The Victorian Home

Isobel's post on Tuesday, about the difficulties of finding a suitable proto-residence for someone who doesn't live in Chatsworth-like splendor, resonated deeply for me.  You see, I'm in the midst of house-hunting and I have a very specific sort of house in mind.

For my next stand alone novel, my modern (2009) heroine is about to inherit a house in a suburb of London called Herne Hill.  The story goes back and forth between Herne Hill in 2009 and the same house in 1849.  Naturally, I went out to Herne Hill this summer, around the same time of year my heroine makes her initial trek up the hill (which, by the way, is, indeed, a hill-- and steep) and poked around a bit, but I had the usual on the spot research problem: things change.  The railroad came through in 1862 and with it a wave of Victorian villas that replaced the earlier and larger dwellings of the wealthy early Victorian bourgeoisie.  Herne Hill went from being a semi-rural outpost of the city to a genuine suburb.

Again, my problems echo Isobel's.  If I wanted to find a Victorian great house, I would have no trouble.  Many have been preserved and are open for view.  (My husband was dragged through several this summer, and announced that he never needs to see a Victorian kitchen again.)  There are volumes and volumes on the residences of the upper classes, from their town mansions to their country estates.

But what I need is something quite different.  My folks in this book are the wealthy middle class.  They made their money in trade; many of them are still in trade.  As close to the metropolis as they are, many have cultural pretensions, but their morals and tastes are still more middle class than aristocratic.  We're talking about people who have a cook, a parlor maid, and maybe an upstairs maid.  If there are children, there will be a nanny.  There are no footmen.  The odds are that they hire a carriage and horses rather than owning, or, if they do own, they outsource stabling.  We're not talking vast estates with large service wings.  The maids might share a room in the attic; the cook probably sleeps near the kitchen.  

Another challenge was the location.  This wasn't a country cottage, per se, even though the area still had rural aspects.  People were very aware of living within reach of the metropolis, many of the men commuting back and forth to their offices in the City.  On the other hand, it's not a town house either.  Unfortunately, very few houses of the right period remain, so it's hard to get a good idea of what the housing stock in 1849 would have been.  Most were torn down to make room for the late Victorian terraces that currently line the long street up the hill.  (Here's the hill in 1823, twenty-six years before my story opens.)

I generally like to start from a real house and tinker with it from there, so the house that I'm using as my model for the Grantham house in Herne Hill is Ruskin's childhood home.  Ruskin's parents moved to a grander house in the same neighborhood a bit later on, but this was his original childhood residence, eminently suited to a comfortable middle class family.

If you look closely, you can see the basement window next to the stairs, where the kitchen would have been.  Kitchen and scullery would be down in the basement area, with the parlor and dining room on the floor above.  Ruskin describes his childhood home as three stories, with garrets above.  My guess is that he's referring to the three main stories on which the family lived, counting neither the kitchen level nor the attic level in his floor count.

As you can tell from the facade, the house is pre-Victorian, which means that books on early Victorian architecture and floor plans, while helpful for mapping the homes of more up to date neighbors, weren't much use to me.  (Ruskin describes these more modern houses as "certain Gothic splendours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours".)  Instead, what I wound up with for my 1849 family was a late Georgian home furnished to early Victorian taste.

Part of the fun of this particular project is that I get to revisit the same home in two different eras.  While the house my 1849 family lives in is reasonably simple, by the time my modern heroine inherits in 2009, there have been some major late Victorian additions, including a rather bulbous conservatory, and, of course, lots of twentieth century updates, including a hideously avocado colored kitchen with 1970s appliances.  

If anyone has any good sources for late Georgian/early Victorian suburban homes, let me know!

The Problem with Younger Sons’ Domiciles

Shawfield

My current WIP needs a house. A very particular kind of house. Something less than a Pemberly and more than a Longbourn if you know what I mean. I need a Nertherfield. Planning great estates for my characters’ families is easy. There are numerous books on the great estates of England and almost every great house has a website of its own. Floor plans are fairly easy to come by, and so many BBC productions pay loving attention to them. Planning something on a lesser scale for my younger sons however can be something of a challenge.

