaign, anyway? That would suck. Then too, for the most part, we didn't have troops involved in Europe (though we did often have advisors there) so "British history" just ignores all the rest. It's that simple.

It was like this at the time, too, though. The British press of 1812-14 was completely transfixed by the raunchy marital discords of the Prince Regent and Princess Caroline, and the marital prospects of their only daughter, Princess Charlotte.

Then too, the Victorians didn't approve of the Regency. And it wasn't just a matter of the perceived immorality of the age. It was that the Regency didn't suit their vision of what Britain should be, in any way. And for a lot of the Victorian statesmen, the Regency and the Napoleonic Wars had been what they did in their youth--a bit like being Flower children, one suspects. So there was just this blanket whitewash. They kept the national heroes, Wellington (who was Prime Minister) and Nelson, and jettisoned the rest.

Add to that another 'funny thing' which is that until recently historians and the British establishment denied that Britain ever 'spied' on anyone. The line has always been, "Oh no, that's what those nasty Froggies do. We don't engage in that kind of thing. We are, after all, gentlemen..." So there was nothing to be found on it. Just this blank wall of denial.

Anyway, over the past decade I would say, there's been a lot of opening up of these previously denied or ignored cans of worms. There have been several well-received histories of the Napoleonic Wars that have been about the whole war, rather than just our little bit of it. There's been a determination to look again and to ferret out 'what really happened' rather than relying on the so-called historical truths passed down through two centuries' of Whig historians. There's been some fine work done on the intelligence war--Elizabeth Sparrow is the leader in this field.

But there's been more available about Sir Sydney Smith--who definitely did his bit in the intelligence war. And Cochrane's exploits have been published. So it's only recently been possible to gain access to the kind of information that would support a novel on the intelligence war.

And let's face it, the struggles of the guerrillas in Spain have been done to death. I mean, it would be utterly stupid to set oneself up against the might of Bernard Cornwell and the Sharpe novels. What's curious there too, though, is that similar local struggles against the Napoleonic state--like in Naples and in Germany--those have been completely ignored. (Though I've just got my hands on some stuff about Italy, so I'm really chuffed about that...)

4) The geographical scope of this novel is on a par with any modern espionage adventure. Is this reflective of the struggles of this period or was this somewhat enhanced to interest modern readers?

The former.

I initially thought the novel was going to switch back and forth between London and Paris. And I thought it was going to have a strong smuggling element too--to which end I did a lot of research about smugglers in the New Forest and in Rye. (Which hardly got used at all.)

But then, I read Adam Zamoyski's stellar 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow, and it blew my socks away. The atrocities, the wanton destruction of Poland and Prussia and of all those men--I couldn't get it out of my head. Those thousands upon thousands of refugees! What happened to them?

Also I knew that regardless of what Napoleon's propaganda machine said, the French army committed atrocities across Europe (Spain as detailed by Goya was not a one-off) and I had to write about it. It just wouldn't leave me alone. And by that point, I'll be honest, it was becoming a different novel from anything I'd planned--the synopsis had gone onto the floor to be trampled and chewed up by the dog, and I just wrote--researching the segments that take place in Poland and Bohemia as I went.

5) The very nature of espionage often means that those involved leave less of a historical footprint than then soldiers and generals on the battlefield. Did you find this a difficult subject to research and did you need to fill in a lot of the blanks?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, in that there were probably dozens of spies we don't know anything about.

But Elizabeth Sparrow has found so much documentary evidence about the British end of the business, it gets a bit silly. They spent millions of pounds on intelligence--we're talking sums that I cannot even begin to comprehend. And there was no audit. Not ever. The government ministers would just hand the dosh out as they saw fit and they were all united in their belief that Parliament shouldn't be told and shouldn't know anything about it, though they did keep records of a sort. So there are these money trails. And names and itineraries.

And that's only the English side of things.

There's been quite a lot of work done in France on Fouche--the famed and feared French minister of police--but he, it turns out, was probably in British pay. Which is why the French 'caught' so few British spies. The Russian court was so full of spies, you wonder who wasn't a spy. The Tsar had his official spies and then he had his private spies, because he didn't trust the court spies. Metternich and the Austrian secret service had spies everywhere and wrote down and annotated everything, so it's all there for one to see...

