Stephanie Barron

My Personal Note From Charles (Dickens, that is)

2012-02-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as various folks around the world gave a nod to the creator of Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Nell--who presumably celebrated his 200th birthday with a glass of Port on some convenient celestial perch--I paused a moment in my guest room to offer Many Happy Returns to Charles Dickens myself.

Framed on the wall is one of the man's letters. It wasn't written to me, of course--but I shamelessly read it anyway. It's a small note written on blue-gray paper, with its original envelope, addressed and sealed with Dickens's wax, the color of dried blood.

The framer, sadly, couldn't show both sides of the envelope at once, so the wax seal is hidden from view, a treasure for some future generation to find when they reframe the thing in 2312. The visible side is some compensation--Dickens signed the envelope as well as the note, and there's a great old penny postage stamp with Queen Victoria pretending to be Caesar's wife in the upper corner. The ink is faded to a sepia brown.

Here's what the letter says:

Devonshire Terrace
Thirtieth November 1842
My Dear Count D'Orsay

We shall all three be delighted to dine at Gore House on Friday; and, (as you do not mention the hour) we shall take it for granted that you dine at Half past Seven, unless we hear to the contrary.

Always believe me
faithfully yours
Charles Dickens

He scrawled his signature emphatically across the bottom of the page, and underscored it with a scrolling motion at least ten times. And yes, that's a comma you see before the parenthesis. Perhaps our habit of placing it after is hopelessly twenty-first century.

It's a commonplace note enough. The Comte D'Orsay was a flamboyant figure in Dickens's day, an artist, a dandy, a wealthy man who loved to entertain. But who are "we three?" And what exactly did they dine on? Did D'Orsay keep the note for decades, or did his valet pilfer it? And how did it end up in my mother's closet, a hundred and fifty years later? The devil of it is, nobody in my family really knows. It's our own little Mystery of Edwin Drood.

There's an import duty receipt for one hundred and forty-five pounds from a dealer named Maggs Brothers, located at 50, Berkeley Square, London, to a dealer in Bethesda, Maryland, dated 1977. We lived in Potomac at the time; and that was the year my father died. The story of how he came by Dickens's careless acceptance of a dinner invitation, died with him. It was only in the last years of my mother's life that the letter was discovered at all--and my sisters kindly passed it on to me. They figured that as a writer, I'd cherish it.

I do. I thought about hanging it opposite my desk, where I can see it every day; and maybe at some point I will. For now, though, it hangs in the guest room, so that anybody transiting through Denver can glance at that sprawling, flamboyant, dramatic fist--and hear an entire world of fantastic characters whispering from the faded ink.

Happy birthday, Charles.

Stephanie

A Toast to January's Quiet

2012-01-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

It has been snowing in Colorado, and I'm off tomorrow to ski over the long weekend. January--a month so many view as bleak and cheerless--is one of my favorite months in the year. The hustle of the holidays is over; no huge obligations loom; and it's time to hunker down by the fire with good books and snoozing dogs. I've been dutifully reading Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot, and finding it disappointing, perhaps because I lived through college in the '80s and my memories of it are much better than his characters'. (It was brought home to me recently just how long ago that was when a chance acquaintance commented: "You look really good for somebody who graduated in 1985." We call that a backhanded comment, folks: Nice to know you look OK, given that you've got one foot in the grave.) So last night I put down the Plot and picked up a Golden Age mystery. And naturally, I mixed up a Sidecar to drink with it.

The Sidecar surfaces in Agatha Christie novels and only rarely in trendy bars these days. It takes its name from the little passenger capsule so many motorcycles sported in England in the 1930s, the kind that Lady Mary Wimsey and her pet Communist meant to elope in, during the first chapters of Dorothy Sayers' Clouds of Witness. It's a brandy cocktail, which nobody drinks anymore, but it's absolutely delicious. Here, after much experimentation, is how to make one:

The Wimsey Sidecar

1.5 oz Courvoisier
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
3/4 oz Cointreau
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice

Shake all in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and pour into a martini glass--preferably one whose rim has been wiped with a lemon and coated with sugar. Grab a good dog and a good mystery and settle in while the blizzards howl.

After you drink this, you'll want to be poured into one of those cute little passenger capsules and elope.

Happy New Year from Nessa and Mycroft

Stephanie

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron: A Fatal Charm

2011-12-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

The tenth Jane Austen Mystery, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, throws together two of history's literary greats--and the two who seem least likely to have met. Yes, they were contemporaries; but Jane was "retiring" and George Gordon, Lord Byron, outrageous. No doubt their conversations, had they encountered one another, must have been compelling. But would the occasion ever have arisen?

I began to wonder about six degrees of separation in Jane Austen's world when I was researching and writing a very different book, A Flaw in the Blood, which is set in 1864 and concerns Queen Victoria. In the course of learning about her world, I naturally read David Cecil's excellent biography Melbourne. Victoria's first prime minister--already aging when she ascended the throne, but a Regency Buck of the First Stare, a remarkable personality and intellect--utterly bewitched the young queen, whose partiality for William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, was so marked that raucous crowds heckled her with cries of "Mrs. Melbourne!" when she rode abroad in Rotten Row. She was perhaps 18 when this "grand pash" occurred, and not yet married to Albert; and she seems not to have cared one whit for public opinion. I'd have swooned over Melbourne, too.

Caro dressed as a page

The real Mrs. Melbourne, of course, was long since dead; but Lady Caroline Lamb's storied reputation lived on long after her time. The author of Glenarvon, she was most famous for her brief affair with Lord Byron, which ended in public scandal because she refused to give up her obsession--becoming possibly the first recorded Celebrity Stalker. Regency fans will always be fascinated by Caro Lamb--she was a Ponsonby by birth, the daughter of the unfortunate Countess of Bessborough, who was a victim of domestic violence, a friend of Sheridan and Charles James Fox, and sister of that Georgian Incomparable, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Caroline Ponsonby grew up in the hectic atmosphere of her aunt Georgiana's Devonshire House and Chatsworth. Ironically, Byron would eventually marry Caro's cousin, Annabella--his sole disastrous foray into marriage.

Researching Melbourne, reading about Caro, and thinking about Regency personalities inevitably led me to a biography of Byron himself. Naturally, it's littered with love affairs and remarkable women, none of whom--not even his half-sister, with whom he had an incestuous child--appears to have been able to resist him. A gallery of some of them may be viewed below.

Annabella, Lady Byron, mother of Byron's
legitimate daughter

Augusta Leigh, Byron's half-sister,
mother of an incestuous daughter

Jane Elizabeth, Lady Oxford

Claire Claremont, Mary Shelley's step-sister,
mother of an illegitimate daughter

A single fact at the end of Byron's life gave me pause: he was refused a public funeral or burial in Westminster Abbey in 1824 due to his scandalous life. Instead, his biographer tells us, he was laid out for viewing at the London home of Sir Edward Knatchbull. Yes, Janeites--Byron's wake was held in Fanny Austen Knight Knatchbull's London house. How did George Gordon end up in with Jane Austen's niece? I have never been able to find out. But the link between the two families was all the permission I needed. I decided Jane MUST encounter some madness in Brighton in 1813.

One more interesting degree of separation: Byron was always in Dun Territory--always at the mercy of his creditors--and when he finally sold his birthright, a crumbling estate called Newstead Abbey, he sold it to the brother of Fanny Austen Knight's Kentish neighbor, James Wildman, of Chilham Castle. (For more about the Wildman family, see Jane and the Canterbury Tale.)

Happy Winter Reading!

Stephanie

Past Master: Appreciating Margery Allingham

2011-12-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

It has been uncharacteristically cold, gray, and snowy here in Denver. I took a break from twining greens around the house this weekend to curl up on the couch with an icon of Golden Age Detective Fiction--Margery Allingham.

And found myself wondering, as I always do, why she is so rarely read anymore.

Allingham created her amateur British detective, Albert Campion, at the end of the 1920s, as one of those plausible, aristocratic, deceptively foolish young men who look decorative at weekend houseparties and have a knack for solving murders. Campion reads like a dangerous foil to Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey--his background is deliberately vague, possibly criminal, and his aristocratic family seems to have cast him off. His valet Lugg--unlike Wimsey's Bunter--is an ex-con. It's a calculated inversion of a detective fiction trope; and this sinister bent becomes more pronounced as Allingham's writing career evolved and deepened. I could talk about the excellent classic fiction Allingham turned out in the Thirties--The Fashion in Shrouds, Dancers in Mourning, Black Plumes--but I won't. It's her later fiction that brings me to my knees.

By the 1950s, Allingham abandoned amateur detection for the police procedural, introducing a series of related characters affiliated with Scotland Yard, who call upon the middle-aged Campion as a sort of eminence grise of crime. More importantly, in such novels as The Tiger in the Smoke and Tether's End, Allingham abandons completely the mystery novel architecture--in favor of a thriller's arc. She infiltrates the minds of her killers, carrying the reader along with her, in a deft examination of amorality, luck, calculated and cold-blooded murder, and the happy element of chance that unravels a sociopath's world. She is masterful at inspiring dread, so that even when you've put down the book her characters whisper quietly in the back of your mind and surface at night in your dreams. Her treatment of trust and its violation, her exploration of the charm of plausible con men and the innocents who care about them, and the final desperation of her trapped criminals, are timeless; her books retain a depth and power entirely due to their complex characterizations.

