A Lump of Coal in Your Stocking

It’s that time of year again. Oh yes, it is indeed the holiday season, and whether you call it Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Winter Solstice, chances are you clothe it in some kind of celebration. If you’re like most of us, you probably don’t even think about where your traditions come from, since these are things you’ve been doing all your life, and which your parents and grandparents most likely did before you. You probably imagine that this is how it’s been done since time immemorial.

Not so. Before author Charles Dickens “invented” Christmas, most people would have spent a quiet day at home or, if they were of a religious bent, in church. For the average working person, not possessed of inherited wealth, taking several days off work (as we do nowadays) to shop and visit friends (not to mention eating and imbibing) was unheard of. The Victorian working classes simply could not afford to miss more work than was absolutely necessary, thus most people would work right up till the day itself, as Bob Cratchit does in Dickens’ immortal A Christmas Carol. Directly the holiday was over, he would most likely go straight back to work. Such was life for a worker in the Victorian era.

The depictions of Christmas that occur in contemporary Victorian literature, then, are very often those of the upper classes, the people for whom fancy dress balls seem to have been invented. Even the celebrations recalled in Jane Austen’s earlier Regency/Georgian era are frequently lavish affairs requiring the burning of many candles and the consumption of much coal!

A Victorian-era Christmas involved the decorated tree that is so familiar to many of us, festooned with home-made ornaments that could be readily fashioned out of common, everyday materials. Garlands made of popped popcorn, for instance, or cranberries strung together like beads, were common, as was the astonishingly dangerous practice of putting lit candles on the tree branches. The custom of decorating a cut evergreen tree came of course from Germany, and many agree that it was the German Prince Albert who brought the custom to English shores (from which it of course spread throughout the Commonwealth – which is why I, in Newfoundland, have a lit tree in my living room window.) The tradition of bringing a cut tree into the house dates back to at least the 15th century in what is today Estonia and Latvia; unlike our trees, however, the Estonians and Latvians (or Livonians, as they were then called) would sing and dance around the tree before setting it on fire. A thrilling climax, certainly, but one wonders whether such a fiery end occurred on purpose or as a result of all those candles. For the Germans, who adopted the Christmas tree around the 16th century, the cut evergreen represented the “tree of Paradise,” a prop used on the December 24th mystery play. A wikipedia article tells us that:

“The modern Christmas tree . . . originated in western Germany. The main prop of a popular medieval play about Adam and Eve was a fir tree hung with apples (paradise tree) representing the Garden of Eden. The Germans set up a paradise tree in their homes on December 24, the religious feast day of Adam and Eve. They hung wafers on it (symbolizing the host, the Christian sign of redemption); in a later tradition, the wafers were replaced by cookies of various shapes. Candles, too, were often added as the symbol of Christ. In the same room, during the Christmas season, was the Christmas pyramid, a triangular construction of wood, with shelves to hold Christmas figurines, decorated with evergreens, candles, and a star. By the 16th century, the Christmas pyramid and paradise tree had merged, becoming the Christmas tree…”

The Victorians, ever eager for the newest sensation, took the Christmas tree to their hearts and made it the centerpiece of their holiday celebrations. For many homes it was considered bad luck to remove the Christmas Tree from the house before Twelfth Night (6th January), a date known in other parts of the world as “Old Christmas,” a reference to the Eastern Orthodox practice of celebrating Christ’s birth on January 6.

Christmas presents in the Victorian era were much less lavish than they are nowadays; naturally a 19th century man could not go out and purchase, say, an iPad for a friend but could and would purchase a packet of handkerchiefs or a book. The giving of intimate articles of clothing (what were then known as ‘combinations’ for men and ‘unmentionables’ for ladies) was unheard of: for the Victorian wife who was urged to ‘lie back and think of England’ the gift of lingerie (especially exotic lingerie) was in the poorest possible taste. My own Inspector Philip Devlin resolves to purchase handkerchiefs for his Freddie, and perhaps the gift of a book; even for men who are such intimate friends, humbler gifts were considered to be in good taste. (Never mind that Devlin, earning a mere policeman’s salary, couldn’t afford much more!)

As for the threatened lump of coal in your Christmas stocking, this tradition started in Holland, where children who had misbehaved were given nothing for Christmas but a lump of coal – an injunction against further acts of childish rebellion.

Happy Christmas.

 

Pushing out the boundaries

When I booked to do this blog, I was going to do a write up of the RNA Christmas party, but plenty of people have reported back on that so I decided to muse about a conversation I’d had just last weekend over lunch with two fellow authors. How can we expand our relatively small part – historical – of a growing but still relatively small genre – GLBT romance?

I’m worried that when we promote, through all the usual social media from facebook to yahoo groups, we’re promoting to the same, small audience. Often we’re promoting to each other. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – most of us authors want to keep an eye out for new books to read and the core audience of  avid readers should be valued and cosseted. They’re our life blood.

But I’m convinced there’s a bigger market. Look at the success of Mary Renault’s books or Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. Look at how many people watchedBrokebackMountain. Think about all the fans of boybands who go crazy when there’s the slightest hint of romantic interaction (real or imagined) between the band members. Or the ladies of a certain age (classic romance readers!) who go all gooey at John Barrowman concerts when he talks about his partner Scott. How do we get these potential readers to know about our books?

Well, there’s the question and if I could answer it effectively I’d be very rich. I’m sure that attending events or being members of writing organisations which are not primarily for writers of GLBT books must help. It gets our names and our genre ‘out there’, hopefully reaching new readers with the help of the accompanying promo opportunities these organisations provide. Being alert to things which are outside our usual run of things and being brave enough to take advantage of them – posting at a different yahoo group, a chance to do a reading at a library, getting an article into a trade magazine, etc – could and should be things we look out for.

But could we be doing more, and is it something we could be doing more effectively together? Who’s up for making 2012 the year we push the boundaries out?

 

E M Forster’s gay fiction didn’t end with Maurice

I’ve read all E M Forster’s novels, starting with Maurice and working my way through the rest in no particular order. I’ve even read the fragments of novels he left behind, unfinished. They were all intriguing, some – Maurice and A Passage to India – were stunning, and the experience left me wanting more. There isn’t “more”.

After A Passage to India the novels ceased. I’ve read various theories as to why, for example his late flowering discovery of physical love somehow stifling his ability to write. There were a few short stories, of course, and I’ve been working through as many of these as I can get my hands on. Some of them are brilliant – such as the  delightful The Celestial Omnibus and the amazingly slashy Story of a Panic – while The Machine Stops is an incredible piece of science fiction which predicts the world of the webcam and the ipod. But I knew there were some stories I’d not tracked down so, when I came across The Life to Come and Other Stories, I was really excited. This collection contains some of Forster’s hitherto unpublished gay fiction: better than that it contains a highly informative introduction by Oliver Stallybrass.  

His theory about why EMF had given up writing novels is simple, and based on the writer’s letters. What he wanted to write was unpublishable at the time and what was pubslishable he didn’t want to write. He still worked on short stories, with varying degrees of success in terms of getting them accepted, and some of these were evidently for his own gratification. A number of these “indecent” stories were destroyed, as he believed they were inhibiting him artistically (what a loss!). What remains, and has made it into the collection, are some extraordinary pieces. 

Consider Maurice. Would you imagine its writer constructing tales in which a respectable married couple meet a couple of sailors at the seaside and each go off for a bit of rooty-tooty in the bushes?  Or a widower having a liaison with an amateur rent boy in the woods of the house where he’s a guest? Where the son of a late Romanic English family undergoes the “rape turns to love” trope? Or a son of the empire indulges in a liaison with a man of mixed race – a man he vilifies in public, behind his back – then kills his lover during sex, after which he commits suicide? 

As a reader I was surprised at what I found – so out of keeping with the rest of the canon – although given what I’ve read about Forster, I should have known better. There are a number of echoes in these tales of his life and his desires; do look them out if you can.

