Beautiful Forever – The Life of Madame Rachel

Everyday women are inundated with advertisements promising to remove fine lines, miracle creams to make skin youthful and dewy, to turn back the hands of time.  We all know that there is no miracle cure for aging, but we continue to buy, and to seek out new beauty treatments like Botox, chemical peels and fillers.  But none of this is new; women (and men) have been seeking the fountain of youth since the dawn of time.  However, in the 19^th century, with the advent of daily newspapers and the increase in literacy, a new way was found to reach the masses, advertising.  And no one did it better than Madame Rachel, a con artist who operated a prominent beauty salon, from which she personally guaranteed her clients who used her fabulous preparations, everlasting youth.  Among the money items for sale were magnetic rock water that was allegedly from the Sahara desert and water from the River Jordan in Israel.  For almost ten years, Madame Rachel had Victorian women fooled.  But it wasn’t just beauty treatments that Madame Rachel was offering her clients.  

At the time of her first trial for fraud in 1868, Madame Rachel’s case exposed not only the thinly veiled anti-Semitism that was rampant in Victorian London, but also their fears of independent women running successful businesses.  She threatened everything that the Victorians held dear about the role of women, who were supposed to be chaste, unpainted angels who needed protection.  Whores, actresses and loose women wore make-up and cared about their appearances, not the average Victorian housewife, or so they thought.  Her trial exposed women’s dirty, little secret, that they were willing to pay a high price in their pursuit of beauty.

In the 19^th century, cosmetics were a lucrative growth business; companies such as Rimmel were founded. But the industry was still in its infancy, and products were crude, and colors were limited.  Make-up consisted of rouge and powder, red salve for the lips and kohl for the eyes but any respectable woman who used more than face powder was given disapproving looks. Queen Victoria, in particular, was appalled at the idea of women using cosmetics. Female beauty was only supposed to be achieved by washing with soap and water, and exposure to fresh air, but not too much dancing as it gave an undignified flush to the cheeks. There was such a general hostility to make-up that most women concocted their cosmetics at home using homemade recipes with ingredients such as arsenic.  Only those with money could afford face washes and creams offered by proprietors such as Madame Rachel.

Madame Rachel claimed to be a woman of social standing who was distantly related to the great French tragedienne Rachel Felix.  In reality, she was born Sarah Rachel Russell sometime between 1806 and 1814. She grew up poor and illiterate in the East End of London, but what she lacked in formal education, she more than made up with street smarts.  According to biographers, Rachel was married to an assistant chemist in Manchester, and then later in 1844 to a man named Jacob Moses who deserted her.  She later moved in with a man named Philip Levinson (also known as Levy or Leverson), whose name she subsequently took.  Leverson was the father of six of her children.  Initially Rachel had a fried fish and potatoes stall in the slums of Clement St. Danes, supplementing her income as a dealer in second hand clothes, before she hit on a more lucrative line of work, selling cosmetics.  

She came armed with a sob story guaranteed to win sales, claiming that she’d been ill with a fever and her beautiful locks were shorn.  A medical man told her that he would give her a lotion which would make not only make her hair grow back, but even more beautiful and luxurious than before.  The product worked and Madame was launched into the beauty business.  With the help of her oldest daughter also named Rachel, she wrote a pamphlet called Beautiful for Ever, which laid out her philosophy of beauty.  The pamphlet was only 24 pages and could only be purchased exclusively at Madame Rachel’s.

Although she may not have had a formal education, she was a natural when it came to marketing her products and her business.  Madame Rachel advertised her exotic sounding wares in publications like The Times of London, the Court Journal and Debrett’s peerage, places where her target audience, wealthy women, would see them and become intrigued.  Next she secured premises in Bond Street (No. 47A) for her shop.  She claimed to not only be a ‘purveyor to Her Majesty the Queen,” but also Empress Eugenie, one of the most admired beauties of the era.  She also jacked up the prices, proving that even in the Victorian age; people believed that if something was incredibly expensive, it must be good.  To make it even more alluring, Madame Rachel advertised that nowhere else could women obtain the products that she offered.   Everyone loves exclusivity.  She also claimed she and her daughters were much older than they were as proof of efficacy of her products.  If Madame Rachel were alive today, she would probably be the CEO of a global advertising firm.

