Hamilton Parking

 

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As I've been fascinated by Alexander Hamilton since my eleventh year, I've always known about his contributions to the founding of the American Republic. However, I've always been aware too that most of my countrymen hadn't a clue who the guy on the ten dollar bill was.  Our nation wouldn't have survived the first twenty years without his financial knowledge. The framework he set in place at the Treasury Department was so carefully thought out and implemented that even his Jeffersonian successor finally decided to just "go with it" because his creation did the job it was supposed to do. 

In short, the original government only functioned because of Hamilton's construction. Jefferson, Hamilton's great antagonist, would never have been able to finalize the Louisiana Purchase, which brought a good chunk of the center of the country, if Hamilton hadn't made the government solvent and also respected as a reliable client among the wealthy European financial markets, which had financed the Revolution. 

However, it was Jefferson who lived long years after the Revolution, and not Hamilton. "History" is written by the survivors/winners, as everyone knows. As a result, the star of this Founder set quickly. I used to take a perverse pleasure in asking people if they knew the identity of the man on the ten dollar bill, and watching them either shrug, or tell me "Benjamin Franklin" or something else equally wide of the mark.   

I wrote my novel back in the 90's, but it was roundly rejected with a lot of "who cares" or "you can't make a romantic hero out of a Founding Father" from editors. Books We Love took it up, though, and so my long labor of love did eventually get placed between covers. In the meantime, however, the brilliant artist Lin Manual Miranda had also been at work on his musical, and so, finally, the name of "Hamilton" made a triumphant return to public consciousness. 

A few days ago, a traveling NYC company brought the musical Hamilton here to my town. The tickets for that performance were being sold at more than twice the usual price, because even though this is not brand new, it is still in vogue, especially here in the country outside the Big City. On my trip to the grocery store, passing through town, I noticed signs over the restaurants that read "Welcome Hamilton." On my way back, I also saw traffic signs, assuring the folks who were coming to the theater that evening that this was the way to "Hamilton Parking." After all those years of obscurity, it tickled me to see my childhood hero's name all over my town, and to know that at least one version of his remarkable story had put his fame back in lights.

What political party of today could claim him? Probably neither, although one in particular would have been anathema to him. After all, he died in a duel with a man who, he firmly believed, wanted to overturn the Republic and crown himself King. 

Aaron Burr, whom he'd called "An embryo Caesar," made no bones about the fact that he wanted to kill Hamilton. No one really knows what exactly Burr, who was usually not particularly easy to rile, had against Hamilton, although they had years of vitriolic political rivalry behind them. To be fair to Burr, the offense that sparked the challenge must have been keenly felt and excruciatingly personal, as he pursued it to that fine July morning, when the gentlemen were rowed across the Hudson with their seconds, to fight in New Jersey where dueling remained legal.  

~~Juliet Waldron

Story From a Small Kingdom

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Why after 500 years would anyone care about an August battle which ended a 423 year-long line of Plantagenet Kings? When Richard III died, so, in a manner of speaking, did the medieval world.

Of course, I didn't think of things that way when I was ten after reading The Daughter Of Time by Josephine Tey. As my mom was a passionate Anglophile, taking up this (then) obscure interest was a great way to please her and to amuse the academic adults in my life. English history was the most important European history to a young colonial brought up in the 1950's U.S. (Glad that's over!)

While my elders drank their afternoon cocktail and indulged me, I would passionately argue the case of "who murdered the princes in the Tower." If you don't know, well, these were the sons of Richard's brother, King Edward IV, the ones who vanished while in Richard's keeping. Richard, until then a faithful younger brother, had been appointed "Protector" because Edward's sons were minors. I soon read many more Ricardian histories (so-called for those books that dealt with the very short reign of Ricard III) and became a kind of young lobbyist for this (then) little known late medieval King. 

If you know Shakespeare's Tudor propaganda piece, you know that Richard III was the original wicked uncle, as well as a murderer of just about every other kinsman/royal who ever crossed his path. He was "crook-back," his physical deformity matching his wicked mind. God sent Henry Tudor to defeat him and deliver England from a tyrant.(!) 