 

Balm to the Brain

Being that I’m a visual sort of person and being that I have the kind of imagination that makes connections between relatively-unconnected things, you can probably imagine the effect visual art has on me. I can’t paint or even draw a straight line without serious professional help, and the kick I get out of seeing something really great set down on canvas is without equal. More than just a kick, however, I often get a story. Maybe it’s the same kind of story the artist intended but who’s to say – artistic or authorial intention is murder to prove at the best of times – and maybe it’s something from way out of left field, but it’s always interesting and sometimes I’m driven to write it down.

One of my favourite paintings is by the American artist Edward Hopper. I’m sure you’ve seen this one: three people in pre-WWII clothes sitting at a lunch counter in some anonymous city at night. The people themselves are incidental; what arrests the viewer is the sense of space and, by extension, the sense of loneliness conveyed by that space.

Two of the people – the man and woman at the centre of the canvas – are more or less together. The third man sits “down stage” of them in an antagonistic position, not looking at them but yet (I’m certain of it) listening very closely to their conversation. I know what story this picture tells me; what does it suggest to you? (Tell me about it in the comments, if you please.)

Much of Hopper’s work was urban and much of it involved street scenes; as is the case with “Nighthawks,” above, the use of empty space conveys a feeling of loneliness that is quite personal and which at times verges on the intrusive.

The painting “Drug Store,” like “Nighthawks,” evokes the same sense of urban alienation and suggests a similar story. Unlike “Nighthawks,” there are no people in this picture. The street is utterly empty and both the drugstore and the surrounding street and sidewalks are brightly – almost garishly – lit. In contrast to the store front, the area directly adjacent to the drugstore is dark, murky and full of shadows, suggesting menace. What happened here? What could happen here? What is likely to happen here?

Another favourite artist is Maxfield Parrish, perhaps best known for his dreamy, subtly erotic illustrations of hyper-realistic nature scenes that often included the figures of young boys and women. One of the best known is “Daybreak,” with its antique Grecian columns, nude and artfully draped figures and its delicate dawn shading into full daylight.

The languid attitude of the reclining figure is in sharp contrast to the young boy leaning down: his pose suggests mischief and fun to be had, as well as artfully evoking his naked (heh) anticipation. The surrounding landscape is like something out of Tolkien, an alternate world of tranquility and pleasure, whose citizens are perhaps more devoted than most to the sensual pursuits. One assumes that times passes slowly (if at all) in this place and that there is never any hurry to go anywhere or to do anything. Perhaps the denizens of this land are the last remnants of some ancient, long-lived race predating humankind, or some weaker distillate of angel.

The Symbolist school of painters believed that art should represent absolute truths which could only be described indirectly. Thus, they painted in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. In other words, what you see isn’t always what you get. For instance, “The Pink House,” by William Degouve, which depicts an ordinary-looking house whose upstairs windows are all lit up. As a writer of inquisitive bent I immediately wonder why the windows are lit – is someone ill? Has someone died? Is there some emergency in the house?

The presence of a smaller light to the left of the house suggests someone is also awake in one of the outbuildings – a servant, perhaps, who might have been summoned to give succour or to explain. What has occurred here? What is likely to occur? Who are the principal players?

“The Pink House” is the sort of painting on which it is easy to superimpose one’s own ideas and to invent a narrative. Similarly, the paintings of American artist Andrew Wyeth present distinct narratives in their own right; for example, the haunting and evocative “Christina’s World”, below:

The figure of the young woman, positioned as it is in the foreground, demands the viewer’s attention, as do the cluster of rough-hewn wooden buildings in the background. The attitude of her body is suggestive of many things: fear, anticipation, resignation, sadness. Is she going towards the cluster of buildings or has she already fled them, and is taking one last look back, like the biblical character of Lot’s wife? How does she regard the scene before her? What does it mean to her? And if she is indeed fleeing, what made her go?

It’s easy to see how something as simple as an artistic representation on canvas can suggest a larger and more complex narrative. To end, then, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite Wyeth paintings, “The Clearing.” I think we’ll all agree that it is a very pretty picture indeed.

 

One wonders what Tsar Alexander had to say about it.

see more Historic LOL

 

LOL Macaroni

 

LOL Macaroni

 

Linkotopia: the 1930s and 1940s

During the course of my research for my current work-in-progress – set in the 1940s – I amassed a collection of research-related links that I thought I would share with you, mostly because they’re interesting, but also because each in its own way allows a peek into a bygone era, its social customs and mores as well as its taboos.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the 1940s (well, of any era, if we’re honest) was the cocktail, and there were lots of different kinds. (n.b.: they still taste just as good in 2011)

A Stinger

One of my favourite places to unearth vintage cocktail recipes is Diamond Dame, a site celebrating “FASHION, LIFESTYLE & MUSIC OF THE 1920S, 1930S AND 1940S.” Diamond Dame is a wealth of information for the researcher, the writer of historical mysteries, the costumer, or one who’s merely interested in recipes for a classic tipple.

Another aspect of the 1940s that interests me is clothing; I needed to know what my hero would wear, and one of the most important parts of a man’s wardrobe then and now is the necktie. This led me to Ties to Pillows, a wonderfully whimsical site featuring neckwear from the 1920s on. Fancy a tie that will make the kind of impact you desire? How about this blue plaid number?
 If blue plaid is a tad too tame, you could always up the ante with this pink tie:  If pink is not exactly your slice of pie, how about batik polka dots? or perhaps a dogs-and-cats motif or electricity (as rendered by the artist)?

The beauty of the 1940s, it seems, is that there was no limit to the array of ugly ties available to the discriminating buyer.

One of my characters is a cop, so I needed to know if he would have graduated from a police academy or not. In New York City in the 1920s/1930s he would have joined the force after high school and worked his way up to detective – where he happens to be in his career when the book opens.

My New York cop had an amphetamine addiction, it seems, and used a Benzedrine inhaler. These inhalers were available not only to the general public by prescription but were generally offered to members of the armed services to aid in the fight against You-Know-Who. Drug companies touted the drug as a cure-all and a pick-me-up, claiming that “two pills beat a month’s vacation.”

Benzedrine inhaler, circa 1940s

Other aspects of my research involved myriad ways to die, such as suicide by jumping from a height. How high do you actually have to be in order to kill yourself? Will jumping out of an upstairs window do it? What about jumping from a moving vehicle? Suicide by jumping into water – in the case of my book’s victim – requires that you be at least three times your own height above the ground. Jumping into very cold water also kills by hypothermia, a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions. (Wiki)

Far less deadly but just as serious (just ask any of the men in your life) are boxer shorts; my cop character has a fondness for silk ones (“I like a bit of comfort,” he tells my protagonist, “I’m in a hard line of work.”) Cotton boxers were the generally accepted undergarment for men in the 30s and 40s, although the jockey short (also known as the Y-front in the UK) had been invented and was widely available; it was called a “jockey” because it offered a degree of support previously known only in a jockstrap.

In a similar line, if a man wanted a manicure, where could he have it done? There wasn’t a lot of information readily available. Some sources suggested it could be done in a barbershop but my research of American barbershops revealed they were more likely to be the site of illegal backroom gambling. A gentleman would never, ever venture into the all-female enclave of the beauty salon, even if he were married and had a wife who went there. It seems that if a man wanted to keep his nails looking good, he was destined to do it himself although I’ve seen characters in contemporary films receiving manicures in their hotel rooms or offices from manicure girls, so perhaps that’s how it was done. I’d be delighted to hear from anyone who has any intelligence on this matter!

Other things I researched, in no particular order:

Danvers State Asylum for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, where my cop character’s older brother is incarcerated for murder; periodically my character visits him to bring him soap, toothpaste, newspapers and books and the like. Danvers has since been demolished.

