Not Your Mother’s Historical Romance

An interview with two purveyors of gay historicals, expanded from the original which appeared in the Romantic Novelists Association magazine, considering the differences (and similarities) between straight and gay romances written within a historical setting.

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. Maybe 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. My Age of Sail lads hide their relationship behind a close friendship. 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: How long have we got?  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.

Wild Bells, two historical novellas by Charlie Cochrane.

Captain’s Surrender by Alex Beecroft

 

 

Extraordinary Female Affection – the Ladies of Llangollen

Extraordinary Female Affection was the title of a 1790 newspaper article on two female friends, Miss Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler, who had defied convention by running away to live together.

The article, which appeared in St. James’s Chronicle, the General Evening Post and the London Chronicle, made it quite plain what the author thought of such goings-on, describing Butler in disapproving tones as of masculine appearance (this was true) and the couple as bear[ing] a strange antipathy to the male sex, whom they take every opportunity of avoiding – which was decidedly false; the ladies entertained many male guests, including the Duke of Wellington, Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth. The author described Ponsonby as Butler’s particular friend and, more censoriously (for the time), the bar to all matrimonial union. Needless to say, the ladies were less than happy with the tone of the article, and took legal advice.

However, the attitude of society in general was very different. The zeitgeist of the time was for romanticising all things, including nature, landscapes and the bonds of friendship, and their story captured the popular (educated) imagination. The ladies were celebrated for their romantic friendship and presumed celibacy, to the extent that they became celebrities of the day—similarly, one supposes, to many early female Christian martyrs who were lauded for their chastity as much as for any miraculous deeds.

There is plenty of the romantic in the ladies’ story: both were from aristocratic (though attainted) families in Ireland and both were under intolerable pressure from their families—Butler to enter a convent, and Ponsonby to accept the advances of her guardian. Close friends for many years, when Ponsonby was 23 and Butler, 39, they hatched a plot to run away together dressed as men, taking with them a pet dog and a pistol. Having ridden through the night to catch a ferry to Wales, they were hit by what we tend to think of as a bane of modern life: transport cancellation. Unluckily, they were discovered and brought back home.

Much as for Marianne in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (who would have known of the Ladies of Llangollen), for Ponsonby, romantic disappointment was swiftly followed by dangerous illness. To comfort her friend—and escape her family, who had stepped up attempts to ship her off to that convent—Butler fled to Ponsonby’s house, where she concealed herself in her friend’s bedroom, aided by a sympathetic maid, Mary Carryl. When, after some days, she was discovered, the families evidently decided that enough was enough, threw up their hands and consented to the couple removing to Wales as they’d wanted all along.

Ponsonby later wrote up the tale in Account of a Journey in Wales perform’d in May 1778 by Two Fugitive Ladies, showing she had an eye for a catchy, if long-winded, title.

The ladies eventually found a house near Llangollen where they settled down and lived happily for the next fifty years in quiet retirement—apart from the steady stream of society visitors.

Were they lovers? Nobody knows. Even in their own lifetimes, opinion was divided. They addressed each other in terms used between husband and wife, and they shared a bed—but this was not unusual behaviour for friends at the time. They also cropped their hair and wore masculine hats and coats—although retaining their petticoats. Their visitors included Anne Lister, who was, by her own writings, what we would nowadays term a lesbian and had physical affairs with women, and Anna Seward, who although romantically interested in women is not known to have had a sexual relationship with any.

It’s often speculated that Butler, the more obviously masculine of the two, was a lesbian, but that Ponsonby, the younger, more femme partner, might have been just as happy with a man. I personally tend to take this more as evidence for the enduring quality of stereotypes than as anything else.

 

Further reading: Rictor Norton (Ed.), “Extraordinary Female Affection, 1790”, Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 22 April 2005, updated 15 June 2005 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1790extr.htm>.

Nancy Meyer, Regency Researcher http://www.regencyresearcher.com/pages/ladies.html

***

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.  Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

JL Merrow is the author of “A Particular Friend” which appears in A Certain Persuasion, a new anthology of stories set in and around the writings of Jane Austen, featuring LGBTQIA characters, which was released on 1^st November.

Thirteen stories from eleven authors, exploring the world of Jane Austen and celebrating her influence on ours.

Being cousins-by-marriage doesn’t deter William Elliot from pursuing Richard Musgrove in Lyme; nor does it prevent Elinor Dashwood falling in love with Ada Ferrars. Surprises are in store for Emma Woodhouse while visiting Harriet Smith; for William Price mentoring a seaman on board the Thrush; and for Adam Otelian befriending his children’s governess, Miss Hay. Margaret Dashwood seeks an alternative to the happy marriages chosen by her sisters; and Susan Price ponders just such a possibility with Mrs Lynd. One Fitzwilliam Darcy is plagued by constant reports of convictions for ‘unnatural’ crimes; while another must work out how to secure the Pemberley inheritance for her family.

Meanwhile, a modern-day Darcy meets the enigmatic Lint on the edge of Pemberley Cliff; while another struggles to live up to wearing Colin Firth’s breeches on a celebrity dance show. Cooper is confronted by his lost love at a book club meeting in Melbourne while reading Persuasion; and Ashley finds more than he’d bargained for at the Jane Austen museum in Bath.

Smashwords| Amazon | ARe

 

 

WWI resource site

Lives of the First World War is a site which aims to combine historical fact with an insight into the hearts and minds of those who served. Of particular interest are combatants like JR Ackerley and Siegfried Sassoon, whose pages seem to be pretty accurate, because – alas –  some of the ‘facts’ at this site are a bit dodgy, including getting Wilfred Owen’s middle names wrong.

As with any online resource, the information presented is only as good as that uploaded; even the Commonwealth War Graves site has the odd typographical error.  It’s always worth reporting these, as reputable sites are usually grateful to have such things flagged up and our LGBT ‘heroes’ deserve an accurate record to be kept.

 

 

 

You couldn’t make it up…

History is littered with people whose lives and achievements would risk being unbelievable in historical fiction. One famous example is Adrian Carton de Wiart, who fought in the Boer War and both World Wars. As it says in the introductory paragraph to his Wikipedia entry:

He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, “Frankly I had enjoyed the war.”

(If you want an alternative source to Wikipedia, here’s a BBC article about him)

In the course of researching Under Leaden Skies, I came across accounts of a number of people and events which made my jaw drop, and I’d like to share a few of them here.

Stewart Keith-Jopp

Keith-Jopp was one of three one-armed pilots who served in the Air Transport Auxilliary, having lost an arm – reportedly on a bombing run – as well as an eye during World War 1. He certainly seemed to have been quite an influence in the ATA, and was the man I had in mind that my character, Drummond, had met, when he mentions to Teddy that “I know for sure there’s at least one chap flies for them who’s only got one arm.”

There’s a little more information about Stewart Keith-Jopp on the RAF Museum website, but I didn’t find any further details about the other two one-armed pilots, First Officer R.A Corrie, and the Honourable Charles Dutton (later Lord Sherborne), other than their mention in Spitfire Women.

Douglas Fairweather

Despite (or perhaps because of) his name, Captain Fairweather was renowned in the ATA for his ability to fly, and arrive safely at his destination, in the most atrocious of weather. The best account I found of his method is in Diana Barnato Walker’s Spreading My Wings, as her style of writing really suits this gentleman’s apparent approach to life.

ATA pilots were supposed to carry a map to aid navigation: Fairweather carried with him a 2″x3″ map of the British Isles “quite obviously torn from nothing larger than the back of a pocket diary”, and according to Spitfire Women, at one point the map he carried was of Roman Britain! His method of navigation in poor or nil visibility required knowing the direction and distance of his destination from where he had taken off, and flying at a steady speed. Once airborne, he chain-smoked cigarettes. He knew that each cigarette lasted him 7 minutes, and by lighting each cigarette from the previous one, he timed his flight and therefore knew exactly how far he’d flown!

Smoking was, as we would these days expect, forbidden. So on landing he brushed the ash from his uniform and made sure to open the cockpit window in time for the smoke and smell to dissipate.

Veronica Volkersz, the first British woman to fly a jet

Whilst the above examples are of people whose story might be seen to stretch the boundaries of believability in fiction, in Volkersz’s case it is the circumstances around her first jet-powered flight which stretch modern credulity. In an earlier draft of Under Leaden Skies, I based Teddy’s first jet-flight quite closely on Volkersz’s, but the feedback I received was along the lines of “Surely he had some extra training first? They wouldn’t just put people in jets with no training?”

Erm… sorry to tell you folks, but that is exactly what they did! Verging on incredulous for us, used to the dangers of jet engines, and well aware of the differences between jet-propelled craft and propeller-driven ones. As stated in Giles Whittell’s Spitfire Women (which, as you’ve probably gathered from the number of times I’ve mentioned it, is an excellent book & you should read it if you haven’t already):

[Volkersz] was offered no conversion course, no cockpit inspection, no helpful hints, no comment. Just a new four by five inch card to be inserted in her ringbound Ferry Pilot’s Notes in alphabetical order between Martinet and Oxford, to be glanced at on her way out to dispersal.

Of course, she was a brilliant pilot, and had requested a chance to fly a Meteor. No doubt also, that all pilots would have kept abreast of developments as much as they could – the aviation magazines Flight and The Aeroplane were published throughout the war, and of course pilots would talk to each other, so I am sure that Volkersz’s commanding officer would have been assured of her ability to adapt to and handle the differences.

However, I will admit that the “two-hour lecture” and extra time in the schedule for Teddy to familiarise himself with the Meteor which appear in my story are entirely fictional… There’s only so far you can push the suspension of disbelief, after all 😉

 

Research and the Historical Fiction Writer

Everyone reading this blog is, I am sure, well aware of the importance of writers Doing Research to make sure they are Getting It Right. Well, there’s research and there’s research… Some “research” is really just a whole bunch of fun, having an excuse to read a raft of books about a topic one is interested in. Other research can become painstakingly dull (triple-quadruple checking that you’ve got a particular aircraft’s layout / take-off sequence just right), and occasionally one comes across research which you really want to put down and turn away from – mostly, for me, this happens when focusing on social attitudes. Casual racism, homophobia, misogyny… you name it, they didn’t even try to hide it in the past.

A selection of the physical materials I acquired in research for Under Leaden Skies (the CD at the front contains pdfs copies of the official Pilot’s Notes for Sunderland Mk I & II)

But the research which really gets me is the first-hand accounts: not just books and TV footage but, particularly when writing in an era such as World War 2, the accounts one finds online. In particular, I’d like to point you in the direction of the BBC People’s War archive. I don’t recall hearing about the project until I came across the archive in early research for the story which became Under Leaden Skies, but the more time I spend there, the more useful I find it.

There are stories recorded of so many different experiences of the 1939-1945 conflict: not just Britain and her allies, but stories from all sides of the conflict. I find it can be a little difficult to navigate in terms of searching for information, but in a way that’s one of its strengths: you can’t just quickly dip in & out, you get drawn in to reading different people’s stories, and sometimes find a gem of information, or a throw-away comment which makes you dig deeper elsewhere. For example, when I needed to ‘flesh-out’ the time which Teddy and Cheeks spend in Gibraltar, I read through a whole host of stories from people who’d been on ‘The Rock’ at the time, and I found myself not just expanding what I had written, but completely revising it.

~~

Under Leaden Skies was released on 1st August, published by Manifold Press

 

Two new historicals out on Monday

On Monday, two new works of historical fiction by members of the Macaronis will be available for your perusal…

Eleventh Hour by  Elin Gregory

Borrowed from the Secret Intelligence Service cipher department to assist Briers Allerdale – a field agent returning to 1920s London with news of a dangerous anarchist plot – Miles Siward moves into a ‘couples only’ boarding house, posing as Allerdale’s ‘wife’. Miles relishes the opportunity to allow his alter ego, Millie, to spread her wings but if Miles wants the other agent’s respect he can never betray how much he enjoys being Millie nor how attractive he finds Allerdale.

