JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AND QUEENSWARE

In TO TASTE TEMPTATION the hero, Samuel Hartley has traveled from Boston to London for two reasons. The first is that he is looking for the traitor who caused the massacre of an entire regiment six years before in the American Colonies. The second reason is business. Sam is a wealthy importer of goods to Boston and he has heard that Josiah Wedgwood the potter has devised a new type of tableware that Sam hopes to see and buy to import. What is the tableware?

Queensware.

Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, commoners ate off of pewter plates or wooden trenchers. Very rich people had pottery plates either made in Europe or imported from China. But the European pottery was very much inferior to the Chinese-made porcelain. The Chinese in effect kept the making of their fine porcelain a trade secret. The European pottery was thicker, the glazing not as fine. For years Europeans tried to devise a way of making pottery as fine as that imported from China.

Josiah Wedgwood came from a family of potters from Burslem, Staffordshire. He was born in 1730 and as a boy he contracted smallpox. He survived, but his knee was injured and he walked with a cane. More importantly, he was unable to work a potter’s wheel with his bad knee. Instead of making pottery, he turned to designing it. By the early 1760’s Wedgwood was perfecting a fine creamware pottery with classical lines and a light cream-colored glaze. In a brilliant act of marketing, Wedgwood presented his new product to Queen Charlotte and got the first celebrity endorsement, enabling him to name his pottery Queensware and call himself Potter to Her Majesty.

Queensware was beautiful, of very good quality, affordable to the middle class both in England and in the American Colonies, and hey, the Queen herself used it. Queensware took off like a rocket. Archaeologists excavating Colonial Williamsburg have said that it’s one of the most widely found types of pottery prior to and just after the Revolutionary War.

When you read TO TASTE TEMPTATION, watch for the appearance of Mr. Thomas Bentley. He’s a real person and Wedgwood’s business partner. Sam met with Mr. Bentley because Wedgwood himself was up in Staffordshire at the time of the book!

Elizabeth Hoyt

www.elizabethhoyt.com

Shocking! Dr. Graham’s Electrical Cures

I’ve been undergoing physical therapy for a wonky problem with my hip and as I lay in a tiny dark room hooked up in six places to an electrical stimulus machine, or “stim,” I thought (for some reason I was thinking in French) plus ça change, plus, c’est la même chose—the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I had written about the famous quack (or not) doctor, James Graham in my novel of Emma Hamilton, TOO GREAT A LADY. In 1780, the teenage Emily Lyon (Emma’s nom de guerre at the time) went from being something of an apprentice at one of London's more respectable bawdy houses (there is no historical indication that she ever actually whored herself there) to working for the wildly popular Dr. James Graham at his Temple of Health, or Temple of Aesculapius in a number of capacities.

I began to notice the numerous handbills advertising the educational lectures and beneficial cures offered by Dr. James Graham, at the Temple of Aesculapius—also known as the Temple of Health—located at the Adelphi on the Royal Terrace in Bond Street. I even puzzled my way—for I read so poorly at the time—through Dr. Graham’s pamphlet on “The Wondrous Effects of the Celestial Bed in the Curing of Impotency and the Sustaining of Life.” A night’s enjoyment of the healthful pleasures of the famed Celestial Bed could be had for a mere fifty pounds. What must such a contraption look like? I wondered. Fifty pounds was a king’s ransom! Although his methods had become all the rage among London’s wealthiest and most glamorous citizens, thanks to the patronage of the vibrant and popular Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, it was a matter of opinion about town whether the doctor was a quack or a genius.

(Emma as a Bachante; painted y Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun, 1790-91)

Having resolved to attend a lecture, I encountered no difficulty in securing an escort from among Mrs. Kelly’s patrons; yet I had not realized, until I witnessed it with my own eyes, that the real entertainment took place after the five-shilling scholarly presentation, a lengthy program of a decidedly more sensual (and dearer) nature. Beautiful young women, scantily attired in shifts of the sheerest muslin, struck classical attitudes while—with a liberal employ of sexual innuendo—Dr. Graham, clad like a clergyman in a black frock coat, demonstrated the healthful benefits appertaining to the espousal of mud baths and his radical new electrical treatments.