The Yiddish Language, including some wonderfully piquant phrases that my cop (who is Jewish) would probably say. You’ve more than likely heard these in movies and on television, including my personal favourites bupkes (something worthless, less than nothing); dreck (shit or garbage); kvetch (to gripe or complain); and meshugginah (crazy.)

The Mafia, particularly what button men are or do (hired killers and nothing nice)

Steamship travel from New York to Newfoundland and whether passenger ships would be accompanied by military escorts; my questions were answered by this article about the sinking of the S. S. Caribou by U-69 on October 14, 1942.

Radio programs, such as might have aired in the evenings in the 30s and 40s; I needed to know what my insurance investigator character would have been listening to.   

My research included 1930s typewriters, Art Deco style, luxury automobiles, and the traditional Jewish blessing for the dead. I’ve often said that part of what I love the most about writing historical romance is the research, which always extends my education and gives me added insight into an era for which I have a deep affinity.

I’m hoping it will make A LITTLE NIGHT MURDER (my work-in-progress) the best novel it can be.

 

I should have never opened that door. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Of course, it didn’t really matter if I opened it or not: five’ll get you ten that Nicky’s boys would have just ignored the door and shot me right through it. That’s the kind of boys they are. That’s the kind of boy Nicky is – or was – and I had no excuse. I knew this was going to happen to me, sooner or later.

 

For my own safety and because he insisted I’d been staying at Sam Lipinski’s apartment on Findlay Avenue in the Bronx. It was late September but the city seemed to be hanging on to summer, and the days were long and lush and golden, with cool nights that were just perfect for sleeping, if that was what you wanted to do at night. I’d been staying there a couple days and nothing bad had happened, or at least nothing much. I knew better than to expect it’d stay that way, especially with what I had hanging over my head. It was inevitable that things were going to catch up with me and, unless I suddenly manifested the ability to disappear myself into thin air, Nicky Brooks’ boys would be around to pay a visit.

 

About about four o’clock in the afternoon, maybe a little after, I heard a knock on the door, just a polite rapping sound like somebody makes when they think you’re not home. I wasn’t sure if I should answer it so I waited but I guess my curiosity got the better of me. It usually does. I wasn’t completely stupid so I peered through the fisheye that looked out into the corridor. Sam had warned me that some of the neighbour kids liked ringing doorbells and running away, and sometimes they left a little gift behind, a paper bag of fresh dog shit or somebody else’s rotting garbage. Mrs. Neumann, an old lady from two floors up, liked banging on doors in the middle of the afternoon so she could come in and talk your ear off and sometimes the super liked to snoop around on the pretext of checking the plumbing or some other excuse. Do they know you’re a cop? I’d asked him. I was willing to wager they knew when he went to bed and when he got up, what he ate for breakfast and what color boxer shorts he was wearing on any given morning.

 

Of course they do, Sam said.Why do you think they’re so goddamn nosy?

 

The man at the door was maybe five and a half feet tall with bright red hair escaping from underneath his Western Union cap, and a spray of freckles across his nose. “Sam Lipinski?”

 

“No. I can take the telegram for him, though.”

 

At first glance he looked like any other messenger boy until you saw his eyes: cold, opaque and empty, they were the eyes of a professional killer. That’s when I knew I’d made a mistake – that’s when I knew I should have never opened the door. There wasn’t any telegram and he sure as hell wasn’t looking for Sam; I said as much even though I knew it was too late.

 

“This message is all for you, Frankie-Boy. Nobody but you.” He drew an automatic from somewhere inside his coat and squeezed the trigger; the slugs crashed into me at point-blank range, leaving behind a trail of burning agony. I felt hot and weak and sick and my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore. Then a lot of doors opened, spilling a lot of people out into the corridor and I heard someone shouting to call the police, call an ambulance. A young woman lifted my head into her lap; she said her name was Claire and she would stay with me. “Mrs. Newberry’s gone to telephone an ambulance. You’re going to be alright.” I knew I wasn’t going to be alright but I didn’t have the strength to explain it to her. I caught a fold of her blouse and managed to whisper some words: Sam Lipinski. 40th Precinct. Sam Lipinski.That was all I had. Everything around me looked weird, small and far away, and I could taste blood at the back of my throat. The hallway seemed to stretch out to an impossible distance, suddenly collapsing back again with the kind of rushing noise the wind makes in the subway. I figured maybe I was going to die, and that was just too bad.

 

 

 

 

Tripped up by words

Tripped up by words. 

In my one Regency story I have a charcter talking about how hard the snow is falling; he calls it a blizzard. Nice, traditional English word, I thought. Imagine how cross I was to recently discover that not only is “blizzard” a late nineteenth century word as applied to weather, it’s American in origin. What right had it to trip me up like that? 

Trouble is, it’s too easy to just assume things about language. Yes, I look up brands to see if they’re contemporary for my heroes (that’s why Orlando can’t snaffle jelly babies) and I check out phrases, too (which is why Helena couldn’t say “Goodnight Vienna”) but some words seem so obviously “old” that I don’t bother. Perhaps I should, but when to stop? 

I guess for most of us there’s an internal sort of check which means we’re fine if we’re writing post 1700. If the word/phrase is in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, then we’re safe.  So I can use punk, “eye for an eye”, ‘’beggars description” and the like to my heart’s content. Plumber, spectacles,  barricade, shuttle; they’re all nice safe words.  Some are surprises, too – skyscraper goes back to the Age of Sail, and was then used as a nickname for things like tall hats. Dunce, admiral, stationer – all these words can be traced back a surprisingly long way.

Clearly there are some obvious words which a writer could never use in a story set earlier than the twentieth century – bikini, Quisling, green in the sense of concerned for the environment, gay in the sense of sexuality., tank in any sense other than a storage receptacle. But there are some phrases which could catch you out. “The cat’s whiskers” comes from the days of radio, so couldn’t be used to describe something really good in Regency days. Nor could your Victorian spy be brainwashed. He could, however, have gone to see a floodlit rugby match, although they weren’t necessarily called floodlights then. 

Aren’t words confusing, or is it just me getting old?

 

Auditory Crumpet: the Joys of Old Time Radio

As many of you doubtless know, I’m an inveterate fan of old time radio shows – Rocky Jordan; Nightbeat; Boston Blackie; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; and my latest find, The Adventures of Frank Race. Now, I’m sure you think me old-fashioned and perhaps something of a Luddite to prefer radio programs over television and I suppose you might be right. I just can’t help myself: night after night there I am, ensconced in my favourite seat with my iPod headphones stuck firmly in my ears, ignoring the modern world and all its contrivances in favour of what used to be called “The Theatre of the Mind.”

Yours Truly, Johnny's Dollars.

What’s not to love? A good many of these  old shows featured some of the day’s top actors and actresses, giving voice to wonderful, original characters whose stories often took place in exotic locales and featured the kind of tough, gritty heroes and smart, wise-cracking dames that all those wonderful old films noir had taught us to love.

Film noir: it's all about hats and smoking.

Old Time Radio offered something for everyone and, in the days before television, was the single most popular entertainment medium in not only North America but much of the world. Thankfully, a good many of these programs have been not merely preserved but, in many cases, lovingly restored so that they sound as good now as they did in their heyday.

And then there’s the slash.

The Slash is Strong in These Ones

Of course we’re all familiar with the phenomenon of so-called “slash goggles” relative to motion pictures, where the viewer senses a covert or overt sexual tension between two or more of the male principals that may or may not be in the script. I maintain that a similar phenomenon is at work when those of us who are inclined slash-ward listen to certain OTR (Old Time Radio) programs, a process I like to call slash earphones or, for ease of use, SlashOPhones. The use of SlashOPhones allows the listener to discern those wonderful, intractably slashy moments during one’s favourite radio program.

99.9% guaranteed to contain genuine slash.

