Georgian era research

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Thieves with a boat or patriots?

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One of the made-to-order stories I gave away last month needed a bit of research. The winner asked for a buccaneer. So what, I wondered, was the difference between a pirate, a buccaneer, a corsair, a privateer, or any other ship-going bandit?

Thieves with ships

Pirates, I found, were fundamentally outlaws. ‘Thieves with ships’ one website I found called them. They ransack towns and capture ships looking for loot and people to sell or hold for ransom. They answer to no-one except their own appointed leaders, and recognise no law outside of themselves. Leaving aside the romantic image from books and movies, they were and are a ruthless lot of men and women, loyal only to one another and a danger to everyone else.

Not that I don’t find something to admire in the way that the pirates of the Caribbean ran a democratic society based on ability, where every man and woman of the crew had a say in how it ran and who should be captain, and a share of the loot. But I’d find it a challenge to make a hero of any of them. It could be fun, mind you, but I’d need a novel, not a short story.

Buccaneers, it turns out, were privateers and pirates in the West Indies in the 17th Century. The word comes from the French boucan, meaning smoked meat. The buccaneers started by selling meat gained from hunting, then found there was more money to be made by attacking towns on behalf of the French and the English, who were at war with Spain at the time.

And corsair is a word the English applied to foreign pirates, particularly Muslim pirates operating out of North Africa. They also applied it to the French and even the Spanish when at war with them, which was most of the time. They intended that as an insult, and it was certainly taken that way. Corsairs were also keen to find loot, but they were particularly interested in capturing slaves. Muslims being forbidden to enslave (or even rob) other Muslims, the corsairs attacked any underprotected European or American ship that strayed into their path, thus combining the religious duty of harrying the infidel with the economic pleasure of making a profit.

Thieves with a licence

Which brings us to privateers. In times of war, governments would issue letters of marque and reprisal — commissions to entrepreneurs with boats. The licence or commission would give the ship the right to attack ships belonging to whoever the country was at war with. In the 1812 war between the United Kingdom and the United States, which is in the background of my short story Kidnapped to Freedom, both countries commissioned privateers. The US had a very small navy but a large merchant fleet, and the UK navy was heavily committed to the war against Napoleon.

The commission specified what they were allowed to do, and any prisoners were treated as prisoners-of-war. But the prize — the ship and the cargo — paid for the enterprise.

All-out privateers often sailed with multiple teams headed by ship masters, who could take over a prize ship and bring it back to port. They were essentially pirates, but with a single focus on their nation’s enemy. They would never dream of attacking a neutral or allied nation’s ships or ports.

Many cargo ships also carried letters of marque authorising them to seize enemy ships. This also made them privateers, but part-time privateers rather than full-time.

When the war was over, those cargo ships would carry on with their usual business. The problem with privateers, though, was that the end of the war destroyed their livelihood, and history records many pirates who began their lives as privateers but branched out at the end of the war they were commissioned for.

I made my short-story’s hero a merchant captain from the Maritime States of Canada, with letters of marque from the United Kingdom. I hope my winner thinks I’ve got close enough to a buccaneer.

 

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In defence of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham by Jacqueline Reiter

Jacquie ReiterToday, I welcome Jacqueline Reiter to the blog. Jacqueline has a PhD in late 18th century political history from Cambridge University. She is very possibly the only world expert on the life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, and has written an unpublished novel about his relationship with his brother William Pitt the Younger. She is currently writing Chatham’s biography for Pen & Sword Books. When she finds time she blogs about her research at https://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com and she tweets at https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.

I’ll be bold: John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham was a very interesting, and thoroughly underappreciated, gentleman.

I know that’s what you’re thinking. (Unless you’re thinking “Who is the 2nd Earl of Chatham?” in which case don’t be bashful, because you’re not alone in that.) Really? The 2nd earl of Chatham? Why bother with him?

It’s a very good question. Chatham has a terrible historical reputation. His claim to infamy is his unfortunate attempt to command a military expedition. The result was the disastrous Walcheren campaign of 1809, which went as wrong as any expedition can be expected to go. Walcheren aside, he is overshadowed by his famous father, Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, and his equally famous brother, Pitt the Younger. “Unattractive, vain, pompous, stupid,” thundered the 1940s Pitt family chronicler Tresham Lever: “The most stupid and useless of the Pitts”.[1]

“Stupid and useless”?! I couldn’t disagree more. I stumbled on Chatham by accident while studying his famous brother, and he has never let me go since. It’s rare to find someone so universally deprecated, and, while the stories about him aren’t all unfounded, he has definitely had a bad press. Don’t believe me? To help you make up your mind, I present five facts about John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham – or, as I tend to call him, John.

