Category: Teatime Tattler Page 103 of 152

To Mr. Samuel Clemens, Editor and Proprietor, The Teatime Tattler

Sir

I write with a heavy heart. Never, in my many years as shepherd of a flock of God’s people here in our fair city, have I seen such depths of iniquity in respectable females. Or, I should say, in females one would have considered respectable were it not their intention to lead so many other members of the fairer sex down the road to perdition.

I write, Sir, as you must know, of the forthcoming book by those who style themselves the Bluestocking Belles. These women, for I scorn to call them ladies, are known for writing novels. I kid you not, Sir. Novels. Frivolities of fiction that distract women from their rightful duties and cause them to yearn after a life that God Himself has seen fit to deny them.

Worse than this, they write about love. Not marriage, Sir, which might be excused, since St Paul wrote it is better to marry than to burn, but marrying for love! It has seldom been my duty to disclaim a more ridiculous notion. Such stories are dangerous to weak minds and sensitive constitutions. No woman should be permitted this dangerous indulgence.

As if this were not enough, I understand that the coming volume includes elements of necromancy or some other foul infernal art. A magical device links the stories.

Mr Clemens, I beg of you, Sir, for the sake of London. Nay, for the sake of all happily married men anywhere in the world, join the campaign to squelch this Horrid Collection. Why should fine upstanding members of our sex lose domestic comfort merely because their wives read such nonsense and become restless? Love? I laugh at the notion, Sir. I have never given my wife to believe that I love her, except as an esteemed companion and helpmate, and I never will.

Of course, neither do I permit her to read novels. A good volume of sermons is excellent reading for any woman. I myself have published several such, and my wife admires them greatly.

But I digress. I am confident of your support, my dear Sir.

I remain, your most sincere servant,

The Right Honorable the Reverend Claudius Blowworthey.

Editor’s note: The Teatime Tattler prints this letter in the spirit of fair play. We would not have it said that we suppressed the opinions, whoever misguided, that a person is free to express. We encourage those who disagree with the correspondent to write their own letters.

For more about the box set, keep an eye on the Belles’ website. We’ll be putting the details of the book up on the Joint Projects part of the site as soon as we reveal the name and cover. Or come to our cover release party, on Facebook on the 8th September 2pm to 9pm Eastern Daylight Time.

The Ungrateful Scots of the Honorable Lady S—

By Aunt Augusta

On September 2, 2018

In Lizzi Tremayne, Teatime Tattler

arrival at coast

My dear Mr. Clement,

I have become aware the Honourable Lady S— of the wilds of the Scottish Highlands has been keeping rather to the drawing rooms and balls of London lately. It seems there has been some discontent in her lands far to the north by some people who cannot see the forest for the trees.

Lady S—, in her goodness, has offered to many of her very own clan, from tacksmen through to the lowest sub-tenant, fine land and a good livelihood fishing and kelping. All they had to do was pick up their belongings and stroll to the coast, where this easy living awaited them.

But no, the more short-sighted them, they fussed and dragged their feet. Her new factor, Gellar, had to encourage them to leave. He lightened their load (so they wouldn’t have to carry their roof poles all the way to the coast) by a few small fires. I’m told it was cold at the time, so the fires should have helped them. A few of the miserable villagers refused to go and were unfortunately burned inside the dismal hovels they called their homes. A few died soon afterwards. One can but try to assist them; they must be expected to make some effort.

Surprisingly, there has been some evidence of unrest from these villagers. It is unfortunate they could not just trust in the benevolence of their clan leader, Lady S—. She means only the best for them.

There has been talk she means to replace the villagers with sheep. Sheep give a much better income per acre than the villagers and their motley cattle. Unfortunately, some of the ingrates have been heard to mutter comments like “your sheep won’t protect you when the French invade your shores,” and other things—much too crude to repeat here. Sheep which have already been placed upon lands have been stolen in large numbers—they were returned, but only after large numbers of Redcoats were dispatched. The rude people have also have been complaining about the factor’s earlier setting of controlled (well, mostly controlled) fires to clear the hills of brush and scruffy vegetation. The dry, useless greenery had to be eliminated so as to improve grass growth before the arrival of the eagerly-anticipated sheep.

