Madame Guillotine

The women of Whitechapel arming themselves against the Ripper. Nice work ladies. Photo: The Museum of London.

I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit, haven’t I? Sorry about that. The fact of the matter is that I’ve been hard at work on my novel about the Whitechapel Murders in 1888, which is turning into a bit of an epic project with all sorts of things going on.

As some of you may recall, I started working on the so called Ripper Book about eighteen months ago but then shelved it while I wrote Minette. However, it’s now my main focus and I have to say that allowing it to ferment in my mind for eighteen months was probably the best thing that I could have done as it’s pretty much POURING out on to the page now and, I think, is going pretty well.

As originally planned, it’s written in the first person and tells the story of the so called Autumn Of Terror from the point of view of three very different young women who are kicking about in Whitechapel during the murders – Alice, the rather prim daughter of a wealthy and renowned artist; Emma, a down on her luck reformed prostitute and Clara, the fresh faced daughter of a local policeman (who is based on one of my own ancestors). Although The Secret Diary and Minette were both suitable for young adult readers this is my first attempt at what I think is a ‘proper’ young adult book and it’s a bit of a weird one, I suppose because of the subject matter that I’m dealing with although not TOO weird really when I remind myself that I set out on the Ripperology path at the age of thirteen and that the Ripper murders are now taught in schools as part of the GCSE syllabus.

Anyway, I’m rattling through chapter ten at the moment, which is the point when the story goes from Really Dark to Really Dark Indeed and I have to say that I am enjoying myself excessively. I asked my husband to have a read of the first eight chapters the other day because I thought it might not be quite dark enough and he, bless him, looked quite troubled by the whole thing and simply commented that ‘They’ve really hit rock bottom, some of your characters, haven’t they?’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that they haven’t even scratched the surface of rock bottom yet…

Christ Church, Spitalfields where two of my characters are currently patiently sitting eating bagels and waiting for me to finish writing this blog post. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Anyhow, that’s where I am right now – ten chapters in and loving every minute of writing it. I really hope you all like it too when you get a chance to read it! I originally planned to bring this out for Kindle at Christmas but erm, let’s just say that I’m not actually sure what’s happening with it now. In a good way? I don’t really want to think about that right now though – I just want to write this book and have some fun with it.

In other writing news, Minette is doing brilliantly and has shifted well over a thousand copies now since it came out a month ago, which is rubbish, I know, compared with other people I might mention but I’m really happy with that as I was told by a few people that no one would want to read it because of the period and so on. In THEIR faces then. No, seriously, I’m thrilled with how well it’s been doing and the amazing reviews it’s garnered. I’ll be starting work on the sequel, Madame as soon as the Ripper Book (it really needs a title – I badly want to call it simply Whitechapel but the ITV series got there first, darn them!) is finished.

Graffiti on Henriques Street, Whitechapel, where Elisabeth Stride’s body was discovered. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Oh and before I forget, don’t forget that Blood Sisters is now available to buy as a paperback from Amazon UK and from this here blog if you’re elsewhere in the world.

I’d better get back to writing now. I am currently planning some research trips to sites around Whitechapel and am massively excited about getting back to my favourite bit of London again for a bit of a mooch around!

After feasting my eyes on the delights of In Fine Style in the Queen’s Gallery, I headed off by foot to Whitehall in search of the Banqueting House, where I intended to continue my day of Stuart frolics.

Surprisingly, I had never been to the Banqueting House before even though I know more than anyone could ever wish to know about its construction and interior thanks to all my years spent intensively studying History of Art at sixth form and university. I really ought to have visited it before now though, especially as one of, I think, the most important scenes in Minette is set outside. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like to write about places that I have never visited (making allowances of course for the fact that I write historical fiction and the past, as we all know, being a foreign country) as I don’t think you can get a full and proper idea of a place just from Google Earth. I need to see it with my own eyes.

Construction on the Banqueting House began in 1619, when it was intended by James I as a suitable place to hold the splendid court masques, receptions and entertainments that his court was so noted for. Designed by Inigo Jones, it is laid out in typical Palladium style with a long double cube room at the heart, perfectly sized to hold both a court audience and performers. It’s a beautiful space, airy and elegant and would have made a striking contrast to the rest of Whitehall Palace, which had been around since Tudor times and was a ramshackle and often confusing collection of higgledy piggledy red brick buildings, stylistically more akin to Hampton Court Palace than the beautiful palazzos of Florence, which were the inspiration for the Banqueting House.

