Is a Cigar Ever Just a Cigar? (A Brief, Personal, and Uncompleted History of Sex in Romance Fiction)

The significant birthday I'm going to be celebrating soon has its good and its bad aspects. But when I'm feeling down about it I comfort myself that I can blog at this site about anything that interests me because I, after all, am history.

For certainly the romance genre changed since I've been writing in it -- as one of the Smart Bitches might say, let me count the ways, yo. At least from the erotic side of things, which is where I, uh... sit... I'd begin counting thusly:

-- Beginning with those readers who were shocked, shocked, when I suggested, in Almost a Gentleman, that a man might ever be attracted to a man (except for when he was part of that acceptable romance device of bad first husband who didn't make the heroine feel sexually desirable).

-- Or when writing about certain sexual positions was enough, as romance reviewer Mrs. Giggles once said of my novella "A House East of Regent Street," to "send genteel readers into seizures."

-- Not to speak of when it was as though I lived and wrote in two entirely separate worlds -- of the hard-core kink of the erotic novels I wrote as Molly Weatherfield and according to the it's-all-about-the-relationship diktat of the erotic romance I wrote as Pam Rosenthal (and when I was urged to keep my dual identity quiet).

None of which distinctions -- to my great fascination -- seem to hold anymore.

The first set of walls that toppled for me was the necessity of keeping my dual identity under wraps. Even in 2003, just after Pam's Almost a Gentleman was first published and Molly's Carrie's Story was reissued, I organized a joint book party for both my authorial identities, at which "we" read from "our" books and talked about the themes "we" shared, and nobody (including my romance editor) seemed to get too exercised about it. Probably because erotic romance was getting so steamy that the borders between it and erotica were simply melting away (more about this later).

While as for the other two changes I've seen, though -- the almost deadpan readerly casualness nowadays about less conventional physical sex and the growing market for romances between two men: You can see examples of both of these in a recent discussion at DearAuthor.com, titled "Do you Skim/Skip Sex Scenes?" And as someone who tends to give a lot of thought to authorial choices in writing about explicit sexuality, I was fairly well blown away by all the "ho-hum, another anal scene" comments, not to speak of a fair number of "oh well, I just read the m/m stuff..." responses.

Though I shouldn't have been surprised by those "ho hum, another..." responses. Actually, I suppose I should have been able to predict them a few years ago when, at a Romance Writers of America National Conference, I found myself talking at a party to an editor from a romance house just about to launch its erotica line.

The editor (who's no longer in the business) was proud as punch and I was curious to find out more.

"So," I asked, "what authorial take will you be looking for, when writing about sex?"

"Oh," she said, "there'll be a lot more sex."

"Yes," I said. "I imagine so. But you know, erotic writing is... well, it takes a certain sense of... of self... and..." I'm not sure what I was going to say, because the business of writing explicit sex, where craft meets self-exposure and pleasure meets I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-doing-this-but-just-try-and-stop-me continues to astonish, delight, and mortally confuse me.

But I didn't get a chance to say it, because the editor in question didn't seem to find anything confusing about it. "A LOT more sex," she repeated. "TWICE as much as in Almost a Gentleman."

More. Right. I got it. As though MORE was all you knew on earth and all you need to know. Which is why, I think, you get all those ho-hum responses now.

While as for the m/m stuff -- well, here I'm curious and fascinated and working overtime to read and understand the historical journey from Jane Austen, who never wrote a scene between men that didn't have a woman present (because she herself could never have physically witnessed such a conversation) to the increasingly common sexually explicit male/male romance written for women by women.

In fact, I was curious (and sometimes entertained) enough by the m/m romance phenomenon enough to put myself on the line recently and propose a presentation for this summer's IASPR conference (International Association for the Study of Popular Romance) conference in Brussels, Belgium, with the title of "The Queer Theory of Eve Sedgwick at the Edges of the Popular Romance Imagination." Partly because I figured it was the only way I'd ever get myself to read the brilliant late academic Sedgwick with anything like the attention and discipline her work demands. (Sedgwick was one of the originators of what's called "queer theory" -- and no, it doesn't mean that every story or relationship can be "deconstructed" to find a homosexual one beneath... it means something a great deal more complex and interesting, that I hope to write about after I manage my own reading of it to my satisfaction.)