With the extra money generated by the sheep, Lady S— will be much better able to assist her clansmen in their lovely new villages by the sea—when they get over their temper tantrums and learn to be grateful.

But all this will have to wait until it is again safe for the good Lady S— to return to her birthright. I, for one, cannot wait to see what these “improvements”, for that is what they certainly are, will be.

Yours respectfully,

An Admirer of Civilized Economics

Whatever can be going on?

This little bit of dirt comes your way compliments of Bluestocking Belle Lizzi Tremayne. Sofia and Robbie’s story, called Somewhere Like Home: The Novella is part of the upcoming Bluestocking Belles’ Christmas anthology! The full novel is expected six months after the release of this boxed set! Watch for it!

You’ll find Lizzi’s details beneath the Bluestocking Belles’ Welcome menu item at the top of this page or find her at the links below the Extract!

Somewhere Like Home: The Novella*

From the Highlands to Waterloo—

can love prevail over fate?

1813, Scottish Highlands

When Robert refuses to become clan tacksman after his father, he is disowned and off down the road to build a life for himself and his beloved Sofia.

Sofia’s waiting turns to despair when her mother buys safety during the clearance of their village at Sofia’s expense, leaving her to the lusts of the laird’s son.

Rob emerges from the hell of Waterloo wanting only to see Sofia again…and his father.

Extract

Sofia turned away from the window as heavy footsteps sounded down the hall. “He’s gone, sir,” came a voice from the room next door.

She clamped her jaw tight at the voice of Gellar, the laird’s new man.

Sofia tuned her ears to listen as she drew back the bed curtains and pulled down the rumpled covers, then began to dismantle the bed-makings while trying to remember their replacement order.

“Are your men ready?” The laird said.

“Ready and keen, waiting with metal bins for their hot coals.”

Coals?

Sofia tried to focus on the unfamiliar bedding while still listening. Her heart grew chillier by the word. The bed not only had a straw mattress, all she’d ever known, but a canvas sheet, topped by a feather mattress. Which to tuck the sheets under?

blackhouse

“I don’t expect trouble. There should only be one able-bodied man in the whole village—the rest are off with the cattle. We needn’t worry about Gunn—he won’t be back until tomorrow.” Sofia stopped short, along with her heart.

Gunn? Did she hear correctly?

Then came the fat bolster at the head of the bed. She tossed it into place and fluffed it while she strained to hear.

“So, after we torch the village, we just stand back and wait or leave them to it?” Gellar’s voice grated as Sofia scarcely breathed. snow clearances

“Just in case any of the tenants have the brains to remember,” the laird said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “you need to make sure they don’t take their roof timbers. They need to burn. I want the tenants gone and they can’t carry their timbers all the way to the coast. They can build with what they find there. Of course,” he chuckled, “there isn’t any wood for miles.”

Gellar laughed, and Sofia gritted her teeth to keep from shrieking.

She finally laid the sheet over the top of the bed, hands shaking so badly she had to walk around the bed several times to straighten it while the men continued.

“The crofts I’ve set aside on the shore won’t let them grow enough food to survive without working the beds and processing the kelp. At least they’ll stay warm while they’re burning it. The market for it isn’t as good as it used to be, but it’s still worth a lot to us. arrival at coast Certainly, more than the tenants and that blasted tacksman are paying in rents here. They won’t have the faintest idea how to fish, but they’ll figure it out if it keeps them from starving. Sheep on the hills instead of my erstwhile ‘clansmen’ will make us a fortune. As my dear lady believes, it will be a better life for them as ‘crofters’—an improvement.”

“For all of us,” Gellar said with a snort. “So, we start an hour before sundown?”

