Hitting the Books While Writing

Taking note of stuff

I have a problem.

I possess what might be called a “flypaper mind.” Stuff goes in and then gets stuck. My memory is not eidetic but loosely associative…meaning that I tend to cascade information in an inverse pyramid. You hit me with a general topic—or even something specific—and then I will barf out all sorts of things. There is a lot of information inside, not much of which is correlated with anything else—except when I write.

Then, it gets a little weird. (Yet, noticeable. My friend Susan Andrews specifically referenced footnotes in the third volume of her hilarious Camp Jane series: Follies of Family.

For instance…in The Maid and the Footman, I created a “proposal without words” where Sergeant Henry Wilson asked for Annie Reynolds’s hand. She is seated at the pianoforte in Burghley House’s Blue Parlor, having been sent there by Kitty Bennet in a “plot” with General Fitzwilliam to set her up for the proposal. While Miss Reynolds waited, she began to play the instrument. Henry slipped in.

Annie softly exhaled as she ended the melody. Not shifting in her seat, she reached up with her unadorned left hand and gently clasped his right where it rested on her collarbone. Her eyes remained closed so as not to break the trance.

Henry dropped to his knees and carefully—so carefully—grasped hers where they were under the pianoforte. He turned her body on the bench to face him.

Her face, rosy in the room’s firelight, was turned down to his. Her eyes slowly opened as she beheld her world. The golden-brown pools glistened with hope and joy.

He gripped her hands in his, holding them prayerfully. Here was his Westminster. His love echoed through the spires, rising like the great buttresses holding the walls of the mighty cathedral to join with the bells tolling a full peal. His Annie…his love…his life.[i]

And there, in the last paragraph, is one of those “things.” Somehow, I recalled that a royal marriage, coronation, or other great national event would be celebrated with a “full peal” of the bells at Westminster Abbey. Now, however, the historian in me took over; I was constitutionally unable to drop such an exciting tidbit into the middle of Annie and Henry’s story.

So, I checked it out. And at the bottom of this post (after the excerpt), you will find the reference. The fine folks at the Abbey itself advise that a full peal is over 5,000 changes and takes nearly three hours to complete. Gentlemen in the audience: I do not know about you, but when my wife of Forty-Seven years said, “My Mom thinks we ought to get married. What do you think?” I nearly shouted back, “That’s what I have been saying for five years!” Think every bell at Holy Name Cathedral, St. James, and Fourth Presbyterian (all Chicago) let loose all at once? You bet!

As a historian, I have been trained always to cite my sources. Doing so adds heft to the evidence I am assembling, but it also illustrates that I am being rigorous and not making it up as I go. I could no more stop footnoting than I could voluntarily cease breathing.

That has put me lightly crosswise with a few readers who do offer the valid criticism that excessive endnotes tend to detract from their reading experience. Endnotes—which I use in literature rather than the more common footnotes found in academic writing—do not disturb the pagination and layout of either print or e-books. A reader can move past the text notation if they desire or, in print, flip to the back of the book, representing an actual departure from the narrative. In the e-book, an interested reader highlights the note in the text to get a full reference.

Many folks tend to think notes are genuinely dull. However, I have several uses for notes: they answer the question “Why/What,” offer backstory and context, or respond to the author’s desire to interact with the reader outside the story.

Why/What Notes

In The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, Mr. Bennet receives a note from someone. The note is in an envelope that is sealed. But wait a moment! Thomas Bennet was sitting in his library in 1812. Are envelopes even around? Time to look it up.

I learned that:

The machine to apply adhesive to the seams and flap of machine-made envelopes was not fully developed until the 1880s.

Not common knowledge to anyone. If I had let it flow by, I would justifiably been pilloried by astute readers. Having an envelope in 1812 was just as much a sin as having (I kid you not) Darcy receive a telegram from an investigator looking for Wickham.

In the message opened by Mr. Bennet, I have the writer using the word “closure.” This was intentional on my part as 1) The writer had undergone years of psychoanalysis and 2) she was writing with the vocabulary of a person living in 1932 (see The Keeper and The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque). As I have a word maven as one of my beta readers (yes, Carol…no teenagers, only adolescents!), I knew I had to explain that I knew what I was doing.

