Bath in its Heyday - Entertainments - a historical Wednesday post

 As Bath became a fashionable city in the eighteenth century, visitors were driven to its entertainments for a variety of reasons. Entry to Bath society was not governed by the strict rules observed in London, and so a diverse variety of classes met and mixed, merchants in trade or squires from the country were able to fraternise with aristocrats and those in the first fashion. Subscriptions were paid for the balls in the assembly rooms at Harrison’s and Lindsey’s, or there were opportunities to mingle at the Pump Rooms and Gardens.

For mothers like Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet, their daughters could be introduced to a marriage market they might not enjoy elsewhere, though as Catherine Morland finds out when she first arrives in Bath it’s not much fun if you do not know anyone.

The master of ceremonies had the job of introducing likely people into society, and one of the most famous was Beau Nash. He published a code of manners to help those who might not know how they were expected to behave, and these were posted in all the public places of the assembly, and in the annual Bath Guide.

Here are a few examples of his rules:

Gentlemen of Fashion never appearing in a Morning before the Ladies in Gowns and Caps, shew Breeding and Respect.

Ladies dressing and behaving like Handmaids must not be surprised if they are treated as Handmaids.

That the elder ladies and children be contented with a second bench at the ball, as being past or not come to perfection.

Chandeliers-Upper Assembly Rooms

He thought nothing of remonstrating with anyone who did not obey him, even refusing Princess Amelia, George the second’s daughter an extra dance after the clock struck eleven. But she forgave him, presenting him with a silver tureen when she left Bath. The Duchess of Queensberry, who appeared at the rooms in an apron was told ‘such things are suitable for Abigails’, even though it was of the finest lace and worth £200.

Once arrived in Bath a formal call on the Master of Ceremonies was made and if you were important enough for him to wait on you, the call would be returned. At the height of the season you might be introduced at a ball, as in Catherine Morland’s case in Northanger Abbey.

Not everyone attended the baths. It was an early morning jaunt, the bather was taken by sedan chair to the King’s, Queen’s or Cross Bath. The Queen’s Bath was for ladies only, and most were there for the healing benefits, not the society. The Cross Bath was used by the quality, purely for enjoyment. In the ‘slips’ or dressing rooms they were dressed by an attendant into canvas drawers and waistcoat for the men, and a loose gown with capacious sleeves for the ladies. Guides led the bathers into the water hanging onto them to make sure they didn’t fall over. Ladies received a little floating dish, like a basin, into which they put a handkerchief, a snuff-box, and a nose-gay. Men and women could bathe together, and it seems some took advantage of the situation.

Here is perform’d all the Wanton Dalliance imaginable; Celebrated Beauties, Painting Breasts, and Curious Shapes, almost expos’d to Public View; Languishing Eyes, Darting Glances, Tempting Amorous Postures, attended by soft Musick, enough to provoke a Vestal to forbidden Pleasures … Here were also different Sexes, from Quality to Honourable Knights, Country Puts and City Madams.

After about an hour it was time to leave. Here is a contemporary description.

Neither sex can come out of the King’s Bath without being stripped quite naked by an old woma who takes off the wet, and put on dry Apparel, for our part, we think, being thus stripped by an old Hagg, alive is but little better than being served the same Sauce when dead in the Field of Battle.

After paying for this delight the bathers were wrapped in blankets and taken back by sedan chair to their lodgings. They were taken sweating to bed, and when cool, got dressed and went out for breakfast either in a coffee house or by crossing the river in a ferry to sit in a pavilion in Spring Gardens. If you’ve been to Bath, this was an area near to where the boat trips still go today.

The site of Molland's Confectioner's

The Pump Room was visited between eight and nine for the usual prescription of three glasses of spa water and to meet friends. It’s still possible to try the waters, they are slightly warm with a strong sulphurous taste - not my favourite! After that the ladies might return to their lodging houses or meet in a coffee house. Jane Austen makes mention of Molland’s in Milsom Street, which is now the shop, East. The gentlemen might visit one of the many circulating libraries and reading rooms.

At midday, people attended church, the Abbey being favourite, and then they were ready soon after for dinner at three o’clock. People might rest then until the evening when card-playing at private parties, theatre going, concerts, and dancing began. Both Assembly Rooms had card rooms which were always full. There were always activities going on in Bath to amuse its visitors, and Jane Austen used this as a background for her two novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

I’ve used Bath as a setting in one of my books, Searching for Captain Wentworth, and had a lot of fun researching every aspect of the city. It’s always a pleasure to go to Bath, and because of the architecture, and the fact that most of the places described above can still be visited, you can imagine yourself quite lost in time.