“Ideal,” said the laird. “Get cracking. You’re now my new factor. Make the most of it, ‘Factor Gellar’.”

Sofia flinched at the sound of clinking glasses, then somehow got the blankets on all anyhow and draped the elaborate tapestry ceremoniously over all. Standing back, she surveyed her handiwork, waiting for her heart to stop racing after the heavy footsteps left the way they’d come.

She found another way back to the servants’ quarters, not daring to pass the open office door. scottish

Want to read more?

You’ll find the rest of the story in Somewhere Like Home: The Novella, part of the Bluestocking Belles’ next collection, to be published in November. Come along to our Facebook Event on 8 September to find out the title of this exquisite boxed set by eight of our Belles! We’ll be telling you more about each story and revealing the cover! We’ll see you there!

*(and no, sorry, you can not see the cover yet!)

A Guillotine Widow Takes Tea on the Isle of Guernsey

By Guest author

On August 29, 2018

In Bluestocking Belles, Guest author, Teatime Tattler

widow There I was, sipping tea in the Donets’ lovely parlor, decorated in the warm colors of the gardens and filled with sunlight, trying to forget the horrors I had left behind in Paris. Sitting across from me was my savior, Mademoiselle Zoé Donet, and her English aunt, Joanna, comtesse de Saintonge. Zoé’s question stirred me from my reverie.

“Do you have in mind a place to settle in England, madame?”

“I have friends in London we can visit. After that, I’m not sure. I rather like the countryside. For many years, I lived in a small country palace in the Bois de Boulogne near Paris.”

“Then perhaps you should consider West Sussex,” offered Zoé’s aunt. “There is plenty of room at The Harrows, my family’s estate, and my brother, Richard, the Earl of Torrington, would welcome you and your children. It would be a fine place to recover from all you have been through at least until you decide. But, if you prefer, Richard could arrange for you and your children to travel with him the next time he goes to London.”

“That is so very kind of you, Madame Donet.”

“Not at all. It is settled. When my husband sails to England, you shall accompany him. Perhaps we’ll all go. I have not visited my brother in a while and he worries about me even though I am on Guernsey.”

I set down my teacup, trying to imagine the anxiety this woman must face each time her husband and niece ventured into the port towns in northwestern France to help the fleeing émigrésof which I had been one. “You must fear for your husband and niece going into France to rescue people like me. How ever do you stand the agony of awaiting their return?”

A subtle smile crossed Madame Donet’s face. It was the look of a woman who had long ago conquered her demons.

“I knew when I married Jean Donet I was marrying adventure itself. Oh, perhaps not the terrifying kind he now faces, defying the revolution’s madmen. For that, I think he and my niece are quite brave. But I have always known such a man would not be content to sit in his parlor and gaze at his vineyard, though he has—or rather, had—an excellent one. No, once he discovered the sea, there was no other life for him.”

I considered the niece. At twenty, Zoé was a beautiful young woman attired in an elegant gown, so different from the soot-covered peasant she had been days ago. “I can see why Monsieur Donet would undertake the rescues, but why you?”

“I made a vow to a friend that I would do all I could for the royalist cause, no matter the peril I must face.”

Zoé’s aunt smiled. “Anyone who marries my niece will be making the same decision I made when I wed Jean Donet.”

About the Book

A Fierce Wind: Donet Trilogy, book 3
Love in the time of revolution
France 1794

Zoé Ariane Donet was in love with love until she met the commander of the royalist army fighting the revolutionaries tearing apart France. When the dashing young general is killed, she joins the royalist cause, rescuing émigrésfleeing France.

One man watches over her: Frederick West, the brother of an English earl, who has known Zoé since she was a precocious ten-year-old child. At sixteen, she promised great beauty, the flower of French womanhood about to bloom. Now, four years later, as Robespierre’s Terror seizes France by the throat, Zoé has become a beautiful temptress Freddie vows to protect with his life.

But English spies don’t live long in revolutionary France.

