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The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned

6 Jan

I was very excited to hear about the new upcoming exhibition at Hampton Court Palace this summer: The Wild, the Beautiful and The Damned, which looks at the beautiful and rather decadent art work produced under the aegis of the later Stuart courts.

This is particularly well timed for me as I am working on a novel about Charles II’s youngest sister and need to go to Hampton Court Palace any way for a bit of a research poke about. I’ve been looking at a lot of Lely paintings lately as part of my work on this book and as usual have fallen hopelessly in love with his peachy, drowsy eyed, sultry lipped sitters. Okay, they may well all look pretty much the same but, seriously, who cares when they look completely gorgeous?

‘The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned, explores the meaning of beauty, and the lives and loves of the courtesans and libertines who lived and died in the Stuart Court during the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III & Mary II and Anne (1660-1714).

At the heart of the exhibition will be portraits of Charles II’s principal mistresses, including Nell Gwyn and Barbara Villiers, brought together at the palace for the first time. Also on display are the resident ‘beautiful women’ of the Royal Court: Peter Lely’s ‘Windsor Beauties’ and Godfrey Kneller’s ‘Hampton Court Beauties’, as we explore their lives and reputations amidst the elegance and decadence of the late 17th century. They will be joined by other Royal Collection paintings, rarely seen portraits from private and public collections, and exquisite fashion accessories, as the exhibition brings to life the glamour and magnificence of the Baroque period.

Visitors will be taken on a journey through the Queens State apartments, guided by the lives of the virtuous and the corrupt. Discover what beauty meant at court – how to display grace and how to use looks to gain attention and influence. Visitors will learn about the beauty secrets of the day, marvel at the fashions and elegance of court life, but also learn what happens when beauty fades, and when a life of virtue is rewarded by obscurity, and a life of vice by syphilis and death. The exhibition explores the story of how kings, queens and courtesans swept away the Puritanical solemnity of the mid-17th century, and attempted to rewrite the moral code of social behaviour.

Brett Dolman, Historic Royal Palaces exhibition curator, said: “Visitors to the exhibition will discover that ‘Beauty’ is not just an aesthetic experience: it is an instrument of ambition, a conduit to pleasure and a magnet for sleaze. This is a story about great art, but also about mistresses and adultery. Visitors will understand what beauty meant and how it was used in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and they will reflect, perhaps, on their own appreciation of beauty today in the 21st century.

The exhibition explores the ambiguity at the heart of Hampton Court Palace; beauty was a good thing, a reflection of divine perfection, an indication of virtue, but it was also a good excuse to decorate your bedchamber with soft-core private delights. Beauty was admired and revered, but also pursued and possessed. In the exotic world of the Restoration court, beauty could be exploited: women used it to command a new personal and political influence at the heart of government, but were themselves chased and abused, pilloried as whores.”

Charles II, the ‘merry monarch, ruled for twenty-five flamboyant, indulgent and decadent years and pursued ‘beauty’ in all its forms. He ruled over a court famous for its elegance and its magnificence, and he collected artworks and mistresses with equal enthusiasm. He fathered a dozen illegitimate children, but left no legitimate heirs. His brother, James II, matched a similar thirst for infidelity with a less acceptable taste for catholicism, and was turfed out of the country after only three years as king. James’s two daughters, Mary and Anne, who had grown up amidst the debauchery of the Stuart court, each became queens in their own right. The beautiful baroque splendour of Hampton Court was remodelled during the dying days of the last Stuart queens.‘ — from the official press release.

I absolutely cannot wait to see this and will, of course, be reported back to you all straight away just as soon as I have! I can’t imagine anything more splendid than seeing these wonderful art works in such a fabulous setting.

The Wild, The Beautiful and the Damned is running from the 5th April 2012 until the 30th September 2012. Tickets are £15.40 for adults and £7.70 for children under sixteen. There are also going to be special late openings on the first Monday of every month between May and September and also ‘Salacious Gossip’ evening tours giving raunchy little titbits that aren’t suitable for children’s ears!

I’ll be combining my visit to this with a trip to Kensington Palace, which reopens on the 26th March after a £12 million transformation. I can’t wait to see the Victoria Revealed permanent exhibit that I was told about on my visit to the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection and also the new display of dresses worn by Diana, Princess of Wales.

