A domestic treasure

vicar-of-wakefield-mr-burches-first-visit-rowlandson1After I wrote a few weeks ago about the clash of cuisines for Caroline Warfields Highlighting Historical, one of my friends loaned me a treasure: the 1819 edition of A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy and Adapted the Use of Private Families, by A Lady. The lady in question was Maria Eliza Rundell, who has been called the original domestic goddess, and the book bears that out.

I have it beside me now, using gloves to turn the precious pages and remembering that they’ve known many hands going back, undoubtedly, to the year of publication.

The book starts with some general observations: a not so little homily on habits of economy, the joys of managing a household, and the importance of properly supervising servants.

imageThe bulk of the book comprises recipes for everything a household might require: food of all kinds, preserves, drink, household remedies. The writer also gives instructions for everything from carving lamb to keeping chickens to making ink and household cleaners. Consider these, chosen at random from the table of contents:

To stew lampreys as at Worcester (and eels the same way)

To make a pickle that will keep for years, for hams, tongues, or beef, if boiled and skimmed between each parcel of them

To dress moor-fowl with red cabbage

A liquor to wash old deeds &c. on paper or parchment, when the writing is obliterated, or when sunk, to make it legible

To prevent the creaking of a door

General remarks on dinners

Everything, in fact, that a prudent woman might need to know in order to run a household. Not for our Regency lady the conveniences of squeegee bottles filled with precisely manufactured chemicals, or vacuum cleaning machines, or spray on foam for oven-cleaning. Or stainless steel, for that matter.

To dust Carpets and Floors.

Sprinkle tea-leaves on them, then sweep carefully.

The former should not be swept frequently with a whisk brush, as it wears them fast; only once a week, and the other times with the leaves and a hair-brush.

Fine carpets should be gently done with a hair hand-brush, such as for clothes, on the knees.

To prevent the Rot in Sheep.

Keep them in the pens till the dew is off the grass.

For Chapped Lips.

Put a quarter of an ounce of benjamin, storax, and spermaceti, two penny-worth of alkanet root, a large juicy apple chopped, a buch of black grapes bruised, a quarter of a pound of unsalted butter, and two ounces of bees-wax into a new tin saucepan. Simmer gently till the wax &c. are disolved, and then strain it through a linen. When cold melt it again, and pour it into small pots or boxes; or if to make cakes, use the bottoms of tea-cups.

And it goes on with recipes and advice for 347 pages. (The 1865 edition had grown to 644!)

First published in 1806, Mrs Rundell’s book stayed in print until the 1880s, with 67 successive editions. Now that is a domestic treasure. Thank you, Inez, for the privilege of seeing it.

image

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected

drugs-mrs-winslows-soothing-syrupI’ve been researching drugs and poisons for A Raging Madness. The book opens with my heroine forcibly addicted to laudanum, which was a mix of opium and alcohol. And then things get worse.

I needed a potion or a poison, or a variety of them, that the heroine could be fed without her knowing, and one that was available in England in the early 19th century. I found that I had a wealth to choose from.

Opium was out. She knew the effects, had fought her way out of addiction, and would have known immediately if it happened again. In describing both the addiction and the withdrawal, I drew (among other sources) on a first-person account from Victorian times.

I’m just mad at myself for having given in to such a fearful habit as opium-eating. None but those who have as completely succumbed to it as I did, could guess the mischief it would do. Even you, with an experience which must be extremely varied, being as you are, in such a good place for studying people’s brains (or rather their want of them), cannot know the amount of harm it did to me morally, though I must say you did seem to have a pretty fair idea of it. It got me into such a state of indifference that I no longer took the least interest in anything, and did nothing all day but loll on the sofa reading novels, falling asleep every now and then, and drinking tea. Occasionally I would take a walk or drive, but not often. Even my music I no longer took much interest in, and would play only when the mood seized me, but felt it too much of a bother to practice. I would get up about ten in the morning, and make a pretence of sewing; a pretty pretence, it took me four months to knit a stocking!

