A Wayward Girl by Victoria Chatham

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 Here she is. Miss Charlotte Gray in all her glory. Finally. I don’t know about my fellow authors, but some of my books have been easier to write than others and Charlotte’s story was the one I have least liked writing. Why? Because Charlotte defied me at every turn. This girl was hard work.

Now, to a non-writer, that might sound really weird. You’re the author, they might say. You pick and choose what your characters do. That’s what being an author is, you direct your cast just as a stage or movie director does theirs. Any artistic endeavor has it's challenges, but few, I imagine, as those authors might have.

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I rarely have any trouble creating characters. Often, they have simply turned up in my mind like a mental visitor, sometimes welcome and sometimes not. All three heroines of Those Regency Belles (Charlotte Gray is Book 2 in the series) came one after the other without me having to think them into being. Hester Dymock (Book 1) very clearly wanted to be involved with healing and medicine, Phoebe Fisher (Book 3 and due out in 2022) wants to have fun and is a tad saucy. But Charlotte?

I had her pinned for a lady’s companion in a secluded, quiet, Hampshire estate. There would be a love interest, of course. Probably a nephew of the lady to whom our Char was going to be a companion. An impossible match to the outside world because of her lowly status, but with wit and charm Charlotte would win her hero. Would Charlotte have that? Not a bit of it. She wanted action, adventure, and a hot-blooded hero.

Many Regency purists might point out that young ladies would not do the things they sometimes do in my stories, especially Emmaline Devereux in His Dark Enchantress when she drives a team of four horses. Can’t be done, one critic told me. However, this aspect of Emmaline’s character was based on Mrs. Cynthia Haydon (1918-2012) who raised and trained Hackney horses and ponies and drove them in many combinations (single, pairs, tandem, four-in-hand) and competitions and was an exceptional lady for her time.

Mrs. Cynthia Haydon

My thinking is that in any era there are women who step outside of the box society has built for them and quite literally break the mold. Most are familiar with Jane Austen, but what about Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Guppy, Harriott Mellon, and Elizabeth Fry. If you want to read more about these ladies check out What Regency Women Did for Us by Rachel Knowles. In more recent years, look at what the ladies in the movie Hidden Figures achieved.

Charlotte was never going to lead a quiet, orderly life. My character notes for her changed practically every day. I think, in the end, I like her better for it. If you decide to read her story, I hope you agree with me.

Victoria Chatham

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A Blast From the Past by Victoria Chatham

 

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I'm often asked if I read outside my genre of historical romance. The answer is an unequivocal and resounding yes. Books are a feast and I devour them. I enjoy and follow my fellow Books We Love authors, but beyond that, I have a penchant for Lee Child, Jane Austen (still) and many, many more both old and new. A recent search for a much-loved book, The Old House at Railes by Mary E Pearce turned up something totally unexpected, an autobiography Good Morning.... Good Night by Tim Langley.

The only Tim Langley I had ever known was huntsman at the Berkeley Hunt where I had worked in my teens as a groom during the 1962-63 season. Could it be the same Tim Langley? Yes, it could and now I have my copy with the cover embellished with the same illustration as a birthday card I have kept for many years of Tim with the Berekeley Hounds. Tim was a real gentleman, always well turned out and polite, but definitely a character.

I never hunted, and today fox hunting is viewed through a very different lens, but I loved the hunt horses. I had three in my string: chestnut Duet who was a real sweetheart, grey Thor who had the longest back of any horse I've ever known, and Tangerine, another chestnut who never learnt to walk but jiggled and jogged along working himself into a sweat and always took forever to cool down.

Duet

This was my first home away from home and it's no wonder I now write historical fiction. Berekeley Castle was our backdrop. It has been the ancestral home of the Berkeley family since the first motte and bailey was erected at the time of the Norman Conquest. The stables were built during the time of Queen Anne (1702 - 1707) and had barely changed at all. The last window on the second floor was our bathroom, the next window along was the kitchen, and the flat apartment was shared by us four girl grooms. 

The routine was all about the horses, from getting up at 4 am for first feeds and skipping out the stables, then exercising them at 7 am for two hours. After checking their hay nets and water buckets we would have our breakfast. Then it was back to the stables for proper mucking out and grooming. Lunchtime the horses were fed again with the hay net and water bucket checks and in the afternoons we cleaned tack, swept the yard, and did whatever odd jobs needed doing. Anyone who has ever had the care of stabled horses will understand the routine of feeding little and often, taking away the waste product and generally keeping everything in order. We all took turns at the early morning starts and the ten o'clock last stables. 

After a month, when my parents came to visit me for the first time, they were so shocked they threatened to haul me home. I'd lost weight with all the extra physical work, they were appalled at our flat, and I was as happy as a cricket. I stayed. Each horse had its own character. Duet was such an obliging gentleman, Thor had a weird sense of humour as if you bent over anywhere near him he was likely to nip your backside. He also had a way of moving without you noticing 

Thor

until he had you pinned against the stable wall and would then look over his shoulder at you as much as to say "What are you going to do now?" 

After all this time I don't remember all of the horses. There was Trio, a full brother to Duet. Zulaika, who loved to watch the birds, Wexford, a big grey who was so fat when he came in after being at grass all summer that we didn't have a saddle that fit him, Doctor who had navicular disease and had to be euthanized, Big Ears (if I remember correctly her real name was Lady Jane) and a black thoroughbred called Judes Hill. 

After a day's hunting, he was always the one we had the most trouble settling down. I won't go into all the reasons this can happen, only that no one went to bed until any of the horses had calmed down, cooled down, and could be safely left. I'm not a poet, but I did write this after one particularly late night.