(Many thanks to Tim, the HRP press officer for the information and poster picture!)

Garrow’ Law

15 Dec

I don’t watch much television – mostly because most shows are awful but also because I work from home and like to be able to honestly say that I don’t spend all day watching really terrible television. Instead, I watch really terrible films.

I’m in mourning right now as two of the few shows that I regularly watch are either at an end (Garrow’s Law) or coming to an end (Rev.) – they’d better both come back for another series next year! In the meantime though I have new episodes of Downton Abbey and Sherlock to perk me up over the Christmas holidays so it’s not all bad.

I came to Garrow’s Law rather late in the day but love it passionately now. Okay, some of the set details and costuming is on the thoughtless side of ropey (plus, how is Lady Sarah a Lady? Does she not therefore have a peer for a father who can use his influence on her behalf? And doesn’t her husband care about the succession of his title and name?) but the quality of the script, direction and acting more than compensates for such niggles. Plus I sort of fancy the actor who plays Garrow. I probably wouldn’t look twice at him without his wig on but c’est la guerre as we like to say while manning the barricades. Oh and I’d happily watch Rupert Graves act in pretty much ANYTHING.

For the unaware, Garrow’s Law is a BBC drama about a public spirited and pioneering barrister (who actually existed) with a complicated private life, operating in Georgian London with all its iniquities, squalor and social changes. Most of the action takes place outside the courtroom as Garrow deals with personal strife, gathers evidence and takes the odd beating but there’s also plenty of legal drama too – all based on actual trials from the time so there’s a mix of riots, murders, nasty slave traders, thieves and forgers.

It’s really fascinating, gripping and often touching viewing.

I watched the last episode of series three last night and was riveted from the very beginning. I won’t give away what happens but it was brilliant with a great courtroom battle, sad goodbyes and a happy ending plus a brief appearance of foxy Mr Fox himself. Cor etc.

I’d definitely recommend watching it if you get the chance.

The notorious murder on Ratcliffe Highway, 1811

7 Dec

The Ripper murders of 1888 were not the first time that the populace of the East End had been scared out their wits and the area had been discussed in hushed tones throughout the country. The crimes of the murderer known as Jack the Ripper are considered quintessentially Victorian nowadays thanks to their gin scented, gas lit ambience and the sinister shadow of the top hatted and opera cloaked murderer slinking through the shadows.

It seems weird therefore to reflect that an equally horrifying murder case had occured in what could be considered the altogether more charming London of 1811, which in the popular imagination belongs to Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Beau Brummell and Quality Street.

But so it was.

At 11.50pm on the evening of the 7th December 1811, linen shop owner Timothy Marr, who was just twenty four years old had just come to the end of a long and busy day at his premises at 29 Ratcliffe Highway and, his thoughts turning to supper, decided to send his family’s servant girl, Margaret Jewell out in search of oysters, which were presumably a favourite snack of both Timothy and his young wife, Celia who had given birth just three months earlier to their son, also called Timothy.

Margaret set out into the darkness with her basket, only to find that the oyster shop was closed, upon which she went back home to see her master working in his office. She then decided to head out again to pay off an outstanding bill at the local bakery, only to be thwarted a second time when this establishment was also shut for the night. Daunted, Margaret then went back to Marr’s shop, only to find all the windows dark and herself locked out. Confused, the girl repeatedly rang the bell, only for it to be apparently ignored despite hearing footsteps and, once, the baby’s cry inside.

It was about twenty minutes past midnight by this time and poor bewildered Margaret continued to hammer at and kick the door and ring the bell, without any response for another forty minutes or so until George Olney, the local nightwatchman came along. They had a discussion about what to do and he decided to hammer on the door also until finally the next door neighbour, John Murray came down and informed them that he’d heard some strange noises come from the shop at around midnight, but had not been concerned enough to investigate further.

By now, the trio were entirely alarmed and Murray decided to try and enter the house through the back door, which proved to still be open. He wandered through the house and eventually came across the body of Thomas Marr’s young shop boy, James Gowan, his head completely battered while close by lay the corpse of Celia Marr in a pool of blood, her head also smashed in. Murray panicked at this point and ran to open the front door of the shop, outside which a small crowd had gathered. ‘Murder! Murder!’ he yelled out into the street as people began to enter the house.