Searching for Captain Wentworth

Jane Odiwe

Writing Tips #5 - Nicola Cornick's Trade Secrets for Writing Regency Romance

Recently I came across an article I wrote a few years ago on my trade secrets for authors of Regency historical romance. I jotted down the ideas one day when I was critiquing a manuscript and thought it would be useful to have a list of the elements I considered important in a Regency romance. I have updated and added to it for this piece. Obviously the list isn’t totally comprehensive and it is only my opinion but I hope it gives aspiring authors some useful ideas! 

  

Start with a strong hook/story idea – think about the possibility of giving a historical twist to a contemporary situation such as speed dating. This need not be as anachronistic as it sounds. Think about a Regency ball and the amount of time that the partners can actually spend together, exchanging information and getting to know one another. It is time pressured. There are a great many contemporary situations that have strong parallels with historical ones.

If you are keen to use a “standard” Regency idea, such as the hero winning the heroine in a card

game (which Georgette Heyer used in a short story in Pistols for Two), try giving it a new twist. For example the heroine could win the hero instead.

Start the book straight into the action. On her website, award winning romance author Liz Fielding has the following advice: “A great opening to a romance sets up questions in the readers mind… Start with something happening. Get the hero and heroine on the page. Grab the reader’s attention.”

Create strong characters. You need to create a hero your readers will fall in love with and a heroine your readers will identify with. This is a whole area in itself!

Make sure that your plot is sustained throughout the story.  It is important to have a strong plot in a longer-length historical. You need to be working with an idea that can change and develop. You also need a big, convincing conflict to keep the characters apart and not something that could be resolved during one heart-to-heart conversation.

Show the way that a strong relationship develops between your characters. They need to communicate with each other during the story so that their relationship can grow. One of the mistakes that a lot of new authors can make is that they don’t allow their characters really to talk and interact at depth and this can give the impression of a relationship that is stalled for a great deal of the book, only to be resolved rather easily with the HEA ending.

It’s also important to show the characters’ motivation for their actions very clearly. And these motivations must be consistent. Even when a character is behaving “out of character” it has to be believable.  Sometimes it helps to think about motivation in the context of the “GMC” – Goal, Motivation, Conflict. What is that your characters want? What is the logical and consistent reason that your character wants this goal? What is the huge obstacle that is standing in their way?

Hooks at the end of each scene and each chapter are essential. Finish each scene on an “up” or “down” note, focussing on the hero or heroine. (Soap operas in particular use this method to keep the viewer engaged).

Background and setting can be a very powerful tool in creating the atmosphere of a historical novel. You do need to do your research but you don’t want to dump it all on the reader in the first few pages! The language of the dialogue is also subtly different from modern conversation. Love is eternal and the emotions that people feel may be universal, but the society and culture within which the relationships take place change over time. So does the way that people express their feelings. The manners and mores of a particular period have a profound effect on the key players in a story.  The Regency period is a good example of this as the rules by which society operated were codified so clearly. You can take the rules of your particular historical period and use them to your advantage. You don’t need to see them as restrictions. They are opportunities. And even if your heroines are the sort of spirited women who will break society’s rules, setting them within the confines of society and showing them kick over the traces will demonstrate the sort of strong characters that they are.

So in summary the book must have:

An atmospheric setting

 Emotional intensity

 Communication between the protagonists

 Sensual tension

 Humour (preferably)

 Witty dialogue

 A whopping big emotional wallop at the end!

Why do I love Historical Romance? Jane Odiwe

Illustration from The Little White Horse

Every Saturday, as a small child, I was taken to my local library to choose my books for the week, and though I loved anything written by Enid Blyton, Noel Streatfeild or C. S. Lewis, the first books that really intrigued me had a historical background. I loved any book that was illustrated with lavish costumes, and as I grew older the pictures were still significant, but less so as the story-telling took over. Being totally drawn into the world the author had created, and back to a time imagined in detail with wonderful descriptions and an exciting plot were the elements that made me fall in love with historical romance. Two particular childhood favourites have stayed with me, influencing my own writing with their mix of historical/fantasy elements and beautiful writing, as well as a first initiation into the world of romance.