This excerpt from TOO GREAT A LADY is taken from fact. Graham was indeed a huge hit among the young cognoscenti: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, attended Graham’s wildly popular lectures on the healthful benefits of electrical cures and mud baths, followed by pseudo-erotic demonstrations of the same. Watching her skimpily-clad colleagues strike poses, Emma may have gotten the idea for her famous Attitudes, which she would perform to great acclaim years later. Not all of Graham’s assistants were “mute.” Some of the young ladies sang angelically, providing background music for Graham’s demonstrations. Emma, renowned for her voice, got her start in this capacity, and was later promoted to sitting in a mud bath, sunk up to her shoulders. Audiences saw only her charming face and an enormous, elaborately dressed powdered wig.

Dr. James Graham, lecturing in Edinburgh

Born in 1745 in Scotland, James Graham was the son of a saddler. Although he never completed his medical studies in Edinburgh, he called himself a doctor nonetheless. He moved to America when he was in his twenties, offering himself as an “eye specialist.” In Philadelphia, he met Benjamin Franklin and after familiarizing himself with Franklin’s experiments with electricity, grew convinced that it was the cure for all ills.

In 1775, Graham returned to London. There, he set up a practice and his “electrical medicine” began attracting a posh clientele. Patients were delivered electrical jolts while sitting on a purpose-built chair (which he called a magnetic throne) or wearing special crowns or caps. Graham’s lectures and treatments were so popular that in 1779 he moved his practice to an elegant townhouse calling it the Temple of Health. The wealthy paid a small fortune to attend his lectures, and the risqué post-discussion demonstrations, but to Graham’s credit, he used their coin to fund a free clinic for the poor, whom he treated at the Temple of Health during the daylight hours.

Electrical cures in action, from a 1766 engraving

The Temple of Health had several ornately decorated rooms, the famous of which was the Tinsel Chamber of Apollo which housed the notorious Celestial Bed.

Dr. Graham boldly claimed that anyone who rented the twelve by nine foot bed for the night would be "blessed with progeny." Sterility or impotence would be cured.

The bed could be tilted so that it lay at various angles, the incline being considered more conducive to contraception. According to the entry in the Museum of Hoaxes, the mattress was filled with “sweet new wheat or oat straw, mingled with balm, rose leaves, and lavender flowers,” as well as hair from the tails of fine English stallions. Above the bed, an inscription in Latin read: It is a sad thing if a rich man has no heir to his property.

Graham's famed Celestial Bed

The pair of would-be parents would be serenaded with soft music (sometimes played and sung by the young Emily Lyon) as they cavorted in the spectacular bed. They could watch themselves in the large mirror suspended above them on the ceiling, while behind them, electricity crackled across the headboard, ostensibly filling the air with what Graham referred to as a magnetic fluid that was “calculated to give the necessary degree of strength and exertion to the nerves.”

Graham also espoused radical dietary beliefs, insisting that people should 'abstain totally from flesh and blood, from all liquors but cold water and fresh milk, and from excessive sexual indulgence., He also believed that many human ailments were due to wearing woolen clothing.

Although the Temple of Health was wildly successful for a number of years, by 1783 or 84 (depending on which source you believe), Graham was deeply in debt. He moved back to Edinburgh, where he began to tout the efficacy of a new cure-all—mud baths. Graham trumpeted these treatments as the secret to immortality, insisting that people could absorb all the nutrients necessary to sustain life simply by bathing in mud. Naturally, like every good quack, he assured his customers that he himself had availed himself of the cure with astounding success, claiming that he had survived two weeks immersed in mud with no outside nourishment except for a few drops of water.

Not too many years later, Graham either got religion or went mad, depending on how you look at it. He founded the New Jerusalem Church (in which he was the only member) and began signing all his letters “Servant of the Lord, O.W.L.” (Oh, Wonderful Love). In 1792, he fasted for fifteen days and covered his naked body in grass turf. Charitable even in dementia, he was seen walking the streets stripping off all his clothes, to give them to the poor. The authorities were not amused, however. In 1794, Graham was arrested for lewdness; he died soon after.

