by Eloisa James
Alcohol helps; Mayne and Josie finish one bottle of champagne and start a second. The drink makes Josie feel “brave and reckless,” and while Mayne is not visibly intoxicated he declares himself “three sheets to the wind” (76). The champagne may serve as a substitute for the love-in-idleness used in Shakespeare’s play to transform the protagonists’ perceptions.
As noted above, Josie likens Mayne to Bacchus while he is wearing her dress. The designation actually appears three times during their interlude. In the first, as the two are sharing their champagne, Josie reflects that Mayne “looked like nothing in the world so much as a slightly wicked Bacchus crafted by a master sculptor” (74). And just before Mayne dons the pink dress, she reflects that he “looked wild, like Bacchus,” and that he would be “perfectly at home in a shadowy wood, vines wound in that mop of curls, a sleek mat of curls beginning at his waist” (93). This last reference again seems to evoke the woodland setting that was home to Puck, Oberon, and Titania in AMND.
The name Bacchus is fitting on multiple levels. Bacchus (or Dionysus) was the Greco-Roman god associated with wine and intoxication as well as ritualized abandon and excess. In sharing his champagne with Josie, Mayne fulfills this god’s role as a provider (and partaker) of libation. It is also worth noting that Mayne’s lithe form that Josie so covets is in keeping with many portrayals of Bacchus as a youth embodying both feminine and masculine traits; Michelangelo’s sculpture Bacchus is notably androgynous, as is the second-century Roman sculpture shown below.5,6 Either might serve as the inspiration for Josie’s musing that Mayne resembles a sculpture of the god.
And so Mayne is transformed, albeit briefly, into both a debutante and an androgynous god, while Josie makes a more lasting change from insecure girl to confident woman. Mayne’s spontaneous cross-dressing is only one piece of the scene’s richness, but it allows us to delve further into Pleasure for Pleasure’s intertexts and allusions. By channeling Shakespeare and Bacchus in this scene of abandon and transformation, James prepares both her protagonists and her readers to fall under the spell of a little of love-in-idleness.
Footnotes
[1] Fletcher, Lisa, Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Performativity, Ashgate Publishing, 2008, p. 74. Emphasis in the quote hers.
[2] James, Eloisa, Pleasure for Pleasure, Avon Books, 2006. All of the passages quoted occur in chapters 7 and 9.
[3] This is the second reference to Bacchus in the interlude. Josie and Mayne have consumed a bottle of champagne at this point and are ensconced in a beguilingly fanciful turret.
[4] The cross-dressing trope does occur later in AMND, as secondary characters discuss the staging of Pyramus and Thisbe within the play. Quince tells Flute that he is to play the female lead while wearing a mask and speaking in as high a pitch as possible. And, of course, Mayne wearing a dress in Pleasure for Pleasure echoes the Elizabethan convention of requiring that male actors play all female parts; it is nearly impossible to separate Shakespeare from men in dresses.
[5] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Michelangelo_Bacchus.jpg
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus#mediaviewer/File:Dionysos_Louvre_Ma87_n2.jpg
The Place of Research in Writing Historical Romances
It takes me around eight months or so to actually write a book. I work out the emotional dramas myself, but when it comes to historical detail, I get tremendous help from my research assistant, Franzeca Drouin. I managed to find some old e-mails that we exchanged while I was writing the series; they give a peek into the interaction between an author and her researcher. I talked in the section above about my characters needing to “perform” the part of a lady; one of the crucial aspects of polite society was an excellent command of etiquette. I can handle table manners, but I need Franzeca when it comes to aristocratic titles.
Franzeca
We had a fairly lengthy exchange about the use of titles in the books, which I thought you might enjoy. You can see my responses following Franzeca’s commentary. And notice the book title that she refers to—Something Wanton? At some point, that title was nixed and replaced with Much Ado About You. Another interesting point is that Rafe started out “middle-aged” before I changed my mind and turned him into a possible husband for one of the sisters. On one level, this should be a simple discussion, but it isn’t. In Regency England, one’s title and rank determined the course of one’s life, and I can spend hours and hours figuring out precisely which title to give a character.