Pursuing a ruthless enemy who wants to throw Europe back into the horrors of the Great War, Briers and Miles are helped and hindered by nosy landladies, water board officials, suave gentlemen representing foreign powers and their own increasing attraction to each other.

Will they catch their quarry? Will they find love? Could they hope for both?

The clock is ticking.

~~~

Under Leaden Skies by Sandra Lindsey

Love. Loss. Betrayal. Forgiveness. Honour. Duty. Family.

In 1939, the arrival of war prompted ‘Teddy’ Maximilian Garston to confess his love to his childhood friend, Huw Roberts. Separated by duty – Teddy piloting Sunderland flying boats for RAF Coastal Command, and Huw deep underground in a South Wales coal mine – their relationship is frustrated by secrecy, distance, and the stress of war that tears into every aspect of their lives.

After endless months of dull patrols, a chance encounter over the Bay of Biscay will forever change the course of Teddy’s life. On returning to Britain, how will he face the consequences of choices made when far from home? Can he find a way to provide for everyone he loves, and build a family from the ashes of wartime grief?

~~~

We’ll be popping back here soon to tell you interesting tidbits of information we found in our research, and other historical delights!

 

Book Review – Sea Wolves

I’ve just finished reading Sea Wolves by Tim Clayton with a view to rewriting my WWII submarine story ‘Under the Radar’ for possible submission.

This book had the capacity to have me in tears–the sheer loss of human life in the submarine service was staggering–but it didn’t.  And it wasn’t that the book didn’t focus on the human face of the service. There were human stories mixed in with the development of the submarine and the progression of the war and how the Powers That Be viewed the use of submarines in the war effort. Tales of their life at play as well as time spent on duty, of falling in love, and, in most cases, of how they died.

The origins of the submarine service, and, to a degree, the chapters on the pre-war service were fine as background information to the main event. The problem for me, and I think the reason that I didn’t connect with the book on an emotional level, was that once war was declared the author chose to focus on the different areas and campaigns. Chapters on the invasion of Norway, the submarine base at Malta, Japan taking over the Pacific, the development of midget subs.

The same names cropped up again and again as they moved from one submarine to another or were promoted—quickly, ensuring relatively young officers in a service that many didn’t want to volunteer for—and transferred to another campaign. I’d say eighty to ninety percent of the names mentioned died or were on board a sub that ended up being missing in action. And yet I could not cry for them. I recognised the names, recalled other submarines they had served on, people they had served with, even on occasions the women they had courted or married. And yet I could not cry for them.  I felt the despair of such vast losses, the futility of some of the campaigns (midget subs may have well have been titled suicide missions), their realisation of time running out, could often tell which report would be each participants last. And yet I could not cry for them.

I can’t deny that I cry easily. So why couldn’t I cry here?

Because the author would not let me. There was no continuity to each participant’s story. The information was probably all there, but in most cases it was spread over so many chapters that it left me feeling disconnected from the human aspect of their tale, and ultimately their death. The characters in this book—and believe me there were many interesting characters in the submarine service—were nothing but pawns in a document that detailed the campaigns and what happened to damn near every ship. In the end, despite the final chapter and his acknowledgements, I felt that the author treated the personnel of the submarine service no better than the Powers That Be, as a means to an end.

As a documentation of the development of submarines, of how it felt to be on board in wartime, and the changing view of the PTB this book could not be faulted. If you want to know what happened to most subs in the service, again this book is probably for you.

However as a celebration of the characters and mavericks that made up this service, as a thank you to them for putting their life on the line every time they stepped on board (even in peace time or friendly waters) this book was sorely lacking.

If you want to check out Sea Wolves or see what other folks thought of it, here’s the link on Goodreads.

 

 

A post for the 100th anniversary of Mametz Wood

Pals 

We met first day at school.

Play time he knocked me down, so I knocked him down.

Both got the cane.

Best buttys ever since, through thick and thin.

Scrumping apples, knocking on doors and running off, climbing the wall to see the match for free, always together.

Because where Billy went I ‘ad to follow.

 

Shared our first cigarette, both of us puking up afterwards, back of the chapel.

‘ad our first working day at the same factory, the same time.

Our first pint at the Working Men’s. Together.

Our first kisses, with those awful Probyn sisters, down the Tanky Woods.

Whatever Billy did, I tagged along, and he didn’t mind.

 

We signed up, pals in the Pals’ Regiment, me hoping I wouldn’t get rejected if he was accepted.

Trained together, trying to outdo each other at drill, or spit and polish.

Stood in the same holding trench at Mametz, me behind him, the only one who could see behind his jokes and his games and spot the fear.

Said to him, “I’m here, Billy, it’ll be alright,” meaning, “I love you, butty, as a man loves a maid,” only I couldn’t have told him.

 

Woke up in hospital, half my leg shot away.

Couldn’t find out if Billy ‘ad gone where I couldn’t follow yet.

Next morning, he’s there at the bedside, arm and head bandaged up.

“I was wondering where you’d got to, you silly sod,” he said, meaning, “I love you Harry, but I can’t say it here.”

Only I didn’t find out that was what he meant until later, after; “Seeing as we’re two cripples, the sort a maid would never look at, just as well we’ve got each other isn’t it?” and, “Neither of us could look after ourselves so we’d best look after each other.”

Pals.

 

 

 

Excerpt: Awfully Glad, WWI romance

WWI hero Sam Hines is used to wearing a face that isn’t his own. When he’s not in the trenches, he’s the most popular female impersonator on the front, but a mysterious note from an anonymous admirer leaves him worried. Everyone realizes—eventually—that Sam’s not a woman, but has somebody also worked out that he also prefers his lovers to be male?

When Sam meets—and falls for—fellow officer Johnny Browne after the war, he wonders whether he could be the man who wrote the note. If so, is he the answer to Sam’s dreams or just another predatory blackmailer, ready to profit from a love that dare not speak its name?

Excerpt:

Sam couldn’t resist unfolding the note; he’d had these sorts of things before and they were always good for a laugh. The invitations would range from the innocent to the knowingly experienced, although nobody ever suggested something entirely obscene—Miss Madeleine gave an air of always being above such things. This would probably be the usual Might I buy you a drink? I know this little estaminet…

It wasn’t.

“I’m awfully glad you’re not a girl. J.”

Sam read it again, not trusting the evidence of his eyes, but they’d been right the first time. J? Which of the officers had that been? Jimmy, Jeffrey, Jonathan…Sam had forgotten their names already, even if he’d been told them.

But when had the note been written? After he’d taken his wig off and burst the little lieutenant’s bubble, he supposed, although if he had no memory of the thing being lodged in its hiding place, he equally had no recollection of somebody scribbling the thing—there’d been very little time for it, anyway. And how much more courage would it have taken to do such a thing in plain sight? It wasn’t the sort of note which could be easily explained away if discovered.

He closed his eyes, trying better to picture the scene. There’d been Corry, whom he’d known since he was a lad. Not him. Not his writing, anyway. And the ginger-haired officer hadn’t been anywhere near those pots. So it had to be the quiet, dark-haired chap or the tow-headed one. He wouldn’t have said no to either of those if they’d met in a certain bar in London. Decent-looking lads, a bit of life about them, and clearly with some spark of interest that was more than platonic. But which of them had written it? And how to find out?

Awfully Glad.

 

Remembering the Annual Reminder: Hop for Visibility, Awareness and Equality

Nearly everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the homosexual experience in America is familiar with Stonewall, not just as a NYC dive-bar, but also as the flashpoint in the struggle for Gay Rights. But the “riots”, as they’ve come to be called, didn’t so much spontaneously combust as explode after the participant’s suffering had reached the end of a long simmering fuse.

Post-World-War-2 America was gripped with fear. The reaction was in sharp contrast to that felt after the first world war. Then, waves of isolationism soothed the country’s lingering regrets about mixing in what many considered “European Affairs” (where that left Japan, China, Australia and the Middle East, one can only wonder, though the as yet lingering colonialist condescension toward Africa explains why not much is ever made of their involvement). WW2, on the other hand, saw America fostering her own imperial ambitions, not least in the schismed states that were the former Germany, but also, and at a greater ultimate price, in Southeast Asia.

The main boogey man was of course the Communist. This was partly a reaction to New Deal socialism, but also the Soviet Union had proved in the war a world power to be reckoned with. A secondary threat were homosexuals. The two were linked (almost inexorably so) not so much rationally, but as a result of their insidiousness and their perceived threat to the American way of life.

Yet, concerning the so-called Commie and Pervert Purges, John Loughery writes in The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives & Gay Identities – A Twentieth-Century History:

“[T]wo facts do stand out that never seem to find their way into histories of the Cold War or books about America in the 1950s. …[T]he number of men and women dismissed for sexual reasons far exceeds—by any estimates—the number dismissed for real or alleged involvement with the Communist Party…[And] for the first time, the federal government had addressed itself to the place of the homosexual in American society and concurred with those who argued that gay men and lesbians were not like other people and should not be trusted.”

The focus on the homosexual over the Communist grew as firebrand senators such as Joe McCarthy lost relevance, and prevailed well into the late sixties.

It was amidst this aura of repression and fear that various homophile groups joined together for the Annual Reminder. (While the modern usage of the word gay has arguably been around since the turn of the last century, in the fifties and sixties, to be “pro-gay-rights” was usually known as being “homophile”.) The brain child of activist Craig Rodwell, following smaller pickets outside New York’s Whitehall and the United Nations Plaza, the picket’s title referenced the fact the public needed to be reminded that not all US citizens enjoyed equal rights. Under the auspices of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), the event brought together gay rights champions from all across the spectrum. Frank Kameny, a former Army astronomer dismissed due to his homosexuality, is remembered today for legally challenging his dismissal, perhaps the first to do so. Clark Polak founded Drum magazine. Barbara Gittings, a founder of the NY chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (which official disavowed the picket), also edited DOB’s publication, The Ladder. Kay Tobin Lahusen is recognized as the first openly gay American woman photojournalist. And Rodwell himself went on to establish the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop.

Barbara Gittings on the picket line in 1966.

The Annual Reminder focused on ending the legal exclusion of homosexuals in the workplace (especially in government jobs), but lasted only five years. In June of 1969 just a week before the final Annual Reminder, the police infamously raided that dive-bar I mentioned. Subsequent to those events, the pickets were considered almost quaint.

Modern hindsight also tends to underestimate the value of the pickets. They are often derided as arguments for assimilation over acceptance or identity. For example, the 1995 semi-musical film Stonewall all but dismisses the pickets as ineffectual. But even as someone who’s early manhood was steeped in the in-your-face civil disobedience of Act-Up, I can’t help but admire these brave men and women, who really risked far more than I ever did.

In 2005, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission commemorated the Annual Reminders
with a state historical marker at 6th and Chestnut Streets. On July 4, 2015, to celebrate the picket’s 50th anniversary, a recreation of the first Annual Reminder was staged.

Jon Wilson is the author of Cheap as Beasts, a current finalist for the Lambda Literary Award Best Gay Mystery of 2015. He’s also written a follow-up volume, Every Unworthy Thing, as well as two westerns. He lives and works in Northern California.