Which is why you're likely to find me in the library most afternoons these days taking apart Sedgwick's dense, magisterial sentences and feeling as I do that I'm splitting atoms of heavy metal and releasing energy that seems to shimmer and shed new light -- on the questions I've been stuttering about for years, in the strange matter of close-up-and-personal erotic and romantic writing.

And yes, I do have some provisional answers. But not now or here. Except for two hints:

-- yeah, it's at least partly about power. Always has been, which is no surprise to me because for the space of my adult life at least, romance and feminism have been leap-frogging each other to make more sense of these issues in the erotic arena.

-- and in Sedgwick's words from her book Epistemology of the Closet (and with a nod to the guy with the cigar):

"...where would the whole, astonishing and metamorphic Western romance tradition (I include psychoanalysis) be if people's sexual desire, of all things, were even momentarily assumed to be transparent to themselves?"

Not to speak (this is me, Pam, now) of how many romance (and romance-inflected) novels we'd have lost along the way. (And I absolutely love that she uses the same word I so often do, "astonishing.")

OK. Readers and writers in the romance (and other) genres: What other changes have you noted, and why do you think that is?

And are any of you going to Brussels this August?

Metropolitan Musings: What Inspires You?

I spent nearly the entire day yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, catching up on all the exhibits I’ve been dying to see. The Met is one of the NYC places I tend to frequent whenever I need a creative pick-me-up, because I always see something that inspires me in one direction or another, whether it’s revisiting an old “friend” (a work of art I studied in high school or college, or just love to look at every time I head to the museum), or something new and equally compelling.

I began yesterday with the Picasso blockbuster exhibit, which is an everything-but-the-kitchen sink show that covers the entire gamut of the painter’s exceptionally lengthy career. Think you’ll have to stop creating when you’re 87? Think again. Picasso did a suite of intaglio prints between March and October 1968 titled the “347 Suite” for the number of drawings he just happened to dash off at the time – nowhere near his dotage. Of this suite, Picasso mused, "I spend hour after hour while I draw, observing my creatures and thinking about the mad things they're up to; basically, it's my way of writing fiction."

Hmmmm.

The exhibit showcases the Met’s collection of Picassos, a collection that began with a gift from writer Gertrude Stein of the artist’s 1905/06 portrait of her. That painting is one of my old friends: (my fellow art history students and I nicknamed it “Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein”) so I had to laugh when I read on the placard what Stein herself had to say about the portrait: “For me, it is I, and it is the only reproduction of me which is always I, for me.”

The Picasso exhibit ends up being a retrospective of the artist’s life, from the miniature caricatures that recall Daumier’s popular drawings through the Blue and Rose periods, naturalism (for him), Cubism and on and on through various media from oils to bronze to several types of printmaking, including linoleum blocks and deliberate homages to Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Cezanne, and Matisse. The" 347 Suite" in itself revisits several of the artist's favorite themes: circus figures, eroticism/nudes, prostitutes, cavaliers, horses, Greek mythology, harlequins, and majas.

Inspiration to Leslie the author: never stop creating; never stop experimenting with different genres.

Then it was on to "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," the current costume collection exhibit, which celebrates the American Woman (although many of the garments on display came from the houses of Worth, Lanvin, Molyneux, Madame Grès, and other Europeans). The stunning exhibit welcomes the Brooklyn Museum’s stellar costume collection to the Met, which will be its new home. (no photos allowed, so I had to purchase the companion book HIGH STYLE, and I’m sure I’ll blog about this exhibit at a future date). I have seen nearly every costume exhibition at the Met since it was reopened in the 1970s, and this is certainly the best since the “Dangerous Liaisons” exhibit a few years ago. The rooms take you through several American feminine icons: the heiress (think Edith Wharton); the Gibson Girl; the Bohemian; the Suffragist; the Flapper, and the Screen Siren. All I can say is I wanted to wear half the garments.

Inspiration to Leslie the author: well – you know me and costumes, and for a certain fellow hoyden, I have a feeling this exhibit would have been an equally orgasmic experience. My only regret was that there weren’t a few strategically placed mirrors so that I could view the front of some of the garments, which looked so spectacular from the rear.