Worse than all, I got so deceitful, that no one could tell when I was speaking the truth. It was only this last year it was discovered; those living in the house with you are not so apt to notice things, and it was my married sisters who first began to wonder what had come over me. They said I always seemed to be in a half-dazed state, and not to know what I was doing. However they all put it down to music. Mother had let me go to all the Orchestral Concerts in the winter, and they thought it had been too much for me. By that time it was a matter of supreme indifference to me what they thought, and even when it was found out, I had become so callous that I didn’t feel the least shame. Even mother’s grief did not affect me, I only felt irritated at her; this is an awful confession to have to make, but it is better to tell the whole truth when you once begin, and it might be some guide to you in dealing with others. If you know of anyone indulging in such a habit, especially girls, just tell them what they will come to.

Of course its effects differ according to one’s nature, and it’s to be hoped few get so morally degraded as I did. This much is certain, few would have the constitution to stand it as I did, and even I was beginning to be the worse for it. For one thing, my memory was getting dreadful; often, in talking to people I knew intimately, I would forget their names and make other absurd mistakes of a similar kind. As my elder sister was away from home, I took a turn at being housekeeper. Mother thinks every girl should know how to manage a house, and she lets each of us do it in our own way, without interfering. Her patience was sorely tried with my way of doing it, as you may imagine; I was constantly losing the keys, or forgetting where I had left them. I forgot to put sugar in puddings, left things to burn, and a hundred other things of the same kind. [Letter in the British Journal of Medical Sciences, 1889: Confessions of a Young Lady Laudanum Drinker]

Laudanum, as the young writer says, was readily available and often prescribed for things as diverse as “Laudanum, the most popular form in which opium was taken (dissolved in alcohol) was recommended in cases of fever, sleeplessness, a tickly cough, bilious colic, inflammation of the bladder, cholera morbus, diarrhoea, headache, wind, and piles, and many other illnesses” [See more at: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/representations-of-drugs-in-19th-century-literature#sthash.v6f0LIBt.dpuf].

drugs-vin-marianiAnother common tincture — too late for my story — was Vin Mariani: coca leaves ground into Bordeaux wine. Red wine and cocaine. It debuted in 1863, and took the polite world by storm.

Devotees of the drink included Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, Presidents William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant, and countless monarchs including Queen Victoria of England. In addition, actress Sarah Bernhardt and Pope Leo XIII (who gave him a Gold Medal!) were among the many who actually appeared in advertisements. [http://vinepair.com/wine-blog/vin-mariani-bordeaux-wine-coca/]

Mercury, arsenic, and cyanide were all used in medicines, their effects often more dire than the illnesses they were intended to treat.

I wondered about marijuana, which was readily available and eaten in cakes. I thought maybe it could be stirred into a drink, but I was assured by a friend that the taste would be a clear giveaway.

I’ve finished up with nutmeg, salvia divinorum, and morning glory.

drug-nutmegNutmeg contains myristicin, a naturally occuring drug with effects similar to LCD when consumed in high enough doses. Doses high enough to cause the effect are also really hard on the heart, so it wouldn’t be my drug of choice, since the villain wants her alive. I haven’t yet figured out how high the dose needs to be, and whether it could be slipped past the victim without her knowing. If I’m arrested, it’ll be for this research.

drugs-salvia_mainachtSalvia was used as a drug by shamans in Mezo-America, and is another hallucinogenic. The leaves are bitter though, so as a tea or an addition to a salad, it seems unlikely. Perhaps a tea sweetened with honey? Or an extract made into a tincture with alcohol, and introduced into an otherwise harmless drink.

And the same with morning glory. A heightened sense of awareness and a diminished sense of reality, my sources say. Poor Ella.

(The heading is a quote from Hamlet.)

On the 11th hour of the 11th day…

world-war-801395_960_720Armistice Day has a particular poignancy in my family. My mother was born on 11 November five years after the guns famously fell silent on the battlefields of Europe, and was named Olive in honour of the moment that ended The War to End All Wars.

The allies won the war, and went on to lose the peace.

Peace is harder than war. It requires being willing to work together, to forgive, to see past the rhetoric and the nasty words in heated moments. Those who have won have the harder task. If they are not gracious in victory, if they take the opportunity to humiliate and torment, the peace is false and will not last.

On that morning of 12 November in 1918, when half a world away New Zealand woke to the news, the Great Depression, the Spanish civil war, the second world war, Korea, the cold war, and all the other tragedies that made strife a constant presence in the twentieth century were still to come. The joy was buoyed by hope.

