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How busy can one’s life become? Wellllll…for me that would be:
Running a hot read edit on my most recent book, “The Sailor’s Rest.”
Changing bedroom #2 into an office with something more than a corner desk for my writing. Ordering the desk. Selling the queen-sized bed that has been unused for three years. Oh, and ordering the Task Rabbit to set up the desk since it is an adjustable height (seated to standing) item. Oh, and running to Office Depot to get a chair.
Undergoing thrice-weekly medical treatment for a chronic condition.
Getting Invisalign to try to keep me from shattering my teeth.
And joining the collective “Austen Always.”
Numbers One and Five keep me going. Two, Three, and Four are about as pleasant as stepping barefoot on a Lego.
In this case, the last shall be first.
I am so excited!!! I am part of a new community of #Austenesque authors...Always Austen! We are authors who blog about All-Things-Austenesque. Tune in, join in, every day for the latest in all things #Austenesque from new books and stories to explorations of the Regency. There is a Facebook Page as well.
We will be doing giveaways to help you get a little more Austen!
At this point, we have nineteen authors contributing to the blog, so it looks like there will be fresh material every day. My first will be Friday, February 17. If you have a topic relating to Austenesque fiction that you’d like me to consider, please let me know.
That noted, please visit the blog and subscribe (always no charge!). You will receive the daily blogs right in your email box!
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As for my hot read of the first draft of “The Sailor’s Rest,” I am now over halfway. What took 5.5 months to write is now into a second week of “Why did I write it that way?” Or… “God, I used five words when one will do.”
I am truly happy with the way the book has worked. Each act has its central plot themes and crux. Each offers readers something interesting (Think Jane Austen meets Patrick O’Brien). If you pick up the story using only its corners, it holds together, leading me from a clear beginning to an ending with which I am satisfied.
SR has been a challenge because it is not a mashup. It is a crossover event between Preide and Prejudice and Persuasion. As such, I needed to give each of the four main characters interesting lives: existences that explained their past but also showed us how they would live through the present and into the future.
Recall that I see Austenesque writing as using Austen as a starting point. I had to build each character honoring the backstory given by Austen, but then develop them into three-dimensional beings capable of carrying the story forward.
So, I had to create a strong supporting cast if the four leads were to do more than sit in drawing rooms and talk…something that would have been a crime, especially for a naval man like Wentworth. Some are familiar from my other books (William Rochet, Sergeant Wilson, Mrs. Wilson, and James Foote). Others are brand new (Wentworth’s cox’n Michael Tomkins and the maid Sarah Small).
I did find some diamonds in Austen’s rough. Of those, Admiral Croft assumes great importance in SR. This is based upon the very simple fact that I see Croft as more than a political creature (in as much as all RN captains and admirals must be that).
Yes, he could have been an incompetent who survived long enough (admirals were promoted based on seniority) to gain flag rank, only to be posted to the Yellow squadron. But, how interesting would that have been? No, the Croft in SR rose on his merits to become one of the RN’s thirty sea-going admirals, a rear admiral of the White squadron (three sea-going squadrons…red, white, blue). Thus, he was able to advance the story.
So, too, does Sophie Croft, an admiral’s wife. How odd it would have been for a rector’s daughter to have found her place at a glittering town table? No, her humble background affirms the fact that her husband is not a favored appointment (oh, he has powerful friends as you will see) of a captain whose family ensured he received cushioned berths with few chances of facing cannons.
There will be more from The Sailor’s Rest. For now, enjoy the story of Admiral Sir Alfred Croft as seen by Anne Elliot.
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This excerpt is ©2023 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited.
Kellynch Hall, Somersetshire, Wednesday, February 15, 1815
Anne gathered her bonnet and gloves and bundled herself against the gusts rolling in from the Bristol Channel beyond the northwest horizon. Her spirit was giddy, too excited, to remain confined indoors. This lightness of spirit rose from a different—a truly metaphorical—breeze. Last summer’s glory had swept away her years’ long gloom. Her soul’s horizons were clear; only blue skies could be seen.
While she dearly loved Frederick’s sister and brother, the Crofts were long married and acted like it. Anne suspected Sophie Croft was far too comfortable in her marriage to remember the anticipation a betrothed woman feels in the weeks before her nuptials. The admiral, as genial a man as one could find, was nevertheless typical of the rest of his species, utterly blind to that which elevated or beset the ladies of his acquaintance.
Anne never intended any criticism of the pair as their felicity was a model to which any husband and wife should aspire. However, imbued with the gentle arrogance of young love—newly rediscovered love even at my advanced age counts as youthful—she was equally certain that Sophie and Alfred never had reason to pine for each other. Once his white pennant had conferred unchallenged prerogatives, they had managed their life to avoid separation. That was Anne’s misfortune yet to come: Frederick was not so elevated that he could carry his wife aboard Laconia.
