Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens

Today, 7 February, is Charles Dickens's 200th birthday.  He was and continues to be my inspiration.  Every year I reread at least one of his books, for the sheer fun of it as well as the re-setting of impossibly high standards.  No matter how many times I reread his stories, I always discover something new.  This was a writer who could give a chair a personality. 

He inspired my love of English history and taught me to love a city I'd never seen—London—and set off that writer's itch that keeps me going and enriches my travels and makes me endlessly curious about the past, especially the world he grew up in and lived in and wrote about.

I am not sure I would have written a single novel, if not for him.

Thank you, Mr. Dickens, for all you've given us & all you've given me.

And a very Happy Birthday to you, wherever you are.

The illustration of a young Charles Dickens (about age 30 if the info is correct), is from Wikipedia—and quite a different look from the more familiar portraits of his older self.

A remnant of Northumberland House

The hero of Silk is for Seduction requiring a domicile in Town, I looked around early 19th century London for a little something suitable for a duke.  I'd already moved characters from previous books into St. James's Square, so that was getting crowded.  Where, then?  Berkeley Square?  Nope.  I'd already stuck a family there.  Somewhere overlooking one of the parks? Nice, but none of the houses seemed to suit my hero

Eventually, my real estate search led me to the Strand, a much less fashionable neighborhood.  Once upon a time, (the time of Susan's historical novels, for instance) all the great noble palaces lined the Strand.  By 1835, the area had gone into trade.  But Northumberland House, home of the Duke of Northumberland, remained. 


So I stole—borrowed it, called it Clevedon House, made some architectural and decorative adjustments, and gave it to my hero.

Over at Two Nerdy History Girls, you'll find a post with lots of links to historical information about this fascinating holdover.  It occupies several pages in Christopher Simon Sykes's wonderful Private Palaces:  Life in the Great London Houses.  In London today all that remains is the street named after it, Northumberland Avenue, a doorway carefully preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a miniature of the room the doorway belonged to, the Glass Drawing Room. 

 Photos courtesy me.

Rex Carolvs means what?

Continuing the illustrated, annotated version of Last Night's Scandal...

As followers of the Two Nerdy History Girls blog are acutely aware, I spend a lot of time on historical trivia that many readers probably don't find all that thrilling. You can imagine my excitement, then, when a reader is sufficiently intrigued to ask me to explain an obscure detail in one of my books. 

