Since I haven't published much of anything lately, I am posting a speech I made in Summer 2015. it's probably far too long!
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
BEAU MONDE CONFERENCE
NEW YORK, JULY 22 2015
It’s a
great honor to be invited to address the Beau Monde Conference and a particular
thrill to do it in New York. I immigrated here some decades ago and it remains
my favorite city. Any other spiritual
New Yorkers here? Wrong crowd maybe. How
about spiritual Londoners? It’s wonderful to be in a room with this marvelous
collection of ladies devoted to romances set in the Regency era.
I couldn’t
remember how long I’ve been a member of the Beau Monde so I checked and
discovered that it’s just about ten years. I joined RWA and the Beau Monde when
I finished my first manuscript. I have great respect for the enthusiasm,
knowledge and, yes, occasional lunacy of the membership.
You are a
very opinionated bunch and not afraid to admit it. Although we write about an
era where everyone was supposedly extremely polite and proper, the ladies and
occasional gentleman of the Beau Monde are never afraid to disagree –with the
utmost politesse, of course. I am both enlightened and entertained when the
loop gets into it on a subject, often some minute detail about horses, or
costumes, or officers’ commissions, or glassware, or gloves. Or extremely
strong not to say frank opinions on sexuality or the demands of historical
accuracy.
Later I
shall be talking a little about how Regency romance is a big tent and there’s
room for books for all tastes. But these online controversies brighten up the
dull, lonely writers’ day. And – unlike most of the internet - members of the Beau Monde always express
themselves in impeccable English and without resort to shouty caps.
This is the
first time I’ve ever given a keynote address. I believe they are supposed to be
inspirational and encourage listeners to follow their dream. I belong to the
Noel Coward school of dream encouragement: Don’t Put Your Daughter on the
Stage, Mrs. Worthington.
If you are
insane enough to wish to be a published novelist you may look forward to
deadlines, rejection, bad reviews, publishers who don’t do what you want, a
dirty house, and a spreading rear end, none of which are at all fun. Since a
large proportion of this audience already knows this, and the rest of you are
undoubtedly going to ignore my excellent advice, I conclude the inspirational portion
of my speech here.
Instead, I
am going to talk about how I managed to end up in this crazy and – okay I admit
it, occasionally satisfying – business.
In particular I want to talk about my beloved father, who died early
this year, and the things I learned from him that helped me to become a writer.
We all come
to historical romance through a passion for history. Mine certainly started
early. I was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, within view of the cathedral,
arguably – and we Salisbury natives will argue this – the most perfect example
of Gothic architecture in the world.
My father
was a farmer. His farm had been part of a large estate that included a park
nominally designed by Capability Brown, though there’s no evidence the famous
landscaper spent more than about ten minutes there. At one end of the park lies
Old Wardour Castle, a fourteenth century ruin that was blown up in the Civil
War. At the other end is New Wardour
Castle, a large Palladian mansion built by the eighth Baron Arundell of Wardour.
The
Arundells were a rich and prominent Roman Catholic family. However, and this is
a story I wouldn’t tell to anyone except this crowd, someone got careless and forgot to renew the entail. When
the 8th Lord went heavily into debt as a result of lavish building
and art collecting, instead of saying “sorry guys but I can’t sell anything
because of the entail,” the family ended up having to dispose of a big portion
of his estates and actually pay the tradesmen, shock horror. The fortunes of
the family went into slow decline and more land was sold off. My parents bought
their farm some time after World War II. By the time I came along the big house
was occupied by a girls’ boarding school and the Arundells lived and still do,
in a perfectly nice dower house.
The
farmhouse, next to an artificial lake and within sight of the Old Castle, had
been converted in the 19th century from a classical bathhouse
complete with rusticated portico. So I grew up in an eighteenth century folly,
a perfect location for a future romance writer.
Wardour was
a beautiful and fascinating place to grow up. The local history was part of our
DNA. My siblings and I climbed all over the ruins of the Old Castle, pretending
to be Lady Blanche Arundell (she was a baroness not the daughter of an earl but
everyone called her Lady Blanche. So sue me.) who dressed her ladies up as
soldiers to make the Roundheads think the castle was well defended. The area is
chock-a-block with stately homes, like Longleat, Stourhead, and Wilton, as well
as lesser known mansions. We went to
Bath for shopping and the orthodontist.
Apart from
being pickled in historical surroundings, we also had parents, our father in
particular, who loved history. My father’s mother was Polish but a native
French speaker and he grew up bilingual. He read history at Oxford – as did I –
and specialized in the French Revolution. Our house was full of books that
reflected his interests.
Here are
some specific things I remember learning from him.
~ He taught
me how to identify and date the four main styles of English gothic churches,
and there was a test.
“Early
English?”
“Wrong.
Perpendicular.”
