Pedestrian Hobby Horse

The Pedestrian Hobby-Horse was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine during the Regency. Originally patented by a German Baron, Karl von Drais, in 1817, the Dandy Horse was first produced in France. It enjoyed instant popularity among fashionable members of the middle class.

An innovative London coachmaker named Denis Johnson picked up the idea and created a new and improved patent in his workshop in Long Acre. His design featured an elegantly curved wooden frame, allowing the use of larger wooden wheels. Several parts were made of metal, which allowed the vehicle to be lighter than the continental version.

Johnson created hundreds of “hobby horses” and, to prove his skills as a marketer, even established a riding schools in the Strand and Soho where prospective clients could try out his new machine. Johnson then introduced a dropped-frame version for ladies to accommodate their long skirts. It was an instant success. Fashionable young men of the day known as dandies led the craze, and during the spring and summer of 1819, the hobby-horse was all the rage in fashionable London society.

The velocipede came with an adjustable saddle for steering. Atiller mechanism controlled the front wheel. A dashboard behind the front wheel helped with steering and pushing. Intrepid riders propelled the wooden 'hobby-horse' velocipede by pushing their feet on the ground. Going uphill was probably a challenge but one could coast downhill. There were no brakes; one simply dragged his or her feet on the ground to stop. I have no doubt there were a number of accidents, as a result.

The pedestrian hobby horse had many names; velocipede, hobby-horse, dandy-horse, accelerator, swift walker, and a number of other names.

For about six months, the hobby horse enjoyed a high profile in London. Once the novelty had worn off, the craze died out. Johnson's son undertook a tour of England in the spring of 1819 to exhibit and publicize the item but by then, the velocipede’s glory days were over. No doubt the London Surgeons who issued a health warning against the continued use of the hobby horse added to its demise.

Few English or French cycling literature the hobby-horse use after 1820, but apparently in central Europe hobby horses were made and sold into the 1830s.

The hobby horse enjoyed a bright, short burst of fame. However, it did lead to the invention of the bicycle in the 1860s. Based on Johnson's design, the machine was resurrected and improved; rotary cranks and pedals were attached to the front-wheel hub of a velocipede. I could find no data on when the brakes were added but that would have been a major selling point for me.

Regency Halloween

Halloween as we know it today was not really a holiday during the Regency. On October 31, the Celts celebrated Samhain, a harvest festival which contained some elements of a festival of the dead. The Christian religion attempted to neutralize the pagan Samhain by combining it with Christian holy days. November 1 was All Saints' Day, or All Hallows Day, so October 31 became All Hallows' Eve.

By the Regency, All Hallows' Eve was mainly a rural festival, rarely noticed in the cities. Elements of Samhain remained in the customs of guising, lighting bonfires, and carving jack o' lanterns.

On Samhain, the barriers between the real world and the supernatural world thinned, allowing the dead, as well as evil spirits, to walk the earth. People left their doors open to welcome the ghosts of their ancestors inside, while at the same time keeping the evil ones out. An associate custom was guising, in which people dressed as ghouls. By blending in with the demons, they avoided them.

Bonfires were also popular on all Hallows' Eve. The fires lit the way to the afterworld of relatives who had died during the past year. They also scared the specters and goblins away.

Carving jack o' lanterns was another custom. Believing the "head" of a vegetable its most potent part, the Celts carved vegetables into heads with faces to scare away supernatural beings. By Regency times, these lighted vegetables were called jack o' lanterns from the seventeenth century Irish legend of Shifty, or Stingy, Jack. Shifty Jack, so evil neither Heaven or Hell would take him, was doomed forever to wander the earth while carrying a lantern.

The lantern was usually carved from a turnip or mangelwurzel, as pumpkins were largely unknown in Britain at the time.

Since turnips and mangelwurzels are dense, not hollow like pumpkins, carving such a jack o' lantern was quite a feat.

The beginnings of many of today's Halloween practices existed in the Regency. If you enjoy Regency and Halloween, you might like Pumpkinnapper, my Regency Halloween comedy.