Not unconstrained. Our Ministry of Health warned against public gatherings to avoid spreading the influenza epidemic. In the next two months, the epidemic killed nearly 9,000 people, half the number of New Zealanders as had died in the past four years of the war.

On 12 November, Aucklanders heeded acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Frengley’s advice not to congregate together. The only visible sign of celebration was the many flags hanging from the city’s buildings – and some of these were at half-mast in acknowledgment of the death of a former city councillor, Maurice Casey, from influenza. Unlike elsewhere in the country, shops generally remained open. But most businesses and government offices closed, included post and telegraph offices and telephone exchanges – a move that came in for severe criticism. The New Zealand Herald argued that, even though they’d kept on some emergency staff, the curtailment of these services had ‘seriously impeded’ relief work. Dr Frengley said that as Auckland was in ‘a much more serious position than any other centre’, the authorities should have referred the matter to him.

The spreading epidemic also influenced celebrations elsewhere. Some communities postponed children’s gatherings until the situation improved. Christchurch’s celebration committee struggled with this decision and only abandoned its plans after a long discussion with the District Health Officer, Dr Herbert Chesson. He objected strongly to bringing children together, commenting that there were ‘many “seedy” children’ who might persuade their mothers to allow them to attend. Dr Chesson also vetoed all general ‘indoor gatherings’, and thanksgiving services were held in the open. Featherston residents cancelled ‘a fully-organised procession of motor-cars’ out of respect for several soldiers from the local camp who had died of influenza and were being laid to rest that day with full military honours. [nzhistory.net, downloaded from: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/armistice-day/armistice-day-and-flu]

The thing is, what affects one person affects us all. The flu epidemic began in Kansas, in a military camp, probably jumping the species barrier from a local pig farm. From there, it travelled to Europe, and returning soldiers took it around the world. What happens in one country has repercussions everywhere. The assassination at Sarejevo began a conflict that killed tens of millions. Bombings in Iraq result in rapes on the Mediterranean and the rise of neo-Nazi xenophobia in northern Europe.

When the US sneezes, they said at the time of the Wall Street Market Crash, Europe catches cold. So though the election campaign that has transfixed the world was not my election, though I had no vote and regard the US electoral system with bemusement, I had an opinion. And a fear that the bitterness of the rhetoric has both disclosed and enhanced a deep vein of hatred and distrust.

People are not labels. The soldiers killed on the battlefields of World War 1 were not ‘Tommys’ or ‘Yanks’ or ‘Huns’—or not only. They were someone’s son, sweetheart, father. They were poets and bakers and football players. They were human beings, all individuals with unique personalities and talents.

Some of the labels that have been cast around may make people you know targets—outlets for inflamed emotions and frustrated anger. Whether you are celebrating a win or grieving a lose, stand against hatred. Please. Build the peace.

And meanwhile, elsewhere in the blogosphere…

I am at a two day work conference. Great stuff! I was going to write my Footnotes on Friday blog on the revolution in kitchens in the late Georgian. I didn’t get it done before I left home, so I put all my notes in my bag. But I’ve just arrived at the place I’m staying after a long tiring day, and the post isn’t about to happen.

Sorry, folks. Instead, though, here are two other research posts you might enjoy, if you haven’t already caught up with them.

The first, about rakehells, I wrote for Jessica Cale’s Dirty Sexy History blog.

The second, about the clash of cooking cultures that spelled the destruction of English cuisine (until it was resurrected in the late 20th century), I wrote for Caroline Warfield’s Highlighting Historical.

Enjoy! I’m off to have an early night before another day of conferencing tomorrow.

Counting the bastards

expelling-hagarA sub-theme of my Revealed in Mist is illegitimacy, and the way that illegitimate children were regarded in Georgian and Regency England. I’m conscious that we see that period through the lens of the Victorian era, as I’ve comment in the article on rakehells I wrote for Dirty Sexy History. I figured I’d better do some research, and — of course — I got sucked in.

Births per women, the number of children born within eight months of the wedding, the percentage of women never married, and maternal mortality rates all turned out to be relevant. No, really. 

Uncovering the secrets

pregnant-brideGenealogists have done some useful research on the percentage of children born outside of wedlock or in the first few months after a wedding. The second is simply a matter of dates, and in the early 19th century, around a third of brides were already carrying when they made their vows.