Women would arrive at her door heavily veiled so that no one would recognize them.  Once inside, Madame made sure that they were surrounded by luxury.   The premises were decorated with Middle Eastern opulence, the scent of sandalwood and incense in the air, their every need attended to by young women in flowing robes.  And at the center of it all was Madame Rachel, dressed all in black, like a spider luring its prey.  For her more discreet patrons, Madame Rachel also made house calls. The season which stretched from about the beginning of February until mid-July was her busiest time. According to her most recent biographer Helen Rappaport, Madame Rachel raked in thousands of pounds on a weekly basis, which eventually bought her a box at Covent Garden, a fine carriage and a pair of horses. Madame Rachel didn’t just spend her money on herself; she used the money to send her younger daughters and sons to school in Paris so that they could obtain the education that she never had.  Her eldest son David was attending medical school in London.

Madame Rachel offered an array of treatments all with suitably luxurious and exotic names.  Items such as Rejuvenating Jordan water which sold for 10 to 20 guineas a bottle (about £1,000 today), Circassian Golden Hair Wash, Magnetic Rock Dew for Removing Wrinkles, Royal Arabian Face Cream, and Honey of Mount Hymetus wash, along with perfumes, oils and spices that she imported at great expense from Armenia, Circassia and Madagascar.  But her most sought after treatment was what she called ‘enameling.’  Anyone who has seen portraits of Queen Elizabeth I probably have a good idea of what the treatment entailed.  Her customers craved a white, porcelain complexion not just on the face but also the bosom and shoulders.   The price for this treatment was a mere 20 guineas.  The treatment was actually quite simple.  Madame would use various lotions to remove facial hair, followed by an alkaline toilet wash to cleanse the skin, and then she would fill in the lines and depressions on the face with a thick white paste.  A little powder to set the paste and a touch of blush completed the process.

But beauty treatments weren’t all that Madame Rachel offered.  She also had a neat little sideline going as a so-called marriage broker, as well as procurer.  Lonely widows and spinsters would come to Madame Rachel for treatments, and then once she had ‘beautified’ them, she offered them a chance at personal happiness but it was all lies. Like con artists since the dawn of time, Madame Rachel exploited the weaknesses of women to make a profit.  She would also encourage her clients to take an Arabian bath and then men would pay money to spy on them through a peep hole.

But her most profitable sideline was in blackmail.  Madame’s treatments cost a fortune, and many of her upper class clients were in debt up to their eyeballs.  Until the Married Women’s Property Act in 1882, a married woman had no money of her own unless she had a forward thinking Papa who made sure that his little darling had an allowance or pin money as part of her dowry.  Most women were not that lucky. They were basically spending their husbands’ money without his permission. Madame Rachel would extend them credit and then once they owed her thousands of pounds, she would try to collect. Since the women were too afraid to tell their husbands the truth, Madame would offer to take their jewels as collateral.  Madame would then take the jewels to a pawn shop and keep the money for herself.  Women were too afraid to take Madame to court because it meant being exposed to ridicule and social humiliation.

In 1868, one of her former clients was finally brave enough to sue Madame for fraud and malpractice.  While Madame was eventually convicted, her client’s reputation was ruined.  The client’s name was Mary Tucker Borradaile, a widow of an Army colonel who had been stationed in India.  She had met Madame Rachel in 1864, and continued to patronize her shop for several years.  As an inducement for Mrs. Borradaile to continue her treatments, Madame Rachel told her that an aristocrat named Lord Ranelagh (Thomas Heron Jones, 7^th Viscount Ranelagh) was in love with her.  Mrs. Borradaile corresponded with Lord Ranelagh solely through Madame Rachel, continuing to give her money for treatments, until in the end she’d even signed over her widow’s pension.  Of course, Lord Ranelagh, a notorious rake and scoundrel, denied that he had ever met Mrs. Borradaile or set foot in Madame Rachel’s shop.

The newspapers and tabloids had a field day with the story.  They printed vicious anti-Semitic cartoons; the case seemed to confirm people’s suspicions about Jews, that they were avaricious and foreign, preying on the good citizens of Britain.  There was so much coverage of the case, with so many slanderous stories, that it would have been impossible for Madame Rachel to receive a fair trial. The case went through two trials before Madame Rachel was convicted.  By the end, the judge clearly believed that she was guilty and made no bones of his opinion in front of the jury.  Madame Rachel nee Sarah Rachel Leverson was sentenced to five years penal servitude, of which she served three years.  Unrepentant, she went back into the beauty business.  Ten years after her first conviction, she was once again convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison where she died in 1880. During her second trial, several of her products were analyzed and found to contain nothing more than water, fullers earth, pearl ash, starch and hydrochloric acid.