It did not take them long to discover the body of Timothy Marr, dead like the others in the shop but the worst discovery was made shortly afterwards when a cry of ‘Where is the baby?’ went up and the child was found lying dead in his cradle, his throat deeply slashed and his head also battered in a cruel and horrible act of violence.

Charles Horton of the Thames Police, which were based at Wapping was called out to the scene and began his investigation by looking around the house, where the bodies still lay as they had been found. It must have been a horrible task, but despite the confusion of the moment, the darkness, the inevitable disturbance of the scene and the lack of proper forensics, he was able to discern various important points: that the blade that had cut the baby’s throat was absent, that the murder weapon was most probably a shipwright’s hammer that was discovered covered in blood and matted hair, that a considerable sum of money in cash was in the house but had been left undisturbed and that there were two sets of bloody footprints leading away from the back door of the house.

The horrifying and seemingly senseless murder of an innocent family on Ratcliffe Highway was to send ripples of horror and fear throughout the capital. Attacks and murder were every day life in London, particularly in the East End but this was different – this case not only involved a perfectly ordinary and respectable family, not to mention an innocent baby but it had also occured indoors and that was enough to send everyone into a panic. Everyone could cope with the notion that roaming the streets late at night wasn’t the wisest thing to do and you were courting the possibility of a smack to the head and an opportunistic mugging, however, the possibility that you could be butchered in your own home? No.

The investigation continued for the next fortnight and gradually fear and speculation began to simmer down until a night watch man walking past the King’s Arms taverns on New Gravel Lane encountered a young man, John Turner, who turned out to be lodger at the tavern, hanging half naked out of a window and attempting to make his escape down some sheets that he had knotted together.

‘There’s been a murder!’ he shouted down to the night watchman, whose heart must surely have sunk when he heard this. They entered the tavern through the hatch that led down to cellar and quickly discovered the bodies of the publican, John Williamson, his wife Elizabeth and their maid servant, Bridget – all of whom had had their heads battered in the same manner as the victims on Radcliffe Highway and then their throats cut. The only survivor was the unfortunate Turner and also the teenaged granddaughter of the Williamson couple, Kitty Stillwell, who had managed to sleep through the entire attack and had, for some reason, not been discovered by the culprits.

At this point, panic reached fever pitch and a serious investigation was instigated, with many arrests being made. The government also offered a large reward for the apprehension of the murderer and speculation was rife as to who was responsible and why and if there were to be more murders.

It seemed as though the case was solved when on the 21st December, a seaman called John Williams, who was lodging at the Pear Tree pub in Wapping, was arrested on suspicion of committing the murders after an anonymous contact had supplied the police with information about him. It was said that he and Marr had been shipmates at some point, had fallen out and that he had harboured a murderous grudge against him ever since.

There was other alleged evidence against the unfortunate Williams – he had been seen drinking at the Kings Arms just before the murder of the Williamsons and he was also said to be of a bad character. In a period that didn’t have the same exacting and scientific processes as we have now, for someone to be considered of ‘bad character’ was considered evidence enough of possible wrong doing.

Williams was therefore arrested and taken to Coldbath Fields Prison and it was decided that on the 27th December he should be brought out to face the magistrates and be cross examined about the murders. However, when the day came, he hanged himself in his cell.

Even though the chief suspect in the case had thwarted them, it was decided that the trial should go ahead and it was decided that Williams must surely be guilty with his suicide rather than facing them all presumably being taken as the greatest indication of all of his guilt. However, the case against him was flimsy indeed and it is almost certain that he was not guilty of the murders.

However, at the time, his guilt was absolutely accepted and it was decided that although he had committed suicide, the people of the district were not to be cheated of a spectacle of guilt and punishment. Therefore, the rather morbid decision was made that his corpse should be paraded through the streets of the area so that all of the London could see that he was dead and that justice, of sorts, had been served.

Therefore, on New Year’s Eve 1811, a vast crowd gathered in Wapping and Shadwell, lining the route that the grisly procession was due to take. It’s estimated that around ten thousand people came out that day to watch the corpse of John Williams, exposed to all their eyes as he lay on his back on a piece of wood, being pulled slowly past. In a mark of respect to the victims of his believed crimes, the ghastly cortege paused for ten minutes outside each murder scene before moving on.

