It is a fact that the Duchess’s eldest daughter, known as Betty, gave birth to her two sons in the Yellow Bedchamber in 1680 and 1682 and that her marriage to the eldest son of the Earl of Argyll was not a happy one. They lived apart after 1696. She was seventeen years old at the time of the story, her sister Katherine about two years younger. The second-eldest son of the Duchess, Thomas, born in 1651, became a famous soldier. Although in my story he comes across as rather immature, I am sure he became the charming man much commended for his bravery.
Portraits exist of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, together and separate, as does the bronze bust of the Duchess’s mother. The portrait of Sir Leo and Lady Phoebe Hawkynne is, of course, quite fictitious. A childhood portrait of the sixth Earl, Wilbraham, hangs in the Great Hall near that of his beloved wife, Anna Maria, who died in 1804, the year after the story. The 1803 pen-and-watercolour painting by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) of ‘Lord Dysart Treating his Tenantry’ is in the possession of the Tollemache family. This event would probably have taken place each year at harvest-time, but I have brought it forward to June to fit my story.
The quotation on page 250 is from John Donne, the seventeenth-century English poet and one-time Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The little gold moon pendant made by the first Phoebe’s brother, Timothy Laker, was passed down through the Hawkynne (later Hawkin) family until it reached Sir Leon, the second Phoebe’s father. His wife inherited it but did not appreciate its significance so, when she became Lady Templeman, she kept it in her jewel-box because it was unfashionable. It was only after she died that it came, with a few other trinkets, to Claudette, Lady Ransome’s eldest daughter. But by this time the Hawkynne portrait was in the possession of her Uncle Leon at his Harley Street house, and Claudette was able to relate the two.
The black velvet waistcoat was never found, but this is not surprising at a time when clothes were passed down through the family, then to servants, until they literally dropped to pieces. The remaining gold buttons would have been removed and re-used, time and again.
Leon Hawkin and Tabitha Maskell were married later in 1803, but his commission to paint the Ham House renovations came to an abrupt end with the death of the Countess the following year, after which the Earl left Ham House for many years. So they closed ‘the cottage’ at Ham and went to live as housemaster and housemistress at Greenwater, Mortlake, to look after the orphans, by which time Leon was able to sell everything he produced, like his friend Thomas Rowlandson. He exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every year after that, still keeping Hetty as his housekeeper and still maintaining his London house on Harley Street. Some of the orphans became artists too.
The Viscount and Viscountess Ransome continued to live at Ferry House, with its productive gardens, and at their London home, where they entertained and raised a large family of sisters and a brother for Claudette. It was not until many years later, when Phoebe looked into the records of the Hawkynne family, that she discovered the date of Sir Leo and Phoebe’s wedding to be one year after the date on the note found with the button. Which told her what we knew, that the scene in the Great Hall was enacted before the two were married. Weddings were not allowed to interrupt the Duke’s plans; Phoebe and Sir Leo had to wait upon His Grace’s generosity.
INSPIRATION FOR WRITING
Scandalous Innocent
In most of my previous novels I have included real places, and sometimes real people too, to give an extra flavour of authenticity to the story. It seems a pity not to use those parts of our history that are still there to be seen—large houses, castles, palaces and natural features, some of which have changed little over the centuries. One of the closest great houses to me is Ham House at Richmond in Surrey: a National Trust property that celebrated its four-hundredth anniversary in 2010. What better reason could there be for using it in a story?
Visiting it, reading about it, about the occupants of the vast rooms throughout its history, their disappointments and hopes, their dysfunctional families and political intrigues, would provide any writer with a wealth of material. Reading the guidebook alone is enough to set ideas in motion: the Civil War dangers, the periods of excess, neglect, and the changes made to the house and gardens, the sad marriages, bankruptcies, premature deaths, and the influence of the French Revolution on the local population. There is no shortage of ideas, the only question being which era to choose for its most interesting characters, the amount of information available, the outside events that might contribute to the storyline and, not least, the kind of lifestyle people lived. The more colourful this is, literally and metaphorically, the more fun one can have with the characters.