 

 

Looking back to find hope for the future

Recently, while researching for a planned novel set during WW2, I was reading the memoir ‘Troubled Waters’ by Margaret Cornish, about her wartime experience on the inland waterways. I’d been reading quite a few books like this as initial prep for this story, and one thing which had stuck out thus far was that, if the somewhat isolated community of boaters were at all aware of the existence of LGBTQ+ people, it was certainly not something they would discuss or record as part of their history. In Troubled Waters, however, I almost jumped for joy when I came across the following, which occurs shortly after Jo joins the author and skipper Daphne aboard the training boats:

When I returned to the boats, I could hear Jo in the cabin of Cleopatra and I almost turned back into the pub. But money was short and it was cold and I was tired. I entered noisily. Jo was lying along the side-bed with her head on Daphne’s lap. I felt embarrassed; Daphne looked embarrassed, but Jo remained imperturbable and stayed where she was. […] Was Jo a lesbian? Were they both lesbians? I wondered as I drifted into sleep.

The reason I jumped for joy was not only finding reference (at last!) to the existence of LGBTQ+ people in this time period, but also that it suggests I should be ok using the word “lesbian” in my own story. As my editor could tell you, I have terrible trouble with weeding out anachronisms…

Looking down into a narrowboat cabin: the side-bed is the bench you can see on the right

A few pages later, however, I wasn’t feeling quite so joyful. In the midst of a series of increasingly disturbing events where Jo’s moods swing wildly from one extreme to another, and her behaviour becomes more erratic, the author (Margaret) sustains an injury to her leg while manoeuvring the boats through a lock. The injury effectively confines her to the cabin where she cannot escape Jo, and on one occasion during a pause while they wait for their cargo to be offloaded, Margaret remains on the boats to write letters while the others go off into town for a few hours. Jo returns earlier than expected.

‘Never get to see you on your own,’ she said closing the cabin doors behind her.

I panicked as she joined me on the side-bed and embraced me fiercely, trying to kiss me. She told me that, in fact, she was a man and that she loved me – had loved me since she had lifted me up on the lockside [..] I was horrified and not a little frightened. My arms were pinioned and my leg hurt.

This particular passage struck me and I put the book down at this point on my first read-through. I understood the fright felt by Margaret – she was injured, and therefore in a very vulnerable position, even more so when you’ve read more than just these small extracts and know that even before her injury, Margaret was not as physically imposing or strong as Jo; and Jo, as has been made clear several times by this point in the text, has a very forceful personality. The consequences when she doesn’t get her own way have been shown to be disproportionately dire.

But “horrified”? That one threw me out of my modern understanding and viewpoint. I had to think back, remind myself how little was known about trans issues even 10 years ago, when the Gender Recognition Act had been in place in the UK for a year, or 20 years ago, when I was a teenager struggling to understand sexuality and gender. On reflection, I shouldn’t be surprised at someone in a vulnerable situation being “horrified” by their understanding of gender possibly being turned upside down.

Of course, Jo may not have been trans at all. Even had she known the term, she may not have chosen it for herself. That is me, again, with my modern outlook, trying to understand this account of the past.

You’ll be glad to know, I’m sure, that whatever issues Jo is struggling with, Margaret manages to persuade her to brew up some tea and have a chat about things rather than get up close and personal, and in the text the author reflects

In those days, when the residue of Victorian prudery enveloped most of us, such revelations seemed incredible and my efforts to talk with Jo about her dilemma would now [1987] seem very inhibited and pretentious.

Often, in my daily life, I find myself in conversation with people who are either completely unaware of, or seem entirely resistant to understanding, issues which we in our community know all too well. It can seem such a long hard slog to get people to understand and accept the truths we tell them, and equality sometimes seems such a long way off.

