Hamilton's forbidden flame, Angelica

 

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Angelica Schuyler ("Engeltke") named for her grandmother, as was Dutch custom,was born on February 22, 1756, probably at the home of her grandparents, the fine house called Rensselearwyck. Her parents, Catherine van Rensselear and Philip Schuyler, had been married during the alarms of the French & Indian War the previous year, on September 17th, 1755. Albany was, in those days, another semi-rural village in the upper Hudson Valley, hanging precariously on the edge of the wild frontier. The French and their powerful Indian allies had been on their doorstep many times before and now were menacing the English/Dutch settlements once more. 

The marriage was noted in the family Bible, just nine days after the Battle of Lake St. George where Philip Schuyler was a Captain and aide to General Bradstreet. If you do the math, you will see that  the young Captain had been summoned back from the army by his soon-to-be father-in-law. Catherine, the "Evening Star" of Albany (per the eligible bachelors of the valley) was a famous belle in her day but her flirtatious days were now over. Her first born daughter would grow up to be an even more famous coquette--on three continents.

Angelica seems to have been her father's favorite, a real sparkler right from the start. In her early teens (14) she was sent with her parents' good friends, New York British Governor Moore and his charming wife Lucy, for an extended stay. In New York, she apparently absorbed ideas about status, and for her the word "Colonial" now carried a cruel sting. I believe this was where she made up her mind to marry an English aristocrat, instead of one of her land-wealthy, but less sophisticated Hudson Valley cousins, the expected course for a Patroon's daughter. When Angelica returned home at last, she arrived in Albany with a music master and a harpsichord. She alone of the daughters was sent to what was then an  innovation among the Dutch--a boarding school to learn French, and the other courtly graces. Nothing was too good for General Schuyler's bright, pert eldest daughter. 

“Carter and my eldest daughter ran off and were married on the 23, July,” (1779) Unacquainted with his family connections and situation in life that matter was exceeding disagreeable and I signified it to them.” Phillip Schuyler to his friend, William Duer.  

This “Carter” was actually John Barker Church—after the war, when news came that the man he’d supposedly killed in a duel was still alive and well--he would resume his proper name. The cause of his flight from England was probably far less glamorous, for Church was bankrupt and a well-known gambler, an unpromising history that Philip Schuyler may have known.

Carter became commissary supplier to Admiral Rochambeau and General Jeremiah Wadsworth during the Revolution. Commissary was a fast way to accumulate a large fortune, as sub rosa skimming and was the norm. His war-profiteering accumulated a large fortune. Eventually, with plenty of money in his pocket, he would become a member of parliament and live in England in lavish style, owning a country home as well as a fashionable house in London.    

At this time, however, the family was still in America, and the Revolution raged in the Hudson Valley. 

"Mrs. Church is delivered of a fine boy. I hope her sister will give me another.” Philip Schuyler to his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton September, 1778, soon after the Battle of Yorktown.

Angelica gave birth to her first born at The Pastures, the Schuyler home. A few months later came the famous Tory and Indian attack upon the house—Angelica & four month old Philip were present, as well as a pregnant Betsy Hamilton and the girls' new born sister, Kitty, and the rest of the children of this large family. 

                                        Angelica Church, baby and maid by John Trumbull

The Marquis de Chastelux remarked after the war: "Mrs. Carter, a handsome woman told me that going down to her husband's office (the commissary at Newport) in rather elegant undress, a farmer who was there on business asked who the young lady was. On being told that it was Mrs. Carter, he said, loud enough for her to hear, 'A wife and a mother has no business to be so well-dressed.'"  The farmer had mistaken her, because of her "immodest" dress, for some dandy's mistress. 

Angelica loved clothes, hats, and the latest fashions. She must have reveled after her marriage to John Church in freedom from the frugality of Dutch tradition, where three good dresses were "more than enough" for any respectable woman. 

These next letters were written when Angelica and Church departed from America in 1789. It would be  1797 that they would finally return.

 

November 8, 1789, Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton:

      "I am not much disposed for gaiety- yet I endeavor to make myself tolerable to my fellow passengers…Do my dear Brother endeavor to sooth my poor Betsey, comfort her with assurances that I will certainly return to take care of her soon. Remember this also my dearest Brother and let neither politics or ambition drive your Angelica from your affections. ..Adieu my dear Brother, may God bless and protect you, prays your ever affectionate Angelica, ever ever yours.” 