Today's query relates to this exchange:
 ~~~
     “What have you got there?”
     “Dunno.  Brass button?”
     “Let me see.”
     After scraping off dirt, Roy said, “A medal, maybe.”  He peered at the object.
     “Old medal?” said Jock.  “Some of them fetch a good price.”
     “Could be.”  Roy scraped some more and peered some more.  Then he spelled out painfully, “R-E-X.  Then a mark, not a letter.  Then C-A-R-O-L-V-S.”
     Jock, whose reading skills extended to recognizing a tavern sign, said, “What is it?”
     Roy looked at him.  “Money,” he said.

My alert-to-details reader wanted to know what REX CAROLVS signified.

The reference is to King Charles I, who appears as Rex Carolvs (Rex Carolus) on the coins of his reign.  One of the plot elements of the book deals with a legend dating to his reign, the turmoil of the Civil War, and its unfortunate conclusion for him and those who supported him.


These illustrations are by Classical Numismatic Group.  You can see more examples here and here, at the Welsh website, Gathering the Jewels.  Another fine example is at the British Museum.  You can even buy a reproduction at the Royal Mint.

Mystery vocabulary

I just finished re-reading (for about the sixth or tenth or eighteenth time) Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, and am once more overwhelmed by my ignorance. Yes, this was an edition with notes, but no, it was not a Norton Critical Edition (there isn't one, I discovered to my intense annoyance), and whoever wrote the notes took an excessively optimistic view of the average reader's knowledge of historical arcana.

Being a Nerdy History Girl, I know weird, useless stuff, make it my business to know weird, useless stuff. But page after page, I was stumped. Here are a few mystery terms:

"plush shorts and cottons"

"Oxford-mixture trousers"

"bagman"

So I thought, if I'm puzzled, what about high school and college students? Then I remembered how tedious I found most of the 19th C "classics" I read back then. Would I be writing the kinds of stories I write now if a friend hadn't explained the joys of David Copperfield to me, sometime in the middle of my lengthy college career?

DON'T TEMPT ME: The Interview

Historical fiction author Susan Holloway Scott interviewed me at the Word Wenches blog. Here's how it went, (minus the very flattering intro, which I've edited out because, well, because):

Susan: First, Loretta, what’s it all about? In a nutshell.

Loretta: Zoe Octavia Lexham, a harem captive for twelve years, risks her life to get home to England again, only to find that England’s not wild about having her back. (Here’s English Society’s idea of a harem). The only man who can make Society change its attitude toward her is a childhood friend, the Duke of Marchmont. Handsome, witty, rich, and very, very fashionable, he’s also the laziest man in town and, apparently, not overly intelligent. But he says “Nothing could be simpler” than making her respectable again, and Zoe can’t afford to be picky. And if I say any more, it’s no longer a nutshell but an essay.

Susan: While Don't Tempt Me is a “stand-alone” book for you, the hero and the heroine are hardly “stand-alone” characters. Their families and friends are very much part of their lives and decisions in both good and bad ways, and yet Zoe Octavia and Lucien de Grey, Duke of Marchmont, are completely separated from their families for years at a time. What role did you see “family” play for both characters?

Loretta: I think family, whether dead or alive, is crucial to character development. We don’t come out of nowhere; we come out of a context. In this story, though, I brought the family up close and personal to the hero and heroine, partly because it’s funny and partly because it’s poignant and partly because of that separation you mentioned. Lucien’s reacted to his experience by becoming detached from everybody. Zoe’s the opposite: She made a family of sorts for herself in the harem and she's determined to be part of her family when she gets back to England. She takes desperate measures to keep from being ejected from the nest--and her refusal to let them eject her is what, eventually, brings Lucien the connection he’s missed. Too, family interactions are a great way to demonstrate character: People behave differently with family than they do with friends, and I loved the opportunities this story gave me to show the comic aspects of aristocrats acting like a normal family.

Susan: In your last book Your Scandalous Ways, your heroine Francesca was a genuine, unrepentant courtesan and not simply one as a titillating plot contrivance. In Don't Tempt Me, Zoe has spent nearly half her life in an Egyptian harem, and you don’t sugar-coat that experience, either. How did you research the life of a European woman in a harem? How did it affect Zoe? And how did it make her uniquely ready to conquer London society?

Loretta: I’d learned quite a bit about harems in Egypt while researching Mr. Impossible. This book offered a chance to explore the material further. Zoe’s harem, though, was bigger than the average Egyptian harem--which refers, basically, to the the women of a family. But the more important the man, the bigger the harem. I’d read that Ali Pasha of Albania had three hundred women in his harem. Considering how small Albania was/is, this sounded like half the female population!

