Just as most modern-day professional beauties –– fashion models and Hollywood actresses –– would have found little favor in a past that favored the more lushly appointed, it can be hard to look at three-hundred-year-old portraits with modern eyes and see the same thing. My next book, ROYAL HARLOT, is a fictionalized biography of Barbara Villiers Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland. She was the most prominent mistress of King Charles II, and one of the baddest bad-girls in English history, which makes for a most entertaining heroine, if not perhaps the best girlfriend you’d call in a pinch. Barbara was universally regarded by her contemporaries as the most beautiful woman in 17th century England. Crowds would gather wherever she went, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Every head would turn when she entered her box at the theatre, and even happily-wed diarist Samuel Pepys made a point of walking by her house on laundry-day, just so he could see her lace-trimmed smocks hung out to dry and fantasize like mad.

Like most famous beauties of the past, Barbara was painted repeatedly, and her portraits by Sir Peter Lily are among the most enduring “images” of the Restoration. But her beauty hasn’t traveled well through the centuries. Sure, Alexander Pope wrote “Lely on animated Canvas stole/the sleepy Eye that spoke the melting soul”, but today those bedroom-eyes look, well, kind of burned-out and druggy, and the double-chins that were so celebrated among Restoration beauties seem matronly –– especially considering that most of these paintings were done before Barbara’s thirtieth birthday.

As a history-nerd, this didn’t bother me. I am up to the challenge. But the marketing folks at my publisher were scared to death, and as a result you won’t find Barbara’s face on the cover when the book hits stores on July 3. Instead we’ll be counting on readers to supply their own mental image of what the most beautiful woman in England looked like –– even if it’s not close to the 17th century truth.

Here in Pennsylvania, the temperature hasn’t risen above freezing for entire month of February and most of March as well, with a good sloppy six inches of freezing sleet last Friday. Is it any wonder, then, that my thoughts have gone back to the great Frost Fairs on the frozen Thames?

From roughly 1500 to 1850, northern Europe suffered through what modern historians call the “Little Ice Age”, with much cooler summers and frigid winters. Such dramatic shifts in climate led to everything from famines to wars, but also to less consequential events, like the Thames (the river that flows through the heart of London) freezing solid. Before the river was closed in by 19th century embankments and diverted by bridges, the depth was more shallow and the current less swift, letting the deep-freeze take hold.

There were numerous times from 1434 onward when the river froze solid enough to be crossed by horses and wagons, but the first organized Frost Fair wasn’t until the winter of 1564-65, featuring archery contests, feasts, and dancing. The Fair of 1607 is the one featured in the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The two most famous Fairs are the one of 1684 (the longest-lasting, and the one that’s featured in Duchess) and 1814 (the largest and the last.)

London during Charles II’s reign was marked by greatness: the Great Plague, the Great Fire, and one kickin’ Frost Fair. From December 1683 until February 1684, the Thames was frozen so solid that not only could men walk safely across its surface, but carts, sleighs, and horses as well.

Like any such phenomenon, the frozen river could be viewed in several ways. Those of a stern Puritanical bent (Cromwell’s time was still less than a generation in the past.) worried that it must be some sign of God’s displeasure with hedonistic London and England in general. Others who were already embracing the interest in science and nature that came with the Age of Enlightenment saw the frozen river as an amazing wonder worthy of scholarly study.

A caption from a contemporary print mirrors the concern that also came with such a harsh winter, and sounds suspiciously like Al Gore filtered through the 17th century:
Though such unusual Frosts to us are strange,
Perhaps it may predict some greater Change:
And some do fear may a fore-runner be
Of an approaching sad Mortality.

But for most Londoners, the frozen river and the Frost Fair on it was mainly one more excuse to party, and to extend the amusements of the Christmas season a little longer.

There was much to entertain visitors all day and well into the night, from bear-baiting to wrestling matches to horse-races, with the horses shod with special spiked shoes. Musicians played, rope-dancers danced, and Punch and Judy walloped away at each other. Many tried the newly imported Dutch sport of sliding in skeets (ice skates), or bought everything from toys to snuff boxes at the two “streets” of shops. Of course King Charles, never one to miss out on a good time, attended with his courtiers.

Like every good popular event, refreshment sellers did a brisk business. An entire ox was roasted near the Hungerford Stairs, but other kinds of roast and stewed meats were offered as well: duck, goose, rabbit, capon, hen, and turkey were all listed as for sale. Visitors could buy coffee, tea, and chocolate, as well as beer, ale, brandy, and sack (one temporary tavern at the Fair went by the elegant name of The Flying Piss-pot), as well as pancakes, sweets, and cakes. After dark, things got wilder, as they usually do when so much imbibing is involved: “And some do say, a giddy senseless Ass/May on the frozen THAMES be furnish’d with a Lass.”