Next:

Les Belles Heures du Duc de Berry. I studied this early 15^th century Book of Hours on both art history and medieval studies courses and it’s a must-see for anyone with a medieval bent. What makes this Book of Hours (a liturgical book meant for the lay person to enjoy, rich with illuminated manuscripts and astonishing miniature detail) so special is that it includes not only the Mary cycle, which is de rigeur for a Book of Hours, but it includes cycles of several saints. What makes the exhibition (on through June 13 only) so remarkable is that until now the duc de Berry’s Book of Hours has never been viewed in its entirety by anyone other than a close personal friend of the duke’s. The Hours were bound, of course, and were on display at The Cloisters, the Met’s uptown medieval sister museum. But the book would be opened to a different page from time to time and that’s all viewers saw. The book was carefully taken apart for painstaking repairs and the curators decided to display every leaf for a few months before stitching it all back together in 3 volumes.

You need a magnifying glass to see the images properly and to really get a sense of the magnitude of the work and the talent of the 3 teenage (!!) Limbourg brothers, native Flamands who were feted at the duc de Berry’s court while they worked on the Book of Hours. I got a bit of a religious education, but burned out pretty quickly on it, as the exhibit is vast and the viewing of so many miniatures is intense. But I came away with a greater appreciation of the social detail in the paintings. The depictions of early 15^th c. garb for royalty, peasants, women, soldiers, etc., is an education in itself and well worth the trip for the medieval-era author.

Inspiration to Leslie the author: no detail is too small. Not only that, whimsy and humor can lurk where you least expect it.

And, finally (and I need to revisit this one), the exhibit of silver that the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa lavished on her favorite daughter, Maria Christina, on the occasion of her marriage to Prince Albert Casimir of Saxony, Duke of Teschen. Maria Christina (Marie Antoinette’s second oldest sister, was the only one of the empress’s children whom she permitted to marry for love, as she herself had done. The elaborate silver, much of it designed by the Viennese silversmith Würth, rivaled the craftsmanship of the French silversmiths of the 18^th century. I came away wondering what Marie Antoinette might have thought of the prodigious gift her mother had made to one sister, when in most other ways she withheld both worldly riches and affection from her children.

So … what inspires you? Is there a special place you go to recharge your creative batteries?

Rivals & Brothers

San Francisco Opera’s season last fall opened with a fabulous production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. I was lucky enough to see it three times (the final dress rehearsal, a simulcast at ATT ballpark, and the closing performance). The production updated the setting from medieval Spain to the Peninsular War, which of course I loved. The Goya-inspired setting fit well with a story of war, divided families, and one atrocity leading to another.

At the heart of Trovatore’s tangled, over-the-top plot are two brothers, separated at birth, now unknown to each other fighting for opposite sides and rivals for the love of the same woman. Watching the opera, I found myself thinking about brothers in literature. A topic which was also on my mind watching tonight's episode of Lost. Sibling relationships are fascinating, but in historically set stories, inheritance can make the the rivalry between brothers particularly intense. Perhaps especially so in British-set historical stories because of the laws of inheritance. Among the aristocracy the eldest son inherits the title and estates, while younger sons may at best receive a secondary property of their mother’s and in many cases have to make their own way in the world as soldiers, ministers, or barristers. In As You Like It, Orlando is living as a servant on the dubious charity of his elder brother Oliver who has inherited all the family lands and fortune.

Questions of legitimacy can further complicate this rivalry. In King Lear, the Duke of Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund sets out to destroy his legitimate brother Edgar, driven by the pent up jealousy of watching his brother be heir to their father’s lands and title due to the fact that Edgar’s mother was married to the duke while Edmund was born on the wrong side of the blanket.

The issues grow even more tangled when an acknowledged son and heir may actually be illegitimate. The rivalry between Lymond and Richard runs through Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles (including one of the best literary sword fights I’ve ever read in The Game of Kings). At the heart of that rivalry is competition for parental affection and the family estates, and the question of who is who’s son, who deserves what, who is loved best. What makes rivalry between brothers particularly interesting is that it tends to be mixed, as in Lymond and Richard’s case, with strong love that goes back to the cradle.