Buy links for A Fierce Wind:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FYPFVRL
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FYPFVRL
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07FYPFVRL</a

Amazon link for the award-winning Donet Trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B071JPXTT5/

About the Author

I didn’t start out as a writer of historical novels. Although I wrote stories as a child, by the time I got to college, and at the urging of my professors, I became a lawyer. After years of serving clients in private practice and several stints in high levels of government, it seemed time for a change. Becoming an award-winning author was the subject of dreams when I first began writing, but dreams sometimes do come true.

Find Regan:

Website (Newsletter signup, Books, Reader Extras and more!): http://www.reganwalkerauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/regan.walker.104
Regan Walker’s Readers on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReganWalkersReaders/
Pinterest (storyboards for my books): https://www.pinterest.com/reganwalker123/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RegansReview
Regan’s blog, Historical Romance Review: https://reganromancereview.blogspot.com/

Protecting the community from a scandalous widow

By Guest author

On August 22, 2018

In Guest author, Teatime Tattler

Dearest Maria,

I simply had to write to tell you the most unbelievable news. It is so outrageous I almost cannot bring myself to reveal it. I hope you are seated because here it comes, Mrs Florence Beaufort (previously Miss Thackeray) has appeared back in Wellington after twenty years!

I can imagine your expression of surprise when you read this, I mean, the gall of the woman showing herself here after everything she did. You will not believe it, but she was shopping on Lambton Quay as proud as you like as if she had every right to be there.

Then, hark this; she had the audacity to insult not only me, but my poor dear departed mother. That woman’s arrogance knows no bounds. I, of course, kept a civil tongue in my head and asked after her husband Dr Beaufort—the man she stole from me. She informs me he is dead. Yes, I know, dead. It seems she has a propensity for killing off her husbands.

Then, she proceeds to tell me that she is perfectly content as a widow as if poor Dr Beaufort meant nothing to her. I was as shocked as I could possibly be.

I must add that the years have not been kind to her. She is still slender, I suppose, and her hair has not yet turned from its shameless shade of copper to distinguished silver as mine has, but I distinctly noticed lines had formed around her eyes and the heavy black of her mourning dress did nothing for her complexion.

It is bad enough we are forced to endure her dreadful brother with his shameless flaunting of his Māori wife and half-caste children around the town, but now we must also tolerate the presence of that fiancé-stealing Jezebel amongst us.

Mark my words, I will ensure everyone in the town is aware of her sordid past and knows to treat her with the disdain she deserves. She will not receive invitations from anyone of any worth if I have anything to say about it.

Anyway, I had better sign off now as I must spread the word before she is able to use her airs and graces to ingratiate herself with the unwitting members of our community.

Best wishes to you and your family

Adelia Dorrington

Excerpt from A Pivotal Right, Book Two in the Shaking the Tree Trilogy

Auckland, New Zealand
1874

“Mama, Mama.” Soft tapping on the back of Florence’s hand brought her rushing back from a black void. She opened her eyes to find her daughter’s face hovering above her.

“You fainted, Mama. I think you may have hurt your head on the floor.”

Florence’s vision swam alarmingly. “I must be losing my mind. I could have sworn I saw—” She swallowed. “No, it couldn’t have been.”

“Saw what?”

“Nothing.” She closed her eyes to try to ease the throbbing pain that was building at the back of her skull. “It is impossible.”

“Liam, bring a couple of blankets from the store room.” The voice so familiar and yet so unexpected cleaved her mind, sending shockwaves through her.

Florence gripped her daughter’s hand as her heart lurched violently inside her chest and she feared she would faint again. “I can hear—” She wanted to say, a ghost, but stopped herself. Viola would think her mad. How hard had she hit her head?

A shadow fell across her and she looked up straight into the eyes of a dead man. Blinking, she attempted to clear the spectre, but it would not vanish. Jack had visited her in her dreams many times over the years, but never when she was awake.