Allingham's not available in digital format yet, and this neglect--similarly visited upon another Golden Age great, Ngaio Marsh--is a gap in the market SOMEBODY should exploit. In the meantime, comb your remaining sources of secondhand mystery fiction and snap up the yellowed paperbacks with the deceptively silly covers. There are forgotten marvels waiting--perfect for a snowy weekend in December.

For a comprehensive wallow in all things Allingham, check out the official website of the Margery Allingham Society.

Stephanie

Channeling Harriette in Barque of Frailty

2011-11-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

Alright, I admit it: there's something of the bodice-ripper in the cover of this particular Jane Austen Mystery--but I love it all the same. The extraordinary quality of light and movement, the combination of pearl and gold, and the Pauline de Borghese-like quality of the murdered woman's limbs--it all works for a book about sex, blackmail, and power. And what does any of that have to do with Jane Austen, you ask?

Everything, my friends.

Thinking of Our Jane as a prudish spinster writing in peaceful retirement has always been something of a mistake. In April, 1811, when Jane and the Barque of Frailty begins, the London Season is in full swing--and Jane Austen is paying an extended visit to her banker-brother Henry and glamorous sister-in-law, Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide. Jane is in London to proof the first typeset pages of Sense and Sensibility, publication of which Henry and Eliza have generously underwritten. Impossible, however, for Jane to escape intrigue--given the nature of the Sloane Street neighborhood the Henry Austens inhabit, and the wildly variable nature of their social acquaintance. Nearby in Hans Crescent, actress Dolly Jordan--the comic genius of her age, the Duke of Clarence's deserted mistress and mother of his ten children--has set up housekeeping; Lord Moira, one of Henry's banking clients and a member of the dangerous Carlton House Set, is enamored of Eliza; and among their friends are the French emigre Comte d'Entraigues and his opera-singer wife--whose curious political activities would destroy them the following year. Jane refers to all of these people in her letters from London, and describes the whirl of activity she experienced during the Season, with drollery and satisfaction. She might have been laboring over her page proofs, but she was also having a darn good time.

The year 1811 was pivotal in British history, ushering in the Prince Regent's nine years of caretaker monarchy and the exit in a straitjacket of his father, George III. The protracted war in the Peninsula was ending in victory for England, and politicians were squaring off to support or oppose the new Regent. Against this backdrop of political change London pursued its dissipations with abandon--chief among them, the patronage of powerful men for a class of women known variously as lightskirts, fair Cyprians, the Muslin Company, or Barques of Frailty: courtesans of the demimonde offered carte blanche--full funding--in exchange for their favors.

Jane had long been aware of the proclivity of powerful men for entertaining young women of easy virtue--she touches on the theme in Sense and Sensibility through the saga of Willoughby, a young buck on the Town blessed with handsome looks, charming manners, complete freedom and the prospect of future inheritance, who thinks nothing of seducing the ward of his acquaintance, Colonel Brandon, and abandoning her once she is with child. In Mansfield Park, she gives the charming Crawfords a naval uncle who insists upon his mistress living with him--which drives his worldly and fashionable young niece out of his home. As Jane knew, such affairs were not limited to Town life--she refers to the Fowle family's patron, Lord Craven, in a letter dated as early as 8 January 1801, as "having a Mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park...the only unpleasing circumstance about him." Lord Craven was the man responsible for sending Cassandra Austen's fiance, Tom Fowle, to the West Indies in 1792, where he died of yellow fever; in 1801, Craven was created 1st Earl Craven (second creation). He was quite the dashing figure: a military man, an aide-de-camp to the King, Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, and eventually the husband of a famous actress, Louisa Brunton, after whom he named his yacht. When Jane mentions him, he was about thirty-one years old; his Mistress, we now know, was fifteen--and detested Craven's "ugly white nightcap" as much as Marianne Dashwood deplored flannel. She ran away from Ashdown Park and embarked upon a storied career preserved forever in one of the Great Reads of the Regency Period: Harriette Wilson's Memoirs.

"The debauched coterie": A depiction of some of the famous members of the ton Wilson named in her Memoirs

Harriette was my guide through the demimondaine's world as I set out to write Barque of Frailty. Never mind that she's a notoriously unreliable witness--she mailed copies of her manuscript to every client mentioned in its pages, offering to remove them for an exorbitant sum of money, which means the public figures she cheerfully pillories are the ones who stiffed her (no pun intended). However vicious her portrait of the Duke of Wellington, for example--who famously told her to "publish and be damned!"--her depiction of courtesan life is vivid, entertaining, revelatory, and unsparing. She was a smart woman living by her wits without much sentimentality, determined to present herself and her friends as victims of Tragic Love. She made money hand over fist, and was as famous when she ventured into Hyde Park as any of the Society ladies who offered her the Cut Direct. After publishing her Memoirs, however, she seems to have found it expedient to quit London for the Continent.

Barque of Frailty closes with a scene Harriette would have recognized: The Cyprian's Ball at the Argyle Rooms. I offer here Cruikshank's lampoon of the event, which was as famous among a certain set as anything Almack's Assembly could offer--and much more enthusiastically patronized.

Enjoy!

Stephanie

Jane Austen Made Me Do It

2011-10-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Just got my Author Copy of this new anthology of up-to-the-minute Austen-inspired stories (can I find anything else to hyphenate? Oh, yes: It's hot-off-the-press), edited by Austen Maven Laurel Ann Nattress. The book doesn't officially launch until next Friday night in Ft. Worth, TX--in the warm penumbra of the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America--but I'm exulting in the advance copy. So many stories!!! From so many fabulous pens!!! Some are modern riffs on the JA world, others are continuations, meditations, improvisations on Jane and her work. Yes, I have an entry--"Jane and the Gentleman Rogue," in which the much-lamented Lord Harold returns--but who wants to read her own stuff when she can read everybody else's?

For more on the book, check out Laurel Ann's website: www.janeaustenmademedoit.com.

I can't attend the JASNA conference itself this year, because I committed to a charity event in Golden, CO--Books & Brunch--on Saturday Oct. 15th; but I'll be in Ft. Worth Friday night, Oct. 14th, at the Jane Austen Made Me Do It book launch party! If you're in the area, by all means come! Lots of great JAMMDI authors will be there, along with Laurel Ann, to sign the anthology--and any other books we're simultaneously peddling.

October 14, 6:30-8:00 pm
Launch Party for Jane Austen Made Me Do It
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Sundance Square
401 Commerce Street
Fort Worth, TX 76102
(817) 332-7178

Looking forward--

Stephanie

Tea with Jane in Scottsdale

2011-09-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

As the week winds to a close, I'm about to set off for The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona, where the lovely and talented Barbara Peters and her staff make bookselling look easy. We're sitting down for a Jane Austen Tea at 2 p.m. this Saturday, September 17th. I'm expecting a good conversation about all things Jane, and Canterbury Tale in particular. If you're planning to stop by, brings lots of questions--and be sure to read the previous post about Edward Austen-Knight's home, Godmersham Park, in Kent, where Canterbury Tale is set.

Looking forward to a cozy nosh with mystery fans!
Stephanie

Walking the Backroads of Kent: Jane and the Canterbury Tale

2011-09-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

One of the particular pleasures of writing about Jane Austen is...the travel! Oh, the travel! After her father's retirement and death, Jane moved with depressing regularity in her twenties and thirties--several lodgings in Bath alone, followed by Southampton and eventually Chawton--and she made frequent side trips to visit relatives in Staffordshire (Edward Cooper and his family at Hamstall-Ridware), Kent (brother Edward at Godmersham), and Warwickshire (a flying visit with strange bedfellows to Stoneleigh Abbey). She often stayed with her brother Henry in his various London homes, and enjoyed summer visits to towns along the Channel Coast, such as Lyme Regis. Scholars dispute whether she ever got as far north as Derbyshire--she mentions the town of Bakewell in Pride & Prejudice--but I for one believe that she did.

And having elected, sometime in the closing years of the last century, to write about Jane myself--I had little choice but to follow where she led. I have traipsed around the English countryside in the grip of obsession, hunting for the obvious and the obscure among the Monuments to Jane. I've lost myself in hedgerows searching for Edward Cooper's parsonage, slept in a canopied bed in a Palladian villa outside of Bath, and traced the remnants of a Humphrey Repton garden; but some of my loveliest memories are of Godmersham Park, Edward Austen Knight's estate about eight miles outside Canterbury, in Kent. And I never even looked inside the house.

Godmersham in Jane and Edward's day

Edward, as most Janeites know, was considered the most fortunate of the six Austen sons, because he was adopted at the age of twelve by Thomas Knight, a childless but wealthy cousin. Edward inherited Godmersham in Kent, along with Chawton Great House in Hampshire and some other landholdings; he was occasionally plagued with lawsuits disputing his right to inherit Thomas Knight's property, and he was required to take the Knight name--but in general, he settled with apparent happiness and few regrets into the life of a country gentleman.