So, was Dr. Graham crackers? Ever had a mud bath? Been slathered with seaweed at a spa? Went “swimming” in the Dead Sea? Ever been hooked up to a modern-day “stim” machine? Have you ever subjected yourself to a new-age treatment or “cure” that turns out to be pretty old-fashioned? Maybe James Graham wasn’t such a charlatan after all!

Welcome Back, Elizabeth Hoyt

To Taste Temptation

by Elizabeth Hoyt

TO TASTE TEMPTATION is set in the Georgian era. What about the book made it vital to set it during this time period?

TO TASTE TEMPTATION is part of a four book series set around four veterans of the French and Indian War in the American Colonies. It actually takes place in 1764, six years after the (fictional) massacre of the 28^th Regiment of Foot, which my heroes all survived. I wanted to use the French and Indian War as the backdrop because first of all it took place in America, so I could introduce an American hero ;-) and secondly because I wanted a war in which the motives were a little fuzzy. Obviously the British were fighting the French for control of the New World, but that’s not quite the same as fighting to defend one’s country, which they would later do during the Napoleonic wars.

Tell us a little about your hero.

Samuel Hartley is an American Colonist. He grew up in the backwoods of Pennsylvania and hunted with his father for the family food. When his parents died he went from a cabin in the woods to living in a boys’ boarding school in New England. Later, he takes over his uncle’s importing business in Boston and builds the company. At the beginning of TO TASTE TEMPTATION, he’s a very wealthy businessman.

Along the way, though, Sam was in the Colonial army where he was a ranger. Rangers were elite companies trained in tracking, shooting, trapping, and spying. They were known for their lightning ambushes and their ability to move in the woods of North America. Army Rangers today are the descendents of these rangers.

What sparked this book? Was it a character? An historical event? A scene you just couldn’t get out of your head?

I wanted to write about men returning from war and the difficulties they sometimes have entering civilian life again. I suppose in a way what sparked my interest was the current war in Iraq, but I’ve always been interested in men who’ve been to war. We now have names for things like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but naming the problem is actually fairly recent. It was known in the American Civil War and came to be called shell shock in WWI, but before that there wasn’t a name for the problem that many veterans of war had.

Did you have to do any major research for this book? Did you stumble across anything really interesting that you didn’t already know?

Lots and lots of research, lol! I actually didn’t know all that much about the French and Indian War before I started, so I had some basic history to learn, such as whose side various tribes of American Indians were on. I researched British regiments, what they wore, what they ate (apparently a lot of ground up dried peas among other things!) army tactics, and various types of soldiers. For instance, a pioneer was a guy who went ahead of the marching regiment and cleared the trail. At one point in the book, Sam is cleaning his gun, so I had to figure out what kind gun he’d have (a Kentucky rifle—which led to a short digression into what, exactly, rifling is) and then how he’d clean it (boiling water, lint, and oil.) Sam wears American Indian leggings and moccasins for most of the book, and I had to find out what they would look like and more importantly, how one would take them off!

What/Who do you like to read?

Just about everything. At the moment I’m in a paranormal phase—I can’t wait for JR Ward’s latest! Right now I’m reading Jim Butcher’s PROVEN GUILTY.

Care to share a bit about your writing process? Are you a pantser or a plotter? Do you write multiple drafts or clean up as you go?

I’m a revision queen. I do a detailed plot outline and character sketches, but I have a tendency to go off my outline fairly often. My first draft is VERY rough. Then I revise, send it to my agent, revise again, send it to my editor, and revise a third or fourth time. It’s all in the rewrite. ;-)

What are you planning to work on next?

Well, TO TASTE TEMPTATION is the first of a four part series called The Legend of the Four Soldiers. Next up is November’s TO SEDUCE A SINNER. Here’s the back cover copy:

THE ONE THING HE CANNOT REVEAL

For years, Melisande Fleming has loved Lord Vale from afar . . . watching him seduce a succession of lovers, and once, catching a glimpse of heartbreaking depths beneath his roguish veneer. When he’s jilted on his wedding day, she boldly offers to be his.