I decided not to have my hero and heroine live at Ham House but instead to associate them closely with the owners at the time—to give them the independence and freedom to come and go. With Scandalous Innocent I took the unusual step of using two periods, the first in 1676, only ten years after the Great Fire of London, when many households were in a state of flux (always a good device), and the second in 1803, at the time of the French Revolution. This must, I thought, tie up somehow with the noble fraternity of French emigres then living in Richmond. The one constant feature would be the house itself, reflecting not only two very different periods but also the changes, structural and decorative, that affected the lives of the main characters. It’s surprising how the changes to a house of that importance can affect the tone of the story and the kind of behaviour in which the occupants indulge. To me, the main point of writing historical fiction is that social mores and the behaviour of the participants belong securely to certain historical periods and do not transplant well into the modern world. So it makes sense to use all the quirks of the chosen period—except, of course, the language, which would make reading unbearable.
The Ham House owners in my two stories needed no extra embellishments to make them interesting. They fitted in as if they knew the plot already, warts and all, particularly the larger-than-life Lauderdales, who were actually more fascinating than I have made them. Powerful women in history are not hard to find, nor are they all entirely under the domination of men, and to find ways in which women can ‘kick over the traces’ and still retain their dignity is one of the aims of the romantic fiction writer. There are, naturally, things a heroine could not and would not do. Living entirely alone is one of them, so she has to be placed somewhere on the edge of society, making her reasonably independent yet rather vulnerable, which is why the idea of marriage to the right man must be made to sound more attractive than the alternative. Staying single was never a happy prospect, yet my heroines have usually had some kind of experience that has made them resistant to the idea of marriage. This is where I had to persuade them both, either by a set of inescapable circumstances, as in the second Phoebe’s story, or by a love rekindled, as with the first Phoebe. Having strong, opinionated women also acts as a link between the stories, as ‘strength of character’ is what Harlequin(r) readers expect. We like to see ourselves putting up a fight. From the safety of our armchairs, of course.
The position of secretary to the powerful Duke in the first story seemed like a useful place for my hero to be—he’s influential, socially adept, intelligent, wealthy, experienced and peripatetic—which explains why he and Phoebe had not sorted out their differences before. This also gave her time to gain a ‘reputation’. As Samuel Pepys’s Diaries show, the seventeenth century was a time of extravagant gestures, quick tempers and overreaction, and the sword-contest between Phoebe and Leo would not have seemed as absurd to them as it would in a later era. Even so, coming early on in the story, I could not allow it to settle the quarrel as it was meant to: I had to make it do the opposite, as in life. It made things worse for a while, until the hero tackled the problem head-on—although there had to be some question left unanswered to take the first story on into the next one. I liked the idea of this ‘something’ being as small as a button, but the truth is that I didn’t know what it was g
oing to be until the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Tollemache picked it up in the ghost scene. Honestly, she did it without any instruction from me. Nor did I even know there was going to be a ghost scene. It appeared quite without warning. When it happens like that, I just let it.
Things moved around a little with the second Phoebe and her brother Leon, who are direct descendants of the first Leo and Phoebe. I had to draw a family tree to make sure the generations coincided with the sixth Earl at Ham House, but it was coincidental that the lovely Wilbraham and his Countess were there doing wonderful things when Phoebe and her Buck were at Ferry House in Richmond. Another family tree, more ground-plans, dates and maps were needed for this, as discrepancies are picked up immediately by sharp-eyed readers. Naturally, I needed my second hero to be quite different from the first, both in character and lifestyle, but the similarities are that Buck, like Leo, is already known to Phoebe, disliked but attractive. He also has the upper hand from the start, and has a powerful ally at Ham House, who this time helps rather than hinders. I would rather have liked the Countess to live longer, but she didn’t, and that is a fact an author may not change.
The sad truth that dissolute young men sometimes lost their entire inheritances was the start of my second story, and one can read of many occasions when families suffered terribly from out-of-control gambling. And, since Mortlake featured in the first story as Phoebe’s home, I wanted to continue the link in the second by having Buck Ransome live there, and Phoebe’s other brother too. Living so close, there had to be some serious interference and wrong conclusions between them to throw things off course.
There is a danger, though, of presenting a set of problems that could so easily be solved if only the characters would act a little more rationally. So the main problem of ‘the other mistress’ had to be made water-tight—not only by hearsay, which is hardly enough to go on, but by taking a look at first hand, which is what Phoebe did. Interestingly, what she actually witnessed was the opposite of the construction she put on it, which is so often the case. This is why I like to look at both sides of the picture to avoid the obvious. I am not naturally a devious person, but I believe some deviousness may have developed in me as a writer of fiction. I have to admit to becoming dreadfully tangled at times.
HOW CLOSE IS THE HAM HOUSE OF TODAY TO THE HAM HOUSE SEEN IN
Scandalous Innocent?