Like most naval gentlemen, Croft had waited to marry. Wives and children were pleasures deferred until the Gazette announced that post-captain’s epaulets graced both shoulders. At that point, a captain’s two-eighths could unleash the prize money required to convert a king’s commission into the landed estate that would confirm his arrival as a gentleman. A competent and aggressive frigate captain’s coffers would continue to fill barring a sniper’s ball or a dismal performance that would see him ashore on half pay. Survive long enough and his name would move up the post-captain’s list until the day a lord who inhabited a flag cabin would trade his embroidered stars for those gracing the night’s sky. Then a new white, blue, or red pennant would flutter on the mizzen high above another man’s head.
Such was the Navy’s story. Admirals may die but never resign.
Alfred Croft had begun his forty-year career as a midshipman on the old Agamemnon at the start of the American uprising. Brilliance and bravery showed him to be one of the fleet’s indispensable men. Years of peacetime service in the Caribbean and on the Slave Coast led to slow but steady advancement. He had been fortunate to catch Collingwood’s eye in the Sugar Islands in the Eighties. The sponsorship of Nelson’s great friend had been the making of Alfred Croft. He commanded the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar’s when Collingwood led the second column through the French rear. ’Twas to Croft’s eternal regret that Lord Collingwood’s death in the Year Ten led to his elevation as a Rear Admiral of the White.[i]
To a casual observer, Croft’s path to an admiral’s cabin was one unbroken bright line. Anne Elliot knew that not to be the case. Lulls and detours punctuated his passage from fresh-faced mid to grizzled flag officer. One during the Peace of Amiens in the Year Three had seen him Port Captain in Bristol where a vivacious rector’s daughter caught his eye. Her lack of fortune was no deterrent for he had more than enough wealth. Nor was the paucity of her connections a barrier. A man who could count Horatio Nelson amongst his circle would never have to depend on his wife for any greater consequence. Sophie Wentworth provided something more important: a measureless love to fill a sailor’s heart.
Coupe de foudre: Sophie tells me that is what she felt the moment their eyes met. And how like my Frederick was her Alfred. He swiftly sought to secure his lady. How did he put it? Oh yes, he mounted a cutting out expedition as if she were a French frigate. Of course, the good Reverend Wentworth could not object to a well-heeled post captain asking for his daughter’s hand.
Would that she had owned the bravery to resist those well-intentioned—and otherwise—voices that had counseled her to consider the security of a well-stocked wardrobe over that of a full heart. Wentworth’s courage showed when he asked for her hand when he could offer nothing but his devotion. Hers failed when her mother’s dearest friend reminded her that love was rarely enough. More than once in her passage through the wilderness did Anne ruefully contemplate how readily she would have traded poverty for the loving situation enjoyed by her host and hostess, whether or not she dined on silver or pewter.
Kellynch’s paths flowed beneath her half-boots. The tracks had been familiar friends throughout her twenty-seven years. Along them she had found adolescent refuge to escape Elizabeth and Mary’s moods which only became more noisome after their mother’s death. Anne could only bear so much of the one’s haughtiness and the other’s grievances. Even now, with Elizabeth in Bath and Mary at Uppercross, the thought of their contributions to her loneliness during seven years of a gray half-life bore down upon her. Yet, she carried in her reticule the perfect antidote: a letter from Frederick Wentworth.
Reaching the brow of a hill overlooking the manor house, she settled upon a tuft long shaped by her use. Clouds’ shadows alternately darkened and then, as they moved in answer to westerlies, lightened the fields and meadows stretching away from Kellynch. Pulling the missive from her bag, she brought the folded packet to her nose and inhaled. Anne imagined she could smell the briny aroma of Wentworth’s working coat. Even before she read the words, an image of a man bent over paper worrying his lower lip as he framed the words she longed to read floated through her mind. Her insides quivered anticipating the joy she would know as his message laved her yearnings.
She could forego her pleasure no longer. The wax seal crumbled beneath an insistent fingernail.
The missive was brief enough for a man of Frederick’s laconic—oh my, I must remember to avoid that particularly broken-winged pun—bent. However, Anne had been the recipient of many longer letters—notably those from her father—that carried on for pages without saying much of any importance.
The Sailor’s Rest, Barton upon Humber
February 9, 1815
My dearest Anne,
How I revel in being able to write such a salutation!
And, how I rejoice knowing that you will be reading my thoughts only a few days after I compose them instead of months afterward. Not being required to pen a numeral by your direction to inform you of the order of my letters sent from deep in the Baltic is a great comfort. You are close at hand, at least as near as England’s turnpikes can allow. This is, my dearest, Letter One of One.