And here is Hamilton's reply: 

    “After taking leave of you on board of the Packet, I hastened home to sooth and console your sister. I found her in bitter distress…After composing her with a strong infusion of hope, that she had not taken her last farewell of you…The Baron little Philip and myself with her consent, walked down to the Battery; where with aching hearts and anxious eyes we saw your vessel, in full sail, swiftly bearing our loved friend from our embraces. Imagine what we felt. We gazed, we signed, we wept…”

    “Amiable Angelica! How much you are formed to endear yourself to every good heart! How deeply you have rooted youself in the affection of your friends on this side of the Atlantic! Some of us are and must continue inconsolable for your absence.

    Betsey and myself make you the last theme of our conversation at night and the first in the morning. We dwell with peculiar interest on the little incidents that preceded your departure. Precious and never to be forgotten scenes! ...However difficult, or little natural it is to me to suppress what the fullness of my heart would utter, the sacrifice shall be made…”

From Betsey: 

“My Very Dear Beloved Angelica—I have seated myself to write to you, but my heart is so saddened by your Absence that it can scarcely dictate, my Eyes so filled with tears that I shall not be to write you much but Remember, Remember, my dear sister of the Assurances of your returning to us, and do all you can to make your Absence short. Tell Mr. Church for me of the happiness he will give me, in bringing you to me, not to me alone, but to fond parents sisters friends and to my Hamilton who has for you all the Affection of a fond own Brother. I can do no more. Adieu Adieu Heaven Protect you.”       

When she and her husband returned from their first sojourn in London, Angelica loved to shock the City with the latest novelties in style. Walter Rutherford, detailing one of her dinner parties, speaks of "a late abominable fashion from London, of Ladies like Washerwomen with their sleeves above their elbows, Mrs. Church among them."  

She and Hamilton continually played seductive word games when they wrote. It is notable that Hamilton wrote so much to Angelica about his work during the hectic time when he was America's first Secretary of the Treasury, attempting to set the wheels of public finance successfully turning. You may make of their affection what you will, although there were rumors about this glamorous pair were rampant in the circles of his political enemies--and finally in scurrilous pamphlets--for years. 

Two of Hamilton's biographers, (James Flexner and Robert Hendrickson) seem to believe Hamilton and his sister-in-law consummated their passion. How unlikely this was--betrayal between affectionate sisters, especially in the Schuyler's closely bonded family--is persuasively argued by Ron Chernow. Infidelity between those two would have been an explosive, corroding secret that it would have been nearly impossible to keep.

18th Century conventional morality ran in two very separate tracks--one for men and one for women-- even for beautiful, worldly, sophisticated women like Angelica. She may have been a kind of danger junkie, leading on so many powerful men, but, playing this game, she could wield far more power over these hopeful lovers than their wives ever could, forever promising, but never quite surrendering.  No one mentions John Church's affinity for dueling as an aspect of their reticence, but his handsome matched set of pistols were employed by many fool-hardy gentlemen. They would finally put an end to the gallant Hamilton himself. 

 Eight years after the tearful departure, Angelica would return to America, just as Hamilton resigned from his heroic stint as Secretary of the Treasury. By this time, despite all those confiding, flirtatious letters that had traveled back and forth across the ocean, she seems to have become anxious about her continuing hold upon Hamilton's affections. As the Church's attorney, Hamilton found himself responsible for purchasing their new home in New York.  In February of that year, she wrote a rather spiteful letter to him. He had enclosed "no plan of the lot and no description of the house. How can I bring out the furniture when I do not know the number of rooms my house contains...?"

She goes on: "I am sensible how much trouble I give you, but ...it proceeded from a persuasion that I was asking from one who promised me his love and attention if returned to America... for what do I exchange ease and taste, by going to the new world...?" 

To which he could only reply that he and Eliza were "strangely agitated between fear and hope, anxiously wishing for your return...We feast on your letters..The only rivalship we have is in our attachment to you and we each contend for preeminence in this particular...To whom will you give the apple?...Yours as much as you desire, A.H."

