The Best Seductions Begin With Words and Ideas: History Hoydens Interviews Pam Rosenthal

HH: Your last novel, The Slightest Provocation, painted a less pretty picture of Regency England than we often get in romance. Does your upcoming The Edge of Impropriety continue in this vein?

PR: Edge is probably a lighter book, a comedy of manners and a satire of the ton.

My heroine, the arriviste Marina Wyatt, Lady Gorham, supplements a respectable but not luxurious widow's portion by writing silver fork novels (books about London high life: these things really were popular during the period, especially among middle-class strivers whose only chance to see Almack’s was in the pages of a novel).

My hero, Jasper Hedges, starts out shabbier, snobbier, more upper-class, and slightly appalled by Marina's commercial success. (Remember that Lord Byron, as a gentleman, didn't take money for "Childe Harold.") Jasper's a Cambridge classicist, an antiquarian, and (because I love finding ways for my brainy heroes to get their hands dirty) an erstwhile Mediterranean adventurer who digs up Roman coins on his family's estate.

While as for prettiness - well, the cover is certainly as pretty as any author could hope for. And this time the conflicts under the covers have largely to do with art and culture.
I like to call The Edge of Impropriety a novel of eros, esthetics, and empire. Jasper and Marina exchange their first glances among the beautiful sculpted bodies of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. But Jasper believes (as did Lord Byron as well) that the marbles were an illegitimate spoil of empire. So there's an imperial theme woven through the class comedy.


HH: You did a lot of research about classical art and literature for this book, didn’t you?

PR: A better way to say it might be that I took the opportunity to address my own shocking ignorance of the subject, when my husband/research partner showed me a book about the erotics of Greek and Roman art and got me hooked. So I’m a very little bit less ignorant now.

I posted about my joys of discovery on this blog and continued posting my discoveries as I researched and wrote the The Edge of Impropriety.

Because one of the joys of being a History Hoyden is having a venue for sharing the goodies. Just as one of the joys of being me is having a husband who knows what I like sometimes before I do. (And if that knows-what-she-likes business has a familiar ring, it's because I’ve used the phrase elsewhere in my books, in a different, more down-and-dirty context).


HH: You’ve managed to bring down the tone of the discussion with remarkable rapidity.

PR: Probably because I’m beginning to believe that whatever I do (and no matter how much reading and research) at heart I’m an erotic writer. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, and I certainly didn’t set out to be one. But the muse has a sense of humor and it seems to have fallen to me to pour all the lonely yearnings of a bookish adolescence into my erotic imagination.

Which means that I also get to pour the ongoing joy of discovery of other erotic traditions into my writing - most recently of poets like Sappho and Catullus, though there was also Ovid in The Slightest Provocation.


HH: So it turns out that what you write is erotica rather than, as your web site has it, “erotic historical romance.”

PR: I’m coming to think so, and to think that my historical romance-writing persona Pam Rosenthal has an awful lot in common with my evil twin Molly Weatherfield, who’s written the wild and crazy comic BDSM.

Because for me (for both me’s) no matter how graphic the writing ultimately gets, the best seductions begin with words and ideas. As in this snippet from the excerpt from Edge that’s currently on my web page:

The copper wire of [Jasper Hedges’…] spectacles had caught the light. “And what thrills [the gods…], what torments them with curiosity and desire, Lady Gorham, is the possibility of death. Mortality. The fragility of our bodies, their vulnerability to the passage of time. Human limitation is something the gods can never truly know, but they find its pathos quite beautiful. And the only way they can experience death’s pathos is through a human’s touch.”

A shiver passed through her. Followed by a flood of warmth.

I write erotica for people who find that sort of thing as hot I do and want to follow my characters upstairs after the dinner party ends.

But since it's skin rather than subtext that makes the romance industry deem something erotica rather than erotic romance, I get counted as a writer of erotic romance -- which is probably why I've been getting gorgeously dressed (or half-dressed) women on my covers instead of bare-chested men.


