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Card Games

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.

Cyprians

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?

Illegitimate Children

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!

Dictionaries

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?

Artists

In researching The Art of Sinning, I discovered quite a few American artists who ended up touring or settling in England. The most famous one, of course, is Benjamin West, one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Arts. Already established as a portrait painter in Pennsylvania, he went to England initially for a visit and ended up residing there for the rest of his life. Alvan Fisher, an American landscapist, toured England around the time of my story. Samuel Morse (yes, the co-developer of Morse code) was also a painter and member of The Royal Academy, who studied in England under West. In fact, several American artists of the period studied there—Robert Fulton, Charles Wilson Peale, and Washington Allston, among others. So Jeremy was part of a long-standing tradition with American artists.

Invented Names

Several English Christian names were invented by authors. Shakespeare gave us Miranda, Jessica, Imogen, and Perdita. The poet Sir Philip Sydney gave us Pamela, and Jonathan Swift gave us Vanessa and Stella. Araminta was coined by William Congreve or Sir John Vanbrugh, who both managed to use it. From the period right before the Regency comes Fanny Burney’s Orville (trust me, I won’t be using that one anytime soon). The poet James MacPherson invented Fiona . . . and a whole series of ancient Scottish poems that were later discovered to be not so ancient (oops!). From the Regency period, we get Sir Walter Scott’s Cedric. Now that’s one I might use.

Names

Names like Minerva and Regina were popular in the Regency because of the fascination with everything classical—Greek architecture, Roman history, antiquities of all kinds. That’s why those early Regency gowns were so toga-like—they were influenced by the costumes that the English saw on Greek and Roman figures. The vertical lines, simple designs, and emphasis on white was a tribute to their love of classical sculpture.

Eugène François Vidocq

One of my favorite parts about writing What the Duke Desires was all the research I got to do into the life of Eugène François Vidocq, who appears as a character in the novel. What a fascinating fellow! Widely regarded as father of the private detective agency, he was a brilliant man who completely changed how crimes were investigated. He really did invent tamper-proof paper for banks as well as using ballistics for the first time to solve a crime. You can check out more pics of him on my Pinterest page.

The Press

The press was as powerful a force in the Regency as it is now. Caricatures featuring “celebrities” like Prinny (George IV) and actresses and other luminaries were regularly displayed in shops, and gossip columns were rife with scandalmongers. Indeed, the Duke of Wellington was discussed in great detail and caricatured savagely after he fought a duel with the Earl of Winchilsea over politics, of all things, especially since Wellington deliberately fired wide and the earl fired in the air. Even the mighty Iron Duke couldn’t escape being pilloried in the press.

Titles

Most of the time, when you see a woman called the Countess of Whatever, it’s because she’s married to the Earl of Whatever. It’s called a “courtesy title.” Women gain courtesy titles by being married to men with titles (and children gain courtesy titles on behalf of their father . . . until the sons inherit the title). But once in a while, with Scottish or Irish titles or with titles going back centuries, the patent (the legal construct, if you will) for the title will allow for a woman to inherit. In those very rare cases, the Countess of Whatever inherits the title and estate from her father, the Earl of Whatever. She doesn’t have to marry anyone to get it. I love that.