Franzeca: Okay. Here’s what’s shaking on the titles used in Something Wanton [Much Ado about You].
If the sisters’ father was an earl, then they would all be Lady Tess, Lady Annabel, etc. They would not be Miss Essex, or the Misses Essex. If, however, their father was a Viscount, then they would be officially as the Honourable Teresa Essex, but could be addressed informally as Miss Essex. Would it be worth making that change, as we have more information, and perhaps a surfeit of, Earls coming up?
Eloisa: I think the easiest thing would be to turn Tess’s father into a viscount then, because that way we don’t have to catch 6 trillion Miss Essexes and Miss Annabels. SO: if we change Tess’s father to Viscount Essex, then they stay Miss Essex (Tess), Miss Annabel, Miss Josephine and Miss Imogen, right?
Franzeca: In addition, he has to be something like Charles Essex, Earl of Nottingham, or wherever. He needs a place name with the title. On page 366, @ the Feltons’, Tess refers to him as the Earl of Essex, indicating Essex is both family name & title. This is also true if he is a Viscount, though he would be Charles Essex, Viscount Fig-Newton or whatever. I wouldn’t go so far back as having a title bestowed by William the Conqueror. The system, as we know it, didn’t really work that way then. I presume you want it to have great antiquity, but I wouldn’t take it any farther back than Edward I (my hero, tho’ cruel to the Scots). It’s 200+ years later than William the Conq, but still would be very impressive. Though I’m confused by the conversation on page 366, between Mrs. Felton & Tess. Who says “My father’s title was given to my great-great-grandfather by William the Conqueror”? It sounds like Tess, in context, and she repeats it in the next paragraph. So in addition, it’s exactly 750 yrs between 1066 and 1816, so Tess would have to be more general, “a distant ancestor” rather than great-great-grandfather. Though, if you stay with William the Conq, it probably would have to be an earl or a duke, I don’t think they did much between baron and those then.
Eloisa: OK, let’s make him Charles Essex, Viscount Brydone. His title can be granted by Edward I. Tess says that bit about William (must be wrongly assigned).
Franzeca: Queen Elizabeth would simply be known as that; as she was the only one in Regency times, so she wasn’t known as “the First” until there became a “the Second.” Just as King John, being the one and only (and likely to remain so), is never referred to as King John the First. I’ll try to catch the page this is on.
Re: Draven. If Draven’s mother married an earl, as she claimed, and Draven is the only child of that marriage, and the dad is dead, then Draven is an earl. At first, I thought he was the heir to an earl, some un-named individual who was a childless cousin or such, and he was next in line, though not directly involved. But if his dad was the earl, then he’s the man now. So he also needs a place name, Draven Maitland, Earl of Westover, or whatever.
Eloisa: I don’t want Draven to be an earl—that makes him too great a catch. Something under an earl, say a baronet, as you put below. Lady Clarice can be the daughter of a duke, which keeps her Lady Clarice. I don’t mind her being in a lower place because I can add a sentence about her wanting to marry Rafe because she was the daughter of a duke and wants to get back to her natural spot in life.
Franzeca: So that makes Lady Clarice’s title as Lady Westover, or Clarice, Countess of Westover. The fabulous url you sent me on titles doesn’t have a countess, or the relic of an Earl, addressed by Lady Clarice under any circumstance. If, however, Lady Clarice was the daughter of a du
ke or an earl, and married someone whose title didn’t extend to his wife (such as a baronet), then she would be Lady Clarice because of her father, not because of her husband. I know this doesn’t square with her snobby, social-climbing tendencies. While that’s happening, her son could still be the heir of an earl, without being the man himself, as the title of baronet is not, if I recall, inheritable. Also, a baronet wouldn’t have a place name, but just be plain Sir Sammy Maitland, though whatever earldom Draven is heir to would still have a name, and he would perhaps have a courtesy title as the heir. I know this will necessitate changes that you were trying to avoid, but I hope it saves you letters later on. (Though ending up in a humbler spot on the social ladder might make her more intent on climbing up. Also, with Draven dead, then she has no chance of bettering her social stance. Another woe.)
