The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (15 page)

Eloisa wrote in a blog about writing that “one of the hardest parts of world-building, as you have to do with a historical novel, is coming up with the hundreds of little events that happen every day in a city like London.” One of Eloisa’s favorite resources is the journal
La Belle Assemblée
, especially the section “Remarkable Occurrence, Deaths and Marriages.”

In
The Taming of the Duke
, we learn that the Duke of Holbrook has an illegitimate brother named Gabe, who knocked down (and nearly killed) a young woman while driving his carriage. After which he . . . knocked her up! Eloisa was inspired by a
story published in
La Belle Assemblée.
Oh, not the knocked-up part, but the accident with the carriage. Eloisa describes the story as having happened to a young actress.

                       
The theater manager at Covent Garden had been most unsympathetic when she appeared, late for the performance, and limping. When Mr. Spenser’s consoling sympathy had led to a most enjoyable evening—if a most unpleasant outcome—the manager had terminated her employment with little more than a grunt and a wave of his head.

The Taming of the Duke

Here’s the original event, as described in the September 1810 issue of
La Belle Assemblée
.

                       
A dreadful accident happened to one of the Lincoln coaches while stopping in the town of Biggleswade, the horses were alarmed by the passing of a load of sheep-skins, piled to some height on the back of an ass . . . [The horses fled and in consequence] Miss Phipps, a young lady of Peterborough, who was traveling in the coach at the time of the accident, died in twelve hours after, in consequence of the fright.

Eloisa notes that her modern hardheadedness made her a little wary of her character dying of “fright,” so she changed that detail to a minor injury.

While this anecdote is rather dark, Eloisa found a funny one that she also used in
The Taming of the Duke
, when Imogen and Cristobel fall into a keg of wine.

                       
[Rafe] caught a glimpse of Imogen’s face, her mouth forming a perfect little O, like a child seeing a birthday pony for the first time.

                            
Then a tide of red wine reared out of the barrel as the top cracked and flipped to the side and with simultaneous—and very loud—screams, Cristobel and Imogen plunged down in the wine barrel up to their waists.

The Taming of the Duke

The real event was described in the February 1810 issue of
La Belle Assemblée
. A young lady was unable to see a performance, so climbed onto an empty hogshead in the tavern: “Here then she was, like a statue on its pedestal, enjoying the double gratification of seeing and being seen.” But then the lady invited her gentleman friend to join her. He nimbly sprang onto the cask, “but Oh fatal catastrophe! . . . our till then envied couple fell suddenly up to the middle of the leg in wine-lees left in the cask, and came to the ground, rolling in it and its offensive contents.”

The final book in Essex Sisters series,
Pleasure for Pleasure
, is particularly involved with the literature of the time, since the secondary plot hinges on the identity of the author of a widely proclaimed memoir,
The Earl of Hellgate, or Night Scenes Amongst the Ton.
Eloisa depicts all of high society eagerly reading this deliciously improper memoir.

But the salacious
Hellgate
is not the only inappropriate book that makes an appearance in the novel; Griselda discovers a few more in a friend’s library.

                       
Griselda trailed a gloved finger over the spines of the books closest to her. They weren’t the sort of books she would have expected. Rafe had rows of classics in his study, all bound up in leather and dating back a few centuries, if the dust that fell from them was any indication.

                            
Darlington had rows and rows of . . . how to put it? Books that the servants read. Books that
she
read with secret pleasure. Books from lending libraries. The kind that had titles like
Nocturnal Revels
and the
Malefactors’ Bloody Register
. Books about murder.

Pleasure for Pleasure

Griselda and Darlington end up talking about an actual murder that took place in 1779, when James Hackman, a respected Anglican minister, shot his former lover Martha
Ray—who happened to be the longtime live-in mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, a minister to King George III. There’s a great book on the murder, if you’re interested: Martin Levy’s
Love & Madness
(William Morrow, 2004).

Of course I instantly decided to search out the contemporary books that Griselda read in secret (and Darlington was writing, also in secret).

(
actual title:
Nocturnal Revels: or The History of King’s-Place, and Other Modern Nunneries)

Somewhat to my surprise, it turned out that
Nocturnal Revels
was indeed a real book, subtitled
The History of King’s-Place, and Other Modern Nunneries
. Nunneries? What kind of revel or merriment could possibly take place in a nunnery? As an American living in the Midwest, I don’t know anything about King’s Place, but I think of a nun as a woman bound by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Well, guess what? In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the word “nunnery” was used to refer to a bordello or, as they called them, a bawdy house. The madam was referred to as an abbess, another religious title. Franzeca Drouin, Eloisa’s researcher, told me she thinks part of the joke sprang from the fact that there were very few Roman Catholics in England at the time. Between 1536 and 1541, King Henry VIII “dissolved” all the monastic foundations in England, disbanding monasteries, nunneries, and friaries. He took their lands and income, and kicked them out of doors. The monasteries themselves, and their surrounding lands, were then sold or given to friends of the king. Some of the lands attached to former monasteries—especially a few in London itself—turned into racy red-light districts (to use modern terminology). I guess that’s where the “revels” come in!

