I’m researching the winter holidays in England today. Don’t ask me how this came up when I did a search for winter holidays, but it did. Quotes like this are so grouch-inducing for me!

-From the London Magazine, Vol VII, 1827

Yellow?!?!?! Really?! I mean, I know old, ugly woman jokes are in existence even now, but still…sigh.

Gentlemen’s fashions are a touch more difficult for me than the ladies’ fashions. It’s a real challenge to find pictures and corresponding descriptions. Even more important, I want my heroes wearing…well, for lack of a better word, manly clothes. Look at these descriptions of some of the men’s fashions of 1829:

Light blue embroidered gloves:

some young men have appeared at balls with blue dress gloves embroidered with white…

and silk cloaks:

…cloaks of the gentlemen lined with plush silk of celestial blue…

and hankies with embroidered corners:

…at balls our young exquisites sport pocket handkerchiefs of fine lawn with a hem as broad as their thumbs the corners only are embroidered.

and flowery shoes:

…shoes tied with a small rosette.

and stylishly curled coiffures:

…a young gentleman now suffers his hair to grow has it curled and parted on the left side of the forehead.

(these examples are all from The Mirror of literature, amusement, and instruction, Volume 13 By Reuben Percy, John Timbs, 1829)

Worst of all, corsets were in style for men. Here’s a caricature of the styles for 1827. Look how tightly those poor men are cinched up! (Also look at the poor ladies’ hats–but that’s a whole ‘nother post!)

© Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: John Johnson Collection

I suppose the Gentleman’s Magazine of Fashion (1827) said it best:

…they say that a tall, thin man with his waist pinched in, and if he is withal very full, looks like grasshopper in an asthma.

Sigh. Maybe I should stop researching and go directly to the Pride and Prejudice movies. Of course, these movies represented a time several years earlier than the settings of my books… Nevertheless, with some variations the basic idea is there: shirts, cravats, tailcoats…

So I’ll just think of Mr. Darcy.

Better yet, Mr. Darcy just after a swim…

I’m always on the search for examples of fashions during the time in which I write. Women’s fashions are easy enough to find, though they can be challenging to decipher. (For me, anyway…even today’s fashions befuddle me, so going back two hundred years definitely makes my brain spin!) Read this description from fashions for December, 1827:

CARRIAGE DRESS: A pelisse of rich gros de Naples of a beautiful stone colour with a deep border of the same on the bias headed by narrow vandykes.
-From the Lady’s Monthly Museum, Vol. 26

Hmm…it takes some sleuthing, but I can ultimately figure it out. The above is the beginning of the description of the carriage dress shown here on the left.

I might just put Lady Rebecca in this dress at some point in A SEASON OF SEDUCTION… Though I really love the evening dress on the right…sigh. I wonder how it would be received at my husband’s company Christmas party if I wore it…

On Thursday, I’m going to be talking about my continuing challenge to find interesting (and masculine!) variations in men’s fashions of the time!

So I’m researching what kind of eggs my hero and heroine would eat for breakfast, and I came upon this:

He goes on to recommend not eating fruit at breakfast (you might feel “heavyish” all day!) and eggs–yuck! He doesn’t want to have pullet-sperm in his stomach all day!

But cold pig’s face? YUM!!! (He recommends eating it with French mustard and shallot vinegar.)

Okay, I’ve got to get back to my revisions. Just had to share. LOL.

(this is from “The Maxims of Sir Morgan O’Doherty, Bart.”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 16, 1824)

Well, I’m drowning in this deadline, but I have a fun contest going on over at the Dawn Halliday site! Go check it out at www.dawnhalliday.com. You could win an advance copy of A HIGHLANDER CHRISTMAS, an anthology containing one of Dawn’s stories that will be released in November.

I’ve been doing a lot of research and learning a lot about the medicine of the time (remember, pus is a good thing! They wanted to see lots of nice, healthy pus! LOL!). Once I have a moment, I can’t wait to post some of the other wild and crazy stuff I’m reading on the blog!

Until then, wish me luck. Must…finish…book……….

I’m researching the eating habits of the 1820’s. It’s easy to find massive amounts of information on breakfasts and social dinners, but lunch seems to be the ignored meal, and I think I’m figuring out why. It’s because lunch is for ladies! Its purpose is to provide a light meal. Heh…here’s a description of this “light” meal:

London persons breakfast at nine, ten, eleven, and even twelve o’clock and dine at eight or nine. Between these meals comes the luncheon composed generally of cold meats such as pates, fowls, pheasants, partridges, ham, beef, veal, brawn, and generally whatever is left fit to be introduced, part of which is to be placed on a side table. On the table is to be served a little hashed fowl and some mutton cutlets broiled plainly with mashed potatoes. The repast itself is insignificant…

Insignificant? LOL! I love it…

But, you see, real men don’t eat lunch! The true purpose of lunch is to give the ladies something to eat so that they’re not so hungry at dinner they make piggies of themselves:

[Luncheon] is only taken by certain young ladies who wish to preserve the elegance of their figures, the beauty of their complexions, and above all the becoming manners of good society which interdict as vulgar eating at table like gluttons. For unless frequent meals are taken too much must be eaten at once.

So there you go. Lunch was invented so ladies could pretend to eat like birds and hence carry forth the image of being elegant and beautiful (basically, so that nobody would see them truly eat with a healthy appetite…).

Sigh.