I think I had Lymond and Richard in mind when I created Charles and Edgar in Secrets of Lady. I know I was thinking of Edmund and Edgar, because I deliberately named my Edgar after the legitimate brother from Lear. I decided quite early on in the plotting process, over lattes with my friend Penny, that Charles was illegitimate, that Edgar knew this and Charles didn’t, and that part of Edgar’s motivation stemmed from feeling that everything Charles had inherited should rightfully be his. I also knew I wanted the bond between the brothers to be strong, so that Edgar’s betrayal would be a particularly intense blow to Charles (poor Charles gets betrayed a great deal).

Beneath a Silent Moon features another pair of brothers in Quen and Val. There’s a rivalry between them that their father has encouraged. Charles tells Mel about the boys trying to scale the Old Tower at Dunmykel when they were children. But I found as I wrote the book that, despite the fact that much of Val’s behavior is appalling, the relationship between the two brothers was more complex and had more affection in it than I had at first envisioned. Quen and Val’s relationship is also clouded by questions of legitimacy as the story progresses. I think that one of the reasons I write about legitimacy and illegitimacy in so many books is that so much of the social order among British aristocrats was build on birth. So that questions about legitimacy can strike at the very foundations of that world (foundations which Edgar, in particular, takes very seriously).

In Beneath a Silent Moon, the reader doesn’t see Val react to the revelations about Quen’s birth, but in the letters I wrote for the trade edition, Quen writes to Aspasia that Val said their father “wouldn’t do violence to himself–Talbots have too strong a sense of self-preservation, as we both should know. I pointed out that I’m apparently not a Talbot, as I had explained to him before we left Scotland. Val shot me one of his looks and said I’d been raised as one, I couldn’t escape the legacy.” Val handles the revelation of his elder brother’s illegitimacy better than Edgar. But then, for all his faults, I think Val has more ambiguity tolerance than Edgar.

Do you like stories about brothers? What are some favorites? Writers, do you enjoy writing about brothers as rivals?

No such thing as a good looking bum

Over on Smart Bitches they're discussing a couple of covers that show what I think are supposed to be Regency-era men in breeches. Lots of people seem to think the breeches are too loose and don't fit. Well, they're right about the "don't fit" part . . .

I once had a discussion with my editor about a book where the heroine spends and inordinate amount of time looking at the hero's bum and pontificating about how fine it is. There are multiple problems with this scenario. Firstly, if the man is in a coat (and he was) the tails would obscure his bottom. Secondly, we're glad they do, cause the hinny in this period is not a pretty sight . . .

Because breeches and panataloons were high-waisted and held up by braces, the seat has to be quite full so that he can sit down. And if you're thinking trousers would be a better option, think again. They're even baggier.

Sadly, you heroine will have to wait for a chance to see your hero naked in order to sigh over his fine hind end.

Images:

Upper right, Breeches, early 19th century
You can see that these are baggy in the rear.


Middle left, Brummell 1805
You can see that his pantaloons are not skin tight.

Lower right, Breeches, early 19th century
You can see the sagging bottom in this side shot

Sir Richard Burton: The Ugly Englishman?

Sir Richard Burton was many things - explorer, linguist, cultural anthropologist, and person of interest in the mid-19th century. He also reveals himself in his “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah” as arrogant, racist, a social snob, and master of disguises.

Burton traveled for the Royal Geographic Society (after browbeating them into submission), and his explorations as delineated in the “Personal Narrative” were to investigate Moslem life in a Moslem country. One wonders why: was it for scientific edification? Or was it to make a name for himself doing the unthinkable: enter Meccah as an Englishman?

Burton first disguised himself as a Persian wanderer, but soon discovered that a Persian is not considered an Arab by either Persians or Arabs. Nevertheless, he sailed to Alexandria and garbed himself in robes and sandals, ostensibly to investigate markets for horses between Central Arabia and India, in actuality to make geographic assessments of watersheds, etc. for the Royal Geographic Society, and to “assess the racial makeup of the ‘Arab family.’”