The Front Hall at Godmersham

His eleven children grew up in affluence, with public school educations and good hunting for the boys; the girls suffered a parade of governesses--Jane befriended some of these, like Anne Sharpe, and passed over others, like the Miss Clewes who figures in Canterbury Tale. The Austen-Knights entertained everybody, and were entertained in return, in their neighborhood in Kent: the Wildmans at Chilham Castle, the Finch-Hattons at Eastwell Park, and their various Bridges cousins. Godmersham was a large and handsome house, set into a fold of the hills, with the River Stour running between it and the road; from Jane's letters, written in October and November of 1813, it seems like a house constantly full of people. The local MP and Master of Hounds, Mr. Lushington, arrives to dine and spend the night; Young Edward's friends drop in and out of the guest bedrooms prior to his departure for Oxford; the Moores arrive for a week and install their son in the nursery. Jane herself spends two months at Godmersham that autumn, and is able to collect considerable material for the book she is thinking of writing--a book called Emma. She revels in the comfort and society of the place, the opportunity for stimulation, and her drives into the walled cathedral town of Canterbury. On one of those junkets, Edward--who is First Magistrate--takes her through the Canterbury Gaol at Westgate.

Years later, I walked through Canterbury myself, looking for the old gaol. I bought some Regency fashion plates--I collect them--at a small bookseller's in one of the town's winding streets, then caught a bus that dropped me without ceremony at the end of Godmersham Park's long drive.

Sheep on the Godmersham Downs

At the time, the house was a corporate headquarters. I was free to walk up the driveway, however, and traverse the grounds--all of which look remarkably as they must have done in Jane's day--because Godmersham sits on the ancient Pilgrim's Way, the footpath between London and Canterbury Cathedral. The Pilgrim's Way is open to hikers, as are all public footpaths in England, regardless of whose property they cross. For a while that sunny July morning I was able to pretend I was one of Chaucer's merry band of fellow-travellers, telling stories to pass the time. And I could imagine Jane, spinning tales of her own, as she walked the high hills of Edward's estate, dotted with specimen trees and sheep. I went on to set two books at Godmersham: Jane and the Genius of the Place, which occurs during the summer of 1805, known as the Great Terror, when Kent was braced for Napoleon's expected invasion; and now the eleventh Austen mystery, Jane and the Canterbury Tale. This story revisits the Austen-Knights eight years later, in 1813--when Elizabeth Austen is long since dead, her children growing up, and her husband Edward still mourning her. It is very much a family story, about love and loss, and the endurance of such things through time. It is also, by design, a story of fellow-travelers, and the adventurous tales they weave about the past, rather as Chaucer's Pilgrims did in that other Canterbury Tale.

It is possible this is the last Jane Austen mystery I will write. I don't regret leaving my Jane here, where I first felt I truly found her--hurrying with her pen and small, handsewn book of paper toward the little temple set on a hill, to gaze out over Edward's paradise, and dream her particular dreams. I hope you find your own Jane Austen in this Canterbury Tale, too.

Fondly,

Stephanie

Austenesque Extravaganza: An Interview With Lord Harold

2011-08-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Without question, the most beloved and intriguing gentleman in the entire Being a Jane Austen Mystery Series is Lord Harold Trowbridge, second son of the Fifth Duke of Wilborough: ardent Whig and debonair clubman; unrepentant duellist and Man-about-Town; trusted confidant of the Crown and implacable enemy of Buonaparte--otherwise known as the Gentleman Rogue. Lord Harold first made his appearance in Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor; having suffered an untimely demise in Jane and the Ghosts of Netley, he nonetheless reappears in a forthcoming short story, "Jane and the Gentleman Rogue," set in 1805 Bath, and presently to be published in Jane Austen Made Me Do It (Random House, October 2011, Laurel Ann Nattress, editor.) The following is an informal interview with Lord Harold, conducted on the fly by The Author.

The Author: How did you come to make such a mull of your affair with Jane?

Lord Harold: Good God! You might spare a fellow a very little! Do you not think I've been asking myself the same damned question--and for all eternity? I am one of those who are fated, perhaps, only to apprehend the worth of a creature once she is past all reclaiming. We exist, you know--in our own particular Hell.  She was an excellent woman, Jane--unmatched, indeed, in her time and sphere. No beauty to speak of, mind--except, perhaps, for her very speaking eyes. When they did not mourn, they laughed irrepressibly, at some inner voice of ridicule she alone heard, that subjected all humanity to its scorn--as no eyes I've ever seen, before or since, have laughed. So must God Himself have roared, to witness our absurdity! It was her wit I loved; I confess it unashamedly. Lord Harold, enamored of a Bluestocking! She ruined me for every other woman.

And her hair! How I should have loved to have seen it unbound. I itched to loose those pins, at times, in the close conference of my carriage, when we two were locked together in the swaying conveyance; an intimate and separate world, whose tragic dignity was preserved only by my restraint--the forbearance of a gentleman. What is forbearance, after all, when its sole reward is the grave? I might have run my fingers through those chestnut locks, and held her fast, within the span of what little time remained to me--

The Author: But you did not; and she died unwed--though perhaps not unloved.

Lord Harold: Her works outlived her. I predicted that much, you know--it was I who told her she must write, as I lay gasping from the effects of the knife-wound that despatched me. She should never have achieved the greatness she did, had I once loosed that glorious hair, and taken her to wife; she should have become something quite else--Lady Harold, a formidable figure, tricked out by the most expensive modiste, which I dare swear she would have gloried in. But her writing? A thing for the fireside; for the amusement of children and indolent cousins, hanging on her sleeve. No: She was better by far, left to Genius, than claimed by me.

The Author: You are eloquent in your own defense.

Lord Harold: Naturally. Eloquence is the most necessary weapon of a gentleman's arsenal; it disarms reproof, even as it wounds. An art lost to your age--but one that defined mine. Recollect: A gentleman is nothing without Honour; and what is honour stripped of eloquence? A poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage--a Buonaparte, in fact, glorying in the sacrifice of better men.

The Author: You devoted your life to defeating Napoleon.

Lord Harold: I see you call him by the name he chose, rather than the one to which he was born. I was never one to pander to a shortened stature, puffed up by bravado--except when it was called Nelson. For the Hero of Trafalgar, one must always make exception.

The Author: Hah! You are an adept, I see, at turning the conversation. But we are to talk of Jane--and so I must ask you, my lord, about the curious cask you bequeathed her. A chest full of papers, kept safe by your solicitors, and bearing your entire history--not to mention the history of your generation. A dangerous gift, was it not? And one contested by the Trowbridge family? Your brother the Sixth Duke was most incensed. Such names as he called Miss Austen!

Lord Harold: My brother is a fool. --Reason enough to have guarded my papers. Wilborough should have burnt them--but Jane knew how to use them.

The Author: The very fact of the bequest argues that you anticipated your death.

Lord Harold: But of course. We are all merely borrowers of Time. It is a wise man who banks upon nonexistence.

The Author: But what of those who gain Immortality?

Lord Harold: Such as Jane, you would mean?  Why else cultivate Genius? I would not be sitting under your eye, my dear Authoress, were it not for my extraordinary discernment--in having seen in Miss Austen, what no one else of her circle recognised: that she possessed the animating flame, unique to herself and her age, that should prove imperishable. I warmed myself at that flame while I lived; I was perhaps scorched by it; but it has kept the cold of the grave forever at bay for us both. And what is the transitory state of a mere Lady Harold, after all, compared to that?

The Rogue is Sped: Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

2011-07-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

It's not too much to say that I've received more mail--and more of it outraged--in response to Jane and the Ghosts of Netley than the rest of the series combined. This has to do, of course, with the ending--which, if you haven't yet read the novel, I won't spoil for you. I will only say that Lord Harold Trowbridge himself dictated it to me, and I had no choice but to write down what he said.

This is a phenomenon most readers can't believe: that the characters we create live their own lives, well beyond our control, and are anything but subject to our authorial impulses. The Gentleman Rogue has always gone his own way--and I was never one to bridle him.

The book is set in the autumn of 1808, in a ruined abbey that still sits across the Solent from Jane Austen's home in Southampton. Netley Abbey was of Cistercian founding, long since destroyed; and we know from Jane's letters that she was in the habit of visiting it. In this book, she discovers a nest of spies operating from the ruined abbey's height, which afforded an excellent view of the waterway.

But of greater interest to me, perhaps, is the secondary tale that runs through the novel--of Maria Fitzherbert, the cast-off Catholic "wife" (as she certainly believed herself to be) of the Prince of Wales. The twice-widowed Maria, prevented by her religion and commoner status from a sanctified marriage with the Prince, consented to marry him morganatically in 1786--ten years before he married his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, at his father George III's instigation. Discarded in favor of other paramours as she aged, Maria Fitzherbert nonethless remained a friend of the Prince of Wales--and in all probability, the mother of his illegitimate offspring. The notion of an heir to the throne, the product of an illegal Catholic marriage, was so socially explosive--and so politically volatile--that any such child would only survive in secrecy. It is that story I explore in Ghosts of Netley.