I can add little new information since my last from Newcastle which was, I fear, brief as I was away as soon as I learned that my lords at the Admiralty commanded my presence in town as soon as was convenient. You have been around the Navy and my brother Croft enough to know that translates to ‘immediately.’ Hence, I am riding south along the coast road and expect to attend them within three days barring the Sabbath. Then I will book a seat on the Bristol Flyer and be by your side in under two days.
After my acquittal in Laconia’s demise, the esteemed gentlemen likely have deemed it best to offer me some sort of shore command—which is a pretty way of saying that, with the end of hostilities, I will be relegated to my own sailor’s rest being beached on half pay to await a yellow pennant. Peace is the enemy every captain fears. The fleet will surely be laid up in ordinary and commands will be thin upon the ground. I doubt if my brother Croft will be able to do much for me unless he is named a port admiral and requires a flag captain.[ii]
However, dear one, unless the clerks have a surprise—and even if they do, our nuptials will not be delayed—I expect to spend the next several years challenging you to find me occupations to keep my overlarge feet from getting in your way. Perhaps I ought to adopt Musgrove’s fascination with hunting dogs and flashy carriages. I can imagine your cheeks have paled at the thought of me favoring high-stepping hunters and risking my neck vaulting over stiles and watercourses. Fear not, sweet Annie, I have not spent more than twenty years risking my neck for King and country to break it pretending that I am some wastrel with less sense than a whey-cheeked mid struggling with the manropes as he climbs into his first ship. If you see me aboard anything more spirited than a weary gelding ready for the knacker’s yard, I give you leave to urge Cox’n Tomkins to tap me behind the ear with a belaying pin.
I was fortunate to hire the last ferryman willing to forsake the warmth of a north bank public house. The Channel weather has been seasonably dirty, and I was soaked to the skin even before I huddled in the lee of the barge’s shelter. My luck improved somewhat when I arrived at the inn on the estuary’s southern shore.
The hostel was so crowded that I feared that I would be destined to break bread in the common room. The innkeeper, though, found a gentleman named Darcy, a Derbyshire fellow, who was gracious enough to share his private dining chamber with me. He seems a well-favored fellow. His eyes portend a deeper intelligence than the usual country squire. I hope he will be able to offer clever conversation, something which I have been craving since I left Newcastle. We shall see soon enough. He completed his own correspondence earlier and offered me use of his writing slope and supplies.
You, my dearest Anne, have disproven the adage that his ship occupies the first place in a sailor’s heart. It is a foul lie! I spent too many years trying to heal my hurt with duty’s balm. It is thin porridge compared to one—just one—of your smiles given as you glance over your shoulder. That radiance sends daylight coursing throughout me and cleanses the darkest, most neglected parts of my soul. You have completed me.
Frederick’s words could have resounded no louder than if Byron himself had penned them in a canto. Her life was so different over the past few months after her love had dispersed the clouds of her sorry contemplation. Anne happily tapped her heels on the turf. Heat suffused her to the point where she freed her bonnet’s ribbons and removed the constricting chapeau. A bubble of joy cascaded from her midriff to escape in a delighted trill that was answered by a brace of reed buntings hiding in a nearby thicket.
I am sure that I must be glowing in happiness. He loves me. He is racing down the entire length of the country and then across its width just to stand by my side in Kellynch’s chapel. Mr. Hoskins has read the banns here and Frederick’s father did so in Bristol. Three times. There is nothing stopping us now but the lack of a groom!
Even if he had been detained in the London for an extra day, the captain ought to be arriving no later than Friday. We could be wed any time next week!
The remainder of Wentworth’s letter waned in eloquence but was nevertheless greedily consumed. The lady’s beauty only increased with the sure knowledge that she was not just loved, but well-loved.
[i] Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, was Horatio Nelson’s partner in several of British victories. Collingwood was second in command at Trafalgar and had raised his flag on the Royal Sovereign. The ship was the first British vessel to pierce the French line. His subsequent refusal to follow Nelson’s dying order led to the destruction of many of the prizes and severe damage to the British fleet in a hurricane that hit the coast of Spain.
[ii] The Royal Navy was divided into three “squadrons” designated in descending order of precedence as Red, White, and Blue. An Admiral, when elevated to flag rank from post captain, was assigned to one of the three. If an officer upon ascending to admiral (promotion was made upon seniority and not merit) was not assigned to a squadron and thus effectively beached, he was referred to as having received a Yellow pennant.
I would love to have an audible code for "The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey." I haven't started reading the Bennet Wardrobe series, but it is getting very close to the top of my TBR. Listening to the first book whilst I'm on my treadmill would be most motivational.
I love everything by Don Jacobson. It is always fun to look for a new title from this excellent author.