"Wanton Abuse of the Whip by Coachmen"

1841 illustration El Coche Simon

 

The coachman--a ubiquitous figure in life, literature and history. His deeds were legend, and his reports of his personality ranged from the kindly, reliable family retainer to the rough, drunken driver of stagecoaches.

The majority of coachmen likely fell between the two extremes. The coachman was a man with a difficult job to do. It took strength, stamina, and resilience. The control of two, four, or even six, horses was no mean feat. Sitting out of doors in all weather for hours at a time required a constitution of iron, and a will to match. To keep a schedule, manage passengers, know one's horses, cope with accidents, highwaymen and weather needed a cool head and no little intelligence.

cover-pianoforte music Boston Public Library

But there were those who fell short of the requirements of the job. Some of those fell into drink, and the harsh conditions of the labour caused some, no doubt, to be hard and even cruel men.

The behaviour of one such coachman was detailed in the September 1819 issue of The Monthly Magazine or British Register. A correspondent designated only as H. from Kentish-town wrote: 

Riding yesterday a few miles on the outside of a stage-coach, I had an opportunity of observing how wantonly the coachman made use of his whip, not alone on the backs of his unfortunate horses, but on every other animal that had the misfortune to come within its reach. Not an ass, not a horse, not a pig, not a dog, approached him, without feeling the effects of his inhumanity. Yet he did not appear to be an ill-natured man: mischief, not malice, seemed to prompt him.

from The English Spy by Bernard Blackmantle

H. found the coachman to be something of a jokester: "There was indeed, a degree of merriment and liveliness about him...". He was, it seemed, playing to his captive audience of outside passengers, poking fun at the drivers and riders--"a lady", "an elderly man on a sorry horse", "a poor sweep", and "a fat, clumsy-looking citizen of the old school"-- whose animals he touched up with his whip.

H. goes on:

Amongst other subjects of conversation, (for his tongue was not less in perpetual motion than his whip,) benefit-societies [like guilds, or later, trade unions] became the object of his praise;...

...[a] passenger mentioned the name of his society; and the coachman replied, "And mine is the Benevolent Whip,"--at the same instant laying it about the back of a poor dog that happened to be passing.

In conclusion, H. was definite about the need for reform:

This gratuitous exercise of a whip, appears to me to be a species of cruelty sufficiently definable to become the subject of a prohibitory law.

I therefore think, that all acts of cruelty towards animals by persons not using them at the time, and especially towards animals over whom they are not entitled, either by ownership or otherwise, to exercise any control, might, and ought to be, made a punishable offence.

Five years after H. wrote to the Monthly Magazine, in 1824, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed. H. must have been pleased.

The coachman continued to go his own way for another ninety years, and then was immortalized in history and fiction. How interesting it is to hear from a gentleman of the Regency era about a real coachman, and his behaviour.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

N.B. The Monthly Magazine or British Register 1819 is available from Google Books free for download.

Etymological Novelties

The people of the Regency were people of words, much more than we of the current day are. I think that we, despite our literacy rates and our love of reading, are very much people of pictures.

A picture is worth a thousand words, the cliche goes. But in the Regency pictures were harder to come by than in our present day. Images, photos, graphics, paintings surround us all, every day, at school, work, and leisure. In the Regency one could, if wealthy, collect and admire paintings. One could stand before the print shop window and enjoy the prints displayed, and even purchase one, funds permitting. Magazines and journals at the beginning of the 19th century carried few pictures, almost none in 1800, and three or four per issue by 1815. Books of engravings became increasingly available throughout the Regency, but it was words that entertained for the most part.

Regency folk enjoyed their words. In July of 1812, the Repository of Arts, Mr. Ackermann's popular journal, published an item--part of an on-going series--titled Etymological Novelties. The words listed are purported to be defined, with their history and evolution delineated, but the explanations are jests, clever convolutions of meaning and message. Some approach logic, some are what we might call 'lame', and some are witty by the standards of any age. Here are some examples:

Extravagance, originally extra-vagrants, from its adding so much to the community of beggars.

Marvellous. Wonders were originally said to be marble-ous, because they made folks stare and roll their eyes about.

Ironical, from ire on I call, as persons using that figure of rhetoric which is termed irony, certainly incur the danger of exciting the ire of those who are the objects of it.

Gazette, a species of newspaper containing information which people are always extremely eager to gaze at.

Maid. This is a playful contradiction--maid before marriage, no longer maid when married, and yet made when well married.

Some of the 'etymological' comments are pointed commentaries on current conditions and politics:

Poor-laws. This appellation was given as a reproof to the legislature of an enlightened country, on account of the defectiveness of a certain part of its laws, in contradistinction to the justice and wisdom of the rest of the code of jurisprudence. The continuance of such a system is a reproach to those whom Providence has placed above wretchedness and poverty. Poor laws, indeed!

Justice, a quality eminently displayed by the Greeks, Romans, and others, where the virtues of the camp superseded all feeling, where fathers adjudged their children to death, owning no relations but those which bound them to their country, and banishing from their hearts every spark of mercy; when they were considered to be neither better nor worse than just ice.

The Regency fascination with words is displayed in many books that were published during the period.

The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785, demonstrates the humour and facility with language that even the very poor revealed. Of course, a great deal of the wit of the book comes from its author, Captain Francis Grose, but the originators of the slang readily show their facility with words. Pierce Egan's edition of the Dictionary includes his own ready wit and scurrilous definitions. His other books affirm his skill with the written word.