This hot and heavy signature, like so much of their correspondence, teeters on the edge of impropriety. This same tone is a constant in their letters until Hamilton took himself permanently out of the game on that ledge at Weehawken. He, however, was not the only important man to be enchanted by her.

Benjamin Franklin adored her. Thomas Jefferson seems to have had designs upon her during a time in France when he was the U.S. Minister to the French Court and she was present, sometimes without her husband. In 1788 Jefferson even invited her to come and stay with him at Monticello when they both returned to America. He further suggested that they could travel together, perhaps to Niagara Falls. 

Angelica's apparently relaxed views on "extra-marital escapades,"*(1.) invited these advances from Jefferson. She had previously acted as a go-between for the painter's wife, Mrs. Cosway, herself an artist and a particular friend of Angelica's, who was enamored of the famous author of the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Cosway became Jefferson's mistress and so close were these three that Jefferson's own copy of The Federalist bears the "surprising dedication"*(2.) 'For Mrs. Church from her Sister, Elizabeth Hamilton.'" 

In Paris, Angelica was presented to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and invited into all the highest Enlightenment circles, as well as maintaining her own very active salon. Later, in England, Angelica once more bedazzled all who met her. Here she was presented to George IV and Queen Charlotte.  After this triumph, as in France, all the finest salons opened to her and to her wealthy husband. 

Insurance in those days was a private legal arrangement between gentlemen, although there was always a high risk of ruin for one or the other parties to the deal, especially if a ship laden with cargo went to the bottom. John Church seems to have (at least partly) shifted his love of gambling into this side of the business world, although he remained famous for his love of night-long, high-stakes card games. He certainly provided Angelica with the glamorous wider world of which she'd dreamed as a girl, as well as all the glittering parties, clothes and jewels anyone could need. When the family returned to New York in the late 1790's their parties were soon the talk of the town, as were her diamonds and the solid silver plate upon which she served dinner guests. Angelica was definitely a "material girl."

Betsy/Eliza 

Whatever Angelica and Alexander may have sometimes fantasied, I believe that Hamilton married the right sister. Elizabeth was faithful, loyal, a frugal manager, and a loving mother. She was exactly what a self-absorbed genius required in a wife, a woman who, no matter what happens, always "stands by her man."  Angelica and Hamilton, on the other hand, were too much alike. She was as high-maintenance as he. Far better suited to her was Church, who could provided the travel, the luxury, and the free rein that she craved.  She couldn't have her cake and eat it too and it was better for all concerned that it turned out that way.

At the end, though, Angelica came home to America. She is buried in Trinity Churchyard, near the graves of Alexander, Elizabeth and their oldest son, Philip. Her husband, John Church, is buried far across the sea in Westminister Abbey.

~~Juliet Waldron 

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

*1. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

*2. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

For a colorful account of Jefferson in Paris, see the 1995 Merchant-Ivory movie of the same name.    

Writing from the Wrong Side, a Heroine who fights for the British by Diane Scott Lewis

To purchase my novels and other BWL books: BWL

Tarred and feathered, tortured, hangings? That was often the fate of the Loyalists in America.

As an American, I should be fully behind the Patriots in the fight for freedom during the American Revolution. But writing about the establishment of New Brunswick in the Canadian Historical Brides series, I read numerous research on the Loyalists who fled the U.S. after being persecuted for backing King George III. Many settled in New Brunswick, forming a new colony.

That's stirred my interest in the Loyalists and their plight while still in the States.

I thought people would be offended by my telling this side of the story. To my surprise, they weren't. Even my Book Club loved the book. Especially the enigmatic Welshman, who takes Rowena on as a spy. Sexy guy!

Loyalists believed the country could never survive on its own, without the Mother Country. They thought the Patriots a ragtag group of trouble makers. In turn, the Patriots, anxious to be free of the tether of British laws, and taxes, considered the Loyalists traitors. Spies infiltrated both sides to see who was loyal to who. Plus, to gain troop movements to pass on to various commanders.

