Sapphire Lebesque's Blog: Margin Notes - Posts Tagged "regency-romance"

I have 2 titles published of my newest series, 3 Aristocrats Find Love. The stories take place in 1794, 1795 and 1796. Book 1 is Kissing The Contessa, Book 2 is Winning Lady Madeleine.

It's a fascinating decade of history in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1789, which the includes the rise of Napoleon and the Peninsula wars with England pitted against France.

Ladies and gentlemen's fashion went through upheavals as well. The frills and flounces and big skirts of earlier were on their way out and the French Revolution inspired a less fussy, plainer look for ladies.

New weaving techniques made lighter fabrics available for ladies gowns, including the sprigged muslin so popular from 1800. For men, fussy buckled shoes started to give way to leather boots, and men's fashion became more rugged and masculine, though the famous dandy still held his own.

On the social scene, coffee houses became places to be seen and Gunter's famous tea shop in London's Berkeley Square rose to prominence for its ices.

It was not fashionable to marry for love and a man could be ridiculed if the gossips discovered he was in love with his wife. Partnerships were made on a business basis and much historical fiction deals with those themes, but where's the fun in that? There's a reason why Regency Romance is so popular (and Georgian Romance).

I haven't finished with the decade and I have one more book to complete, Romancing Ava Russell. It'll be released later in 2024.
Winning Lady Madeleine: A Georgian Romance

Luxury and expensive food features in the lives of the gentlemen and ladies of 3 Titled Gentlemen Find Love Series, and below stairs, the household staff generally ate better than the working class or poor.

Gunter's ice cream parlour (and tea rooms) of London, is mentioned in many Regency novels and was famous among society of the ton looking to go out for a treat or be seen in fashionable places. Flavours were more varied than we know today, including sweet and savoury, such as Parmesan Cheese! Unusual sweet flavours included Elderflower, Muscadine (Grape) and Currant.

Gunter's logo was a pineapple, a prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain fruit. A pineapple centrepiece was a must-have status symbol of any dinner-party hostess trying to impress and were passed from hostess to hostess until they rotted.

A common cure-all was seawater mixed with milk. The seawater probably made the unfortunate drinker sick, but they didn't know that at the time.

Lady Madeleine is taken to Gunter's Tea Rooms by one of her suitors. She has pineapple and elderberry ice, he has vanilla and strawberry (One scoop of each). It's the most romantic experience she's ever had... so far.

Bed Warmers and Hot Bricks

Before electric blankets, hot water bottles and central heating for our homes, generations before used more primitive means of warming the bed and chasing away the cold and damp. A bed warmer was a shallow, round, copper or brass bowl with a tightly fitting lid, on a long wooden handle. The maid (usually) would fill it with hot coals (or ashes) and move it up and down between the sheets. Hot bricks, often made from ceramic, were used for the same purpose. They were too hot to handle and were wrapped in cloth or placed in a fabric bag.

Chamber Pots

Before the flush toilet was common, what did people do? They used chamber pots, made of ceramic and kept under the bed. Hostesses often set up rooms as 'retiring rooms' when entertaining.

Flat Irons

Flat irons (smoothing irons for clothes) were made from solid iron. They were heavy, weighing more than 5lbs and were heated on a fire or stove. Also known as 'sad irons', the word 'sad' being derived from old English meaning 'solid'.

Boot Scrapers

These devices for cleaning footwear could be found outside building entrances. In days when urban streets were dirtier than they are today, these were common and essential tools to prevent muck being trodden into a house. Routinely made of iron or sandstone, many were decorative and consisted of some kind of bar with a sharp edge, often embedded in a stone and low in the ground.

Old Craftsman Tools

We're so used to power tools these days that we often forget that in the past they had to do everything with muscle power, whether beast of burden or man or woman. Hand drills, braces and augurs, hand wood planing and carving tools have become rare or specialist items, or used in some parts of the world. Many seem quaint to modern eyes, though they were essential tools in their day.

A box-hedge maze features in Romancing Ava Russell. When Hugo and Ava attend the Duke of Stapleton's house party, the hosts have devised a competition in the maze in their formal south-facing garden. I took the inspiration for Stapleton's maze from the one at Hampton Court.

Garden mazes evolved from the knot gardens, which were earlier herb gardens. These were low and mostly planted with herbs, but over time the dwarf box became popular because it was robust.

The puzzle maze was inspired by the labyrinth concept of mythology, most famously the labyrinth the Minotaur lived and lurked in, in the myth of ancient Greece. The Minotaur was a half bull, half man monster who demanded an annual sacrifice of young virgins, male and female.

The words 'maze' and 'labyrinth' have become almost synonymous in contemporary culture. Puzzle mazes or hedge mazes became popular during the Renaissance and many stately homes have them.

Famous ones in the UK are Hampton Court Maze (of course), Longleat Maze, constructed of yew, and in Europe, Andrássy Castle Maze (Hungary), Hedge Labyrinth of Villa Pisani (Italy), and around the world, Ashcombe Maze (Australia) and Dole Pineapple Maze (Hawaii), not purely grown from pineapples but thousands of species of Hawaiian vegetation.

Christmas Trees became a popular thing in the USA around 1812, when John Lewis Krimmel, a European who had migrated to Philadelphia in 1809, included them in his watercolour sketchbooks. The idea of the Christmas tree also came from Quebec in 1781, introduced by Hessian soldiers from one of the myriad small states that today comprise Germany. Quebec was a British colony before it became Canada.

In the UK, the introduction of the Christmas tree in the 1840s has been widely attributed to Prince Albert, German husband of Queen Victoria, who had one brought in to Windsor Castle, but it more than likely was introduced by Queen Charlotte, wife of King George 111, who had one at her childrens' party in 1800. Queen Victoria, as a girl growing up, was certainly used to them, having one placed in her room every Christmas.

I don't feature Christmas trees in my Georgian and Regency Romances, mainly because they weren't widely adopted then, but I do have the houses decorated with evergreens, holly, yew and mistletoe, and sometimes a Yule log will be brought inside for burning.

The Christmas tree was a common concept in European countries, in German states, Slovenia and thanks to the popularity in the aristocracy, was adopted in Russia. Earlier traditions in Latvia, Estonia and German states of hanging decorated branches inside the home and buildings go back several centuries, and the idea of a fully decorated tree probably grew out of these.