But then, on looking back, it is possible to see how far we’ve come.

~~~

As ever, there are some wonderful posts in the Hop for Visibility, Awareness and Equality. Do make sure you visit other people on the list here, as well as reading the posts we Macaronis have gathered here.

 

The Hop for Visibility, Awareness and Equality

Research into the history of asexuality is only just beginning to gain any traction. Which is fitting, because it’s only in the last decade, really, that there has been an awareness that asexuality exists at all – and that awareness is very far from being widespread outside the LGBTQ part of the internet. We are still very much an invisible orientation, and as such not much is known about our history.

Having said that, we do know that the Kinsey Reports – the hugely influential studies of human sexuality published in 1948 has a sliding scale of 0-6 to measure how heterosexual or homosexual someone was, and a seperate category X for those who are not attracted to anyone. That’s us. So clearly we’ve been around since the first serious investigation was going on.

In fact, according to this discussion in AVEN’s forums as early as 1896, budding sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, in his book Sappho und Sokrates says There are individuals who are without any sexual desire (“Anästhesia sexualis”)

He also says It is also not possible to artificially evoke the kind of drive, that is not existent or almost not noticeable. In case of a complete atrophy there is no way that it would spontaneously develop.

And that’s what I would like to talk about today. One of the places where we are almost certain to find reflections of ourselves is in medicine, as a problem to be cured. Acing History has a good summary of the pathologisation of asexuality under the terms of ‘frigidity’, ‘sexual anaesthesia’, and more recently ‘Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder’ (HSDD). This gives us a great place to start when it comes to trying to uncover our history, but it also segues into something of direct relevance today.

This year’s theme for the IDAHOT organisation is Mental Health and Well-Being. Normally I would talk in more vague terms about all of us under the (Queer, MOGAI, LGBTQI+) umbrella. All of us, after all, suffer ill effects to our mental and physical well being by being members of a minority in general, and particularly by being members of a minority that is opressed.

However, today I sat down to write my post immediately after having signed this petition:

Tell the FDA: Disinterest in Sex Shouldn’t Be Treated With A Pill

and I thought ‘well this is spot on theme for a blog hop concerned with the mental health and physical wellbeing of queer people, and it has the advantage of being something I can talk about from experience.’

I really encourage you to go to the petition and at least read the article that accompanies it. The long and the short of it is that – clearly not having the wisdom of Magnus Hirschfeld – they’re bringing in a pill that they claim can do something for disinterest in sex in women. So that they can claim that it’s not going to be used to try to ‘cure’ asexuals of their orientation, the FDA have specifically said that the pill should not be prescribed to people who are not distressed about their disinterest because they identify as asexual.

This is nice, of course. But let’s ask ourselves, how many of those women who are distressed at their lack of interest in sex are distressed because they’ve never heard of asexuality? How many of them even know that asexuality is an option?

While we continue to be an invisible orientation, it’s completely disingenuous to say ‘of course we won’t press this on the asexuals.’ Seriously. Ten years ago I’d have taken it myself because I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know there was absolutely nothing wrong with being disinterested in sex.

I am livid to think that in my desperation to be ‘normal’ I might have grasped at the chance to take a drug that I had to take every day for the rest of my life, a drug with significant side effects and little apparent effectiveness. And I might have done that, not knowing there was nothing wrong with me at all except that I wasn’t straight.

I am livid to think that while there are people out there who don’t know asexuality exists, of course they’re going to be distressed about themselves. Of course they’re not going to protest that there’s something wrong about them being forced to have sex they don’t want, because people somehow think it’s a disease not to want it. And it won’t ‘cure’ them, because they don’t need to be cured, but it will be a direct threat to their physical and mental well being.

So please, sign the petition. This is a chance to make history instead of simply observing it. Please also let people know that asexuality is a real thing that has been around as long as research on sexuality has existed, and if you don’t want sex it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you.

 

In honour of the hop, I will be donating to Gendered Intelligence, a great charity for young trans people in the UK. And I will be giving away a book of their choice from my back-catalogue to one commenter chosen at random. Thanks for reading!

~

Click here to be taken to the list of participants in the blog hop or use the links below.

Blog Hop for Visibility, Awareness and Equality.

1.	B. A. Brock (BI TR GAY LES)	23.	Amelia Bishop (MULTI)	45.	Remmy Duchene (MM)
2.	Jamie Fessenden	24.	Moonbeams over Atlanta – Eloreen Moon (MM, REV, MULTI)	46.	Sharita Lira writing as BLMorticia M/M
3.	Rory Ni Coileain	25.	Helena Stone (M/M )	47.	Barbara Winkes (LES)
4.	Erica Pike (M/M)	26.	AM Leibowitz (M/M, F/F, BI, TR, NB, REV)	48.	Bronwyn Heeley (m/m)
5.	Andrew Jericho (GAY)	27.	L.D. Blakeley (M/M, BI)	49.	L. J. LaBarthe
6.	Tempeste O\’Riley (M/M (Bi) (NB)	28.	Lila Leigh Hunter [M/M, BI]	50.	VJ Summers (m/m, m/m/f)
7.	The Macaronis [various]	29.	Sharon Bidwell	51.	Nikka Michaels (M/M)
8.	Elin Gregory [mm]	30.	Nicole Dennis (M/M, ACE, M/M/F)	52.	Caraway Carter (LGBT)
9.	Alexa MIlne	31.	Lexi Ander	53.	L M Somerton (M/M)
10.	Nic Starr (M/M)	32.	Barbara G.Tarn (M/M, ACE)	54.	Taylor Law (GAY)
11.	Evelise Archer (MM)	33.	Kaje Harper M/M, TR, BI	55.	Anastasia Vitsky (F/F, TR, BI)
12.	Sue Brown	34.	JMS Books LLC	56.	Draven St. James (M/M)
13.	Elizabeth Varlet (M/M, BI, NB)	35.	JM Snyder	57.	A.V. Sanders (GAY, ACE, NB)
14.	Raven J. Spencer	36.	Dean Pace-Frech	58.	Lynley Wayne
15.	Sharing Links and Wisdom (REV)	37.	Kimber Vale	59.	DP Denman (GAY)
16.	Lisa Horan (REV/Multi)	38.	Jacintha Topaz (BI, F/F, M/M, TR)	60.	M.A. Church M/M
17.	Archer Kay Leah (M/M, F/F, TR, NB, BI, ACE)	39.	Prism Book Alliance® (MULTI)	61.	Andrew J. Peters GAY
18.	Alexis Duran (M/M)	40.	Eva Lefoy (M/M, F/F, F/M/F, BI, MULTI)	62.	Dianne Hartsock MM
19.	Jules Dixon	41.	Lou Sylvre (M/M)	63.	M. LeAnne Phoenix M/M F/F
20.	R.M. Olivia	42.	Anne Barwell	64.	Cherie Noel (M/M)
21.	Heloise West (M/M)	43.	Viki Lyn (M/M)	65.	Chris McHart (M/M, Trans*)
22.	Angel Martinez (M/M GAY BI TR)	44.	Sean Michael

 

The strange tale of Billy Clegg-Hill

Updated August 2023 to reflect new information.

It’s not easy to come across a fact that not only shakes you up but casts a major aspect of a cause celebre into doubt, but that’s what’s happened here. The received story about Billy Clegg-Hill – as per BBC documentary, article in Gay Times, etc – is that he was sentenced to aversion therapy simply for being gay and serving in the forces (either because he was caught in a gay bar or his name was in an incriminating address book). That’s wrong.

In June 1962, at Somerset Assizes, Billy was found guilty of indecency with a 16 year old boy and indecent assault on a 15 year old. He was put on probation for three years on condition he received in-patient treatment at Netley Hospital. (Indecent assault would be automatic if the person were 16, even if the sex was consensual.) The judge as good as stated that the two lads were rent boys but the fact of their ages remains, as does the sentence passed down. (Source: Bristol Evening Post, June 5th 1962)

Intriguing details emerge, like Billy being represented by an incredibly high-powered defence barrister: Norman Skelhorn was Director of Public Prosecutions by 1964. Billy was leading the Keynsham TA at the time he was sentenced, which begs the question of why such a highly-rated officer would have been relocated to such a minor role. Maybe this was a demotion for having been caught in the gay bar.

There are plenty of questions still left to answer and maybe we’ll never get to know all the facts, especially as the truth has been so effectively  concealed for so long.

Original article text:

It’s my turn to blog as part of the Hop For Visibility, Awareness and Equality and I’m sharing a sad but strange story.

The honourable Gerald William Clegg Hill was born on 26th August 1932, the second son of Gerald Rowland Clegg-Hill, 7th Viscount Hill of Hawkestone and of Hardwicke and his wife, Elizabeth Flora Garthwaite, nee Smyth-Osbourne. Their first child, the Hon Anthony Rowland Clegg-Hill, succeeded to the title. Gerald William (known as Billy) was christened at St Mary’s, Edstaston, Shropshire, with four godparents including a member of the Welsh Guards. He was educated at Kelly College, Tavistock, and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He served in the Royal Tank regiment, being made Captain on 6th February 1959.

So far, so good. Distinguished family, even if it was one which had fallen from its absolute heights, prospects of a great army career, but things took a horrible turn for the worse.

Billy was arrested in 1962, possibly in a police swoop on gay men in Southampton. He is said to have been tried at Somerset assizes, in Wells, found guilty of homosexual practices and sentenced to compulsory aversion therapy at Netley Military Hospital. He may have been offered the alternative of going to prison. (You can find many references to Captain Clegg-Hill online although many of them are just not very accurate reproductions of earlier articles, so the exact events and where they happened are not clear. One of the best sources is Peter Tatchell’s site.)

Billy’s therapy might have been carried out in P wing of Netley Hospital, the building near D block. Wherever it happened, it went disastrously wrong and he was taken seriously ill. He died from coma and convulsions resulting from injections of apomorphine, a potent vomit-inducing drug he’d been administered as part of his aversion treatment. At the time, the coroner listed the death as being due to ‘natural causes’ perhaps an allergic reaction to the drugs; this was only revealed as untrue thirty years later. A BBC documentary was aired in 1996 detailing his story and alleging medical negligence; Billy didn’t receive prompt enough treatment when he was taken ill and may have suffered a stroke brought on by dehydration.

He died on 12th July 1962, aged 29, at Southampton General Hospital; the national probate register gives his address as Rushgrove House, Woolwich and he left his estate of £10778 6s 4d to his mother. His funeral was held at St John’s church on Thursday July 19th 1962 and I’ve been told that Billy’s parents used to sit in the churchyard while they were waiting to visit their son.

There’s a strange twist to the tale. A few years back, an appeal went out for people to adopt one of the four war graves in Rownhams churchyard. I resisted, being too busy. The appeal went out again and I succumbed. I asked for the WWI grave but that was already taken, so I was given Billy’s. I had no idea at that point of any of the background to this young soldier.

I found it quite extraordinary that, of all the graves I could have ended up looking after, I have this one; some may call it coincidence, I call it the hand of God. Whatever it is, I regard it as a privilege.

 

Daughters on the Stage: Charlotte Cushman

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and today, 17th May, is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia

I’m delighted to be blogging here at the Macaronis today as part of the Hop For Visibility, Awareness and Equality.

 

Among the many fascinating exhibits in the British Library’s Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition is the story of lesbian actress Charlotte Cushman from Boston, Massachusetts, who has been described as the first native-born star upon the American stage.

In 1846 she crossed the Atlantic to appear on the London stage in Romeo and Juliet—but not in a female role.

London theatre audiences of the time were notoriously conservative—after all, it was only 40 years since Sarah Siddons, playing Lady Macbeth, had caused a sensation by putting down a candlestick when tradition dictated it should be held throughout a scene. Playwright Richard Sheridan was apparently so horrified by the prospect he actually visited her in her dressing room to try to get her to abandon such a dangerously avant-garde idea, although he changed his mind when he saw the performance.

So how might an accomplished actress, tired of—and in some ways ill-suited to—playing the limited female roles available at the time circumvent all tradition and convention to take on a male role?

How, in particular, might she persuade an audience to accept cross-dressed casting of one of the most famous of Shakespeare’s characters, the eponymous lover, Romeo?

In an inspired move, Miss Cushman—known for her strong features and deep (for a woman) voice, not to mention her independence of spirit—gave out the story that she took on the role of Romeo to protect her Juliet from the unwanted attentions of male actors. The role of Juliet was taken by Charlotte’s younger sister Susan, who had been abandoned by her husband and lately involved in a romantic scandal. How could anyone object to the preservation of female virtue?

And in fact the casting brought a whole new dimension to the role. Charlotte Cushman’s masculine femininity was well suited to playing a young man whose masculinity was perceived as having something effeminate about it. Romeo’s immaturity, and in particular his emotional immaturity, led the role to be seen as one not easily portrayed by a mature male actor of the era—or at least, not without embarrassment. Women, however, were popularly supposed to be naturally over-emotional and impetuous, and so a woman’s portrayal of the young lover was, in some ways, actually more credible to nineteenth-century audiences.

Precedent established, Charlotte Cushman went on to play Romeo to at least two other Juliets—with both of whom she was romantically linked. And she didn’t just stick with the “effeminate” heroes: in her career she played over 30 male roles, including that of Hamlet, often seen as the loftiest endeavour of an actor’s career.

That she was able to do so is a tribute not only to her ability as an actor, but also to her tenacity, business savvy and, not least, her skill and pragmatism at working a system that was stacked against women.

See also: the British Library’s excellent Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition: http://www.bl.uk/events/shakespeare-in-ten-acts (on until 6th September 2016).

***

PRIZE: I’m offering an ebook of the winner’s choice from my historical backlist to a randomly chosen commenter on this post, and I’ll make the draw after the hop ends on May 24th. There will be lots of other prizes up for grabs on the hop, so make sure you check out the other participating blogs! 

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.  Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

 

The words of the past seen with the eyes of today