I poured over a bunch of books this weekend looking for inspiration, since this is going to be a house book. It has to be right. It’s going to be character in and of itself. And the heroine has to love it. Most of my books were not at all useful. To focused on the grand houses of the era. But The Georgian Villa showed promise. It has floor plans for more modest houses. I settled on two that looked promising and had floor plans in the book, Shawfield Park (1711) and Hawkhill (1757).

Hawkhill interior

Shawfield is a Palladian house which is described as “a modest seven-bay house with a pedimented and slightly projecting centre-piece, hipped roof.” It has a belvedere on top for added interest and a nice long, open terrace running along the entire front. It is two stories over a basement with small garret rooms for the servants (so four stories effectively) There is a full article with minute descriptions of the layout and rooms on JSTOR for $14, which I held off buying.

I also looked at Hawkhill, which was built designed by Adams. I’ve been in several of his houses, so I know what to expect of the interiors. Hawkhill was torn down in 1971, but I still managed to find pictures of it which confirm that though a far more modest house than Osterly Park, Hawkhill shared the same design flair.

In the end I think I will go with a combination of the two. Hawkhill for the principal floor and Shawfield for the others (Hawkhill has a horrible layout on the first floor where the bedrooms are, no windows on the entire back side in what must be the servants’ quarters).

I haven't posted for many weeks, but here, at last, is some news: My new book, The Bride and the Bandit, is out in digital form, with the print version to follow in November. Here's a brief description: When Frank Burkett steps off the train from Colorado, he sets up a portrait photography studio. But he's no photographer. Frank is actually an undercover detective sent to Maple Falls, Oregon, to capture the mysterious Black Bandit who has been boldly robbing the townspeople. But the town librarian, Geneva Stanton, snares him into performing Antony to her Cleopatra in her summer theatrical, The Trials of Cleopatra, and that turns out to be the ultimate challenge for them both. This comic tale was wonderful fun to write! The novel deals with photography in the 1870s, the struggles of librarians, the unorthodox battle to reinstate a "disgraced" schoolteacher, and the production of a small-town summer theatrical using a collection of amateurs and unique townspeople. The Bride and the Bandit is available from Amazon, Turquoise Morning Press (www.turquoisemorningpress.com), Barnes & Noble, and Createspace.

Oliver is in town

This is part two of my favorite entries in James Hardy Vaux's 1812 Dictionary of the Flash Language. Part one is here.

(I'm rereading the dictionary, and reading Vaux's memoirs, because my next book has changed direction. After a conversation with my agent at the RWA conference about the marketability of ghosts at the moment, I've temporarily shelved The Ghost and Miss Moore and have started another book about a con man and the daughter of the Tory patron of my little market town from Sweet Disorder. Its working title is Crimson Joy and so far I'm still in that new-book first-flush-of-love stage with it!)

LETTER Q: the mace, or billiard-slum, is sometimes called going upon the Q, or the letter Q, alluding to an instrument used in playing billiards. [BILLIARD SLUM: The mace is sometimes called giving it to 'em on the billiard slum. See MACE.

MACE: to mace a shopkeeper, or give it to him upon the mace, is to obtain goods on credit, which you never mean to pay for; to run up a score with the same intention, or spunge upon your acquaintance, by continually begging or borrowing from them, is termed maceing, or striking the mace.]

LETTER-RACKET: going about to respectable houses with a letter or statement, detailing some case of extreme distress, as ship-wreck, sufferings by fire, &c.; by which benevolent, but credulous, persons, are induced to relieve the fictitious wants of the imposters, who are generally men, or women, of genteel address, and unfold a plausible tale of affliction. [I think my hero and his brother have done this one a fair number of times in their careers.]