This is why my model was the Sultan’s harem, of the Topkapi Palace. With hundreds of women, and all the slaves and eunuchs, things get complicated. I thought a smart, educated young English woman, even at twelve, could adapt and, as she matured in that world, would master its ways. This experience makes it easy for Zoe to deal with, say, the hierarchy of English society and the hierarchy of household staff.

Too, in the harem’s hothouse atmosphere, a smart, observant girl would develop a keen understanding of human psychology. The cultural differences are important,too. She’s coming from a world in which people are more demonstrative. Emotion isn’t a dirty word. And dirty words aren’t dirty words: In that world of women, the focus is on sex, and this is what they talk and think about. So she walks and talks and generally behaves differently from English women. It's comedy material, yes, but it's also an eye-opening--and arousing--experience for the men, especially her jaded duke. (For more harem gossip, see my post at the Avon Romance Blog.)

Susan: The proliferation of dukes in historical romances is epidemic, and for the most part they’re often depicted as pleasure-seeking-slacker-rakes. But Lucien takes his title and responsibilities very seriously––and I have to say it earns him a solid place alongside the other great Loretta Chase heroes. You make him suffer, yes, but he also gets over it, and gets along with his life. Is he based on a real-life peer?

Loretta: I stole the Duke of Norfolk’s house for him, and shoved the Duke of Richmond (descendant of Louise de Keroualle, the heroine of your latest, THE FRENCH MISTRESS) down a rung on the ladder of precedence to make room for Marchmont. But he wasn’t based on any duke in particular. I was thinking about what happens to a young man psychically when he’s abruptly thrust, in the most unwelcome circumstances, into a position of great responsibility. I was thinking, “teenager--rebellion--avoidance--denial.”

But this is also a man strongly influenced by a father figure, Lord Lexham, who takes his public duties seriously and is a devoted family man. That made for a conflict between the outside Marchmont--the detached nobleman who refuses to take anything seriously--and the inside Marchmont, who knows his Duty, and gets it done via his secretary.

As to raking, it seemed to me that a man as detached as Marchmont couldn't be the serial seducer type. He has his 19th C equivalent of girlfriends, but it’s one at a time, for a (short, because he gets bored) time. I wanted us to be aware, all along, of a the kernel of goodness at heart that's necessary in a proper hero--and I think the bond with family helps account for his not turning out all bitter and twisted and selfish. I like to think the sense of humor and the wry self-awareness have grown out of interactions with the Lexham brood.

Susan: One of the hallmarks of your books is to establish the setting as a real place, and in Don't Tempt Me you’ve again managed to make early 19th century London seem fresh and vivid. What aspects of the era did you choose to emphasize to make this work?

Loretta: Zoe's point of view helps revive endlessly worked-over ground. She comes to England from another culture, and sees everything so differently. Showing London through her eyes made it fresh. She allowed me to delve more deeply into the old, familiar places. In her eyes, Hyde Park and the Green Park
are wonderlands of greenery. Everything, from the exterior of White’s Club to the claustrophobic royal Drawing Room, is unfamiliar and needs to be interpreted, and her interpretation isn’t like everyone else’s. (The black and white drawing is of the famous Almack's Club.)

Susan: You’ve always been aware of how fashion and clothes make your characters behave (or not.) The stunningly awkward hoop skirts required for formal court dress play a major part in the courtship been Lucien and Zoe –– and that’s all I’ll say so as not to give too much away. Would you share a little more about these ritualized hoops?

Loretta: Reading about hoops elsewhere had opened my eyes to their seductive possibilities, but then you suggested DANGEROUS LIAISONS--not the Laclos novel but a book published in connection with an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The marvelous illustrations offered the sort of detail one longs for--as well as abundant inspiration. But I think with hoops, the pictures really are worth a thousand words, so I’d direct readers to Candice Hern’s wonderful collection of prints
and I’ll point out that Cruikshank’s comical illustration strikes me as more accurate an illustration of a Drawing Room than the one below it by Rowlandson--certainly it's closer to the one I describe in Don't Tempt Me.

Susan: You've given us three very different Fallen Women so far. What's next?

Loretta: Another Carsington book, featuring a woman of weak moral fiber, a man who prides himself on having no imagination, and a haunted castle in Scotland.

Susan: It seems that's all we're going to get out of her. For more background info, check Loretta's website for links to interviews and blogs.

(Originally posted at Word Wenches)