Also called Tories, the Loyalists consisted of one third of the thirteen original colonies. Their numbers were spread out in the colonies and came from differing classes, farmer to merchant. The Patriots ordered them to join the war to fight the British, or their properties would be subject to confiscation or burning. If Loyalists were captured in battle they were treated as traitors and often killed.

1774 British print of a Boston commissioner
being tarred and feathered.

My heroine's father is tarred and feathered in the novel's first scene. A true, particularly violent act occurred in 1775, in Georgia. Loyalist Thomas Brown was confronted on his property by the Sons of Liberty. Brown was beaten with a rifle, which fractured his skull. Strapped to a tree, stripped naked, hot pitch was poured over him, then he was set alight. Two of his toes were charred to stubs. Then the Patriots rolled him in feathers and scalped him.

Many fled north to Canada, especially after the war. Others were tortured or hanged. Out of desperation, some joined the Patriot side so they could remain in their homes.

                                        Loyalists refugees traveling to Canada by Howard Pyle

My heroine, Rowena, is a staunch Loyalist, along with her family. But as the war wears on, she wonders if she is on the right side. Do the Patriots have good reason to want independence?

"Rowena is a star. Bless Derec Pritchard who loves Rowena for who she is. Their chemistry is fabulous. Readers will love to read this alternative view of American history." InD'tale Magazine  

Find out more about me and my writing on my website: Dianescottlewis

Diane Parkinson (Diane Scott Lewis) is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Napoleonic Historical Society. She’s had several historical novels published. Her most recent is the Revolutionary War novel, Her Vanquished Land. 

Her upcoming novel Ghost Point, the 1950s Potomac oyster wars, love and betrayal, will be released in September.

Diane lives with her husband and one naughty dachshund in Western Pennsylvania.

Revolutionary War Rambles

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Fellow BWL author Kathy Fischer-Brown and I took several trips into the rich historical area of upstate New York and one into New Jersey. I had seen re-enactments before, but Kathy loved these events, and being with her and therefore in good company, it made these experiences even more fun than before. As Kathy is gone now, and taken all her knowledge and wit with her, I'm dedicating this blog to the fun we had -- not to mention all the discomforts of travel on a shoestring -- we shared together. 

If you are into the Revolutionary War, all these photos are of places and things that set a writer's historical spider-senses a-tingle. Re-enactors are an amazing source of period information. These are the kinds of touches that can truly flesh out a story, if only you take the time to ask questions and then listen while you trudge through roasting summer days, wondering at how our linen and wool-covered informants aren't fainting.

This is Kathy at the front door of the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, NY, where the Schuyler sisters grew up. I found those fascinating ladies back in the 90's when I wrote my Hamilton & Eliza story, a Master Passion.

Put brackets "" around mansion, though, as any number of modern monster McMansions are larger. Back in the 1770's though, this home was an outpost of Europe, with linoleum "rugs" over the wide board floors, as well as woolen carpets and ornate wallpaper imported from France. This house sat on the edge of a still truly primeval forest, filled with wolves, bears, beaver and many tribes of First Nation's people.    
 

We thought he was amazing! Anyone who writes novels in this time period, even with the slightest brush of the romantic, has imagined this fella and his well-behaved palomino. I will admit that we waved and called to him hoping he'd wait for us so that we could take his picture. He was most gracious, even though women had probably been harassing him all day.  :)

Here's an operation I wish I'd known about earlier, simply for the colorful language. These artillery people are engaged in a hither-to unknown (to me) operation called "puking the cannon." Cold water is poured down the hot barrel after a fight, to be sure it's clear inside and not accumulating gun powder residue. Sure enough, the cannon hisses and then "pukes" out a long jet of scalding water. Now the cannon is cleaned and we also know that it has not cracked. Cannons blowing up was part of the hazard of the artillery companies. As Hamilton spent the first years of the Revolutionary War as a humble artillery captain, this would have been a familiar duty. 

 

The inadvertent humor of re-enactment, present all the time, is in this juxtaposition of 2015 and 1776. The macadam, too, is often a reminder of where you really are, no matter how hard you are exercising your fantasy bone. 

 

Kathy and the surgeons, British camp. These gentlemen showed us their instruments and we talked about wound care and the damage a pistol's .54 caliber ball could do to a leg bone or a chest. 