LUSH: to drink; speaking of a person who is drunk, they say, Alderman Lushington is concerned, or, he has been voting for the Alderman.

[Some scholars believe that this term derived from an actors' fraternal organization, "The City of Lushington." According to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (as quoted here), "Near Drury Lane Theatre in London was the Harp Tavern, where a club of hard drinkers called The City of Lushington had been founded in 1750. Lushington's had a chairman, the 'Lord Mayor,' and four 'aldermen,' who presided over the wards [a type of urban administrative district] of Poverty, Lunacy, Suicide, and Jupiter (the supreme Roman god who presided over all human affairs).[...]'Lush,' at least as a generic term for beer or drink, first appeared in about 1790, long after The City of Lushington's formation, and it could very well be a contraction of the club's name."

By the way, when the club stopped allowing stage hands and other crew members to attend meetings as guests, it spun off a theatre technicians' organization called the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes which has lasted as a fraternal organization to the present day (although it is no longer affiliated with the theatre).]

MONKERY: the country parts of England are called The Monkery.

NUT: to please a person by any little act of assiduity, by a present, or by flattering words, is called nutting him; as the present, &c., by which you have gratified them, is termed a nut.

NUTS UPON IT: to be very much pleased or gratified with any object, adventure, or overture; so a person who conceives a strong inclination for another of the opposite sex, is said to be quite nutty, or nuts upon him or her. [Wow, is that where that comes from?]

OLIVER: the moon.

OLIVER IS IN TOWN: a phrase signifying that the nights are moonlight, and consequently unfavorable to depredation.

PEAR-MAKING: inlisting [sic] in various regiments, taking the bounty, and then deserting.

PIGS, or GRUNTERS: police runners. [Wow, some things never change.]

RINGING CASTORS: signifies frequenting churches and other public assemblies, for the purpose of changing hats, by taking away a good, and leaving a shabby one in its place; a petty game now seldom practised.

SPANK: to spank a glaze, is to break a pane of glass in a shop window, and make a sudden snatch at some article of value within your reach, having previously tied the shop-door with a strong cord on the outside, so as to prevent the shopman from getting out, till you have had full time to escape with your booty; to spank a place, is to rob it upon the spank; a spank is a robbery effected by the above means.

STAR: The star is a game chiefly practised by young boys, often under ten years of age, although the offense is capital. It consists of cutting a pane in a shop-window, by a peculiar operation calling starring the glaze, which is performed very effectually by a commen penknife; the depredators then take out such articles of value as lie within reach of their arm, which if they are not interrupted, sometimes includes have the contents of the window. A person convicted of this offense is said to have been done for a star.

TURN UP: to desist from, or relinquish, any particular habit or mode of life, or the further pursuit of any object you had in view, is called turning it up. To turn up a mistress, or a male acquaintance, is to drop all intercourse, or correspondence, with them. To turn up a particular house, or shop, you have been accustomed to use, or deal at, signifies to withdraw your patronage, or custom, and visit it no more. To quit a person suddenly in the street, whether secretly or openly, is called turning him up. To turn a man up sweet, is to get rid of him effectually, but yet to leave him in perfect good humour, and free from any suspicion or discontent; this piece of finesse often affords a field for the exercise of consummate address, as in the case of turning up a flat, after having stripped him of all his money at play, or a shopkeeper, whom you have just robbed before his face of something valuable, upon the pinch, or the hoist.

TURNIPS: to give any body turnips signifies to turn him or her up, and the party so turned up, is said to have knap'd turnips.


While writing this post, I discovered that almost all of these entries appeared word-for-word in Pierce Egan's 1823 expanded edition of Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (subtitle: "Revised and Corrected with the Addition of Numerous Slang Phrases Collected from Tried Authorities")! I don't know enough about nineteenth-century copyright law to know whether that would be considered plagiarism. (I guess it's possible that he paid Vaux's publisher for the rights...does anyone know?) If it was, I can't decide whether James Hardy Vaux would be annoyed and want his share of the cash, or appreciate Egan's sharp practice.