In the modern sense…“Tendency to create ordered and satisfying wholes” is 1924, from Gestalt psychology. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=closure

Context Notes

Sometimes an explanation is necessary to establish an obvious context for a set of actions undertaken by a character.

In The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque, I was curious how large Kitty’s fortune would become over 75 years. Why? First, I wanted to know how wealthy she would have been—an interesting problem for a young lady who had been raised knowing that her family was one fall from horseback away from poverty. But her wealth was a vital plot motivator for the villain in the story: Lord Junius Winters.

I felt that I needed to justify the figure at which I arrived (somewhat north of £200,000) for her holdings when she arrived in 1886. I did not want an error detracting from the overwhelming impact of that figure.

Kitty’s £10,000 dowry infusion from Darcy and Bingley plus her £1,000 share of her mother’s dowry calculated at 4% compound interest (annual beginning in 1812) would be £208,398 in 1886 after seventy-five years of investment. Her annual income from that principal, again at 4%, comes in at about £8,300. That £8,300 would be the 2024 equivalent of £1,352,000 per year. See  https://www.officialdata.org/uk/inflation/1886?amount=8300

Were Winters’s efforts to get his hands on Kitty’s trust fund worth it? For my American readers, that £1,352,000 is about $1.7 MILLION! A Year!

However, my favorite Context note is how Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sword is referenced. Austenesque writers have often credited the good Colonel with offering that he “should have run that (pick your epithet) through with my sword.” I immediately wanted to ask… “And what was that sword?”

There is a psychological reason behind the answer to the question about what sword a man, acknowledged to be a trained and experienced killer, would use.  To reduce it simply, I will answer with a question: “While a steak knife is as deadly as a sword, which freaks you out more?”

The sword, of course, is the most common response. Why? Because it is a brutal weapon, hacking, amputating, capable of splitting you from (as Sir Thomas Malory wrote) “from guzzle to gatch,” and inflicting such heinous damage that you would run from the field.

Would General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam have fought with a gentleman’s blade? I think not, and so put those thoughts into the mouth of Mary Bennet in The Keeper as she dressed down three militia officers who dared to harass her, Maria Lucas, and Georgiana Darcy, on the streets of Meryton. She told them Fitzwilliam was protecting all those who lived in Meryton, particularly the Bennets and Darcys.

I have seen his working sword. It is not shiny and bright like that little toad sticker you wear. His is a man’s weapon, heavy to cut through bone and gristle, hued like pewter, and with a blade longer than your arm. It is nicked, scarred, and so worn from constant sharpening that it is more rapier than saber.

But what sword would the General carry? As Mary put it, his daily weapon, which “dispatched more of Napoleon’s horde to Hades than you can imagine,” was likely the Pattern 1796 Heavy Cavalry Sword. He was probably in the Guards as he was the son of an earl. These were the British Army’s shock troops, armored and riding great chargers (Imperator, Fitzwilliam’s Stallion, was a giant). In today’s parlance about hacking (electronic, not martial), their blade uses “brute force” to be effective.

See the note:

“The trooper’s sword, and the officer’s undress sword, was a dedicated cutting weapon with a broad, heavy blade and was renowned as being completely unfit for delicate swordsmanship.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1796_Heavy_Cavalry_Sword

Photo Credit: Bygone Blades

Dialogue Notes

In The Exile, a character in 1886 comments that new legal protections protected young Kitty Bennet from fortune hunters, unlike Miss Darcy in 1810. The danger to Georgie from Wickham was the practice known as coverture. That word was never used in the body of the book. More needed to be said, and I took that opportunity in the note.

Coverture was a practice based upon the legal fiction that upon marriage, a man and a woman became one in the eyes of the law. Thus, a woman’s property became her husband’s to do with as he pleased. Hence Wickham’s search for an heiress—or, for that matter, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s. Sadly, Darcy and Bingley’s ability to “marry for love” was based on their income. The woman could only regain direct use of and title to her remaining pre-marital property if she outlived her husband. The Married Woman’s Property Acts of 1870, 82, 84, and 93 gave women rights to their property even within the confines of their marriage.