Pumpkin thieves, a youthful love rekindled, and a jealous goose. Oh my!

Buy link here.

Happy Halloween!

Thank you all,

Linda

P.S. The top picture is Snap-Apple Night, painted by Irish artist Daniel Maclise in 1833, of a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland. From Wikipedia.

Guest Susanna Kearsley--Dangerous Loyalties: The Jacobites in Cornwall

Linda Banche here. My guest today is Susanna Kearsley and her knock-your-socks-off time travel back to 1715 Cornwall, The Rose Garden. Here she tells us about the politics of the time.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win the copy of The Rose Garden which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Susanna will select the winner. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winner within a week of selection, I will award the book to an alternate. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winner Susanna selected is Harvee! Thanks to all for coming over, and Susanna said she appreciates you coming over, and she enjoyed reading your comments.

Welcome, Susanna!

Susanna Kearsley:

Say “Jacobites”, and most of us think “Scotland”, but the truth is there were many on the English side as well who held the true heir of the throne to be King James III, a Catholic, not his Protestant half-sisters, who had ruled in turn since their joint father, James II, had been chased across the Channel into exile by his daughter Mary and her husband, William, Prince of Orange.

Politics then was as divided as it is today, and Britain’s parliament was split between the Whigs—who believed the monarch’s role should be strictly limited, and that progressive social and political reform was necessary—and the Tories, who stood for tradition, the old church, and a strong monarchy. Just as the Whigs had opposed the openly Catholic James II’s right to the throne, many of the Tories had supported him, and continued to consider him the true king even while they served his daughters in their parliaments.

When James II died in 1701, the Jacobites transferred their loyalty to his young son, James III. And when Queen Anne herself died in 1714 without a child to succeed her, Jacobites on both sides of the Scottish border felt the time had come to bring her brother back from exile to assume his rightful crown.

The Whigs, who did not believe in the hereditary right of kings, had found their own candidate for the royal succession. The Prince of Hanover, who despite being only distantly related (more than fifty Catholic relatives of Anne, besides her half-brother, had better claims) and speaking no English at all, was crowned King George I of Great Britain in October of 1714.

Not everyone approved. Public rumblings and riots began to spread out from the capital into the countryside, becoming particularly intense in the spring, since George I’s birthday unluckily fell the day before Restoration Day—a half-century old Stuart celebration of the day King Charles II was restored to his throne after being similarly exiled in the wake of the Civil War. The festivities for George’s birthday devolved into angry protests of his coronation, and several towns and cities across England erupted in riots and bonfires.

In response, the Whig-controlled parliament passed the famous Riot Act, which gave officials the right to break up any gathering of 12 or more people. Anyone who ignored the reading of the Riot Act was guilty of treason, and they could be beaten, arrested or shot dead on the spot without any further warning or liability.

At the end of July, George I also announced the suspension of the right of Habeus Corpus, meaning his agents could arrest anyone they suspected of treason and imprison them indefinitely, without having to bring actual charges or hold a proper trial.

He did this not only because of the riots, but also because he had learned from his spies that the Jacobites—not just in Scotland, but closer to home—were preparing to rise. And one of the strongholds of highly-placed Tories and Jacobite leaders was Cornwall.

The Duke of Ormonde and Lord Bolingbroke, two of the Tories’ highest men, had been accused of treason and had fled to France, but the popular and charismatic Ormonde had been planning his return, intending to support James III’s landing in Scotland by landing himself in the West of England and leading an army from there towards London against George’s parliament.

The plans had already been set in motion, led by one of the most influential men in Cornwall, Sir Richard Vyvyan, and aided by others like powerful MP John Anstis—who was not only a cousin of King James III’s private secretary but was himself the hereditary steward of the tinners who made up a large portion of the Cornish population—and his good friend George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, whose own family had a long history of backing the cause of the Stuart kings. (Granville, an accomplished poet and playwright, had even written poems while at Cambridge about King James III’s mother, Queen Mary of Modena).

But these men had a powerful enemy in another MP, Hugh Boscawen, who through his own family connections was part of George I’s inner circle, and who had an ongoing personal rivalry with George Granville.

