Footnotes on Friday

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Folk tales in human history

In most places and for most of history, folk tales have not been written down. They have instead been passed from story teller to story teller down through the generations, changing over time as the current teller of the tale adds or changes a detail.

In the book Clever Maids, the author Valerie Paradiz tells the true history of the women who collected the stories that were edited and published by the Brothers Grimm. Folk tales, she tells us, were women’s stories—the tales that women told over the laundry or the baking, or entertained children with during a long winter’s evening, or when putting them to bed. They were servant’s stories—the stories of the folk, the ordinary people.

We can see these origins in the stories themselves. In folk tales, if not in the high literature of the cultures of the world, the weak and helpless win out over the malice of the powerful. Notably, many of the protagonists of folk tale are women—women who are essential to the story, which isn’t over until they get their happy ending.

Today, romance literature is predominately a women’s literature: written predominantly for women and by women, and not over until the female protagonist gets her happy ending. It seemed to me that romance was the right place to retell folk tales, and A Twist Upon a Regency Tale is the result.

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Exploring officers

Lion’s command includes a group of exploring officers, whose job it was to collect information about enemy movements. They would have denied being spies. Spying was considered underhanded and dishonourable, and simply not the way that a British gentleman acted. Indeed, while several government officials are known to have run spy networks both within Britain and overseas, Britain didn’t have an official department for spies until the 20th century.

In real life, as opposed to books, Exploring officers in Wellington’s army worked for the Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster General’s office. They operated on their own or with one or two local guides. Their task was to collect first-hand tactical intelligence by riding to enemy positions, observing and noting movements and making sketch maps of uncharted land. It was a dangerous job and they had to be fit, good horsemen, and ready to escape at any moment. They wore their uniforms at all times (at least in theory), because they were officers, not spies.

The famous exploring officer Lieutenant Colquoun Grant was captured by the French while in uniform, and treated as an officer. Grant gave his parole, which basically meant he agreed to not try to escape. However, he discovered that the French general whose prisoner he was had written a letter that said  ‘His Excellency thinks that he should be watched and brought to the notice of the police’.

In other words, the French consider Grant a spy, to be dealt with by the police and not the army. Grant decided that the French had broken their agreement so his parole no longer counted, and he escaped.

Another job of the Intelligence Branch was intercepting letters, such as those sent from French generals to their officers.

They also collected information from networks of local spies. In my books, I have my exploring officers joined by a Greek spy and his niece, who claim to working with the British because the British are the enemies of the Turks.

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Property developers Georgian and Regency style

Most British cities, and particularly London, grew significantly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not only did agriculture changed forcing rural workers to move to cities to seek work. The population of Britain nearly doubled in the eighteenth century and quadrupeled in the nineteenth.

Wealthy families who owned land in and around large cities, especially London, were the Georgian era’s property developers. Great landowners developed well planned streets and squares on the western side of London, obtaining local acts of Parliament to allow them to levy rates so they could finance paving, lighting, cleaning, and watchmen.

The standard of construction was generally high, and many—from grand aristocratic residences to more modest workers terraced houses—still remain today, giving many cities and towns their character.

Lesser developers built with cheap materials and little planning, and left slums and neglect These dwellings are almost all gone.

Most buildings were designed by owners and builders together—until the middle of the eighteenth century an architect was anyone who cared to call themselves one.

Regency flip or flopper

The regency house flipper who is the hero of Grasp the Thorn is an invention of my own. But why not? In a world where fortunes were being made and lost, renovating houses for the upwardly mobile seems like a good thing to do. If people like Bear didn’t exist, it was necessary to create one. So I did.

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History on WIP Wednesday

One of the first things I do when planning a story is find out what was happening in the world at the time of the story. In 1815, few events could have been more significant to a retired soldier than the Battle of Waterloo. It was obvious to me that my epilogue for Chaos Come Again had to touch on the arrival of the news from Belgium.

By the next day, rumours that battle had been joined were swirling around London. Lion went out in the morning to see what he could find out, but no one knew anything concrete.

“I don’t know how many people I spoke to who are convinced the Corsican monster is even now on his way to England having massacred the largest army the allied forces have ever put into a single field,” he told Dorothea, disgusted. “You will be pleased to know that I punched none of their stupid faces.”

By that evening, the rumour was that there had been a great battle, a retreat, and a defeat. It was now the twentieth of June. The more credible reports suggested the French had crossed the northern border of France some five days ago, and engaged the Prussians, who had fallen back.

“Not a defeat,” Lion scoffed, and the veterans among their friends agreed. “A fighting retreat until they can gather their numbers. If the Prussians were the only troops involved, it wasn’t the main battle.”