I did refrain from editorializing here…despite my distaste at coverture.

Of course, one can have fun in the notes. Consider the name of Maggie Smalls’s abuser in The Exile—Charlie Watts. My note:

Sorry, Stones fans…I needed a “w.”

Then there is my fascination with not necessarily useful information when referring to Lord Henry Fitzwilliam’s 1907 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. My wife’s great-uncle was Art Souter, so I loved the idea of getting him into my book. Mr. Souter was the “Chief Mechanic” for Rolls-Royce in the United States when the company manufactured R-R chassis in Springfield, MA.

Rolls-Royce manufactured the chassis and drive train components. Those who purchased an automobile from R-R would order a body from a coach-maker. An excellent reference on classic Rolls-Royce motorcars is Arthur Souter, The American Rolls-Royce, Mowbray Co., 1976

Finally, when Mary awakens on December 12, 1811, her first day as Miss Bennet, she recalls the dreams she had been having and references Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The front end of the note is straightforward, but I did have fun with the last sentence.

Coleridge composed “Kubla Khan: Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment” in 1796 after dreaming that he had been composing a poem. He awoke and raced to write down all he could recall as his senses returned. Some argue that he had been under the influence of Mrs. Bennet’s favorite nerve restorative, a tincture of morphine known as laudanum.

Thus, dear readers, the notes form an integral part of the work…much as the book covers or the text itself…and do, I hope, offer an ultimately rewarding reading experience.

To enjoy my endnotes, please consider my Austenesque Variations available in Kindle, KindleUnlimited, paperback, and Audible. Check out my titles on my Amazon author’s page.  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Jacobson/author/B001IQZ7GC?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1707506605&sr=8-3&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Also, to find Susan Andrews’s Camp Jane Volume 3, Follies of Family, please use this link (US): https://www.amazon.com/s?k=camp+jane+book+3&crid=1FRDF0URB3EB1&sprefix=Camp+Jane%2Caps%2C333&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_9

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This excerpt from a Work In Progress, The Halls of Westminster, is © 2024 by Donald P. Jacobson.

Chapter Fourteen

Before the Walters’ ball, January 16, 1807

Darcy House

Hastings’s fussing over his cravat did nothing to improve Darcy’s disposition. His cousin’s needling from a chair in the dressing room’s corner already had set his teeth on edge. “Come, Darcy, I will not have you stalking the perimeter of tonight’s festivities! We are not invading St. James’s Palace. You’ll not have to wear knee breeches and silver buckles.

“Cheer up, old man. I will not have you in a foul mood, acting like you are off to the barber to have a tooth pulled. These are people who would be honest friends, not ones with eyes sparkling over your ten thousand a year or whatever is the current tittle-tattle about your pile.”

Darcy grunted and made to turn his head which earned him a huff from his valet. Darcy stared over the man’s bowed head, caught his visage—stern as always—, and narrowed his eyes. “Enough Richard! My temper has nothing to do with tonight’s ball or estimates about my purse’s weight. Men with ten thousand a year are rank amateurs when compared to India House’s shareholders and country merchants, nabobs with a million in their pocket![ii]

“While there may be a matchmaking mama or two flitting about—the cause of most of my society headaches—I doubt if I will have to fend off their daughters’ attentions. Those empty-headed, fluff-brained ornaments will be elsewhere, probably at routs more suited to their jejune tastes. This is a political gathering of the type your mother puts on when the earl needs to win the government a few more votes in the Lords.”

Hastings patted his master’s shoulder, signaling the completion of the delicate process of tying a ton-approved knot for his employer, recognized for his fashionable appearance and demeanor. Darcy frequently, much to his valet’s chagrin, had been known to take matters into his own hands—literally—and leave the house with a mail coach knot holding his collar if he had been too impatient to submit to Hastings’s ministrations. Although his mein could curdle milk when displeased, Darcy understood that, while he cared only for neatness, Hastings took his master’s appearance very seriously. Good or bad would reflect on Darcy, the House, and all who lived and served there. A poorly turned knot or a wrinkled turnback would be noticed, and the news would pass along the servants’ telegraph to unleash shivers below stairs at Darcy House.