The first is usually clear enough, too. From a level of two children out of every hundred, the rates rose over the long 18th century until, in the early Victorian, seven percent of all children were illegitimate.

(Of course, this doesn’t count those who had a legal father to whom they were not biologically related. Research in other fields gives figures for the number of offspring not related to the putative father, with figures ranging from one or two percent up to as many as forty percent, depending on things like the conditions of the research, socio-economic status, and social norms. One in ten across the Georgian population seems reasonable, with lower figures in the homes of the middle sort, for reasons we touch on below. EDITED)

The birth or baptismal records might state the name of the father and the status of the child. Or perhaps the mother wouldn’t name the father, though such stubbornness could see her jailed. The local parish authorities, who were required to pay for the care of a child whose mother was a resident, had a vested interest in making sure that the man took his responsibilities seriously.

I dare say a number of those pregnant brides went to the altar to meet a groom constrained to be present by the local Vestry committee. And if the man could not or would not marry the girl, he was expected to pay a weekly amount until the child was seven, and could be apprenticed.

Of course, then as now, there were men who successfully denied responsibility, or who absconded. And, with urbanisation, the old village system, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, became less significant for most of the population. The cities provided greater opportunities for anonymity and escape, and fewer opportunities for social sanctions, so the rise in illegitimacy rates is hardly surprising.

Septicaemia as birth control

death-in-childbirthNow I needed to know average family size. After all, five percent in 1800 is only one in twenty, but how many families had an illegitimate child?

In 1800, women could expect, on average, five live births in their childbearing years. Several sites suggested this implied some form of contraception, and I think I’ve figured out what it was. Women had a twenty percent chance of dying in childbirth, which correlates in a horribly fascinating way. The most common way of limiting the number of births per women was maternal mortality.

We can’t say that the average family size was five children. The odds were slightly skewed because it seems likely that a third of women never married (although presumably some of those had children anyway). And fathers could and did take new wives and have more children.

Calculating average family size

familySo let’s do it this way. [WARNING: If you are allergic to Maths, read no further.]

750 children would be born to 150 women. One hundred of those women would be married. Thirty-seven of those children would be born outside of marriage, so the remaining 713 children were born inside of marriage.

This gives us an average family size of around seven, and, in those hundred families, 71 children whose biological sire was not the father of record, and 34 who were conceived before the marriage but born within it.

Class differences in attitudes to illegitimacy

family-sceneThe idea that a woman with a bastard was damned forever and had no choice but to sell her body on the street is part of our Regency writer vocabulary, but it isn’t entirely accurate. The rural lower classes were more practical than that. A girl who was found to be pregnant, and without a lover willing to marry her, might be producing another mouth to feed, but in a few years that mouth would become a set of hands. Genealogy studies have found that unmarried mothers often married later on, their ‘mistake’ absorbed into the new family without a ripple.

For the urban poor, forced to work in factories and workshops, babies were more of a problem. Many were cared for in baby farms, where the death rates were horrific.

The middling sort always set greater store by moral behaviour that those below and above them on the social scale. They tended to expect morality of their men and their women, so perhaps the daughter of a shopkeeper or a lawyer or a wealthy tenant farmer might expect her suitor to marry her if he anticipated his marital rights.

The double standard

the-alarmNot, though, if she were foolish enough or unfortunate enough to attract the attention of one of the upper sort. They had two sets of rules. If you’ve seen the movie Georgiana, you’ll remember the Duke of Devonshire, who had a series of mistresses he preferred to his wife, brought his bastard children to live in his house, and expected the duchess to be friends with the mistress who lived with them, and mother to the entire brood: hers and those of his lovers. Yet he was exceedingly miffed when she had an affair resulting in a child, and insisted that the child be given to its paternal grandparents.

In some ways, little Eliza Courtney, Georgiana’s daughter, was fortunate. She went to relatives who were well able to care for her, though it seems she was kept very much in the background. She made a good marriage, and her descendants include Sarah, Duchess of York. Other noble bastards were put into foster care with unwilling or careless carers, or they remained with their mothers, but only because the poor fallen ladies were turned from their homes.

Women were to be pure (or at least discreet). Men could do pretty much what they liked, as long as they were a little subtle about it.