Lord Who?

A reader asks:

“Every once in a while a character in a historical romance will be referred to simply as Lord Such-and-such, with no indication ever being given as to what his title actually is (Earl, Viscount, Baron). Sometimes the title is the same as the last name, sometimes it is different. Was this a typical way to refer to nobility at times, with the actual rank being a given to those of the time? Was the rank understood to be different if the last name was the same?”

British titles and styles of address is a quicksand topic. One of my favorite quotations on this subject comes from my 1936 Whitaker’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage:

“The rules which govern the arrangements of the Peerage are marked by so many complications that even an expert may occasionally be perplexed.” (italics mine)

This is why, whenever I respond to questions about same, I do so with trembling typing fingers, sure that someone, somewhere, will remind me of an exception I forgot to except or a subtlety I’ve overlooked. As I try to answer your question, please bear that in mind.

The grades of the peerage are, in order of rank, Duke, Marquess or Marquis (pronounced “markwiss” or "markwess" but not "markee"), Earl, Viscount (rhymes with My Count--"s" is silent), Baron. Anyone referred to or addressed as Lord So & So is below the rank of Duke.

How do we know this? A duke is addressed as Your Grace (older style guides include the form My Lord Duke) or, by equals, Duke. He might be referred to as the Duke of Someplace, e.g., the gentleman here is the Duke of Wellington. But the duke is never Lord Wellington. (This rule does not apply to Royal Dukes, who are younger sons of the monarch. They’re addressed differently.)

Below the rank of Duke, the correct form is “Lord.” So a Lord Somebody is a Marquess/Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron. One doesn’t address these peers as Marquess of So & So or Baron Such & Such, and normally doesn’t refer to them by their rank. In conversation, people would refer to this gentleman, the Earl of Egremont, as Lord Egremont or, very informally, Egremont.

According to my Titles and Forms of Address: “All peers and peeresses below ducal rank are called lord and lady in speech....there are a few formal occasions in which the full title would be used, but it would never happen in intimate speech.”

Sometimes the title is the same as the last name and sometimes not. For a great many peerages, the title comes from the name of a place. All dukes’ titles are from a place, even when the family name is the same as the title. But a baron’s title might come from a place, his family name, or another source entirely.

If there's no “of”, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a family name. And if there is an “of”, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a family name.

The first Earl Granville--whose wife raised the two illegitimate children he had with her aunt--is missing the "of," though Granville isn’t his family name but the name of an ancestor whose title became extinct. This earl's family name is Leveson-Gower, pronounced lewson-gorr (pronunciation is another minefield).

Leveson-Gower is also the family name of the Duke of Sutherland, who’s selling the Titian and who has a really nice place in Scotland, Dunrobin Castle, that I got to visit years ago when the dollar wasn’t like Monopoly money. (That's me at his place with the owl.)

But I digress.

Viscounts and Barons, whether the title is from a place or not, don’t have an “of” in their titles, thus, the Viscount Hereford or the Baron Headley.

So no, there’s no way to tell the rank simply from the name used in the title. Those with whom they associate are supposed to know whether Lord Castlereagh here is a marquess or earl or viscount or baron. I’ve always imagined that members of the aristocracy learned who was who in the same way they learned to speak, and the knowledge was, like accent, one of the ways members of the upper orders could tell who was one of them and who wasn’t. It was a small world, after all.

And that’s as far as I dare to go on the topic. Not a word about younger sons, wives, daughters, son’s wives, daughter’s husbands, etc.

If you’d like to explore this labyrinth, there are plenty of references. In addition to the aforementioned Whitakers, and an 1811 Debretts reprint, my frequently-used guides are:

Titles and Forms of Address: A Guide to Correct Use, A&C Black, London.

Measures, Howard. Styles of Address. Thomas Y Crowell

Emily Hendrickson, The Regency Reference Book. An excellent reference for a great many Regency-era subjects, it's sold privately. Contact Emily at regencygal@hotmail.com for information or to order a copy.

Candice Hern has heaps of terrific Regency-era stuff on her website, including a Who’s Who of the lords & ladies we often encounter in the stories and a fabulous collection of fashion plates.

Of course, not everyone needs to know more. Before I got into this business, I had very little understanding of British titles and would not have known or cared when an author used the incorrect form. Now that I do know, such mistakes may unsuspend my suspension of disbelief.

(Originally published at Word Wenches)