Sources:

Margaret Nicholas, The World's Wickedest Women, Octopus Books Limited, London, 1984
Helen Rappaport, Beautiful for Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street – Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer. Ebrington: Long Barn Books 2010.
The Extraordinary Life and Trial of Madame Rachel at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey

Review: The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig

Title: The Ashford Affair

Author:  Lauren Willig

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication date: 4/9/2013

I have to preface this review by saying that I have had the privilege of getting to Lauren over the past five or six years through RWA conferences and Lady Jane’s Salon. I’m also huge fan of her Pink Carnation series, particularly A Very Turnip Christmas which for some reason she insists on calling The Mischief of the Mistletoe.  She’s not only a fantastic writer, but she’s also an extremely nice person, witty and intelligent.  And if that weren’t bad enough, she wears ridiculously cute dresses.  Seriously, even at eight months pregnant, she’s still adorable. Oh and she bakes as well. It’s absolutely too, too sick-making as Lady Beatrice Gillecote would say. So when I had the opportunity to read Lauren’s first stand-alone historical novel, I couldn’t say no.  Especially once I learned that the book was set during the 1920’s in England and Kenya.  As I’ve mentioned numerous times on the blog, I’m absolutely nuts about the Roaring Twenties.

The Ashford Affair is actually two intertwined stories, a multigenerational tale that spans almost one hundred years.  In 1999, Clementine Evans, known as Clemmie to her family and friends, is an associate in a large Manhattan firm, just shy of making partner.  At the age of 34, she has finally achieved almost everything she’s been working towards—but now she’s not sure it’s enough. Her long hours have led to a broken engagement and, suddenly single; she feels her messy life crumbling around her. At her Grandmother Addie’s ninety-ninth birthday, her step-cousin Jon lets slip hints about a long-buried family secret, leading Clemmie on a journey into the past that could change everything that she thinks she knows about her family. As her life begins to unravel, she discovers secrets about Addie that rock her world.

The second story involved Clemmie’s grandmother Addie.  Orphaned in 1906, Addie is sent to live to with her aunt and uncle into the grand English house called Ashford Park. Scared and lonely, Addie is befriended by beautiful and outgoing cousin, Beatrice. Although they are as different as night and day, Addie and Bea are closer than sisters, partners in crime.  For a while, it seemed like nothing could come between the two of them. But World War I not only changes the face of Europe irrevocably, but also the relationship between the two cousins. Beatrice makes her family proud by landing a Marquess, but her marriage quickly unravels. Addie secretly finds fulfillment in her new job working for the Bloomsbury Review. One day, she becomes reacquainted with Frederick Desborough by chance.  Addie falls hopelessly in love, but Frederick has been emotionally scarred by his experiences in the war.  

I would spoil the rest of the book by revealing more, but I think that one can guess what happens next.  The action soon shifts to Kenya, where Bea is now living after creating a huge scandal in London.  Addie is collateral damage to her cousin’s actions, cut off from her family, and forced to fend for herself. After six years, Bea has invited Addie out to Kenya. Addie sees the trip as her last chance for adventure before she settles down with her rather staid fiancé, a lecturer at King’s College.

I loved a great deal about this book, and what I didn’t love, I liked. Addie had my heart from her the moment that she runs and hides in the closet when her new relatives come to get her. She is a keen observer, with a sharp wit that pops out occasionally.  She grew up in a loving, warm but rather bohemian family in Bloomsbury. It turns out that her father married beneath him to a woman who wrote rather racy novels for the time.  From the very beginning, Addie is made to feel unwanted by her Aunt Vera, who frequently mutters about how blood will tell. When Addie arrives at Ashford Park, her cousin Beatrice who is only a year or so older, immediately adopts her as one would a stray dog. Her older sister Dodo is obsessed with her horses, and younger sister Poppy is a mere toddler when the book opens. Beatrice is not only a free spirit but also somewhat spoilt. As a member of the aristocracy, she’s used to getting her own way and damn the consequences. But she’s also kind to Addie, the only one in the family who makes the effort to treat her as such. How could Addie not love her?