~ He taught
me to love classical music and opera. BBC Radio 3 was his constant companion
and he went to the opera whenever and wherever he could, delighting in
collecting obscure performances like Puccini’s Tosca sung in Russian in Warsaw. In his memory, I completed and
rewrote an abandoned manuscript about a Regency era opera singer and it makes
me sad that he won’t be able to read it. It was published this year as Secrets of a Soprano.
~ Both my
parents were dedicated art lovers, with artists on both sides of the family. My
father was a talented amateur painter.
For as long as I can remember no museum or gallery was permitted to be
passed by unvisited. As a result I am constantly aware of what my characters
have the walls of their houses and my last series – the Wild Quartet – was
designed around art collecting.
~ How to construct
a compost heap. Hm. Why this you may
wonder? Papa was a brilliant gardener,
almost single handedly turning a boggy wilderness into a garden that was open
to the public as part of the National Gardens Scheme. When I took up gardening,
as one does once one is old enough to have patience for an activity that takes
months and years to bear fruit, he came to Vermont and got me organized. “Building a compost heap,” he said, “is easy.
It’s the same principle as a haystack.”
“Who do you think I am? Bathesheba Everdene?” I replied. Since I am not
a character from a Thomas Hardy novel, I had to be taught. And dammit if I didn’t
include the knowledge in a novel. That one never made it out of the hard drive
but my haystack knowledge lurks in the back of my mind and will be put to use
one day.
~ My father
loved travel and his post-farming career gave him lots of scope. He loved to
take his children on his business trips, fitting in churches and museums and
galleries between his appointments. I remember an epic trip around France and
Italy with one of my sisters. In case you think we weren’t normal teenagers, he
complained that we talked only about our diets, our suntans, and the boys that
followed us around the sites. However, he was immensely proud of all his
children and secretly loved girl talk. He took a great interest in anything we
studied. When I took a course at university on post-Restoration English
architecture, he organized a tour of country houses of the period such as
Chatsworth and Castle Howard, always punctuated by good dinners with lots of
wine.
~ Once I
showed him a paper I’d written for high school history. He harrumphed a bit
then sat me down and showed me how to to plan an essay so that the facts and
arguments flowed correctly. His summary
method works well for fiction too. I still use it when I have a tricky and
complicated scene to write.
He was very
picky about writing. At Stowe School he was taught by the novelist T.H. White, the
author of a series of Arthurian novels. He didn’t like White’s books – he had
no taste for fantasy and thought Tolkien and J.K. Rowling were rubbish – but he
did like elegant prose. He had no patience for academic writing and a couple of
books he published on European agricultural policy were quite readable, despite
their dry subject matter.
~ My father
didn’t read much fiction, apart from Anthony Trollope and Evelyn Waugh. But he
was supportive of my aspirations and proud of my books. In his last year or so
his reading matter consisted of The Times,
The Spectator, The Tablet, and the novels of Miranda Neville.
My mother,
who died several years ago, consumed novels by the bucketload so there were
always plenty around the house for me. Her reading was eclectic ranging from
the classics to thrillers. One summer we both got hooked on the Jalna series by
the Canadian Mazo de la Roche, a good long multigenerational saga. But our
tastes didn’t always align.
She did not
like romance.
She loved
Jane Austen – Emma and Mansfield Park were her favorites – but
she disapproved of Pride and Prejudice,
believing that Mr. Darcy gave girls unrealistic ideas about men.
I always
loved my fiction with historical settings, going back to children’s books by
writers like Cynthia Harnett and Rosemary Sutcliffe. I glommed Jean Plaidy’s
historical novels, especially those about the Tudor and Stuart kings and
queens. For a while my career ambition was to be a royal mistress. When I was
about twelve my mother returned from a shopping expedition unable to find the
Plaidy I wanted and handed me—with a slight sniff of disapproval—Georgette
Heyer’s Powder and Patch. Thus began
my love affair with romance.
I read all
of Heyer but I also liked the smutty historicals like Forever Amber, the Catherine novels of Juliette Benzoni, and the
Angelique books, another French series. Juliette Benzoni inspired me to take a
course on medieval France and Burgundy at university. I read traditional
Regencies by Heyer imitators when I could find them, and the occasional super-shameful
Mills and Boon and Barbara Cartland that I kept under my mattress.
How did I
progress from a romance reader to a writer.
And why the Regency? Apparently I had early ambitions. When my father
moved out of our childhood home, I found a box of school papers that included
some early chapters of romances, both historical and contemporary, written in
my late teens. They are notable mainly for a complete inability to control
backstory.
As for the
Regency, it wasn’t because of my education. At school we did the Tudors and
Stuarts about ten times, then jumped to 1815, skimmed the Great Reform Bill and
on to Gladstone and Disraeli. The long 18th century was, I think,
thought too boring for school children except for a few wars.
Wolfe and
Quebec, check.
American
War of Independence, check.
French
Revolution, check.
Battle of
Waterloo, check.