In fact, reactions varied as much as families. Whatever you’ve read in a romance probably happened somewhere.

For a linked topic, see my post this week on Jessica Cale’s Dirty Sexy History: The Rakehell in Fact and Fiction

From brothel to pirate queen to successful business woman

piracy_of_the_south_china_seaIn the early 19th century, ships traversing the China Sea faced a most unusual band of pirates: unusual because of the size of the fleet, its impeccable organisation, strictly enforced rules, and the nature of its leader. For ten years, the woman known to us as Widow of Zheng was the power to be feared, not just by any passing ship but by her pirates, the Red Flag Fleet.

It all began in 1801 when the pirate leader Zheng Yi fell in love with a girl he captured from a brothel. She agreed to marry him, but only if he would make her his business partner. It was wise move on his part—she proved to be an organising genius, and by 1804 the couple had formed a coalition of pirates into a fearsome fleet, eventually reaching 1800 ships and around 60,000 pirates (this included supply ships).

When Zheng Yi died in a typhoon in 1807, his widow, Zheng Shi, took over as the new leader, keeping his second in command and adopted son, Chang Pao, as her own second and her lover. The fleet and her fame grew, and Zheng Shi not only took loot and collected ransoms from any ships the fleet captured, she also controlled a long line of coastal villages, collecting taxes.

madame-ching-pirateShe set up strict rules for her fleet. Any loot had to be presented to the common fund. The collecting ship was given 20% and the rest went into the pool to be shared amongst the rest of the fleet. Anyone failing to share would have their head cut off. Anyone disobeying her orders would have their head cut off.

She had special rules about female captives. A rapist had his head cut off. Pirates could take their pick of pretty captives, but would have to marry the woman they chose and then be kind to her and faithful, or have their heads cut off. (Ugly women were to be set free.)

First time deserters lost their ears. If they deserted again, they had their heads cut off.

The Chinese Government  found it impossible to stop this fearsome woman and her pirates, even with help from the Portugese and the British. In the end, the Chinese offered an amnesty. Zheng Shi sent Chang Pao to negotiate the best deal he could, and when negotiations broke down she took over herself. Her fleet won not just the amnesty, but the right to keep their loot. Most of the pirates walked free, and Zheng Shi received a cash bonus. Chang Pao was commissioned as an officer in the Chinese navy, and set out to become the scourge of the pirates who had formerly been the Red Flag Fleet’s rivals.

Zheng Shi married Chang Pao, opened a gambling house (and some say a brothel), and settle down to have Chang Pao’s son and remained a wealthy and highly respected business woman until her death at the age of 69.

Not that I’m advocating piracy as a career move, but I quite like the fact that arguably the most successful pirate in the history of the world was a woman.

 

How a disease of cows saved hundreds of millions of lives

Would people innoculated with cowpox become cows? The cartoonist James Gillray lampooned the fear.

Would people inoculated with cowpox become cows? The cartoonist James Gillray lampooned the fear.

I’ve been looking back over 250 years of growing knowledge about the human body, the ills that befall us, and how to treat them. In her book Smallpox, Syphilis, and Salvation, Sheryl Persson points out that the idea of curing disease is a very new one. For most of history, and for many illnesses even today, physicians have treated symptoms and tried to keep the body alive long enough for it to cure itself.

smallpoxAs for eradicating a disease, we’ve managed to get rid of one, and it took us 180 years from the time a country doctor in England first published a pamphlet suggesting not just the possibility, but the method.

How can we who live in the West in the 21st Century imagine a society where a single illness killed one tenth of the population every year? Where a quarter of the entire population was killed or permanently scarred by that same illness?
Smallpox was no respecter of persons, killing kings and street beggars alike. It was responsible for one out of every three deaths in childhood at a time when a third of children died before they were nine.

It changed the course of history several times, contributing to the fall of Rome, altering the succession of the British throne and ushering in the Georgian era, killing the rulers of the Aztec and Incan nations and crippling their nations so the conquistadors could sweep all before them… The list goes on and on.

Death among the Mezo-Americans

Death among the Mezo-Americans

By the middle of the 18th century, England had learned the practice of variolation; fundamentally, the practice of rubbing a cut or scratch with material from a smallpox scab to give a healthy person a case of smallpox. As long as the person administering the treatment avoided both of the two major risks, the person had a far better chance of surviving the disease, and then they wouldn’t catch it again.

