Guest Leigh Michaels: How to Have an Affair, Regency Style

Linda Banche here. Today I welcome Leigh Michaels, whose latest book is the Regency historical, The Mistress’ House. Here she talks about how to conduct an affair in Regency times.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win one of the two copies of The Mistress’ House which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Leigh will select the winners. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winners within a week of their selection, I will award the books to alternates. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winners Leigh selected are StephB and catslady! Ok, you two, I know who you are and I've sent you email.

Welcome, Leigh!

There were many ways for a Regency gentleman to carry on an affaire, from visiting a bordello to sneaking into a lady’s bedroom at a house party to finding a quiet nook in a hay barn on his country estate. Sometimes the location depended on the duration and depth of the attachment between the lovers; a few years before the Regency period, the Duke of Devonshire installed his mistress – who also happened to be his wife’s best friend – right in his household, and he carried on the affair until the death of the duchess left him free to marry his mistress.

But the most romantic-sounding of all the possible ways for a pair of lovers to get together was the love nest – where a gentleman hired or bought a small house in which he could install the lady of the moment in comfort and security (for her) and convenience (for him). As Thorne thinks when he’s considering buying the house which becomes The Mistress’ House:

There was certainly merit to the notion of buying a house just off Portman Square. If he could tuck a mistress into a trysting place just a step from his own garden, he could avoid a long list of inconveniences. Kicking his heels for hours while messages were delivered and answers returned… Riding halfway across London for an assignation… Finding new, safe, and very secluded meeting places… Wandering around the halls of a country house trying to locate a particular lady’s bedchamber… Keeping his horses, and the grooms who cared for them, waiting outside a private house on a cold day…
© Leigh Michaels, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2011

Young women of the day – even those who had been married and widowed – were well-protected from scandal even when they didn’t wish to be. In The Mistress’ House, Anne Keighley is staying in her brother’s house, so she can’t exactly invite her lover to stop by her bedroom. Living with relatives means that her time has to be accounted for, or her brother and sister-in-law will ask questions. She can’t simply go off by herself without taking along a maid or footman or groom, and her brother’s servants owe their loyalty to the man who pays their wages.

Throw in the practicalities – like a gentleman’s coat that was so tightly fitted it required assistance to put on, and a lady’s corset and petticoats – and it’s a wonder clandestine Regency lovers ever managed to get naked together.

So the idea of a love nest – a private house where a couple could be together with minimal risk of interruption – was an attractive option for the man who could afford it. His mistress would be always on call, at his convenience. And when he tired of one paramour, he could move her out while he was looking around for her replacement.

Though having a discreet little love nest right around the corner didn’t quite work out the way Thorne hoped it would in The Mistress’ House…

In the book, the love nest is located at Number 5, Upper Seymour Street (isn’t that a lovely aristocratic address?) Though no illustration exists, maps of the period show there was a real house located there, pretty much as it’s described in the book. It stood directly beside the entrance to Berkeley Mews, just around the corner from Portman Square.

Today it’s just called Seymour Street. The houses are gone, and a hotel now occupies the site where The Mistress’ House stood during the Regency era. It’s fitting, I think, that the hotel is called the Hyatt Regency!

THE MISTRESS’ HOUSE BY LEIGH MICHAELS – IN STORES FEBRUARY 2011
Three beautifully intertwined love stories…

The rules are made to be broken…
When the handsome, rakish Earl of Hawthorne buys the charming house across the back garden from his town home, he never expects the lovely lady he installs there to ensnare him completely…

Again…
After Lady Keighley marries the earl, it seems a shame to leave the house empty, so she offers it to her childhood friend Felicity Mercer, who discovers that the earl’s gorgeous cousin is precisely the man she’s been waiting for…

and again…
Finally, feisty Georgiana Baxter moves into the house to escape an arranged marriage, and encounters the earl’s friend Major Julian Hampton late one night in the back garden. The handsome soldier is more than willing to give her the lessons she asks for…

There is plenty of gossip, scandal, and torrid speculations surrounding the “mistress’ house”, but behind closed doors, passions blaze…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leigh Michaels is the author of nearly 100 books, including 80 contemporary novels and more than a dozen non-fiction books. More than 35 million copies of her romance novels have been published by Harlequin. A 6 time RITA finalist, she has also received two Reviewer's Choice awards from Romantic Times, and was the 2003 recipient of the Johnson Brigham Award. She is the author of On Writing Romance, published in January 2007 by Writers Digest Books. Leigh also teaches romance writing on the Internet at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, please visit www.leighmichaels.com.