Before shrugging into his topcoat, Darcy strode across the room and towered over his cousin before unlimbering to pick up a goblet of uisge beatha—Darcy preferred the old Celtic term for whiskey from Islay—which he contemplated before tipping it back. Swirling the pungent liquor in his mouth, he appreciated the aromatic notes filling his sinuses. “No, cousin, we both know that my humor rises from several days of Wickham. He has been after me like a tavern dog on a joint fallen to the floor.

“Today I received a token to remind me of what was expected.”

Darcy turned to the valet patiently brushing imaginary lint from his topcoat, “Hastings, leave us. I will summon you when I require your assistance to finish dressing.”

When they were alone, Darcy stepped past Fitzwilliam to his writing slope, stowed on a shelf in his wardrobe. He brought the box back to a table adjacent to his cousin, unlocked it, and removed a letter. This he handed to the colonel. “The dastard did not even bother to add a message for my edification.”

A pair of bushy eyebrows lifted at the familiar feminine hand. In a voice graveled by years in the firing line, the soldier grated, “He is anxious to secure your cooperation if he uses this to send you a reminder that you must turn your coat.”

Then Fitzwilliam laughed sardonically. “This also tells me he fears his employers more than either you or me if he is parting with one of his treasures rather than holding it over your head. That concern is rather impressive, given my long-standing desire to spit Wickham’s gizzard with my Pattern 1796. You should have given me my head at Ramsgate!”[iii]

Darcy looked dyspeptic. “You just used the essential word, Richard. My older awareness of it caused me to still your hand when we uncovered how he had trifled with Georgiana.

“One.

“I had—have—no idea how many tidbits of compromising material Georgie gifted to Wickham. I have not pressed her. She is still fragile after her ordeal. But, if he is willing to release one, he proves he need not worry about a single letter. He is like a dragon sitting atop his hoard.

“Wickham will always be a threat until we can dispose of both him and the evidence of Georgie’s naiveté. I wish we knew where he lays his head because I assure you the rest of his secrets will be there.

“Force will not gain us surcease from his endless threats. As much as I want to kill Wickham, we require a subtle hand lest we startle him into flight: someone stealthy, a burglar, to separate our old playmate from his trove.”[iv]  

Fitzwilliam leaned back in his chair and looked cryptically at Darcy. “When the time comes, I have resources and connections of which you know nothing.” He handled the note as if it were an adder rendered comatose by the sun but ready to wake and strike in an instant. He extended it to Darcy. “Now, if you have finished making me bilious, I suggest we allow your squire back in to finish arraying you in your finery. Balls wait for no man, least of all a gentleman with only ten thousand a year.”

***

Gardiner House

This afternoon had passed as others always had when young women prepared for an evening of glittering lights, elegant dancing, and enlivening entertainment. Baths were taken. Hair was washed and fanned over the backs of fireside chairs to dry before being woven intricately with ribbons, seed pearls, and gem-tipped pins. Tea was sipped, and treats were tasted. Long looks through the window above the street fueled reveries only women of a certain age could dream. The hours thus spent during that golden moment were a cherished episode that could not be replicated for its ephemeral nature was made of gossamer memory.

In all respects, Jane and Elizabeth acted like young ladies looking forward to the mysteries of the dance floor and the complicated ballet that surrounded it. Neither of them was so ancient as to have become jaded with the diverse amusements to be found at a town ball—even one held on the edge of Cheapside. The two Hertfordshire lasses knew that Mr. and Mrs. Walters stood at the intersection between cit and ton, mercantile and manor, Leadenhall Street and Grosvenor Square. Astonishing wealth smoothed their entrance into many lofty homes and, likewise, ensured that tonight’s guests would encompass most aspects of English society. The Walters’s position in the upper reaches of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade brought them the respect not only of their fellows in trade but also of aristocrats like the Earl and Countess of Matlock.  