Naturally, he kept a journal. His studies in Oriental manners came first, and they were surprisingly specific. He received instruction on, for example, how to drink a glass of water:

“With us [English] the operation is simple enough, but his [the Moslem’s) performance includes no fewer than five novelties. In the first place he clutches his tumbler as though it were the throat of a foe; secondly, he ejaculates, ‘In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful!’ before wetting his lips; thirdly, he imbibes the contents, swallowing them, not sipping them as he ought to do, and ending with a satisfied grunt; fourthly, before setting down the cup, he sighs forth, ‘Praise be to Allah!’ ... and fifthly he replies “May Allah make it pleasant to thee!’ in answer to his friend’s polite ‘Pleasurably and health!’ He also avoids the irreligious action of drinking the pure element in a standing position.”

Further instructions included (1) using the right hand exclusively; (2) shaving one’s head and growing a beard; (3) speaking Arabic; (4) reviewing religious practices and the art of prostration; (5) reading the Koran; (6) practicing how to behave in coffee houses, baths, and bazaars, and (7) behaving with good manners in the mosque.

Burton quickly learned that passing himself off as an Arab doctor gained him better acceptance, and this he did with many embarrassingly arrogant revelations about his prejudice about his patients: “Moreover, the practice of physics is comparatively easy amongst dwellers in warm latitudes, uncivilized peoples, where there is not that complication of maladies which troubles more polished nations.”

Thus buoyed by his success, Burton set off on his journey, traveling in disguise. His packing list is astounding: a softwood toothstick; soap; wooden (not horn) comb; 2 changes of clothing; a goatskin waterbag; coarse Persian rug for sleeping and sitting; pillow, blanket, and sheet (which can be used as a tent or a mosquito curtain); sewing items (thread, needles, buttons, cobbler’s wax);
a huge yellow cotton umbrella; dagger; brass inkstand and pen holder; prayer beads; money carried in a cotton purse secured in the breast pocket or in a leather money belt, along with important papers; a pair of saddlebags; medicine chest, with drugs (purchased in Egypt) in tin or wooden boxes, not glass bottles which labels them as “Frankish.”

Methods of securing money varied: gold links covered with leather can be worn as a belt; an even more extreme method is to make a shallow slit in one’s shoulder and hide jewels under the skin!

Thus Burton sets off, as he describes it, “...mounted in a ‘trap’ - a cross between a wheelbarrow and a dogcart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, biting mule” to his next destination, Cairo.

Burton was not a happy camper. He refers to his trip and stay as “The Comedy of Cairo” and complains in his journal about everything: “The Nile... you see nothing but muddy waters, dusty banks, a sand mist, a milky sky, and a glaring sun; you feel nought but a breeze like the blast from a potter’s furnace.”

The scenery: “...Birds peeped out from among bright green patches of palm-tree, tamarisk, and mimosa, of maize, tobacco, and sugar-cane. Beyond the narrow tongue of land on the river banks lay the glaring, yellow Desert, with its low hills and sand slopes... the chocolate-skinned, blue-robed peasantry; the women carrying progeny on their hips, with the eternal waterpot on the heads; and the men sleeping in the shade or following the plough... The lower animals, like the higher, were the same: gaunt, mange-stained camels, muddy buffaloes, scurvied donkeys, sneaking jackals and fox-like dogs.”

One has to admit his descriptions are wonderfully visual!

Burton then took the name Hakim Abdullah, an Indian name for an Afghan male, and continued his adventures as a doctor in a land where poisoning was common.

Further episodes to come in later blogs.

Misattributions

The book which I just oh-so-gladly handed off to my editor involves the run-up to the infamous Enghien affair, in which Napoleon kidnapped a member of the French royal family (not personally—can you imagine Napoleon trying to toss the Duc d’Enghien over his shoulder?), had him hauled across the Rhine onto French soil, tried him on rather wobbly charges, and summarily executed him. It was not the First Consul’s most shining moment.

Of this affair, it was said, “C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute”, or, en anglais, “It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder.”

But who said it?

Although the famous words were, in fact, voiced by Joseph Fouche, Napoleon’s infamous Minister of Police, many people attribute them instead to another flamboyant member of the Consular regime, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. The misattribution has its own unintentional humor to it; Fouche and Talleyrand, aside from both being savvy political operators, both employed by Bonaparte, were about as unlike as any two men could be. One imagines that neither would be pleased to be linked for eternity by a shared phrase.