If this novel stirs your interest in the history of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his descendants, by all means pick up a copy of Sisters of Fortune, by Jehane Wake. The story of the four beautiful Caton sisters--Charles Carroll's granddaughters--took Europe by storm in Jane Austen's day: painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, beloved of Wellington, and the epitome of convention-shattering American women. If they knew Maria Fitzherbert's secret, they never breathed a word.

Enjoy!

Stephanie

A Fine Naval Fervour: Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

2011-06-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

One of the great indulgences in the life of an Austen fan is a trip designed to follow in her footsteps. I've naturally had to travel in Austen country a number of times in order to research the various books in this detective series, but oddly enough, I never find the terrain tedious. One of my favorites stops is Portsmouth--blasted nearly to oblivion in the second World War, but home nonetheless to a replica of Nelson's flagship, Victory, and the Royal Navy's fabulous maritime museum. This is pure jam for anybody who cut her literary eyeteeth on C.S. Forestor's Horatio, or Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey--or anyone who finds Captain Frank Austen one of the more interesting of Jane's brothers.

Frank was on shore leave during the course of the sixth Jane Austen mystery, Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House, living with his young wife, Mary, his future wife, Martha, and the female members of his family in hired lodgings in Southampton, a short sail up the Solent from Portsmouth. Although Southampton suffered terribly from German bombing runs on the docks, vestiges of the old walled city Jane knew can still be found--a sort of treasure hunt for any Austen fan with a copy of In the Footsteps of Jane Austen tucked into her purse. There's Castle Square (although the house is gone) where Jane lived and the Dolphin Inn, with its bow window, where she danced at the Assembly despite her advancing spinsterhood.

I stayed at the Dolphin while I was in town--and although it has since been smartly renovated, the arched carriage entrance to the inner courtyard still gives a sense of the coaching inn it must have been two hundred years ago. One imagines all sorts of people hastening from London to take ship in Southampton, and stopping the night at the Dolphin; I would use it again in the next novel, Jane and the Ghosts of Netley, when Lord Harold Trowbridge gave Jane a lesson in the use of his dueling pistols in the Dolphin's yard.

And of course, there is the Wool House still sitting as it has for seven hundred years facing the quay, a square, utilitarian, medieval building erected by Cistercian monks--the same ones who were housed at Netley Abbey across the Solent in the 14th century. It was once a center of the English wool trade, most recently it housed Southampton's Maritime Museum, and is currently up for redevelopment by the town council--but in Jane's day, the Wool House served as a temporary prison for French seamen. She must have passed it often as she walked briskly down the High and turned left, toward the little theatre where she enjoyed attending plays.

The French sailors kept in the Wool House would have been held only temporarily, awaiting exchange for English sailors taken in battle with the French. The notion of exchange is a strange one for most of us moderns; we assume that once taken prisoner, a seaman would be sidelined for the duration of the war. But in Jane's day, POW camps were unheard of. Officers taken prisoner were often housed by their Enemy brethren, and treated with the respect demanded by rank, dining at table with their former combatants and attempting to converse in each other's language. In a matter of days or weeks they returned cordially to the business of killing each other. The process seems almost civilized, in retrospect--an honourable approach to the notion of warfare that probably ended decades later somewhere in the Crimea.

Standing in front of Wool House one July day, however, I felt a shiver as I imagined the men held within, and Jane walking by. The Wool House's windows would have offered glimpses of unknown French faces, or snatches of French song drifting to the street. Or perhaps a plea for aid, from a French prisoner to an unknown Enlishwoman, whose brother was a naval officer...

The cover of this particular novel is my favorite of all the Jane books. It so perfectly captures the color of the sea, the sense of wind off the Solent, even the possibility of hope--as Jane gazes out at the horizon. Enjoy!

Stephanie

Anatomising Jane: The Stillroom Maid

2011-05-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

For any person with a knowledge of history, traveling in Derbyshire is an emotional venture. It was here that an entire village quarantined itself, the inhabitants slowly dying of the plague, in an extraordinary act of communal stoicism that is creatively reimagined in Geraldine Brooks's novel, Year of Wonders. In Derbyshire, too, is Thomas Banks's masterpiece, a marble statue of little Penelope Boothby, which draws countless visitors to Ashbourne Church. The child died at the age of five in 1793, and the anguished inscription of her parents is profoundly moving:

She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail Bark. And the wreck was total.

Penelope rests on her side, cheek cradled by a pillow, her hands cupped beneath her chin; the very image of a sleeping child. The statue is heartbreaking. We're told people mourned their dead children less in past centuries, because mortality rates were so high; but this is clearly false comfort. I carried the image of Penelope in my mind as I toured Derbyshire, and the death of children wound its way into the plot of The Stillroom Maid.

Derbyshire boasts the great estate of Chatsworth, of course--still haunted by the ghost of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the extraordinary risks she took at the gaming tables and beyond; haunted, too, by the memory of Kick Kennedy, Jack's little sister, who married Devonshire's heir Billy Hartington in 1944, in the teeth of family outrage, only to have him killed by a German sniper five weeks later. Kick died tragically young and is buried in the Devonshire plot at Edensour, a few miles from Chatsworth; but her puckish grin still blazes from the portrait gallery's walls.

In a story that revolves around Lord Harold Trowbridge, second son of a duke and Rogue-About-Town, it was impossible not to use Chatsworth--it was a center of Whig politics in Jane Austen's day, and Lord Harold was nothing if not a Whig. He would certainly have known the Incomparable Georgiana, who has recently died at the opening of this book. From Lord Harold to Jane, dancing at Chatsworth, is but a step.

Jane describes the little town of Bakewell, three miles from Chatsworth, in some critical chapters of Pride and Prejudice. But as I mention in the introduction to Jane and the Stillroom Maid, most Austen scholars assume Jane never saw Derbyshire at all, because no letter exists dated from the county. Some of us suspect otherwise. She writes about the Peak District as she wrote about Lyme Regis in Persuasion, with the sort of contained passion for a place she loved. As a writer myself, I find it categorically unlikely that she would choose to place Pemberley, much less the pivotal encounter between Darcy and Elizabeth, in a place she'd never seen. d'Arcy was the family name of the Earls of Holderness, local to Derbyshire.

A wall placque in The Rutland Arms in Bakewell declares that Jane Austen stayed there during the summer of 1811, but that is unlikely--the family record has her elsewhere. She might, however, have visited in 1806, while staying with her cousin Edward Cooper in neighboring Staffordshire. During Jane's six-week visit to the parsonage at Hamstall Ridware, the numerous Cooper progeny contracted a virulent strain of whooping cough, and it seems plausible that Cousin Edward might suggest a side-trip for his guests to the beauties of Matlock and Dove Dale, while his children hacked away at home under the harassed attentions of his long-suffering wife. The absurdities of Edward Cooper are one of the delights, for me, of this book.

Thus, the setting of The Stillroom Maid.

Murder, however? And maids?

The plot arose from various influences. Chief among them was a portrait I saw in a country-house hotel outside of Bath. I'd stayed at Ston Easton Park while researching The Genius of the Place--the beautiful Palladian-style house still boasted the remnants of a garden designed by Humphrey Repton, and the owners had one of Repton's famous Red Books, outlining his proposed changes, in their library. In another room, however, hung a group portrait of the servants resident during Jane Austen's time. Among them were the housekeeper--a truculent looking middle-aged woman in a white cap--the steward, a dark and wiry fellow with a determined jaw--and the stillroom maid. Her hands were folded and her gaze was demure; but her gaze was suggestive. She was young, and her features were delicate. She was flirting with the painter.

I asked about the portrait--was it usual to commission a study of one's servants?

"There's a story about that," the Ston Easton staffer confided. "Apparently the steward had an affair with the stillroom maid, and the housekeeper murdered her in a fit of jealous rage."

In the Austen household, Cassandra served as stillroom maid. The stillroom was where produce was preserved, fruit wines were made, and simple medicines were distilled. Hence the term, "still room." A stillroom book would have been a household's compilation of both recipes and remedies.

I've researched and reconstructed a number of stillroom receipts for my character, Tess Arnold. But I feel compelled to add, in the interest of my readers' health: Don't try these at home....

Stephanie

Surveying Jane's Landscape: Jane and the Genius of the Place

2011-04-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

It's not every day that a complete stranger walks up to you in the middle of a crowded bookstore and confesses, in a distinctly audible voice, My mother was a whore.

There are a range of possible responses every author has mastered. Fixed smile, sympathetic nod, sidelong glance at bookstore security--or just the polite question: "And how would you like your book signed?" Two things prevented me from completely embarrassing myself on this occasion, however--the speaker's English accent, and her burst of laughter immediately following her extraordinary confidence.

She meant Hoare, of course. As in: My mother was raised in one of the most privileged banking families in Britain.

Henry Hoare II and his heirs created Stourhead, a glorious Wiltshire estate that should be on every garden-lover's bucket list. (If you've seen the movie Barry Lyndon, you've seen Stourhead--it was partly filmed there.) I was fortunate enough to wander through its extraordinary valley, beautiful woodland paths, and around its lake--complete with grotto and statuary hermit--on a day of fitful rain, when visitors were few. Stourhead must be seen to be fully appreciated, much less believed--a constructed landscape that appears to have existed forever; a staggeringly expensive undertaking intended to reach its apogee long after its architects were dead. I used it as a model for The Larches, home of banker Mr. Grey and his mysterious wife, in Jane and the Genius of the Place.