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge is a magical tale set in 1842, and from the very beginning I was hooked by a description of the heroine Maria’s clothes.

And the boots she had on today were calculated to raise the lowest spirits, for they were made of the softest grey leather, sewn with crystal beads round the tops, and were lined with snow-white lamb’s-wool … she rested herself against the thought of the piece of purple ribbon that was wound about her slender waist beneath the pelisse, the little bunch of violets that was tucked so far away inside the recesses of her grey velvet bonnet that it was scarcely visible, and the grey silk mittens adorning the small hands that were hidden inside the big white muff.

The romance between Maria and Robin is a very gentle one, but for a first book which hinted at love and ended in marriage it was perfect for a twelve or thirteen year old reader.

A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley is another favourite, and a timelip novel. I was fascinated by the story of Mary Queen of Scots as a child, and reading about the Babington Plot, as seen unfolding through the eyes of a twentieth century girl as she travels through time ticked all the boxes for me. Penelope’s relationship with Anthony Babington’s brother Francis develops throughout the book and ends with a tender kiss - I was smitten!

Again, the descriptions completely transported me to form pictures of the Elizabethan manor house in my mind:

I smell the hot scents of the herb garden drenched in sunshine, and the perfume of honeysuckle after rain, but stronger than these is the rich fragrance of the old house, made up of woodsmoke, haystacks and old old age, mingled together indissolubly.

Later on my favourites changed as other writers took over and their books took me to other historical worlds and romantic tales of love - Frances Hodgson Burnett, Dodie Smith, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Edith Wharton, Anya Seton, Jean Plaidy, Daphne du Maurier, Elizabeth von Armin, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Gaskell, Georgette Heyer, and the author whose work has inspired me the most, Jane Austen.

I could not leave this post without mentioning my all time favourite book, Persuasion. I love it for the bitter-sweet tale of the love between Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth finally brought together after a separation of nearly seven years. I don’t think the letter below has ever been bettered for perfection in writing!

Jane Odiwe

Persuasion

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in 

F. W. 

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Jane Austen - Persuasion

Getting to Know You - Christina Courtenay

I’ve never really found anywhere I truly belong – I grew up in Sweden with a Swedish mother and an English father, which meant I was a bit of a ‘mixed-up kid’.  But one place (if you can call it that) I’ve always felt an affinity with is the past.  I still remember my very first history lesson, learning about the Stone Age, and being taken on an outing to see a Stone Age boat carved out of a tree trunk.  I was amazed and fascinated and completely hooked on history from then on.  While others in my class groaned about having to learn the names of kings and queens, and the dates of battles and other important events, I lapped it all up – I couldn’t get enough!

Like most other authors, I was a voracious reader as a child and quickly outgrew the children’s section at the local library.  My dad had noticed my love of history and pointed me in the direction of books like The Odyssey and the Norse Sagas, as well as factual books about Tutankhamun and so on.  When he told me to read The Three Musketeers, however, I had found my favourite genre – historical romance.

It has to be said that there isn’t an awful lot of romance in that book (and what there is doesn’t end very happily, which frustrated me enormously!), but it showed me that such books existed and made me go looking for more.  I discovered writers like Victoria Holt and Madeleine Brent, but in my high school library I finally found the best thing ever – Georgette Heyer.  As a teenager I had a one hour long journey to school by train, when I was supposed to be revising or studying, but I’m afraid to say a lot of those journeys were spent in Regency England instead!  If you ask me, it was time well spent though as I learned a lot about the Regency period and my English (both grammar, vocabulary and spelling) improved no end.

These days I’m lucky enough to both read and write historical romance as much as I like!  I also spend time doing genealogy, a very addictive hobby which feeds my love of all things past.  There’s nothing more exciting than discovering an ancestor who has been eluding you for years.  I once found one after looking for him for ten years - talk about a Eureka moment!  And I almost missed him because the person entering his name in the baptismal register had smeared the J at the beginning of his name so it read <inkblob>oseph.  Thankfully the smudge couldn’t be any other letter so I knew I’d found ‘my’ Joseph.

So far my genealogy research hasn’t given me any ideas for a novel, but I’m hoping that one day soon I’ll come across the perfect hero or heroine among my ancestors.  Until then, I’ll just make them up!