I came across a book in a second hand shop and picked it up simply because I rather liked the title and the plain cover. It proved to be a collection of chapters from the longer work “A Student in Arms” – combining observations on a soldier’s life during WWI with reflections upon faith and religion.  Hankey’s an interesting person, whose words are very much of his time. And some of his musings are distinctly slashy.

The first chapter describes an officer, Ronald Hardy, in glowing terms that verge on hero worship. The bit about Hardy’s smile, “It was something worth living for and worth working for”, reminds me of The Charioteer, where Laurie remembers Ralph Lanyon at school, and how boys competed fiercely and tacitly to earn one of his smiles.

Then there’s the chapter “Some who were lost and found”, which is full of stuff reflecting a wonderfully open heart towards some of the soldiers he met. “If they did fly in the face of the conventions, well, we sometimes felt that the conventions deserved it.” One line intrigues me. He’s talking about the men and their relationships with women. “They had their code, and though God forbid that it should ever be ours, it did somehow seem to be a natural set off to the somewhat sordidly prudent morality of the marriage market.”

I really can’t work out what Hankey means by that little dig at marriage, apart from the obvious implication that he didn’t himself want to be married. For whatever reason. You see, it’s really hard at times to understand the words of the past when the only filter we have is our modern ears and eyes.

I read a lot of literature written either side of 1900, and while people haven’t changed, society and conventions have. In the days of “Three Men in a Boat”, men staying in a hotel would have shared a bed if need be with no implications other than necessity. And lines like, “I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did.” could be written in complete innocence of any double entendre. (They accidentally smeared it all over the stuff they were packing, in case you’re wondering.)

Writers would use the word “love” in a wider context, too. Ronnie Poulton Palmer was a stunning pre-WWI rugby player, the sort of three-quarter who could slice through defences like a knife through butter. His last words are said to be, “I shall never play at Twickenham again” although that’s likely to be apocryphal as it seems he was shot and died instantaneously. I can, however, imagine a player saying just that sort of thing ironically.

Poulton seems to have inspired a great deal of affection from his friends and extracts from letters such as this from Keith Rae to Poulton are very evocative: “I believe very firmly that there will be a Bright beyond after this war…My Love to you and God bless you, always your affectionate friend, Keith Rae.” Army Chaplain Dick Dugdale wrote home after Poulton’s death to say “You know I loved him {Poulton} more than anyone else,” and “Each passing year means one year less to wait for Ronald”. *

Deep friendships? The sort of love that dare not speak its name? The sort of love which couldn’t speak its name because it didn’t understand that it was more than friendship?

Wilfred Owen, in one of the few surviving bits of correspondence between himself and Siegfried Sassoon certainly seems to have gone beyond friendship.

“Know that since mid-September, when you still regarded me as a tiresome little knocker on your door, I held you as Keats + Christ + Elijah + my Colonel + my father-confessor + Amenophis IV in profile.
What’s that mathematically? In effect it is this: that I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can’t hurt me in the least.” **

Poor Wilfred, so much in awe of Sassoon and unlikely ever to have that love requited in the way he seemed to want. At least with some of Owen’s extant poetry the homo-erotic elements are obvious. No slash goggles needed when reading “Page Eglantine”, “Who is the God of Canongate”, the unfinished “Lines to a Beauty seen in Limehouse” or “I am the Ghost of Shadwell stair”. (The last one apparently is a play on words between ghost and infantryman, with a suggestion that Owen himself is the ghost who visits a male prostitute.)

Of course, you could probably get away with more in the veiled language of poetry or the private language of letters than you could in plain prose.

* The Greater Game – Sporting icons who fell in the Great War

**Wilfred Owen a new biography

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Excitement of the New

Here comfortably sitting on our well padded seats in 2016 – probably looking at stuff online on a slim piece of glass and plastic, or maybe a hinged something that purrs a little and is warm to the touch – we are all so used to the ‘new’ the ‘exciting’ the ‘dynamic’ that we accept it without quibble, merely making a mental note of its shortcomings to add to our review later. The new is no longer a novelty, in fact we expect and demand it.

In some ways this is sad. I think we miss out on a lot of excitement by being so blasé about innovation. I remember my grandmother – born 1890 – and her delighted wonder at the first men in space. Just in her lifetime the world had gone from the fastest form of transport being a train, to men orbiting the earth. “It’s just like Jules Verne!” she said.

But technology isn’t the only thing that changes. There are works of beauty that are so much a part of our list of artistic icons that they are immediately recognisable. In fact it can be hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. If you want to reference them in a story it’s always a good idea to check on their dates, just in case. Your modern day protagonist may admire his love interest’s smile, likening its mysterious quality to that of the 16^th century Mona Lisa but in the 17^th or 18th century he is unlikely to have been able to see the original, or a copy or engraving or parody, to make the comparison.

Mona Ogg by Paul Kidby

However he might have read Vasari’s description of the painting which is approving to say the least:

Anyone wishing to see the degree to which art could imitate nature could readily perceive this from the head; since therein are counterfeited all those minutenesses that with subtlety are able to be painted: seeing that the eyes had that lustre and moistness which are always seen in the living creature, and around them were the lashes and all those rosy and pearly tints that demand the greatest delicacy of execution. The eyebrows, through his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close and here more scanty, and curve according to the pores of the flesh, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth with its opening, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse: and indeed it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every brave artificer, be he who he may, tremble and lose courage. 

 

Bigging it up a bit there, and no mention of the very real possibility that the famous close lipped smile may have been to conceal bad teeth.

Critics weren’t always favourable when it came to innovation. The School of Impressionism  bombed on its first major showing:

This school does away with two things: line, without which it is impossible to reproduce any form, animate or inanimate, and colour, which gives the form the appearance of reality.

Dirty three-quarters of a canvas with black and white, rub the rest with yellow, dot it with red and blue blobs at random, and you will have an impression of spring before which the initiates will swoon in ecstasy.

Smear a panel with grey, plonk some black and yellow lines across it, and the enlightened few, the visionaries, exclaim: Isn’t that a perfect impression of the bois de Meudon?

Dance Class by Dega was one of the despised paintings

When the human figure is involved, it is another matter entirely: the aim is not to render its form, its relief, its expression – it is enough to give an impression with no definite line, no colour, light or shadow; in the implementation of so extravagant a theory, artists fall into hopeless, grotesque confusion, happily without precedent in art, for it is quite simply the negation of the most elementary rules of drawing and painting. The scribblings of a child have a naivety, a sincerity which make one smile, but the excesses of this school sicken or disgust.

EMILE CARDON
LA PRESSE
“The exhibition of the Revoltes”
April 29, 1874

So a late Victorian gent with an eye for art might have seen some of this work but there’s no guarantee that he’d approve of it.

In music too, standard works that are ubiquitous, in fact officially sanctioned, were considered shocking. Here’s Guiseppe Verdi’s comment on the first performance of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony:

“marvelous in its first three movements, very badly set in the last. No one will ever surpass the sublimity of the first movement, but it will be an easy task to write as badly for voices as is done in the last movement.”

Another critic was even less enthusiastic:

Beethoven is still a magician, and it has pleased him on this occasion to raise something supernatural, to which this critic does not consent.

And now it’s the official theme tune of the EU, whose policies do indeed sometimes smack of those strange and eldritch things, beyond the wot of mankind.

Times change, and so do attitudes, but on the whole critics don’t. Even though we are used to new and wonderful things there are still always people happy and delighted to point out their shortcomings. In a hundred years I’m sure there will be things we adore now that have fallen into obscurity, unpopular things that are considered the pinnacle of our current civilisation and novelists writing stories set in 2016 whose heroes whole heartedly approve of them.

Just for a change of pace, here’s the Ode to Joy given a very modern al fresco treatment.

 

 

Slash in the Golden Age

It comes as a shock to many people (it did to me) that AA Milne wrote a murder mystery. Just the one, published in 1922, but it was enough to earn him admission to the inner sanctum of crime writers.
Is “The Red House Mystery” a good book? I’d say it’s fair enough, and very much in the style of its time, which is fine if you appreciate the Golden Age of crime. It certainly has many of the classic elements – the country house, the house party, the locked room, the wastrel brother who reappears from abroad and, of course, the amateur sleuth, with his slightly dim sidekick. If the denouement draws on a plot line which is peppered throughout those Golden Age mysteries, it’s none the worse for that.
Of course, it’s a whole other discussion about whether the detective’s sidekick only really exists to fulfil the main purpose of allowing the sleuth to show off his or her genius and give fulsome explanations regarding his or her thought processes. In the case of Red House’s Bill, he appears to be at the dimmer end of the bell curve of intelligence and certainly hero worships his friend Tony, the man who solves the case.
Tony’s a really interesting character, a man of independent means, who takes on various jobs just for fun. He’d have been well served by further crimes to solve with his sidekick. I could envisage a whole series of cases in which our two heroes pop up at house parties and the like, solving crimes, causing chaos and generally having a whale of a time. Alas, those books were never written.
Somebody even suggested that Bill reminded him of Piglet, but Tony and Bill makes me think of Raffles and Bunny, not least because of the “slash”. I usually say if you’re not sure what slash is, get your mother to explain when you get home. This time I’ll give a definition, straight from Wikipedia. “Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on interpersonal attraction and sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex.”
Milne himself objected to love stories getting in the way of the detection, so he takes Bill’s love interest “offscreen” pretty rapidly, then – ironically – proceeds to give us an almost love story between his two leading men. If you picked up this book without knowing the author or context, you might think you were reading a romantic mystery, with a gay bloke (Tony) who pursues, and then is all over, another man.
From the moment Tony serves Bill, first in a shop and then in a restaurant, “Something about [him], his youth and freshness, perhaps, attracted Tony”. He arranges a proper introduction to Bill and they quickly become “intimate”. Yes, that word clearly didn’t mean quite the same in 1922! As the story proper gets going, Bill is flattered, delighted and proud to be liked (and needed in the cause of investigation) by Tony, who soon after tells Bill he’s wonderful for describing someone so well, at which Bill is happily embarrassed.
Should I mention how often Anthony takes Bill’s arm when they’re walking? I know that this practice was not uncommon between men in the early twentieth century, and nobody batted an eyelid, but they seem to be at it all the time. Then there’s the hand holding; Tony tells Bill he’s the most perfect “Watson” before taking Bill’s hand in both of his to say, “There is nothing that you and I could not accomplish together…” (That’s the sort of thing he says a lot.) Bill responds by calling him a silly old ass, and Anthony replies with “That’s what you always say when I’m being serious” which is very similar to a tense, flirtatious interchange between Laurie and Andrew in Mary Renault’s “The Charioteer”.
They even end up sharing a bed, although strictly in the way the characters share a bed in “Three Men in a Boat”. That’s another element which is hard to interpret innocently with modern eyes, although those of us who were brought up on “Morecambe and Wise” know that Eric and Ernie weren’t “at it” when the lights went off.
So what the heck was going on in “The Red House Mystery”? It’s terribly easy for us to look back at books written so long ago with our “slash goggles” firmly in place and see things which the author didn’t intend. Perhaps we see things which aren’t there at all. You only have to look at the volume of Holmes and Watson romances that have sprung up to find people interpreting old stories in a very present-day fashion. But gay men did exist in the 1920s (or at any point in history) and gay or lesbian characters can be found, thinly veiled, in classic books such as “A Murder is Announced”.
Maybe Milne was just being observational in his writing, basing Tony on somebody he had known, weaving in elements of conversations he had heard, as so many of us do. I have little doubt that he had no intention of giving us that romantic storyline, but he did so, nonetheless.

 

The Reluctant Berserker by Alex Beecroft.

Can we talk about that cover for a moment? It’s probably my favourite cover out of all my books and is by the inestimable Kanaxa

We worked hard on getting this cover right – by which I mean that Kanaxa worked hard, and I kept saying things like “can you make that helmet look more like a spangenhelm,” and “can we make it a round shield please?” But as a result of that unflinching back and forth we ended up with a cover that is not only beautiful but is also a kind of microcosm of the book itself.

Say “Early Medieval England” or “Viking Age England” and most people will think “Dark Ages.” It conjures up visions of grim horsemen, battleaxes, snake-prowed Viking ships running up the beaches, disgorging angry armoured men. Burning villages, looting, rapine, war. A bit like the Vikings TV series where everything that isn’t bloody is brown.

That would naturally make you think of dark colours, maybe some battlements, flames against a lowering sky and an atmosphere of oppression and threat.

And that was exactly what I didn’t want for the cover of this book.

I understand why so many people who write books set in this period focus on the battles between Saxon and Viking, the war and terror that that implies. After all, they tell you as a writer to focus on conflict and what more obvious conflict is there than two bunches of people trying to kill each other with swords?