The perfectly proportioned room is a setting though for the jewel that is Rubens’ amazing ceiling, which was commissioned by James I’s son Charles I after his death and depicts his father in various aspects of glorification, with the wonderful ‘Apotheosis of James I‘ (which depicts James I being called to Heaven) as the centre piece, flanked at each end of the hall by ‘The Union of the Crowns‘ (which celebrates the union of the English and Scottish crowns and shows Hercules beating Envy on the right and Minerva berating Ignorance on the left) and ‘The Peaceful Reign of James I‘ (which shows James as a peaceful and wise king, surrounded by personifications of Peace, Plenty, Abundance and Reason, who triumph over Avarice and Intemperate Discord).

During the reigns of the Stuart monarchs this space would have been used for all the most splendid court entertainments and events like the reception of foreign ambassadors or banquets to celebrate royal weddings. It was here that James I received Pochahontas in 1617 and was so unprepossessing that she had to ask which of the men present was the king. It was also here that his daughter in law, Henrietta Maria danced in whimsical court masques, in lavish costumes designed by Inigo Jones.

Of course the most famous event in the Banqueting House’s history is the execution of Charles I, which took place outside on the 30th January 1649 in front of an immense crowd that had gathered in Whitehall for the occasion, a stone’s throw away from where Downing Street and Trafalgar Square are now. The king was brought by foot from nearby St James’ Palace and crossed the main hall of the Banqueting House on his way to the window through which he would step out on to the specially erected scaffold.

There is of course an immense irony to the fact that one of the the unfortunate Charles’ last sights on earth would be the paintings that he had commissioned Rubens to create in honour of his father’s Divine Right of Kingship and the peacefulness of his reign.

I’ve read conflicting accounts about which window Charles I, dressed in his extra shirt so that no one would spot him shivering with cold and think that he was afraid, stepped through to get to the scaffold, ranging from one of the central ones leading out from the main hall to one above which he would have reached by walking around the gallery that runs around the top (this isn’t a musician’s gallery but was instead used by less important court hangers on who could stand here to watch the festivities below), which would have meant that his scaffold would have had to be dizzyingly high as the main hall is reached by stairs.

The official line, however, is that the scaffold was reached via a now completely bricked up window that was originally on the first landing of the stairs up to the main hall and which, if it still existed today, would be just above the now main entrance to the Banqueting House as shown in the photograph above. This would have involved a very low scaffold though, so I personally am inclined to think it was one of the central windows from the main hall.

Visiting the Banqueting House today is a bit of an odd experience – it’s a beautiful space, no doubt about that but a curiously empty one where visitors mill about beneath Rubens’ beautiful ceiling and try to find some meaning in the major historical event that happened here, assisted by the great but rather discreet display about Charles I’s execution on the stairs. I think it needs something more though – if I had my way, I would try to bring to mind the lavish and really quite extraordinary court masques and entertainments that were held here, with the mad fashions enjoyed by the Jacobean court (they had some amazing mannequins in paper Georgian costumes in the new exhibition at Hampton Court, which would look brilliant in the Banqueting House as well) and the beautiful music that flourished during the period. Actually, after the beauty of the building, that’s what struck me most – there should have been music playing.

Ultimately though, perhaps the melancholy emptiness and almost reverent hush of the Banqueting House is better though. Certainly, it seems to be an excellent place for silent contemplation, broken only by the buzz of the infernal audio guides and the trundle of people pushing wheeled mirrors along the parquet floor in order to look at the beautiful ceiling.

If you’re at all interested in the Stuarts then I’d definitely recommend a visit. Entry for adults is just a fiver, while children under sixteen are free and it’s open every day from 10am until 5pm. I’m told that there will be an evening performance of a masque at some point over the summer, which I would love to attend. How amazing.

Thanks so much for all the entries to the Robe competition! I have fired up a Random Number Generator and the winners are Kerry from Planes, Trains and Plantagenets and Hester! Thanks so much for commenting, everyone! It was so nice to see so many long time readers commenting for the first time – please come back again! If you weren’t successful this time, they are now selling copies of Robe on the Royal Collection website.