A case in point is The Adventures of Frank Race, my newest radio crush featuring attorney and former O.S.S. officer Frank Race (now a private insurance investigator) and his devoted friend, Brooklyn cabbie Mark Donovan. This program – I kid you not – is a veritable treasure trove of slashy goodness. To begin with, Frank (whom Mark often refers to as simply “Race”) and Mark live together; they take their vacations together, where they share a hotel room and, if circumstances necessitate it, a bed. They are frequently naked in front of one another, as evidenced by several programs where they are changing into swimming trunks together or deciding to take a “quick plunge into the pool” at a Turkish bath where they are wearing nothing but towels. Both men are utterly devoted to one another and, as often as they appear to chase “dames” (as Mark calls them) they only ever go home with each other. For half of the series Frank Race was played by veteran actor Paul Dubov; the other half was played by the gorgeous and urbane Tom Collins.

Tom "Hubba Hubba" Collins

Mark Donovan’s role went to Tony Barrett (birth name Martin Lefkowitz) who portrayed the cabbie as an honest, earnest, blue-collar foil to Race’s sometimes snobby barrister.

Tony Barrett

Frank, a well-educated scion of the upper classes, appears to take a mentor’s interest in Mark but his apparent standoffishness conceals a deep vein of concern. He is protective towards Mark and urges him to better himself, to mingle with society – in one particularly memorable episode, Race takes it upon himself to teach Mark how to play golf. For his part, Mark is equally concerned about Frank, grumbling aloud if Frank is late coming home or if he’s out and doesn’t call to check in with Mark. Mark is Frank’s devoted protector, the one person in Frank’s world who is willing to go to the wall for him – and Frank returns this devotion time and time again.

For example, the following clip is from the episode THE SILENT HEART, which features Frank and Mark investigating a string of mysterious heart attack deaths in otherwise healthy people. Frank sends Mark off to see the local coroner, hardly imagining the dire consequences that follow his request. (I’ve added a rough transcription of the dialogue for clarity’s sake.)

Frank is concerned and angry, and wants to go out immediately and revenge himself on the people who have hurt Mark. In this next excerpt, Mark takes a bullet that was meant for Frank:

In THE MORMON COUNTRY, our boys take some time off to go for a swim in Utah’s great Salt Lake, where they change into their swimming trunks together before taking a dip. Later, they court serious injury when they are forced to bail out of their car. Mark escapes injury but Frank ends up in hospital; listen to Frank’s reaction when Mark tries to hook up with a pretty nurse:

Frank’s quiet “I’m not doing anything” is just coy enough to be funny, yet comes across as serious; it echoes a declaration of Mark’s from an earlier episode when, walking down a rainy street with Frank, he says, “I am out with a man who thinks it’s fun to get soaked to the skin.” Note his phrasing: I am out with a man.

Whether or not your SlashOPhones pick up the same nuances as mine do, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had from Old Time Radio programs such as The Adventures of Frank Race. Sadly, there were only ever 44 episodes made but, as compensation I’d like to leave you with this little video that, I think, says it all about these two.

As Mark might say: “Holy COW.”

 

Sharing other people’s historical crumpet.

I’m hugely indebted to Lee Benoit for mailing me with some pictures she noticed in an archive for the athletic departments at her old university.

These lovely – and very modern looking lads – appear to be the 1870 baseball team. The guy sitting down, second from right, looks just like Steve Borthwick.

And this lad from 1880 looks like he could just have stepped out of my Sky Sports screen!

 

More historical crumpet

I picked up the book British Greats at a charity stall; it’s a real gem. As I flicked through, I came across this picture – the bloke second from the left at the back really caught my eye. “That’s Mallory! I had no idea he was so striking!”

The story of Mallory and Irvine’s bid to climb Everest is the stuff of which British history is made, especially the attitude that using oxygen to aid climbing was somehow unsporting! Did they scale the mountain three decades before Hilary and Tenzing? How did they die? The haunting account of them being last seen disappearing into cloud as they attempted the summit has me welling up even as I type.

Andrew (Sandy) Irvine, even if he’s traditionally more handsome, doesn’t cut it for me.

Mallory’s my boy.

Lytton strachey thought he was pretty hot, too.

My hand trembles, my heart palpitates, my whole being swoons away at the words — oh heavens! I found of course that he’s been absurdly maligned — he’s six foot high, with the body of an athlete Praxiteles, and a face — oh incredible — the mystery of Botticelli, the refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print, the youth and piquancy of an imaginable English boy. I rave, but when you see him, as you must, you will admit all — all!

Maybe the picture featured here is the reason. Mallory seems to have had a hankering for being in the nude – how cold must he have been doing this?

 

More historical pin-ups

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years reading books and poetry by and about the WWI poets. I’ll start by saying that I’m not going to be extolling either the beauty or the virtue or Rupert Brooke or Siegfried Sassoon. Despite the way that women raved about their looks, I find neither particularly attractive physically and the more I read about them the more I dislike their personalities.

Instead, let me squee about these lads:

Ivor Gurney is one of the almost forgotten poets of WWI, in comparison to Brooke, Sassoon, Graves and Owen. He seems to have had some sort of mental disorder, not just the almost inevitable shell-shock, and died tragically young,  leaving behind a legacy of such poems as “To His Love“.

is body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.

And then there’s my favourite, Wilfred Owen

I have on my computer cart a WWI Manchester’s cap badge, ourchased solely because Owen was with one of the Manchester regiments (the seller gave me a discount because I mentioned that). Complex, charming, a touch immature, shy, talented, Owen comes across wonderfully well – better, indeed, with everything I read about him. There’s something so gentle and wistful in that gaze, something to make me go weak at the knees.

He’s retained his place in the heart – and the English curriculum – of the nation, although I do wonder what some teachers would think if they knew he’d written about rent-boys as well as life in the trenches. I’d recommend that anyone who wants to understand WWI, and early twentieth century Engalnd, reads his work. I’ll go back to sighing…

 

That Lust For Books…

Those of you who know me personally know that in my Real Life ™ I work in a library. I am, in fact, responsible for maintaining the audiobooks and music part of our collection, which means I get to shelve a lot of music CDs with titles like BARKING IN MY PANTS, THE ELVEN SHUST, RADIO LUSTERS, or INZ DA BRUSTA SHIZZLE MA NIZZLE.  Alternately, I while away hours mending broken cassette tape cases, cleaning audiobook discs and making angry faces at teenagers who put things back in the wrong place. Also shushing – which is, incidentally, the best part of my job.

I’ve always taken the idea of the library for granted; since I was very young the public library as an institution has been a fact of my life. My mother took me to story time; I frequented the school library (mostly at recess time and, as it was below ground and dark, to play Blind Tag); I checked out books from the ubiquitous Bookmobile whose presence at the end of our country lane meant another three weeks of brand new books. Beyond that, I didn’t think very much about the library.

The library as we know it began in ancient Mesopotamia, where a collection of some 30,000 clay tablets date back more than 5000 years. Author Barbara Krasner-Khait asserts that archaeologists have uncovered papyrus scrolls “from 1300-1200bc in the ancient Egyptian cities of Amarna and Thebes and thousands of clay tablets in the palace of King Sennacherib, Assyrian ruler from 704-681bc, at Nineveh, his capital city.”(http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html)

Clearly the idea to collect a society’s writings isn’t new. The ancient Greeks, those wonderfully civilised folks, gave further push to this notion through their love of writing and intellectualism; by the 4th century B.C. the public library had become a reality.

Perhaps the greatest library in history was the library at Alexandria, Egypt, a public library open to those with the right scholarly and literary qualifications and founded about 300 B.C. Egypt’s King Ptolemy and his successors wanted to understand the people under their rule; thus the library housed Latin, Buddhist, Persian, Hebrew, and Egyptian works, all translated into Greek. The Romans, also, were great collectors of recorded information, much of which was obtained from the spoils of war. Julius Caesar dreamed of creating a great public library, a vision which was cut short by his assassination.