Richard III

History, however, isn't quite so cut and dried. Richard of York was slain by a man whose claim to the English throne was supported--not by God--but by the treachery of power-hungry  noblemen and women, and it rested upon an extremely tenuous claim through an illegitimate line. Henry VII, as he became, was "The Godfather" of the next murdering, famous/infamous English dynasty. His reign set a kind of record for beheadings of kinsmen and those he believed were rivals. He set up an organized program of legally extorting the high nobility, in order to break their power. These actions he took evenhandedly, not sparing those who'd betrayed Richard to support him. He had something of a record for judicial murder--at least, until the reign of his son, Henry VIII.

No saints here, whether of the White Rose Party or the Red! Check out the feudal history of any country in the world, and you'll see the same story, universally. Looking back dispassionately, something I can do after many, many more years of reading world history, all I see is one gang of vain, self-serving, murderous, paranoid, grasping 1%ers succeeding another. It's just "human beings being human," only in the worst possible way. 

Henry VII

Despite all "older and wiser caveats," I wrote Roan Rose, because this was a story I "owed" my childhood obsession, Richard. Besides, take away the aristocratic, medieval window dressing, and here's a story worthy of an opera--or a series TV show, like Succession. Family feuds, vast wealth, sibling rivalry, hubris, greed, addiction, betrayals by the score, and unions made with passion and unions made for gain, are similarly on display. 

This, however, is more of a "downstairs" story, which allows me to explore what the life of ordinary people was like during this turbulent civil war period. A personal "body servant" was privy to all manner of royal secrets. Faithful Rose loves both her mistress and her master, who are, by the accident of birth, both placed loftily, high above her. They can hardly see her, this couple whose hearts she can never truly possess.  "Loyaulté me lie," ("Loyalty Binds me") was Richard's chosen motto. Perhaps it's even more true of this fictional commoner who remains so dear to my heart, Roan Rose.

                                                                             

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"Juliet Waldron's grasp of time and period history is superb and detailed. Her characters were well developed and sympathetic."

"One of the better Richard III books..."

(Amazon reviews)

 

~~Juliet Waldron

Writing in Multiple Genres by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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I've heard it said that writers should only write in one genre. Why? I read and enjoy more than one genre. Why shouldn't I write in more than one? For me (and, I dare say, for most writers) characters and story ideas pop up in my head unexpectedly. I can't help what genre they fall into.

Though I began my writing career with historical fiction and that will probably constitute the bulk of my writing when all's said and done, sometimes the characters who visit my head are not historical. Sometimes they're not even human. Take for example, my newest release, All the Furs and Feathers, the first book in the Cat Tales series. Though the animals in this book are highly anthropomorphized, not a single human is in the story. Nor are any mentioned. For the animals of All the Furs and Feathers, humans don't even exist. Obviously, this is not historical fiction. It's fantasy. Not the epic sort of Lord of the Rings, but the cozy sort. I couldn't anymore banish the characters in it from my head than I could banish those in my historical novels.

So what's yet to come? Definitely more historical fiction. There's one in the works right now and another taking shape in my mind. As for fantasy, there will be more of the Cat Tales series to come, but there may be others as well. A few months ago I awoke from a dream that featured characters I haven't been able to get out of my thoughts ever since. I picture them in period clothing, but they live in a world that does not and never has existed. Fantasy!

The parade of characters that march through my mind on a regular basis range from historical to fantastical to contemporary. So for the moment, historical fiction and cozy fantasy are my focus. What else may come depends upon my cerebral visitors and how insistant they are about their stories being told.

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On Writing Historical Fiction by Victoria Chatham

 

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I was recently asked why I  chose to write historical novels, and I needed to think about the answer. The truth is, I was not too fond of history when I was in school. Other than the Norman invasion of England in 1066 and Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, dates meant nothing to me. I don’t think I once correctly listed the succession of kings starting with Edward 1. Nor could I tell you the dates of the Wars of the Roses or the Great Fire of London. As for the English Civil War, without resorting to Google, I can only tell you that the combatants were the Parliamentarians, or Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, on one side and the Royalists, or Cavaliers, who supported Charles 1, on the other.