One enterprising printer set up his press on the ice and, for a small fee, would print visitor’s names. As diarist John Evelyn noted: “People and ladies took a fancy to have their names printed…this humor took so universally that it was estimated the printer gained £5 a day, for printing a line only, at sixpence a name.”

The river remained frozen for three months, but everyone knew the fun had to end. Still, when at last the ice began to break up one night in February, the cracking was so thunderously loud that Londoners leaped from their beds and ran into the streets in terror, convinced that the city was being attacked by invading French guns.

This is the Frost Fair I used as a setting in Duchess. Sarah Churchill and her friend Anne, then Princess of Denmark, leave the stuffiness of the palace to go riding in a sleigh along the frozen Thames –– one of the few rare places where they are able to speak freely without fear of being overheard. Even swaddled in furs and hooded cloaks, it would have made for an entertaining and exhilarating trip.

In fact the horse is named after Francis, the second earl. (Researching this brought back all sorts of very distant memories of Marguerite Henry “horse books” that I read as a child, where the horses were always heroic and noble. ) I believe the Godolphin Barb was first a diplomatic gift to Louis XV from an Arab prince. Scorned as too small, the stallion demoted to a cart-horse in Paris, rescued by a English Quaker horse-lover, and eventually sold to the country stud of Francis Godolphin. There he became one of the “big three” founding fathers of modern thoroughbred horses, his qualities still much prized in racing bloodlines three hundred years later.

Every English gentleman (including John, as well as King Charles and King James) aspired to having a noteworthy stable of horses, but very few were so lucky in their stallions as Francis Godolphin!

Here’s the answer: Sarah had worked too hard to get that dukedom to let it disappear at John’s death. Instead she lobbied heavily with her friends in Parliament to have a special (and very unusual) act passed that allowed the title to pass to their eldest daughter. So John’s first successor was Henrietta, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough.

Her husband, Francis, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, had no claim to the Marlborough dukedom, but their son, William, 2nd Marqess of Blandford, should have become the next duke. Sadly, he died before his mother, so at her death, the title went next to a nephew, Charles Spencer (son of John & Sarah’s second daughter Anne), who was already 5th Earl of Sunderland. The next several Dukes were all Spencers, until the 5th Duke, George (1766-1840) took the additional name of Churchill, restoring the connection when he assumed the title.

For the record, the current Duke is the 11th. His grandson (b. 1992) is the present Earl of Sunderland, and his name –– George John Godolphin Spencer-Churchill –– manages nicely to bring it all full circle, doesn’t it?

Of course, it’s the portrait of Sarah Churchill that makes this cover such a winner. Like most wealthy, noble people of her time, Sarah had her portrait painted a number of times during her life, from a flower-decked teenager to a middle-aged grieving mother in somber mourning for her elder son.

The painting used on the cover of DUCHESS is far from the most accomplished of her portraits –– the artist, Charles Jervais, is little more than an art history footnote today, nearly forgotten behind his more accomplished peers such as Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely –– and it’s probably a flattering but not terribly accurate likeness, considering how Sarah was well into her forties when it was painted. But as a pure symbol of Sarah as Her Grace the first Duchess of Marlborough –– ah, this painting can’t be beat.

To begin with, there’s that fantastic red costume, visible clear across any bookshop. It’s not a dress; it’s a dressing gown, a loose-fitting, wrapped garment worn casually at home. Many aristocrats chose such informal attire for portraits to reinforce their elevated rank. While you, the viewer of the painting, would have had to be fully, formally dressed before you called upon a grand lady like Sarah, she, being your superior in rank and wealth, doesn’t have to bother for the lowly likes of you. She’s still wearing her undergarments, of course (even hierarchical undress has its limits) and her whalebone-stiffened stays mold her body into the fashionable, conical shape visible beneath her loosely wrapped dressing gown.

Yet though this is a casual garment, it’s still a very costly one –– and one that Sarah, the wealthiest woman in England, wants you to know she can afford with ease. The fabric is silk velvet, likely imported from Marseilles or Genoa. The brilliant scarlet is a “power” color, favored by kings, cardinals, generals, and other persons of high rank. The primary ingredient of red dyes at this time was cochineal, made from crushed Mexican beetles that the Spaniards imported at great expense. Sarah’s choice of a red dressing gown is unusual for a lady, demonstrating as it does not only her wealth, but her power at Court –– equal or superior to that of a powerful man.

Even her pose reinforces her status. True, she’s sitting on some peculiar mossy hummock that was probably a chair in the artist’s studio. But she’s been painted from slightly below, forcing the painter (and the viewer) to gaze up at her. Considering how the finished portrait would also be hung above eye level would only increase the feeling that yes, you are beneath Sarah in every possible way –– exactly where she’d wish you to be.