6) The late Georgian Period is often glamorized by many authors despite the tumult of both the Napoleonic Wars and social unrest in England. What drew you to these more gritty aspects of the period?

I think this goes back to our fondness for putting history in boxes. Here we have the heroic military history with Nelson and Wellington. Huzzah and thrice huzzah! Here we have the Industrial Revolution and the Luddite backlash against that--but that's up North, so we don't need to think about that, do we?

Here we have Napoleon. But his wife wore pretty dresses, so he must be 'all right', mustn't he? Here we have Beethoven writing all this very non-Mozart-like music--what did he have to do with the world, he was deaf. And here we have the Romantic poets--they were just looking at lice and mountains and things, so they're too artsy fartsy to count. And the Tsar? Well, he was Russian--he didn't even speak English...so what could he have to do with Jane Austen? (Except that he visited Britain in the summer of 1814 and the whole country turned out to see him--he was the hero of the age! He had defeated the anti-Christ, Napoleon.)

It's like a TV dinner with all the tasty bits separated into the little trays and nothing touches. But history's not like that. Life's not like that. It's one great big pot of beef stew, all bubbling and roiling away, with tomatoes and carrots and garlic and onions, mushrooms and herbs and dumplings and half a bottle of good wine chucked in...

Then too, history or the perception of history has undergone quite a transformation in the last decade. There are all the Horrible Histories for children by Terry Deary. We have Dan Cruikshank looking into old buildings--so much of the London we love was built on the earnings of prostitution. Dan Snow did a series on the telly all about how different cities smelled 200 years ago. (At which point we were all grateful our tellies didn't come with scratch and sniff screens.)

We've got forensic scientists analysing the bones found in the Napoleonic mass graves from Smolensk and what they're telling us about how these men died and what diseases they were carrying is a lot different from Napoleon's official version. There's Amanda Vickery reading all the letters and journals of late Georgian women and showing how what we think they lived like isn't what it was like, at all. There are biographers writing about people like Beau Brummell and refusing to be coy about the syphilis that killed him. There's this united determination to get at the truth, whatever that may be (even if it doesn't ultimately sit well with our pre-conceived notion of what a BBC costume drama should look like) and a determination to understand.

Then too, I do live in a combined 17th century and Georgian house, so you might say I'm on intimate terms with the Georgians' foibles...with their draughty windows which aren't set straight in the walls, with their wonky ceilings, their interesting ideas about how many fireplaces one room requires, with their cobbled together doors that don't match each other, with the doorframes upon which anyone over 5'10" will bean themselves, with cleaning the ashes from the grate...

7) Your debut novel also focused on the espionage aspects of the Napoleonic Wars. How are your two novels similar and how are they different?

The first novel is Bennetts writing a love/war story and examining the domestic crises of May 1812--chiefly the assassination of the Prime Minister on 11 May 1812.

So in the first, there's a focus on the 'wholeness' of life of those who lived at the time and worked in government circles. Their lives weren't neatly compartmentalised. Viscount Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary and Wellington's closest ally and friend, was the husband of a patroness of Almack's and regularly turned up there to see her. He had a vastly active social life at the same time as he was sitting up in the House of Commons till all hours as Leader of the House. And he went on to be one of the greatest Foreign Secretaries the world has ever seen.

And I really wanted to do something with that lovely Russian literary form, the slice of life. But I left out the gulags and the borscht, and instead did a month in the life of a chap who worked in the Foreign Office. So it's, if you will, the Home Front--because, don't get me wrong--Britain was entirely unique at the time. It was the one country which hadn't suffered the devastation of French invasion--it was a haven of a green, untrampled landscape! And they loved it for that.

The second book has been described as 'Bennetts without the nice'. The world of espionage--which was a key element of the war against Napoleon, particularly as Britain was subsidising the Austrian, Prussian and Russian efforts against France to the tune of millions of pounds--provided this fantastic window through which to look at all sorts of aspects of the Napoleonic wars that normally get swept aside: the police state that was France, the refugee crisis, the aching loss of it all, and the contrast between Britain which had suffered none of the depredations of war and Europe which was rent by war. And who doesn't want to write a cracking historical thriller?

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