Because Addie is the poor relation, she’s afforded a bit more freedom than her cousin. During the war, Addie allowed to become a nurse, while Beatrice is not.  No one expects Addie to make a good marriage, even Beatrice assumes that she will end up marrying a country vicar. Lauren has a fine eye for not only historical detail but for social commentary as well. Through Addie’s sharp eyes, the reader gets an intimate view of The Bright Young Things who populated London just after the war. Addie only sees the waste of too many people drinking and dancing their lives away instead of taking their experiences during the war and using them to make a difference.  At times, she can come off as a bit of a prig. Like Bea, one wishes that Addie would loosen her girdle a bit, and get in the swing of things. The story gets even more complex when the action moves to Kenya. Addie finds that the British transplants have just brought the party to Africa. While Bea can come across at times as shallow and glib, Willig gives the reader a glimpse into a woman who has been brought up to be beautiful and decorative, and then finds out that it’s no longer enough.

When the story moves into the late 20^th century, that was where it lost me. Unfortunately I didn’t find Clemmie’s story nearly as interesting or as absorbing as Addie and Bea. In fact, the little glimpses that the reader is given of Clemmie’s mother Marjorie and her sister Anna, I found more compelling.  I would have loved to have read more about their lives after the events in Kenya. Maybe there were just too many similarities between Clemmie’s character and Addie. Both women felt like outsiders in their own families, both women have a bit of sharp wit but Clemmie was a little too much of a sad sack for me. I found myself skimming through the sections set during 1999/2000 to get back to Addie and Bea’s story. I wanted to actually see Addie’s office at The Bloomsbury Review not just hear about, and I wanted more insight into Addie and Frederick’s blossoming relationship in Kenya. Although I totally believed in their love story, I wanted to see more of it.

Still there were some moments that I enjoyed, particularly Clemmie arriving in London, tired and worn out, and having to immediately run to a meeting without getting a chance to change. I’m sure quite a few readers could relate to that. I also liked the brief glimpses that we got of her relationship with her mother, and the realization that even her mother had more of a social life than she did.  Frankly I hope Clemmie found a hobby or something to lighten her up a bit.

The book is ultimately a love story, not just between Addie and Frederick or Clemmie and Jon, but Addie and Bea.  It’s a story of female friendship, and how easily it can be shattered through jealously, neglect, and growing apart, but also the strength of that friendship, how it can ultimately be repaired.

Verdict:  This stand-alone is the perfect introduction to Willig’s writing for those readers who might be a bit daunted by The Pink Carnation series. A richly textured historical novel that sweeps the reader from post-war London to the Happy Valley in Kenya and then to millennium era New York City. Willig weaves a stunning tale of sex, secrets and sisterhood. I'm looking forward to seeing what Lauren comes up with next. I've heard rumors that involves the VIctorian era and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

review: ROYAL MISTRESS by Anne Easter Smith

Title:  Royal Mistress

Author:  Anne Easter Smith
Publisher:   Touchstone
Publication Date:  May 7, 2013
How Acquired:  Through Net Galley

What it’s About:  Jane Lambert, the quick-witted and alluring daughter of a silk merchant, is twenty-two and still unmarried. When Jane’s father finally finds her a match, she’s married off to the dull, older silk merchant William Shore. Marriage doesn’t stop Jane from flirtation, however, and when the king’s chamberlain, Will Hastings, comes to her husband’s shop, Will knows King Edward will find her irresistible.

Edward IV has everything: power, majestic bearing, superior military leadership, a sensual nature, and charisma. And with Jane as his mistress, he also finds true happiness. But when his hedonistic tendencies get in the way of being the strong leader England needs, his life, as well as those of Jane and Will Hastings, hangs in the balance. Jane must rely on her talents to survive as the new monarch, Richard III, bent on reforming his brother’s licentious court, ascends the throne.

My thoughts:  I’ve had a lovely couple of days spending time with my favorite Plantagenets thanks to Anne Easter Smith.  I read and reviewed Anne’s last book QUEEN BY RIGHT about Cecily Neville, the Duchess of York, which I enjoyed, so I was eager to dive back into this world that I have loved ever since I saw THE LION IN WINTER in high school.  Jane Shore, Edward IV’s last mistress, was someone that I had heard of, but knew very little. At first when I started reading the novel, I thought that it was just going to be another harlot with a heart of gold story.  You know, “she sleeps with the King, but she’s a really good person who helps the poor,” type of thing but Jane’s story is much deeper than that.

