Hello, Friends!
It’s been another hot minute since I’ve blogged here. I know I keep saying I’ll do it more often, but then Writing and the Day Job and Life all conspire to prevent me from doing so. Sadly, Worth has been delayed due to a combination of several factors, but I am still plugging away at it. I’ve also been working on a short story that is part of an anthology that is due out this November.
It’s actually this short story that I’m going to be talking about today. Thanks to A.S. Fenichel for inviting me to the Romance Writing Weekly blog hop. Hopefully this will get me to blog more regularly.
I do a lot of research for my books. Tell us one or more fun or interesting things you recently learned in your research.
I’ve been mired in this short story lately. It’s been a nice change to step away from Worth for a bit, and I’m excited for the project. It’s a winter-set story, but I didn’t want it to be a holiday story. I mean, holidays are only one part of the season, right?
One think that was different in early 19th century London is that it actually snowed in town. Today, with all the vehicles and buildings London is too warm for snow to linger on the ground like it used to. It’s basically created it’s own microclimate. But back in Regency days, that wasn’t the case. In fact, it got so cold in London that the River Thames would freeze over on occasion, resulting in a Frost Fair.
The last official Frost Fair was in 1814…and is when my story takes place. If you’re a member of the Haute Ton Reader Society group on facebook, you would’ve seen my posts about the 1814 Frost Fair and the things they did like printing pamphlets and baking gingerbread on the ice. In fact, the Museum of London, Docklands still has a complete piece of gingerbread from that fair in their collection. You can check it out in this BBC video. Can you imagine…200 years old and it still smells like gingerbread.
Anyways…referred to as a combination “winter festival and illegal rave”, the Frost Fair did not lack for entertainment. From pop up pubs to roasted oxen, wrestling to sword swallowing, and everything in between. Probably the most interesting thing I’ve discovered about the 1814 Frost Fair is that the ice was so thick between Blackfriars Bridge and London Bridge that it was strong enough to support the weight of an elephant. Whether the elephant was brought out to convince people the ice was strong enough to support them, or whether is was part of the general entertainment is still up for debate.
Elephants were not unknown in London (the first arriving in 1255) and during the 1814 Frost Fair, there would have been three elephants wintering at the Exeter Exchange as part of Polito’s Royal Menagerie. Furthermore, it wasn’t unusual to see them being taken on a walk down by the river, so a little trip onto the ice was not out of the question!
The 1814 Frost Fair lasted for five days, only ending when the ice became thin enough to pose a danger—or when people started to fall through into the Thames. While I know it’s not exactly historically accurate, I did find an episode of Dr. Who that recreated the Frost fair, with some supernatural embellishments of course. Accurate or not, it’s still fun to see the Frost Fair brought to life*.
And now, I pass the baton to Dani Jace. Be sure to pop over and see what fun research tidbit she’s discovered!
See you you next week!
*You can catch the episode on the streaming service of your choice—season 10, episode 3 “Thin Ice”.