Eventually the procession came to an end at the crossroads of Cable Street and Cannon Street, where a grave had already been dug for the dead sea man. As befitted a suicide, the body was dragged down from its cart and a stake driven through the heart before it was buried in an upright kneeling position into its grave, only a few yards away from the final resting places of the murder victims in the church yard of the imposing white Hawksmoor church, St George in the East.

The body of John Williams remained there, undisturbed and mostly forgotten beneath the feet of Londoners and an ever changing city until finally it was dug up again in 1886, when a gas main was placed on the spot. The landlord of the nearby Crown and Dolphin pub helped himself to the skull, which was then kept behind the bar.

Dickens’ London

29 Nov

Longterm readers of this blog will know that I am passionately interested in Victorian London, particularly its grimy, seedy underbelly so I was thrilled when Haus Publishing sent me a copy of Dickens’s London by Peter Clark to review.

‘Few novelists have written so intimately about a city in the way that Charles Dickens wrote about London. A near-photographic memory made his contact with the city indelible from a very young age and it remained his constant focus. Virginia Woolf maintained that, ‘we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens,’ as he produces ‘characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks.’

But the ‘character’ he was drawn back to throughout his novels was London itself, all aspects of the capital from the coaching inns of his early years to the taverns and watermen of the Thames; these were the constant cityscapes of his life and work.

Based on five walks in central London, Peter Clark illuminates the settings of Dickens’s London, his life, his journalism and his fiction. He also explores ‘The First Suburbs’ (Camden Town, Chelsea, Greenwich, Hampstead, Highgate and Limehouse) as they feature in Dickens’s writing.‘

There’s several books available about Victorian London but this is one is unique as it actually guides you through the streets on five fascinating and in-depth walking tours, which lead you past buildings and places that appear in Dickens’ work (with relevant quotes) or were important to his life. I haven’t attempted one of the tours yet (but will do next time I am in London) but found this a fascinating armchair read as it really leaves no stone uncovered and also highlights just how intertwined Dickens and the city were.

This book is ideal for anyone interested in Victorian London – especially those who are keen on really long walks! I can’t wait to give one of the walks a go.

This brilliant book is a bargain at £7.99 from Haus Publishing’s site and readers who use the Exclusive To This Blog discount code of MMG25 will get 25% off! (It says it is coming out in February but is actually available to buy right now.)

Thanks so much to Haus for my review copy!

As Shadows Haunting

25 Oct

I’m rereading the most marvellous book at the moment. Oh dear, that sentence sounded very Grand Dame didn’t it? I expect you are all imagining me now – reclining in my peach marabou negligée on a pink brocade and gilt chaise longue, eating violet cremes out of a box with an enormous pink silk bow and petting a cluster of sulky faced pugs as I dictate this post to my long suffering secretary. Well, I’m not one to burst bubbles (although have you ever noticed how people who start sentences with ‘I don’t want to burst your bubble’ always seem to take the most extreme glee in doing so – FUN SPOILERS that they are) but I am in fact perched on an Ikea sofa and watching Upstairs, Downstairs as I type this nonsense into my MacBook with my own fair hands.

Anyway, back to the point, the CRUX if you will of this blog post. I am, my dears, reading the most MARVELLOUS book. What’s that you say, Agnes? No, I will not stop letting the pugs drop violet fondant on my negligée. One can always send off to Paris for another.

Oh very well.

Anyway, this book is great. It’s As Shadows Haunting by Dinah Lampitt, which is a time slip ‘ghost’ novel set in London. No, no don’t run away! I don’t usually like this sort of thing to be honest – the works of Barbara Erskine and Diana Gabaldon have never really appealed to me all that much but this book is, I think particularly good.

Dinah Lampitt is of course the author of Pour The Dark Wine which is a great novel set at the Tudor court, which I am particularly fond of as it doesn’t portray Jane Seymour (boo! hiss!) as a simpering little miss. In As Shadows Haunting, however Lampitt writes about the much later court of George II and III as seen through the eyes of the beauteous Lady Sarah Lennox (yes, she of The Aristocrats by Stella Tillyard) who is the dashing and strong willed heroine of the Georgian part of the book.

The heroine of the ‘modern’ (I say ‘modern’ but this book was published in 1994, which is when I first read it so oh woe, it’s not really modern at all – oh crikey, you know you’re Getting On A Bit when years that you remember very well are not modern any more. I was quite woebegone when a drama set in the year I was born was described as a ‘costume drama’) part of the book is a musician called Sidonie (one of my favourite names – if there had ever been a Miss Guillotine-Towers, she was to be called Eliza Sidonie) who plays old instruments to immense acclaim in large London venues.