JUDES HILL 

Ten o’clock.
Last rounds.
Sweet smell of hay
Drifts from warm stables
Where horses shuffle, sigh,
And soft whiskery muzzles
Nuzzle goodnight.
 
But not Judes Hill.
He has been hunting today
And his thoroughbred body
Is hunting still.
Sheen of sweat on neck,
White striped face stark
Above the stable door,
He peers into the night.
 
His ears twitch this way, that.
Has he missed the plaintive
Wail of Master’s horn
Sounding ‘Gone Away’?
Was that the full cry of
Hounds in flight?
Steel strikes stone under his
Restless feet.
 
I unbuckle surcingles,
Loosen steaming rugs.
Islands of foam float
On the sea of neck,
Shoulder, flank.
On with his cooling sheet
And out into the night
We go.

We walk and walk,
This horse and I.
He stamps his feet and tosses his head,
His mane flutters like
Tattered rags against his neck.

I talk about everything
and nothing into his willing ears
until his head drops,
and the thrill of the chase
drains from his body.
Now we can rest.

From beach ponies to the hunters, from friends' horses to our much loved Arab, the books about horses that I have read and still like to read, I think you've gathered by now that I have a passion for this marvellous creature that is unlikely to ever go away. Horses appear, in one way or another, in all of my books. In historical novels how can they not? And even in my contemporary western romances, cowboys need horses. Look out for my next contemporary western, available for preorder now and releasing on June 1st.

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Victoria Chatham

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For the Love of Chocolate by Victoria Chatham

 

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If you read Regency romance, you will probably be familiar with the hot chocolate our heroines enjoy. We still like our hot chocolate today, whether flavored or topped with whipped cream or both. Opening a can of cocoa powder or an individual serving sachet is so much easier for us to make than it was for the Regency maid or cook. Ours is practically instant, and theirs took a good thirty minutes of work to produce a cup of silky rich hot chocolate. But from where did this fascination of ours for chocolate in all its guises come?

Anybody who likes chocolate in any form is probably familiar with the term 'food of the gods,' which reverts to chocolate's Aztec and Mayan origins when only the rich and powerful drank it. Cocoa comes

Cocoa pod and beans

from the beans, or seeds, of the cocoa tree pod. The beans could be given as a wedding gift or used as currency to buy a pig or a slave or used in official and religious ceremonies. An illustration in the Codex Tudela shows the traditional method of creating the froth the drink was famed for by pouring the liquid from one cup to another with a considerable gap between them. When the Spaniards arrived, they couldn't quite get the hang of this method, so they invented the molinillo, a type of whisk still used today.

Cocoa beans were first imported from Mexico to Seville by the conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1585. By the 17th Century, chocolate was a popular drink in France. In England, the first chocolate house was opened by a Frenchman in the Queen's Head Alley near Bishopsgate in London in 1657. Chocolate houses were the then equivalent of our coffee shops today and were a club of sorts for wealthy and elite all-male clients. White's Club, the haunt of gentlemen of the ton in many a Regency tale, was originally a chocolate house. Opened in 1693 by an Italian, Francesco Bianco, alias Frances White, the house was described by Jonathan Swift as 'the bane of the English nobility.' Such was chocolate houses' reputation for being hotbeds of gossip amongst social climbers and ambitious politicians that Charles II tried to ban them in 1675.

Ladies, of course, could not step foot in such establishments, so they drank their hot chocolate in the comfort of their own home. Not such a comfortable job, though, for the staff who had to prepare these drinks. Purchased in hard blocks about four inches wide and one or two inches thick and packed in a linen bag, in this form, chocolate would keep for about a year.

First, the chocolate was grated into a powder and placed in a pan with milk or water, maybe with a little wine or brandy in it, or even a flavoring of cinnamon, nutmeg, or flowered waters like orange blossom or rose. Then the pan was put on the stove, and the contents were brought to the boil. Constant stirring prevented the mixture from scorching. When it had boiled, the pan was removed from the heat. The contents were then whisked to blend the mixture with a chocolate mill, known in France as a molinet, and in Spain as a molinilla. Eggs, sugar, and thickening agents such as flour, corn starch or sometimes bread were then added to the pan. The cook would spin the chocolate mill between her hands, like rubbing two sticks to start a fire, further mixing the ingredients. Once that was done, the pot was put back on the heat and again brought to the boil, being stirred all the time by the cook, who must have had a strong arm. A little cream might be added, and then another good whisking would be required to produce the essential froth without which hot chocolate was not considered fit to be served.

Nothing but the best silver or porcelain would do for this beverage to be served from for the upper classes. Chocolate pots were tall and slim and often had an elegant swan-necked spout. They might even have a finial of polished wood or ivory on top of the lid. Some had a hole in which the handle of the whisk

Trembleuse

 could be inserted so the chocolate mixture could be spun again to produce that all-important froth before pouring. Chocolate cups often had a holder in the centre of the saucer and were known as a trembleuse in France and a mancerina in Spain. When the habit of drinking hot chocolate spread to the rest of society, pots were made of sturdier materials such as pewter and pottery.

The history of chocolate is as deep and rich as the end product. Dark chocolate is reputed to have excellent qualities, from improving blood flow and lowering blood pressure to being rich in antioxidants. It can improve your mood and improve brain function. Amongst its nutritional qualities, it contains Vitamins A, C, D, B-6, and calcium, magnesium and potassium. In fact, in ratios per 100 grams, chocolate is richer in potassium than a banana. There is so much more to this marvelous treat that it should be a food group on its own. So, from the food of the gods to being feared by some religious bodies as exotic and decadent, to whether you like large or small marshmallows in your hot chocolate, we enjoy it in all its forms.

Victoria Chatham

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