  1. He wasn’t stupid

Nope, not even a bit of it. Not as clever as his brother William, perhaps, but none of the Pitt siblings was stupid. His education (at home, with a tutor) was considered “singular” by at least one contemporary, but it furnished him with a lifelong love of complex mathematics (he was discussing Euclidian geometry in his letters at 15) and natural history. Like his father and brother, he was an accomplished classicist. When he grew up he was considered a sensible sort, with a reputation in cabinet for giving unostentatious good advice.

  1. ….. But he was vain (and lazy)

John Pitt Lord ChathamMmmm. His nickname of “the late Lord Chatham” was not undeserved. Joseph Farington recalled that, when Chatham was compared with his successor as First Lord of the Admiralty, “it was admitted that Lord Chatham has greater abilities, if an unconquerable indolence, did not prevent their being exerted”.[2] I’ve rarely seen him making appointments earlier than two in the afternoon. I once read about him reviewing the militia at ten a.m. and nearly fell over in shock.

Chatham even kept the King waiting. He once turned up four hours late at a royal function.

And, yes, he was “vain”, maybe even “pompous”. His niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, said that never “did anybody ever contrive to appear as much of a prince as he does: his led horses, his carriages, his dress, his star and garter [KG! KG!], all of which he shows off in his quiet way with wonderful effect”.[3] Chatham’s brother William had a reputation for sloppy dressing, frequently described as wearing muddy boots or greasy leather breeches. Chatham would rather have died.

  1. He wasn’t lucky

“If ever any individual drew a prize in the great lottery of human life, that man was the present Earl of Chatham”, Sir Nathaniel Wraxall wrote, cuttingly.[4] Wraxall was a jealous, poisonous gossip. Chatham’s luck was superficial and I don’t envy his life one bit.

But he inherited one of Britain’s most famous titles

True: but it stopped him leading his own life. His parents forced him to resign from the army in 1776 as a protest at the war with revolutionary America. When he returned in 1778 he was obliged to accept undesirable postings to places like the West Indies to avoid being deployed against the American rebels. Later, he was forbidden from serving on the continent lest he die and propel his heir (his brother William Pitt) into the House of Lords. And though he undoubtedly benefited from being the prime minister’s brother, he was constantly compared to his more famous relatives.

OK, but he inherited pots of money, yes?

Also true, to an extent. Chatham inherited a nominal income (after 1803) of £7000 a year, a £4000 pension settled on the Earldom of Chatham and a £3000 pension acquired by his father for three lives. Whoopee, as they say. But the estates he inherited were so mired down in debt that Chatham had no choice but to sell them (his father actually raised more than £10,000 IN ONE GO on the security of his son’s inheritance, and there were other debts as well).

Chatham unfortunately didn’t learn from his father’s poor example. He spent most of his life taking out massive loans from friends and moneylenders (some respectable, others ……. less respectable) to help keep him and his wife in West End properties, carriages and expensive silverware. But, after working through a number of bonds, contracts and legal proceedings detailing the Chatham family finances, it seems he started off at a distinct disadvantage. He was still trying to fulfil the terms of his father’s will as late as 1809, nearly thirty years after the first Lord Chatham died.

Very well. But he was lucky in love.

Chatham married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Elizabeth Townshend, after an endearingly bashful courtship. (Chatham came over all tongue-tied every time he tried to propose, and kept missing opportunities to speak up. It’s all rather sweet, although I suspect Mary wanted to kick him in the shins by the end of it.)

The couple remained close throughout the thirty-eight years of their marriage. They went everywhere together (except on campaign) and I’ve never been able to substantiate the rumours that he had a mistress. (And anyway he’d never have had time: as I said, he and Mary went EVERYWHERE together.)

But Mary’s life was full of illness. She spent nearly the first year of her marriage unable to walk across the room due to some sort of rheumatic complaint. She celeberated her recovery with a miscarriage, and never did manage to carry a child to term. Worse still, between 1807 and 1809 she developed what may have been a form of schizophrenia. It nearly broke their marriage; remarkably, it did not. But Mary relapsed in 1818, and never really recovered. She died suddenly in 1821 of unidentified causes, and Chatham remained profoundly depressed for over a year.

Not so lucky, then.

  1. He wasn’t as pathetic as people think

Chatham’s public reputation rests on his less-than-stellar performance at Walcheren, and his career as First Lord of the Admiralty and Master-General of the Ordnance. Walcheren didn’t cover him with laurels, and I must say he was not the right person for that task. But his cabinet career did not suck nearly as much as people think.

Everyone who worked closely with Chatham seems to have been fond of him, in a rather protective way. He remained friendly with several members of his Admiralty Board long after he left the Admiralty, and one of his underlings at the Ordnance thought he was the best Master-General in a generation (no, really, I’m not making this up). And his military secretary at Walcheren, Thomas Carey, wrote (AFTER the failure of the campaign): “In understanding few equal him, & in Honor or Integrity He cannot be excelled”.[5]

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But one thing’s for sure: Chatham inspired loyalty.