We are often told about Sidonie’s ‘fox coloured’ hair, green eyes and pale face so I imagine her looking a bit like Tori Amos, which means that I imagine her hot doctor love interest as looking a bit like a cross between Nick Cave and Trent Reznor. This is possibly not what was intended. He is very Irish though, so he is, to be sure. No, I’m not mocking Irish people, that’s just how he talks in the book.

Look, I’m not really selling this to you am I? Anyway, Sidonie buys a flat with a garden door that leads onto the grounds of the now ruined Holland House, where Lady Sarah had once lived while it was in its glory days with her sister, Lady Caroline Fox and her rambunctious husband and offspring. It doesn’t take long for Sidonie to find herself making visits to Sarah’s world, where the other girl is swiftly falling in love with the new young king George to the consternation of his advisors while all the while she is troubled by the apparently spectral visions of a lovely young woman with red hair who stands and watches her from the edge of her world…

Anyway, if you like time slippy type books and especially those with bits set in Georgian London then you’ll probably love this one. It’s a massively entertaining read and, like The Children of Green Knowe which is keeps recalling to mind for various reasons, makes perfect winter reading.

The RNA Regency Day

9 Oct

First of all – look at my new hair! FINALLY, the perfect pink!

Now, I’ll be honest and say here that I didn’t actually have that great a day. In fact, it has almost made it into my Top Fifty Bad Days Of All Time, mainly because it culminated in me bursting into hysterical tears in the middle of Paddington Station but also because of other stuff which I won’t go into here in case I drive you all away.

I’d been looking forward to the Romantic Novelist’s Association Regency Celebration Day for MONTHS as it was going to be focussed on two of my all time favourite authors – Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. What could be more perfect than a day of talks with like minded enthusiasts? Nothing, that’s what.

Perhaps things would have been better if I hadn’t got up at 5am to get my train to London. I’m not usually up and about at such hours but did enjoy the sight of the sun rising over Berkshire as I queued up in the buffet car. I felt quite lively, in fact, when I got to Paddington so I decided to walk through Hyde Park and along Piccadilly to get to the event venue, which was the rather imposing Grade I Royal Over-Seas House, just off St James’ Road.

I was still feeling lively when the event started (I just want to digress to say in a giddy Lydia Bennet manner that there were SOLDIERS in Regency costume everywhere) and so opted to pass up the first talk, about Sense and Sensibility in favour of a guided walk by Louise Allen (who is fabulous btw) around the area surrounding St James’ Palace, which was a den of iniquity and fashionable larks in the Regency period. To our delight, the walks were accompanied by two of the aforementioned Regency soldiers, which was really splendid.

We took in the famous gentlemen’s clubs of St James’ Street: Brookes’, Boodles and White’s as well as several of the fabulous shops that have stood the test of time and still stand where they were in Regency times – selling cologne, boots, hats and waistcoats to the upper class gentlemen of today. One thing that really struck me is that St James’ and Jermyn Streets are still very much Men’s Streets, even now and we spotted more than one ruddy faced Barbour garbed gentlemen popping into said shops.

Of course, the GOD of sartorial Regency shenanigans is Beau Brummell and rightly, his statue presides over Jermyn Street just as he had done in life. Naturally, we all posed with him before continuing on to take in the London Library, St James’ Square, the site of Almacks (so sad -it’s a hideous modern monolith now) and St James’ Palace as well as a few taverns and alleyways (including one that still has gas lamps!) along the way.

After this, it was back to the venue for a break. Unfortunately, I have a caffeine intolerance and when I asked if they had anything other than tea or coffee to drink, the young lady serving handed me a cup full of boiling hot plain water. Which was nice. Actually, it wasn’t. It was rubbish.

After this there was a talk by Dr Jennifer Kloester about her new biography of Georgette Heyer, which was really fascinating as she has been fortunate enough to have access to the Heyer family photographs and a LOT of information that has previously not been seen by researchers. Her love and enthusiasm for Heyer, faults and all, really shone through and some of her theories about the conception of her books were really interesting. I look forward to reading the book and reviewing it here!