Cosmetics in the Past

Makeup, in one form or another, has been used since before the dawn of Christianity. In ancient tombs, archaeologists have found evidence of the use of unguents to hydrate the skin in the hot, dry climate of Egypt. In addition, Egyptians colored the underlid of their eyes with dark green, and blackened their lashes and upper lids with kohl. The ancient Greeks used mulberry juice to color their cheeks and lips, while other civilizations used concoctions made from beet juice or other berries.
In Rome, during the 1st century AD, citizens used kohl, too, along with chalk to whiten their faces, rouge to color lips and cheeks, and pumice to clean their teeth. Persians preferred henna to stain their hair and faces.
During the Victorian era, it was considered vulgar for women to use coloring on their faces, so when a young lady wanted to make a favorable impression on a suitor, she was inclined to pinch her cheeks and dab a little grease on her lips to make them shine.
Ladies were not the only ones to use makeup. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men wore rouge, and of course used talcum to whiten their wigs, when those hairpieces were in fashion.
George IV is said to have spent a small fortune on cosmetics, unguents and cologne.
Here are a few cosmetic recipes used in the late 1800s:
For freckle removal, squeeze the juice of chickweed, and add three times that amount of water to the chickweed juice, then bathe the skin ten minutes morning and evening.
To wash the complexion: Take one teaspoon flour of sulphur, and to that, add a wine glass of lime water well shaken. Mix in one-half glass glycerin and a full glass of rose water. Rub on face nightly before bedtime.

Cross-Quarter Days

Just as the Quarter Days mark the beginning of the seasons in England (see previous post), the Cross-Quarter Days mark the midpoints of the seasons.

The four cross-quarter days are:

Candlemas (Imbolc) February 1
May Day (Beltane)1 May
Lammas (Lughnasaid )August 1
All Hallows (1 November) or Samhain (October 31)

Notice the two names. The first names are the Christian names, which in time were layered over the older Celtic names.

The Church gave Candlemas its name for the candles lit in the churches to commemorate the presentation of the Christ Child at the temple in Jerusalem. The Celtic name of Imbolc (lamb's milk) arose because the date was the beginning of the lambing season. Another name was Brigantia, for the Celtic goddess of light, as daylight increased at this midpoint between the winter solstice and spring.

May Day, half way between spring and summer, was a day of feasting and joy as the crops sown soon after Lady Day began to sprout. In this season of new life advancing, May Day became the traditional date for young men and women to pair up. They would marry at the next cross-quarter day, after three months of seeing if they would suit. June weddings came about as impatient couples pushed up the wedding day.

Next, on August 1 is Lammas, the first festival of the harvest. The Celtic name is Lughnasaid, the day of the wedding of the Celtic sun god, Lugh, and the earth goddess, whose marriage caused the grain to ripen. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which dates from the ninth century, calls it "the feast of first fruits". The name "Lammas" may derive from the shortening of Lughnasaid or the term "Loaf-Mass", for on this day, the first loaves from the year's crop were brought to the church for blessings. Also, on or before this day, English landlords required their tenants to present them with the freshly harvested wheat.

And last is All Hallows Day and the evening before, Samhain. By All Hallows Day, the harvest is in and the year turns to the depths of winter. Samhain, the day before, was the death night of the old Celtic year. Its associattion with death and dying led to its transformation into our modern Halloween.

As so the year turns, from Quarter Day to Cross-Quarter Day and back again, in the never ending cycle of time.

Thank you all,
Linda

Guest Mary Lydon Simonsen: Fun in Regency England

Linda Banche here. Today I welcome Mary Lydon Simonsen, whose latest book is the Pride and Prejudice retelling, The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy. Here she talks about what Regency ladies did for fun.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win one of the two copies of The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Mary will select the winners. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winners within a week of their selection, I will award the books to alternates. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winners Mary selected are Judy and Dee! Judy, I've already sent you an email. Dee, please contact me at linda@lindabanche.com by February 3 or the book goes to an alternate.