  1. He’s worthy of your time

As great as his father or brother? Not a chance. An administrative genius, or a great military commander? Hah, don’t make me laugh. But unimportant? Uninteresting? Unworthy? Sorry, can’t agree. He spent more than twenty years at the highest levels of government, holding highly responsible wartime posts; he’s much more than the bunch of unsubstantiated rumours circling about him in the contemporary and secondary literature. (And don’t get me started on THOSE.) He’s not in the first rank of historical personages, but he mattered.

Have I convinced you yet?

References

[1] Sir Tresham Lever, The House of Pitt (London, 1947), pp. 361-2

[2] Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary I (London, 1922), 64, 170

[3] Duchess of Cleveland, The Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope (London, 1914), p. 52

[4] Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, Posthumous Memoirs of my Own Time (London, 1836) III, 128

[5] Thomas Carey to William Huskisson, 3 May 1810, BL Add MSS 38739 f 26

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The 18th century cookie cutter

I’ve found some lovely cookie cutters while I’ve been researching for Gingerbread Bride.

Flat hard wafers seem to have first been made in 7th century Persia, and spread into Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain. And gingerbread was a great favourite in England from medieval times.

Wooden moulds to shape the dough gave way to metal cutters in or around the 16th century. They were made on the spot to the buyer’s specification, every one different.

cookiecutter1

Historically cookie cutters were made by family members and itinerant tinsmiths who travelled the country.  Often the tinsmith would spend several days making cake tins, pans and pails. The cookie cutters for the most part were made from left-over tin scraps. Some interesting examples have turned up showing they were made from flattened baking powder tins and canisters.

As well as the dough and the cutters, I’ve been researching the story. First written down in the 1870s, the gingerbread man is part of a much older classification of folk tales: the runaway food stories. The British tradition seems to have leant towards pancakes and bunnocks, but the gingerbread story, when it first appeared in print, came with the note that a servant girl told it to the writer’s children, and that she had it from an old lady. So I feel quite justified in using the story in my novella for the Bluestocking Belles box set. Here’s the excerpt where my heroine remembers the story.

Mary smiled with satisfaction as she placed the last of the little gingerbread ladies into the box.  In the four weeks she had been at Aunt Dorothy’s, she had learned a number of recipes, and helped with all kinds of baking, but the gingerbread biscuits that the cook of the Ulysses taught her had become her special contribution to the success of the shop.

Making them took her back to the galley where Cookie ruled with a rod of iron over various helpers, but always had time for a lonely little girl. She could still hear his deep gravelly voice telling the story of the run-away gingerbread horse, or it might be a dog, or whatever cutter shape he had used at the time. She would be hovering over the tray of hot biscuits, waiting for them to cool enough to ice and eat.

“And he ran, and he ran,” Cookie would say, “with all the village behind him: the old lady, the fat squire, the pretty milkmaid, and the hungry sailor. But none of them could catch the gingerbread horse.”

The story would continue, with the gingerbread horse escaping one would-be eater after another, and mocking them all, until Cookie had iced the first biscuit, and she would then wait, patient and giggling, for the gingerbread horse to encounter the river, and the fox.

First, he’d put the horse over her back. Then, as the river water rose, on her head. And finally, she would tip her head back, and he would perch the biscuit on her nose, and say the words she had been waiting for. “And bite, crunch, swallow, that was the end of the gingerbread horse.”

Aunt Dorothy had round cutters, and star cutters, and cutters in the shape of various animals. When the miller’s daughter asked for gingerbread ladies and gentlemen for her wedding breakfast, Mary had been delighted with the conceit, and the cutters the tinker made to her pencil drawings worked very well.

The icing gave them clothes and features; a whole box of little gingerbread grooms, and a box of little gingerbread brides. The miller’s daughter would be very pleased.

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Newgate prison – a habitation of misery

fig.1_maltonnewgate_fmtMy latest story has taken me into Newgate prison, immortalised (if the word is appropriate in the context) in Fielding’s Moll Flanders, and in 1807 still the place described by notorious highwayman   Captain Alexander Smith as a ‘dismal prison… a place of calamity… habitation of misery, a confused chaos… a bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and none hearers.’

newgate-prison-entry-gateAt the time, it housed around 300 women in a space intended for 50, and they often brought their children with them. Many slept on the floor, without bedding. Looking through the proceedings of the neighbouring court, the Old Bailey, I found many convicted women had two, three, or even four children under 7, and into prison with mother they would go.

Everything was for sale. The keepers weren’t paid, but lived on the bribes of prisoners and their families. So much for a bed, so much for a meal, so much for a pail of water, so much for coals to cook or to keep warm. Those who were wealthy could be housed in comfort, and could have visitors and their own reading matter, clothes, and food.

Those who were poor were thrown to the mercies of the other prisoners, and were likely to have whatever little they still owned taken from them. The prisoners ran their own affairs inside of the walls, with a tough culture of gangs who intimidated those who didn’t fit in. The keepers simply kept the prisoners from leaving.