HH. The Edge of Impropriety will be released next week, on election day. And on your own blog, Passions and Provocations, you told your readers, "if you only have time to do one hugely, critically important thing on election day… you know what that is. And it’s not rushing out to buy The Edge of Impropriety." How seriously did you intend this?

PR: Absolutely. There's nothing like being at a pivotal point in history to bring things into perspective. I’ve felt myself overwhelmed these past weeks -- by the economy, the level of interest in the election, the intended and unintended narratives of the candidates and their campaigns, the ways in which people have begun to access and reassess their own places in this present very complicated juncture. All of which seem to me particularly complicated things for a historical romancer to address, and which I’ve been trying to puzzle out for myself.

There’s something amazing about living in a moment when the stakes are so huge and the outcome so perilously unknown. Historical romance -- and to my mind all historical fiction -- trades on some opposite approaches to this issue, and so I’m seeing online discussions (like Kathrynn’s here and Janet’s at Risky Regencies) about the ways in which we turn to romance and other escapist fictions for comfort at times like this.

About which (Gemini-like) I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I need as much comforting as the next person -- and the most comforting thing I know is the overarching romantic fantasy of a universe that wants to bring its lovers together after testing and finding them worthy (or more generally any narrative that promises and delivers on a satisfying resolution).

But on the other hand I find myself rather thrilled by the knowledge that this is not how things actually work, and that fictions and stories are our consolation for the maddeningly difficult truth -- which is that emergent human history just keeps spiraling into the unknown and unresolved. And that we have nothing but the best of ourselves to rely upon along the way.

Or at least to make us more passionate, more deeply engaged romance writers and historical novelists.

And I’d love to hear from both readers and writers about where you find yourself at this moment.

"Many Loving Kisses" : Love Letters between Spouses

I've always been intrigued by the private self that is revealed by famous people in their letters, particularly those that pass between lovers, and even more tellingly, between spouses. It's become a revelation to me as I research my work-in-progress on notorious royal marriages; the most obnoxious, autocratic, boorish people can become tender and gooey as S'mores when their ink is flowing as rapidly (or lustfully) as their blood.

In 1795, a rising Corsican military man, Napoleon Bonaparte, had become commander of the Army of the Interior and then, through the assistance of his friend Paul Barras, secured a post within an influential department of the Committee for Public Safety in Paris. Napoleon decided that in his quest for status, wealth and power, it was time to find a rich wife. “It is not necessary that our wives should be good looking,” he asserted. Of course, “with a mistress it is different” as an ugly paramour would have failed in her only duty.

He’d had his eye on Barras’s lover and salon hostess, Rose de Beauharnais. Rose’s rapt attention to Napoleon's war stories at dinner one evening cemented Napoleon Bonaparte’s desire for her. He yearned for recognition and her praise had stroked his ego into a lustful frenzy. They became lovers—if not that night, then not too much later. For Rose, the affair was a pleasant diversion, but Napoleon was smitten.

After their first night between the sheets Rose gave him a sketch of herself as a memento. Only hours after leaving her bed, he scribbled a note headed “seven in the morning” and filled with rhapsody.

I awaken full of you. Between your portrait and the memory of our intoxicating night, my senses have no respite. Sweet and incomparable Josephine [by now he had renamed her], what is this strange effect you have upon my heart? What if you were to be angry? What if I were to see you sad or troubled? Then my soul would be shattered by distress. Then your lover would find no peace, no rest. But I find none, either, when I succumb to the profound emotion that overwhelms me, when I draw from your lips, from your heart, a flame that consumes me. Ah, it was last night that I realized that your portrait is not you and that . . .

You will be leaving the city at noon. But I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, I send you a thousand kisses—but send me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.

But the poet had a pragmatist’s soul. Before pursuing a serious involvement with Josephine, Napoleon visited her notary to inquire about her wealth.