The risks? Doctors tried to find milder strains of smallpox by looking for people who were recovering, but sometimes they got it wrong. And—without a germ theory of disease transmission—some of them weren’t that careful about washing their instruments (or even their hands) between patients. Variolation was common during a smallpox epidemic, and doctors carried contagion from their dying patients to their well ones.

George III of England lost two infant sons to variolation within six months of one another. Still, a death rate of less than one in fifty was an improvement over the status quo.

A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid' Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid's hand while a farmer (?) passes another physician a lancet. Coloured etching, c. 1800. Published: [ca. 1800]

A physician inspects the growth of cowpox on a milking maid’
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images, http://wellcomeimages.org

Edward Jenner, the country doctor I mentioned, drew on folklore to find a better way. While not the first to inoculate healthy patients with cowpox, he was the first to press his treatment on the medical community. Cowpox was a related disease, seldom fatal or even serious, and country folk had long known that milkmaids were immune to smallpox.

When, in 1796, Jenner inoculated his gardener’s son with cowpox taken from a local milkmaid, he founded the science of vaccination, and took the first step in the long road to the last natural case of smallpox, a hospital cook in Somalia in 1977.

image002

I’ve been reading about illnesses and deaths in the 18th and 19th centuries, and about medical knowledge, for some of my books. In A Raging Madness, (Book 2 of the The Golden Redepennings) the hero is crippled after being hit by a canister shell (today we’d call it shrapnel) and the heroine is a doctor’s daughter and was her father’s apprentice. In the Mountain King series, the next book after The Bluestocking and the Barbarian is The Hermit and the Healer. My healer takes on a cholera epidemic at a girls’ boarding school, and needs to deal with the prejudice of the locals as well as the suspicion and anger of the reclusive parent of one of the girls.

I have one of my regular background characters dying of syphilis (the great pox—more about the medical history of that scourge next week).

And I’m still working out what will kill Mia Redepenning’s husband’s Javanese wife so that Mia can finally have her happy ending in Unkept Promises, Book 4 of The Golden Redepennings. (Something lingering, so she has time to send a letter halfway around the world to her English ‘sister wife’ to beg Mia to be a mother to her four little children.)

The first vaccination

The first vaccination

Running away very very slowly

xa6t0jrcjgosmeiapcjbThis is a rerun of a post I wrote for Caroline Warfield’s Highlighting Historical Research blog, several months ago.

I love research. I even love research when I have a perfectly delightful plot that falls apart when research proves it couldn’t have happened. Working out what might be historically probable instead, or at least plausible, has allowed me to drop down many an exciting rabbit hole into research wonderland.

For example, in my current work-in-progress, A Raging Madness, my hero Alex has a leg full of shrapnel, and is currently helping my heroine to escape from relatives who are determined to lock her up in an asylum for the mentally unwell.

Shrapnel? What kind of shrapnel? What munitions carried shrapnel at that time? What battles were they used in? How were shrapnel wounds treated? What was the long term prognosis? How about complications?

It took me a while to find a suitable battle, but eventually I put Alex the right place to be on the business end of a canister shell, a cannon ball with a weak outer shell filled with scrap metal. When the cannon fired, the shell burst apart, and a broad fan of metal caused devastation among the enemy troops. And, in my case, on the body of the assigned escort of a British diplomat who was observing the battle. (And, no, it was not called shrapnel at the time.)

Ella, my heroine, was the daughter of an army doctor, and I figured she’d solve all of Alex’s problems by removing the shrapnel. But not so. Then, even more than now, removing shrapnel or even bullets (unless they are lead) was a very bad idea.

Even today, going in after a splinter of metal might cause more harm than good, and the world is full of people walking around with bomb fragments buried inside. Back then, with no antibiotics and no anaesthetics, the treatment of choice was to leave the mess alone.

Over time, one of three things would happen. The body and the shrapnel would adjust to one another. The body would reject the shrapnel, moving it piece by piece slowly out to the surface. An abscess would form, and the poisons from the infection would kill the patient unless someone acted to drain the abscess.

Hurrah! I had my intervention. Poor Alex developed an abscess.