And what about the line, “I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”? Just the other day, I found myself arguing rather vehemently that the line was Oscar Wilde’s. Of course it was Wilde! I protested hotly. Mocking club life… well, it just sounded like him.

It turns out I was wrong. Not all the best lines belong to Wilde. This one was properly the property of Groucho Marx.

Oooops.

A quick google search of “misattributed quotations” revealed that I was far from the only one stealing thunder from Peter to gift it to Paul. Shakespeare and Mark Twain appear to be the biggest beneficiaries/victims of the misquotation craze, getting credit for others’ lines at the same times as theirs get snatched, but it isn’t just them. Some of the more amusingly incongruous misattributions that popped up included bits of Aesop being credited to the Bible, Henry Thoreau providing words for the mouth of Jefferson, and (my personal favorite) the twentieth century Russian dictator, Lenin, taking the credit for a phrase penned by the seventeenth century Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift: “Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.” Somehow, one just can’t imagine Lenin and Swift sharing a cozy cup of tea, even if they could get past the whole milk or lemon/ monarchy or proletarian paradise question.

Have you come across any interesting misquotes?

Orient Express – Portal to Adventure

Orient Express… Just saying that train’s name conjures up images of royalty and spies, arms dealers and aristocrats traveling across Europe in unimaginable luxury. Crystal goblets and embroidered tablecloths set with the finest wines and most complex liqueurs, while peasants peeked through the windows at the gilded furniture and frescoed ceiling. Liveried stewards managed to know every passenger’s language – and keep all their secrets.

No wonder authors flocked to set their stories aboard it – Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, D. H. Lawrence, Eric Ambler, and even Ian Fleming. The amazing thing to me is that the reality was, in many ways, even better than the legends.

It all started with the maiden voyage in 1883, for which a ticket cost the equivalent of a year’s rent on a high-class London townhouse. If passengers had any qualms about the stewards’ ability to offer suitable service, they could provide their own servant at the price of approximately one year’s wages. Obviously, this was designed for the wealthiest of the wealthy – even if the route had been cobbled together. (King Leopold II of Belgium, the railroad’s original sponsor, pressured his relatives to allow the train passage, despite their suspicions that this was an attack on local railroads’ monopolies.)

The train had two wagon-lit sleeping cars accommodating twenty passengers each, a restaurant car, a car for baggage and the very high quality food, wines, liqueurs, and other required luxuries. The sleeping cars were as exquisite as music boxes. Even better, they were heavily carpeted, well heated, insulated against noise – and so well cushioned that a gentleman that a gentleman could shave without cutting himself. (Try duplicating that feat on a twentieth century train!)

The locomotive was equally carefully selected, since a breakdown in the Balkans during this war-torn period would have been disastrous.

The liveried waiters were not allowed to wear glasses but were required to wear powdered wigs. The Burgundian chef had a beard and was attended by six assistants.

Only men boarded the first train in Paris; two women would join them later, in Vienna. (Perhaps other ladies were offended that the dining salons were segregated by gender and hence declined to join? On the other hand, that was the era’s custom – and it must have made for fabulous gossip sessions, dahling.) The company included journalists: Edmond About later wrote De Pontoise à Stamboul, the official account, and Henri Opper de Blowitz, the Paris correspondent for The Times of London, made sure that millions could read about every mile of the trip in his syndicated columns.

The first Orient Express left Paris for Constantinople on October 4, 1883 so smoothly that few passengers realized they’d departed. A ten-course dinner was served at 8 P.M., which provided sustenance for the journey to Strasbourg. They crossed the Rhine at dawn (a sight most passengers slept through) and reached Vienna by late evening, where the Emperor’s Court Chamberlain led a grand reception committee. (Now I ask you: Would this happen to a modern airplane passenger? Hardly!)

Endless speeches were spiced by national anthems for all the passengers, performed by the Imperial Guard’s band. The exhausted guests probably enjoyed “The Blue Danube” more, since that marked a shift to the station restaurant for supper, champagne, and imperial Tokay. (Yes, more fine wine!)