Although Napoleon could not seem to remain sexually faithful to Josephine, she was his acknowledged soulmate. Josephine had enjoyed a passionate affair of her own early on in their marriage, so Napoleon spent the rest of it exacting his revenge by sleeping with just about everything in a petticoat. Nonetheless, when he was off campaigning, he wrote passionate, graphically bawdy letters that never sugarcoated his desire. In fact, one of the words he used to describe a certain part of his wife's anatomy is unprintable in this milieu.

He longed to kiss her heart, then her lower anatomy, then much lower (he emphatically double-underscored the word), referring to her as his “sweet love . . . the pleasure and torment” of his life. “Never had a woman been loved with more devotion, fire, and tenderness.” If she ever left him he’d have lost everything that made life worthwhile. He dreaded losing her and her “adorable person.”

On April 3, 1796, Napoleon wrote: You are the one thought of my life. When I am worried by the pressure of affairs, when I am anxious as to the outcome, when men disgust me, when I am ready to curse life, then I put my hand on my heart, for it beats against your portrait. . . .” Is that why he’s always painted with his right hand shoved under his left lapel?

By what magic have you captivated all my faculties, concentrated in yourself all my conscious existence? It constitutes a kind of death, my sweet, since there is no survival for me except in you.

To live through Josephine—that is the story of my life.

That last sentence can leave one breathless.

In the wake of his decisive victories against the Austrians that winter, his correspondence expressed his eagerness to show her the proof of his “ardent love”; to be in bed with her and once again see her face, and her hair bound into a headscarf à la Creole, and her “little black forest.”

I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the time when I will be in it. To live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian Fields.

Alexandra of Hesse, known to her family (including her grandmother "Gangan" Queen Victoria) as "Alicky," had fallen in love with Nicholas Romanov, the Russian tsarevich, as early as 1884 when as a little girl she developed a puppy-love crush on the handsome "Nicky." Yet even though she turned down other offers and her family was afraid she'd end up a spinster, Alicky was reluctant to marry Nicky because she would have to convert from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy. However, her older sister Ella (Elizabeth) had married Nicky's uncle Serge and convinced Alicky that her religious qualms should not be an obstacle to her heart's desire. Once she got past that hurdle and gave her heart fully to Nicky (one of the few true love stories among royal marriages--each of them held out for the other), she had no problem pouring out her emotions on paper. During their brief engagement, Alicky discovered that Nicky kept a diary; so she would add her own little notes, in English, beneath his entries.

Nicholas and Alexandra: official engagement photograph, 1894.

Many loving kisses, she would invariably begin. Below is a sample of one of Alicy's early entries:

I dreamed that I was loved, I woke and found it true and thanked God on my knees for it. True Love is the gift which God has given, daily, stronger, deeper, fuller, purer.

And on their wedding night, Alicky wrote in Nicky's diary: At last, united, bound for life, and when this life is ended, we meet again in the other world and remain together for eternity. Yours, yours.

It proved eerily prophetic.

The following morning she wrote in his diary: Never did I believe there could be such utter happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings. I love you, those three words have my life in them.

Her last sentence also takes my breath away.

I know that Tracy has used love letters in her novels to tremendously compelling effect. Tracy, how did the love letters shape your characters and what was it like to incorporate letters from actual historical personages; how did they feed and/or effect your story? To everyone else, have you used love letters within your stories, or read love letters between real-life lovers and/or spouses to inform your research for your own books? What do you think love letters say about character that can't be shown in other ways?

Queen of Fashion

Sunday afternoon at the Walters Gallery in Baltimore I heard an excellent one hour biography of Marie Antoinette given my Dr. Caroline Weber of Columbia University. In conjunction with a mediocre exhibit on jewelry (Bedazzled – 5000 Years of Jewelry,)it was Dr. Weber’s talk that was the real gem.

Her most recent and, I think, most successful book: QUEEN OF FASHION: WHAT MARIE ANTIONETTE WORE TO THE REVOLUTION was the basis for the talk. Like the good titles we discussed in my last post on October 6, this title is about more than the chemise-like white dress the former Queen actually wore to the guillotine. It is all about the choices she made that led to that moment, about how she made most of her political statements through what she wore. More often than not, especially as the years wore on, those choices were reactive rather than showing an awareness of what was coming.