But escape? Alex can barely walk, let alone ride. Ella is recovering from addiction to the laudanum that her relatives have been force-feeding her. (Another rabbit-hole: what does laudanum withdrawal look like? Feel like?)

I needed a plausible way for two such invalids to escape.

I chose a canal narrowboat for a number of reasons.

The narrowboats were designed at the maximum size to fit in the smallest locks. An inch too big, and they couldn’t go wherever they needed to for the operator to earn his living. The early designers decided on a boat around seven foot wide, up to ten times as long as wide, and drawing about three feet of water when fully loaded.

The narrowboats were designed at the maximum size to fit in the smallest locks. An inch too big, and they couldn’t go wherever they needed to for the operator to earn his living. The early designers decided on a boat around seven foot wide, up to ten times as long as wide, and drawing about three feet of water when fully loaded.

One: I loved the idea of the villains haring all over the countryside looking for them while they ran away by the slowest form of non-pedestrian transport ever invented.

Two: I’ve always wanted to go on a canal cruise, and this way I got to watch YouTube clips and call it working.

Most of the boat was given over to cargo, covered by canvas. In the cabin at the rear, everything did double service, with fold down beds and tables. Some boats also had a small cabin at the bow.

Most of the boat was given over to cargo, covered by canvas. In the cabin at the rear, everything did double service, with fold down beds and tables. Some boats also had a small cabin at the bow.

Three: By 1807, when my story is set, the canal network stretched from the Mersey (with access to Manchester and Liverpool) all the way to London. Travelling by narrowboat was feasible. Canals were a supremely profitable way to move goods in the early 19th century, and had been for a number of years. At a steady walking speed, a horse could move fifty times as much weight on a boat as it could on a road. The canals provided still water and tow paths to ease the travel, and locks, tunnels, and viaducts to overcome obstacles. Later, canal boats were mechanised, and later still the railways put the canals out of business. But in 1807, Alex and Ella hitched a lift with a charming Liverpool Irishman called Big Dan.

Four: I could put my hero and my heroine in close confines, calling themselves married, for five to six weeks. Not only did they have heaps of time to talk and even to succumb (or nearly succumb) to their

A healthy strong horse was vital. Each horse needed a stall in a stable each night, and copious quantities of high energy food.

A healthy strong horse was vital. Each horse needed a stall in a stable each night, and copious quantities of high energy food.

mutual attraction, they were also in deep trouble (or Ella was) if anyone found out. They used false names. They stayed away from fashionable places. But even so, their novelist made sure that someone with no love for Alex saw enough to cause trouble.

Five: The time frame let Alex develop an abscess and recover from the operation, all before he needed to be on hand to save Ella when rumours spread about the two of them and their canal interlude.

And down the rabbit hole I went.

Globalisation ancient central Asian style

Not so much a road as a route, and only one of them, at that. Imagine a procession of heavily laden camels, donkeys and carts.

Not so much a road as a route, and only one of them, at that. Imagine a procession of heavily laden camels, donkeys and carts.

I’ve been fascinated for most of my life by the histories I didn’t learn at school. According to the wisdom I received from my teachers, enlightened thinking began with the Greeks, was codified by the Romans, and was resurrected after the Dark Ages in the Renaissance where it grew into the humanist and democratic beliefs that bubbled up in Europe in the 18th Century and reached its culmination is the set of beliefs and practices widely known as western civilisation.

(Gandhi was once asked what he thought of western civilisation, and said he thought it would be a good idea.)

This view, of course, completely ignores the fact that Europe was a backwater until at least the 16th Century, and all the time inventions and advances and discoveries in the rest of the world laid the foundations upon which Europe would later stand.

Let’s leave for today the great kingdoms of Kush, Nri, Songhai, and Asumite in Africa, the Olmec, Aztec, and Mayans of the Americas, Kutai, Khmer, Dvaravati in South East Asia. In the past months, I’ve been filling my head with the broad swathe of city-states, kingdoms, principalities, and empires that created, maintained, and thrived because of the Silk Road. Not so much a road, but rather a rambling plaided string of trade routes from China and India to the Mediterranean Sea by diverse ways.