The first historical novel I remember reading was The Sun in Splendour by Jean Plaidy, and, for

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once, history came alive. After that, I started looking more closely at historical fiction and found that history was not just about dates. It was about people who had lived in different eras, whether they were rich, privileged people at the top of the tree, or the lowly commoner. Catherine Cookson set most of her novels in Northeast England. Georgette Heyer’s characters populated London and wherever their country seats might be, while several had adventures in France or Spain. I enjoyed C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, who served in His Majesty’s Royal Navy and then the adventures of Bernard Cornwall’s British soldier, Sharpe.  

In writing my historical novels, I have envied colleagues who still have family papers, whether letters or diaries. In my family, very little of our history survives. Thanks to dedicated cousins on my mother’s and father’s sides of my family, I know something of it now. As much as I enjoy research, building family trees was never something I wanted to get into, possibly because of all those dates of births, marriages, and deaths, or hatches, matches and despatches, as my maternal grandmother used to say.

History may seem like a thing of the past, but the truth is we live in history all the time, and what we know today may make dusty reading for some teenagers in the future. While we hark back to the Regency or Victorian eras, more recent histories set during WWII are still popular. I won’t apologize for referencing English history because that is what I know best, but history happens everywhere. Ancient Egypt was the setting for several novels by Pauline Gedge and Wilbur Smith, the latter giving a vivid depiction of South Africa in many more of his novels.

History can be fascinating whether you enjoy it in fiction or non-fiction, movies or television series. Wherever you find it, I hope you enjoy it too.

Victoria Chatham

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Love, Madness & Mozart

 

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That persistent character who keeps coming back; I think most writers have a few of them. Sometimes they inhabit a book that can’t, or won't, ever be satisfactorily finished. These conundrums are in every writer’s desk drawer and on every hard drive. 

My particular dark horse always returns around her birthday, at the end of April. She’s here, hanging around, just behind the curtains, even during day-light. I’m once again re-re-imagining scenes I’ve already visited many, many times. I’ve journeyed to her world for forty years now.

My Mozart is the first book I ever completed. A satisfactory ending, I think, still eludes me. Like Konstanze of Mozart’s Wife, this young heroine insists on speaking in the first person, which both narrows and deepens her POV. It’s like writing while pinned inside her dress. 

I’ve heard authors talk about having a “channeling” experience with their characters. There are many accounts of automatic writing and spirit dictation, some sounding as if they should be taken with salt. At least that's what my day-light self thinks. However, after the experience of writing this initial, and, perhaps never-to-be-finished story, I believe other-worldly communications can happen. Ordinarily it takes a period of concentration and study to make your characters  ("the dolls") get up and move independently, but in the case of a channeled story, they arrive fully realized, walking and talking.

So here's what I've learned, forty years after my attempt to tell this ghostly story. For a while, at least, after Mozart's death, Miss Gottlieb coped with her tragedies, until, in a final cruel blow, she lost her voice. After that, she appears to have lived on, among of the walking wounded, enduring a life of poverty until her death. Such was the fate of the first Pamina, pure heroine of The Magic Flute.

I'm glad I hadn't known her true ending before I wrote the one for this story. I was willing to follow the fantasy of a limited kind of HEA , not only for my sake, but also, the rational self argued, for marketing reasons.  Any darker ending was too painful--for me, for prospective readers--and, no doubt, for my spirit informant herself.

Wild Tulips 

 

So now it’s tulip-time April, and Green May is on Her way again. Tomorrow is Miss Gottlieb’s birthday, and once more I have glimpses of her spring-time, numinous world, animated by youth, love, and music. It makes sense that the “old” holidays too are upon us, Saint Brigitte’s Day, May Morn, Saint Walpurga’s night, Beltane, and all the other Divine Feminine Maidens who rule the second Cross-Quarter Day of the year.