As Lion and Dorothea drove back to their townhouse, the streets were thronged with people waiting for official news.

The following morning, several of the London newspapers claimed that a bloody battle had been fought and won. But they provided no detail and ascribed the news to a gentleman who had arrived in London from Brussels. And a couple of them even said there may have been not a victory, but a defeat.

The couple kept themselves busy, but dread and hope mingled as they waited. “Even if the battle is over,” Lion pointed out, “that doesn’t mean the war is won.”

Lady Sutton and her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Winshire, were holding a ball that night. Lion and Dorothea decided to go, rather than sit around their townhouse and fret about the outcome of the battle. “We will dance and talk with our friends, even as we pray for our comrades,” Dorothea said.

It was close to midnight when the Duke of Winshire suddenly halted the orchestra, and called out in a battlefield roar, “Listen! Outside! Do you hear?”

In the silence, the shouts of a crowd carried clearly through the French doors that were open all along one side of the ballroom. As one, the ball-goers surged for those doors, the closest reaching the terrace first and joining the shouting. “Victory! Hurrah!”

The orchestra struck up again, this time to the tune, God Save the King. Lion could feel tears prick his eyes. It was over, then.

 

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Civilians and the army

To our modern minds, it seems strange to think of civilians, including women and children, travelling into combat zones. Yet until the second half of the nineteenth century, civilians were an essential part of how armies worked. Collectively, anyone who followed the army that was not a soldier was called a camp follower. And every army had all kinds of followers.

All non-military supplies came from the commissariat, a civilian service, funded by Treasury. They searched for supplies, found a depot in which to store them, and staffed the depot and those who drove the mule carts that brought supplies in and out. Each local group of soldiers probably had a sutler, either semi-official or unsanctioned.

Sutlers negotiated with locals and sold goods that were not supplied by the commissariat: tobacco, coffee, sugar, and other supplies. A sutler was usually authorised at brigade level, and the role in each brigade often went to the wife of one of the soldiers.

Saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, and farriers might be soldiers (if someone with the right skills could be found) or civilians, but they were all essential to the operation of the army.

So were medical staff. The Army Medical Department employed around one surgeon for every 250 soldiers. Military surgeons were not commissioned into the army, so were technically civilians, but they were on the payroll. They were assisted by soldiers with more or less medical training, gained on the job, and by camp followers, usually wives of soldiers.

Wives and families formed the largest group of camp followers. In England, soldiers’ families lived around the barracks, as military families do today. When the regiment travelled overseas, regulations stated how many wives they’d take with them (one for every six soldiers was common). To be in the ballot, a woman had to be a wife of good reputation. Mostly, women with children were excluded. On long overseas postings, babies arrived anyway, often on the march or even during battles.

Those not selected could seldom afford to follow their menfolk. They stayed in England and survived the best they could, often in a garrison city far from family, lacking work opportunities and not recognised as part of the local parish for poor relief.

Those selected faced hard work and unknown risks, but—though they might not be an official part of the army—they were on the books. Yes, they had to have an officer’s approval to follow the army and they were subject to military discipline, but they received rations (a half ration for a wife and a quarter ration for a child) and they were paid for the work they did.

Wives were not only sutlers and nurses. They were also responsible for many other important jobs that kept the army operating: laundering clothes, cooking food, sewing and mending, watching the baggage, looking after sheep and cattle (food on the hoof), and acting as servants to officers and their families.

And, of course, they provided sexual services to their husbands. The rest of the soldiers in the unit would have to make other arrangements or go without. Wives who followed the army were, as I said before, women of good reputation.

Local women filled the gap, either on a temporary basis, as prostitutes, or longer term as mistresses or even wives. Locally acquired wives and families provided the same wide range of services as those brought overseas with the regiment, but the army didn’t hold itself accountable for paying them or for transporting women and their children to England when the war was over, or when the soldier died, unless the woman could produce proof of a legal marriage, recognised by the Church of England.

As to the marriage of officers, the army discouraged young officers from taking a wife. Not only was it likely to ruin them financially, given the cost of being an officer—commission, uniforms, equipment, subscription, and the officers’ mess. Marriage was thought to disturb the camaraderie of the mess, as it took the officer out of the all-male brotherhood of warriors.

A young officer who married without permission risked ruining his chances of promotion.

That changed as he went up through the ranks. An old rhyme said:

“A Subaltern may not marry,
captains might marry,
majors should marry,
and lieutenant-colonels must marry.”

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Gretna Green weddings

Why did people in our Regency and Victorian stories run away to Gretna Green to get married?

It’s a combination of different legal systems and geography. In the middle of the 18th century, England passed a law to stop clandestine and irregular marriages. From then on, people could not marry without proving that they were who they said they were and that they were over the age of 21 or that they had the permission of their guardians, if under that age. I’ve written about the reason for the act and what it established, if you’re interested.