The religious tradition of monasticism was arguably the greatest force for the transformation of libraries and even though most monasteries’ collections were mostly theological, their existence led to an explosion of learning amongst the clergy. These libraries were especially important after Europe emerged from the Dark Ages, when civilisation was looking to classical societies – such as Greece and Rome – for learning. By the 1600s, libraries surged in popularity along with the great universities.

Nowadays, the library is no longer a place of silence and lowered glances; modern libraries boast at least as many computer terminals as bookshelves and the advent of electronic literature means that traditional paper books often end up in overflow storage in those scary ‘rolling stacks’ in the basement. The library where I work has a television set with attached DVD player if patrons wish to sample any one of our hundreds of movie titles. On Tuesday afternoons we host a rollicking group of beautifully irreverent knitting ladies and sometimes a jazz trio plays in the main concourse.

None of which takes away from the greatest pleasure of the job as far as I’m concerned: giving dirty looks to patrons who fold, spindle or mutilate our books and shushing loud teenagers.

I can’t believe they pay me to do this.

 

Historical crumpet

At the Macaronis authors’ group we were discussing handsome men (par for the course) and got onto hotties from days gone by. Some of us will be sharing our favourite historical hotties over the weeks ahead.

I’m starting with some sporting heroes (well, there’s a surprise!) I like men’s tennis, so I was astonished to discover that there were two British players who dominated Edwardian tennis, worldwide, and I’d never heard of them!

Laurie and Reggie Doherty between them won every Wimbledon singles tournament from 1897 to 1906, bar 1901. They had wins at the US championships, won doubles titles in the US and UK and garnered Olympic gold, including in London 1908. And they were gorgeous.

Then there’s Ronnie Poulton-Palmer. He scored four tries in an international against France (shades of Chris Ashton and Italy!) and was killed in the trenches, his last words apparently being, “I shall never play at Twickenham again”.

His death inspired a poem, by Alfred Ollivant, in The Spectator:.
‘Ronald is dead: and we shall watch no more
His swerving swallow-flight adown the field
Amid eluded enemies, who yield
Room for his easy passage, to the roar
Of multitudes enraptured, who acclaim
Their country’s captain slipping towards his goal.
Instant of foot, deliberate of soul -
All’s well with England, Poulton’s on his game.’

I’m off to have a lie down and a weep.

 

LOL Macaroni

 

The Pause That Refreshes

It could be argued that ‘the pause that refreshes’ belongs most notably to Coca-Cola – that very representative American beverage – but for me, the only pause that truly refreshes is the tea break.

The island where I grew up used to be a British colony (the oldest of the British colonies, in fact) and so our consumption of tea is on a par with what one might expect elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Almost as soon as Newfoundland youngsters are weaned we are given tea, at first cooled in a saucer and then, when we’re ready, from the cup. When I was a child tea was considered an ideal drink for everyone from the very young to the very old and if you were ill, a hot cup of tea was the best thing for you.

Good For What Ails You

But tea was a relative latecomer to English shores and it was not until the mid 17th century that the beverage first appeared. The use of tea spread slowly from its Asian homeland, reaching Europe by way of Venice around 1560, although Portuguese trading ships may have made contact with the Chinese as early as 1515. Eventually the East India Company(with its trade in India and China) capitalized on tea’s popularity and helped to secure tea a place in the annals of food history as perhaps the most important substance in the daily gastronomic life of your average English man or woman.

This website asserts that London coffee houses were responsible for introducing tea to England. One of the first coffee house merchants to offer tea was Thomas Garway, who owned an establishment in Exchange Alley. He sold both liquid and dry tea to the public as early as 1657. Three years later he issued a broadsheet advertising tea at £6 and £10 per pound (ouch!), touting its virtues at “making the body active and lusty”, and “preserving perfect health until extreme old age”.

Once tea gained a foothold in England, it quickly replaced gin and ale as the preferred drink of the lower classes, a trend much resented by tavern owners, who saw tea cutting into their profits. Tea began to be heavily taxed, the intention being to price it out of the range of the ordinary person, thus driving them back to the pubs, but enterprising smugglers brought tea from Holland and Scandinavia to sate English thirsts and the culture of tea-drinking persisted.

Before long, tea rooms sprang up to compete with the already-popular coffee houses, and were especially favoured by Victorian ladies, who could meet their friends in public without the need of a male escort and without fearing damage to their reputations! As the tradition of tea drinking took hold, a need for suitable receptacles arose, resulting in massive growth in the porcelain industry. The acquisition and use of beautiful tea pots, tea cups and other accoutrements designed specifically for the taking of tea became the hobby of many a Victorian lady and no proper lodging house was complete unless the landlady possessed the equipment to make a really gorgeous, piping-hot pot of tea at a moment’s notice. The really enterprising Victorian gentleman, for his part, was capable of taking tea just about anywhere:

“Oiled,” said Inspector Raft. “OiiiiiiiilED wards.” He held the book clear of the bathwater and peered at it. “Turn the key deftly.” He flicked forward several pages. “I mean, it’s not Milton, is it?” He was entirely alone in the room and a casual observer would likely be puzzled as to who, precisely, Raft was addressing. The bath was large and deep, of enamelled cast iron, set upon four brass legs and boasting that most modern of inventions, a shower head. “When I consider how my light is spent.” His voice deepened several octaves and began to boom like the bass drum in a Salvation Army band. “Ere half my days – d’you hear that? Hawwwwwwwwwlf his days. Hawwwwwwlf. Tum, tum, tum. Yes, quite ponderous, the sanctimonious old fart.” It was just past ten in the evening, and Raft was enjoying his nightly bath as he usually did at this hour – enjoying it, that is, in his own inimitable way. On a small table at his elbow there was a cup of tea, rapidly going cold, and a candle, and a flat packet of his favourite cigars, thin and slender and hand-rolled in Rotterdam to the specifications of Raft’s personal tobacconist. (WILLING FLESH)

Tea could be proffered as a gesture of friendship, as a means of smoothing over difficulties and slights, and as a way to take care of someone in a situation where more intimate means might be prohibited:

“Cup of tea, sir. Bloody wet and cold out there today.” Crook laid the mug down at the inspector’s elbow and made to leave, but just then Raft blinked and stared at Crook as if he’d materialised from out of the floor.

“Constable.”

“Crook, sir. It’s Constable Frederic Crook.”

In my Inspector Raft novels WILLING FLESH and the about-to-be-released sequel RAG & BONE, tea drinking is a ubiquitous activity, one which often stands in for the sort of intimate congress which, in Raft and Freddie’s day, could only occur behind a closed and locked door:

He went to the window and looked down at the street; the rain was lashing sideways, bouncing off the pavements and forming ankle-deep puddles of misery.

“You are very right.” Freddie slung his coat at the hook. “Tea?” His hat followed, with unerring accuracy. “We’d best drink up before Westminster floats away underneath us.”
Raft sat down and reached for his cup. “Splendid. I could stand something hot inside me just now.”
Freddie raised an eyebrow and his habitual smirk grew in magnitude. “Really?”
Raft assumed a stern expression. “Constable.”
“Sorry, Sir.” Freddie tried his level best to smother the grin. “I’ll get the tea, Sir.”

Tea can be offered by anyone, anywhere, to soothe and to comfort:

Ponsonby was waiting with the promised tea tray when Raft emerged from the examination room, fastening his waistcoat. The doctor’s maid had brought them not only a strong, piping hot brew but also a plate of warm scones and twin pots of jam and clotted cream. As if on cue, Raft’s stomach growled, and Ponsonby laughed. “I’ll offer you a scone, shall I, Inspector?”

“Please.” Raft slipped into his coat and retied his necktie. “Doctor, I assure you, whatever it is, I am more than ready to accept it. I’ve no illusions about the durability of the human body.” Raft accepted a cup of tea and sipped it; it was hot and delicious, just the thing on a morning like this.

Ponsonby wasted no time. “You have an extra heartbeat.”

“An extra…heartbeat?”