Inside Fort Ticonderoga with an officer with whom we "held discourse." Another memorable horse, very patient and obviously used to this kind of all-day nonsense.  The green jacket on the officer makes me believe he was playing a Tory officer, a British loyalist, but Kathy can no longer tell me of  what regiment. She had all that kind of information on the tip of her tongue.  Her "The Serpent's Tooth" trilogy draws a great picture of the divided loyalties of American colonists of the time.

That's me, tactlessly wearing an Alexander Hamilton t-shirt into the grounds of Fort Ticonderoga's  "King's Garden." I got called on this a lot, especially when we were visiting the Royalist encampments.  

Magnificently terrifying Iroquois warriors, speaking with a soldier at the British market.  

Ticonderoga cannons, overlooking Lake Champlain. Both of us lugged our cameras and water bottles.

Here is Kathy with a friend. Jenna, a marvelous teacher, and is also an 18th Century seamstress, making period clothing for both men and women. She also made stays, which is, as it was then, an expensive clothing item, very difficult and time-consuming to make. Jenna's friends were also talented seamstresses and dedicated to the re-enactment life. I adored seeing their little ones, all dressed up and quite ready to join in the camp out game their adults were playing. 

Here, we got a talk on the progress of the battle--back at Saratoga again--which was a three day affair with weeks of skirmishes both before and after in the countryside near Albany. Some of the young men were,, in their modern lives, historians, teachers or in forestry. Others were employees of the the Park Service.

Here's Jenna again, playing another role, as sutler, vending produce to the army. Many of these veggies ended in a big pot at the fire for re-enactors' suppers.  Camping is a big part of the experience.  

Mom and a pair of siblings. Big sister is an invaluable help corraling the little one! Here the women are portraying "women of the army," soldier's wives and children, who always slogged along in the baggage train of 18th Century armies. Women had no other option than to follow their husbands. Any army of that period had children in the baggage train too. The women worked as laundresses and cooks for the troops. Wives got a soldier's half ration and the children were allotted quarter rations. You can imagine how hungry--and ready to join up--the teen boys were! 

Saratoga cannon appreciation.

Bullet making

Officer and wife have a confab. 

Below, we're at Monmouth, where young men were cooking in an earthen oven. They are also baking salt rising bread in this interesting construction, which was dug into the soft sandy soil of the site. The fire was in the largest hole with separate tunnels dug to direct heat onto other pots set above ground. Monmouth Battlefield that day was a period correct 90+ degrees.  Kathy and I were sweating in our t-shirts and shorts and constantly wondered about how the re-enactors were faring inside all that wool. More soldiers, I've read, died of heat stroke at The Battle of Monmouth than died from wounds. 

Here's Kathy, speaking with a charming doctor and surgeon at Fort Ticonderoga. Here's how I will remember her, asking questions, talking history and, if questioned, citing sources, holding her own with these equally history-drunk gentlemen.   

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My Favorite Christmas - in a hospital cafeteria, by Diane Scott Lewis

All holidays share different memories with family and friends, close or remote.

We spent one in Puerto Rico, in steaming hot weather, our little, fake tree, just my husband and I and our new baby. I felt alone without extended family, but now see I should have rejoiced in a First, with my firstborn son.

My youngest son was born on that island. Many years later, while my oldest remains single, my younger son married and started a family.

Christmas was thrilling again with our first grandchild. 

Below our oldest granddaughter at Christmas 2011 when we lived in Virginia. If you look close you can see our dog Fritzie behind her, trying to sneak into the gifts.

,

Nearly eight years ago, we'd just moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania. My husband had retired from the government in D. C. and we moved north to be closer to my son and his family. A colder climate for this California girl, when it dropped to 7 degrees, I was in shock. I invested in plenty of long underwear.

A few days before Christmas, my very pregnant daughter in law had to travel two hours away to take care of family business. Her mom was in the hospital. Her father had recently died. My son and their three year old joined her.

My daughter in law wasn't due until the first week of January. But in the middle of Christmas Eve night, the roads icy, with all the stress, she'd gone into labor. The doctor advised her to stay where she was, near Pittsburgh, and have the baby.

Early Christmas morning, we drove down in an ice storm to meet our second grandchild, a little girl stuffed in a stocking.

