From now through 18 February, the e-edition of Miss Wonderful, the first Carsington Brothers book, is on sale for $1.99. If you haven’t yet met the Carsingtons, here’s a chance to start at the beginning and start cheap. Or maybe this will make a nice Valentine’s Day gift for somebody.
Guided tour of "My Inconvenient Duke" Part Two
Almack’s was THE night club for the elite. A group of aristocratic women, the patronesses, gave vouchers for entry to only a chosen few. These amounted to about 400-500 attending the Wednesday night assemblies. You’ll find many articles online, but be aware that a good deal of information, especially about the patronesses, is based on books written long after Regency (e.g., in the Victorian era) mainly by men. You’ll encounter some inaccuracies as well as some rather misogynistic gossip.
The Regent’s Park Zoo still exists although it’s quite different from the place Lady Alice would have known. The Yale Center for British Art has online a beautiful collection of watercolor images of the place in its early days.
Kensington used to be a western suburb of London. It was very much a rural area, and the northern part (which includes Notting Hill) was largely undeveloped at the time of my story. There were prosperous farms as well as the wasteland that was home to the notorious piggeries and potteries. The Bridge Inn is one of several fictional establishments I created here.
The Lovedon Arms, as explained in the notes at the end of My Inconvenient Duke, did exist, but not under this name. It was the White Horse, the White Hart, and the Holland Arms, depending on the source I consulted. It stood on the corner of the road leading to Holland House, a beautiful Jacobean mansion that was badly bombed during WWII. In Don’t Tempt Me, I’d given it to my fictional duke. But for some reason, instead of using his name, I used that of the hero the short story, “Lord Lovedon’s Duel.” Not the first mistake I’ve ever made . . .
The Colosseum, as promised in my notes, I’m giving this one its own post, but I’m including here a picture of the outside.
Blackwood’s house in Brighton is based on Marlborough House, on the Steine, Brighton. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find a pubic domain picture of it so far, but here’s one at Flickr.
The Haymarket Theatre still exists. Like so many other structures, it’s changed over the years.
Tollstone Academy for Girls. If you’ve read Nicholas Nickleby or Jane Eyre, you’ll be familiar with the notorious Yorkshire Schools. I modeled mine after the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters’ School, which the Brontes attended.
If you are trying to visualize the scene at Hatchett’s White Horse Cellar, when Jonesy vanishes, this Cruikshank image lets you stand in its doorway, to get an idea of the anarchy.
Gunter’s Tea Shop. Unfortunately, to date, nobody has turned up an illustration of this place, which is rather sad, considering how long it was in business and the role it plays in so many Regency-era stories. For this reason, though, one finds numerous articles about the confectioner’s online, like this one and this one.
The Fox and Hare is a fictional location. This illustration from Nicholas Nickleby gives a sense of the inn’s interior. “Boxes” or “box compartments” are what we in the U.S. call “booths.”
SOURCES
Illustration at top: “The Piccadilly Nuisance! Dedicated to the worthy, acting magistrates of the district”, G Cruikshank, published 29 December 1818. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. (The same holds for the other images from the British Museum.)
Highest life in London. Tom & Jerry sporting a toe among the Corinthians at Almacks in the west NYPL. Date Issued 1821-05-01. Cruikshank, Robert; Cruikshank, George. New York Public Library.
Zoological Gardens. Regent's Park. Six Views in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park. George Scharf. View inside the zoo in Regent's Park, showing the aviary, with a crowd of visitors; pelicans in foreground at left, caged birds behind, enclosure with lake at right. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Portobello Farm, illustration from Old & New London Vol 5
Illustration from Mrs. Mary Bayly’s Ragged Homes and How to Mend Them (1860)
Holland Arms, from Leigh Hunt’s The Old Court Suburb; or, Memorials of Kensington, regal, critical, & anecdotical 1903 ed.
The Colosseum, Regent's Park c 1830 printed 1846. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
New Haymarket Theatre, opened July 4th, 1821 [graphic]. Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Collections.
Lowood illustration from Life and works of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters v. 1 (Jane Eyre)1875
If you’d like to listen to me talk about My Inconvenient Duke with my good friend, historical romance author Caroline Linden, our chat at the Ashland Public Library is here on YouTube. Yes, it did get recorded after all.
A guided tour of "My Inconvenient Duke"
Today I’m in Nerdy History Girl mode, offering information and images of some of the locations in My Inconvenient Duke. If this kind of historical detail isn’t to your taste, feel free to skip this post—or maybe just look at the pictures.
Camberley Place, where the story opens, and which appears in all three Difficult Dukes books, is based on an existing house in Surrey: Sutton Place. I’m drawn to the Tudor and Jacobean houses because of the layout. If you look at the Wikipedia article, you’ll see the way the house offers many opportunities for my couples to have a little privacy—and allows me to be inventive about what they do with their privacy. But the houses are also chockful of interesting objects, which are fun to mention in the course of a scene.
The fishing house, also a recurring location in the series, is based on the 16th century fishing temple in Staffordshire. If you search “Walton Fishing Temple” or “Cotton Fishing Temple”, you’ll find all kinds of articles and images. I’m constantly adding to my collection of images, though I’m not sure I’ll be using the temple again… but maybe.
Hatchards Bookshop, where Doveridge encounters Lady Alice, is another existing London location.
Newmarket, the site of the famous races, is home to the still-existing Rutland Arms, where several scenes take place. The Racing Calendars for 1832 and 1833 provided the where and when of races in England, and the articles by correspondents helped me work out the weather and other details that help bring scenes to life.
Sussex Place, where Alice resides with her aunt, is another existing London structure (albeit changed internally), one of several beautiful Regency-era buildings around the outer circle of the Regent’s Park.
Crockford’s Club: The building on St. James’s Street remains, though it is no longer a gentlemen’s club.
The Arch. As explained in my notes at the end of the book, this is what we now know as the Wellington Arch. It’s moved since the time of my story. It used to be next to what was St. George’s Hospital and is now the Lanesborough Hotel. As the Wikipedia and other articles illustrate, the arch has also changed in appearance over the years. But one can still climb to the top, and I used photos taken by visitors to get a sense of the experience.
Blackwood House in Piccadilly is based on Devonshire House, which was demolished in 1924, one of so many splendid London mansions that haven’t survived. The images on the Wikipedia page will give you an idea of the layout.
Hatchett’s White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, is a site you’ve probably read about in many Regency historical romances. It was there until the late 1800s. My sense of the anarchy in the vicinity comes from satirical prints by George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. This isn’t the only inspiration such artists have provided. (See image above, of Hyde Park Corner.)
George Inn, Southwark is still there—well, some of it, anyway. It’s enough to give you a sense of the old galleried inns I’ve used in several stories, including Lord of Scoundrels and Ten Things I Hate About the Duke.
The Fisk building, where the first encounter with Maggie takes place, is based on the Lamb Building, which was destroyed during WWII. This part of the Temple also appears in Dukes Prefer Blondes, where I used a different building to house Raven Radford and his friend.
The Cock, where Blackwood and Maggie meet for negotiations, is now known as Ye Olde Cock Tavern. It was on the opposite side of Fleet Street street during the time of the story. I don’t know if the porter is still superior, but I mean to find out during my next visit to London.
I restricted myself here to Creative Commons and non-copyrighted images. You’ll find more images on my Pinterest Page.
I’ll continue the tour on another post, but in the meantime, you can also see more images for the story on my Pinterest page.