Tea can be given to welcome a friend:

Raft had been back at his desk an hour when he heard the lift whirring. A series of footsteps sounded in the corridor outside his office and then Doctor John Ponsonby appeared. “Have you got a minute?”

“Of course, Doctor.” Raft ushered him in and showed him to a chair, offered tea, which Ponsonby declined, and a cigar, which he accepted. “Your expression tells me this is not a happy visit.”

No matter what the circumstances, a cup of tea is always welcome.

 

A friend of mine, a recent immigrant to Newfoundland from England, read WILLING FLESH and said she’d liked it very much. “What I like best,” she said, “is that there’s so much tea-drinking. It feels very comforting to me.”

Tea: the pause that truly refreshes.

 

Mere Morals

No – the title isn’t misspelled. (However – warnings for plot spoilers of Mere Mortals)

One of the things I wanted to explore in Mere Mortals was the sheer disposability of human life. I remember that Dickens’ expose of the terrible treatment of orphans in Oliver Twist helped to start the authorities to look at them, and to improve matters–and Kingsley’s Water Babies highlighted the plight of chimney sweeps, which again led to reform.

I’m a bit too late to reform the Victorian Age, though, but I did want to explore some aspects of life that make our modern hair stand on end.

Orphans were pretty much human detritus–we see that in Oliver Twist, of course. Boys from the orphanage are simply objects, not humans to be raised and cared for in the way they are today. When Oliver plays up, asking for more food (the cheek of it!) he’s sold off to a local tradesman–which would have been a step up, if he’d managed to keep the job. He certainly had more chance surviving out of the workhouse.

Greediest Boy In The School

In Mere Mortals, the three young men, Crispin, Myles and Jude, are a little more fortunate, at least in some respects. They are obviously natural sons of well-to-do men, and better still, men who (in the absence of DNA testing and the authorities we have today such as the Child Support Agency) who feel that they should provide the minimum of decent education for those sons. But that’s as far as it went. Once those orphans left their preparatory schools, there would be no money for further education–or apprenticeships. One of them dreams of being a barrister, and that would have been impossible without funding. They might, if fortunate, be placed in an office somewhere as a clerk, or perhaps in a shop, or even–like Jane Eyre–as a tutor, but without more education than they have (two of them didn’t even take their final exams) even this last was an unlikely option.

Thing is, that orphanages and workhouses were good places to find workers for employers, scrupulous and otherwise. Today there would be a national/international uproar if you walked into a school or orphanage and said “I’ll have three, please,” and took them off, no questions asked, but back in 1847 it was a real possibility. Especially if the owner of the establishment was unscrupulous too. If he was being paid for a boy’s education–but no-one had ever checked on that boy–why not let him go, continue to take the education money and pocket the difference?

If they were taken away, no-one would bother to check up on them once they had gone. Perhaps a schoolfriend might write, if he knew where his friend was going, but the headmaster was unlikely–once rid of his responsibility–to ensure that his ex-charge was being treated well. Look at Becky Sharp, you can be sure that her headmistress, once having got shot of the acid-tongued girl, couldn’t have cared less if the girl ended up as a white slave or white slaver.

And then–if the person who HAD taken these orphans got tired of them? Or they didn’t work well at the job they were given? Or didn’t suit in some way? It’s quite likely that their future would become a little less than rosy–and if they did disappear–who’d care? Who’d check?  All the employer/abductor had to say was “Oh, they ran away, ungrateful wretches, I’ll give another boy the opportunity he obviously didn’t want.”

and in the days before Social Services, phones, email, TV…Who’d know? Who’d care?

 

Friday Links Post

Just a short one this week.  Many thanks to Lee Benoit for sending in a link to this

possibly the first ever onscreen m/m kiss.

And to Syd McGinley for this link to a blog featuring some historical hunks:

Bangable Dudes in History

 

Writing breeches rippers…

I’ve posted here on many occasions about how wonderful the Romantic Novelists’ Association  is. They have a members’ magazine called Romance Matters, so Alex beecroft and I gathered up our courage and submitted an article about writing gay historical romance. It appeared in yesterday’s issue!

This is the original, uncut text, which we clipped to 500 words for inclusion in the magazine.

 “Not Your Mother’s Historical Romance”

 …was the cover quote from Josh Lanyon (creator of the Adrien English Mysteries) for the book Speak Its Name, an anthology of gay historical novellas. The book contained Charlie Cochrane’s debut story and the quote greatly amused her teenage daughters as that absolutely was their “Mother’s Historical Romance”. But it got her thinking about the differences (and similarities) between straight and gay romances written within a historical setting. So she asked fellow Romantic Novelists’ Association member Alex Beecroft to share her ideas on the subject. 

 Charlie: I suppose the first difference in gay romance is the general lack of bodices. I mean, many of my characters have them but none actually get ripped. How about your gals? 

Alex: Well, Emily certainly has one and mentions it in Captain’s Surrender, but her beau is too nice a guy to spoil a good dress.  But yes, Captain’s Surrender is the only one of my books (so far) where I’ve had a male/female romance as a sub-plot to the male/male.  Having said that, Victor Banis’s Lola Dances features a cross dressing gay man, so I wouldn’t rule bodice ripping out entirely.  Breeches ripping certainly happens (I believe I even have a breeches ripping scene in False Colors,) but I wouldn’t say that represented the entire genre.  I couldn’t see your kind and gentle young men dealing out violence to each other – even to each other’s clothes.

Maybe it’s the extent of having a wide variety of heroes and not putting as much emphasis on the overpowering nature of the hero that makes gay romance not “your mother’s romance”?  What do you think?

 Charlie: I think romance in general has moved on from my mother’s day and there’s a wide variety of heroes in gay and straight historical romance. I think one of the main differences is that we can’t have a “traditional” happy ending for our leading men. No “Reader, I married him,” moment, no big wedding or even engagement. The best we can do is to find some situation in which they can try to live together without being shunned by society or reported to the police. My Edwardian lads are living under the shadow of the fairly recent Oscar Wilde trials; at least they have a Cambridge single sex college to live in so they can hide in plain sight. How do you solve the problem?

 Alex:  That’s very true about romance moving on.  There’s really something for everyone’s tastes, these days.  But yes, it certainly presents an interesting problem, finding a happy ending which has the weight of a marriage in an era when our heroes could have been imprisoned or even executed it their relationship was suspected.  I think the male/male equivalent of the wedding is the point where the characters make a commitment to face whatever might come in the future together.  They may figure out a cover story which enables them to live together without arousing suspicion, or they may simply make that commitment to each other, leaving the reader to deduce from their prior adventures that they are cautious and clever enough to get away with it.

 Of course, the lack of a socially sanctioned wedding doesn’t mean that they can’t privately offer one another similar vows.  They can have every bit of the same emotional impact.  Even more so, perhaps, since the reader knows what an act of love in the face of all odds they represent.

 I know too that there are some readers of gay romance who might regard the traditional Happy Ever After = marriage ending as worryingly heteronormative.  What are your thoughts on that?

 Charlie: I think you’ve made a great point and, again, one that applies to straight romances, where a big white wedding isn’t necessarily everyone’s idea of the “must have” happy ending.

 Another aspect of romances is the “tension along the way”, you know, the complication/estrangement that has to be overcome en route to the HEA. I suspect that’s an area where gay fiction has an inbuilt advantage, especially historical, as the relationship was illegal and generally viewed as immoral. Actually, in some parts of the world either or both of those would apply today.

 Of course, that doesn’t mean we can be lazy and just use the ‘how do we avoid discovery’ as our only cause of dramatic tension; we have arguments, misunderstandings, temptations, all the story threads that crop up in straight romances. What’s your favourite “boy temporarily loses boy” moment from your books?