There’s even more to this picture to show that Sarah’s no ordinary English lady. The portraits of other seventeenth-century noblewomen emphasize their roles within the domestic sphere. They’re posed with needlework, letters, flowers, pets, and children, their hands are often clasped, with their houses often shown in the distance behind them.

But Sarah sits alone in a vague green landscape that doesn’t represent a specific place, but stands in for all the acres and acres of land –– whether at Windsor, St. Albans, or Woodstock –– that she and her husband John have acquired through hard work, intrigue, and royal favor. She stares out boldly over her shoulder, with an expression that’s so confident as to be almost arrogant. Instead of having her hands modestly folded in her lap, she has one hand touching her temple, signifying her unusual intellect, while the other is extended, palm open with a consummate courtier’s grace, towards the greater world beyond –– and, I hope, to readers everywhere.

Such is the case with my next book, DUCHESS, to be released early in August. My first foray into fictionalized biography, DUCHESS is the story of Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough. Recently I received an email from my publicist at NAL, requesting that I answer several background questions about the book to help her generate publicity about it. The first question was, of course, a variation of the old favorite: When did you first become interested in Sarah Churchill?

And I knew at once: 1971. The very first BBC series shown in America as part of PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre was a multi-part saga set in 17th century England called “The First Churchills”, staring Susan Hampshire and John Neville. I was in high school, and though I was already branded a history nerd, I’d never heard of any Churchill beyond Sir Winston, and all I knew of King Charles II and his bawdy Restoration court had come via a well-thumbed copy of “Forever Amber.” But with millions of other viewers, I was instantly drawn into the lives of the beautiful, ambitious Sarah and her dashing soldier John as they contrived to rise from penniless beginnings to the very highest places in the English court and army –– the most powerful and wealthiest couple of their time. For the majority of “First Churchills” fans, the series was a fascinating way to pass Sunday night. For me, it was the germ of a novel I wouldn’t realize I’d write for another thirty-four years.

I began to think of other movies or television shows that helped shape my impressions of the past that still influence me today. I don’t mean actual research, but more the romantic sweep of history that sank so deeply into my impressionable teen-aged bones that it remains with me now.

First and foremost, of course, would be Franco Zefferelli’s 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet.” The overture alone is enough to reduce a whole generation of long-grown women to shuddering sighs (and apparently remains popular enough that the DVD is #351 on Amazon, with nearly two hundred comments!) In those days of limited movie distribution, my friends and I skipped school and took the bus into Manhattan to the Paris movie theatre on 57th Street, the one place where it seemed always to be playing (and why, I ask you, do I still remember THAT?) and where we’d weep in the dark and savor the gorgeously romantic past of Zefferelli’s Renaissance. Leonard Whiting in dark blue velvet wasn’t so bad, either.

Victorian England had already hooked its marcasite claws into me through Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, and “Far From the Madding Crowd” in 1967 carried me off to Wessex with Julie Christie and her perfect Mod-girl straight bangs and sulky mouth. As Bathsheba Everdene, she was wooed by three heroes –– Alan Bates, Terrence Stamp, and Peter Finch –– which, when you’re struggling to achieve the notice of churlish high school boys, struck me as glorious excess. I’ve never forgotten the wide, melancholy vistas of Hardy-country, Terrence Stamp’s flopping black hair and beautiful army uniform, and Julie’s skirts billowing in the wind.

The 1970 version of D.H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love” was an eye-opener of another kind. Alan Bates again, plus Oliver Reed. Yes, Glenda Jackson won the Oscar, but all I remember was those two men eating figs in a lascivious way that simultaneously embarrassed and fascinated my adolescent self. This wasn’t “Romeo and Juliet” love; this was something else entirely from health class filmstrips, something dark and sensuous and very, very grown-up. Terence Stamp, Oliver Reed, Alan Bates –– are they the reasons that so many of the heroes I’ve written have been Englishmen with dark hair and blue eyes?

There were many more period movies that left their mark on me –– Tom Jones, Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Barry Lyndon –– movies that remain much more vivid in my memory than any of their newer counterparts can ever be. I don’t seem to have the patience for movies now. I see too many historical inaccuracies, inconsistencies in characters, weaknesses in plot development, all the curse of habitual self-editing. Sadly, that innocence of blissful ignorance can’t be regained, any more than I could squeeze into a pair of Landlubber or Britannia jeans from the same vintage.

I don’t buy the DVD’s of my old favorites, either. Just as it’s better not to discover that the old boyfriend is now bald and belting his Dockers south of the equator, I’d rather leave Juliet and Bathsheba in the hazy, flattering glow of the their past, and mine.

And, like Sarah Churchill, I never know how or when they’ll rise up from my memory and into my writing.