Prisoners weren’t classified beyond the general classification of debtor and felon, and people awaiting trial were imprisoned with those sentenced and awaiting transportation or execution; first time offenders with hardened criminals; the young with the old.

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Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker reformer, first visited in 1813:

The turnkeys warned them that the women were wild and savage, and they would be in physical danger. However, they went in anyway. On that and two more visits, they brought warm clothing and clean straw for the sick to lie on. Elizabeth also prayed for the prisoners.

Elizabeth said:

‘All I tell thee is a faint picture of the reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the ferocious manners and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness, which everything bespoke, are quite indescribable’

After several visits, family problems kept her away, but she returned several years later and began a long process of reform. (Note, though, that the painter doesn’t quite believe in the reform. At her feet, the children play with dice. And the women on the far right are passing a bottle.)

Elizabeth Fry

 

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All at sea – travelling the Mediterranean in the early 19th Century

640px-French_ship_under_atack_by_barbary_piratesI’ve been researching times for sea travel. I began because I had a soldier to get home wounded from a battle in Alexandria. The times didn’t work, so I had to have him injured elsewhere.

It’s a tricky question, because it depended so much on the type of ship, the time of year (and therefore the prevailing wind), which direction they were travelling (trips towards the west were slower than trips towards the east) and the weather encountered along the way.

But I’ve managed to come up with a table showing what I think are reasonable timings for a medium-sized sailing ship – a brigantine or a frigate – in the early 19th.

A fast ship given perfect conditions would do better, and bad conditions could mean the trip took a lot longer. And pirates could mean you didn’t finish it at all.

I’d be delighted if any of you naval buffs want to correct my figures. Just comment below.

Embarkation port Destination port Nautical miles Time spent on the voyage
Rome (Ostia) Gibraltar 935 7-10 days
Gibraltar Rome 935 7-10 days
Tunis Gibraltar 820 6-9 days
Gibraltar Tunis 820 6-8 days
Istanbul Rhodes 445 5-6 days
Rhodes Istanbul 445 5-6 days
Rhodes Marsala (in Sicily) 760 30-50 days
Marsala Rhodes 760 20-30 days
Gibraltar Marsala 857 7-10 days
Marsala Gibraltar 857 7-10 days
Marsala Alexandria 1175 20-30 days
Alexandria Marsala 1175 45-65 days

Add 1374 miles from London to Gibraltar, and you begin to have a sense of the distances.

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Farewell to Kindness deleted scene – Anne’s trip to Bristol

I’m travelling today, and so I thought I’d post the deleted travelling scene from Farewell to Kindness. I enjoyed writing it, remembering all the times I’ve travelled with my own children or entertained someone else’s children on a train or a bus. But it didn’t help the pace of the story, it introduced a whole heap of characters who never appeared again, and the single plot point could be carried in the one or two paragraphs that replaced it.

The photos of luggage are from my Pinterest board Farewell to Kindness trip to Bristol.

Behind time

A few minutes later, they were away. This was the shortest part of the trip. Some of the passengers had left Gloucester at 7.00 in the morning, but now there was just 15 miles to go. They would break the trip only once more, at Winterbourne.

Anne was squeezed between a large woman who had not woken during the Chipping Niddwick stop, and a small balding man who offered her a tentative smile over the top of his glasses. On the opposite seat, a young man was trying to keep a small boy occupied with cats’ cradle patterns in wool, while his wife rocked a sleeping little girl.

18th century luggageBefore long, the boy lost interest in what his father was doing, and became restless.

“You look like a boy who enjoys stories,” Anne said to him. The boy looked to be of an age with Daisy, who had a robust taste in adventure, preferring Anne to spice her tales of fairies and princess with wicked pirates and hungry dragons. Playing down the fairies and playing up the dragons should work for a boy.

He looked at her with hope and suspicion. “He does love stories,” his father said, his own expression all hope. Then hastened to introduce himself and his family. “This here is Georgie, and that’s Millicent with my wife, Mrs Norris. George Norris, that’s me. And that there lady by thee, that be my mother.”

So Anne introduced herself before launching into a tale that she made up as she went along, in which a coach travelling through the Gloucestershire countryside was magically transformed into a ship that – beset though it was by storms, pirates, dragons, and a rather large giant who wanted to take it home for his bath – nonetheless managed to come safely to port not quite an hour and a half later as the coach pulled into Winterbourne.

By this time, young Georgie was leaning on Anne’s knee, anxious not to miss a single word of what she said, and Anne’s voice was growing hoarse. “The End,” she finished, with a sense of relief.

At the inn in Winterbourne, the older Mrs Norris woke, and levered herself out of the couch asking for the necessary. The guard poked his head around the door into the couch. “Does anyone else need to get down? We’ll be here 10 minutes. And we don’t wait for no-one.”

