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As I researched dances for Grey to teach Beatrice, I had trouble finding one with set figures for a specific piece of music. Although “Jenny’s Market” from Project Duchess was created specifically for the Emma BBC series, all of the figures can be found in a variety of English country dances, so I went with that one. Plus, it looked sexier than a lot of the others. Hey, just because I wanted a dance that was true to the period doesn’t mean I had to sacrifice intimacy to get it!
So, if you’re a fan of the Regency period, you’ve probably heard about the London Frost Fair of 1814, when the Thames froze for four days, and people set up fairground booths on the ice. They even led an elephant across! But you may not know why it happened. It was partly due to the Little Ice Age, which engulfed many parts of the world from around 1600 to 1850. Since seven possible causes have been postulated for why that happened, we won’t get into that. The upshot is that the Thames was wider and slower then, so the decrease in temperatures resulted in a number of frost fairs being held during those centuries. London Bridge also had more pilings that dammed up the river with ice in winter.
After 1814, the Thames never saw another Frost Fair. London Bridge was rebuilt with less pilings. The river was embanked, which helped it flow more freely. And the weather grew warmer. Don’t you wish you could have experienced a Frost Fair on the Thames? I do!
Although the word “jigsaw” didn’t exist before the jig saw was invented in the late Victorian age, such puzzles did exist, cut out with marquetry saws. They were called “dissected maps.” Apparently, puzzles go back to the 1700’s, when they were primarily maps cut along the borders of the countries/counties, etc. You can see an example of two on my Pinterest page. I even saw them mentioned in a period account as a popular gift for loved ones on Valentine’s Day!
You probably know that “Auld Lang Syne” was written by Scottish poet Robert Burns, but you may not know that he was taking some of it from an older folk song. He’s the one who retooled it into its current version and popularized it in Scotland, and then, once he had it published, in England. Regency revelers sang his poem on New Year’s Eve just as we do, although it may not have been sung to the same tune. Still, it’s amazing how far back the sentiments go. One precursor to his poem that uses similar verses was published in 1711!
Believe it or not, I didn’t invent the erotic automaton watch in The Pleasures of Passion. They were popular throughout the late Regency and Victorian periods. Some even had two faces—the one that showed on the front with a sedate animated scene and the hidden one that was more erotic. This one, for example, has a much naughtier inside panel, but you could just enjoy the outside panel where the boat rocks, the servant rows the boat, and the gentleman plays the mandolin. Very clever. Can’t you just imagine certain young men carrying these sorts of watches, if only to provoke their relations?
I did some writing while in Vegas, which was a surreal experience because Warren’s book involves gambling, and it definitely enhanced the writing experience to be in a city so dedicated to that. Most Regency bucks gambled primarily in private clubs (like St. George’s) or gaming hells. My book concerns the latter, since I wanted to have a sort of tavern/gaming hell combo where tavern maids served the men. I had to scour the internet for period descriptions and images of hells, which is how I was reminded of Crockford’s, a club run by a former fishmonger. Originally he worked in a gaming hell, and I found an excellent article at the Smithsonian magazine about it. It’s clear from the article that gaming hells were designed to cheat the customers at every turn. I guess we know why they were called hells! As usual, the house always wins, one way or the other.
Regency folks loved card games, and many of those were either precursors to games we play now or are actually still being played. Whist, for example, became our present-day Bridge. Patience is our modern Solitaire, and Vingt-un (which is what the Brits called it; only the French called it Vingt-et-un) is actually our Blackjack. And Piquet (Warren and Delia’s game of choice) is still being played as it was centuries ago. In fact, the term carte blanche came directly from Piquet. It’s a very complicated game, so I haven’t attempted to master it, but you can find tutorials on the internet if that interests you.
I admit it. I invented the widow’s auction that is the basis for my reissued novella, The Widow’s Auction. To my knowledge, no such auction ever occurred in a gentlemen’s club. But other similarly scandalous events took place. Like the Cyprian’s Ball held in the Argyll Rooms annually during the period. There’s even a famous print from the period depicting it.
A Cyprian was a courtesan, and the ball enabled women who couldn’t attend balls and society events normally to have their own where they could scope out potential protectors and vice-versa. So my auction is a bit of a variation on that, with masked respectable widows auctioning off their favors to gentlemen for one night. After all, why should courtesans have all the fun?
Regency and Georgian men and women could be quite randy. The Duke of Queensbury had an illegitimate daughter, Mary, by an Italian marchesa (the equivalent of an English marchioness) and easily convinced an earl to marry his darling daughter. The founder of the Smithsonian Museum started life as the illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland and a wealthy Bath widow. He was born abroad (discreetly) in Paris, and eventually brought back to England to be educated. William IV, Prinny’s youngest brother, had ten illegitimate children with an actress, all of whom were given titles or married off to lords. The higher in rank you were, the more your indiscretions were overlooked or swept under the table. But lower-ranking women could have a rough time. Many was the story of a fallen woman on the stage or in the brothels who’d been a gentlewoman before she was seduced. Which is why my club members are trying to keep the rogues at bay!
Yvette’s hobby of collecting slang is a bit out there, but it’s feasible. Regency women loved wordplay. If you read or saw the adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, you may remember Emma and Harriet collecting riddles and charades (word-puzzles) for a book. And slang dictionaries were more common than one would think. Captain Grose really did produce A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, and Pierce Egan really did have a book called Boxiana, with references to boxing slang. What’s more, one of the earliest female lexicographers I could find, Anna Brownlow Murphy, wrote a children’s dictionary that was published in 1814 and widely used in the Regency. It appeared in multiple editions. So why not a female lexicographer who collects slang?