After that, most of the passengers staggered back to their compartments to catch some shuteye. But a few brave souls boarded state carriages to see the newly lit – by that modern wonder, electricity – Ringstrasse, the floodlit Opera House, the Hofburg, and the House of Parliament. (This special tour may have been linked to the presence of Herr Porges, the European head of the American Edison Company, who could always find an opportunity to showcase his company’s products.)

The Orient Express left Vienna during the night and reached Budapest early in the morning. At the station, a military band played traditional airs, goulash was served from steaming kettles – and the passengers were not allowed to leave the building.

Any disappointment vanished when they reached Szegedin, an ancient Hungarian city. Here, a gypsy band dressed in traditional silks and gold jewelry sang and played for two hours in the dining car. The gypsy king danced with the Viennese ladies and they played “La Marseillaise” for the Burgundian chef. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as they rolled toward the Transylvanian Alps.

Once past the Danube’s spectacular Iron Gates, the passengers dined with the King and Queen of Romania at their private resort. The king wore his parade uniform, the queen wore Romanian national costume, the courtiers wore tails or uniforms, while the poor passengers were by this time becoming slightly bedraggled. Entertainment was provided by a famous Romanian soprano, badly accompanied by the queen – who undoubtedly received much praise for her portion of the performance.

Afterward, the party walked down the hill in a rainstorm to reboard the Orient Express and reached Bucharest well before midnight. There they enjoyed an excellent midnight supper. Romanian women were famous for their beauty and sexual inventiveness. Unfortunately, the journalists’ accounts stop abruptly short at this point.

Long after midnight, the train departed for the small frontier port and the ferry across the Danube to Bulgaria. There, the passengers sadly had to say goodbye to their beautiful accommodations and board a much more primitive train. Bandits were so prevalent here that the men rode with their pistols out, in preparation for an attack. (One came in 1891, which took over a million dollars in today’s currency.)

Finally, the intrepid adventurers reached the Black Sea port and the ferry for Constantinople. Dawn broke as the Espero entered the Bosporus and headed toward Constantinople. The sun sparkled on the blue Mediterranean waters and dozens of boats danced around the boat with its passengers. Ottoman palaces dotted the shores like white flowers arising from green gardens. Great domes and minarets climbed over the hills – Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and more. The Belgian ambassador, the sultan’s chamberlain, and other Turkish officials greeted them on the pier. They were probably happiest to see the finest European hotel in the city.

Their visit included a private tour of Topkapi Palace, oldest and greatest of Ottoman palaces, and a lengthy shopping excursion in the Grand Bazaar, which was old before the Byzantine Empire fell.

The Orient Express returned to Paris exactly on schedule, eleven days after it had departed – and ready to give birth to legends.

Only a few years later, along came “Sir” Basil Zaharoff, an ethnic Greek originally from Constantinople but traveling with a British passport. Known in his own time as “The Merchant of Death,” he’s said to have earned at least a pound sterling in gold for every casualty in World War I, thanks to the armaments he’d sold to both sides. His mastery of bribery, corruption and “dirty tricks” can only be described as amazing.

But he met the love of his life aboard the Orient Express. María del Pilar de Muguiro y Beruete stumbled into Zaharoff’s compartment after her insane husband Don Francisco, Principe de Borbon y Borbon, tried to kill her on their wedding night. Zaharoff refused to give her up, even though her husband was a cousin of the King of Spain and the scandal imperiled highly profitable business ventures just before the Spanish-American War. Zaharoff and his lady were married almost four decades later, after the madman died, but only enjoyed eighteen months together before she passed away.

Zaharoff always used compartment No. 7 after that when he took the Orient Express – the same compartment where she’d found him. When he died, he gave orders that his ashes were to be scattered from the window of compartment No. 7 at exactly the same place and time of day where he’d first met his lady.

Sometimes true life offers the greatest romance and adventure, even if Zaharoff must have been one of the world’s most spectacular rogues.

Is there a place in history that you’d love to be whisked off to? What author told you about it first? What adventures would you hope to enjoy there?

I admit my own longing to visit Constantinople was a major inspiration for THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS and my book trailer for it.