One of the things I consistently try to remember while writing is how valuable every piece of personal property was before consumer goods became mass-produced and semi-disposable. I remember researching a few years ago what a Regency house would have in its rooms in place of a trashcan and realizing they wouldn't have had anything because nothing was thrown away. Absolutely nothing. It's hard for me to imagine a world where handkerchiefs cost enough that you could make a good living just from stealing those, but it must have really informed how people thought about their surroundings, and it definitely informed how professional crime and the underworld functioned.

And with that I must leave you! Here, have some of these:

Names & Context

When I first heard the name of Joan's baby on Mad Men this past season, I thought, "Kevin sounds sort of modern for the sixties." Then I realized Mad Men was now taking place in the year I was born (1966), and I went to school with a number of Kevins, so it was in fact a very appropriate name. I just don't associate it with the sixties because the people I think of when I think of the sixties were adults then and born decades before. Which made me think about naming characters in historical fiction and how we need to consider the cultural influences not of the time in which are our books are set but of when our characters were born. Characters in their thirties or twenties in the Regency would have been named in the 1780s or 90s. When they were born, their parents might have been reading Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, or Alexander Pope not Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, or Lord Byron. Those in their twenties and thirties in the early Victorian era on the other hand would have been born in the Regency. While the name Victoria didn't soar in popularity until after Victoria became queen.

I'm writing this post as I watch the Emmy Awards. I suspect that if one looked at the names of characters in television shows and books, one would find more similarities to the names of babies born when those shows were aired or books were published than one would if one looked at real life adults the same age as the characters. Partly, of course, because names from popular culture inspire parents in naming their children. But also, I think, because the writers naming those characters are living in the same world with the same cultural influences as the parents naming their babies.

It can be a challenge, in historical fiction, finding a name that's historically accurate but still appeals to modern readers. Victorian names like Gladys or Edith would be problematic for the heroine of a novel written today, even if that novel was set in the late 1800s or early 1900s when those names were in vogue. On the other hand, a name like Jessica can sound modern and trendy though it's the name of a Shakespeare character and could certainly have been used historically (I used Jessica for Malcolm and Suzanne's daughter, though it didn't make my short list for my own baby girl because it did strike me as too trendy).

Authors, how do you choose names for your characters? Do you consider cultural influences when the characters were born? Readers, what matters more to you in the names of characters, historical authenticity or names you can relate to?

May I please present ...

I’ve been having a fascinating discussion on Twitter about introductions. My understanding of “the rules” is that gentlemen are always introduced to ladies (and here we’re talking about people of the same class, not the lower orders or servants).



High Change in Bond Street by Gillray, 1796

Men being anything but gentlemanly
as they crowd the ladies into the dirty street.



This is because women are the ones with reputations to guard and it should always be up to them if they wish to have a gentleman presented to them or not. But one of my favorite people to blab with (who also happens to be British) quite firmly believes that a viscount’s daughter would be introduced to a duke because the duke is of a higher rank.

On the one hand I get what she’s saying, as “the rules” also state that inferiors are introduced to superiors, but I’ve always understood that “the lady rule” trumps the “inferior/superior” rule.

I went digging for some kind of actual documentation to clear the issue up, but I can’t find anything from the Georgian period. My guess is that etiquette books only really became a necessity in the Victorian era when the burgeoning middle class was becoming a power to be reckoned with. Before that, the proper way of doing things would have simply been instilled by your family. This might also explain why the vast majority of these guides (especially the earlier ones) are American. The “great unwashed” wasn’t learning these things at their mother’s knee.

The oldest source I can find is American, but it expresses the concept just as I understand it:

Etiquette for Ladies (Philadelphia, 1840)

“…in the introduction of ladies to each other, and to gentlemen, infinitely more care is necessary, as a lady cannot shake off an improper acquaintance with the same facility as a gentleman can do, and their character is much easier affected by apparent contact with the worthless and dissipated.”