The law did not apply to Scotland, which had its own laws. In Scotland, you were married if:

  • you were not already married
  • the pair of you said you were husband and wife in front of witnesses
  • you consumated the marriage.

Gretna Green was the first village north of the border on the highway that ran from England to Scotland on the western side of Britain. The highway on the eastern side was far busier, and the chances of being caught by pursuing angry parents higher. Other villages along the border were not as easily accessible, since much of the border country was wild and hilly. So Gretna Green became synonymous with runaway marriages, as anxious couples arrived and demanded to be married right away.

And the Blacksmith’s shop? In fact, anywhere would have done, but the blacksmith had a building at the junction of five coaching roads. Easily found. And Joseph Paisley, the local blacksmith, saw an opportunity for a side business, witnessing and recording marriages for a few coins. He would ask, “are you of age to marry” (14 for boys and 12 for girls in Scotland at the time), and “are you free to marry”. Then he’d strike the anvil and it was done.

The hammering of the anvil soon became a notorious sound; romantically it is said that like the metals he forged, the Blacksmith would join couples together in the heat of the moment but bind them for eternity. [https://www.gretnagreen.com/why-the-blacksmiths-shop-a740]

Paisley performed marriages in the blacksmith’s shop for over 60 years, and his successors to the forge carried on the tradition.

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Romance over the chess board

In my novella The Husband Gamble, Hythe and Rilla get to know one another while playing chess. What could be less romantic? Chess, after all, is a game of war, a game of logic. Yet, both chess and love are filled with passion and excitement. Both chess and love require the players to focus on one another, tensely wondering what the next move might be, and watching for clues.

In long centuries when society frowned on such a close focus between a man and woman, dancing and chess has allowed interested couples to meet. Chess allowed them to spend hours in one another’s company, talking and getting to know one another better.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, chess was used both to facilitate courtship and as an allegory of courtship, as can be seen in paintings, carvings, and tapestries of the time. Likewise with literature of the time, where the language of chess and the language of seduction merge.

The queen was not in the original Persian and Indian game. She replaced the vizier, whose moves were limited. Our modern day queen, with her expansive sweeps, may have arisen in medieval Spain at the time of the powerful Queen Isabella. Certainly, the new movements were first described in a Catalan poem called “Love Chess”, although the vizier lingered on in some places until the early 18th century.

The connection between love and chess continued. In 1801, in her book Belinda, the novelist Maria Edgeworth wrote:

O, you novice at Cupid’s chess-board! Do you not see the next move? Check with your new knight, and the game is your own.

Chess even made it into Victorian valentines:

‘My little love do you remember,
Ere we grew so sadly wise,
When you and I played chess together,
Checkmated by each others eyes?’

 

 

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News and journalism in Regency England

Researching for one of my works in progress, I came across an article by journalist, author, and academic Brian Cathcart about the arrival of the official despatches from Waterloo.

He points out that no one in London on 18th June 1815 knew that the great battle had taken place, let alone who had won. The news was slow to arrive, too. The battle was on a Sunday, and it wasn’t until late on Wednesday that Wellington’s messenger, Major Henry Percy, arrived in London, with a French eagle sticking out of each window of his yellow post chaise. Escorted by a delirious crowd, he brought the report to Cabinet, who were dining in Grosvenor Square. After they’d read it and made an announcement to the crowd, Percy continued on, with an even larger crowd and followed by most of the Cabinet, to the house of the banking family where the Prince Regent was dining that night. In the words of the hostess, Mrs Boehm:

The first quadrille was in the act cf forming and the Prince was walking up to the dais on which his seat was placed, when I saw every one without the slightest sense of decorum rushing to the windows, which had been left wide open because of the excessive sultriness of the weather. The music ceased and the dance was stopped; for we heard nothing but the vociferous shouts of an enormous mob, who had just entered the Square and were running by the side of a post-chaise and four, out of whose windows were hanging three nasty French eagles. In a second the door of the carriage was flung open and, without waiting for the steps to be let down, out sprang Henry Percy – such a dusty figure! – with a flag in each hand, pushing aside everyone who happened to be in his way, darting up stairs, into the ball-room, stepping hastily up to the Regent, dropping on one knee, laying the flags at his feet, and pronouncing the words ‘Victory, Sir! Victory!’

In another article, Cathcart makes the point that not a single war correspondent was in Brussels to cover the battle, and explains why. Journalism as we know it had not yet been born, though London had many many papers. Indeed, the news they printed came from reports from ordinary civilians who happened to know something, official reports printed verbatim, or articles lifted from other papers.