Georgie whispered something to his father, and they left the coach, followed by the small balding man.

“Can George get you a drink, Ma’am?” Mrs Norris said softly over the head of the sleeping girl. “Thy throat must be that sore from all that story. Why it was as good as the players that come to Christmas fair, and so it was!”

wallpaper boxAnne turned down the drink, wanting to avoid her own trip to the necessary, but thanked Mrs Norris for the thought and the compliment.

Mrs Norris senior clambered back into the coach. “Move over, Lilly, do. How’s my Milly?”

Mrs Lilly Norris, who had relaxed into the middle of the seat, shifted sideways again to accommodate her mother-in-law’s bulk, and dropped the little girl’s head so that Mrs Norris could see her.

“You should wake her, you should.” Mrs Norris turned to her son as he put his son up into the coach and followed. “I’ve been telling Lilly she should wake Milly, else she’ll not sleep tonight.”

The guard poked his head in the door again. “Are we all aboard, then?”

“There is still one gentleman to come, I think,” Anne told him.

The guard said something scathing about passengers, adding, “Not present company, ma’am. Best take your seats. We’ll be off in just a tick, whether the gent comes back or no.”

Mrs Norris was still organising her children and grandchildren, and took no notice, but it didn’t take her long to set Norris next to Anne, and settle herself beside her grandson, with her yawning granddaughter on her knee.

“There, now we shall be comfie,” she announced, with satisfaction. “Feel under the seat, young Georgie, and tha shall find summat tha’ll like, I warrant.”

Georgie obeyed, pulling out a rectangular basket just as the thin balding man attempted to climb into the coach.

“Here, be careful, fellow,” the man said.

Norris apologised, and helped Georgie hoist the basket onto the seat between his wife and his mother.

He sat back just as the coach started with a jerk, and Georgie fell backwards against the thin man, prompting more apologies.

“Tha’ll have one of my apple turnovers, and all will be well,” offered Mrs Norris, digging into the basket with one capacious hand, while steadying the child on her knee with the other. And she and her daughter-in-law proceeded to hand out food from a seemingly bottomless basket – pork pies, apple turnovers, gloucester tarts.

Anne accepted a tart, offered shyly by Lilly Norris. “Tha should have a pork pie, ma’am,” Mrs Norris told her, frankly. “Tha has no meat on thee.”

The thin man shared his name after the first apple turnover, and the reason for his journey after the second. He was Frank Durney, and he was on his way to Bristol to take up a job as a clerk in a counting house. This coach, which he had joined at Chipping Niddwick, was his second of the day.

After his third tart, Durney complimented Anne on her story, and after the basked had been packed away, he launched into a song that, he said, had always amused his own little one.

It involved dancing for all kinds of rewards, and the others knew it. Norris and his wife joined in the singing, and Mrs Norris danced little Milly on her knee to the music, until both children were weak with giggling.

painted basketNorris produced another basket from under the seat, and pulled out a jug of cider and some wooden beakers, which he passed out to everyone in the coach, even the two children.

“And what about yourselves?” Durney asked. “It’s a long trip for the children. Cheltenham, was it, you came from?”

“Gloucester,” Norris told him, leaning out to see Durney around Anne. “But Mother has always had a yen to see Bristol, and Mrs Norris here,” he raised his cup in a salute to his wife, “she wants to stay at the seaside. So we’re off on holiday, we are, just like the nobs.” He said the last with great satisfaction, then looked at Anne with alarm. “Saving your presence, Ma’am.”

“All that way for a holiday!” Durney sounded shocked.

“What I say,” said Mrs Norris cheerfully, “is you’re a long time dead. That’s what I say. Let’s go and have a good time, I said to George here.

“But such a long way. And so much money!” Durney was clearly having trouble grasping the concept.

“Business is doing well, lad, and George deserves the time off, I told him. You’re a long time dead, I said.”

Durney looked inclined to continue arguing, so Anne hastily changed the subject. “The ride seems much smoother.”

This worked, as Durney had information he wanted to share. “We’re on the Bath road, Ma’am,” he told her. “Up till now we’ve been on lesser roads, but the Bath to Bristol road is a major post road. The toll charges are higher, but they put the money into keeping the road up.”

The following dissertation on road maintenance soon lost Anne, but clearly fascinated Norris and his son, and Anne ended up crossing the coach to sit between Lilly Norris and Mrs Norris, so that the two men could talk about various methods of road surfacing and maintenance while the boy listened.

“We will be in Bristol soon, I think,” Anne told Milly, who was shifting restlessly on her grandmother’s knee.

“I going to the sea,” Milly told her, before putting her thumb firmly back in her mouth.

“How exciting. Have you seen the sea before?”

Milly had never been to the sea, it appeared, and neither had any of her family. Anne talked to them for a little while about walking on the sand and wading in the surf, and about the shells, and strangely shaped wood, and other things that washed up on the beach.

