I am thrilled today to be part of the blog tour for Don Jacobson's latest release, The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque. My thanks also goes to Janet Taylor for inviting me to take part.
Beware of What You Wish For
The Bennet Wardrobe may grant it!
Longbourn, December 1811. The day after Jane and Lizzy marry dawns especially cold for young
Kitty Bennet. Called to Papa’s bookroom, she is faced with a resolute Mr.
Bennet who intends to punish her complicity in her sister’s elopement. She will
be sent packing to a seminary in far-off Cornwall.
She reacts like any teenager chafing under the “burden” of parental
rules—she throws a tantrum. In her fury, she slams her hands against the doors
of The Bennet Wardrobe.
Her heart’s desire?
I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!
As Lydia later said, “The Wardrobe has a unique sense of humor.”
London, May 1886. Seventeen-year-old
Catherine Marie Bennet tumbles out of The Wardrobe at Matlock House to come
face-to-face with the austere Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, a scion of the Five
Families and one of the wealthiest men in the world. However, while their paths
may have crossed that May morning, Henry still fights his feelings for another
woman, lost to him nearly thirty years in his future. And Miss Bennet must decide between exile to
the remote wastelands of Cornwall or making a new life for herself in Victorian
Britain and Belle Époque France.
The Bennet Wardrobe Series is an alternative history in the Jane Austen Universe. While the
characters are familiar, I have endeavored to provide each of them with an
opportunity to grow into three-dimensional personalities, although not
necessarily in the Regency period. If
they were shaped or stifled by the conventions of the period, the
time-traveling powers of The Wardrobe helped solve their problems, make
penance, and learn lessons by giving them a chance to escape that time frame,
if only for a brief, life-changing interlude.
Would it have been possible for them to do so staying on the Regency
timeline?
Perhaps. However, something tickled my brain—maybe it was the
intersection between my youthful fascination with speculative fiction and my
mature appreciation of Austen and 19th Century fiction—that threw
the idea of the Wardrobe up in front of me.
Now my protagonists could be immersed in different timeframes beyond the
Regency to learn that which they needed to learn and in the process carry the
eternal story of love and change forward to even the 21st Century.
Atmospherics
in JAFF
All sorts of questions bedevil authors.
Are my characters
believable?
Is the plot believable?
Is the world in which my
characters interact with the plot itself believable?
How often have we read a book that has a compelling plot only to
start wondering why the characters are responding to the cruxes as they are? In
other words, if Lizzy is kidnapped, she fights her attacker every conscious
moment. She does not sit primly like a young miss awaiting a dance at Almack’s.
That would not be Elizabeth Bennet. Darcy, in his search for her, braves every
conceivable trial. He does not hire the Bow Street Runners and then retire to
Darcy House. While he is reserved and keeps his inner Colonel Fitzwilliam under
strict regulation, the moment one of those he cares about is threatened, he
becomes “a one-man assault.”[i]
How often have we begged an author (much as John Adams argued with
Rousseau or Wollstonecraft in his ephemeral but remarkably revealing Marginalia) to ‘Just have them do something that reveals their inner discourse.’This
is different from characters moving in relation to plot. Rather, it is regular
behavior that informs us of the mindset of the character. Thus, our Elizabeth
tramps all over the countryside as she burns off her impertinent energy and
shows her resistance to the social constraints bearing down upon women of her
class. The oleaginous Collins bows and scrapes to all betters, but especially those who control his next meal. We never need to hear a word from his mouth
to understand his true nature.
However, even if characters act as they ought in response to the
plot movers and show us their inner workings, the setting of the world in which
they exist must accurately contribute to the reader’s comprehension of why they are shaped as they are, why
they move as they do.
Atmospherics are the one feature that unites the book’s realm and
the reader’s world.
There is a code which we in Western Civilization have developed over
the nearly three thousand years since the Greeks. We use it to understand why persons act as
they do based upon a complex interaction of factors that form a matrix of
perception.
Consider this…
The rain is pouring down outside of the drawing room. Lady Catherine
is upon her “throne.” Suddenly she begins to laugh. Is she
happy or is she insane?
Admittedly it is Lady Catherine.
But, a rainy day is not conducive to jolly behavior. Your conclusion that she
is playing with less than 52 cards would not be amiss.