FROM: THE FRENCH COOK, A SYSTEM OF FASHIONABLE AND ECONOMICAL COOKERY ADAPTED TO THE USE OF ENGLISH FAMILIES By Louis Eustache Ude, 1829

As my hero prepares to undress my heroine in my current book (A SEASON OF SEDUCTION starring Lady Rebecca from A HINT OF WICKED!), I am researching stays (corsets) and how they were worn in the 1820’s, and I came upon a story of a mother who has three children, like I do.

Matilda is a fine woman of good breeding, great sense, and much religion. She has three daughters that are educated by herself. She will not trust them with any one else.

Gee, so far Matilda sounds like the kind of mom I am. So I read on:

Matilda never was meanly dressed in her life; and nothing pleases her in dress but that which is very rich and beautiful to the eye.

Okay, I’ll admit to being attracted to nice clothes. In fact, just today I bought my daughter a very cute outfit at Gap Kids…

I continue reading on:

She stints them in their meals and is very scrupulous of what they eat and drink and tells them how many fine shapes she has seen spoiled in her time for want of such care. If a pimple rises in their faces she is in a great fright and they themselves are as afraid to see her with it as if they had committed some great sin.

Oh dear! My kids aren’t at pimple age yet, but I sure hope if they ever get pimples, I’ll not blame *them* for it! Now I’m beginning to worry about this Matilda…

It goes on to say that if the girls begin to look flushed, she calls in a doctor to keep their complexion from becoming too “coarse and ruddy.”

Uh. Okay.

By this means they are poor, pale, sickly, infirm creatures vapoured through want of spirits, crying at the smallest accidents, swooning away at anything that frights them, and hardly able to bear the weight of their best clothes.

This is seriously beginning to depress me. And then I read this:

The eldest daughter lived as long as she could under this discipline and died in the twentieth year of her age. When her body was opened it appeared that her ribs had grown into her liver and that her other entrails were much hurt by being crushed together with her stays which her mother had ordered to be twitched so strait that it often brought tears into her eyes whilst the maid was dressing her.

Wow. Just wow.

From A serious call to a devout and holy life: adapted to the state and condition
by William Law – Religion – 1821 – 346 pages

I’m researching scandalous marriages today and came across a lecture entitled “On Woman” delivered by Colonel Willyams at the Cornwall Literary and Philosophical Society in 1819.

The good colonel spends some time extolling the virtues of women, but then turns to their more despicable qualities. Then he says he’s set up some “rules and regulations” for women that he intends to get passed as an act of parliament. For women who break these rules, he suggests a “female court martial” made up of “gentlewomen of tried candour.”

What are the proposed rules, you ask? Well, here they are. I have to chuckle when I relate this to the writing community/blogs/etc. Most of us would be in big trouble!

ARTICLE 1st:

RULE: All ladies must diligently attend holy services.

PUNISHMENT: If a lady goes to church and behaves improperly, if married, she will be brought before the court martial to be “publicly and severely reprimanded.” If she’s not married, she must forfeit twelve pence.

ARTICLE 2nd:

RULE: Ladies must never speak in a disrespectful manner towards their superiors.

PUNISHMENT: Any lady to use “treacherous or disrespectful” words against her superior in rank or reputation must be rejected by her own society and “put to the bottom of the list.”

ARTICLE 3rd:

RULE: A lady can’t be mean to anyone who’s prettier or more accomplished than her, and she can’t hurt their feelings or dishonor them.

PUNISHMENT: “Any married unmarried or widow lady who shall behave herself contemptuously or spitefully towards her superior in beauty or accomplishment or shall speak words tending to her hurt or dishonour shall be punished accordingto the nature of her offence by the judgment of a female court martial.”

(Yep, I hurt your feelings, so I must PAY!!!!)

ARTICLE 4th:

RULE: No lady can cause or join in any scandal.

PUNISHMENT: If a lady is found guilty, she must “suffer silence, or such other punishment as by a female court martial shall be awarded.”

(Yeah, “silence” was italicized. What is “silence,” I wonder? She’s not allowed to talk at all?)

ARTICLE 5th:

RULE: Any lady present at a scandal must immediately “impart the information to her husband, father, brother, or other commanding officer.”

PUNISHMENT: Those who break this rule shall suffer the same punishment as article 4th.

(‘Cause, you know, the guys MUST know all the gossip, too….)

Here is the lecture (from Ackerman’s Repository) in full from Google books:


Sometimes, we’ve just got to appreciate the fact that we don’t live in the 19th century!

I just found this while doing my endless research about servants’ lives.

It has been frequently observed by travellers and men of experience that comfort is a term only understood in England and scarcely applicable to the habits of any other nation.

From:

The Servant’s Guide and Family Manual

By Katherine Golden Bitting
Collection on Gastronomy (Library of Congress, 1831)

I have to say, I love the vanity of the English during this period!
So…hmmm. What do you think? Was she right?

Though my books generally are more about characters than they are about actual historical events, I spend a great deal of time researching the historical backdrop. When I researched A HINT OF WICKED, I spent a lot of time neck-deep in divorce and separation laws of the period, and I read some really interesting case studies! I blogged about one of them today:

My Book Addiction and More

Come by to read the wild story of the 3rd Duke and Duchess of Beaufort’s nasty divorce and comment to win a copy of A HINT OF WICKED!

Also, just a reminder, through June, the publisher is offering A HINT OF WICKED in ebook format for just $1.99 (or even less). Check the Sony eBook store, Books on Board, the Kindle store, the iPhone App store, Fictionwise (where it’s only $0.85 for club members! WOW!), or anywhere ebooks are sold.