Christina x

The Jade Lioness – historical romance and adventure set in 17^th century Japan, published by Choc Lit, out now as an ebook, coming in paperback October 2015

Indian or British? An intimate look into pre-war India.

I was inspired to write Regency books because I read Georgette Heyer as a teenager and later read Jane Austen's wonderful books. In latter years I watched the many Jane Austen adaptations that appeared on television and this spurred me on to write my own Jane Austen variations, as well as over thirty Regency stories.

However, when I found my mother's journal about the time she spent in India with her father, my grandfather, I decided to write a historical family saga using her memoirs for authentic background and detail. I was astonished at the luxury of wealth of my grandfather's family and am sure that living for two years in what was virtually a palace (albeit a Victorian one) changed my mother, and not for the better. The disparity between the wealthy Brahmins and the lower castes was even more pronounced in the 1930s than it is today. The Untouchables – the ones who emptied the chamber pots and did all the other unpleasant tasks – were reviled and ignored by everyone. My mother caused a major upset by sitting on the doorstep of her apartment to have a cigarette first thing in the morning.This meant the man designated to empty pots and clean bathrooms couldn't do so as he wasn't allowed to be seen by the family. The first part of Victoria's War, Shadows, uses a lot of my mother's actual descriptions of the India where she lived for two years between 1937 and 1939. I also made the decision to get her memoirs typed and transferred to my PC and then to publish them on Amazon.

The electronic version has been live since last month and the paperback version is now live with Create Space. I shall make a colossal loss on this project, but writers don't do everything in order to earn royalties – sometimes we write and publish books because they are important to us. Victoria's War :Shadows http://amzn.to/1HvkEP (.uk) http://amzn.to/1KZdmCD (.com) Indian or British? Fenella J Miller

The House that Inspired me to write Danger Wears White

When I write a historical novel, I like to have a place in mind. For “Danger Wears White,” I had a place saved for it especially. It’s been one of my favorite places for a long time, and it was a delight to be able to write about it. I fictionalised it for the book, moved it a few miles north and tweaked the layout a tiny bit, but basically, Imogen lives in Little Moreton Hall.

My hobby is miniatures, or doll’s houses. Little Moreton Hall is like a life-sized doll’s house. It really shouldn’t exist. The owners employed builders rather than architects to build it, and when they fancied a new extension, they stuck it on where it would fit.

It’s a half-timbered house built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a family of self-made men, or rather, the builders they employed. They built it with green wood, and as it dried out, it twisted, so the house is England’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. But so beautiful.

Timber framed houses are just that – the main structure of the house is wood, and it’s infilled with wattle and daub, a woven screen of flexible strands of wood, filled with a noxious mixture of dung, straw and other ingredients. The wall is then plastered. It can be filled as the house moves, and these houses do move. When England was covered in woods and forests, this was what people did with it.

The windows are mullioned, of course. Above the windows on the main range is the proud boast and the name of the man who had the Hall built, William Moreton, together with his builder, Richard Dale. As the years passed, the timber framing became more complex, but all those studs and stars are structural.

The last thing to be built was the Long Gallery. In building it, they cut off some rooms, made them non-fucntional, but they left an opening in the Long Gallery. In effect, they made a suite of secret rooms. These are important in my story. They are the rooms where Imogen hides Tony when she thinks he’s a Jacobite spy.

The house went into decline after the Civil War in the seventeenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth century, it was a storage place, where pigs rooted in the Great Hall. The last Moreton and her heir started the renovations in the late nineteenth century, and finally, the house was bequeathed to the National Trust just before World War II. I did deviate from history a bit there, when I had Imogen and her mother live there. 


In my version, the Hall is all they have left from a larger estate, after Imogen’s father took the wrong side in the Jacobite Rebellion. Lancashire was a centre of support for the Stuarts in the early eighteenth century, a Catholic stronghold in a Protestant country. All Imogen wants is to live in peace and avoid any further conflict, to hold on to the onhly thing they have left, and then she finds Tony on her land, wounded, and to all intents and purposes, a Jacobite spy.  How could I not use the Hall for that?

Take a look at the pictures, and see what you think. And if you’re ever in Cheshire, don’t fail to pay a visit!

You can buy Danger Wears White here:

You can read an excerpt and preorder this book now!
Amazon
iTunes
Kensington website
Barnes and Noble

Lynne Connolly