So I just finished researching marriage traditions of the 18th century. There are actually two marriages in this book…ahhh, but no spoilers today!

As usual, I ended up getting distracted–this time by marriage rites of various cultures during that same century, and I came across a description of the marriage ceremony of the Hotentots:

The Suri, or master of religious ceremonies, pisses on the bridegroom, who receives the stream with eagerness and rubs it into the furrows of the fat with which he is covered. He performs the same ceremony on the bride, who is equally respectful.

Sketches of the History of Man By Henry Home Kames, 1813

Um….yeah.
Just makes me happy I write romances that take place in the United Kingdom! The culture and society was different from ours…but rather easier to portray as romantic, in my opinion.

One of my favorite romance blogs is Risky Regencies, where they’re talking today about “The First Time,” i.e. the virginal heroine and how she is portrayed in historical romance.

Kate, the heroine of my current book, is my very first virginal heroine. Kate is a woman whose rampant curiosity nearly overwhelms the entire experience of her deflowering. So I find this topic particularly interesting, because they’re talking about what makes and breaks a “first” sex scene in historical romance (particularly Regencies).

Along a similar vein, I’ve been reading about women’s ideals of romance and maidenhood, and how they were viewed by writers in the 19th century. Here’s one opinion:

Madame St. Henry was as sweet and amiable a woman as I have ever known. She bore her husband’s ill-treatment as saints do their earthly injuries, and made him such a wife as all men desire but few deserve.

She had one–fault, shall I call it? No; it was a weakness: her sensibility of disposition was the grave of her happiness. In the days of her romantic maidenhood she had indulged this passion so fatal to the serenity of human life; so that when the blast of the world came she had no strength to resist it. She had formed an idea of the happiness of married life, such as all women of refined and sensible dispositions will form; and she was disappointed, as all such women assuredly will be.

So highly wrought had been her feelings that she found no fortitude within herself to sustain this cruel shock. Soon after having given birth to the subject of this memoir she died, and was perhaps glad to get to her grave.

–The London Magazine By John Scott, John Taylor, 1824

So much for romanticism, huh? Sigh…

The heroine of the book I’m currently writing, A Touch of Scandal, is a lady’s maid. In A Touch of Scandal, Kate has just been upgraded to the position, and unfortunately, she’s not very good at it.

So off I ventured into Google Books, looking for more information about lady’s maids. And look what I found! Perhaps if Kate took some advice from Punch, she’d fare better. For example:

“…you should pocket any trifle that is left carelessly out of its place. I do not mean to say you should become a thief, for if found out you would lose your place … but you may take care of a thing till it is missed … It is then time enough for you to find it in some hole or corner into which it has of course got by accident.”

(Very wily…hmm…perhaps Kate can “find” something her mistress is searching for…something ever-so critical…)

“You should endeavour at all times to save your mistress trouble by acting for her as much as you can … dress as much like her as possible. Order about other servants just as she would herself and talk to tradespeople exactly as if they were being spoken to by your mistress…”

(Of course! If Kate acts in this way, then it won’t surprise a soul when she marries a man with a title!)

“Manners form an essential part of the qualities of a lady’s maid, and making one’s self agreeable is the best mannered thing one can possibly accomplish. This is to be done by praise, for nothing is more agreeable to a lady than flattery. However sensible your mistress may be, she is sure to have a share of female vanity; and even if she knows herself to be ugly altogether, she will fancy she has some redeeming feature. If she squints, praise her complexion; if that is bad, tell her she has beautiful eyes; if she has a dumpty figure, praise her face; and if her countenance is as ugly as sin, tell her that her shape is exquisite.”

(Yet another way for my Kate to win her mistress’s favor…isn’t Punch brilliant?)

These are excerpts from an article entitled “The Lady’s Maid” from a Punch Magazine dated 1845: Punch By Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, Owen Seaman.

Too bad it was written a good 20+ years after Kate’s lady’s maid dilemmas are solved, or I might actually have her consult Punch for advice at some point.

First off, Happy New Year! I’m excited to be here, excited to have a new website, excited about my upcoming book…I’m just excited! I’m so glad it’s 2009, too. 2008 was a wild ride, and I need to rest for a while, I think.

I hope to jam pack this blog with all sorts of…um…interesting things. You see, in the course of my research for A Hint of Wicked, I visited Google Books quite a lot. Google Books is this massive archive of all kinds of books, from way back when to the here and now. I usually looked for books in the 1800-1825 range to search for information for A Hint of Wicked. The kinds of things I looked up were along the lines of “bigamy divorce annulment 1800-1825″ or “arm arteries stopping bleeding” or “opium overdose cure” (thus in A Hint of Wicked, you’ll find the solution of drenching an opium addict in ice water!).

As I slogged through countless works written in that time period, I came across some extraordinary opinions, writings, and facts. Things that were a very strong reminder that times have changed and that people aren’t the same now as they were in the early 19th century. Things that if I suggested I write about to my editor, she’d probably dismiss me as the biggest lunatic of a writer she’d ever worked with.

I’d like to share some of those things here, because I think they are not only interesting, but funny, enlightening, and sometimes frightening. I hope you agree, and I hope you’ll come back to visit me again!

Stay tuned for the first blog post coming soon!