I made several visits to Ham House, first to get the general feel of the place, and then to fill in some details I knew I could use—such as the routes my characters would have taken, which way the hall doors opened, and where exactly was the fountain in the little orchard. Visits also gave me a more accurate sense of scale than photographs did, and I found that the great hall with the chequered floor was not as large as it appears in the guidebook.
But inevitably there are differences that one must accept—like the room now used for displaying artefacts, the upper storey and some of the second-floor rooms closed to visitors, the servants’ access passage that is hidden until one asks the reason for those doors in the wallpaper, and the old kitchen garden and orangery, which have changed beyond recognition. Here, one must impose a fertile imagination on what is there and what was there. To their credit, the National Trust has tried to recreate the interior as closely as possible, using some of the seventeenth-century furniture that could have been used by Phoebe and Leo, but not the billiard table, and sourcing similar items on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And although the house looks massive from the outside, on the inside it is really quite compact. One particular bonus was the painting by Thomas Rowlandson that appeared in an earlier Ham House guidebook, showing our dear sixth Earl of Dysart with his missus at a garden party for the workers. That was a piece of history I had to include—though the space they used has changed over the years, as has the other side of the house where the great Wilderness was. Thankfully, the River Thames is still there, although I believe even that has changed shape a little in four hundred years.
GHOSTS AT HAM
Ham House is reputed to be one of the National Trust’s most haunted properties. A paranormal investigation by the Ghost Club reckons that, in total, there are around fifteen ghosts in residence, with a large proportion being canine. In the second part of Scandalous Innocent, Phoebe experiences echoes from the past—echoes which still appear today, particularly concerning Elizabeth, Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698).
The Duchess’s ghost is supposed to roam the house still. Disquieted by the death of her second husband, John Maitland (first Duke of Lauderdale) in 1682, who had fallen out of favour at court, she tried to sue his brother for her husband’s funeral expenses. The case lasted ten years and, as costs mounted, Elizabeth became penniless and gout-ridden, and was forced to sell much of her valued collection from the house. She died in 1698, after having written: “I am a prisoner in my beloved Ham House, and I will never leave…”
Footsteps and a rose scent often appear in her ground-floor Bedchamber, pets refuse to enter, and visitors often remark on being rather terrified by her portrait, hanging over the fireplace. In the nearby Dining Room, wafts of tobacco can be often smelt. It was Elizabeth’s husband, the first Duke, who enjoyed smoking Virginia tobacco.
Footsteps have been heard overnight, and occasionally footprints are found on the stairs and in the Bedchamber, which appear to have lifted the varnish from the floorboards. At times, a lady clothed in a long black dress is spotted going downstairs and into the Chapel. After her husband’s death, the Duchess of Lauderdale is known to have spent much of the week preceding his funeral in the Chapel, praying alongside his coffin. During conservation cleaning one morning, a handprint was found among the dust on the rail of the Duchess’s pew. The Chapel had been closed and alarmed since the previous clean.
Indeed, Sir Horace Walpole (1717-1797) commented:
“Every minute I expected to see ghosts sweeping by; ghosts I would not give sixpence to see, Lauderdales, Tallemaches (sic) and Maitlands…”
Many other ghosts too numerous to mention also frequent Ham House and other National Trust properties.
(Based on a chapter from: Ghosts: Mysterious Tales from the National Trust by Sian Evans, National Trust Books 2006)
FILMS AT HAM
Being close to London has made Ham ideal for being used as a filming location. While TV and film make up much of Ham’s film credits, it is also frequently used for fashion shoots, TV commercials and comedy shows. Recent projects are:
44 Inch Chest (2009)
John Hurt, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane
Brideshead Revisited (2007)
Emma Thompson, Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw
Never Let Me Go (2009/10)
Keira Knightley, Charlotte Rampling,
Sally Hawkins
Spiceworld the Movie (1997)
Spice Girls, Richard E Grant
The Young Victoria (2009)
Rupert Friend, Miranda Richardson, Mark Strong, Emily Blunt
Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2006) BBC
Jane Horrocks, Janet McTeer
Ballet Shoes (2007) BBC
Victoria Wood, Emma Watson
Little Dorritt (2008) BBC
Andy Serkis, Matthew Macfadyen
Sense and Sensibility (2007) BBC
David Morrissey, Claire Skinner
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0584-0
SCANDALOUS INNOCENT
Copyright (c) 2010 by Juliet Landon
First North American Publication 2011
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