A friend of mine insists that my titles in the Jane series are ridiculously complicated, and probably put readers off. She advises me to name each of my books Jane and Mr. Darcy. She figures they'd sell gangbusters if I did. And Genius of the Place wins her prize for Stupid Title of All Time. I mean, what was I thinking?

I was thinking of Alexander Pope, who once wrote: "In laying out a garden, the first and chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place." By this he meant the atmosphere, the animating spirit, the overwhelming emotional sensation one receives in a particular spot--and that the gardener violates it at her peril. In ancient times, it was common to believe in the actual Spirit of the place--Horace refers to the resident genie--and propitiate it with sacrifices.

What does all this have to do with Jane Austen?

She thought about landscape a good deal, although her novelistic descriptions are famously brief. There was a rage for landscape design in the late Georgian and Regency periods, as the naturalistic concepts of Lancelot Capability Brown gave way to the Gothic vogue of Humphrey Repton. The "improvement of the estate" became the object of every gentleman of Fashion; and Jane's tongue-in-cheek treatment of this bit of pop culture is most obvious in Mansfield Park. Poor, dull, Mr. Rushworth hankers after an Improver for his estate at Sotherton; his friend Smith has employed Repton; his affianced bride is certain only Mr. Repton will do for her--and Rushworth even states, with careless insouciance, that Repton's terms are five guineas a day, an astronomic sum that signifies Rushworth's wealth. (Mansfield Park, Oxford edition, p. 53). How did Jane know all this? One of her relatives employed Repton to transform Stoneleigh Abbey when he inherited it--the estate Jane is commonly thought to have used as a model for Rushworth's Sotherton. She would have made a point of getting the man's fees exactly right.

But of course, landscape is chiefly valuable as metaphor, in Austen's work--Rushworth's need to dress up his noble pile is unwitting evidence of a value for form over substance. His sham landscape--decorated with faux Gothic ruins and other Follies--is a metaphor for his sham marriage, where all the expense in the world cannot compensate for a lack of real feeling. Similarly, Henry Crawford--the consummate Improver--tries to remake simple Edmund's honest home in the style of a gentleman--representing a clergyman's living as a fashionable residence for a man of the world, which is what Edmund has no desire to pretend to be. Even Mary Crawford unconsciously invokes Alexander Pope in urging her brother's help: "Only think how useful he was at Sotherton! Only think what grand things were produced there by our all going with him one hot day in August to drive about the grounds, and see his genius take fire." (Emphasis mine. MP, p. 244).

Jane and the Genius of the Place is a riff on all of these themes. It features an Improver rather like Humphrey Repton, one Julian Southey, who possesses a charm that masks a peculiar agenda. Set at Godmersham, Edward Austen's home in Kent, during the summer of the Great Terror--1805--when the entire Channel coast was braced for Napoleon's invasion, it is a tale that blends horse racing, French spies, local militia movements, and the rhythms of country house life with brutal murder. Southey is the particular friend of one of Edward's neighbours--Mr. Finch-Hatton--whose son, George, appears as a principal character in the forthcoming Jane and the Canterbury Tale, due out in late September 2011. (And yes: those of you who remember Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham's separate accounts of their love affairs in Africa with Denys Finch-Hatton are not mistaken--he was a descendant of the same family. Charm is genetic.)

Enjoy--and may we all realize our peculiar Genius!

Stephanie

The Art and Drama of Bath: Jane and the Wandering Eye

2011-03-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Lord Harold Trowbridge, my dark angel of recent adventure--confidant of the Crown, adversary of whomever he is paid to oppose, and general Rogue-about-Town--is the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough's younger son. He is also in the throes of some trouble with a lady--nothing unusual for Lord Harold, although in this instance, the novelty of the lady's being not only unmarried, but related to him, must give the mendacious pause.

When I wrote the third Jane Austen mystery, Jane and the Wandering Eye, I was in the throes of passion for a relic of late Georgian England known as the eye portrait. This is a diminutive painting of a human eye, generally executed by an accomplished miniaturist, and worn as a locket or other piece of jewelry.

Eye portraits are reputed to have come into fashion when the Prince of Wales commissioned Sir Richard Cosway to paint the eye of Maria Fitzherbert; by some accounts, he wore it next to his heart all his life, and was even buried with it--although this is probably unproved. (Maria herself he certainly did not retain so long.) The portraits became known as lovers' tokens--for only with the eye of love can one see truly. Eye portraits were suggestive of hidden passion, illicit amour, and clandestine love, as well--for an eye is difficult to identify, when abstracted from a face. It might be anybody's.

What a perfect clue to drop at the scene of murder!

Jane and the Wandering Eye is set in Bath in 1804, during the Christmas Season. This is an important time in Jane Austen's life, because it marks the high tide of her young womanhood. A month later, in January 1805, her clergyman father would unexpectedly die, throwing his widow and two unmarried daughters into domestic upheaval. Although Jane never loved Bath, she was soon to leave it, as the Austen ladies embarked upon a series of short-term lodgings and impermanent households throughout the south of England. This, then, is Jane Before the Flood--able to enjoy the frivolities and absurdities of a watering-hole she describes so vividly in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. In depicting Bath in 1804, I hoped to paint a town that was not yet a backwater, but a fashionable alternative to London and Brighton, the Prince of Wales's preferred escape. To do that, I consciously tapped into the culture of painting and of the theatre--eye portraits and Shakespearean actors--to serve as backdrop to Jane's detective adventure.

On occasion, readers ask where I find my ideas for novels. Invariably, I tell them that I stumble on a subject I wish to research--and build a story around it. This was true of the portrait painting of the period, and also of the state of the theatre at the time. Both were flourishing enterprises, and both served on occasion to elevate their foremost practitioners from the fringe of society to its heights. The aforementioned Sir Richard Cosway received his title for services to the Crown; his estranged wife, the enchanting Maria Cosway, was a compelling painter herself whom Napoleon chose to catalogue his breathtaking collection of stolen paintings--which became the foundation of the Louvre Museum. While in Paris on this errand, Maria Cosway fell in love with Thomas Jefferson. As the fashion for Georgian styles of painting, exemplified by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough, waned, however, the freer and clearly more "modern" hand of Thomas Lawrence came into vogue. He emerges as a chief character in Jane and the Wandering Eye for several reasons: he had personal ties to principal acting families of the period, and his popularity as a portraitist among the wealthy and influential meant that he had access throughout late Georgian--early Regency Society. His career reached its apogee--and he received his title--when he was commissioned to paint both the Regent and the heroes of Waterloo (including the Duke of Wellington, left) whose portraits now hang in the famous Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle.

Researching the theatre of the time was equally compelling, as plays fell broadly into two categories--tragedy and comedy--and most accomplished actors or actresses excelled at one or the other. Sarah Siddons exemplified tragedy; her brothers, John and Charles Kemble, the ultimate in Shakespearean interpretation; and Dolly Jordan the comic muse. Dolly Jordan embodies an actress who moved between two worlds--that of the stage, which was regarded as disreputable for a woman to grace in Austen's time, and that of the haute ton; as the Duke of Clarence's mistress, she bore ten children known as the FitzClarences. For those interested in Dolly, I suggest Claire Tomalin's excellent biography and study of theatre in Austen's day, Mrs. Jordan's Profession.

The most successful transition from boards to bedroom, however, was effected by the comic beauty Elizabeth Farren--who, after years of hopeful passion for the Earl of Derby, became his second countess when his first wife finally died. The connections between art, theatre, and the Great World come together in Sir Thomas Lawrence's famous portrait of Elizabeth Farren, seen here.

Weaving all of these elements into a story for Jane and Lord Harold--whose wilfull niece, Desdemona, makes her first appearance in the series in Wandering Eye--was a delightful exercise. Naturally, Mona would have her portrait painted by Lawrence...

Many readers have commented that this novel is reminiscent of a Georgette Heyer book; and I never argue the point. Heyer, for those who have not yet read her, created what we think of as the Regency novel--and any portrait of Bath during Austen's lifetime must inevitably evoke the Heyer atmosphere. If you enjoy Wandering Eye, have read Austen's novels set in Bath, and still want more of the place and period--by all means consult Heyer. My favorite of her Bath novels include Bath Tangle and The Black Sheep.

Enjoy!

Stephanie

Jane and the Man of the Cloth: Enjoying the Gentlemen of the Night

2011-02-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

Your account of Weymouth contains nothing which strikes me so forcibly as there being no Ice in the Town; for every other vexation I was in some measure prepared;. . . .But for there being no Ice, what could prepare me! Weymouth is altogether a shocking place, I perceive, without recommendation of any kind. . .

From Letter No. 39, dated 14 September 1804, to Cassandra Austen

Jane Austen's Letters, 3rd Edition (Oxford University Press, Deirdre Le Faye, editor.)