Later that day, my husband, son, and I, with his three year old, ate Christmas dinner in the hospital cafeteria. The usual fare, nothing fancy, but we laughed and talked, and I thought this is a great Christmas dinner. My family close, a new, healthy baby upstairs. What more could I ask for? I savored the moment.

 

My beautiful granddaughters

In this time of a pandemic, I realize how the simplest things should be cherished, and those closest to you--even if you can't be physically near them--must be held in your heart, especially family.

I wish I had a Christmas novel to throw in here, but let's celebrate more family adventure and turmoil in my American Revolution story, Her Vanquished Land.

Long and Short Reviews says: Her Vanquished Land "Espionage and intrigue keep these pages turning. This is an exciting historical novel well worth the read." 

A Revolutionary War Gone with the Wind. Rowena Marsh fights for king and country, but the ruthless rebels are winning. Where can her family escape to, and will the mysterious Welshman, a man she shouldn't love, search for her? 

To purchase my novels, and my other BWL books: BWL

Find out more about me and my writing on my website: Dianescottlewis

Diane Scott Lewis lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty puppy.

Earth Walker

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A powerful connection to the earth is a common theme among all 1^st Nations’ people about whom I’ve read, whether they live north or south of the arbitrary lines European colonists drew upon their home land. In every story I read written by 1^st Nations’ People, there is a recollection of a childhood where adults have carefully fostered a deep consciousness of what European culture commonly puts in a generalized lump called “Nature.” It’s that experience with which we European moderns, the “come heres” of the western hemisphere, are -- every day-- less and less familiar.

Football with my cousin, 1950's

Instead of gazing at screens all day, most folks my age (+70) remember playing outside regularly, especially during school summer holidays. My house was near a dairy farm and the surrounding fields were in hay and alfalfa. The farmer didn’t care if my mother and I roamed across them, or if I went by myself to a wonderful pond adjacent to a woodlot. In the spring it was full of tadpoles, crayfish, and blue gills. Later, in summer, it was full of multicolored frogs. Butterflies and dragon flies sailed above muddy flats, and floated over flowering plants, whose names I did not know, although I much admired their bright colors and floating seeds.  

Sometimes I’d see rabbits, fox, or woodchucks, or come across deer at their midday rest.  Red-winged blackbirds nested among the cattails; purple martens performed their fighter-pilot maneuvers over the pond.  At home, we even had a mud nest of barn swallows every year on the far end of our porch—off-limits to us until they’d finished rearing their adorable, plump, dun-breasted family.

For several years as a young teen I was sent to a summer camp--my parents' were fighting their way toward a divorce--for the entire three months. This particular camp was truly rustic, with unheated cabins, water you carried in buckets, and a bunch of retired police horses. These days it would probably be closed down as unsanitary and unsafe. You could take a bath--if you were willing to go to the owner's house--once a week. Otherwise, you "bathed" in the farm pond in the afternoon.

Some water came into it from chilly springs , but a creek flowed in at one end and over a dam at the other, so it was constantly in motion. The pond had been part of the original farm for years, so it was established. Water snakes cruised among the lily pads and cattail beds. While those reedy spots were green and inviting in the slanting afternoon light, we stayed as far away as possible, treading water and playing mermaids in the middle with friends.

It was, among us campers, a badge of honor to never go to the big house and take a bath. How humiliating! How sorry we were for the girls whose parents insisted upon it! The rest of us washed our bodies and our hair in the pond. We floated bottles, half filled with air and half with shampoo, as well as cakes of Ivory soap on the surface beside us. After a day of playing games, hiking in the woods, riding and grooming horses, and entertaining ourselves with marathon games of jacks--we dismantled the ping pong table to use the smooth wooden surface--everyone was ready to wash off the sweat before dinner.

When I returned home at the end of August, at my mother's insistence, I marched straight upstairs and ran the bathtub full. Standing naked before the mirror, I could see the brown dirt residue left from three months of "bathing" in a silty farm pond. The swim suit outline was shades darker than my suntan.