Minette, my novel about Henrietta-Anne Stuart, youngest daughter of Charles I and favourite sister of Charles II is out now for Kindle. It’s got more posh doom than you can reasonably shake a stick at and is apparently rather good too.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the blogger’s preview yesterday morning of the new exhibition In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. It must surely be testament to how thoroughly excited I was about this exhibition that I did not at all begrudge getting up at 3.30am to get there for the 9am start and proof of how ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT it is that I think it was an entirely well spent effort.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

‘This exhibition explores the sumptuous costume of British monarchs and their court during the 16th and 17th centuries through portraits in the Royal Collection. During this period fashion was central to court life and was an important way to display social status. Royalty and the elite were the tastemakers of the day, often directly influencing the styles of fashionable clothing.

In Fine Style follows the changing fashions of the period, demonstrates the spread of styles internationally and shows how clothing could convey important messages. Including works by Hans Holbein the Younger, Nicholas Hilliard, Van Dyck and Peter Lely, the exhibition brings together over 60 paintings, as well as drawings, garments, jewellery, accessories and armour.‘

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Let’s face it, if you are into royal and aristocratic portraiture, there are few collections to touch the Royal Collection and the effect when they bring some of their most wonderful pieces together to display together is really quite staggering. The rooms of the exhibition were a riot of colour, rich shimmering fabrics, glossy hair and shimmering fine lace. It was absolutely amazing.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

The layout of the exhibition and all the sumptuous imagery on display really encourages the viewer to get as close as they can to the portraits, all the better to feast your eyes on the amazing rich detailing of the fabrics, lace, jewels and trimmings on display. It really is extraordinary how much attention to detail went into even what could be considered the most trivial aspects of a costume – I was particularly struck by the lavishness of sleeves, something that our well dressed forebears clearly put a lot of thought into, lavishing lace, jewels and ribbons on them. I recalled though that making sleeves as presents, particularly to loved ones, was a popular pastime in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so clearly they were considered rather more special than they are now.

Also on display were some wonderful examples of contemporary clothes, many of which with royal associations but several there just because they are beautiful and rare examples of seventeenth century fashion. I fell a bit in love with Henrietta Maria’s crimson mule shoes, garnished with a touch of gold lace.

Naturally, I ran around like a mad thing taking photographs of EVERYTHING so here are some of the highlights. Brace yourselves for VISUAL OVERLOAD.

Details from Louis, the Grand Dauphin and his Family, Mignard, 1687. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Detail from the Three Eldest Children of Charles I, Van Dyck, 1636. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Eleanor Needham, Lady Byron, Lely, c1663. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from James II, when Duke of York with Anne Hyde, Princess Mary and Princess Anne by Lely, c1668. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Charles II when Prince of Wales, Dobson, 1644. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria, Pourbus the Younger, c1598-1600. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Margaret of Austria, Queen Consort of Philip III of Spain, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, c1605. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Portrait of a Young Girl, British School, c1630. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Prince Henry Frederick of Bohemia, Flemish School, c1616. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Alleged portrait of the young Henrietta Maria when a Princess of France, Anonymous, c1622. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, van Doort, 1609. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Portrait of a Woman, British School, c1620. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Detail from Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Mytens, 1626. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Detail from Mary Princess of Orange, Hanneman, 1655. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Lady Bowes, British School, 1630. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Portrait of a Lady, Cornelius Johnson, 1624. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Detail from Anne of Denmark. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Charles I, Van Dyck, 1645-6. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Charles I, Mytens, 1628. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Charles II Dancing at a Ball at Court, Janssens, c1660. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Mary II when Princess of Orange, Wissing, c1686-7. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Queen Henrietta Maria, Van Dyck, c1632. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Frances Stuart, later Duchess of Richmond, Lely, c1662. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Frances Stuart, later Duchess of Richmond, Huysmans, 1664. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Anne of Denmark, van Somer, 1617. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Mary of Modena, when Duchess of York, Verelst, c1675. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Anne of Denmark, Gheeraerts, 1614. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Elizabeth I when a Princess, Attributed to Scrots, c1546.Photo: Melanie Clegg. (One of my favourite portraits so I may have gone a BIT wild.)

Henry VIII, van Cleve, c1530-5. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Details from Portrait of a Man in Red, Unknown Artist, c1530-50. Photo: Melanie Clegg. This painting had a room to itself to highlight its recent conservation work and inviting visitors to speculate on the sitter’s identity.