She was surprised when she realised they were coming into Bristol. This last part of the trip had gone very quickly. Both children abandoned the adult conversations to press their noses up against the coach windows.

Before long, they turned into the yard of the coaching inn.

The-Cambridge-Telegraph-a-mail-coach-about-to-depart-English

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What’s in a word? Authentic language in historical fiction

One of the challenges facing a writer of historical fiction is that our language keeps changing. In 2015, our vocabulary, our speech patterns, and our tolerance for formal grammar conventions are all very different to what they were 200 years ago, or even 100. We need:

  • to use words that were in use at the time, but that modern readers will understand
  • write dialogue that sounds authentic, but that is also easy to read for modern readers.

Ian Reid, in his blog Reid on Writing, talks about:

…the challenge of creating a language that achieves verisimilitude – the semblance of reality. It’s no easy matter to persuade your readers that your narrative medium is rendering accurately how people spoke and wrote in your chosen period and place. The writing must seem to embody their characteristic turns of phrase, their conversational habits, the structure of their sentences – not only to avoid anachronism but also to gain an insight into the way they thought and felt, which would sometimes have been different from what we’re used to today. So meticulous attention to language isn’t pedantic in novels of this kind – it’s vital for credibility. But it needs to be done in a manner that avoids weighing down the story and slowing down the reader.

And John Yeoman points out that such language must not sound too modern to modern ears.

If the reader detects a linguistic howler in our work (although the reader may be wrong), the illusion is shattered. When I had a character in my last Elizabethan novel abandon his ‘go cart’ to ‘jet’ about Europe, arrive in England by ‘bus’, take his ‘train’ to Slough, then leave his ‘car’ at Ivinghoe, some critics chided me for my anachronisms.
 
Nonsense! I was simply being faithful to the everyday language of the 1590s. Those terms, surprisingly, were associated with transport in the period. The truly erudite reader, I felt, would have understood (and chortled). But s/he didn’t. In the reader’s view, I had committed five howlers.
When I was researching for this post, the word I kept coming across was ‘authenticity’. We simply cannot accurately reproduce the language of the past.  What we can do is give the readers a flavour of the past; a sense of authenticity. This becomes more and more acute (as Lynn Shepherd points out in a blog post on authenticity) as we go further back in time:

People in the past didn’t just dress differently from us, they talked differently too, and that difference gets wider the further back you go. And at some point – probably around the year 1500 – authenticity of language becomes literally impossible: if you’re writing about the Trojan war you simply can’t do your dialogue in Ancient Greek, any more than a character like Cadfael can speak in Middle English (or, indeed, medieval Welsh).  So some sort of compromise has to be found.

Do you opt for a style that conveys some notion of the period, or take the view that your characters would have spoken the ‘ordinary English’ of their time, so allow them to use ‘ordinary English’ as spoken now? I’ve seen both approaches – and many variants in between – and each has both pros and pitfalls. The danger with the former is what I call Forsooth Syndrome, in which you end up with characters spouting a queasy mixture of contemporary English liberally sprinkled with cod words and phrases designed to give a period feel. It can sound very phoney – a bit like a newly-built pub decked out with reproduction horse brasses. But going for the full-on modern-English-and-be-damned approach does make the task of creating that elusive ‘atmosphere’ all the harder.

I’ve tried to keep my vocabulary authentic. I’ve used contractions in my general descriptions, but not in the conversation of my upper-class ladies (except in moments of great stress). Otherwise, I think my writing is modern in style. I hope I’ve done enough to give an authentic early 19th century flavour to my writing.

To keep the vocabulary authentic has meant researching all sorts of unusual topics, such as what words were used for intimacy in my time period. And where I’ve failed, I’ve been ably supported by my excellent proofreader, who has highlighted and questioned words that felt modern to her.

Yesterday, she sent me a link to a resource Mary Robinette Kowal created when writing her Regency Magic series. It is a list of all the words Jane Austen used: 14,793 of them. She has generously posted it on her website, as a text file and as a plugin for Open Office. If you’re writing in the late Georgian or Regency era, go take a look. (And if you haven’t read Kowal’s Glamourist histories, do yourself a favour and check them out.)

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How historically accurate should historical romance be?

histgirl anac2The question in the title is a perennial favourite for readers and writers alike.

Should our characters, our backgrounds, and our plot details be scrupulously accurate to the period in which they are set?

Why write historicals if they’re not set in history?

I’m the first to put my hand up and admit I’m pedantic. I obsess over things like when and how the news of Trafalgar and Nelson’s death arrived in Bath (a plot point in Candle’s Christmas Chair). I’ve written blog posts about:

anachronism-6957-guy-whiteleyI care. If someone in a regency novel calls an earl Your Grace, or zips up his trousers, or has been christened Beyonce, I’m going to notice.

And other readers care, too. I was called out by one reader when a minor character in Candle’s Christmas Chair said he was okay. Quite right, too. Thanks to the magic of ebooks, I was able to remove a word that belonged decades in the future and on the other side of the Atlantic.