See how rain may be one atmospheric that sets a tone in this excerpt
from Chapter VIII of The Exile: Kitty
Bennet and the Belle Époque.
She rested her face against
the rain-speckled glass that cooled her flushed cheek. The soft patter of the
early afternoon shower washed away all of the noise worrying her thoughts and
settled the troubled knot in her middle, an unwelcome and periodic companion
since she peeked out of the Wardrobe in Henry’s room over four years ago.
Now twenty-one, Kitty is home from school on the night of Henry
Fitzwilliam’s engagement ball. She is not sad, but rather wistful. The chapter
develops from there.
The mood can be further darkened by forcing the mercury to drop.
Consider this fragment from Chapter XXVII, deep in Kitty’s troubles.
Peering out between the
folds of dusty, worn cloth, Kitty had gazed over at the frost creeping down the
tattered wallpaper that had been new when Napoleon III ruled. Her world had
become so small, circumscribed by the walls of this tiny icebox. She could not
find the energy to shift from the chair. Even if she did, where would she go?
The tiny circuit of bed to commode to table to chair and back again already
defined her life. No variation could be found that could relieve the boredom.
Ennui is certainly a curse, especially for those caught in an
unending cycle of seeking and disappointment. Here Lord Henry Fitzwilliam
battles the depressing feeling that nothing is going right…and he cannot
concentrate on anything else in Chapter XXIX.
He made a disgusted sound
and pushed back from his desk, walking over to the sideboard to pour a dram of
whiskey. Slipping on his dark glasses, he then gazed out a window into the
barren garden behind the townhouse; for how long, he was unclear. These brown
studies, a feature of his personality since 1883, had become more frequent as
the absence of young Miss Bennet had lengthened. Staring out the window seemed
as productive a use of his time as anything else. Little mattered to him.
There is but one word to describe the atmosphere created in the next
excerpt from Chapter XXXVI…and the French is more powerful than the English…paix.
Henry stepped out into that
expanse seeking solitude beneath the drooping willows that cooled the manicured
lawn surrounding their trunks. Spying a bench hidden behind an ancient tree, he
settled onto the white-painted iron filigree and tipped his head back against
the rough bark. He stared at, without really registering, the fragmented and
refracted rays that were split by the foliage. A singular peace he had not
experienced for nine years—plus thirty-odd—overtook him as the worry that had
been his constant companion since July drained away.
To this point, weather and place have shaped the context within
which characters establish themselves. There is one more element…perhaps the
most powerful—light.
Two excerpts each use light to set the mood for two proposals.
The first is from The Maid and
The Footman where Annie Reynolds has been sent to the Blue Parlor at
Burghley Houseto await her love, Sergeant Henry Wilson. Here, the room is nearly
monochromatic.
A cheery coal fire popped
and sizzled in the grate, giving the room a distinctive reddish brown cast.
Annie dug into her memory trying to recall where she had seen such a shade
before; searching about for something that nagged at the edges of her conscious
thought. …
Titian…that is the color
named after the Venetian artist who portrayed many of his women subjects with
auburn hair. I remember when young Mr. Darcy returned to Pemberley from his
Grand Tour with one of the Master’s portraits of a young lady. Her hair was
exactly the same hue![ii]
Curious, Annie began to
wander around the modest-sized room looking at the paintings that graced the
walls. …one, obviously by Sir Thomas Lawrence, was clearly a copy of Lord Tom
and Lady Mary’s wedding portrait. Lawrence had captured the image of love.
She studied the unusual
composition of Lord Tom standing directly behind his seated wife, both hands on
her shoulders. Lady Mary’s head was tipped slightly upwards and turned away
from the painter—not enough to obscure her features but making it obvious that
the focus of her attention was not the artist behind his easel, but rather her
husband whose tender touch had stirred deep emotions. Her left hand, the
jeweled wedding band clearly visible, reached up across her bodice to caress
his right where it rested on her bare skin.
Would the portrait have set as profound a tone if the room had been
awash in afternoon light? Perhaps…but dimness removes all the other influences
that may have competed for Annie’s attention. And, we know what is to come.
And, we are equally prepared for the final denouement in The Exile
when, in Chapter XL, we come across this scene in Renoir’s studio. Consider the
mention of Renoir’s wife and Kitty’s friend, Aline Charigot-Renoir, as
emblematic of the tone leading to where we know the tableau will lead.