   

My Mozart is “romance” in the original sense of the word, in the much the same way Romeo & Juliet  may be called "romance." Not romance in the commercial sense, but the old-fashioned bloody insanity of love, the madness which can, so easily, end in tragedy. The true domain of "Romance" is Castle Perilous, which makes drawing a final line under a tale of a hopeless passion so very hard to do. 

~~Juliet Waldron

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Baroness Orczy by Rosemary Morris

 

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Baroness Emma Orczy

    

I am a fan of well written historical fiction which recreates past times.  Baroness Orczy’s books are among my favourite novels, and I became curious about the author’s life and times.

 

 

Baroness Orczy

 

Best remembered for her hero, Percy Blakeney, the elusive scarlet pimpernel, Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September 23, 1865, to Baron and Baroness Orczy.  Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor and friend of Liszt, Wagner, and other composers.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed every luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateaux, which she later described as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna.  The baron and his family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style’.  Throughout her life, the exuberant parties, the dancing, and the haunting gypsy music lived on in Emmuska’s memory.

After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest.   Subsequently, in fear of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium.  Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until, in 1880, the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

 Fifteen-year-old Emmuska, learned English within six months, and won a special prize for doing so.  Later, she first attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, an illustrator.

Emmuska fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home.  When people referred to her as a foreigner, she replied there was nothing foreign about her, she her love was all English, for she loved the country.

Baron Orczy tried to develop his daughter’s musical talent. Emmuska chose art and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy. Later, she turned to writing. 

In 1894 Emmuska married Montague, and, in her own words, the marriage was ‘happy and joyful’. 

The newlyweds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts, and the theatre.  Emmuska’s bridegroom was supportive of her and encouraged her to write.  In 1895 her translations of Old Hungarian Fairy Tales: The Enchanted Cat, Fairyland’s Beauty and Uletka and The White Lizard, edited with Montague’s help, were published. 

Inspired by thrillers she watched on stage, Emmuska wrote mystery and detective stories. The first featured The Old Man in the Corner.  For the generous payment of sixty pounds the Royal Magazine published it in 1901.  Her stories were an instant hit.  Yet, although the public could not get enough of them, she remained dissatisfied.

In her autobiography Emmuska wrote: ‘I felt inside my heart a kind of stirring that the writing of sensational stuff for magazines would not and should not, be the end and aim of my ambition.  I wanted to do something more than that.  Something big.’

Montague and Emmuska spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the violence of the French Revolution.  Surely, she had found the setting for a magnificent hero to champion the victims of “The Terror”.           Unexpectedly, after she and her husband returned to England, it was while waiting for the train that Emmuska saw her most famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed in exquisite clothes.  She noted the monocle held up in his slender hand, heard both his lazy drawl and his quaint laugh.  Emmuska told her husband about the incident and within five weeks had written The Scarlet Pimpernel.

     Very often, although the first did not apply to Emmuska and Montague, it is as difficult to find true love as it is to get published. A dozen publishers or more rejected The Scarlet Pimpernel.  The publishing houses wanted modern, true-life novels. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play.

The critics did not care for the play, which opened at the New Theatre, London in 1904, but the audiences loved it and it ran for 2,000 performances. As a result, The Scarlet Pimpernel was published and became the blockbuster of its era making it possible for Emmuska and Montague to live in an estate in Kent, have a bustling London home and buy a luxurious villa in Monte Carlo.

During the next 35 years, Emmuska wrote sequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel such as, Lord Tonys Wife, 1917, The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel 1919, but other historical and crime novels.  Her loyal fans repaid her by flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero.  Released in 1935, it was produced by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, starred Lesley Howard as Percy, and Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

 Emmuska and Montague moved to Monte Carlo in the late 1910’s where they remained during Nazi occupation in the Second World War.

Montague died in 1943 leaving Emmuska bereft.  She lived with her only son and divided her time between London and Monte Carlo.  Her last novel Will-O’theWisp and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life were published in 1947 shortly before her death at the age of 82 on November 12, in the same year. Raise your glass and drink a toast to them.