“No person of correct feeling will make an introduction to a lady, without having first apprized her of it, and obtained her consent.”

The first English source I can find is The Hand-Book of Etiquette (London, 1860).

“Introduce gentlemen to ladies, not ladies to gentlemen, for etiquette takes a chivalrous view of the subject and looks upon the lady as the superior. It is the law of introductions to introduce the inferior to the superior.”

Emily Post says the same thing in 1922: “No lady is ever, except to the President of the United States, a cardinal, or a reigning sovereign, presented to a man.” And Debrett’s agrees: “If you are the link between people who have never met it is up to you to make the introductions. Remember the hierarchy: men should be introduced to women, juniors to elder people and higher ranks.”

None of these sources says anything about a peerage trumping the gender rule, but of course they’re not written for the haut ton. I tried to find plays or novels that might show me such a scene, but I came up with nothing. Anyone have a resource I’m missing?

Let’s be honest, this is all just academic, because if a duke was bad enough that a viscount’s daughter wouldn’t want to be acquainted with him, no one in society would introduce him to her in the first place! But I still love kicking these things around …

Capturing a Moment in Time

I just returned from a lovely few days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my daughter Mélanie (there we are at the Member Lounge, though Mel is still a little young to actually go the plays). Along with some wonderful Shakespeare my friends and I saw a great new play OSF commissioned, All the Way, by Robert Shenkkan, about Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act. Very much in the style of a Shakespeare history play, it's set on a broad canvas, with a wide cast of characters - politicians from both parties, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, J. Edgar Hoover.

I came home to Lauren's wonderful blog about Regencyland and the difficulties of "winkling out those elusive distinctions" of a specific year within a larger time period. As Lauren said, "Letters and diaries are even more revealing, the unmediated product of the moment." All the Way uses the actual words of the characters in many cases. It's set from November 1963 - November 1964. And though we talk about "the sixties' as we talk about "the Regency" or "the Victorian era", 1960 was certainly very different from 1969, and 1963-4 was very different from either. All the Way gives a richly detailed portrait of a specific moment in time. The start of the LBJ presidency, the maneuvering over the Civil Rights Act, Freedom Summer, the presidential campaign, Hoover's vendetta against Martin Luther King, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Yet it creates this complex portrait of the time period through the personal portraits of the characters - their goals, personal and political, their alliances and conflicts, in many cases their relationships with their spouses. Some of the most haunting moments are personal snapshots. LBJ telling Lady Bird to fix her lipstick just before they get off the plane where he's been sworn in after JFK's assassination. Coretta King helping MLK pack and telling him the kids are starting to see him as a stranger. LBJ telling his aide Walter Jenkins he's the closest thing he has to a son and Jenkins gently removing LBJ's glasses, visibly touched, shortly before Jenkins is photographed in a tryst with another man and shunted off to a mental hospital.

I realized that it's similar personal details that evoke a time and place in our books. In The Garden Intrigue, Lauren captures Napoleon's court just before it becomes an actual court when Napoleon makes himself emperor. Napoleon is at the height of his power, still married to Josephine though he's under pressure to divorce her. Hortense Bonaparte is unhappy in her marriage to Louis, pregnant with her second child, not yet in love with Charles de Flahaut. Some of the informality of the Consular era lingers as while Imperial formality begins to creep in. A couple of years before or after Paris would be a different place. In Vienna Waltz, I tried to use the circumstances of the characters to evoke the complexities of the Congress of Vienna. Prince Talleyrand holding on to power in the restored Bourbon government and using all his wits to keep defeated France a player in the international game. Dorothée Talleyrand feeling her wings in love and politics. Wilhelmine of Sagan desperate to recover her daughter and using both Prince Metternich and Tsar Alexander to do so. These characters appear again in my forthcoming The Paris Affair. It takes place only a year later, but in the post Waterloo world their circumstances and goals have changed.

What are some favorite books of yours that capture specific moments in time and what detials evoke the time period?