Now, in the late afternoon,
golds and oranges gave dimension to barren worktables. Yet the room was neither
dead nor stripped of life. On the contrary, one could still feel the
undercurrent of potential, as if the very walls had absorbed the surfeit of
Renoir’s creative energies.
Kitty wandered through the studio herself
bathed in that remarkable light streaming in through the floor to ceiling glass
walls. Given Renoir’s version of ‘freedom of the city,’ she opened cabinets
filled with pigmented wonders…landscapes here, group scenes there. His
portraits of Aline, a lifelong passion, some just studies, others completed
except for varnish, were stored in a special place reserved for her alone.
She did not hear Henry
enter, so entranced was she with the artist’s genius.
To Henry’s eyes, Kitty was
a gilded statue come to life. Her white summer gown captured the golden hue.
Her straw blonde hair was burnished and enriched by the late afternoon glow.
Writers have an exquisite toolbox when it
comes to the way they craft a reader’ s experience. The three elements of
character, plot, and atmosphere set the stage for the transformation of common
words into a river upon which the reader is borne to new worlds of
understanding.
[i]Arthur Jackson, WWII Medal of Honor
recipient.
[ii]See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian_hair accessed 11/4/16.
Author
Bio:
Don Jacobson has written professionally for forty years. His output has ranged from news and features
to advertising, television and radio.
His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. He has previously published five books, all non-fiction. In 2016, he published the first volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series—The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary
Journey, novel that grew from two earlier novellas. The Exile is the second volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series. Other
JAFF P&P Variations include the paired books “Of Fortune’s Reversal” and “The
Maid and The Footman.”
Jacobson holds an advanced degree in History with a specialty in
American Foreign Relations. As a college
instructor, Don teaches United States History, World History, the History of
Western Civilization and Research Writing.
He is a member of JASNA-Puget Sound.
Likewise, Don is a member of the Austen
Authors collective (see the internet, Facebook and Twitter).
He lives in the Seattle, WA area
with his wife and co-author, Pam, a woman Ms. Austen would have been
hard-pressed to categorize, and their rather assertive four-and-twenty pound
cat, Bear. Besides thoroughly immersing
himself in the JAFF world, Don also enjoys cooking; dining out, fine wine and
well-aged scotch whiskey.
His other passion is cycling.
Most days from April through October will find him “putting in the
miles” around the Seattle area (yes there are hills). He has ridden several “centuries” (100 mile
days). Don is especially proud that he
successfully completed the AIDS Ride—Midwest (500 miles from Minneapolis to
Chicago) and the Make-A-Wish Miracle Ride (300 miles from Traverse City, MI to
Brooklyn, MI).
Contact
Info:
Buy
Links:
Blog Tour Schedule:
06/15From Pemberley to Milton; Guest Post, GA
06/16My Jane Austen
Book Club; Guest
Post, Excerpt, GA
06/17Just
Jane 1813;
Review, Excerpt, GA
06/19Diary of an Eccentric;Excerpt, GA
06/20Savvy Verse and Wit; Guest Post, GA
06/21Darcyholic Diversions; Author Interview,
GA
06/22My Vices and Weaknesses; Review, Excerpt, GA
06/23Babblings of a Bookworm;Character
Interview, GA
06/24A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life; Guest Post
06/25My Love for Jane Austen; Vignette, GA
06/26Interests of a Jane Austen
Girl; Review,
Excerpt, GA
06/27So
little time…; Guest
Post, GA
06/28Laughing With Lizzie;
Guest Post or Vignette, Excerpt, GA
Terms
and Conditions:
Readers may enter the drawing by tweeting once a day and daily commenting on a blog post or
review that has a giveaway attached for the tour. Entrants must provide the
name of the blog where they commented (which will be verified). If an entrant
does not do so, that entry will be disqualified. Remember: Tweet and
comment once daily to earn extra entries.
A winner may win ONLY 1 (ONE) eBook of The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the
Belle Époque by Don Jacobson. Each winner will be randomly selected by
Rafflecopter and the giveaway is international.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
My thanks again goes to Don for this interesting post! My thanks also to Janet for setting up this tour.
I wish Don all the best with this release as well as any stories in the future!