Eloisa actually explains the word “nun” in
The Taming of the Duke
, linking it to a dubious area of London called the Whitefriars—which had been a monastery occupied by white-gowned friars before Henry VIII got involved.

In the novel Gabe (Rafe) and Imogen go to a pantomime in costume. Imogen’s gown is so low that it garners some disapproving glances from the other audience members.

“I am dressed as a sailor on leave,” Gabe explains. And then he uses a euphemism for prostitute to explain what people are thinking of Imogen:

                       
“I do believe that I shall readily be taken as a sailor with his—shall we say—Whitefriars nun?”

                            
“Whitefriars
nun
?”

                            
“A popular pun. Whitefriars is a less than salubrious area of London, which used to house a monastery. Nuns are, of course, sworn to a life of chastity—”

                            
“And the current occupants of that district do not adhere to ancient standards,” Imogen said, giggling. “I feel positively wicked.”

The Taming of the Duke

The frontispiece of Darlington’s volume would have had a quite long and descriptive title:
Nocturnal Revels or the History of King’s-Place, and Other Modern Nunneries. Containing their mysteries, devotions, and sacrifices, comprising also, the present state of promiscuous gallantry: with the portraits of the most celebrated demireps and courtezans of this period: as well as sketches of their professional and occasional admirers.

Franzeca Drouin told me that all the wording here is ironic, since it is couched in the same words and phrases as a somber religious observation (“devotions,” for example). Remember, Henry VIII had changed England’s religion from Catholic to Anglican almost three hundred years earlier. So this sort of sardonic, sarcastic reference was common.

It turns out that the entire book is basically about brothels. It explains how they operate, and includes sketches of famous prostitutes and their “professional and occasional admirers.” This suggests that if people were willing to be linked to a book of this nature, prostitution must not have had the terrible reputation that it has now. Obviously there was some stigma attached, since the book rationalizes prostitution by explaining it as a service provided for the safety of society. The following quote is from the second volume of
Nocturnal Revels
(1779; pp.4–5).

                       
Even in the state of matrimony itself, it often happens, that a man who holds his wife in the highest estimation, may be debarred the felicity of hymeneal raptures, from sickness, absence, and a variety of other temporary causes, which may with facility be
imagined. If, in any of those situations, a man could not find temporary relief in the arms of prostitution, the peace of Society would be far more disturbed than it is: The brutal Ravisher would stalk at large, and would plead, as in the case of hunger, that the violence of his passion would break down even stone walls: No man’s wife, sister, or daughter would be in a state of security: The rape of the Sabines would be daily rehearsed, and anarchy and confusion ensue. In this point of view then, at least, female prostitution should be winked at, if not protected; and though it may be pronounced a moral evil, it certainly is a political good.

The argument is absurd, but overall
Nocturnal Revels
is an entertaining book that provides a window into a very different attitude toward sex work and brothels. The entire book can be found in the Digital Library of Free Books, at
http://archive.org
.

(
also known as
The Newgate Calendar)

The second book Griselda looks at is the
Malefactors’ Bloody Register
, which is the subtitle of a series of publications called the
New and Complete Newgate Calendar.
I was not familiar with the word “malefactor”; it turns out to mean an evildoer, a lawbreaker, a criminal or felon. This makes sense because Newgate was the most famous and dreadful prison in London during the time.

Apparently,
Newgate Calenda
r started as a broadside, or crude sheet of paper, hawked at public executions. It provided the crowd that gathered to watch this dreadful
entertainment an account of the condemned criminal’s career. Later, it became a monthly publication produced by the Keeper of the Prison, and thereafter the title was borrowed by publishers who created lurid “true crime” biographies of famous criminals.

By the time of Eloisa’s
Pleasure for Pleasure
, which is set in 1818, the simple broadside had evolved into a substantial publication. The title in 1818 was
The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactor’s Universal Register, Comprising Interesting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters Who Have Been Convicted of Outrages on the Laws of England, with Speeches, Confessions, and Last Exclamations of Sufferers.

Due to its vast popularity, the
Newgate Calendar
evolved into a “true crime” publication written by experienced writers who often had legal training. It offered descriptions of the most notorious criminals incarcerated at Newgate, including lists of their associates and details about the circumstances that brought them to their execution or punishment.

As you can see from the frontispiece below, the text stresses “horrid” murders. Entries generally tried to find an explanation for the criminal’s uncivilized behavior, much as a public defender might do today. Here these “unhappy men” become murderers due to “an inattention to their education.”

As a former library worker, Franzeca said she can attest that the “true crime” section of a public library collection is very large and extremely popular. Library workers often just refer to the entire section by the main Dewey number, 364.1523, meaning, basically, true crime, or even “364.” So things haven’t changed much. Horrid murders are still fun to read about—and those books still try to explain murderers’ actions by exploring what went wrong in their childhoods.

It’s easy to find different versions of the
Newgate Calendar
online, and frankly, they are utterly fascinating. I was surprised by how many hours I spent reading different stories. If I had been a bluestocking living in a nineteenth-century country home without Internet service, I’m sure I would have easily become addicted to reading details about the “most horrid of crimes,” although I likely would have had to hide my reading material from my mother. Not only are the crimes bluntly described, but some of the engravings can be shocking, even to a modern sensibility like my own.