It only took one man to ruin the Jacobites. The Duke of Ormonde’s secretary, Colonel John Maclean, had been sent to travel down through Cornwall, seeking out supporters for the cause and letting those already faithful know of Ormonde’s plans. Known and trusted by all those connected with the uprising, and privy to their plans, he then, for reasons never specified, turned traitor. He told George I’s agents all that he knew, and in turn George I gave Boscawen instructions to raise a militia and send out his Messengers (agents who had the ability to make arrests) to take care of the men who’d been named by Maclean.

Anstis and Granville were arrested on the same day in late September, and shortly afterwards Sir Richard Vyvyan was arrested at his grand house Trelowarren, although the story goes that the Messenger sent to arrest him was purposely delayed at an inn by Vyvyan’s friends while they sent someone to warn him. He reportedly used the time, not to escape, but to destroy potentially incriminating documents. If true, this tactic seems to have worked, because although he was sent to the Tower and held prisoner there for a time, he was eventually released for lack of evidence against him.

On October 7, the day after Vyvyan was taken, a group of Cornishmen led by James Paynter proclaimed James III King of Great Britain at a gathering in St. Columb. He and his friends were arrested and taken to Newgate prison, but Paynter, like Vyvyan, eventually managed to win his freedom (though at least one of his friends wasn’t so fortunate).

When the Duke of Ormonde finally managed to cross the Channel later that month, instead of being met as he’d hoped by an army of men under Sir Richard Vyvyan, he found the whole affair in tatters. Being told of Maclean’s treachery, and learning that his best men and allies were all in the Tower of London, he gave up his hopes of a Cornish rebellion and went back to France.

Would history have been any different if Colonel Maclean hadn’t sold out his friends to the enemy? Nobody knows. But considering just how well-liked and how powerful all of the great Cornish Jacobites were, there’s no saying how much they’d have helped James III when he landed that winter in Scotland, if they had been able to raise him an army in Cornwall as well.

THE ROSE GARDEN BY SUSANNA KEARSLEY

Eva Ward is a modern woman thrown back three centuries to 1715 only to find that might be exactly where she belongs. There she finds true love with Daniel Butler, but the discord surrounding Hanoverian King George plunges the lovers into a world of intrigue, treason, and love.

About the Author
Susanna Kearsley’s writing has been compared to Mary Stewart, Daphne Du Maurier, and Diana Gabaldon. Her books have been translated into several languages, selected for the Mystery Guild, condensed for Reader’s Digest, and optioned for film. She lives in Canada near the shores of Lake Ontario. Her previous works have won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for both the UK Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romance Writers of America's RITA awards.

Medieval Dance

In writing The Tapestry Shop, I researched medieval dance, because one of the scenes is a dance scene. Most of our information about medieval dance comes from fragmentary sources such as extant manuscripts and a few illuminations, leaving us to speculate on any form of dance steps that may have been used. From what little is known, the carole was most likely the form familiar in courts as well as at rural gatherings. This dance was probably a simple form of round dancing, where the dancers joined hands and sang, moving in a circle.
From Chretien de Troyes, the French poet, we know there were other forms of dance. In a wedding scene, written during the twelfth century, he says, “Maidens performed rounds and other dances, each trying to outdo the other in showing their joy.” What these other dances were remains a mystery, with the exception of references to the estampie.
A troubadour, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, may have written a Provencal song to fit the tune of an estampie he heard played by two jongleurs, which would set the date of this dance in the twelfth century. However, the earliest examples of instrumental pieces called estampies date from the 13th and 14th centuries and consist of both monophonic and polyphonic structures.
With so little information as to early medieval dance, we are left to speculate on the actual dance steps used, but we can be sure the people of the early Middle Ages found a way to express joy in their lives. From this writer’s perspective, I’m also certain that even with an open ring of dancers, two lovers would find a way to come together, even if it was across a bit of dance floor with only a sly wink or a touch of a hand.

Regency Historical, or Regency make-believe?

In my on-line writing group for Regency Writers, some of us were bemoaning the fact that so many novels labeled historicals are historically inaccurate.