But I wanted to do something that was a bit less obvious.

You see I love the Anglo-Saxons. I have done ever since I discovered that they were the closest thing to the Rohirrim you could get in the real world. I studied Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology at university and did a Masters degree focussing on the Saxons’ pre-Christian beliefs in magic, medicine and the gods. As a result of which I read most of their extant literature (in translation.) I even learned to read Old English, although I have thoroughly forgotten it by now, so that I could begin to appreciate the way they used their beautiful language.

For the last twenty years, I’ve been a member of the Saxon, Viking and Norman reenactment society Regia Anglorum, which has certainly helped me when it came to getting the small details of this book right. For example, here I am by the fire playing the same kind of bone whistle that Leofgar carries up his sleeve in the book:

And yes, I know exactly what it’s like to sit in a longhall on a cold winter’s night with your eyes streaming from the smoke, smelling like you’ve been kippered, and hearing the wolves howl outside. Even the wolf part is true – Regia has a longhall in Kent, just outside a nature reserve on which there are wolves. Close enough to hear it when they sing.

I love the Saxons’ art, the amazing colours and brightness of their illuminated manuscripts, the gold and glitter and garnet of their jewellery. I wanted some of that sense of light and colour in my cover and by Jove I think I got it.

I love the thoughtfulness and romantic melancholy of their poetry. They felt that they lived in a diminished age, that great things had happened in the past and nothing now lived up to it. They built their wooden halls in the shadows of Roman walls and made songs about “the ancient works of giants.”

They had a cooperative and really quite egalitarian society – much better for women’s rights, social mobility and the treatment of peasants and slaves than the Norman culture that replaced them.

So what I wanted in this book was to show that society working, in the last years before the Viking raids began to turn into a Viking invasion. I wanted to show that society at peace, so that I could look a bit closer at the kinds of things that war doesn’t leave time for: music, magic, gender and the social construction of masculinity.

We know very little about how the Anglo-Saxons treated gay men, so I’ve had to borrow from what we know of the Vikings’ attitude. I feel OK about this, as the Angles were essentially the same stock as the Vikings, they shared the same gods and many of the same words. They shared a past. It’s not a stretch to think that their beliefs about sex were similar.

It’s both good news and bad news. On the one hand no one is thinking same sex relationships are unnatural, illegal or damned. On the other, it’s a proof of your masculinity to be the top, but woe betide the bottom. He is the object of ridicule and the same kind of contempt that Victorian society dealt out to fallen women.

So there’s a conflict. How the hell do you negotiate a relationship of equals in a culture that’s preoccupied with the assumption that one of you must be the bitch? If you’re a well respected, high born, dangerous warrior, can you ever dare to be some man’s boy? And if you’re poor and beautiful and dependant on charity from your local warlord – like an itinerant bard – how do you get him to accept that you will never submit to him because you’re just as much of a man as he is?

These questions and many more are answered in the story, which does in fact contain numerous sword-fights, fist-fights and other types of conflict both magical and mundane. War, after all, isn’t the be all and end all of everything. Even a society at peace is not necessarily free of bandits, backstabbers, supernatural horrors and men with lethal levels of entitlement.

~

Alex Beecroft is an English author best known for historical fiction, notably Age of Sail, featuring gay characters and romantic storylines. Her novels and shorter works include paranormal, fantasy, and contemporary fiction.

Beecroft won Linden Bay Romance’s (now Samhain Publishing) Starlight Writing Competition in 2007 with her first novel, Captain’s Surrender, making it her first published book. On the subject of writing gay romance, Beecroft has appeared in the Charleston City Paper, LA Weekly, the New Haven Advocate, the Baltimore City Paper, and The Other Paper.

She is represented by Louise Fury of the L. Perkins Literary Agency

You can find her at her website, or on Facebook or Twitter.

 

Same era, another mother

This is Tom’s mother from Promises Made Under Fire. Very different kettle of fish from Mrs. S.

Mother met me at the station, full of smiles and news. Father’s back playing up, her head much better, thank you, scandal about the neighbour’s son, who’d somehow mysteriously moved to Ireland.

“And your friend Ben—he asked me to apologise for his not being here to meet you but the silly boy’s gone and got mumps.” She slipped her arm in mine. “So he’s strictly persona non grata.”

She didn’t need to add why—any of my platoon could have told you the risk to a man’s wedding tackle. What the hell had I done to get such a run of luck?

“Have you any plans? Apart from rattling around at home?” Mother squeezed my arm, her hand seeming so tiny against my uniform coat. I patted it.

“I’ve a commission to fulfil. No, don’t worry.” I patted her hand again. “It’s not the army. You remember Foden?”

Of course she did, the way she paled at the mention of the name and gripped my arm tighter. She’d have remembered my tears, too. I hailed a cab and carried on. “He left a letter asking me to make some visits on his behalf. Least I can do.”

“You always were a good lad,” Mother said as we bundled into the cab and gave the driver our address.

Good lad I might be, but I wasn’t looking forward to doing this particular duty. “He wanted me to visit his mother,” I said, looking out of the window, unseeing. “Do you think I should write to her and make an initial introduction, rather than just turn up on her doorstep?”

“It would depend on her character. If it were to bring her distress rather than comfort, she might prefer one dose of it.”

Only one dose of discomfort for me, too; I’d forgotten how wise Mother was. “I have no idea. She’s a cook, up in London.”

“A cook?” A brief look—surprise tinged with quickly hidden disdain—crossed her face.

“It will have hurt her as much to lose her son as it would the lady of the household.” The anger I felt shocked me.

“I’m sorry. You’re quite right. You’ve always said that bullets don’t make any social distinctions.” She suddenly produced a mischievous smile. “And since the ‘to do’ with the lad next door, even Father says you can’t tell how brave someone is from the school he went to. He’s very proud of you, you know.”

 

A Mother’s Role

Ah, mothers. Every hero has one—or does he? It’s a sad fact that for most of the time in which historical fiction is set, it wasn’t uncommon for mothers to say a final farewell to their sons rather sooner than we’d hope in today’s world of antibiotics and modern hygiene.

And as if childbearing itself weren’t perilous enough in less enlightened times, there’s the further danger of narrative demands—after all, where would Harry Potter have been, if his parents had lived? Not, one suspects, the star of seven ever-more-bricklike tomes. In fact the number of fictional orphans is so suspiciously high, one might be tempted to suspect some sort of juvenile murder ring going on.

But never fear. The fictional historical mother isn’t extinct, merely somewhat endangered. And often, due to the smaller circles in which people moved in former times, rather more closely involved in her son’s life than might be the case nowadays, both in happy times:

Mam came bustling down from upstairs, looking bright herself in her Sunday best. “Oh, that’s a beauty, Danny. Will you stay for supper with us now?” There was a furrow in her brow as she said it, so Danny reckoned he knew what the answer had better be. – Keeper’s Pledge

And also in times of worry:

“Mam, you know me and him have been, well, close?”

She nodded, tight-lipped. It wasn’t something they ever spoke of.

“I think it’s over, Mam. I can’t risk my job, not when like as not he’ll be looking for a reason to fire me. What’d we do then?” He tried to keep his voice steady, Lord knew, but the pain was too great not to let it show a little.

“Oh, Danny.” Mam put down her sewing and rose to lay a gentle hand on his arm, then gathered him to her. “Oh, love. Hush now. Don’t you worry. I’ll not say another word about it. You just do what you think is best.” – Keeper’s Pledge.

And maybe this close involvement, with children staying in the area their parents had grown up in, helped sons see a fuller picture of their mothers. Including the astonishing fact that mothers were once young themselves. Here’s Danny from Poacher’s Fall and Keeper’s Pledge talking to Philip about his mother:

“[Mam’s] always loved having a bit of mistletoe in the house come Christmas. Says it reminds her of how she met my da.”

“Oh? That was at Christmas? At a dance, I suppose?”

“There, sir, you’d be supposing wrong. See, she was the second chambermaid here, back when old Mr. Luccombe was alive, God rest him. Maybe you’d remember her? Right pretty she was, by all accounts. Helen Braithwaite, as was.”

Philip shook his head absently. He’d never really paid much attention to the chambermaids.

“Any road, she’d been sent to ask the men to cut some mistletoe for the hall, here. And it happened it was my da sent to get it for her. Now, Da being Da, he tells her she’s to come with him to get it. So he takes her out into the woodland, out to that very oak tree I came a cropper on. ’Course, I reckon it’s grown a bit since then,” he added, grinning.

It seemed to be infectious. “So I suppose he shinned up the tree and fetched the mistletoe, whereupon she was duly impressed and agreed to let him court her?”

Costessey’s grin had turned wicked. “Well, she never did go into detail, mind. But they were wed the following Easter, and I was born in time for harvest that year.” – Poacher’s Fall.

Which leads us on to another aspect of mothers. One of the perks of having grown-up (or nearly grown-up) children is, of course, being able to embarrass them and/or anyone they bring home to meet the parents. Here’s the reserved George meeting his friend Matthew’s mother for the first time in Dulce et Decorum Est:

Matthew’s mother was an unusually tall woman, thin as a beanpole and as energetic as a whippet. She greeted her son with a kiss that left him with powder on his shoulder and a faint lipstick mark on his cheek. She then proceeded to bestow the same honor upon George, rather to his discomfort. “Welcome to our home, dear. So glad that Matthew’s found such a good friend in London—a mother does worry so, particularly when—”

“Mother!” – Dulce et Decorum Est

***

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.  Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

JL Merrow is a member of the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

 

But John worries about his

In False Colors John Cavendish’s relationship with his mum, although off screen, is a big factor in the way he approaches life. It’s one of the many things he has to work through in the process of allowing himself to fall in love.

~*~*~*~

As everything paused on a high note, clear and perfect, John’s delight escaped in a gasp of breath, and at the sound Donwell’s eyes snapped open.  With a convulsive heave backwards, he drew the flute to his chest as if to protect it, slamming his heels into the sea-chest and scrabbling to rise.  “Oh!  Oh, I’m….  I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know you were there!”

 “No need to apologize, Mr. Donwell.”  John smiled, not only the music making him radiant.  It was pleasing to have the upper hand for a change; to wrong-foot his over-bold lieutenant.  “Rather I should ask your pardon for disturbing you in the middle of a performance.  I have a most untutored reaction to music.  What was it, may I ask?”

“Surely you know Telemann, sir?” Donwell’s dark brows arched with surprise as he straightened up, freeing space enough for John to walk in.  In his new mood of confidence, John did so, and found it pleasant to revert to the comradely visiting he had done on board the Admiral’s first rate.  There, they had been in and out of one another’s cabins all the time, borrowing books and stockings, taking a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with each other.  It had been, indeed, a little too sociable for John’s tastes, but now, after a fortnight of solitude, he thirsted for company. 

“It is not possible to underestimate what I know about music.”  The canvas partition wall creaked beneath John’s weight as he cautiously leaned against it.  A small part of him quailed at opening the details of his family life to such a stranger, but Alfie’s honest, good-humored amusement encouraged him.  Whatever else he felt—this itch of over-awareness which made every conversation a little too intense—distrust was not part of it. 

Indeed, the desire to put Donwell on the next ship to China weighed equally against the desire to tell him all and keep him close.  If it puzzled John which instinct to trust, he thought he should probably choose the more humane.  “My mother did not approve of it.  ‘Snare of the devil,’ she said.  It was not played in our house.”

“Your mother did not approve of music?”  Donwell had clearly been very startled indeed; his face only now began to change from boyish openness to the urbanity of an adult.  In all the layers thus revealed, John was startled to see pity. 

His temper flared instinctively. “Why should she?  Is it not used to set the scene for debaucheries?  Balls, where young people may lose their innocence.  Theatre and opera and dancing that dazzle the senses and make the heart forget true morality?  It would be a more steadfast, sober world without music.”

In his zeal, John stepped forward.  Donwell did not retreat, but stood there, apparently relaxed, his thumb moving gently over the curve of the flute.  “And a poorer one.”

Fists tightening almost against his will, physical fury swept through John, clear and glorious as the music.  Breathing hard, he could almost feel the smack of his knuckles into Donwell’s mouth, where a small, startled smirk turned in the end of the man’s lips.  Infuriating!  How dare he?  How dare he laugh at me?  They stood so close he could feel the warmth of Donwell’s shin on his own calf.

Watching that little knowing smile light up Donwell’s smoky amber eyes, John breathed in sharply and turned away, fighting down the urge to wrap his hands around the other man’s neck and choke some reason into him. 

What the…?  Where had that violence come from?  Shame flooding him, he stepped back, head bowed, appalled at himself.  It wasn’t even as though he didn’t agree.

“Forgive me.  ‘And a poorer one, sir.’”  Donwell too retreated, hopping up to sit on his cot, ceding John the two paces of floor and the sea-chest seat. 

For a man who has given in, he looks altogether too triumphant, John thought, sitting down on the chest with trembling legs and a tender conscience.  “You might be right.”  As his racing heart slowed, he attempted a reassuring smile.  God alone knew what Donwell must think of him!  He himself had no idea.  “Though it shows a filial impiety in me to allow it.”

John’s mother disapproved of many things in which he himself could not see the harm.  Had the music not – only a moment ago – made him feel closer to God?  Prompted him to worship?  How then could anyone say it was a snare?  It disturbed and grieved him that she made her life more unhappy than it needed to be, but at times it was hard to avoid the thought.  “I do sometimes fancy it is ungrateful—in our quest for purity—to disallow ourselves the things which were created to give us joy.”

 