This second novel in the Jane Austen Mystery Series is one of my absolute favorites--so much so, that I often tell readers to start with Book 2, rather than Scargrave Manor. Why? I suppose because it combines so many of the things I love about writing the series: fidelity to one of Jane's actual letters; espionage during the Napoleonic Wars; and immersion in a particular place we know Jane loved--Lyme Regis. Finally, the story is woven around a mystery in Jane's life, something that has come to be called her "nameless, dateless" romance. The vaguest of tales has filtered through the years from a chance comment of Caroline Austen's, who said that Cassandra once mentioned that Jane fell in love with a clergyman while traveling along the Channel Coast one summer, between 1802 and 1804; and that she expected to meet up with her lover further along the coast--expected, indeed, a proposal of marriage from him--but upon arriving at her destination, learned instead that the clergyman was...dead.

It is virtually impossible for a mystery writer to read this and not think about murder. Or imagine that perhaps the clergyman was no clergyman at all, but a notorious smuggler known by his soubriquet of The Reverend--because he was a "man of the cloth," a dealer in smuggled silks.

The book's fundamental inspiration, however, was Jane's letter No. 39 to Cassandra, written from Lyme Regis in September of 1804. I've excerpted it above--and that excerpt raised a host of questions in my mind. First, why did Cassandra leave her family and journey on from Lyme to Weymouth? Why was Jane obsessed by the lack of ice? (In all probability, she was teasing Cassandra about a chance comment, but to a novelist, simple explanations are never enough.) I decided Cassandra was in DIRE NEED of ice, because she'd sustained a concussion when the Austen carriage overturned in a vicious storm upon arrival in Lyme--and was thus sent on to Weymouth for her health. And so the book begins.

Throughout this series of novels featuring Jane Austen and her family, I've chosen one of two paths in composing the plots: Either I fill a gap in the existing correspondence--a blank hole where no letter of Jane's survives to tell us how she lived during the period in question--or I take one of her letters and use it as a blueprint for her schedule, habits, dress, entertainments, conversation and intimate circle during the course of the story. The minor addition of a murder and its investigation is woven, I hope fairly seamlessly, into the actual record of her days. Man of the Cloth is the most thorough example of this method. Jane wrote in such detail from Lyme in 1804 that I was forced to incorporate her life during that period in every respect. She mentions the name of her manservant, and the fact that he led her to an evening's entertainment with a lanthorn--a sign that it was a night without moonlight, considered dangerous for travel abroad; she mentions bathing at Charmouth on a particular day; she describes her mother losing a sum of money during a game of whist with a man she names only as Le Chevalier. She also names the local surgeon--and it was my great good fortune, in reading a history of Lyme by the noted novelist John Fowles, to discover that Jane's surgeon was also the coroner for the town. Every murder mystery MUST have its coroner--and Jane had already met him. She told Cassandra so.

In this sense, Man of the Cloth is a true mosaic of fact and fiction, a sort of treasure hunt for readers familiar with Letter No. 39. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so--and then compare Jane's actual life with the adventure I give her in my book. It is essential, too, to reread Persuasion--her love song to Lyme, and the possibility of love triumphant, the most poignant and heartfelt, in my opinion, of her novels.
Happy reading!

Book One: Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

2010-12-30T19:01:00.000-08:00

"It is rare to find a woman who places her personal happiness above her fears for the future. You refused Mr. Bigg-Wither, refused his offer of a home, a family, and the comfortable means they assured, to retain your independence, despite the counsel of all who wished you well and threw their weight behind the match. What strength!"
"Did you know Mr. Bigg-Wither, you would think me less noble," I said. "There cannot be two men so likely to meet with refusal in the entire country."

When I wrote that snippet of dialogue in the opening pages of Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, I unconsciously betrayed the inspiration for the entire series. What was a young woman of six-and-twenty to do in the year 1802, knowing that she had no fortune and no immediate prospect of passionate romance, as the Years of Danger (as Jane once phrased them) approached? Did she grasp at the only acceptable offer of marriage that came her way--with no more than tolerable liking for her life partner--or did she embark on the far lonelier proposition of spinsterhood, with all the privations and burdens that entailed?

Jane did both, within a twenty-four hour period; and the consequences determined the course of her life.

When I decided to write a mystery series featuring Jane Austen as an amateur detective, I knew only a few things: I wanted to write about Jane herself, rather than attempting a continuation of one of her novels. I wanted to use the richness of her distinctive language--the intimate and acerbic tone of her private letters as well as her narrative voice. I wanted to set Jane within the frame of her time: the late Georgian and Regency periods, when constant warfare on land and sea deprived the ballrooms of eligible gentlemen, and a lady was actually accorded a good deal more freedom than the subsequent Victorian era would allow. And I wanted to give her a mystery to solve.

Why a mystery? Because Jane understood nothing so well as human motivation--the crux of every conflict and murderous impulse. Hearts and minds were her preferred playgrounds. Several of her books--Emma and Northanger Abbey come to mind--can be read as early novels of detection. She loved to offer her readers false suspects and hidden clues. In an era when all law enforcement was informal--when England had no police force, and justice was administered by the wellborn as one of the privileges of birth--an amateur detective was the norm. That Jane was a woman seemed no bar to the adventures I'd planned for her. She had access to every level of the English power structure through her brothers--a wealthy landowner, a banker, a clergyman, and two captains in the Royal Navy.

I had studied Napoleonic France as an undergraduate, so I was familiar with the period. I had been reading Austen's novels for decades, and had an echo of her voice in my head. But I realized I knew more about Eliza Bennet or Anne Elliott than I did about Jane herself. Once I had a bevy of biographies under my belt, I knew I had to write about Jane before she was Austen: the successful writer. It was the uncertain young woman who interested me--the woman confronting age, potential poverty, and the terrifying challenge of independence. This was a Jane who was often rootless, who moved from hired lodging to hired lodging before landing, finally, in her thirties, in the sanctuary of Chawton; who suffered grief at the loss of people she loved and the evanescence of certain dreams. It was clear I had to start Scargrave Manor at a pivotal moment in Jane's life--when she accepted Harris Bigg-Wither's offer of marriage, only to jilt him the following morning. It was perhaps the most courageous and reckless act of her nearly twenty-seven years; and those of us who cherish her prose owe her a debt of gratitude for turning her back on a loveless marriage.

Had she consented to become Mrs. Harris Bigg-Wither, we would probably never have known her name.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor drops our unsuspecting heroine into the sort of life she might have chosen: a marriage of convenience, with disastrous consequences. Jane's friend Isobel Payne rescues her from the mortification of her broken engagement with an invitation to Christmas at Scargrave Manor, where Jane meets a cast of characters reminiscent of some of her own. George Hearst, the clergyman; his brother, the dissolute Lieutenant Tom Hearst; Fitzroy Payne, an inscrutable, proud, and handsome young heir to an earldom; Fanny Delahoussaye, whose behaviour would make Lydia Bennet's look tame. When one of the company is poisoned, all are suspect--and Jane is compelled to learn the truth.

Along the way she encounters a man she rightly believes capable of every intrigue and violence, a man she describes as malevolent--and yet, by the end of the novel, chooses to call her Dark Angel: Lord Harold Trowbridge.

When I introduced Lord Harold in Scargrave Manor, I never imagined he'd become an obsession for so many readers. But the Gentleman Rogue, as Jane and her world know him, has a subtle charm that makes him hard to ignore. He cropped up in book after book, almost without my intending it. The silver-haired second son of a duke, Lord Harold is the constant subject of idle gossip, rampant envy, and malicious intrigue. Negligently at home in the breathless halls of the ton--London's Great--he chooses to devote his time and energy to the foiling of Napoleon Bonaparte's plans. From the moment he meets Jane, he compels her with his intelligence; and his appreciation of her own is something Jane cherishes. They make a fitful, star-crossed and unwittingly romantic pair. But in Scargrave Manor, this is all in the future; I knew nothing of it myself, when I wrote the book back in 1994.

I have to confess that I'm ambivalent about Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. When I look through it now, the language feels correct but stiff, the footnotes overly-pedantic. I'm struck by how much more familiar Jane has become over the past sixteen years. We scraped an acquaintance at Scargrave; it was only later that she unbent, and shared her vicious sense of humor, her uncanny wisdom, her love of absurdity and some of her pain. Those are the best Austen gifts--the kind that return us again and again to her remarkable novels, the kind we carry with us always.

Reading Group Questions for Scargrave Manor

1. Jane Austen is nearly twenty-seven when this novel begins, and is considered long since "on the shelf," as her contemporaries would put it--meaning well past the marriageable age for a woman, which in her time was roughly between fifteen and twenty-two. Lacking any dowry or personal fortune, she had only her looks to recommend her, as she would later write of the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice. Well-born women of her day were prohibited from pursuing any sort of income-producing profession, and unless they married, were regarded as a financial burden on the male members of their families. Given these considerations, does Jane show great courage--or great selfishness--in refusing an excellent offer of marriage? Discuss.

2. A woman's life was often short in the late Georgian and Regency period. Three of Jane's sisters-in-law would die by the age of thirty-five, all three as a result of childbirth, and Jane herself lived only to forty-one. Did the shortness of one's span make individual life choices more or less important? Did a woman of Austen's time have the luxury of pursuing personal ambitions and dreams, or was her focus primarily on her family or community? Do these considerations make Jane's particular choices more or less remarkable?