Many years ago, my granddaughter was taken for a walk in the woods for the first time when she was around two years old. Her entire experience of "outdoors" up until then had been playing in groomed suburban yards, or passing through parking lots and shopping malls with her Mama. After a first walk with her daddy on a nature trail, she haughtily pronounced the leaf and stick strewn paths “messy and uneven.”

It’s a funny story, but it’s also sad, as it shows how limited a modern child’s experience often is of this world in which she lives.  Fortunately for her, Dad got the message. From then on, he spent time with his girl out-of-doors, so she wouldn’t suffer from what I’ve come to look upon as Nature Deprivation. She can now out-walk her Grandma any day.

Snow picnic, 1970's, at a favorite spot

When she went to college, this eighteen year old was surprised to find "Walking" was a physical education course. As phys. ed. was required of freshmen and sophomores, she signed up, and then she was again surprised by the exhaustion and pain of which her classmates complained.

Considering all this, I guess it’s no wonder that so many people today are disrespectful of the earth, especially if shopping malls, macadam, and the virtual world are all they experience. It’s not only a great emotional and spiritual misfortune for them personally, but I believe this disconnection is the root cause of our civilization's current mega-scale disregard for our only home, our birth mother. 

Pipeline explosion

I’ve been reading To You We Shall Return by a Lakota author, Joseph Marshall III. This is part of an ongoing attitude adjustment exercise, as I hope to broaden my outlook and see the world through another cultural lens. (The one with which I was raised seems to have ever so many blind spots.) From that book is a Traditional Lakota Prayer to Mother Earth: 

 Grandmother,

You who listen and hear all,

You from whom all good things come,

It is your embrace we feel

When we return to you.

~~Juliet Waldron

All My Historical Novels

Genesee's story:

 Red men & White, at war in the world and in her blood.

Housewives, Traditional Sex Roles & Mopping the Floor

Alexander Hamilton & Elizabeth, A Master Passion

Amazing how much time housewives spend pondering their floors. You may think that such a preoccupation is a sign of not much going on in that life, but from a "housemaid" view, the state of the floor is a re-occuring issue. Worn board floors, where cat fur accumulates in powdery drifts after a mere 3 days, or the kitchen linoleum which desperately needs waxing, they all cry out to me. I might fancy myself in an observatory, pondering the gravitational fields of Trans-Neptunian objects, but math always evaded me. --Or maybe I was just a typist at heart.

Gravitational studies do have a small place in the field of housecleaning.  A bit of cat fluff falls at the same speed as the toast crumbs my husband sweeps absently from the table onto the floor. This practice of his used to make me see red. Sometimes he'd do it even while I, rag in hand, was on my way to tidy that exact surface. These days, however, I pick my battles. He doesn't seem to realize that things on the floor immediately become my problem. Or--more darkly--maybe he does.

Most likely, he doesn't think and then multiplies this by doesn't care, because really scratch the surface and most men don't think much about women's work, especially if they have a "proper" housewife in residence. 

This blog is from an elder's POV, one from the "baby bust" cohort. As a female of that era, I was trained to domesticity in the traditional mode by a mother who wasn't much for housework herself and maybe figured such a virtue would eventually help me out in the marriage market. Back then, the deal between the sexes was: The Man performs the work he does in field or office, factory or machine shop and in return, Woman cooked, cleaned and helped to tend the green square surrounding the house, as well as being MOM to the kids. If you were a farmer's wife, you had an extra task in the form of poultry. 

Prehistorical Digression:

Imagine a Cro-Magnon a.k.a. EEMH "European Early Modern Human" woman (perhaps an Aurignacian, the ones with the great wall "posters") cleaning out the clan cave. Gotta take out the garbage you know, or you'll attract all kinds of unwanted guests, like the cave bear who used to live here, the local wild dog pack or the saber toothed tiger, the old one who can't chase faster prey anymore.

This old tiger may be a bit lame, but he's fast enough the dine on you, monkey.

Better to get the tell-tale odors away from your front door. You could simply heave the gnawed bones over the edge of the cliff. If you weren't lucky enough to have such a handy disposal area, you had to laboriously dig a hole with an antler pick and bury the stuff. And just about the time you'd get the place cleaned out, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the men would be back with a new carcass and all jazzed on fermenting grapes or something vegetative and disorienting they'd eaten in the woods. They'll just want to barbecue and party. If that's the case, tomorrow will just be same another day of taking out the trash.