In Praise of Mothers: Eusebius has a vision of the Future

7-December 1855
Dear Hohenheim,

It seems that a vast period of time has passed.  Another vision ensues.  I see myself in youth, curled into the hard windowseat that looks down into the Hauptmarkt from my room, and occasionally the front door rattles  as a customer enters or leaves.  It is my birthday, and I am ten years old.  Held in my hands is the too-difficult text of Byron’s Manfred, not yet available to me in German, and so I labor over the English original.  Why must he be so metaphorical?  Can he not, for my sake, use less flowery words, so that I am not constantly jumping up to the dictionary?  As I study, a sound comes to my ears.  It is my mother, singing.  She must be brushing her hair, now.  I am drawn away from the puzzling beauty of Byron’s verse to the irresistible beauty of her voice.  She does this because she knows I am listening.

I wander down the main stair, toward the singing voice as it grows louder and more compelling to my ear, and as I do, I realize that something impossible is happening.   It is I, indeed, and I am yet ten, but the angelic voice of my mother is singing “Der Gärtner” which I did not compose until 1842! nor publish until 1851.  Then – the singer cannot be my mother, else she herself composed it in 1820 or before,  and I took it down later from memory.  But this cannot be, because I, here in the finalized Present, know that my mother never composed a tune nor invented any single piece of music, and she learned anew only what I wrote, and then only my student compositions; for my true work did not come until later.  So it cannot be.

By the time I reach the bottom of the staircase I behold the beautiful newness of the paint, the grand doors that lead into what is no longer my father’s shop but is now a concert hall!  Just as had been done to Ha’s library in the Future!  This is my house, indeed, and on what is now a stage, where once lay stacks of cartons of books and Zeitungen, there stands in slimmer guise, with wildly loose hair running free, my mother!  Practicing with a chamber quartett!  She never wore such a seductive coiffure in 1820, certainly!  This is my birthday indeed, for I see she is rehearsing this concert as a gift to me.  I enter the room, and milling about are others, dressed for the concert, listening to the rehearsal as they arrange flowers near the stage, and set the chairs in the hall.  It must be some hours beforehand.

I stand rapt, listening.  The casements are finished in beautifully polished blond wood, the walls shine with bright stucco, new-applied.  The Flügel on the stage shines with a rich sheen.  This Future is wealthy beyond the dreams of the greediest composer’s avarice! And this room, yet another shrine to chamber music.

Do you vouchsafe for me this vision as answer to the pages of bitter regret just past, Hohenheim?  For what could touch me more deeply, or move me more joyously than to see my mother once again, so radiant?  In voice, perfect, sweetly singing a piece I had composed specifically in her memory?

There is a joy in me difficult to contain, now, for I love her utterly.  She is the incarnate presence of the Angel, to me.  Despite her moods and petulances, she never said single word of harshness to me.  She loved me unrelentingly, constantly.  She told me once that she had prayed in song to God to send her an angelic child, to bring her inspiration to sing, and she knew when she was confined with me, that she had Song within her.  During that pregnancy she sang continually.

She, my Beloved, was my first Song, and I ill tolerated parting from her.  Oh joy, mixed with sorrow!  For here, again, she stands.  No more than five and twenty years old, and if possible, her voice more brilliantly colored.  And standing at the door, invisible in the Ghost Realm, I weep for the soul-stirring vision of her..

It is my birthday.

The moment chimes, the audience – a hundred, more! pack into the room, some with flowers in hand, with smiles, greybeard men, grey-haired women, youths, and here and there a serious-faced child – a violinist the one, another a pianist.  I can read it in their faces.  Students at the Konservatorium.

Since when has this dull town had a musical Konservatorium, I wonder?  Oh dear, it is named for me! I learn.  The house, the plaza, the school… how incredibly embarrassing.  To go from obscure neglect to a cult-like fame in death.  A man should never live to see himself become a figure of reverence.  It is not me, it was never me… erect monument instead to the faceless Angel of the Wellspring!

 

Peter tries not to worry his mother

I am rather ashamed to realize how few of my characters seem to have mothers! But here, from Captain’s Surrender, is Peter Kenyon working through his grief at apparently having lost his lover, while remembering to reassure his mum that although he’s a prisoner of war, he’s still doing fine.

~*~*~*~

“May I write to my friends in Bermuda?” Peter asked after another pause in which both men felt they should be saying something but neither knew what. “I…there is unhappy news to tell to many, which I would wish them to hear from a more sympathetic source than the naval gazette.”

His calm began to fracture at that sentence; he could feel the cracks spreading out from it, as they spread from an incautious foot stepped on thin ice. He was fragile at present, but beneath him the cracks were widening above the plunge into icy depths. He tried to ease away from the flaw but could not. It spread and spread beneath him, and he tensed for the sudden final break.

“Of course. Just go on into the drawing room. I’ll have Nancy bring you paper. I heard about the fight, of course. Don’t let my wife hear me say this”—he shook his head at the thought, his eyes shining—“but that must have been something! A French ship of the line and a little, tiny thirty-two? Hoo! I don’t mean to be unpatriotic, but that was a brave man.”

“Yes.” Peter was startled into a small smile. “Yes, he was. He was my particular friend, but I had no idea he intended anything so rash or so…so glorious.”

“Your friend, was he?” Ward rocked back on his heels. He wore no wig, so to Peter he seemed always informal, but the look in his pale eyes was unmistakably kind. “Well then, I won’t say that all this could have been avoided if Westminster had chosen to treat with us like civilized men. How they ever thought they could beat us into submission is probably as much a mystery to you as it is to me. So go and write your letters, son, and mourn your dead. You won’t be the only man doing the same.”

 

Peter considered the justice of this rebuke as he worked his way through the letters of condolence. His handwriting grew progressively shakier as his grief insinuated itself under his guard.

He had never failed in anything, and yet when had he ever done anything but what was expected of him? He had great sympathy for the colonists’ desire for self-rule, but when had he ever said so? When had he ever stood up for those things that really meant something to him? He had not. He had chosen always do to what everyone else thought was right, not what his own heart told him.

And in doing so—he put the pen down, rubbed his stinging eyes, telling himself it was fatigue that made them burn—he had rejected the one thing in his life that had ever made him completely happy.

He looked out at the sea, the ships in the harbor visible and yet so far away, and wondered if he could pray. He wanted to pray, “Oh, God, please, don’t let him have done this because of me, because I hurt him, because I put an end to something that he said must end.”

Pulling a fresh sheet of paper towards himself, he took up the pen again and began to write. My dear Mr. Summersgill, I am happy to inform you that I am alive and well, though confined. I am under house arrest in the dwelling of a worthy gentleman of Boston named Mr. Ward. I am quite comfortable and lack nothing but my freedom.

I am including here my wish that you should have power of attorney over my small estate in Bermuda and beg leave to ask you to see that my servants are paid and are not in distress in my absence.

Peter wondered if he should express some conventional sentiments of attachment to Emily, but his disordered thoughts rose up against such base hypocrisy. When the world lay at his feet, it had seemed natural that every prize should be his, but now he wondered if she even liked him, and more, he wondered if—beyond a basic physical appreciation of her charms—he even liked her. How much did he know about her? Not half so much as he had known about Josh, and he had cared not half so much to know.

Please pass on my love to my mother, and the reassurance that I am as well as it is possible to be, though I may not be able to send her the bird-of-paradise feathers she asked for in her last. My regards to Emily, and I remain, sir,

Your most obliged servant,

Peter Alexander Kenyon.

 

Jonty Stewart’s mother’s most notable moment

From Lessons in Discovery. Orlando has lost his memory following an accident and can’t remember what Jonty’s Mama is like. He has a shock coming.

“Jonathan! Orlando!”

A voice that seemed to have been designed to penetrate concrete at two hundred yards rang through the college court. It was Sunday morning and the broomstick had obviously landed successfully. Its arrival had been anticipated by the two fellows so they were lurking around to greet the pilot.

“Mother,” Jonty whispered to his companion, before saying in a tone as hearty as hers, “Mama! You’re looking ridiculously well. What has the doctor been giving you to make you look so young?” He was scooped up into his mother’s arms and had the breath squeezed out of him.

“Looking thin again, dear.” Mrs. Stewart always seemed to think that her son was on the brink of starvation, even though he was more muscular and well set up now than he had been this last year. “Dr. Coppersmith, you look positively emaciated.” She grabbed Orlando and squashed any answer out of him, too.

Orlando was stunned. His own mother had never shown any such physical affection for him and the perfume-soaked, genial embraces of this ample lady were a complete shock. He knew he’d met her before although he had no recollection of the events and he’d no time now for reflection, with Mrs. Stewart thrusting an arm through those of both her son and his thin and starving friend and insisting that they go immediately to the Blue Boar for a jolly good feed.

She was most sympathetic over lunch, a meal taken in a quiet room away from the noisy masses so that the recovering invalid shouldn’t be overwhelmed. She’d asked, with great concern, about Orlando’s condition, gently talking him through the times he’d been her guest, the pleasure it had given her to receive him. “Because it has always been a delight to us whenever Jonathan has brought you home. I think of you rather like a son now, which of course must seem very odd today when you no doubt regard me as a stranger. But one day you’ll remember everything, dear, and then it will be like old times.” She beamed.

Orlando thought how much Mrs. Stewart resembled Jonty and how lovely she must have been at the same age. A sudden, small voice in his head informed him that his friend was beautiful now and when he looked at Jonty he realised it was quite true, which was another terrible shock. He had never really considered before whether anyone was eye-catching and he’d now done it for two people within a minute.

They finished their meal with a wealth more gossip and made their way back to Jonty’s set for a cup of tea to refresh them and to give Orlando a chance to collect his thoughts.

Mrs. Stewart insisted that there was nowhere better to take a cup than in front of one’s own fire. She was now ensconced on Jonty’s sofa and her thoughts ran to old acquaintances.

“So you met old George le Tissier on Jersey. I wonder if he remembers me?”

“I don’t think that anyone would ever forget you, Mama.”

“Especially true in this case. Not my most shining moment, Jonathan, I positively disgraced myself.” Mrs. Stewart blushed, something that seemed out of character.

“Whatever did you do?” Their interest was piqued, their appetite whetted at the thought of what revelation might come from this lady’s lips. Jonty in particular was intrigued at the thought of his mother disgracing herself in any way.

“It was a grand ball. A very big occasion, all the handsomest young men were going to be there, including George who was a subaltern at the time. Not that I had eyes for any of them except your father—that’s why I was so excited. Richard Stewart was going to be present and we’d arranged in advance to have several dances together. Got out my best bib and tucker and set off. Within a quarter of an hour of arriving there, a young man I’d taken a waltz with, I can’t remember his name, the ill-favoured surly thing.” She glanced surreptitiously at the often surly thing on her left but he was looking remarkably sweet and kind today. “Anyway, he drew me off into a corner, said he’d never loved anyone the way he adored me, proposed a marriage within three months and when I refused to take up his offer, threatened to kill himself. I spent twenty-five minutes trying to talk him out of it. Meant that I missed my first dance with your father, so I was rather miffed. When I tracked Richard down to apologise he hooted with laughter. He said he knew the chap and that he’d done the same thing numerous times—the suicide threat was all a big bluff of course. I was livid. Your father had to hold my hand and try to get me to calm down. I was all for going and tweaking the chap’s ear, but I suppose the hand-holding made it all worthwhile.”

“It always does.” Jonty smirked slightly and there was a suggestion of a blush on Orlando’s cheeks. How odd, Jonty reflected, wondering if the embarrassment was due to subconscious memories.

Mrs. Stewart sailed on undaunted. “Then blow me down if three dances later a similar thing didn’t happen, though I remember the chap’s name this time. Samuel Parker, and he was a toe-rag. We were walking through the portrait gallery at the back of the house en route to get an ice when he plighted his troth. I gave him the old ‘thank you but no thank you’ and he pulled me behind the arras—I can see you sniggering, Jonty and it doesn’t become you—and started to take the grossest liberties. All he got was a black eye—it was a real shiner, I was rather proud of myself—and he departed. Then I had to go and find Richard again and explain why I’d been late for our next dance. Had the suspicion that he thought your dear mama was a bit of a flibbertigibbet, but he held my hand once more and called me his ‘dear little peach’. I can see you smirking again, Jonty, and if it happens a third time I will have no hesitation in taking you across my knee and spanking you. Anyway, I was furious, furious beyond all measure. So when poor George le Tissier came up all beaming with excitement and asked for my hand, I forgot myself entirely. It was pent-up anger, and I am not proud of myself. Now, are you ever going to make me that cup of tea or will you watch your poor mother sit here, wasting away parched and drained?”

“Mother, I won’t even put the kettle on until you tell me what you did that was so bad.”

“Laid him out, dear. One great big punch and goodnight sweetheart. Now that ends that trifling matter and you need to address the greater one of my desiccated throat.”

When Mrs. Stewart was watered sufficiently to be able to attempt the return journey, Summerbee, the porter, found a cab (she wasn’t inclined to fly the broom). With many a kiss, hug and wave she was sent on her way.

 

In praise of mothers…Mrs. Stewart’s wishes