And the
Reform Bill and the Irish Question were sooo much more interesting. Every fourteen-year-old’s
idea of a rattling good time.
I gradually
came to the conclusion that what I liked most about history was entertaining personalities
in beautiful clothes.
There was
Heyer, of course, but I really came to the early 19th century via
France. I loved – and still love – French history and went through a major
Napoleon phase. (Don’t all hiss.) I started reading the English side. Arthur
Bryant’s Age of Elegance is an oldie but
goodie that I recommend to anyone new to the period. I picked up a used copy of
Creevey’s letters and found the old toadeater an excellent read.
Life and
work nipped my budding romance career in the bud. After I graduated, I got a
job cataloguing autograph letters and manuscripts in the rare book department
at Christie’s auction house in London, in King Street right opposite where
Almack’s was located. My first day I was
handed a big box of papers that turned out to be records of a militia regiment
in the 1790s. What a great job – I had never been so happy in my life. For this
they paid me? Not very much, I may say, but still.
I ended up
doing rare books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s in New York, and as you may know,
I wrote a series about Regency book collectors. But that was way in the future. I married, moved to Vermont, had a daughter,
worked in Special Collections at Dartmouth College for a while, and then as a
journalist on a small town newspaper, and started a business. I kind of forgot about romance. I still occasionally read one, usually a trad
Regency, but I missed the bodice ripper era, never read Kathleen Woodiwiss
until last year. Then at some point I picked up a Catherine Coulter at a yard
sale and I loved it. Whoa! Regency romance with sex. Never mind that the
history was a bit wonky. Then I discovered Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney and
other historical writers of the 1990s.
At some
point I decided to try and write one myself. Pretty much every job I ever had
involved writing, but always non-fiction. Fiction was immensely liberating. Suddenly
I was allowed to Make Stuff Up and it was great. It took about five years from
typing the words Chapter One on my first novel until I saw my first book (not
the same one) on the table at my local Borders. Borders. Remember them? So much
has changed since that day in 2009.
I won’t to
go into details about the seismic shift in the publishing business. Despite the
stresses of the current market for historical romance, Regency romance is still
far and away the most popular period and for that we can all be thankful. I
believe that one of the reasons for its enduring popularity is that it now
includes such a wide range of books. This year the Beau Monde is celebrating
the 80th anniversary of Georgette Heyer’s first Regency. Ebooks and
self-publishing have revived the traditional Regency which, ten years ago, was
declared dead. And that is awesome. It’s also great that our genre incorporates
inspirationals, paranormals, time travel, alternative history, erotica, gay and
lesbian romance, and every conceivable variation of the original Regency
romance. You can write like Jane Austen or you can write an essentially modern
romance set in a playful version of Regency life. Or somewhere in between. There
are no limits. It’s up to the writer and the taste of the reader.
None of us
writes early nineteenth century books. We don’t have the same language, the same
attitudes, and we don’t really know
what life was like then. Neither do our readers. We can only make educated
guesses based on our own interpretation of the historical record, and we all
make our own choices about what to include, what to ignore, what to change. I
have come to the conclusion that all discussions about historical accuracy,
while often enjoyable, especially among friends, are as fruitless as arguing
about whether you like the color blue.
What shade? Is teal green or blue? It is ultimately a matter of taste.
In my spare
time I am a bit of political junky. As an analogy to the way we use our common
historical setting, I’ve been thinking about the way two different TV series
treat American presidential politics.
The West Wing manages to say profound things
about our politics and gives the viewer an excellent sense of how the White
House and Washington work. And yet much of what happens in that show couldn’t
or wouldn’t ever happen in reality. The show concerns a happy band of insiders
who stay together through two presidential terms and three elections, best
friends with the first family and never leaving their jobs. It wouldn’t and
doesn’t happen. Kind of like clubs full of hot dukes. The West Wing simplified politics in the interests of a good story.
Then there
is Scandal. Nominally set in the highest level of Washington politics, you have
the Oval Office, and the Secret Service and the Chief of Staff and Congress –
all the same trappings as The West Wing.
But it’s completely unmoored from reality. (Perhaps Scandal is more like a club full of hot dukes.) Spoiler alert for
those who haven’t discovered this cracktastic show: In a presidential election
there are three candidates, all of whom have committed murder, including of a
Supreme Court Justice. It’s entertaining soap opera with barely a veneer of
truth. There’s room for both The West
Wing and Scandal – they are
different fictional interpretations of the same real world.
Writers do
the same thing. Think of some of the stars of Regency romance. Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh,
Stephanie Laurens, Julie Anne Long, to name a random few, all play in the
Regency sandbox and come up with different and distinctive versions of life in
early nineteenth century Britain. What they have in common is an ability to
write stories that grip the reader and characters readers want to know. No
author is loved by all readers but if you create a world that appeals to enough
of them, they will keep coming back and you will succeed.