 

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Party like the Eighteenth Century! In January, by Diane Scott Lewis

 

Rose aspires to be a doctor, impossible in the 18th century, but uncovers evil village secrets in Cornwall-- and love in the most inappropriate place.

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But let's explore the lighter side of the eighteenth century, especially the celebrations of Twelfth Night, as Christmas cheer continued into January. 

Twelfth Night, usually January 5th or 6th, was celebrated as the end of the Christmas Season since the Middle Ages. It marked the Feast of Epiphany, when the Three Wise Men visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. It also evolved from Pagan fertility rights, celebrating the end of winter and the soon to arrive spring.

In the 18th c., it was the perfect excuse to throw lavish parties. Great spreads of food, especially enticing desserts, were the centerpiece. Over-indulging in food and drink, people partied hard, before returning to the drab winter of their lives.

 

The Twelfth Night cake was the highlight served to guests. Martha Washington's (wife of the famous George) recipe included 40 eggs, four pounds of sugar, and five pounds of dried fruit. A bean or coin, sometimes a metal Baby Jesus, was baked into the cake, (people were warned to chew carefully) and whomever received that piece became the King. This king caused mischief as he presided over the festivities.

The ale-based drink with spices and honey, called Wassail, was put in huge bowls and passed around the revelers. The name is derived from the Old English term "Waes hael", meaning "be well."

People donned costumes and danced and performed plays in the village streets. Some dragged plows house to house, seeking treats and alcohol. While the Upper Crust held elaborate balls.

Mervyn Clitheroe's Twelfth Night party,
by "Phiz"

Live birds were hidden in empty pie casings, so when opened, scared the recipient. Traditional foods were anything spicy or hot, such as ginger snaps. Or anything with apples; apple tarts, apple-walnut cakes. And lots of Port and Sherry to drink.

The common folk partied, drank to excess, releasing the frustration of their hard-working lives. One Pennsylvania upper-class man of the time said of the commoner, "were a set of the lowest blackguards, who, disguised in filthy clothes and ofttimes with masked faces, went from house to house in large companies, ...obtruding themselves everywhere, particularly into the rooms occupied by parties of ladies and gentlemen, (and) would demean themselves with great insolence."

This holiday as a time to party is largely ignored today.

To find out more about me and my books, please visit my website: DianeScottLewis

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

Book Babies

 

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In the season that celebrate the birth of an extraordinary baby, it's fun to think about how babies are portrayed in our books. They are scene stealers, for sure, so must be used wisely!  

In literature as in life, how people react to babies is a real illumination of their character. The baby born to my heroine Ursula at the end of Book 2 of my American Civil War Brides series, Mercies of the Fallen, is featured prominently in Book 3, Ursula's Inheritance. I was delighted to draw on the effervescent spirit of my little grandson to fashion little Henry Ryan Buckley, born into the hands of his soldier father and uncle the middle of the infamous New York City Draft riots and massacres of the summer of 1863.

Baby D... always ready to inspire!

The joy of his mother's heart, Henry is also being cared by these two men when they're on army leave as Ursula's Inheritance begins. The novel's antagonists, out to steal his mother's inheritance, now have a new foe, as Ursula has an heir of her own. And they will stop at nothing. 

So Henry's got a squad of protectors besides his nearest and dearest. His father Captain Rowan sends for one of the three women who raised him after he was orphaned in Canada. Little Henry will soon be spouting French as well as English thanks to his devoted Tante Marie Agathe. And the whole family of Ursula's beloved cook and companion Miriam, who have escaped to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Weeksville after the riots, welcome Baby Henry into their thriving community. There's a mysterious teenaged orphan Penina (hiding behind her fan on the cover) who he takes a shine to, too. Was ever a little fellow so lucky?

I enjoyed featuring a baby to brighten my wartime story. Babies can be a wonderful presence in a novel, besides revealing the characters of all around them, and serving as symbols of our hope for a better future, when placed in any time period!

I hope readers will enjoy the antics of Baby Henry in Ursula's Inheritance.