There were only two possibilities—either she had lost her mind or she was dead—but no lifeless heart could race the way hers was racing now.

“Am I insane?” she asked the vision of her long-dead husband.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pivotal-Right-Shaking-Tree-Book-ebook/dp/B07FY1BCLQ/

Bio for K A Servian

As a life-long creative, Kathy gained qualifications in fashion design, applied design to fabric and jewellery making and enjoyed a twenty-year career in the fashion and applied arts industries as a pattern maker, designer and owner of her own clothing and jewellery labels.

Her first novel, Peak Hill was a finalist in the Romance Writers of New Zealand Pacific Hearts Full Manuscript contest in 2016. She has also published a romantic suspense novel tilted Throwing Light and her short story, Seeing Him Again for the First Time won the Romance Writers of New Zealand Chapter Short Story contest for 2018.

Never one to do things by half, Kathy creates her own covers and has made and photographed the costumes for the covers of her Shaking the Tree trilogy of historical novels: The Moral Compass (2017), A Pivotal Right (2018), and Slaves in Petticoats (due out in 2019).

She has made and photographed costumes from various periods ranging from Regency to early twentieth century. Images are available for purchase on Shutterstock https://www.shutterstock.com/g/kathysg.

Kathy has completed a diploma in advanced creative writing. She works fulltime as a writer squeezing it in around teaching the occasional sewing class and being a wife and mother. You can follow Kathy on her website https://kaservian.com/ or Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KAServian/.

A Warning for Mr. Clemens and His Readership

By Rue Allyn

On August 18, 2018

In Teatime Tattler

Dear Mr. Clemens,

Mr. Wm. W.

I wish I could laugh off as a trifle the letter from ‘A Concerned Society Matron’ published in The Teatime Tattler this past July 28^th. Sadly, this is not the case. I feel it incumbent upon myself to warn you that the forces of censorship are at work. Please take care, lest you and The Tattler fall victim to this insidious process. I have reason to suspect that the purported matron is truly an agent of The Society for the Suppression of Vice. She might even be a guise for Mr. Wm. W. himself. The members of the society (whose work against slavery is admirable) are, on the subject of literature, as ignorant as they are intolerant and see anything vaguely outside a strict and very uninformed norm of societal behavior to be dangerous and seditious vice. They are among the many frightened voices that prompted the passing of the Six Acts of 1819 which included alarming restrictions on the freedom of the press. It is after all sedition—we all remember what happened in France—that started this censorious craze. This madness of conformity labels a group of harmless, erudite, and broad-minded women as ‘scandalous and salacious.’

I paraphrase from the supposed matron’s letter not to give her absurd ideas a hearing—as you so generously did—but to prove the danger inherent in casting broad aspersions where one has little experience and less knowledge. I doubt very much that this faux-matron has ever read a single word written by The Bluestocking Belles. Nor would she know a well written and researched romance novel from the most puerile pornography. She should ask herself why no male would ever admit to reading works such as those written by The Belles. While I am certain most men believe they have good reason to avoid these works, those reasons spring from ignorance. In fact, I challenge the matron and her male contemporaries in rank and education (which cannot be very extensive) to read any one of the works by the Bluestocking Belles. Further having done so, I challenge any of them who has read a Bluestocking Belles’ book to prove the stories are seditious or vice filled in any way.

One of many novels from the work of The Bluestocking Belles.

Before the public bows to rants like those of the ‘concerned society matron,’ let them look for themselves at the body of work by the Bluestocking Belles. I am certain that any educated, open-minded person will arrive at the same conclusion as I have. The novels and stories of the Bluestocking Belles are to be lauded. They belong in the highest ranks of great literature and could, were it possible, teach even Ovid and Homer a lesson or two.

I sign myself proudly,

Lady Hultinford of St. Brendan Priory, Warwickshire

A dedicated supporter of learned entertainments in general and in particular, The Bluestocking Belles.

Because history is fun and love is worth working for