Hoops Fit for Court (or a Noble Wedding), 1760

Isabella/Susan reporting,

One of the real challenges - or is it a pitfall? - of writing historical fiction is historical fashion. Personally I love the clothes of 18th c. England, the period in which When You Wish Upon a Duke is set, but I have to accept that readers may not share my, ahem, infatuation.

I also have to keep in mind that while I've been wallowing in silken Georgian excess since I was a teenager, most readers won't know an open robe from a mantua, nor will they care. Nothing is more deadly than a scene that grinds to a halt while the author indulges in some heady dead-fashion reportage. The trick is to incorporate the clothes into the story with the same ease that the characters would wear them.

Which brings me to hoops. Loretta and I have written about hoops many times before (here and here and here.) I suppose we find the notion of wearing an elaborate frame of cane and linen tapes, below, tied around the waist to support the skirts, so weirdly alien that we're fascinated.

But for my heroine Charlotte, the newly-minted Duchess of Marchbourne, hoops aren't weird at all. Ordinary women did not wear extreme hoops, any more than ordinary modern women wear the highest  platform designer shoes. They might wear a modest set of hoops, or a stuffed bum-roll, but the widest pocket-hoops were reserved for grand ladies for formal and court dress. As a duchess, Charlotte is, of course, expected to wear them, and wear them gracefully. Important ladies occupied a sizable footprint on those parquet floors. There could be no awkward squeezing through doorways, or sweeping vases from nearby tables. Unlike the heavy wire crinolines and multiple petticoats of the 19th c, a Georgian lady's dress was more like a lampshade, her silks fragile as feather, and as likely to blow away, too. A lady like Charlotte had to learn to glide along with small steps to keep from  unseemly bobbing, how to go up and down stairs, how to dance, and even how to sit in a chair.

Yet Charlotte wouldn't have regarded hoops as a pain; to her they would have seemed elegant and stylish, even a glamorous status-symbol of her new rank. But her first real test comes with the formal gown, known as a mantua, in which she is wed. Aristocratic brides seldom had a special wedding gown - weddings were generally small, family affairs - but they might wear the gown in which they would later be presented at court as a newlywed (and titled) lady. Originally worn by Mary, 2nd Marchioness of Rockingham c 1760, the white silk mantua, above, inspired Charlotte's gown.

Charlotte manages to walk down the aisle without incident. But climbing in and out of a carriage before a phalanx of her new husband's footmen offers special perils, and the fragile construction of silk and cane must likewise withstand her eager bridegroom on a narrow carriage seat. Or not. But who ever said being fashionable was easy?

Top: Fitzwilliam Mantua, 1760-65, English, silk satin brocaded in silver thread with silver lace trim. Collection, Kensington Palace. 
Below: Hoops, c 1750, French. Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs.

Loretta & Isabella Talk about WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DUKE

If you read this blog regularly, you know that Loretta and Isabella/Susan have been friends forever, a long-distance friendship that occasionally touches down in places as diverse as Colonial Williamsburg and the shoe department at Nordstrom. It doesn't matter that they live in separate states, because they talk on the phone, like, everyday. Here they talk about Isabella's newest historical romance, WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DUKE, on sale everywhere now.

Loretta: You've had several writer incarnations. How did Isabella happen?

Isabella: Most recently I'd been writing historical fiction as Susan Holloway Scott. After books filled with court politics and beheadings, it felt time to return to my romance roots, and write happy endings again.

Loretta: WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DUKE is the first book in a series. What inspired you?

Isabella: My last historical fiction series centered on the intrigues of the bawdy 17th c court of King Charles II. I started thinking about what might happen to all those royal bastards that Charles sired and made into dukes, and how their families might have evolved several generations later. The heroes of this new series are (very) loosely based on real noblemen in England in the 1760s. 

Loretta: Anyone who reads our blog knows that we love to talk about historical dress. My current series of books (including SILK IS FOR SEDUCTION and SCANDAL WEARS SATIN) features dressmakers in 1835. I like how you incorporated the gorgeous Georgian clothes into your book, too.

Isabella: As much as I'm a sucker for laces and silks, I don't ever want to make the story stop for a fashion report. I always try to make the clothes part of the action. For example, Charlotte demonstrates exactly how to undress all the fascinating layers of 18th c male attire when she seduces March.

Loretta: It's obvious that you love these characters and that you got under their skin. What fascinated you most about them?

Isabella: One of the main themes in these books in family. The heroes are cousins, and the heroines are sisters, and I loved the chance to explore how the two extended families come together, and how their relationships develop.

Loretta: So what's next for the Wylder sisters?

Isabella: Look for middle sister Lizzie's story in WHEN THE DUCHESS SAID YES, coming in September, 2012, and youngest sister Diana's story in WHEN THE DUKE FOUND LOVE, coming in November, 2012.

Loretta: Good! Now, I just found a fabulous new shoe source....