Dare I write about a troubling incident in recent memory, by Diane Scott Lewis

 

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When I worked at the Dahlgren Naval Base, Virginia, in the 90s, a woman told me tales from the little beach town where she lived about a half hour away. Colonial Beach, Virginia, had been a huge tourist destination in the early twentieth century, when boatloads of steamships came down from Washington, D.C. to visit the beach every summer. 

Amusement Pier Colonial Beach 1912

But in the late nineteenth century it was the scene of murder of boat crews; I blogged about this previously.

Fishing Pier Colonial Beach

My friend told me the true story of the Potomac Oyster Wars, which took place in the 1950s. Her boyfriend lost a brother in that fraught time, and he hesitated to speak of it. But I was able to talk to him and he showed me photos of the friends he had who were involved. Many who lost loved ones were still skitterish about this history.

But my friend insisted I had to write the story. 

Since colonial times, Maryland owned the Potomac and policed the waters where Virginia fisherman plied their trade. Since the end of WWII, times were lean, and the Oystermen snuck out at night to rake "dredge" up oysters. This process destroyed the beds but brought in a larger catch. Tonging for oysters was the approved manner.

Well known people in the town got involved, and a prominent man was killed by the dreaded Maryland Oyster Police. His relatives still reside in the community. Would I step on their toes?

Me with my friend in Colonial Beach

I published my novel, Ghost Point, on this era and tentatively put the info on a FB page called "Memories of Colonial Beach." I thought people would be upset about me, a non native, writing about their history. Instead, they were thrilled, and one woman said she knew the niece of the man who was murdered. They were happy to purchase my novel and speak of those events.

A very generous community. My main characters are fictional, but I used several actual residents of the town.

I plan to do a book signing next year at the Colonial Beach Museum. It seems the younger generation is anxious to learn about this era.

Colonial Beach Museum,
drawn by Christine Valenti

Sunset on Monroe Bay, Colonial Beach

To find out more about me and my books, please visit my website: DianeScottLewis

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

October Surprise by Eileen Charbonneau

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Greetings, dear readers!

My October surprise is a sneak peek at my November 2021 release, Ursula's Inheritance. The third book in my American Civil War Brides series, it was a surprise to me, too! After publishing Book 2, Mercies of the Fallen, I thought I was finished with Ursula's story. But readers thought otherwise! 

Mercies took place between the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. It ended just after the infamous New York City draft riots of July 1863. Readers wanted to know what happened next in the lives of Ursula and her Union officer Captain Rowan Buckley. Does he survive the war? Can she come out of hiding and clear her name? Will their young marriage born of desperate circumstances become a lasting union of souls? And what about the secrets still between them?

Did you know that this is how Louisa May Alcott's Little Women got written too? The first volume (1868) was a great success. But readers were eager for more. Alcott quickly completed a second volume in 1869. The two volumes were issued in 1880 as a single novel that has become our cherished classic. 

I hope you'll enjoy what happens next in the story...The opening is from Rowan's viewpoint, and I hope you'll learn what a great dad he is becoming....

Chapter One, Ursula's Inheritance  

April 1864, Gramercy Park, Manhattan

Even with the one eye the war had left him, Rowan Buckley knew the wee one pilfering from the garden was a girl, despite her trousers. He frowned at the canvas bag at her feet.

“So it is not a squirrel with an interest in our angelica, then?” he asked quietly.

The urchin turned, startled eyes narrowing. “Better me than an Irish thug!” she spat out. 

The girl took advantage of his hesitation and his limited depth perception. She grabbed the sack and raced toward the iron garden gate. But after three hard years of soldiering, there was nothing wrong with Rowan’s reflexes. He caught up, took her wrist, and, when she resisted, her waist. She had a waist. So she was a little older than her small size had first impressed upon him.

“Please let me go, sir,” an even smaller voice came out of her.

“Am I ‘sir’ then, now that you’re caught?”

“You are a black Irish scoundrel to hold me against my will!”

She kicked him. Hard enough to throw off his stance. He maintained his temper and light grip as he steered her toward the tradesman’s door of Ursula’s house.