Edward VI, Attributed to Scrots, 1546-7. Photo: Melanie Clegg.

Queen Anne Boleyn, Holbein, c1533-6. Photo: Melanie Clegg. Now before you all shout at me, this is the official identification of the Royal Collection which I have spoken with them about and agree with, mainly because I think ONLY the Queen, in this case Anne Boleyn, could have been portrayed so informally in her nightgown in this period.

Anyway, there ends my pictures! Unbelievably, I haven’t posted photographs of everything on show – this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this astonishing and really excellent exhibition.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

But wait! It doesn’t entirely end there! We were all fortunate to be given copies of this brilliant fake glossy fashion magazine from the seventeenth century. How cool is this? It was the brainchild of someone in the Royal Collections Media team, who was inspired by the fact that fashion magazines as we know them had their birth in the seventeenth century.

Anyway, I slipped two extra copies in my bag to giveaway to two lucky commenters on this post so you too can enjoy Mr Samuel Pepys’ style queries, tips on how to spot a Restoration fop and hints on when to put your sons into trousers instead of skirts and LOTS more. It’s ace.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

In Fine Style opens today at the Queen’s Gallery and is running until Sunday 6th October. Here is your timely warning that if you plan to combine a visit to the exhibition with a jaunt inside Buckingham Palace then you need to pre-book tickets for the latter well beforehand as it’s a strictly book in advance job. Unless like me you hung on to your tickets from last year so you can get in for free this summer. Woohoo.

Photo: Melanie Clegg.

ps. There’s also an excellent learning room for children with Jacobean costumes and a brilliant portrait backdrop to pose in front of as well as bags containing activities to go with the exhibition.

pps. There’s a great free interactive app to go with the exhibition. You can download the app, take photos of yourself and then make yourself look like a Tudor or Stuart beauty. It’s inspired by a totally mad miniature of Henrietta Maria in the exhibition which had her face and then a whole slew of different hairstyles, hats, BEARDS etc that could be placed on top.

Many thanks to Anna Reynolds and everyone at the Royal Collection for inviting me to such a fun event.

I thought I would take a break from weeping over the seventh chapter of The Ripper Book in order to chat a bit about my other heroine, Clara Lee whose life in Whitechapel is rather less fancy than that of Alice Redmayne with her knighted artist Papa, big house in Highbury and lovely dresses.

Clara is actually based in part on my own great great aunt Clara, who was born in Poplar in 1865, the second daughter of David Lee of H Division and his first wife, Elizabeth Barr. The real Clara Lee was actually twenty two at the time of the Ripper murders so I’ve made her a bit younger in my book but I’ve mostly left the family as it was with two girls as the eldest and four younger boys, only changing their ages to make them all younger, changing the eldest daughter’s name from Mary to Catherine and missing out the baby of the family, Beatrice, who was born in 1880.

A bit creepily, I totally forgot the names of David Lee’s actual children (this was sort of deliberate as I didn’t want to get too hung up on the facts of my family history while in the initial planning stage) and still managed to name his fictional daughter ‘Cora’, which is pretty close to Clara. I’ve changed it now though as I think Clara suits my fictional great great aunt rather better.

At the time of the 1881 census, my great great great grandfather, Sergeant David Lee was just thirty nine years old, widowed and the father of a brood of seven children, all of whom were still living with him in two flats on the Peabody building in Shadwell. His youngest child, Beatrice was just one year old, his wife Elizabeth having died giving birth to her while the next in age was my great great grandfather, Alfred who was four years old. It’s likely that David’s eldest daughters, Mary and Clara (who were seventeen and fifteen at the time of the census – the ages I have given them in my book) stayed at home in order to help look after their younger siblings.

David Lee wasn’t to remain single for long though and he remarried in Whitechapel in 1881 to a twenty seven year old widow, Harriet Cook, who came from near me in Wiltshire. Harriet already had two young children, a daughter called Alice and son called William and she went on to have another son, David, with her new husband in 1885, making a family of ten children. Blimey, crikey.

David Lee apparently put Whitechapel police station on Commercial Street down as his address on his marriage certificate so I used that as my inspiration to have he and his children living there during the 1888 murders, something that will cause no end of trouble for the fictional Clara Lee! There is basis in fact for this though – it was actually pretty usual for police officers to live in the station, some of them with their families so there would have been women, wives and relatives of the policemen, about the place at the Commercial Street and Leman Street stations so although I’ll admit that it feels a bit weird writing about a pair of adolescent girls living above Whitechapel police station in 1888, it’s actually not at all fanciful.