Eloisa: She’s not pregnant—and actually, I’ve pretty much decided to kill off Lady Clarice. I’m going to add something indicating that she’s ill at the end of the book, and then she’ll die between book 1 and 2, leaving Imogen an extremely wealthy young widow—she leaves it all to Imogen.
Franzeca: There’s no mention of Imogen possibly being pregnant. I think you told me earlier she’s not, but it would be of keen interest to Lady Clarice & the next in line (the heir to the earldom,) or the current earl, if Draven is the heir himself. So also, with Draven as an earl, after the wedding of Draven & Imogen, Clarice would become the Dowager Countess, as Imogen would be the countess, during the week of the marriage. Then that would change when it’s figured out who Draven’s heir is.
re: Rafe. His name in the bible is “Raphael Jurdain, Duke of Holebrook.” And almost constantly in the book, he’s referred to as Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook (though there are a few variants.) I’m presuming that you want to stay with Jourdain and Holbrook, and, unless I hear otherwise from you, will flag alternate spellings to those. Also, as he is a middle-aged, slightly sotted, unmarried, childless duke, I am very interested in who his heir is, and is that heir interested in Rafe’s social life, and the appearance of the nubile sisters (would an heir be more suitably younger than Rafe for a sister?)
Eloisa: I changed his name to Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook. He’s not middle-aged! He’s in his 30s. I originally had him in his 40s, so there might be left-overs. I’ll try to bring an heir into the next book.
Re: the Feltons. Mrs. Felton, as the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire, can continue to use the title “Lady” with her Christian name, so they would be Mr. Edward and Lady Marjorie Felton, or whatever. So I don’t know how the rewrite on the ending chapters is going to be, and whether she uses her title as Lady in pride of her origins, or goes by Mrs. in shame at her marriage, will be interesting to play out.
Franzeca: Great point. She should definitely be Lady Marjorie Felton. Would that be Lady Marjorie then? Or Lady Felton?
As well as guiding me in points of etiquette, Franzeca is the source of much of the historical detail in my books. For this series, we exchanged many, many e-mails about horse racing. Those letters cover everything from the way horses are described (according to Franzeca, the famous Secretariat was “nosy, alert, ambitious, playful, a big clown, and unruffled around crowds”) to their height and weight (Secretariat was sixteen hands, two inches high and weighed twelve hundred pounds). Some of her e-mails include information about horses written in the 1800s, so that I can strike the right note when my characters describe horses, and some of the letters take a broader historical perspective. She noted, for example, that racehorses were gradually getting bigger, and fifteen hands was a good size by 1818.
In a specific example, Franzeca sent me tremendous amounts of information about a stallion named Blacklock, born in 1814. Here’s Franzeca writing about him: “I like that he was big and not pretty and that Ewan got a bargain for him, though it’s hard to think of Annabel’s father letting a colt go so cheaply. Another bad decision by the viscount. I guess it would be better if Ewan bought Blacklock in 1815 as a yearling, which would be the year Annabel’s father died.”
One thing that nonwriters often don’t realize is the amount of work that can lie behind even a single sentence in a historical novel. For example, Franzeca and I exchanged a lot of e-mails about the Jockey Club, which was founded in 1751 and began regulating the horse racing industry in 1757. I had the idea of using it in reference to Draven’s ill-fated choice to race a yearling, but eventually the entire thing fell out of the book.
Mostly Franzeca puts me straight about history, but every once in a while I manage to score a point against her. For example, we had long discussions about Draven’s rash decision to race his yearling. Franzeca protested that yearlings were not put to race, but I had found evidence to the contrary (ha!). Here’s Franzeca’s note: “You were right: this is from the late 1700s: There were isolated instances of racing yearlings, but happily the pursuit of precocity to this outrageous length did not become general and was soon suppressed.” And Franzeca added a little note: “Bad Draven!”