Which begs the question: does it matter?

In the 1980’s, the attitude toward historical novels was pretty much anything goes as long as it's a good story. A few authors did a great job of blending a great story with historical accuracy, but many best-selling authors just wrote whatever they wanted and didn’t worry too much about research. Unfortunately, publishers let them get away with it and readers swallowed it. A lot of those stories had situations that readers believed were truth, many of which are still accepted as truth today.

A prime example of this is the myth in Regency romance novels is that marriage could be quietly annulled if it wasn’t consummated. I don’t know who started that, but it is unarguably false. There was an ancient Scottish tradition that allowed for annulment in certain circumstances if the marriage was not consummated, but for all intents and purposes, marriage was permanent, especially in England. Annulment was messy and scandalous and never, ever happened quietly. It also socially ruined both the husband and the wife. Even after King Henry VII legalized divorce in England, divorce was difficult to obtain and still had a huge social and legal backlash.

Today, more and more publishers are looking for historical accuracy, but still not enough to satisfy some history geeks. The winner of a nationally recognized historical contest began her Regency romance novel with a grand wedding full of descriptions that are modern inventions which never happened in that era. Why did she win? It was a lovely fantasy that blended history with modern-day traditions, and she was a good writer. Too bad the judges overlooked the fact that it was historically inaccurate. A few hours spent in research would have won her not only the contest, but the respect of other regency authors and the well-informed readers who know better.

Why do we, the authors of Regency Romance novels care about historical accuracy? Several reasons.

First, it’s true. The fiction comes from the plot and the characters, not the setting.

Second, accuracy helps preserve our heritage.

Third, we can learn from the past and see that maybe the good old days weren’t all that good, or that they were wonderful and should be treasured.

Fourth, many readers (and writers) are fascinated with the Regency era and want sources to guide them through it, meaning, they want to know what it was really like. That's part of why the read Regency romance novels.

Fifth, keeping an accurate backdrop helps shape the characters. Research is more than just learning about what the clothing looked like, or what kind of carriages they drove; it’s about society and people. It’s a realm long gone and our only doorway back is through painstaking research.

Some say, “Oh, well, it’s the story we want and the fantasy that entertains us.”

To that I say, “Well, fine, then label it a fantasy, not a historical.” If you’re going to call a novel Historical, or Historical Fiction, or Regency, do the research. I know it's a pain. I've had characters nagging me to write their stories for years but I resisted because I didn't want to do the amount of research that would be required. Finally, when they wouldn't leave me alone, I broke down and began researching. It's hard, and frustrating, and very time consuming. But it's worth it. The end result was my first ever Regency romance novel entitled, The Stranger She Married, published in 2008, Book 1 of the Rogue Hearts Series.

Now I'm hooked on the Era so much that I read research books on Regency England just for fun. Okay, well, it's continuing research and all that, but really, I read those research books because I'm a Regency geek.

In the midst of the on-line ranting, one of the published authors in my group shared with us her philosophy:

As a Regency romance author, my job is threefold:

1) do my homework well enough to please my fellow history geeks,

2) make the story compelling enough to hook readers who don't care whether or not it's accurate, and

3) don’t stress over writers/readers who prefer the fairytale.

It resonated within me. I hope it helps you, too.

The Orrery

An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system.

Although orreries date from the time of the Greeks, British clock makers George Graham and Thomas Tompion built the first modern orrery in 1704. The Fourth Earl of Orrery commissioned a copy of the original instrument for his own use, thereby lending his name to the device.

An orrery is essentially a clock. When set in motion, the orrery shows the relative periods of the sun, the earth and its moon, and the planets in relation to each other. They are not usually built to scale, and may not contain all the planets and their satellites. A grand orrery contains all the planets known at the time of its construction. One method of dating a grand orrery is to note the planets and moons the instrument contains.

The devices were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. King George II owned an orrery (1750 copy of his orrery at left), as did Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson's orrery here). John Winthrop taught astronomy at Harvard using an orrery (picture at right) that instrument maker Benjamin Martin built in London in 1767.