Here’s the old warhorse herself, Mrs. Stewart, in surprisingly mellow mood, expressing her Mothering Sunday wishes for her son, Jonty.

To Jonty, aged 4

I wish you joy, my golden child, laughter and happiness and length of days.
I wish you sunshine, in skies as blue as your eyes. Snow to play in, wind to fly kites, mud and grass and cold salt sea.
I wish you someone at your side to share them all.

To Jonty, aged 14

I wish you strength to fight whatever ails you, my boy who once laughed so readily.
I wish you courage to share it; with someone, if not with us.
I wish you the return of your smile.

To Jonty, aged 24

I wish you a sense of direction, my lad, a new beginning.
I wish you a companion to share the journey, a hand at your elbow and a smile at your side.
I wish you someone for whom you are the whole world, but who’d never make you aware of the fact.

To Jonty, aged 34

What do I have left to wish you?
I wish you health and length of days, of course, a warm hearth and a table set with food.
But you have all that any man could desire, in the person who sits in the chair beside yours.

 

Mothering Sunday event tomorrow

Various historical (and maybe hysterical) mothers from Macaronis authors’ books will be dropping in tomorrow, some in the form of excerpts from gay romances and some in new material. They are a law unto themselves so why not drop in and see what’s going on?

 

Why the 18th Century?

Although I’ve done a number of historicals now – enough to say I am a ‘historical novelist’ – I still feel that not all historical eras are equal. People have said to me ‘the Tudors are very popular. I’d like to see you do something set in Tudor times.’ I nod politely, because there’s no predicting where my muse might take me next. But inside, I’m still going ‘ew, the Tudors. They’re all torture and paranoia and witch burnings.’ I can’t really imagine wanting to write in an era where my nation’s best battleship sunk because someone forgot to put the plug in.

This is slightly hypocritical of me, because I like the Anglo-Saxons a lot, and they are not without brutality either. Plus, their technological level is much lower. But they nevertheless seem more civilised to me – a thoughtful, religious, melancholy people with less tendency towards burning women alive. Maybe I’m reading too much from the example of King Alfred and the Venerable Bede – both the sort of humane intellects I wouldn’t mind meeting in real life.

The 18th Century, though, is still my favourite. Part of this is the clothes. I can’t take Henry VIII seriously in his padded bloomers, but when we’ve moved on to tricorn hats, poet shirts, tight waistcoats and frock coats with swirling skirts; tight breeches and men in white silk stockings, showing off their toned calves to the ladies, well, then you’re talking.

But it’s more than that. I prefer civilization to savagery – I like to write in a world in which I would not find it unbearable to live – and the 18th Century is a time in which it’s possible to exist as something other than a warrior. More than that, it’s a time of great exploration. The world was opening up before Western Man, and as a result the spirit of the age is one of excitement. New things are being thought of every day. New places are being discovered. The world and the human spirit is expanding, and for the first time people are beginning to think about freedom and equality and the rights of man. An awful lot of what we take for granted nowadays was first being thought of in the 18th Century and it’s fascinating to watch it blowing their minds.

I read a lot of 18th Century journals as part of my research, and I find no difficulty in liking these people. They are urbane and amused, confident and surprisingly open minded. They have none of the self-righteous imperialism and prudery of the 19th Century, and while you’d have to cover the ears of the sensitive, because of their vulgarity, I wouldn’t feel a qualm about inviting them around for dinner. The tendency to fight a duel at the drop of a hat would be worrisome, I suppose, and they do drink and quarrel a lot, but they’re never quite what you expect. I think Jane Austen, who was that little bit later, would be shockingly disapproving of them. But in a fight between Lady Mary Wortley-Montague, lady of letters, who travelled the world, wrote letters from Turkey, and invented an early form of smallpox inocculation, and Jane Austen, my bets are on Lady Mary. She, at least, had attended the Empress of Austria when the fine ladies of Austria exhibited their honed pistol marksmanship. I think she’d be the one to walk away from that duel.

Blurb:

For Captain Harry Thompson, the command of the prison transport ship HMS Banshee is his opportunity to prove his worth, working-class origins be damned. But his criminal attraction to his upper-crust First Lieutenant, Garnet Littleton, threatens to overturn all he’s ever worked for.

Lust quickly proves to be the least of his problems, however. The deadly combination of typhus, rioting convicts, and a monstrous storm destroys his prospects . . . and shipwrecks him and Garnet on their own private island. After months of solitary paradise, the journey back to civilization—surviving mutineers, exposure, and desertion—is the ultimate test of their feelings for each other.

These two very different men each record their story for an unfathomable future in which the tale of their love—a love punishable by death in their own time—can finally be told. Today, dear reader, it is at last safe for you to hear it all.

You can read an excerpt and buy Blessed Isle here at Riptide.

Author Bio

Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and Philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years. Now a stay-at-home mum and full time author, Alex lives with her husband and two daughters in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800 year old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

You can find Alex on

her website,Facebook,Twitter or her Goodreads page

 

 

A pseudo-medievalist’s guide to fire

A Pseudo-Medievalist’s Guide – to Fire.

 

Clearly there are many advantages to reading bad books. One of these is the inspiration to write blog posts in an effort to make sure it never happens again.

There are several aspects of medieval life which are easily researchable, but which sometimes writers think they can make up on the fly. I can hardly blame a writer, who has grown up with movies and TV series in which the pseudo-medieval people sit round a blazing fire of leaping yellow flames, which comes on and goes off as if at the flick of a switch, for thinking that that’s how it really is.

 But you know what, kids, it really isn’t, and writing shows up your ignorance more than any brief glimpse of setting in a movie ever could. Worse, more than enough of your readers will have dealt with camp fires, will have open fires at home, will be blacksmiths, reenactors and twisted firestarters to know you got it wrong and to laugh at you for it.

Here, then, is a cheat’s guide to the common camp and hearth fire.

First of all, to address the scene in the book I just read, if you stumble into a clearing where someone has had a fire which has been left to burn itself out and is now cold, and you want to light one yourself, do not try to set fire to the ‘powdery stuff’ which is left. That stuff is called ‘ash’. Ash is the waste product of fire, and while good for tanning leather and making soap it is not flammable.

So, how do you relight someone’s fire (sounds like a romance plot)?

First of all, you rake the cold ashes out of the place where they made the fire. Ash forms a fluffy, inflammable barrier which prevents air getting to your fuel – so it actually chokes the fire. You want a nice clean start on which to build, because making a fire is hard, and unless you give it the best chance you can, you will fail to get it started at all.

 First of all, consider your terrain. Are you in a very dry place? What’s the soil like? If you start a fire on top of an unprotected soil largely made of dry peat, you may end up setting fire to the ground under you. This is a bad idea.

Check, therefore, to see if the previous camper lined the firepit with stone or clay, or whether the ground is wet enough to reduce the danger of roasting yourself and the county you sit in. If not, find stones or clay yourself and make a floor of that to start the fire on.

 Next, sort through the raked out mess of the previous fire. There are some parts of a burnt out fire which will be helpful – any largish chunks of wood which are partially but not wholly burned are likely to be slightly more inclined to catch alight than completely unburned wood would be. These don’t go on the hearth (technical term for the floor you’ve made for your fire) yet, though.

 Now you want to give the infant fire some baby food to help it grow up strong before it can move on to the solid food of big logs. You cannot just drop a spark on a log and expect fire to result, unless you’re in ‘hello forest fire’ conditions, in which case do not light a fire at all!

 Ideally, your sensible pseudo-medieval traveller is carrying a carefully protected bag of dry hay, small dry twigs, and a half a dozen larger dry split sticks. (This is a job for the evening before – drying out enough wood to start the fire next day.)

 Arrange the small twigs in a lattice arrangement (any shape you can manage which leaves plenty of space for air to get through, and a hollow in the middle into which you will insert the fire. Arrange the larger twigs on top of that – still carefully preserving the air-flow. Support the larger dry sticks and partly burned pieces on top of that.

 Make sure there is a good pile of further wood already gathered and preferably cut up into hearth-sized lengths waiting to go on when the time is right.

 OK, so that’s the easy bit done. Now, the prepared pseudo-medieval traveller takes out her tinderbox. The tinderbox contains a small lump of flint and a steel strikealight. It also contains a piece of pre-prepared tinder. This can be a kind of dried fungus, or the fluffy seed of bullrushes, or several small pieces of linen that have been cooked in an airtight box until they’re black.

 I’ve never used fungus or bullrushes, but this is how it goes with linen. When absolutely everything is ready, you hold one piece of linen and the flint in the same hand. Strike the steel against the flint until a spark falls on the linen. The spark will hopefully catch and create a little glowing red spot of slow burning on the linen. When this happens, you put the flint down, keep the spot glowing by blowing gently on it, pick up the straw. Place the glowing linen into the centre of the straw and blow hard into the centre of the ball of straw and linen.

 Hopefully the straw will catch alight. Encourage it by further breathing on it. Not too soon, but not so late that you burn your hands off, push the burning ball of straw into the hollow you created for it in the lattice of what will become your fire. Get your face as close to the fire as you can and breathe air into the flames – gently and steadily.

 Hopefully, the twigs will begin to burn before the straw burns out. Hopefully the larger twigs and pieces of branch will begin to burn before the smaller twigs burn out. If so, the careful lattice will slowly settle into itself and begin to create glowing embers.

 You cannot walk away from the fire at this stage. It needs another hour or so of feeding it larger logs while being careful not to crush or smother the air out of it before it’s self-sustaining enough to be left for a short period. But even then, you will need to check on it every quarter of an hour or so to make sure it isn’t running out of fuel and threatening to go out, or alternatively to make sure it hasn’t ventured out of the side of the hearth and decided to explore your whole campsite.

 Fire needs to be cosseted and nurtured and tenderly nursed, and watched relentlessly to be sure it isn’t going to make a break for it. Fire is not an electric light or a space heater, controllable at the flick of a switch, and it’s a tricky, sneaky creature on whom you have to keep a careful eye.

 But, you may say, my pseudo-medieval traveller was robbed of all his equipment and is stumbling through the forest naked. He starts a fire and…

 How’s he going to do that then? I say. Naked, eh? So he’s got no flint or steel to create a spark? And he’s got no knife to create a fire-drill? Um… Is there flint or rock around he could knap into some kind of cutting tool? More to the point, is he the kind of character with the survivalist knowledge necessary? Does he know which kinds of trees to make his fire-drill out of? Could he recognise the right kind of fungus for tinder? Is it the right season for the bullrushes to be in seed?

 And I really hope it’s not raining, because even if he has the ability to make the spark, if the fuel it ends up on is wet, it will put the spark out.

 Your average pseudo-medieval peasant is likely to know how to start a fire at home, using dry everything under optimal conditions, just as you are likely to know how to start a fire using matches and a couple of firelighters. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re any better than you at lighting a fire in the wild without matches/tinderbox and kindling.

 Your naked forest-wanderer may still be saved if he stumbles over the remains of someone else’s fire. But – here is the key bit – he must do so before it has completely burnt out. If he gets to the fireplace and the ashes are still warm, then there is a chance that there are still small embers alight in the ash-bed. Then, if he can find dry tinder (straw, dry pine bark, paper etc), small dry sticks and larger dry sticks, he might be able to find an ember in the ash which will take the place of that elusive spark (another good romance title).

 It still has to be not raining, though.

~

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world.She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800 year old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone. You can find more of her blogging and all of her books at her site: http://alexbeecroft.com

 

Word of the Day – collywobbles

Hopefully will make this a weekly event, words found whilst doing my writing and researching. Feel free to email me with any you’d like included.

A disordered state of the stomach characterized by rumbling in the intestines; diarrhœa with stomach-ache; hence gen. indisposition, ‘butterflies in the stomach’, a state of nervous fear. (In quot. 1853   used nonsensically.)

1823   P. Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. Vulgar Tongue (rev. ed.) ,   Collywobbles, the gripes.

1841   Punch 9 Oct. 154/1   To..keep him from getting the collywobbles in his pandenoodles.

1853   ‘C. Bede’ Adventures Mr. Verdant Green viii. 75   A touch of the mulligrubs in your collywobbles?

1901   F. T. Bullen Sack of Shakings 308   He laughingly excused himself on the ground that his songs were calculated to give a white man collywobbles.

1959   I. Opie & P. Opie Lore & Lang. Schoolchildren x. 185   He is a ‘funk’..or has ‘got the collywobbles’.

And also a place in South Africa, so one wonders if it actually derived from the place – as “Delhi Belly” is used these days.

I think next week’s should be pandenoodles!

 

Winners of the Carina Bundles

I’m sorry that we are a bit late in announcing this, my fault entirely! Thank you to everyone who entered, there was a great response.

The winner of Ava March’s bundle is ELIN GREGORY

The winner of my bundle is KIRSTEN

(Here’s a screencap of my draw so you can see it’s all above board!)

Well done, both of you, Carina will be sending your prize very soon. (probably after they’ve recovered from RT….)

Thanks for playing and I hope you both enjoy all the books!