The Miseries of Human Life written by James Beresford in 1805 is another example of the Regency delight in words. In describing the afflictions of the daily round upon sensitive souls, Beresford illustrated a dexterity with language that Regency readers highly approved. Walter Scott himself praised its "wit, ... humour and perfect originality."

In reading Regency periodicals, I am sometimes taken aback by the density of the text, the unrelieved torrent of words. I long for pictures, and indeed, I break up my own torrent of words--my blog--with illustrations. The people of the Regency looked for the words first, and enjoyed the pictures if and when they could be found.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Researching the World War Two Novel by Guest Blogger Jana Richards

I’ve always had a fascination for the stories of World War Two. The war is full of amazing tales of bravery and daring, of sadness and pain, and of love found and lost. I like to combine all of these elements in my stories.

When writing about any era of history, it’s important to get the details right. World War Two history is massive; it’s almost impossible to know everything. But it is possible to focus on one piece of that history and become something of an expert on it.

So far, I’ve written two novellas and one short story set in the 1940s, each concentrating on different elements of the war.  

Flawless is set in occupied France in 1942. Le Coeur Bleu, a famous and valuable blue diamond, has been stolen by the Nazis. They plan to trade the diamond for weapons that could crush the Allies. Jewel thief Hunter Smith is recruited to steal back the diamond with the help of Madeleine, a beautiful French Resistance fighter.

a Lysander

When I began writing Flawless, I didn’t know much about the French Resistance. I turned to my favorite sources of research for information; books and the Internet. One book I read, called “Just Raoul: Adventures in the French Resistance”, told the story of the war from the perspective of a French Resistance fighter. I learned what members of the Resistance accomplished and the dangers they faced. From the Internet, I learned about the Special Operations Executive or SOE, a branch of the British government that trained spies and sent operatives into occupied European countries to learn of the enemies’ movements and to disrupt their lines of communications and transportation. My research suggested elements of the plot. For instance, I discovered that the SOE brought spies in and out of France in small planes called Lysanders that were able to land and take off on short runways, most often fields or pastures. I used this information to get craft several scenes. I researched a myriad of other details on the Internet; what does a French chateau look like, how do you pick a lock, were flashlights available in the 1940s? (They were.)

Home Fires is set in Saskatchewan, Canada just after the end of the war. English nurse Anne Wakefield travels to Canada to marry her fiancé, a former pilot in the Canadian Air Force she met during the war. But when she arrives she discovers her fiancé has married someone else. Devastated, she prepares to return to England. But her ex-fiance’s mother has a suggestion; marriage to her other son. Badly scarred and wounded during the war, Eric Gustafson can’t believe that a beautiful woman like Anne would want him. But Anne sees past his scars to the beauty of his heart. Eric can’t forget that she was once engaged to his handsome, unscarred brother. Her biggest task is to convince Eric her love for him is real.

Researching English war brides was a labour of love. Some 43,000 English war brides, along with 22,000 of their children, came to live in Canada between 1942 and 1948. War brides faced many difficulties in their new homes. Many war brides, most of them coming from modern British cities, found themselves in rural Canada living in primitive conditions. The book “Risking it all for love” is written by a British war bride who finds life difficult after arriving in Canada. Coming from a well-off family, she goes to live with her new husband on a hard scrabble farm in northern Saskatchewan with no electricity, no running water and no indoor plumbing. Most brides were welcomed by their husbands and new families but some were not. “Brass Buttons and Silver Horseshoes” by Linda Granfield tells many stories of the war brides, some happy, some sad, and many poignant. Much information about war brides is also available online. Some of my favorite websites for information on war brides:
http://www.canadianwarbrides.com/intro.asp . This site has passenger lists from the special war bride ships as well as stories from the war brides themselves. http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/history/secondwar/warbrides . This site, from Veterans Affairs Canada, has a lot of great statistics about the war brides.
http://canadashistory.ca/Magazine/Online-Extension/Articles/War-Brides.aspx . This site has a lot of good pictures of war brides.

 BCATP airmen

My short story “Wings of Fire” appears in the Saskatchewan Romance Writers anthology, “Love, Loss and Other Oddities”. William Crane is a British airman training in Canada to be a pilot so he can do his part in the war. When he crashes his training plane into a farmer’s field and meets the farmer’s daughter, Will finds a reason to believe that love will find him when the war is over. For this story, I researched the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. To start, I visited the BCATP Museum in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, which contains archives of the program, including many of the training planes used by the airmen. The BCATP trained some 200,000 pilots and other aircrew from all over the British Commonwealth on 231 bases across Canada.  The airmen, far from home and lonely, were often befriended by Canadian families who took them into their homes. Many romances took place between Commonwealth airman and Canadian women. Though there are no statistics on how many Commonwealth men returned to live in Canada after the war with their Canadian wives, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest a sizable number.  “Canada’s War Grooms and the Girls Who loved them” by Judy Kozak tells the love stories of these men and women. I’m hoping to someday expand my short story into a full length novel.

The French Resistance, the war brides, and the BCATP are only three of the many stories of World War Two. I can hardly wait to discover more!

~~

Jana Richards has tried her hand at many writing projects over the years, from magazine articles and short stories to full-length paranormal suspense and romantic comedy.  She loves to create characters with a sense of humor, but also a serious side.  She believes there’s nothing more interesting then peeling back the layers of a character to see what makes them tick.

When not writing up a storm, working at her day job as an Office Administrator, or dealing with ever present mountains of laundry, Jana can be found on the local golf course pursuing her newest hobby.

Jana lives in Western Canada with her husband Warren, and a highly spoiled Pug/Terrier cross named Lou. You can reach her through her website at http://www.janarichards.net