Elizabeth drifted over to the bed where Sarah had carefully laid out her new gown, beautiful in its transparent delicate rose overdress atop the creamiest silk which was embroidered with delicate vines. Aunt Gardiner’s dressmaker, Madame Tremblay, had enthused when she first beheld the second Bennet daughter. ‘Votre cheveaux châtains! Trop des femmes ont une chapeau brun mousseux. Et votre yeax: commes le chocolat! Vous êtes vraiment unique, une originale!’[v]

Lizzy scoffed when she recalled their encounter. Unique? One-of-a-kind? An original? I doubt that. I am an ordinary woman from a most ordinary family—if you can ignore my parent’s eccentricities.

We all know that Jane is the one who shines brightest. Sir William may overlard the pudding in his effusions, but they are on target when he labels my sister ‘the jewel of the county.’  Madame Tremblay could be his distaff version. The lady is a French émigré and, like the rest of her countrymen, is prone to flights of fancy and overstatement.

Yet, when she was introduced to Jane, a classic beauty from the ends of her hair to her toenails, Madame simply nodded and whispered something to an assistant. That worthy escorted my sister off and into another changing room. The dressmaker was polite, but her eyes had no flash of inspiration. The assistant took Jane’s measurements and discussed fashion plates with her.

But Madame remained by my side. If I had been a fishing smack bouncing against a pier, Madame would have been a barnacle clinging so tightly to my strakes.

Chocolate, indeed. My hair is dark, as are my eyes. We call it ‘Bennet Brown’ much as Mama, Jane, Kitty, and Lydia are crowned with ‘Gardiner Gold.’

The lightest of carmine tints Madame chose for the gauze overdress sets them off so well. It is so untraditional for a young, unmarried woman to wear any color, especially one that inspires violent passions. However, Madame Tremblay—I doubt if she knew that my middle name is Rose—reached deep into her stockroom to bring forth the perfect complement for my coloring.

She also defeated my lack of height. Normally my shorter legs bring along an unfortunate emphasis on my haunches. Most dressmakers cannot put aside their ingrained techniques suitable for most of their customers. However, Madame Tremblay stitched the material in such a way as to make my hips disappear.

My gown flows like a delightful young claret waiting to impart its silky smoothness onto our palettes. When I walk, the ivy needlepoint gracing the undergown sways to and fro as if a breeze is rustling Mama’s rose beds.   

Returning to the window, Elizabeth placed one hand gently on the windowpane, the outdoor chill cooling her hand. Close as they were to departing for the ball, Lizzy could not risk mussing her hair even though she dearly wished to put the frost-rimmed glass to work on her fevered forehead.

She was not ill. The heat came from her contemplations about her life over the past sennight: the confusion of Mr. Wickham’s enigmatic character and the conundrum of Mr. Darcy’s outré temperament. Perhaps tonight would bring clarity because Elizabeth did not doubt that both gentlemen would be in attendance given the importance of the ball to the Cause.

Little about Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham had passed between Jane and Elizabeth in recent days. The subject had been thoroughly canvassed in that remarkable, un-Jane-like, session after the Hyde Park excursion.

Sisterly conversation was not what was needed, of that, she was convinced.  

Elizabeth, however, anticipated meeting with either one or both principals tonight. One would have questions to answer about what had been left conveniently unspoken, while the other would have to answer for words caustically delivered.

---

[i] Significant events and anniversaries whether royal, national or Abbey related are marked by the ringing of a full peal [at Westminster Abbey]. This comprises a minimum of 5000 different changes (or sequences) and is performed without a break. A peal takes over three hours to complete… from http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/abbey-bells accessed on 11/12/16.

[ii] Nabob is a word from Hindi adopted into English which describes someone returning from India having made/looted £100,000.

[iii] The colonel refers to his Pattern 1796 Light Cavalry Saber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_1796_light_cavalry_sabre

[iv] Gandalf the Grey about the value of Bilbo Baggins to the expedition in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. “If I say he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes.”

[v] Your chestnut hair! Most women have mousy brown. And your eyes: like chocolate. You are truly unique, an original.