 Alex: I’d say it was the incident in John’s cabin in False Colors, just after the ship has almost sunk in the Arctic.  The two heroes have been alternately pursuing each other and spurning each other for a while now, and Alfie, feeling terribly bitter due to bereavement and misunderstanding, makes an absolutely disastrous attempt on John’s virtue in order to teach John a lesson.  John – who’s a highly strung mixture of very sensitive and very proud – realizes that Alfie is doing this to put him in his place and goes ballistic with outrage.  It’s hard to explain in one paragraph, because there’s a whole book of misunderstandings and hurts that lead up to it, but it’s simultaneously their lowest ebb, and a sign that things are beginning to thaw between them and that there’s hope there still.

 How about you?

 Charlie: I’ve got two. One of them’s in my ongoing Cambridge Fellows series, where Jonty and Orlando finally seem to have settled into a nice, comfortable “looks to the outside world like a bachelor existence”, only for some awful events from Jonty’s past to rear their heads. The lads have to work through a lot of emotional and ethical complications together, but emerge stronger. The other’s a bit more light hearted, from an Austenesque short story, The Shade on a Fine Day, where it needs ghostly/angelic intervention to get my leading man to pluck up the courage to act.

 It’s been fun picking your brains – anything you want to add about the differences you’ve found between gay and straight historical romance?

 Alex: Well, thanks for having me!  It’s an interesting topic and I’m glad we got to talk about it.  I’m inclined to cheat on this last question, though, and say that despite any differences occasioned by the fact that you’ve got two men instead of one man, one woman, still the ways in which they are similar outnumber the differences.  After all, a romance is about two people falling in love and committing to that relationship despite the problems they face.  The external problems the characters face may be incomparably greater due to society’s disapproval, but internally I don’t think that love is any different.  Nor is the process of two independent personalities learning to live with each other any less complex when it’s two men (or two women) together instead of one of each.

 

A single moment that stays with you forever

Ever come around a corner and seen a vista so perfect it literally took your breath away? Ever been in a place with such a perfect combination of setting, weather and atmosphere that you almost cry for the sheer perfection of it and the feeling that you’ll never get that moment back again? I’m sure most of us have had times like that and if you haven’t I’m genuinely sorry. They’re priceless.  

So how do you capture them forever? One way is with a photograph, or a video, although they only capture the look of things and not the feel. Another way is to use them to inspire a piece of writing which, although it doesn’t preserve the physical impression perfectly, can at least convey what things felt like.

When our children were younger we spent a morning on this beach:

It was perfect, unspoiled and there were only two other people on it. We’ve been back since and all the world and his wife have discovered it; we’ll never have those perfect moments again (unless we get down there crack of dawn).  But Jonty and Orlando can experience what we did when they visit Jersey, so I’ve sealed our feelings safely away in their story by using the beach as their special place.

Another holiday moment happened at Arromanches. We parked the car on a clifftop car park, walked over a little ridge and saw this:

The ruins of the Mulberry harbour out at sea, and in the foreground a field of barley with poppies. It was the poppies which got to me and I was soon in tears. That sight inspired several bits of AU fanfic, and has been weaved into another very short story, almost as if I have to keep writing that sight, and my emotions, out of my system.

This is the next ‘special moment’ I have to capture in a story:

Anyone else got ones they want to share?

 

Friday Links Post

A short but fun one today:

Passed along by Syd McGinley, this interactive Victorian role playing game will allow you to see if your character would have been welcomed at the Gentleman’s Club or cruelly cut at the Ballroom.

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/game_0/

 

Recommended by Erastes, a very nice vintage book blog

Bali Hai’s Blog

and two links found at physorg.com

“Gay rights movement born in 19th century Germany, scholar says”
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-gay-rights-movement-born-19th.html

“Eighteenth century writings of first gay activist discovered”
http://www.physorg.com/news96733007.html

And in keeping with this week’s more entertainment-based theme (what, we’ve got games and everything!) but for Brits only, I’m afraid, unless you can get your browser to conceal your location, a moving TV programme about Frankie Howerd – “Rather you than me.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b009s7gv/Frankie_Howerd_Rather_You_Than_Me/#recommendSource=tv_episode_page

Drama starring David Walliams as the comedian Frankie Howerd, looking at the relationship with his long-term, long-suffering manager and partner, Dennis Heymer.

~

If you have an article which you think fits with our subject matter (gblt and historical and/or writing) and you’d like us to share it with our readers, just send it along to alex@alexbeecroft.com

“Historical” by our definition means pre-Stonewall, so pre-1969.

 

Report from our RNA lunch – the importance of a story’s opening paragraphs

This Monday just gone saw the first local Romantic Novelists’ Association lunch of 2011. Good food, good company, always something to learn and always a great chinwag. This time we didn’t have a speaker. Instead we all read the first 250 words from one of our works (finished or yet to be) and discussed them. In total there must have been about 14 offerings, from authors with dozens of books under their belts to the newest newbies. 

What amazed me was how different they all were. All good, but as varied as chalk, cheese and chewed pen lids. Within that small amount of words (a double drabble and a half) the tone of the story was set, the writer’s “voice” was instantly recognisable, you could get a pretty clear idea in all bar a couple of cases about where the story was going to go and you knew the era/seeting even where there hadn’t been a Cambridge 1907 type heading at the start.

And - maybe most important of all – I think you had a ninety percent chance of knowing whether you wanted to read more. While all the intros were good, not all of them piqued my interest enough to think, “Read on, read on!” Which led me to think about submitting stories and the importance of them making an instant impact.

I remember, on the I Do and I Do Two projects, how we could pretty well tell by the end of the first page whether a submitted story was a ‘goer’. The same applies where submission calls ask for a chapter or three. It’s not helping your cause to say, “The first few chapters are a bit slow” or “they don’t represent the story as a whole”. They’re the first bit the editor will see and if he/she isn’t sold, what chance have you got of nabbing a reader? Do we have the patience to plough through three chapters of intro to get to “the good stuff”?

 

Friday links post

From Syd McGinley
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php

This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.
The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.

~

Two links from Erastes:

from lgbtukmonth

http://lgbthmuk.blogspot.com/2011/02/secrets-out-on-hidden-life-of-gay.html

hidden life of gay victorians

and

glbt objects in the Victoria and Albert – (disappointingly only 21!)

http://www.untoldlondon.org.uk/article/get-our-free-lgbt-trail-british-museum

~

and some vintage cross dressers:

from the Bilerico project, a young male impersonator

http://www.bilerico.com/2011/02/boi_from_a_bygone_era_vintage_male_impersonator.php

and from the blog A Gender Variance Who’s Who, Ross Hamilton as Marjorie

http://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/05/ross-hamilton-1889-1965-female.html

 

Friday Links Post

I see I forgot to do a Friday post last week.  My apologies!  However, that does mean that I’ve got an especially good selection of links this week.  So, without further ado:

Ever had your historical character sigh and stare at the wall, only to wonder exactly what he was seeing?  Have a look at these historical wallpapers discovered in a renovated house:

http://ht.ly/3SdYn

I haven’t yet looked at the rest of the site, but that looks pretty interesting too.

~

This is an absolute must bookmark site for anyone doing stuff set in the Victorian era:

http://www.victorianlondon.org/

“several thousand pages of Victoriana, available free to the general public.”

~

Some evocative photos of London during WW2

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2010/06/london-blackout-february-1944/

I liked these photos in particular, but I follow the Retronaut on Twitter because it’s consistently interesting and inspiring with regular little glimpses into different eras and historical subjects.

~

And now for something completely different – some writing resources!

Ever stuck for a new story idea?  This may help:

http://www.creativity-portal.com/prompts/imagination.prompt.html

~

Oh no! My historical gay romance character has put on a deerstalker and is insisting he’s a detective, what can I do?  I know nothing about plotting mystery novels!

Fret not, but check out

http://ticket2write.tripod.com/mysplot.html

~

And for a bit of fun, and in case you were absolutely yearning for a banyan of your own

http://www.lacma.org/art/ffpatterns.aspx

downloadable patterns for a man’s banyan, a sleeved waistcoat, an unsleeved waistcoat and a late 18th Century man’s coat.  (Well, I can’t be the only one in the world who saw this and went “I want one!” can I?)