3. In a society that placed inordinate importance on both beauty and wealth, was Jane's intellect a gift or a handicap?

4. Justice in Austen's day was largely administered by the wellborn and well-connected. There was no police force, no presumption of innocence, no conception of evidence collection and few rights accorded to defendants during trials. Has the justice system benefited or suffered with the passage of time?

5. Fans of Austen's work frequently cite the civility of society in her day, as evidenced in the ritualized behavior of men and women in both public and private venues, and contrast it negatively with our own. Is this an idealized version of Austen's time, or an accurate one? How does Isobel Payne's experience inform your thinking on this question? Is she protected by the implicit civility of her society--or a victim of her limited capacity to defend herself?

Stephanie

The Being a Jane Austen Mystery Challenge

2010-12-30T13:52:00.000-08:00

The Austen faeries at Austenprose have sprinkled their stardust over my very own Jane, with interesting results for the coming New Year: Laurel Ann Nattress, Austen Maven Extraordinaire, has issued the following challenge--read several (or all eleven, yes eleven) of the Jane Austen Mysteries, which she'll review in order each month throughout 2011, and you may be eligible for a few prizes!

As part of the Challenge, I'll be blogging here each month about my particular Jane: the inspiration for each novel, the sources I found most intriguing and useful, the period in Jane's personal history each story amplifies, and the rich veins of late Georgian and Regency life I mined for background to the stories. I'll also be offering a brief Reader's Guide specific to each mystery.

It's an indulgence and a gift to revisit so many books I wrote over the past sixteen years--but my chief hope is to spur conversation. Check back after you've read some of the Austen Mysteries, toss me your questions or thoughts, and with luck we'll all learn something.

For details of the Challenge, do read Laurel Ann's invitation below--or go to http://www.austenprose.com/ .

Being a Jane Austen Mystery Reading Challenge 2011

We are very pleased to announce the Being a Jane Austen Mystery Reading Challenge 2011. If you have not discovered one of her wonderful mysteries, this is a great opportunity to join the challenge along with other Janeites, historical fiction and mystery lovers.

Novels in the Series

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (1996)
Jane and the Man of the Cloth (1997)
Jane and the Wandering Eye (1998)
Jane and the Genius of the Place (1999)
Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2000)
Jane and the Prisoner of the Wool House (2001)
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley (2003)
Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (2005)
Jane and the Barque of Frailty (2006)
Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (2010)
Jane and the Canterbury Tale (2011)

Challenge Details

Time-line: The Being a Jane Austen Mystery Challenge runs January 1, through December 31, 2011.
Levels of participation: Neophyte: 1 – 4 novels, Disciple 5 – 8 novels, Aficionada 9 – 11 novels.
Enrollment: Sign up’s are open until July 01, 2011. First, select your level of participation. Second, copy the Being a Jane Austen Mystery Reading Challenge graphic and include it in your blog post detailing the mysteries that you will read in 2011. Third, leave a comment linking back to your blog post in the comments of this announcement post. If you do not have a blog you can still participate. Just leave your commitment to the challenge in the comments below.
Check Back Monthly: The Being a Jane Austen Mystery Challenge 2011 officially begins on Wednesday, January 12, 2010 with my review of the first mystery in the series, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. Check back on the 2nd Wednesday of each month for my next review in the challenge.
Your Participation: Once the challenge starts you will see a tab included at the top of Austenprose called Reading Challenges. Click on the tab and select Being a Jane Austen Mystery Reading Challenge 2011. Leave a comment including the mystery that you finished and a link to your blog review. If you do not have a blog, just leave a comment about which book you finished with a brief reaction or remark. It’s that easy.

The Prizes

Oh, of course there are prizes! Author Stephanie Barron has very generously offered one signed hardcover or paperback copy of each of the novels that we will be reviewing each month here on Austenprose to be drawn from comments left with each post, and one signed paperback copy of each of the eleven novels in the series to one lucky Grand Prize Winner to be drawn from comments left at any and all of the reviews left on this blog or yours. Yes, that means that your readers who comment on your challenge reviews have a chance to win too. Winners will be announced monthly two weeks after the blog post, and Grand Prize winner will be announced on January 01, 2012. Shipment to US or Canadian address only.
Bonus Stuff: Yes, of course there is more to get happy about. Availability of each of the novels in the series is great. The books can be purchased or eBooks download at most online etailers and brick and mortar stores. Since the series is so popular, your local library should be a great resource too.
One of the delights of the series is the incredible historical detail that parallel Jane Austen’s life. To expand upon our reading journey in 2011, author Stephanie Barron will be blogging about researching and writing each of the novels as we progress through the series at her Stephanie Barron blog. What an incredible resource and motivation for your reading challenge!
So, make haste and join the challenge today. I am so looking forward to revisiting all the novels in the Being a Jane Austen Mystery series in 2011 and hope you can join in too.
Cheers,

Laurel Ann

Participants

Laurel Ann – Austenprose
Theresa – The Treehouse
Ruth – Book Talk and More
Ruchama
Karen Field
Joanne – Slice of Life
Kimberly – Reflections of a Book Addict
Bella
Kristin
Dana – Much Madness is Divinest Sense
Stephanie
Staci – Life in the Thumb Reading Challenges

© 2007 – 2010 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose
Being a Jane Austen Mystery Reading Challenge Graphic by Katherine Cox of November’s Autumn

Austen Short Story Contest!!!!

2010-12-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

Laurel Ann Nattress, blogger extraordinaire of Austenprose, is the happy editor of a new Jane Austen fan fiction anthology entitled Jane Austen Made Me Do It, to be published by Ballantine Books in October, 2011. (Now THERE'S a reason to ring in the New Year.) She already has twenty-two submissions from known Austenesque writers--I've contributed a story featuring the late, lamented Lord Harold Trowbridge entitled "Jane and the Gentleman Rogue," for instance--but she's Looking For Just One More.

It could be yours.

The short story contest winner will be published in the anthology. Entries will be posted at the Republic of Pemberley, where readers can vote for their favorites! FOR COMPLETE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES, CONTEST DATES, AND RULES, FOLLOW THE LINK to Austenprose.

And good luck, Janeites!

Yes, Virginia, There is a Jane Austen

2010-12-12T11:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not the sort of writer whose books are found stuffed into the seat pocket of every airplane. My sales are modest and my fame is derived more from the exploits of my sons than from any work I turn in during a given year. So it was a bit of a shock when a friend emailed the other day to tell me my name had come up. Her daughter likes those desktop calendars that offered a teaser-a-day: jokes about lawyers, inspirational quotations, gardening tips, yadda yadda. This one happened to be a Jeopardy! calendar. Question: "This author had the sense and sensibility to turn Jane Austen into a sleuth in a mystery series." I was the answer.

Is that weird, or what?

When I started writing about Jane, I thought I was talking to a certain audience: people (OK, mostly women) who cherished her novels and wanted to know a bit more about her. I've loved the Regency and Napoleonic France for a long time. I yearned to use a semblance of Austen language, and luxuriate in Jane's particular settings and obessions: Lyme Regis, Bath, all things Royal Navy and the occasional bout of London shopping. What I NEVER anticipated was that I'd writing, in large part, for readers who did not know her name.

This was a shock delivered repeatedly in unexpected ways. Somebody at a signing asked if Jane Austen had founded Hull House in Chicago. (Wrong era, wrong woman, wrong continent.) My son's preschool teacher (yes, teacher) asked if she'd written Jane Eyre. An acquaintance gave me a COPY of Jane Eyre, because she knew how much I loved to write about her....And then there was my bank teller, pausing in the act of processing my transaction, who said, "This Jane Austen you write about. She...lived?"

I've tried different aids to enlightenment. I mention Colin Firth as Darcy. Emma Thompson and her academy award for Sense and Sensibility. I've even invoked Keira Knightley for the benefit of a younger generation, although I loathe that version of P&P. And whenever a faintly snobbish sort of Janeite asks me pointedly why, with so much knowledge of Austen and the period under my belt, I haven't written a real book about Jane--meaning a nonfiction one--I patiently explain the lesson I've learned. My series of ten detective novels may have introduced more people to Austen's work than any historic monograph I could have written. I get no greater pleasure than hearing this oft-repeated phrase: "I actually went and read one of Austen's books after reading Jane and the..." whatever it might be.

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Jane Austen--and some of us wander through the world pretending there always will be.

I've asked my friend to save her daughter's calendar sheet for me. I think I might frame it. Or at least stick it on my refrigerator.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Janeites in Portland

2010-11-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

It's Monday morning and I'm back in the saddle after a delicious few days in Portland, at the Jane Austen Society of North America's Annual General Meeting. The focus this year was Northanger Abbey--and murder, muslin and mayhem--but the proceedings were given a fillip of added interest by their coincidence with Halloween, and Saturday night's Masked Ball. Most provocative costume: the Empire-waisted Regency gown made entirely of black patent leather, worn by a mashed-up Austenesque vampire. Greatest laugh moment: Team Tilney's spoof of the Old Spice Man commercial, with Henry Tilney compelling every woman in the room to "Look up! Look down! Where are you? You're with that man who's reading that book you love..." I just hope somebody filmed it, and that it goes viral. Thanks to Maggie Sullivan of AustenBlog and friends who put That Man in a Corinthian's costume.