Arranging a Georgian Match

Isabella/Susan reports:

What would you say to a blind date that lasted forever? That was the reality for young Georgian aristocrats, and the inspiration for the match between the Duke of Marchbourne with Lady Charlotte Wylder in When You Wish Upon a Duke, on sale everywhere today. 

While there were definitely marriages made on love-matches, the higher the rank of the bride and groom usually translated into a match carefully balanced and considered by the parents. It wasn't just a case of following the precedent of royalty; a marriage was a union of rank and property as well as of hearts, and while popular ballads and plays might be filled with high-blown sentiment and true love, the reality was much more practical. In an era where even high-born ladies had little independence of their own, becoming the virtual property of their husbands, parents of daughters were especially cautious about settling their daughters into an advantageous marriage. Security trumped the vagaries of love, and marriage would be a life-long arrangement, with virtually no chance of escape. The best that could be hoped for was that love - or at least an agreeable regard - would blossom after the wedding.

Consider the 1774 marriage between Georgiana, the 17-year-old daughter of the Earl of Spencer, and the 26-year-old Duke of Devonshire. On paper, it must have seemed an excellent match: the Duke was astonishingly wealthy and wished a young, malleable wife to provide him with heirs, while the chance for Georgiana to leapfrog up the noble ladder to become a duchess (like the elegant Duchess of Grafton, above, painted in her noble regalia by Sir Joshua Reynolds) must have seemed an irresistable opportunity to her parents to see her settled. The couple met a handful of well-chaperoned times before their wedding, but had no real knowledge of one another's personalities. Georgiana tried to love her unyielding husband, but within a week, he was once again in the arms of his mistress. There marriage became one of the most infamously awful of 18th c. England, riddled with complicated infidelities and financial disasters, and sad proof that Mom and Dad didn't always know best. (For more, see here.)

But another, equally notorious arranged marriage between a duke and a lady had a much happier result. In 1719, the charmingly wastrel Duke of Richmond agreed to a match for his 18-year-old son and heir with the 13-year-old daughter of the Earl of Cadogan as a way of settling the duke's gambling debts, accepting a reduction of £5,000 in the girl's marriage settlement against his losses. The young pair met at their wedding, though because of their youth, they did not live together as man and wife for several years. Yet from this unlikely match, made over the gaming table, began one of the great married loves of the 18th c. The second Duke and Duchess of Richmond were as happy as the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire were not.

But what of my fictional Duke and Duchess of Marchbourne? Matched by their fathers as children, the two find the path of discovering love with a stranger after the wedding to be a considerable challenge. Do they follow the path of the Richmonds, or the Devonshires?  I think you can guess  – but here's the first chapter of When You Wish Upon a Duke to tempt you to the read the rest.

A New Book – plus a Bit of Personal History

Isabella/Susan reporting:

This week (Tuesday) is the publication day for WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DUKE, my first historical romance written as Isabella Bradford for Ballantine/Random House. For international readers often stymied by Amazon's downloads, the book will also be published as an ebook in the UK by Headline. I'll be sharing more about the Duke of Marchbourne and his arranged bride Lady Charlotte Wylder (and the history that inspired them) all this week.

But first, a bit of personal history. Regular readers will have noticed that Loretta's been doing all the heavy-lifting here for the last ten days or so, and that I've been MIA on Pinterest, FB, and Twitter as well. I wish I could tell you I'd been lolling on some holiday-isle, but alas, that wasn't the case. On Friday, July 20, I was settling down to write. My husband and daughter were off to see Dark Knight, and I was looking forward to a good, quiet, productive afternoon. I was feeling a little 'off', but that was easily blamed on the usual writer combo of too much caffeine and too little sleep. What else is new?

But that off-ness abruptly changed to nausea and vomiting, and when my family returned from the movie, I sent my husband off to the drug store for an OTC remedy. Fifteen minutes later, he found me passed out on the floor, and called 911. I can only remember weird fragments from the rest of the day - the tension in the curt voices around me in the Emergency Room, my daughter crying, the blood-draws and IV's - and how much everything just plain hurt. Turned out I had a double-whammy of acute pancreatitis and cholecystitis, completely out of the blue and with no prior history or warnings.

By all reports, I nearly died.

I spent the next eight days in the hospital, looked after by an amazing team of nurses and doctors. I'm home now, at last, though only long enough to beef myself up to have my gall bladder removed. The surgeon is welcome to it. I've been assured that when all this is done, I'll once again be my usual rude-animal-health-self. The old adage promises that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I'm looking forward to becoming one awesome, improved model. 


Now, about the Duke of Marchbourne. . . .

Friday Video: Carmen Miranda

Loretta reports:

Before there was Lady Gaga, there was Carmen Miranda.  While this clip has a longer lead-in than another of the same song on YouTube, I think it's worth the wait for the sharper image.  If you love her style, as I've done for ages, there's lots more where this came from.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a rectangle or square where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.