 

Real Life Love Letter. Marbod of Rennes to a Young Lover

Marbodus (ca. 1035 – 11 September 1123) was archdeacon and schoolmaster at Angers, France, then Bishop of Rennes in Brittany. He was a respected poet, hagiographer, and hymnologist.

I have to smile wryly at the last instruction in the last two lines. But then if the young lover had kept these to himself, we’d never had seen them.

Horace composed an ode about a certain boy
Who could easily enough have been a pretty girl.
Over his ivory neck flowed hair
Brighter than yellow gold, the kind I have always loved.
His forehead was white as snow, his luminous eyes black as pitch
His unfledged cheeks full of pleasing sweetness
When they gleamed bright white and red.
His now was straight, lips blazing, teeth lovely,
Chin shaped after a perfectly proportioned model.
Anyone wondering about the body which lay hidden under his clothes
Would be gratified, for the boy’s body matched his face.
The sight of his face, radiant and full of beauty,
Kindled the observer’s heart with the torch of love.
But this boy – so beautiful, so extraordinary,
An enticement to anyone catching sight of him –
Nature had molded wild and stern:
He would sooner die than consent to love.
Rough and thankless, like a tiger cub,
He only laughed at the gentlest words of a suitor,
Laughed at a sighing lover’s tears,
He mocked those he himself caused to die.
Wicked indeed, this one, and as cruel as wicked,
Who with this vice in his character keeps his body from being his glory.
A handsome face demands a good mind, and a yielding one,
Not puffed up but ready for anything.
The little flower of youth is fleeting and too brief;
It soon witherws, falls, and knows not how to revive.
This flesh is now so smooth, so milky, so unblemished,
So good, so handsome, so slipper, so tender.
Yet the time will come when it will become ugly and rough,
When this flesh, dear boyish flesh, will become worthless.
Therefore, while you flower, take up riper practices.
While you are in demand and able, be not slow to yield to an eager lover.
For this you will be prized, not made lsss of.
These words of my reques, most beloved,
Are sent to you alone; do not show them to many others.

 

A WAR TO DIVIDE US

From Pieter in the North to Sebastian in the South (from Cane and Conflict)

14 February 1861

I’m lying here in bed, not ‘my’ bed because that is wherever you are and we are many hundreds of miles apart. I know it was my choice to leave as I can’t fight for the South if war does come, but that necessity doesn’t make me miss you any less or my wish any greater that we were lying in each others’ arms.

It’s only by chance that I discovered today is Valentine’s Day, but it matters not; I love you with my whole heart each and every minute of each and every day.

I will come home as soon as it may be possible; months – years, I will come, I swear. I pray you will still want me when that day finally dawns. Know I will always love you, always.

Piet

 

MOONLIGHT BECOMES YOU

Richard to Julian (from Smoke Screen)

14^th February 1802

You were restless last evening and you got up and went to the balcony. You thought I was asleep but I missed your warmth almost immediately. I lay there and watched you, entranced as the moon slipped from behind a cloud and bathed you in its light. You’re always beautiful to me but in that moment you were ethereal and I had the insane idea that perhaps you weren’t of this world, that you were but a dream that visited me when I needed to know that love was real.

Then this morning I awoke to find you in my embrace, your arms wrapped around me. Then you opened your eyes, smiled at me, and whispered, “Happy Valentine’s Day, my love.”

If you are but a dream then I am happy to forever share it with you.

I love you.

Richard

 

Bai Juyi – Separation

 

"..through rain and snow you stand alone by the water's edge..."

Seeing Poems Written by Yuan at the Blue Bridge Inn

On your return last spring
you stayed in the Blue Bridge Inn;
wen the wind sweeps down
from the Qinling Mountains, I head
the other way; each time I
come to an inn I dismount first
eagerly looing on the walls to see
If you have hung any poems there. 

In Rewi Alley’s book, “Bai Juyi-200 Collected Poems,” there’s this intriguing note:

“Durng the early part of his official career, Bai made close friends with Yuan Zhen, young scholar and poet also in his twenties… the two poets’ relationship was most intimate.  Their friendship was famous in literary history, and it was said taht whenever the two went out riding together, crowds gathered to watch them pass…”

 

and yet.. many of their poems vanished, and

“whereas it had been the custom for outstanding poets to be granted a posthumous title, this hoour was denied Bai by the emperor.”

Alley believes this was because the poet wrote verses criticizing the government, and that might be true.  But I wonder.

 

Sending Summer Clothes to Weizhi(one of Yuan’s courtesy names)

Upper garment white in colour
woven fine as mist
cotton cloth for trousers
thin as a cloud; don’t think that
these are too light; please
wear them, for I fear you
will suffer from the heat at Tongzhou.

The two poets planned to live together as Taoist recluses after they retired.   Yuan Zhen died before this could happen.  Juyi wrote dirges and songs for the funeral.

Night deep–the memorial draft finished;
Mist and moon intense piercing cold.
About to lie down, I warm the last remnant of the wine;
we face before the lamp and drink.
Drawing up the gren silk coverlets,
Placing our pillows side by side;
Like spending more than a hundred nights,
To sleep together with you here.

 

Tell My Heart I’m On the Next Train

Maarif, Morocco

1941

My dear Jake:

To say that this place is horrible without you is a gross understatement, but needs must when the Devil drives and the Devil, I fear, intends to drive this train all the way to Perdition’s very gates. At last report Herr General was advancing towards Cairo but there is hope – faint, mind you – that he will be stopped at El Alamein. One would pray except one has been a fervent nonbeliever for a good many years.

And you, I trust, have reached America by now or are at least within striking distance of something resembling safety. Remember what I told you: say nothing.

I shall wrap up matters here within the week and be with you as soon as I can. Every moment we are parted is an agony to me.

Tout a toi,

Nicolas

* * *

275 W. 86th Street

New York, New York

1941

Dear Nicky,

Landed here in New York off the Manitowan with all the other grunts; after three weeks at sea I more or less consider myself an able seaman. Laugh if you like.  I met a couple of guys you’d probably like but most of them were jerks. It goes without saying that I miss you like nobody’s business.

Found a room near the subway on W. 86th. It ain’t much – a bed, a chair, a window looking out on a brick wall, and a private bath – but it’s big enough for two. Talking to Frankie Boyle the other day; he’s just about ready to leave for Newfoundland but he said there’s rumours the Egyptians have got an ace or two up their big, baggy sleeves as far as this war is concerned. Let me know if this last gets past the censors.

You know I love you and I miss you so much it’s making me crazy.

Yours,

Jake

*  *  *

Lisbon, Portugal

1941

My dearest darling,

Am five minutes about from boarding the clipper to America. There have been reports of heavy artillery fire in the area so if you don’t hear from me after this, well…imagine me sitting on a cloud and playing a harp. I’ve no musical talent whatsoever but perhaps that won’t matter, where I’m going.

Frederick Abaroa saw me off in Maarif. He met me at the train station and I’ll tell you, Jake, at first I didn’t recognise him. He really is a master of disguise. Today he was posing as a camel driver, complete with a foul smell that he must have rolled in dung to realise.

I have noted down the address. Expect me at your door any day now.

Je t’aime,

Nicolas

*  *  *

WESTERN UNION
FEBRUARY 14, 1941
TO: MR. JAKE PLENTY

ADVISE HAVE ARRIVED CITY. WILL BE AT YOUR DOOR SOONEST. LOVE, NICKY.

* * *

My dearest darling heart…I slip this note under your door…I’m afraid to knock…my heart is trembling like some ridiculous  lycée girl. Your city is astonishing, remarkable…you are astonishing, remarkable. Are you there, the other side of the door, waiting? Shall I knock?

Or shall I merely wait?