Welcome Mary!

Thank you for inviting me to join you on your blog today. I was so pleased when my publicist told me that you wanted me to write about Regency Era books and what women did for fun—two nice, juicy subjects. Since The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy is a Jane Austen re-imagining, I thought I would try to give you a feel for Austen’s world (1775-1817), give or take a decade.

So what books did Austen read? We know that she read Henry Fielding’s rather risqué Tom Jones, Samuel Richard’s Pamela, and the writings of Dr. Johnson. She was also familiar with Ann Radcliff’s gothic novels, and not being a fan of that genre, she parodied the author’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey. By the way, Northanger Abbey was published posthumously in 1817. But by that time, the gothic novel craze had run its course, and Austen’s first written and last published novel was already dated by the time it was released.

Austen was an admirer of the novelist, Fanny Burney, who penned Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. Evelina is a witty epistolary novel about the unacknowledged daughter of a spendthrift English aristocrat. It is likely that Austen borrowed the title to her most famous novel from Miss Burney as the final chapter of Cecilia is titled “Pride and Prejudice.”

Sir Walter Scott’s novels were just appearing in print at the time of Austen’s death in 1817. She may have had an opportunity to read Waverly, but not his later novel, Ivanhoe. Scott was a giant of the later Regency Era, but two American authors were having their impact as well. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans, were bestsellers in Britain as was Washington Irving’s Sketchbook that included his two most famous stories, The Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle.

Your second question was what did Regency Era ladies do for fun. Like our famous couple, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, let us assume that we are speaking of the middle and upper classes. Although ladies did not run, they did walk and walk and walk. They might choose to visit the seaside and go sea bathing, changing into appropriate bathing attire before being pushed into the sea in a bathing machine. On a sunny day, two friends might engage in a battledore, the precursor of badminton, or play lawn bowls. In the winter, they could strap on their ice skates and go out on a frozen pond, most likely on the arm of a male relation or suitor. Riding was a year-round pursuit, but because horses were expensive to keep, this tended to be a sport for the upper class.

On a visit to London, a lady may choose to attend one of Sheridan’s plays at the Royal Theater on Drury Lane, purchase a ticket to the opera, enjoy an afternoon stroll in one of London’s pleasure gardens, or witness a balloon launch.

In a world lit only by fire, at home, Elizabeth and Darcy would have played cards, and there were so many games to choose from, including whist, casino, faro, just to name three. Charades, staging plays, and guessing at riddles were popular entertainments as was reading out loud. Furniture could be pushed to the perimeter of the room to permit a game of blind man’s bluff. But the preferred activity of most people of this era was dancing. This was one of the few opportunities where unmarried ladies and gents had the opportunity to actually touch, if only a gloved hand, as well as to engage in a conversation without their chaperones overhearing them. But even for those not looking for a marriage partner, it was a favorite pastime and the reason why an assembly hall could be found in any town of a goodly size throughout the kingdom.

Thank you so much for inviting me. This was a pleasure.

THE PERFECT BRIDE FOR MR. DARCY BY MARY LYDON SIMONSEN – IN STORES JANUARY 2011

If the two of them weren’t so stubborn…

It’s obvious to Georgiana Darcy that the lovely Elizabeth Bennet is her brother’s perfect match, but Darcy’s pigheadedness and Elizabeth’s wounded pride are going to keep them both from the loves of their lives.

Georgiana can’t let that happen, so she readily agrees to help her accommodating cousin, Anne de Bourgh, do everything within their power to assure her beloved brother’s happiness.
But the path of matchmaking never runs smoothly…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona where she is working on her next Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit http://marysimonsenfanfiction.blogspot.com/ and http://www.austenauthors.com/, where she regularly contributes.