TO THE ONE WOMAN HE MOST DESIRES

Vale gladly weds Melisande, if only to produce an heir. But he’s pleasantly surprised: A shy and proper Lady by day, she’s a wanton at night, giving him her body—though not her heart.

IS HIS DEEPEST NEED . . .

Determined to learn her secrets, this sinner starts to woo his seductive new wife—while hiding the nightmares from his soldiering days in the Colonies that still haunt him. Yet when a deadly betrayal from the past threatens to tear them apart, Lord Vale must bare his soul to the woman he married . . . or risk losing her forever.

The Little Ice Age

Most of us who write Regency set history are familiar with 1816 the “Year Without a Summer” but how many of us know that this was just one year in a period commonly referred to as The Little Ice Age?

The book, by Brian Fagan, was my introduction to the story. According to Fagan, who studied archaeology and anthropology at Pembroke College in Cambridge, this period of abnormal global chill lasted from 1300-1850.

There is debate on the length of the LIA and the extent of this atypical cooling pattern. There are various causes presented in research, among them "decreased solar activity and increased volcanic activity” (Wikipedia).

It has been argued that the change was felt more in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern, due to changes in the warmth introduced by ocean patterns. One theory is that the large infusion of water from melting glaciers of the Medieval Warming Period interfered with the flow of the Gulf Stream. Several sources I Googled maintained that the Southern Hemisphere did experience a similar, if less dramatic, period of lower temperatures.

Pictured below is a graph that shows the change in temperature for the last two thousand years. The patterns are reconstructed from different studies but all show a pattern that signifies a cooling period from the late Medieval Period through the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Others maintain that the Black Death was a contributing element to the global cooling. Following the decimation of the populous of Northern Europe caused by the plague, less land was cultivated, and the spontaneous growth of forests took more carbon from the atmosphere, resulting in a period of prolonged cold weather.

This is about as much science as I can handle but if you are interested there is an enthusiastic and sometimes contentious discussion of the theories in the comments section of the Wikipedia entry.

Whether a global event or a more regionalized one, Fagan is committed to his theory that the Little Ice Age changed history.

As you begin to consider the premise, evidence pops up in social as well as in the political development of the time. Paintings by the artists of Northern Europe emphasize winter theme like this 1565 painting by Bruegel the Elder.

To focus on only one element of historical change precipitated by the Little Ice Age: the lack of adequate grain supply caused by the protractged poor growing conditions led to food shortages. Fagan maintains that the French Revolution is the result of this failing food supply. Certainly, food riots and the resulting threat of insurrection are a frequent threat during this period, up to an including post Waterloo England (my area of interest).

As much as I believe in the concept that one person can make a difference I am equally fascinated by this larger view of how nature can change our world – one more element in the truth that man and nature are so inextricably bound. Your thoughts?

Why Blue or Green Eyes?

It has been said that eyes are the window into the soul---for a writer that means eye color is part of your heroine’s (or heroe's) character. Human eye color is determined by a number of factors, including the amount of melanin in the iris, as well as the thickness of iris, which causes light to be absorbed differently. But most of us have noticed the predominance of blue-eyed and green-eyed heroines in historical romance? Green eyes are particularly popular in medieval heroines, and blue eyes are common in the fair-skinned, light haired historical heroine of European descent. Since most historicals are set in Europe, there's a reason. A few interesting facts about green eyes and blue eyes:

Green Eyes
Extremely beautiful and very rare, truly green eyes are a recessive trait that exist in only 1-2% of the world population. Part of their rarity is because blue eyes are dominant over green eyes. Hazel eyes, a more common color, are a combination of medium blue eyes and a dark brown. Hazel eyes appear to change color depending on the light. So yes, this is possible (a feature I’ve seen in many heroines and heroes). In short, we see a lot of green eyes (more correctly, hazel eyes) in European heroines because blue eyes are common in people of European decent.