As well as keeping me to the historical straight and narrow, Franzeca also steps out of the realm of history to play a more editorial/critique partner role, using her historical knowledge to create a coherent backstory for my characters. In one e-mail, for example, she writes, “Mayne’s mother was French, so he used to give the horses French names. That tradition continued as well, making sense to give French names to horses with French-named parents. So these are: Tournesol (Sunflower); Perigord, Millefleur . . .” You can see how well Franzeca knows the book; she figures out backstory herself and then tells me about it.
Eloisa and Franzeca
I asked her to come up with a back story for Mayne’s fiancée, Sylvie. While no mention of Sylvie’s past made it into the final draft of Pleasure for Pleasure, her quiet but ferocious put-down of Mayne when he asks whether she is “happy” stems directly from the background Franzeca created for her.
Sylvie de la Broderie has a most interesting family background. Basically, her grandfather was beloved by his people, and the villagers actually defended him from the mob. So Sylvie’s young father was drawn to Napoleon and Paris, and became Napoleon’s finance minister. But he grew increasingly dismayed by the carnage and corruption of the new regime, and so he wisely began moving his holdings to England. During the Peace of Amiens (1802–1803), he fled safely to England. Sylvie thus moved from Paris to England at age ten.
Jody and I thought it might be fun if Franzeca offered an idea to all of you out there thinking about writing a Regency romance. Why not write something about a fabulous female jockey from the period? You’ll find her essay at the end of Part One. I think we’d all agree that a female jockey would make a terrific heroine!
Editing a Manuscript
My editor for the Essex Sisters series and I often figured out tricky aspects of a plot before she saw a first draft. For example, I had difficulty figuring out how to handle Rafe’s alcoholism in The Taming of the Duke. The problem, of course, is that back in the 1800s, people didn’t think of alcoholism as an illness, the way they do now. It was hard not to fall into modern patterns of speaking. But I found a letter to my editor, saying that I had just finished reading John London’s Jack Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs, dated 1913. That is a century after the date of my book, but even so, it was invaluable because London talked about addiction to alcohol without medicalizing it (as I did above by calling it an “addiction”!).
When I finished a first draft of each manuscript, I printed it out and mailed it in (that’s how long ago the Essex Sisters were published!). Larger editorial suggestions would happen over the phone; in my experience, if an editor is going to tell an author to cut more than three chapters, she generally does it in person. Line edits were handled by e-mail. I managed to find a few snippets, so you get a glimpse of what those exchanges are like.
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 18 ‘I only just lay down’ sounds very colloquial to me. ‘I’ve only just lain down.’
Eloisa: Great.
>
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 145 ‘on-dit’ doesn’t really seem to make sense in this instance. Perhaps raison d’être would work better?
Eloisa: I’m not seeing how raison d’etre would work. She says that her family (Mayne) takes second place to a piece of great gossip (on-dit about Felton being chased by Annabel), and then says she brought a great quantity of stationery. That goes back to her previous paragraph saying that she will be able to make a “full report to all the dowagers” who have tried to match Felton with their daughters. I am understanding on-dit as gossip.
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 182 I suggest we insert Maitland was behind them, and Imogen to make this passage a little clearer.
Eloisa: Great.
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 226 I wondered if Tess might not be a bit more surprised to hear that Mayne has slept with many wives?
I’ve inserted: “Tess inhaled sharply but Mayne persevered.”
Eloisa: A foible, but I hate people who inhale. How about if we just go with a more simple statement: “I have slept with wives who”
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 247 When Lucius asks Tess to marry him I thought we should add something like: “Tess’s heart pounded in her chest.”
Eloisa: Sounds good to me!
Editor’s Suggestion: Pg 279 I’ve added, after, “She had no mother, to advise her on these delicate matters.” What do you think?
Eloisa: Excellent. (no comma though)