Most interesting to Heyer fans will be the information that contrary to common report, Georgette Heyer was actually DESPERATE for her books to be adapted into films and television series! There’s been quite a few attempts to make them into films (let’s not mention The Reluctant Widow) but they’ve all floundered over the years. Apparently a version of Sylvester almost made it onto screen a few years ago and, most excitingly, one of the screenwriters of Cranford was apparently working on something similar involving interweaving three Heyer books together. How amazing would that be?! I’ve found a mention of it here, which suggests it was to be a BBC production…

After all this excitement, I had a choice between being taught Regency dancing or learning more about Regency scents and smells. I was seriously flagging by this point so opted for the latter, which was very interesting and involved sniffing and spraying a lot of pungent aromas that would have been used by Georgian and Regency ladies and gentlemen.

Lunch followed, which I had been dreading after the Hot Water Incident earlier on. I’d made sure that the organisers knew that I was vegan but would I be fed? What would I do if they didn’t have any food for me? I walked in to see a bazillion trays of sandwiches and my heart sank. After lurking about a bit while everyone else tucked in, I finally found one of the serving people who went off and found me my lunch – avocado with a lemon dip and also salad, which was nice. However, I’d lurked about for so long that there was nowhere on any of the tables for me to sit so I was told to eat standing up on my own at one of the serving tables at the back. Someone took pity on me (thank you!) but there were no chairs so although I was now at a table with actual people, I had to kneel on the floor to eat until a chair was found (thank you to the person who offered me theirs!). This didn’t make me feel all that great, to be honest.

After lunch, there was a panel talk about sex and the Georgians or more specifically, sex in novels about the Georgians and Regency period. This was very interesting as clearly writers do have to decide if they intend to follow their characters past the bedroom door. Personally, I try not to but do anyway. I dread to think what that says about me.

After this, there was a walk to the East India Club on St James’ Square to take afternoon tea in the actual room where the Prince Regent received the news of the Allied victory at Waterloo and also the French eagles captured from Napoleon’s troops. This was an extra that my husband had very kindly paid for (in fact he paid for the whole thing – thank you! I just wish I’d had a better time) as part of my birthday treat. The building itself looked really interesting and the room itself was lovely, although clearly much changed since 1815. The afternoon tea also looked wonderful – really gorgeous cakes with tea and coffee with, you guessed it, nothing for me. Another attendee asked what I was supposed to have with my glass of sodding tap water and it turned out that the caterer had said that they couldn’t provide me with anything so they’d decided to buy me some biscuits, which had been forgotten. They arrived eventually but only after everyone else had finished so I had to noisily and rather self consciously munch them through the rather interesting presentation about the arrival of eagles.

The day ended with a panel discussion about Austen and Heyer and whether they realised how great they were, which was also very interesting. After this, I grabbed my hot pink goodie bag and headed off to Paddington, which I eventually reached over an hour later and two minutes after my train had left. However, Atif at Paddington Station (and I’ll be writing to them to tell them just how marvellous he is) is the kindest man in the world and not only put me on the next train without me having to spend all my housekeeping on another ticket but also rang Dave to tell him I’d be about fifteen minutes late (my iPhone battery died during the day) and then texted him when I was on the train to let him know what time I would be in Bristol. What a genuinely lovely person.

I was in a right old state when I got to Bristol – tired, hungry and emotional after a day of feeling weepy and low so I had to sit down and have a bit of a cry and also eat one of the fortifying peanut butter sandwiches that Dave, realising that I hadn’t eaten much during the day, had brought with him (see, I’m not so hard to cater for!) before we went on to Tampopo for noodles and weird black rice pudding.

We were supposed to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy after this and did indeed make it into the Cinema de Luxe next door to the restaurant. We even made it into the film, but then we both ended up dozing and getting confused throughout the film. It’s one of those films where you have to actually WATCH WITH YOUR EYES AND ALSO BRAIN or it’ll never make any sense. Possibly, we should have watched Shark Night instead…

I feel bad for not being altogether happy about the days events and for having a bit of a complain, however it wasn’t all bad and I loved the walk and the talks. It’s just the bits in-between that were not exactly great.

