Coincidence - or Fate?

When I came to plan the family tree of my Ravenhurst clan for the Those Scandalous Ravenhursts series the heroine of the sixth book, the Piratical Miss Ravenhurst, seemed a long way away. I couldn’t “see” her yet or find a name for her.

For some reason I called her father Clement. Then I thought that as my skinny heroine would run away and find herself as a cabin boy on a pirate ship the feminine form of his name, Clemence, which would shorten to Clem, seemed a good choice for her.
When I started to get to know her it seemed to suit her well. And when my hero, Nathan Stanier, meets her he likes the name too -

Clemence. He said the name in his mind, savouring the sound of it, a sort of fruity sweet tang of a name. Tart and challenging, yet mellow too.

I was half way through writing the book when I found myself in my favourite places, a country auction room on Viewing Saturday. There was a pot of odds and ends in a cabinet and poking out of them, the unmistakeable handle of an 18th or early 19thc fan. I collect fans so I took a quick look, saw it was covered in verses in French and put it back amongst the rubbish before anyone else saw me looking at it.
I was in luck - no-one seemed to have spotted it for what it was and the only other bidder when I came back for the auction appeared to be after the Victorian pot the fan was in and certainly wasn’t prepared to battle it out with me!
So I bore off my spoils in triumph and had a good look at what I had bought. I couldn’t read the French verses but the picture seemed to be a scene of six young women and four cupids drawing lots from a revolving drum and handing them out. Then I saw the name - Clémence. The frustration of only being able to make out half the complex old French was acute! What did the verses say?
Luckily I remembered that fellow M&B Historical author Joanna Maitland is an accomplished linguist and she gallantly tackled the archaic French for me.

It was a lottery as I had guessed - a lottery for love. Each young woman was given a verse that described her lover and the virtues he would have -

Here is Love, putting the charms
Of all these beauties to the test.
The prizes, he has promised, will be
The true qualities of men…
A constant friend, a faithful husband,
Are both a lottery.

Poor Isis has no luck at all - and no lover. She is the girl in pink with her head in her hands. Aglaé will have a man with only one virtue, Aglaure, one with two. And so it goes on until -

And finally, there remains but one.
It is for the lovely Clémence.
Her destiny is wonderful, but rare.
It surpasses all her hopes.
A stout heart, a quick mind,
Virtue, courage and a handsome form.
Her lover is blessed with them all.
She has won the fivefold prize.

I could not believe it - the Clémence of the fan (the figure on the right in purple) is promised a hero with all the virtues of my Clemence’s love.

Of course I had to use the fan in the book - but you will have to read it to find out how! The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst is out this month with Mills & Boon Historical and Harlequin Historical.

Louise Allen

Fancy a Dip in the River?

As I write this it is not exactly Flaming June, but perhaps by the time it appears the sun will come out again and we'll all be in the mood for bathing.

I have researched seaside bathing during the Regency and even set a love scene in a bathing machine (The Outrageous Lady Felsham) and of course, the hero or heroine taking a risky plunge in the local stream often occurs in a hot summer romance - but it had never occured to me that anyone might willingly take a swim in the 19thc Thames or Mersey.

Then I found the print above of the Royal Waterloo Bath in Ackermann's Repository for 1819. According to the description "It contains a plunging-bath, 24 feet long by 8 feet wide, and two private baths, 10 feet long by 8 feet wide. The depth may be regulated at pleasure by machinery, which raises or depresses the bottom. To each of the baths are attached small dressing-rooms, commodiously fitted up, with proper persons to attend upon visitors. The water, being a running stream, is changed every two minutes."


There was a boat at Waterloo Bridge to convey the bathers out to the Bath and the "terms of bathing" were one shilling in the plunging-bath or one and six for the private baths. Season tickets were available.

I was dubious about how popular it could be to bathe in the Thames in the middle of London -surely the water must be filthy? - but to my surprise I found an unmistakeable floating bath with its tall flagpole in the Grand Panorama of London, 1844. This one is moored at Blackfriar's Bridge.

In the words of the Ackermann's article "...we have a noble river filled with the purest and most wholesome waters in the world. The want of baths in London has led to the incommodious and indecorous practice of public exposure in the Thames."




1858, only fourteen years after this print was published, was the Great Stink when the Thames was so foul that Parliament had to close and people fainted. In the intervening period improvements to domestic sanitation had sent sewage from homes direct into the river and the floating baths were doomed.




I still haven't discovered when the floating bath first apeared in London, but there was certainly one in Liverpool in 1816. The Liverpool Mercury for August 9th 1816 has a picture of it and both an advertisement and (doubtless by the same hand) a letter to the editor explaining the improvements to increase the flow of water through the boat. Apparently, those in rowing boats passing at either end could see through the grills into the bathing compartment - which must have been entertaining for all concerned. On the Prince Regent's birthday there would be admission for ladies - but only to view the boat: no bathing would be allowed. One wonders if this was to allay their fears that their sons and husbands were sneaking off to some other kind of establishment altogether!