Blue Eyes
Though blue eyes are a recessive trait, they are a highly desirable characteristic in female historical heroines. One study shows that blue eyed men seek out blue-eyed women from an evolutionary standpoint in order to verify paternity.

Almost 90% of Icelanders have blue or green eyes. Outside of Iceland, blue eyes are most common in Northern European countries, and especially in Ireland and the UK. Not surprisingly, a 2002 study found the prevalence of blue eye color among Whites in the United States to be 33.8% for those born between 1936 and 1951 compared to 57.4% for those born between 1899 and 1905 (reflecting our European roots---pun intended!).

Today, only 17% of Americans have blue eyes, reflecting our ever-changing multicultural heritage. Interestingly, all presidents since Richard Nixon have had blue eyes. Kensut speculates voters subconsciously register a preference for someone with “deeper roots” in America. In any case, the number of blue-eyed people in the US continues to decline.

I’ve seen all colors of eyes in historical romance. I took some heat for giving my hero steel-gray eyes (a real eye color) in DARK RIDER, and I even looked up amber eyes---surprised to learn that’s a real color, too. I remember a paranormal romance with a heroine whose eyes changed color with the weather---which I thought was very cool.

What striking eye-color of a character made an impression on you? I can't remember the color of Mr. Darcy's eyes--can anyone recall? Was it even mentioned?

Welcome, Claudia Dain!

The Courtesan's Secret
by Claudia Dain
Available Now!

Lady Louisa fell in love with Lord Dutton exactly three years ago and never fell out. It was past time for him to fall in love with her. Long past time. What was wrong with Dutton? Couldn't he see that she was the very ideal sort of wife for him? The picture of ginger haired beauty and sparkling wit? And her bosom was quite nice, too.

After watching the speed with which Caroline, Sophia's daughter, managed to snag a husband, Louisa has come to the logical conclusion that if she could only have Sophia help her then Louisa and Dutton would find themselves quickly married. With Dutton as her goal, Louisa swallows her pride and asks Sophia for help in acquiring the man of her dreams.

Sophia is more than happy to help a woman get the man of her dreams, but is Dutton that man? Lord Henry Blakesley seems a much better match for the fiery Louisa. And Sophia, an ex-courtesan, has no qualms at all in arranging things so that Louisa sees Blakesley in a new light. But it's a secret...no one can know that Louisa sought help in snaring a man from a former courtesan.

But in London, secrets are as rare as hen's teeth.

THE COURTESAN'S SECRET is set in 1802 LONDON. How did you become interested in this time period? What you love about it?

I love the Regency period, along with the rest of the world. Anyone who's seen or read Pride and Prejudice and loved it falls equally in love with the Regency, don't they? It's a fascinating time, poised between bawdy Georgian England and buttoned-up Victorian England, the end of the Revolutionary conflict in America and the beginning of the French Revolution and Napoleon on the continent. Tension up, down, and sideways!

Anything that constrained you or that you had to plot carefully around?

I turned my gaze to the American continent instead of the European one. My anchor character, Sophia Dalby, is half Iroquois and half British nobility. She straddles both worlds culturally and emotionally so I had to find sources that would give me insight into the wars, politics, treaties, cultural values, etc, for both continents, both cultures, over a 70 year period, from about 1750 to 1820. I'm still researching, still finding bits of essential information, so I step carefully until I'm sure I have exactly what I need. As this is a multi-book series, I'm going to be researching and stepping carefully for a long time to come!

Anything you flat-out altered or “fudged”? If so, why?

In planning The Courtesan's Secret, I decided not to focus on certain elements of detail that other authors can spend a good amount of time on; there aren't a lot of descriptions of interiors or clothes, no lengthy and proper introductions, no scene of the maid stoking the fire with the appropriate tool. It was definitely a decision on my part to "use up" my allotted word count on external and internal dialog. Did I fudge the physical details? Probably, but I was more concerned with getting the culture right, that internal compass that we all learn from living in a society.