History Hoydens makes the following point:

To me, it seems ridiculous to even bother writing “historical fiction” (be it romance, mystery, whathaveyou) if the “historical” part is optional. I know, I know . . . in Romancelandia a lot of the history has become optional: our characters are abnormally clean, have perfect teeth, and somehow our heroes never have the ridiculous haircuts that were in vogue for their age (has anyone ever written or read a medieval hero with a bowl cut?). Is a man with Fabio-locks in the Middle Ages any less offensive than a red silk nighty in Regency England? I think they’re both problematic, both a betrayal of the entire point of the genre…

Perhaps I’m being ridiculous, but the willfully chosen error just gets under my skin and itches like mad! There’s something demeaning about it, something dismissive. Something about it says: It was too much trouble to find a way to make my vision/story work within the framework of history, and rather than alter my vision/story, I chose to alter history instead.

But we’re not writing history books

anachronismOn the other hand, we’re writing fiction, not history. And we’re writing fiction for today’s readers, for whom real historical accuracy might be a step too far, as this Heroes and Heartbreaker’s post comments:

…in some cases a too-strict reliance on historical detail can be just as off-putting. A classic example of this phenomenon is Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, in which hero Jamie gets fed up with heroine Claire’s bad habit of putting his men into mortal danger through her dangerously unpredictable behavior, so he beats her. He beats her! Gabaldon’s response to the clamor around this scene (paraphrased) was “I scrupulously researched every aspect of this book and Jamie’s actions and attitudes are fully consistent with those of a man in that time and place so obviously it’s all good because REALISM!!!” To which I can only reply…yes, from a historic standpoint, Jamie’s actions are unexceptional, but on the other hand this is a book whose plot kicks into gear when the heroine travels backward through time, so…well, I wouldn’t have missed that scene if it weren’t there, is all I’m saying.

Penetrating Analysis makes a compelling case for anachronism that makes the story better for readers.

…historical romance is more beholden to the constraints of the romance genre than it is to the reality of history. While historical fiction may generally aim to simulate the past for readers through painstaking attention to detail, historical romance’s overriding preoccupation is different. Emotional authenticity in the development of the relationship is far more important to the genre than strict fidelity to a historical or geographic setting.

ipad boyHistorical settings open up a range of concerns and possibilities to authors, some because they are similar to the present day and others because they are different. To cite just one example in the latter category, the consequences for unintended pregnancy were much different for an upper-class unmarried woman of Regency England than they are for most twenty-first-century readers. The elevated risks associated with extramarital sex can be used to raise the stakes for heroes and heroines in a way that would be out of place in a contemporary novel.

At the same time, historical settings provide a way to explore themes and issues that are vital to contemporary concerns. The remote past can serve as a safe space in which authors can tackle more sensitive topics without hitting too close to home for readers.

Heroes and heroines with postmodern sensibilities are a natural consequence of being written by authors of the twenty-first century. Expecting writers to purge their work of any trace of modern perspective is unrealistic in a genre predicated upon the reader’s connection to the novel’s protagonists.

And some anachronisms are not anachronisms at all

cookI’ve also been jarred by something in a novel, gone to check the facts, and found that my idea of historical fact was out of tune with what really happened. Perhaps a book has a hero using dental floss in pre-World War I Great Britain. Anachronism?

in James Joyce’s Ulysses, a minor character, Professor MacHugh, “took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth”. This feels all wrong, and you’d be hard pushed to find any other reference to dental floss – pretty much, in any literature ever – but there it is, in a book produced in 1918-20 and set in 1904. [Guardian article on anachronisms that aren’t]

I’ve recently had this experience with Candle’s Christmas Chair. Many reviewers have commented on Min’s profession. (She designs and makes invalid’s chairs.) To some, she is reflecting the start of feminism. To others, my choice of career for her is ridiculous, and a total anachronism. Working class women, of course, always held down an income-earning job or range of jobs. But women of the tradesman and merchant classes, according to my reviewers, stayed at home and managed the servants.

Both types of review see history through a lens of Victorian middle-class sensibilities. I’m not going to write here about the invisible women who thronged the trades, crafts, and professions from medieval times until the Victorian era. That’s a topic for another blog post. Suffice it to say that we should be cautious about labelling something as an error, either intended or unintended.

Do you care?

Different people are annoyed by different things. I got this neat chart of allergens from a thoughtful digest of posts on Likes Books.