After this talk, I can date any painting of Marie Antoinette based on what style of clothing she wears. The picture at below: when she was trying, almost desperately, to convince the people that she was everything a queen should be.
This painting by Vallyer-Coster shows her dressed in classic queenly garb with a relatively simple coiffeur (see blog by Amanda on August 27 on the style eaerlier in her career as queen) and pearls, the traditional jewel of a French monarch.

In the question and answer period following, and in the nature of an, as yet unresearched, aside Weber expressed the opinion that the inclination to make judgments about what women who are in the public eye wear may come directly from Marie Antoinette.

Before Marie Antoinette came to Versailles it was the men who were the fashion focus. With deliberate effort she changed that and for the first time it was the Dauphine's and later the Queen's choices in fashion that made her a trend setter and eventually led to her fall. It helped that her husband, Louis XVI was shy, unimpressive and not at all interested in attracting public attention.

I mention this as Maureen Dowd of the NYT and Robin Givahn of the Washington Post have both written on the phenomenon during this election cycle. I would love to share lunch with the Givahn, Dowd and Weber and listen to their discussion.

In a related coincidence I have been looking through what can only be described as an adult picture book, A DRESS FOR DIANA by design team David and Elizabeth Emanuel. It is coffee table book of two hundred pages about the selection and production of Diana Spencer’s wedding gown.

“We were both aware as designers that Diana was young and inexperienced and that she was going into St. Paul’s as Lady Diana Spencer, but that she would come out as the Princess of Wales, the wife for the heir to the throne.”

Whatever you may think of that dress it did accomplish exactly that goal, that is suited the fairy tale AND the royal nature of it. Despite the fact that almost two hundred years separate the two ill-fated royals, there is an amazing echo of Marie Antoinette in Diana’s life and style. I would be willing to wager that anyone who pays close attention to clothes could date a photo of Diana by the style of dress she is wearing, It changed almost as much as she did.

There is no doubt in my mind that I am a very visual person. I love watching people but also respond emotionally and sometimes physically to clothes, fabric, jewelry, and architecture not to mention the more traditional works of art such as painting and sculpture.

So tell me how do you see fashion? Are clothes something you pretty much ignore? What do they tell you about a person or do they influence how you “see” that person?

How important is what your characters wear? To you as the author. To your hero and heroine and/or the people around them?

I must admit, I'm a Georgette Heyer virgin. I know, I know...how could I have never read a single book by the fabulous Ms. Heyer? I started wondering that, too.

So last week I decided it was time. I browsed a couple of Heyers, and decided on These Old Shades.

The first two sentences had me:

"A gentlman was strolling down a side street in Paris, on his way back from the house of one Madame de Verchoureux. He walked very mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high . . ."

And now I'm hooked. Where I have been and why had I not discovered this wonderful author earlier? I have no explanation. But I'm glad I finally met her.

Today the stock market took another tumble. Book sales are sluggish to say the least, and wonder what the economy will do to the publishing business in general. Not good for authors. The bookstores I've visited lately have not been busy.

So I retreat into the delighful pages of TOS. Along the way, I started wondering why do I read and write historicals--historical romance, specifically?

Yes, I love the escape, but as my crit partner put it (and she is very pop-culture hip--you would never guess she is such a devoted Regency fan):

In historicals, there are behaviors and expectations for civility. Today nothing is taboo. I want gentility and manners and consequences if you don't have them.

I paraphrased the above, but I think she's right. I love historical romance--a story where merely "Leaving the company of one man (who sits beside you on a settee in a drawing room) to talk to another was not the custom of the time. . ."-- would set the gossip rags on fire.

Why do you read historical romance? And if anybody want to give me the "best of Heyer" book rec's I'm all ears. I can't wait to start the next one!