I was fortunate enough to present my PowerPoint on aspects of mystery writing in Northanger before something like six hundred avid Jane fans, and have a "comfortable coze" about all things Austen in the Q&A that followed; enjoy breakout sessions and Juliet McMaster's excellent assessment of Catherine Morland as heroine; sign books until my hand fell off at the cocktail party; browse the Milsom Street emporium; meet JASNA president Marcia Huff, and congratulate the conference organizers on a phenomenal job. I raised a late-night Austentini with fellow writers and Laurel Ann Nattress, AustenProse blogger and editor of the forthcoming short story anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It, which will include "Jane and the Gentleman Rogue" when it appears in October 2011. I got to stroll through the Saturday morning Farmer's Market in downtown Portland in the rain, with my husband--which was unabashedly romantic. Writers spend far too much of our time alone in semi-darkened rooms, staring at glowing screens; the chance to mingle with like-minded souls for a few days was a boon. Thanks, Jane!

Jane the Illiterate

2010-10-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've been trying to ignore Kathryn Sutherland's bizarre publicity stunt this week, in which she's telling anyone who will listen that Jane was nothing without her alleged editor. But hearing her interviewed on NPR this morning made my blood boil--and I feel compelled to put down my views. None of Jane's "fair copy" manuscripts for her published novels has survived. Therefore, Sutherland has been studying the rough drafts of unpublished work--and nobody who lived before the age of the word processor or standardized spellings should be judged by such manuscripts. This is why we call them ROUGH drafts. She also said today in her interview that most of Jane's letters were destroyed--when one hundred and sixty-one exist, and can be seen in manuscript at various libraries in the US and England. They reveal that Jane rarely placed i before e--but also are remarkable for their fluency, wit, and mastery of the English language.

I've written twenty-one novels to date, and benefited from the technology of my time. I value and honor my editor, Kate Miciak--and invariably wait for her response to my prose. I carefully review the comments of copyeditors on the edited manuscript--because I rely on their gentle corrections of infelicitous grammar or errors of fact. But do I regard my publishers as having written my novels? No. Did Jane's publishers write Pride and Prejudice? Not even remotely. Enough with the sensationalism, Kathryn Sutherland. Jane deserves better.

Ratafia Cakes. Yes, Ratafia Cakes.

2010-10-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

Who knew that Whole Foods could be a Janeite's best friend?

I'm headed down to The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale on Saturday, October 23rd, for one of Barbara Peter's fab signings--it wouldn't be a Jane Launch without a visit to the Pen--and in a moment of idiocy this past summer I suggested brightly: "Let's do a tea! And I'll bring Ratafia Cakes!"

Devoted readers of Regency-era novels know that such things are frequently referenced in most scenes of routs, balls, masques and impetuous late-night calls, rashly paid by feckless heroines to the bachelor digs of their dangerous suitors. But what's ratafia? And how did it get into a cake?

Jane Austen, although she never mentions them to my knowledge in any of her novels--(Sudden Rush of Janeites Everywhere to Prove Me Wrong)--was intimately familiar with the little oohjahs. A recipe for them shows up in The Jane Austen Cookbook, by Maggie Lane and Deirdre Le Faye. Most of the recipes are culled from the cherished collection of Martha Lloyd, Jane's longtime friend, housemate, and second wife of brother Frank. I forget whether the Ratafia Cakes recipe was Martha's or someone else's. But whatever. There it is, on the VERY LAST PAGE of the book. And it turns out to be something like a macaroon. The kind you buy at Laduree's. Nothing much more than ground almonds, powdered sugar, egg whites, and...wait for it...rose water.

Hoping to avoid the whole hunt-for-the-archaic-nineteenth-century-ingredient-thing, I decided on a strategic retreat to the front section of the cookbook, where Naples Biscuits are prominently featured. Now, in every Georgette Heyer novel involving passage by sea (or is it the Patrick O'Brian books?), the characters are forced to exist on a monotonous diet of Naples Biscuit. One gets the impression of something like Melba Toast, stored in barrels in the holds of ships. But apparently they had other uses--Amabel Fancot brings a vast store of them to her country seat from London, for entertaining, in Heyer's False Colours. And in reading over the handy recipe, I discovered they seem a lot like our present-day biscotti, or even madeleines. I quite like madeleines. I dip them in tea and imagine I'm in Paris. But alas, alack--Naples Biscuits turn out to require orange flower water.

I ask you.

Which brings me back to Whole Foods.
They stock orange flower water. From Paris. The label's quaint, and vaguely suggestive of the Moulin Rouge, or a flirtation with absinthe. I can get into having that in my pantry. They even stock rose water--although it's in the cosmetics section, which seems a little sketchy. I bought it anyway. Best of all, they have pre-ground almonds in their massive section of Bulk Food Items!!! Who knew? I got lots of that, too.
So I'll be arriving at The Poisoned Pen with the requisite Austen tea things. If airport security doesn't rip them off first.

And as for that ratafia?
Turns out it was a kind of liqueur made from apricot pits. Or cherry stones. Or bitter almonds.
All of which contain cyanide.
A drink only a detective novelist could love. :)

The Body in the Library

2010-10-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

When I was twenty-four years old and pathetically academic, Stanford University gave me half a year to master the canon of literature in my doctoral field. I loathed my subject and couldn’t explain for the life of me why I’d bothered to study it; but here was a gift! Six months with nothing to do but sit in a comfortable armchair in the university library, and read!

Problem was, I kept falling asleep.

They were such lovely, drowsy, golden afternoons in that library—all the glory of California slanting through the modernist stacks, eucalyptus leaves rustling beyond the plate glass windows. The cushions were deep and the prose was turgid. From sheer mental torpor I turned to the one thing I knew would save me: I put down the canon and picked up the Dorothy Sayers.

Murder Must Advertise, to be exact.

People fall on their swords every day in defense of their favorite Sayers novel. Passionate, sensitive and articulate people argue themselves hoarse over the dueling sonnets in Gaudy Night, or the creeping horror of The Nine Tailors’ bludgeoning bells. But the book I return to, again and again, is Murder Must Advertise. I love the cleverness of the dope smugglers, the wit of the copywriters, the intricacy of the murder on the iron staircase, the revelations of the final cricket match and Lord Peter Wimsey in a harlequin’s tights. I love Dian de Momerie, louche and doomed, with her cant dialogue in words of one syllable. But most, I appreciate Wimsey’s envoie to the unfortunate murderer: Go home now. Go on foot, and not too fast. And don’t look behind you.

When my days are too full and my time is too short, and reading about neuroscience or the Taliban is what Dian de Momerie would call “too terribly yawn-making, darling,” I look to the classics of the Golden Age. Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke is one of these: a white-knuckle novel of suspense, an elegant study in the redemption of the human soul. Michael Innes’s Lament for a Maker, in which the story of snowbound Scottish death unfolds through the serial pens of five distinct narrators, is another. I get a kick out of the cartoonish drama of E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, as well as its fiendishly clever plot; but when I think about why I re-read these books, I always come back to character. It’s character, not plot, that abides in the dark watches of the night.

Which brings me to two modern classics, sure to endure: Laurie King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, which offers one of the most sensitive portraits ever drawn of an intelligent young girl’s coming of age; and Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, in which hellion Flavia de Luce—who could be Dorothy Sayers at age twelve—saves everybody worth saving through the force of her own wit.

I squeaked through my Orals, but never wrote my dissertation. Twenty-odd novels later, I’m grateful to Stanford for the armchair in the library—and the epiphany it brought: fiction will always be more compelling, to me, than fact; and half a year with nothing to do but read, is still the best gift of all.

At long last—Jane!

2010-09-29T13:27:00.001-07:00

I suppose it’s fitting that the tenth book in the Jane Austen Mystery Series should appear in the Year Ten, as one Austen hero might put it. When I started writing these books—ahem, when I began editing Austen’s long-lost journals of her detective adventures—I was thirty-one years old and pregnant with my son Sam. He’s now nearly sixteen and thinking about college, his little brother is twelve, and I’m forty-seven. (I think often about the fact that Jane died at forty-one.) During the intervening years, Colin Firth laid down a Darcy for the ages, and Zombies somehow ate their way through Regency England. Austenmania is a full-blown publishing, blogging, cinematic and tweeting phenomenon. The obsession with Jane’s intelligent women and satiric men has found its way to Bollywood and back. I wonder, often, what that mordantly funny woman in Hampshire would have thought of it all.

In my parallel universe, it’s now 1813 and Jane has only four years to live. She doesn’t know that, of course—she’s too busy publishing Pride and Prejudice and writing Mansfield Park to be aware of the insidious disease creeping through her body. This is the year Jane seized at life: though still an anonymous author, she was beginning to be a successful one. Her acute and independent voice empowered her, in a world that gave little room to women. Jane’s determination to speak and be heard continues to inspire me.

And so I’ve decided to start writing this blog. It won’t be a daily posting, and it won’t deal solely with things Austen. I like to think of it as a voice in the dark—a place where I can whisper my thoughts about life and writing, debate my direction, and perhaps enjoy a conversation or two. Feel free to comment or question; feel free to lurk unawares. I’ll do my best to answer.

Stephanie Barron