Any gaffs or mea culpas you want to fess up to before readers get their hands on the book? I know I always seem to find one after the book has gone to press. *sigh*

Well, after banging my head against British titles for three years, pounding every correct form into my head, I've found that no one else much cares. Reviewers have yet to get the titles of the characters right, and even the blurb copy tends to be wrong. What can you do?

Tell us a little about your hero. Something fun, like his favorite childhood pet, or his first kiss.

Oh, this is such an interesting question because it points out how we go about writing, the different ways we each have of finding the story and the characters. My hero: he doesn't have a pet during the course of the action in The Courtesan's Secret...so he doesn't have a pet. My mind never went there, never went back to his childhood. He is as we find him, a full grown man at a party one night in April. My hero is very observant, sarcastic, and a closet romantic. He was extremely fun to write because he zinged the heroine nearly every time he opened his mouth, all to hide his romantic nature from her.

What sparked this book? Was it a character? An historical event? A scene you just couldn’t get out of your head?

It's the character of Sophia Dalby, without question. She's the driving force behind all the books, the fulcrum on which all the Courtesan books rest. I'm definitely a character driven writer and not a plot driven one, and Sophia is the character of all characters! I can't get her out of my head, and don't want to. She's endlessly entertaining.

Did you have to do any major research for this book? Did you stumble across anything really interesting that you didn’t already know?

I did! And that's always so much fun. I had no idea that the Indian nations of America were so vital to European politics. While European power struggles were being fought on American soil, the various Indian tribes aligned with the European powers. All the alliances shifted with each treaty, each battle, each gift. Because France and England specifically sought to have as many Indians as possible on their side, they loaded the Indians with gifts. Not the string of cheap beads we often hear about, but the best of the best. While the colonists were struggling to buy a cheap gun or making do with a flaky pot, the Indians were given the most technologically advanced firearms of the period and cooking on the best iron skillets. Mirrors, for example, were very expensive, a true luxury item in America. The Indians were dripping in mirrors! This fascinated me. Plus, whoever had the most Indian allies in any specific battle were the usual winners. The French and English spent the lion's share of their financial resources and time trying to make sure the Indians stayed or strayed over to their side.

What/Who do you like to read?

I love reading Regencies, obviously, but the problem is that I can't read one while I'm writing one! When I'm between books, I read Liz Carlyle, Sabrina Jeffries, Deb Marlowe, Karen Hawkins, Suzanne Enoch, Julia London, Mary Balogh. When I'm writing, I read Harlan Coben, Karen Rose, Tess Gerritsen: suspense! I need to take a breath in a completely different world when I'm writing.

Care to share a bit about your writing process? Are you a pantser or a plotter? Do you write multiple drafts or clean up as you go?

I'm a pantser, almost completely. I do quite a bit of research before I even have an idea for a book; everything in my writing process springs from the research. Once I have an idea, and that usually means a character, I just jump in and start writing. I write one draft on the computer. I don't read back as I go forward, I just keep writing and writing. Once I finish, I read it through on the computer, cleaning it up. Then I print it off and my DH reads it. He's my cold reader. He fixes all the typos I missed, makes notations where he was confused and where he was delighted, I go back and clean it up again, then off it goes to my editor. No critique partners. No input at all while I'm writing. Even my poor editor has to play by my rules. Any other voices in my head while I'm writing and I can't hear the voice of the story.

What are you planning to work on next?

I've just turned in the third book in the Courtesan series, The Courtesan's Wager, and am about to begin the fourth book. I know who the heroine is in this book (as yet untitled), and I *think* I know the hero, but as to what will happen? I have no idea! I'm a bit gun shy because in The Courtesan's Wager, a new hero sprang up one-third of the way into the book. He was *not* supposed to be the hero! It's humiliating and a bit scary, having a book run roughshod over me that way. I only hope this next book is better behaved. I can dream, can't I?