Although the Lee children grew up in Whitechapel and were surrounded by terrible poverty and want, not to mention the things they must have heard about when their father was involved in the hunt for Jack the Ripper, great pains seem to have been taken to make sure that they were all well educated and respectable. I’ve seen the handwriting of his widow, Harriet and his sons on the 1911 census and they all write with a fair and clear hand and have jobs as clerks, mainly in the docks area. At some point after David’s death in 1906 the Lee boys and Harriet moved out of Spitalfields and on to West Ham, the only exception being David Lee Jnr, the baby of the family who eschewed the doldrums of being a clerk in favour of the excitement of being a ‘driver on the electric railway’ and living in Highbury then Finsbury Park with his wife and daughters. At some point though, so family lore tells me, he would go on to become a policeman like his father.

I don’t know as yet what happened to the Lee girls, Mary, Clara and Beatrice – I think I will have a concerted hunt for them in the records when I’ve finished writing the book.

I couldn’t resist illustrating this post with a photograph not of Clara Lee but of myself, her great great niece, dressed to impress in Edwardian style. There’s a strong likeness running through the Lee branch of my family to myself so it isn’t entirely fanciful to think that she may well have looked at least a bit like me in real life.

My research BIBLE right now is Jack The Ripper and the East End: Introduction by Peter Ackroyd. It’s not really about the Ripper murders, so don’t get it expecting a run down of facts and figures (for that I completely recommend Jack the Ripper: CSI: Whitechapel), but is actually about the AREA at the time so is invaluable to me as I stagger through this novel.

Many thanks to Victorian Policing expert extraordinaire Neil Bell for his huge help getting me through the first few chapters.

Edit: I caved in and looked Clara up. It turns out that her middle name was Eleanor and she was born on the 15th of December 1865 at 38 Upper Randall Street, Poplar. She died at the grand old age of ninety on the 11th of April 1956 in Whipps Cross Hospital. At some point before 1901 she married someone called Walter Pease and moved out to West Ham like her step mother and brothers. It would seem that Walter was five years her junior, came from Billericay and worked as a ‘railway carriage gasman’. They had at least two children, also named Walter and Clara.

My much anticipated copy of In fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion arrived yesterday and naturally I couldn’t wait to share it with you all as I think quite a lot of you will be VERY interested in getting hold of a copy for yourselves!

In Fine Style accompanies this summer’s big exhibition of the same name at the Queen’s Gallery, which looks like it is going to be absolutely STUNNING with art and clothes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries displayed alongside each other to fully illustrate the parallels between aristocratic and royal fashion as it was depicted in portraits and worn in real life.

The book itself is GORGEOUS, a nice big hardback with a lavish array of full colour illustrations inside, many of which are close ups of paintings and clothes so that you can fully appreciate the artistry and design that went into them.

This is quite a pricey book, I suppose (I paid £28.80 for my copy but it’s been £38.80 for quite a while on Amazon as well) but I think that it’s worth every penny as almost every single page has at least one sumptuous image, either of a portrait, a detail from a portrait or an actual piece of clothing from the period, many of them associated with monarchs such as Charles I, Charles II and William III and several that even I haven’t seen before.

I haven’t had a chance to properly read it yet but a quick glance through shows that the accompanying narrative is a lively and very detailed look at fashion and the art of portraiture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with particular emphasis on the social history revealed by the way people chose to dress, particularly in their portraits.

Seriously, this book is a MUST BUY if you are at all interested in the fashion and art of that period, particularly the lavish and ornate clothes and costumes worn at the courts of the Tudor and Stuart (although there is some discussion of other European courts as well) monarchs.

Pleasingly, there are chapters devoted entirely to the clothes worn by men and children as well as women and there are also chapters on the clothes worn in war and while hunting and the costumes worn during the elaborate court masques.

The exhibition In Fine Style is running at the Queen’s Gallery, London from the 10th of May until the 6th of October and promises to be AMAZING. I should probably grab my ticket actually!

Ps. If like me you are madly interested in the massively over the top court masques of the seventeenth century then you’ll be thrilled to hear that there are plans to put one on at the Banqueting House in London. I’m SO THERE.