The Double Event – 30th September 1888

30 Sep

 

On the night of the 29th September 1888, Elisabeth Stride, a slight woman with grey eyes and curling brown hair walked the streets of Whitechapel in search of clients. Unlike the flashy Victorian prostitutes of popular imagining, she was dressed soberly and rather shabbily in a black jacket and skirt and black crepe bonnet, accessorized with a posy of red roses and ferns.

She was far from home, having been born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter in November 1843 near Gothenburg in Sweden. As a teenager she had worked in domestic service before becoming a prostitute in her early twenties. Poor Elisabeth became pregnant as a young woman but delivered a stillborn child, probably as the result of a venereal disease picked up from one of her clients.

In 1866, she moved to London in order to escape her past and start afresh and after a period as a maid Elisabeth married a ship’s carpenter called John Thomas Stride, who was thirteen years her senior. For a while the couple ran a coffee shop in Poplar before separating in 1877, whereupon Elisabeth entered the local workhouse. The couple had an off/on relationship after this but had finally ended their marriage by 1881 and by 1885, she was living with a labourer called Michael Kidney with whom she had a very unstable and occasionally violent relationship, fuelled by her alcoholism which led to several appearances in the dock for drunken and disorderly behaviour.

Her husband died of TB in October 1884, but it seems that Elisabeth had been in the habit of telling people that he and two of their fictitious nine children had been drowned in 1878 in the sinking of the Princess Alice into the Thames. There’s nothing unusual about this – the lives of the fallen women of Whitechapel were so awful and dreary that they often made up stories to make themselves appear more interesting and also in the hopes it might make their clients cough up a few more pennies out of pity.

On the evening of the 29th September, Elisabeth left her mean lodgings on the notoriously dreadful Flower and Dean Street and went in search of clients. A witness later claimed to see her at 11pm near Berner Street with a man in a bowler hat and then she was spotted again forty five minutes later with another man, this time wearing a peaked cap. Then at 12.35, a PC William Smith saw her on Berner’s Street, standing opposite a working men’s club with a man in a felt hard hat.

Where would Ripperology be without the various types of Victorian male headgear?

Less than half an hour after this last sighting, at around 1am,  Elisabeth’s body was discovered by the steward of the men’s club in the next door Dutfield’s Yard when he led his horse and trap inside and almost tripped over her as she lay, her throat cut, on the cobbles.

Later, a witness, Israel Schwartz would come forward to say that he saw Elisabeth being attacked at the yard’s entrance by a man who threw her roughly to the ground. Clearly she had had a busy night but no money was found on her body, which adds to the possibility that the unfortunate Elisabeth was not actually murdered by Jack the Ripper but by someone else, who escaped justice thanks to the hysteria and panic surrounding the Ripper case in 1888.

At 8.30pm on the 29th September 1888, Catherine Eddowes, a short auburn haired woman who was known for her hot temper and loud, ready laughter was discovered lying drunk on Aldgate High Street by PC Louis Robinson, who arrested her and took her to Bishopsgate Police Station where she was held until 1am, when she was considered sober enough to be released onto the streets again, just as not far away, Elisabeth Stride’s body was being discovered.

Like all of the Ripper’s victims, Catherine had had a chequered past having been born in Wolverhampton in April 1842 then moving to London as an infant before going back up north again as a teenager to work as a tin plate stamper. This job doesn’t seem to have lasted long before Eddowes was sacked and moved in with an ex soldier Thomas Conway, with whom she had three children after they moved down to London together.

In what is now becoming a familiar tale, Eddowes became an alcoholic and she and Conway split up in 1880. Catherine left the family home while her ex boyfriend changed his and the children’s surname so that she wouldn’t be able to find them. Within a year she was living with a new man, John Kelly at a lodging house on Flower and Dean Street, just down the road from Elisabeth Stride and here she made a living of sorts from prostitution and whatever she could find.

In the summer of 1888, she and John Kelly left London to spend the hot months hop picking in the Kent countryside but didn’t manage to hang on to their wages for very long so that on the 29th September, they were forced to literally split their last sixpence and go their separate ways until things improved. Catherine had two pence, enough for her lodging for the night but had presumably spent the evening working so that she had enough money to be sufficiently drunk to be drunk and disorderly on Aldgate High Street.

When Eddowes was released from Bishopsgate Police Station in the early hours of the next morning she gave her name as Mary Ann Kelly and disappeared into the night, choosing not to return to Flower and Dean Street but instead return to Aldgate, possibly in search either of more booze or a few more clients for the night.