An orrery figures in my Regency comedy romance, Gifts Gone Astray (Buy Link here). Since the latest planet discovered by 1817, the time of the story, was Uranus (then called George's Star after George III), my fictional grand orrery has Uranus as the last planet. In the upper left of the cover of Gifts Gone Astray (click on the image to enlarge it), you can see part of the orrery.

Thank you all,
Linda

Pictures from Wikipedia.

Guest Elizabeth Chadwick: Medieval Pregnancy and Childbirth

Linda Banche here. My guest today is Elizabeth Chadwick and her medieval historical novel, Lady of the English, set in 12th century England.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win the copy of Lady of the English which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Elizabeth will select the winner. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winner within a week of selection, I will award the book to an alternate. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winner Elizabeth selected is catslady! Congratulations, catslady, and thanks to all for coming over.

Welcome, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Chadwick:

Thank you ladies for inviting me onto your blog to write a guest post!

I thought I'd talk a little bit about pregnancy and childbirth in the period of Lady Of The English.

Lady Of The English is about two Medieval women, Empress Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England and Adeliza of Louvain, Matilda's stepmother, who was a couple of years younger than Matilda herself. In political terms, it's the story of Matilda's struggle to gain the English crown after it is usurped by her cousin Stephen, and how Adeliza helped her in this endeavour, while treading a difficult path of her own due love and loyalty. In the emotional sense, it's about how these women coped with their lives in very difficult circumstances - some of their own making. It’s also about how they dealt with the physical hardships that were the lot of women in the 12th century, not least bearing children.

Today in Western society we have contraception as a matter of course. We have access to excellent healthcare both preconception and throughout pregnancy, childbirth and afterwards. We have drugs to control the pain and medical intervention on hand should there be an emergency. But in the 12th century it was a very different state of affairs. Contraception, although known, was haphazard and frowned upon by the church. Sexual intercourse was supposed to take place for the purpose of procreation, and to indulge without that expectation was to commit a sin. I'm sure people did have sex for fun, and followed contraceptive practices. I'm sure it was a rule that was treated with differing levels of gravity depending on a person's attitudes, but nevertheless it did exist. One suggested contraceptive trick was for the woman to tie the testicles of a weasel round her neck. Other than keeping her partner away, I can't see this it would have been very effective! Putting lettuce leaves under the man’s pillow would also seem to be a dubious way of preventing pregnancy. However, coitus interruptus and pieces of moss soaked in vinegar and appropriately inserted may have had more success.

For the aristocracy, producing numerous children seems to have been the approved norm. Women married young and by their mid-teens were usually embarked upon a breeding program. The age of their husbands was more variable. Adeliza of Louvain was perhaps seventeen or eighteen when she married Henry I. He was well into his fifties and she was his second wife. He had two legitimate children from his first marriage, and at least twenty bastards born of various other women. Adeliza and Henry had no children during their fifteen year marriage. Empress Matilda had been married to the Emperor of Germany who was about eleven years older than her. She may have had one child with him, but it died soon after birth. When her husband died, she returned to Normandy where her father married her to Geoffrey of Anjou who at the time of their marriage was only fourteen years old to Matilda's twenty six. It was going to be five years before they had any children, although some of this time was spent in separation from each other. The marriage doesn't appear to have been a happy one.

Eventually, the couple got back together, and Matilda bore their first son, the future Henry II in spring 1133. Producing a son would have been a feather in Geoffrey’s cap, not just because male heirs were valued, but because it was believed that if the male seed was the strongest, then a boy child would result. If the female seed was dominant, the baby would be a girl. So a boy child was even more a reflection on a man's virility.

Aristocratic women and those from wealthier families would retire into confinement in the later stages of pregnancy. This meant that for perhaps the last month they would be shut away from the world in a special room that had been prepared for them to give birth. Perhaps it was a bit like going back into the womb! At the best it was an enclosed and secure women's enclave where the expectant mother could rest and relax with companions and attendants. At worst it must have felt claustrophobic and perhaps like a prison. Peasant women didn't have a choice and just got on with their daily lives.