This was the mixing ground of cultures, ideas (including religious ideas), new technologies, and products. Above all, products: silk, paper, and spices travelling West; carpets, jewels, drugs, metal, glass, and other trade goods travelling East.

To hear the Venetians tell the story, they started the whole thing. In fact, they were very late into the game. One of the main western arteries did come first, established in Persia. It was the old Persian Royal Road, with postal stations along the route. The pony express was nothing new. The Persian route was established close to 2,500 years ago.

2,250 years ago, an emperor of China, struggling to keep the horse nomads of the north out of his land, sent an envoy west looking for help. Zhang Qian’s expedition led to trade deals to purchase the larger faster horses the envoy found in central Asia. Silk for horses. The Chinese beat of their enemies, and settled down to consolidate the trade, while from the other end the Parthians (who now controlled Persia) were doing the same.

For 2000 years, the Silk Road was how China got its western goods, and places as far distant from China as England got its silks and spices. Then, in the 15th Century, the rising Ottoman Empire blocked European merchants from using the routes, impelling them to find a sea route. Columbus went west, and Vasco da Gama south. And the rest is history.

If you’d like to know more, this 10:30 minute video is entertaining and interesting.

Huh! How about that. I set out to write about the Kopet Dag mountains between Turkmenistan and Iran, and the place of their inhabitants in the silk routes, and I’ve got all excited about ancient history. Another time, perhaps. Meanwhile, feel free to look at the novella I have in the Bluestocking Belles 2016 box set. Called The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, it features as hero a young man who grew up in a small kaganate high in the Kopet Dag mountains. The link is to my book page, which in turn links to the first two chapters.

The king of chefs and the chef of kings

careme-06Just down the road from where I live is the village of Martinborough, centre of a wine and olive growing industry that has become a major tourist destination for foodies. And one of the attractions is named after the man who was arguably one of the founders of France’s grand cuisine, whose life story I borrowed from for the hero of my novellette A Suitable Husband, written for the box set Holly and Hopeful Hearts.

cuisiniers2Carême is a cooking programme at the Palliser Estate, and it is named after Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême, cook to statesmen and kings in early 19th century France and England.

He had a rough start: born in Paris and abandoned by his parents at the age of 10 at the height of the French Revolution. A job as a kitchen boy, in return for food and board, led to him being apprenticed at a pâtisserie in a high-profile, fashionable neighbourhood. He soon became known for his centrepieces, which his employer displayed in the shop window. Sometimes several feet high and moulded from sugar, marzipan and other foodstuffs, they were architectural shapes such as temples and ruins.

Carême freelanced in private kitchens, and learned to create whole meals, and when the diplomat Talleyrand was given a chateau at which to entertain and impress those Napoleon wanted to influence, Carême convinced Talleyrand to take him, too. The test Talleyrand set was a year of menus, with no repetitions using only seasonal produce. Carême passed. He had just turned 20.

He went (after the Napoleonic wars) to London, where he was chef to the Prince Regent for a time, then back in Paris he worked for the banker Rothschild. He laid the foundations for the system that became French cuisine, and was a prolific writer. He is credited with being the first cook-book writer to say: ‘You can try this for yourself at home.’

a-suitable-husband-fbMy character Marcel Fournier is also a talented and ambitious chef, a few years younger than Carême. In this short excerpt, he is indignant that he is not to be in charge of both kitchens at Hollystone Hall.

caremeMarcel could do good English cooking! Had he not grown up here in England after his family escaped from the Terror?

In Spitalfields, until he was apprenticed to a cook in an inn on Tottenham Court Road, then in Soho where he took charge in an earl’s kitchen, and finally, after having himself smuggled into France and attracting the man’s attention by the bold trick of sneaking into his office with a box of his own pâtisseries and menus for a year’s worth of banquets, in the kitchen and under the direct supervision of the great Marie Antoine Carême, chef to Tallyrand and through him to the diplomats of Europe.

For the past two years, Marcel had been one of the most sought-after chefs in the whole South of England. Good English cooking, indeed.

diplomacy-through-cuisine

For more information, see:

Marie-Antoine Carême, First Celebrity Chef

Eater: A name you should know

https://reginajeffers.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/regency-era-hells-kitchen-marie-antoine-careme-the-first-celebrity-chef-and-one-time-head-chef-for-the-prince-regent/

Cooking for kings