An Epistolary Introduction to the World of Charles & Mélanie Fraser

I've always loved letters in novels. Darcy's letter to Elizabeth. Captain Wentworth's incredible love letter to Anne Elliot. The wonderfully witty and insightful collection of letters from various characters that sets the stage for Dorothy Sayers's BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON. Novels told entirely in letters, from Choderlos de Laclos's LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES to Steven Brust and Emma Bull's FREEDOM AND NECESSITY. I love reading the letters of real historical people for research. In particular, I find myself often returning to the witty and insightful comments of Emily Cowper and Harriet Granville.

When I decided to write an epilogue for DAUGHTER OF THE GAME'S reissue as SECRETS OF A LADY, I knew from the first that I wanted to do it in the form of a letter from Charles to Mélanie. When my editor, Lucia Macro, asked me to write something for the A+ extras section and said it was sort of like DVD extras and I could do anything I wanted, I knew at once that I wanted to write a series of additional letters between the characters. I did the same thing for the reissue of BENEATH A SILENT MOON, writing a letter from Charles to Mélanie for the epilogue (I at first thought I'd make this one from Mélanie to Charles, but it seemed to fit the book better for Charles to write the letter) and writing more letters for the A+ section.

I write a new letter from one of my characters every week for the Fraser Correspondence section of my website. I thought it would be fun to post one of those letters, which serves as a good introduction to Charles and Mélanie and BENEATH A SILENT MOON. This letter is an entirely fictional letter written by the very real historical figure Emily Cowper (daughter of Lady Melbourne, sister of William Lamb, sister-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb) to her the equally very real Harriet Granville (daughter of the Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, cousin of Lady Caroline Lamb). I wove letters between Emily and Harriet into the A+ section of BENEATH A SILENT MOON.

George Street 23 March 1817

Dearest Harriet,

I saw them last night. Charles Fraser and his wife. Lady Frances gave a ball to welcome them to London. I must say Mélanie Fraser dresses superbly—that was plain when they were here two and a half years ago, and now one can tell she’s had all her gowns made in Paris. They certainly don’t hang about each other unbecomingly. Charles danced the first dance with her, then spent a good portion of the evening in the library with David Mallinson and Oliver Lydgate and Gideon Carne and some others. Harry went in at one point and told me they were discussing Habeas Corpus. Mélanie Fraser danced a number of dances in her husband’s absence and didn’t seem in the least concerned. Nor did Charles look the least bit jealous when he returned to the ballroom late in the evening to find his wife surrounded by a throng of admirers. So the whole idea that she someone how seduced and bewitched him and addled his reason is nonsensical. Not that I ever gave much credence to it. The whole idea of Charles Fraser being bewitched by anyone is patently absurd. If there’s one thing that man is not it’s a besotted fool. She’s certainly done very well for herself to have escaped Spain (which cannot be at all a comfortable place to live just now( and married a man so comfortably situated, but who can blame her. A girl with no family and fortune must look out for herself. She has a very elegant manner—a touch informal but doesn’t put herself forward disagreeably. And she does seem genuinely fond her children. I’ve seen her in the park with them several times.

Gisèle Fraser, by the way, danced two waltzes with Val Talbot (rather closer than I would care to see Minny dancing with anyone when she’s of an age to dance). I think they would have danced a third time had Evie not gone up and pulled her cousin away. Such a sensible girl, Evie Mortimer. Honoria didn’t look best pleased either. Of course, I suspect she found the whole occasion of the ball uncomfortable, but to her credit she behaved beautifully. She went to talk to Charles and his wife as soon as she arrived. She didn’t linger overly long, but she appeared to say everything that is proper, just as she always does. I wonder if she’s more likely to marry now that Charles is definitely taken. She’d make an excellent match for Fred—just the sort of wife a diplomat needs.

Quen put in an appearance late. For Charles’s sake, I suspect, Quen’s always been fond of him. He danced once with Evie and once with Mélanie Fraser. Kenneth Fraser also did not stay long, though he did dance with his daughter-in-law. Lord Cowper says he heard Mr. Fraser murmur that he’d never expected his son to do so well for himself. Every time I sigh over my own family, I remind myself that I could have been born a Fraser. Or a Talbot.

Yours most affectionately,
Emily

Do you like letters in novels? What do you think of letters written entirely in novels? Any favorite examples to suggest?