After the baby was born, the new mother would continue to remain in her chamber for another 40 days before emerging for her churching ceremony, for which she would receive gifts and have lovely new clothes to wear. The churching ceremony welcomed a woman back into society and gave thanks for the safe delivery. It made her ‘clean’ again, and able to resume all the duties of a wife. In the aristocracy this meant handing the baby over to a wet nurse and getting back into the breeding programme.

Empress Matilda bore Henry II in March 1133. By September of the same year she was pregnant again with her second son, Geoffrey, who almost cost Matilda her life. We don't know what happened but following the birth she was so seriously ill, that she made provision for her own funeral. She wanted to be buried at the Abbey of Bec. Her father wanted her to be buried in Rouen Cathedral and there was something of an altercation between father and daughter - so at least even in extremity Matilda still had the strength to argue! In the event, she survived her ordeal, but that must have been down to her strong constitution. Medical interventions for women struggling in labour, or suffering complications after the delivery, were few, rudimentary, and steeped in superstition. The Trotula, a compendium of women's medicine written in the 11th century, advises a woman having difficulty giving birth to take a warm herbal bath, and that her ‘sides, belly, hips, and vagina be anointed with oil of violets or rose oil.’ She was also to be rubbed vigorously and given a drink made with sugar vinegar and pomegranate juice. She was to be encouraged to sneeze and to be led at a slow pace through the house. If none of this worked, other remedies included drinking the milk of another woman, eating butter or cheese into which special words had been carved, or having a snakeskin tied around the loins. But basically, if you didn’t push the baby out on your own, you’d shot it. If you succeeded, you then had to hope you didn't suffer severe bleeding, a retained placenta, or develop a fever.

Despite her ordeal, Matilda, on returning to a husband became pregnant again and gave birth to a third son, William in 1136 (How virile that must have made Geoffrey of Anjou feel!). After that, there were no more children. One suspects that with three sons in the bag, this might well be a conscious decision on the part of the parents.

Adeliza of Louvain was barren throughout her fifteen years of marriage to Henry I, and this despite the fact that he was still merrily siring bastards on other women. We can only speculate on the reasons he and Adeliza were not fertile with each other.

After he died, she married again to William D’Albini, a royal steward, and immediately became pregnant. She married him in 1138, and when they parted 10 years later she had borne him at least six children - perhaps seven, risking herself year upon year in pregnancy and childbirth. I suspect that her inability to have children with Henry I probably put Adeliza in the mindset of those in the population who thought that sexual intercourse should be open to the possibility of conception every time it happened, and that quickening with a child was a gift from God and to be welcomed. It must have taken a toll on her health though. She would have been about thirty five when she bore her first child. She entered a nunnery in 1148 and died in 1151, when her oldest son would only have been about twelve, and her youngest perhaps three or four. William D’Albini did not remarry although he survived her by twenty five years.

All in all, previous centuries were fraught times for women. Men went to battle, and so did their wives and mistresses. Even today outside of societies with access to good medical care, women and their babies continue to be at high risk during the birth process. Having borne two healthy sons myself and having had the choice of when and where and how, I have enormous respect and admiration for my sisters and I am so glad I did not have to go through what they did!

LADY OF THE ENGLISH by ELIZABETH CHADWICK
Matilda, daughter of Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England’s queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival Stephen do not know the iron will that drives her.

Adeliza, Henry’s widowed queen and Matilda’s stepmother, is now married to a warrior who fights to keep Matilda off the throne. But Adeliza, born with a strength that can sustain her through heartrending pain, knows that the crown belongs to a woman this time.

In the anarchy, in a world where a man’s word is law, how can Adeliza obey her husband while supporting Matilda?
How long can Matilda fight for the throne that she has struggled so bitterly to win?

About the Author
Elizabeth Chadwick is the author of 17 historical novels, including The Greatest Knight, The Scarlet Lion, A Place Beyond Courage, For the King's Favor, Shadows and Strongholds, The Winter Mantle, The Falcons of Montabard, and To Defy a King, six of which have been shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Awards. visit her at her website at http://www.elizabethchadwick.com/