Cravats and Croates: History of Men's Ties

Although men may have worn neckwear since ancient times, probably for warmth, the first neckwear is generally traced to the period of the Thirty Years War in the 17th century. Croatian mercenaries, fighting alongside the French, wore small knotted neckerchiefs, like the one pictured to the right. The Croatian word for Crotes was Hrvati.
Parisiennes, enamored with this unfamiliar neckwear, combined the French word for the Croatian nationality, Croates, with Hrvati, and the neckwear became a cravat.
The cravats started a new craze in Europe, and soon both men and women were wearing cravats. Men’s frequently were made of lace, held in place with cravat strings tied in a bow.
During the 18th century, cravats briefly fell out of favor, replaced with a stock, a folded piece of muslin wrapped around a shirt collar. Men wore their hair long, below the shoulder, and tucked the ends into black silk bags worn at the nape of the neck. This was called the bag-wig hairstyle.
In the latter part of the century, cravats again became popular. Around the turn of the century, different methods of tying the cravat came into play, and a book was published, Neckclothitania, which illustrated fourteen ways to tie a cravat. This book was the first to use the word tie in association with neckwear.

The birth of radio broadcasting

Hi there,
As I am working and going to school full time, I will not be able to blog much.
I am taking broadcast technology, so here is a blog I wrote after reading from chapter one of my text book.
Good night and Good luck.
Jen



In December of 1901, Guglielmo Marconi was able to transmit a wireless signal across the Atlantic a distance of more than 2.000 nautical miles.

Not unitl Reginald Fessednen was the human voice able to come over the air waves. At first, radio signals were only dots and dashes, like Morse code. The human voice could not be transmitted. Fessenden came up with a solution. He built a high speed alternator, using the idea of the Fleming valve.

He called it the audion. It was a device that looked alot like a light bulb. Within the 3 element vaccum tube were pieces working together to act as an oscillator, an amplifier and a detector. These three elements worked to create a continuous radio wave able to carry speech.

On Christmas Eve in 1906, wireless operators aboard ships were amazed to hear a human voice through thier headphones. Fessenden explained what was happeneing, then played the violin for them , read passages from the bible and wished all a Merry Christmas before signing off.

Radio took off over the years. Radio signals could be heard using crystal sets to detect waves. By 1910, Lee De Forest was able to amplify the radio waves.
Legal problems became a tangle of issues between inventors, until WW1.
the Navy was very intereseted in the ship to shore communications and all legal issues were put aside for the war effort.

Radio took America by storm and new legislation came about in response to the new media. Soon, millions were tuning in to local broadcasts on a regular basis, it had grown from point to point messaging to a form of mass communication, and the people loved it.

Fessenden commented "I have discovered an invisible empire of the air." in regard to his invention.
An empire still growing as of today.

Quarter Days

For societies located in the temperate latitudes, the turning of the seasons provide a natural division of the year into quarters. In Britain, the Quarter Days, used at least since the Middle Ages, mark these four major parts of the year.

The four Quarter Days in southern England, Wales and Ireland are:
Lady Day - March 25, Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the traditional day for hiring farm workers for the coming year
Midsummer - June 24, Feast of St John the Baptist, the midpoint of the growing season
Michaelmas - September 29, Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, start of the harvest
Christmas - December 25, Feast of the Birth of Jesus, high point of the year, when farm workers were paid for the year's labor

The Quarter Days originally referred to the agricultural cycle. But because they're easy to remember, they became the markers for other events and obligations. Servants were traditionally hired and paid on these dates. Rents were due then, giving rise to their other name of Gale (or Rent) Days. In England, leasehold payments and business premises rents are still often due on the Quarter Days. Since the dates were already associated with debts, other debts were usually also paid then, too.

The Quarter Days were also used for legal matters. At those times, justices of the peace discharged their responsibilities for dealing with taxes and the care of roads, and could order the constables to pay the amount of money owed the poor.

School terms remain loosely linked with the Quarter Days. For example, Michaelmas term at Cambridge runs from October through December, the Lent term from January to March, and the Easter term from April to June.

In the northern part of England and in Scotland, the four Quarter Days (also called Old Scottish Term Days in Scotland) are:
Candlemas - February 2, Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary
Whitsunday - May 15, Feast of the Holy Spirit
Lammas - August 1, Feast of St Peter’s Deliverance from Prison
Martinmas - November 11, Feast of St Martin the Bishop

Note that the days are different for England and Scotland. Both mark the start of the seasons, but according to different calendars. The English Quarter Days roughly align with the astronomical seasons, while the Scottish Quarter Days mark (more or less) the start of the seasons according to the Celtic calendar. These Scottish days correspond more closely, but not exactly, to the cross-quarter days, or mid-season days, of the English calendar.

More on the cross-quarter days next time.

Thank you all,
Linda