Thank heaven EEMH men did "bring home the bacon," because women were incredibly busy. Either pregnant or nursing, chewing great swathes of hide to soften it sufficiently to sew, or gathering firewood and water and scrounging about for roots, nuts and berries, while trying to keep the older children from falling over the edge of that room with a spectacular view.

Years ago, post climbing the ladders to the dwellings at Mesa Verde, my first question was  how did they raise any kids up there? Or did they tie up toddlers  like backyard dogs until they'd acquired complete balance skills and some judgment?

So now, considering what housecleaning used to be like, I don't consider my modern housework all that hard. When I wrote Mozart's Wife I imagined Constanze's trials when the money ran out--which it often did--and how often she'd find herself doing the chores. Hand-scrubbing those lace cuffs and cravats and undies in a world in which there was no decent hand-cream for winter cracked skin! Soothing ointments? Another item for which you'd have to track down the ingredients and then concoct a cure yourself. Worse would be dishes in a world with no indoor plumbing. The Mozart's, like many today, ate a lot of take-out when they could no longer afford an apartment with a kitchen and/or the requisite cook and scullery maid to staff it.

Mozart's Wife

Personally, mopping floors has become a creative driver. Versions of this housewife's trance work often appear in my stories. The Cinderella-like tale of Genesee, where a Metis girl is demoted from beloved daughter to servant, or Elizabeth Hamilton's strategy in A Master Passion to "encourage" her husband to accept the gift of a housemaid from his in-laws, or  Angelica in Angel's Flight, attempting to settle her nerves by scrubbing the steps at her Uncle's Hudson Valley house on the eve of a British terror campaign .

Genesee

~Juliet Waldron

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Women's Rights before Suffragettes by Diane Scott Lewis

Celebrate Women's History Month

I once had a critique group where the only male member protested my female character's feminist-like qualities. She was eighteenth-century and women didn't demand their rights until the twentieth-century, so he insisted.

Suffragettes 1914

I had to explain how wrong he was.

Most people don't realize that women have been asking for rights for centuries.
I see it in book reviews all the time: the spunky heroine behaves in too modern a manner.

However, history if full of such women, if you look for them.

Aphra Behn was a writer, playwright and translator who lived in England in the 1600s. She championed the rights for women to speak their minds. She was also one of the first Englishwomen to earn a living by her own writing. She became the inspiration for future female authors. Charles II appreciated her intelligence and used her as a spy in Antwerp.
Her first play, The Forc'd Marriage, in 1670, criticized women being forced into often unhappy or cruel arranged marriages.


Behn

Mary Astell, another Englishwoman, advocated equal education for women. She's been called the first English feminist and insisted that women were just as rational as men. And deserving of a similar education. In 1694, her book Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest put forth plans for an all female college where women could expand their minds. This at a time when most women weren't allowed to attend any college. She also wrote about the dangers of women being pushed into bad marriage choices.



Astell

Mary Wollstonecroft lived in the later eighteenth century, and was the mother of Mary Shelly (who wrote "Frankenstein").
Wollstonecroft advocated for equal education for women, writing two books on the subject. Her 1792 "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" put forth that women weren't naturally inferior to men, they just suffered from inadequate education. Today she's revered as a founding feminist philosopher.

Wollstonecroft

Women could also be as brave as men. Many participated in the American Revolution dressed as males. Deborah Sampson Gannet fought with Washington’s army dressed as a soldier. Sampson enlisted in 1782 with the 4th Massachusetts, as Robert Shurtleff. She achieved the rank of corporal in the battle of White Plains, and sustained injuries twice. Upon discovery of her sex, she was honorably discharged. And received a pension!

My heroine, Rowena, in "Her Vanquished Land" fights as a man during the American Revolution--but on the British side. She decodes messages for a mysterious Welshman. Soon, their relationship evolves even as the war might destroy them.

So my strong women are not anachronistic. History has kept most of them out of the history books.

Purchase Her Vanquished Land and my other novels at BWL
For more info on me and my books, check out my website: Dianescottlewis

Diane Scott Lewis lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty puppy.