“You’ve nothing to fear from me, lass.” He sent her through the entrance with a nudge at her back. “Now hush up your caterwauling, the baby’s asleep.”

Jonathan was stretched out at the hearth, his stockinged foot rocking the cradle. His eyebrow arched.

“Company? The kettle’s on, my fine fellow.”

“Your fellow is a girl, and there’s nothing fine about her,” Rowan corrected, lifting the cap off his captive’s head. Fair-haired braids descended. “May I present our angelica and camomile thief?”

Jonathan smiled. “Ah. Mystery solved.”

The girl’s eyes fired. “I planted that garden!”

“Did you?” Jonathan asked in his most charming southern tone. “Fetch the young horticulturist a chair, brother.”

“She kicks,” Rowan warned.

The girl’s light brown eyes narrowed as she looked from one to the other. “You’re not brothers.”

“And you neglected to pay for your trousers,” Rowan observed, yanking off and reading the dry goods store tag. “The proprietor might want a word with you about that.”

“The proprietor is my father. His name is Selby, see?”

A rustling of nightclothes and Ursula stood in the back doorway.  “Mr. Thomas Selby?”

Rowan saw something familiar in the girl’s trapped look, the tears stubbornly held back. 

“You are so confusing! All of you!” she shouted, loud enough to startle wee Henry to wailing. 

“Aw, there now then, fledgling,” Rowan soothed, lifting the baby from cradle and into his arms. “You’ve had enough of the lot of us, have you?”

Ursula kept her eyes fixed on the girl.

“What is your name?”

“Penina.”

She glanced in the sack, “Thank you, Penina. A little camomile is exactly what we need for our Henry’s teething gums. Take the rest home. Will you not join us for breakfast first?”

Rowan sighed. His wife had found another stray. He rubbed his sore shin, then fetched the frying pan. This little one might enjoy some of his oatcakes, he supposed.

Personal Cleanliness and Cosmetics in the 14th Century by Rosemary Morris

 

To see more of Rosemary's work please click on the cover above.

I have written two #classic#fact fiction# novels, Yvonne, Lady of Cassio, Volume One of The Lovages of Cassio set in Edward II’s reign, and Grace, Lady of Cassio, Volume Two, set in Edward III’s reign, (to be published on the 1^{st of} September 2021). At heart I am a historian, so in this and my recent blogs, I am sharing some of my intensive research into times past.

 

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness

Medieval people believed in the saying ‘cleanliness is next to godliness.’ They thought a spiritually clean person without sin was spared from illness, and the necessity of seeking redemption through God’s mercy.

Bathing

  In an era when there were no anti-perspirants or deodorants people who stank because they neglected personal hygiene would be avoided (to use a cliché) ‘like the plague’.  Men with unsavoury occupations washed in rivers or other natural sources of clean water. Immersing the body in water indoors or outdoors had the benefit of ridding the body from fleas and lice. Mothers or nurses bathed babies frequently and sweetened their linen swaddling with powdered herbs or flower petals mixed with salt. Those in holy orders at abbeys at monasteries bathed between two and four times a year. 

Like royalty, the families of noble men and women, and wealthy merchants bathed in wooden tubs lined with cloths. King John bathed every three weeks. Henry IV bathed on the evening before his coronation. He instituted The Order of The Bath to stress the importance of physical and spiritual purification before a knight made his vows. Some of Edward III’s palaces contained bathrooms with hot and cold running water.

 

Washing

 It took too long to heat water for daily baths. Every morning basins of water were filled for men and women in respectable households to wash their hands and faces. Women attended to children too young to wash themselves. Before and after meals, everyone washed and dried their hands. Every week those in holy orders washed their feet in foot basins. Travellers who went on long journeys, also cleaned their feet in foot basins

 

Hair

Hair was washed in copper basins in water mixed with cinnamon, liquorice, and cumin instead of soap which irritated the skin.

Teeth

 People believed bad breath caused disease. To freshen it they chose one of these spices to chew, cardamon, liquorice, aniseed, cumin, or fennel.

 

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