Allergens: Which of the following items are you sensitive or allergic to?
  • Americanisms in UK dialogue
  • Anachronistic inventions or discoveries
  • Anachronistic language
  • Anachronistic modern psychology
  • Anachronistic names
  • Anachronistic technology
  • Astronomical errors
  • Asteroids with breathable atmospheres
  • Big lumps of information
  • Combat errors
  • Confusingly similar character names
  • Contrived character actions
  • Costume errors
  • Culturally inappropriate names
  • Dance errors
  • Ecological errors
  • Etiquette errors
  • Excessive repetition
  • Excessive use of long sentences
  • Excessive use of short sentences
  • Excessive use of slang
  • Facial hair style anachronisms
  • Form of address errors
  • Generation-inappropriate language
  • Genetics errors
  • Geographical errors
  • Geological errors
  • Grammatical errors
  • Hairstyle errors or anachronisms
  • Head-hopping
  • Historical errors
  • Inappropriate regional dialect
  • Inappropriate use of cant
  • Inheritance or entail errors
  • Internal inconsistencies
  • Legal errors
  • Malapropisms
  • Martial Arts errors
  • Medical errors
  • Military errors
  • Misuse of foreign languages
  • Morals and mores errors
  • Punctuation errors
  • Religious doctrine errors
  • Science errors
  • Story elapsed time problems
  • Succession errors
  • Time zone/timekeeping errors
  • Title of nobility errors
  • Translation errors
  • Transportation errors
  • Typos
  • Vehicle description errors
  • Weaponry errors

So what do you think? Do you hate historical inaccuracy in books? Does a book blurb that refers to Richard III as the King of York remove any desire to read the book? Or do you not care as long as the story is good?

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Streets of London

Here are a couple of neat resources for those who want to picture places when reading (or writing) a story set in historical London.

This one is an animated flythrough of 17th century London streets.

And this one shows London street views and a little bit of history about the houses featured, including their occupants during the 19th century.

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Click on the link in the text above, or the image, to go to their website.

 

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Travel times, the growth of London, and other random thoughts

regency horsemenWe live in a shrinking world. When we enter the past as writers and readers, we need to remember that earlier generations did not experience such ease of travel, communication, and transport of goods.

This has caused me some angst, as my character Rede in Farewell to Kindness travelled across Southern England in the climax to the novel, and I somehow missed a day in my calculations. I needed to rewrite several scenes to get him to where he needed to be just too late to stop the villains in their villainy, but in time to be in for the finish.

I have heaps of notes on travel in the early 19th Century. I can tell you how long it took for the mail coach to travel from London to Bath to Bristol, how long the passenger ships took to sail from London to Margate, how many miles a post horse could cover before being replaced, and the average distance a man and a horse could travel in an hour.

Christchurch100 years later, things had changed dramatically. I have a package of letters my grandfather wrote to his siblings as the 19th Century was becoming the 20th. He and his brothers travelled for work (they were builders). In those days in New Zealand, travel beyond the local town was by horse, boat, or train. With no telephones, the men wrote home whenever they were away.

Even so, they had options for travel and communication that were way beyond those available to earlier generations. Until the eighteenth century, travel was slow, difficult, and expensive. Many people spent their entire lives within walking distance of their birthplace, and those who did travel expected to spend days or weeks on the road or possibly months at sea.

The easy mail my grandparent’s generation took for granted was relatively new at the time; the first penny stamp was used only 60 years before the start of the 20th Century. Before that, those outside the peerage had limited access to cheap mail, and often relied on friends and neighbours to carry messages.

West_India_Docks_Microcosm_editedTransport difficulties limited the size of cities. People need to be fed, and perishable food needed to be grown close enough to a city that it could be brought to the markets while it was still usable. Right through history, societies have collapsed when they grew too large for their hinterland to support them.

Shipping was one answer to the problem. The great cities of the past were built on harbours, and until very recently indeed, it was faster to sail from port to port than to travel overland. The trip by sea from London to Edinburgh took between five and nine days in the 18th Century (depending on weather), but travel by land took between 10 days and a fortnight. A seat on a coach cost more than two weeks wages for a skilled tradesman, and the traveller would still have to pay for food and lodgings along the way.

canals liverpool leedsThe Georgians began a revolution in travel with the feverish canal-building of the 18th and early 19th century, which added to the much smaller network of canals built in the 1600s. Suddenly, goods could be transported from Liverpool to London by boat, without risking storms at sea. The great London population of explosion followed. In 1800, London was five miles across, and had a population of a million people. By 1815, the population was 1.4 million. By 1860, over 3 million people lived in London — a growth fuelled by easy movement of goods and people on the railways. And the urban sprawl had began, with people living in the suburbs and working in the city.

railwayIn the same 70 year period, the roads improved, with the introduction of turnpikes providing money and an incentive to apply new road building techniques that could keep up with faster carriages and a greater volume of traffic.

By the time my grandfather was a young man, people could readily travel from town to town around the country and (less readily) from country to country. And the now literate masses could send letters across town in a day and across the world several times a year. The world had grown smaller.

He would find today hard to believe, with cheap world travel within the reach of many, and near-instant around-the-world communication available on cell phones to slum dwellers in India.

It has been a fascinating quarter-millennium. I wonder what’s next?