She was last seen alive at 1.35am by three men who were leaving a club together on Duke Street and saw her standing at the entrance to Church Passage, which led from Duke Street down to Mitre Square. Her horribly mutilated body was discovered ten minutes later at around 1.45am by the beat police officer, PC Edward Watkins who had walked through the square at 1.33am and seen nothing meaning that the unfortunate woman had been killed in the space of just ten minutes before the killer made his escape…

My latest writing project – Minette

13 Sep

After complaining about being quiet because I’d lost my creative mojo down the back of the sofa, I am now being quiet because it has come back with a VENGEANCE and I am totally over excited about my new project. For those of you at the back who haven’t been paying attention, I’m working on a novel about Henriette d’Orleans, the sister of Charles II and sister in law (and possible more?) of Louis XIV who has the distinction of being one of very few royal figures born in my very own West Country.

I’ll admit that work on this book was dragging along a bit as I didn’t know where to start and was missing a common thread between the main book, written from the point of view of Henriette and its start and end, which focusses on Henriette’s grand-daughter, Marie Adélaïde, who has come to Versailles to marry her cousin, the Duc de Bourgogne.

HOWEVER, I had a massive break through while weeping over research notes the other day when I realised with a jolt of excitement that the estranged wife of Henriette’s lover, Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche (who was previously the boyfriend of her husband – yes, the court of the young Louis XIV was like one of those Jerry Springer episodes when they have to continually bring ever increasing amounts of chairs on stage to accommodate everyone) would later remarry after his death to the Duc du Lude and go on to become lady in waiting to Marie Adélaïde.

This was serendipitous for me as I had a vague idea that an older woman of the court would take the young princess in hand, give her Henriette’s diary and tell her to sort herself out lest she Go The Same Way due to Worldly Folly but had no idea who to pick on or whether I should just make her up. You can imagine my excitement therefore when the Duchesse du Lude (who Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon detested by the way, which just adds to the deliciousness) sauntered into view, her towering lace fontanges wobbling slightly on her head.

So yes. I’m excited now and raring to go. I’m using Scrivener for this book, which is a bit of a head scratching adventure as I get to grips with its iniquities. True to form, I’ve yet to actually WRITE anything with it, but I have a bazillion character folders on there full of portraits, dates and gossip about Olympe de Mancini (pictured above on horseback, looking very natty indeed), Louise de la Vallière, Lady Castlemaine, the wicked Marquis de Vardes (if anyone can find me a portrait of him, incidentally, I’ll love them forever as I’m drawing blanks in all my usual places), Armand de Gramont and Henriette herself, who is taking shape slowly but surely in my mind as an irresistible mixture of charm, grace and mischief.

Historical fiction can involve all the drudgery and elation of detective work – which is one of the reasons why I love it so much. I also love it because it gives one fabulous opportunities to take *cough ahem* research trips so I think a jaunt down the road to Exeter may be in order as well as visits to Fontainebleau, the Palais Royal and Saint Cloud. My knowledge of the precise logistics of the Restoration court of Charles II is currently lamentably hazy (don’t worry – I have a MOUNTAIN of books about Charles, his court, his family and his hangers on in my study upstairs) though so I’ll need to work out where I need to be visiting in London too but luckily that isn’t far away. I’m hoping this means I can go to Hampton Court really.

I’m still planning to take up English Civil War re-enactment as part of my research too, but my husband is being a bit unenthusiastic about this. Interesting fact about my husband: he apparently went to the same school in Bristol as Philippa Gregory (only many years later) and came away thinking that Henry VIII’s second wife was called ‘Jane of Leaves’.

One thing though – this book was originally intended to be a follow up, of sorts, of my book about the childhood of Marie Antoinette as events will mostly be recounted by Henriette herself, but it’s rapidly becoming clear that this won’t be a book for children. Another thing – I’m now on official boycott of all novels set at the court of Louis XIV. Annoyingly, I haven’t managed to read Before Versailles by Karleen Koen yet but it’ll be something to look forward to once I’ve finished.

I wanted to illustrate this post with totally gratuitous pictures of Rupert Graves in Charles II: The Power and the Passion but couldn’t find any, alas. I may have to do some screen grabbing later on while I’m putting together the ALL IMPORTANT ‘Minette’ playlist on iTunes.

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