When the book opens, Jane Lambert is on the verge of spinsterhood.  She’s twenty-two and still unmarried which was highly unusual at that time.  Her father is bit of an asshole; he adores her younger sister Isabel but treats Jane like she’s a nuisance.  He expects absolute obedience, and prefers women to be seen and not heard. Jane however is quick-witted, intelligent and not afraid to speak her mind. There’s a telling scene with her mother Amy who shares her story with Jane, that once she too was outspoken and feisty, until basically Jane’s father beat it out of her.  She tells Jane that one day she too will learn to keep silent.  How awful but also probably how common was that in the 15^th century when educating a woman was seen as a waste of time.  The fact that Jane can actually read makes her something of an anomaly.

She’s also gorgeous, petite with an hour-glass figure, and wavy blonde hair.  She’s the type of woman who men gape at on the street, while their women glare. It’s not Jane’s fault that she’s a pocket Venus but most men don’t see much past her pretty face.   Jane is also a bit of a romantic, she wants true love which she thinks she’s found with Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset until she discovers that he’s not only married, but that he’s lied about who he is.

Since she can’t marry the man that she loves, Jane settles for marriage to William Shore, a much older silk merchant who is eager to get in good with her father.  She’s determined to make her marriage work but William won’t cooperate, or more to the point, a certain part of Will’s anatomy won’t cooperate.  As I read further into the book, I experienced a range of emotions towards Jane.  I liked her enormously for her sense of fun, her optimism, independent, and most of all her loyalty to her friends, her King, and Will Hastings. When she has the opportunity to help her friend Sophie as well as others in her community, she does. On the other hand, Jane was also naïve, stubborn, and headstrong.

The novel details the last few years of Edward IV’s reign as well as the first two years of Richard III’s reign. Although the book is predominantly Jane’s story, it is told in multiple points of view, including Will Hastings, Richard III, Elizabeth of York and Thomas Grey.  Ah poor Edward IV, he comes across as a relatively decent man who started out as a good King but then through boredom, and having to constantly deal with his asshole of a brother George, Duke of Clarence, he’s given full reign to his hedonistic side, spending more time drinking, eating and whoring than he does governing.  You finish the book feeling what a waste of a human life.  To spend all that time fighting to get what you want, the Crown of England, just to turn into a fat git towards the end. When the revelation comes to light in the book about Eleanor Butler, one is not surprised; it is exactly the type of boneheaded move that you would have expected from Edward.

And then there is Richard, my Richard.  For the record, I’m a diehard Ricardian but that doesn’t mean that I believe that Richard III was a saint.  As portrayed by Easter Smith in ROYAL MISTRESS, Richard’s downfall is his inflexibility when he thinks that he is right.  In his own way, he’s as arrogant as Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence.  Like Jane, he is incredibly loyal to Edward IV and by his extension his family, although he loathes the Queen and the Woodvilles as many people did at the time.  One has to wonder if Elizabeth Woodville hadn’t made such a power play after Edward IV’s death, whether or not things would have turned out differently.  Edward IV’s death meant that people stopped playing nice and began to get real.  Easter Smith has an interesting take on the death of the two Princes, it’s a theory that has been tossed about before, but she lends it real weight in her portrayal of the events that lead to their death.

Edward’s death means that Jane is in danger of losing everything.  It’s to her credit that she didn’t demand more from Edward. Her plight illustrates the lack of opportunities available to women in the 15^th century if they are not married.  While the reader may not like Jane’s choices, in the end one understands where she is coming from.  There is a moment towards the end of the book, where she is talking to her close friend Sophie, that is just so self-aware without taking you out of the story.   Jane makes no apologies about the choices that she has made in her life. In the end, after everything that Jane has been through, her unhappy marriage, her relationship with Edward IV, and the punishment meted out to her by Richard III, you long for her to have a happy ending.

My verdict:  A compelling and intimate account of the last days of the Plantagenet dynasty. An utter joy to read and a must for lovers of The War of the Roses.  Now that I have read ROYAL MISTRESS, I will definitely be seeking out A ROSE FOR THE CROWN, DAUGHTER OF YORK and A KING’S GRACE. The only trouble is which one am I going to read first?  Hmm!

The Case Against Florence Maybrick

The story of Florence Maybrick in the late 19th century fascinated Victorian audiences.  Was she a vile poisoner or a Victorian victim? Because she was an American by birth, the case ended up involving the US press as well as the US government, as her lawyers worked frantically to get her sentence either commuted or overturned.

The suspect:

 Name:  Florence Elizabeth Chandler

Born:  September 3, 1862, Mobile, Alabama.

Parents:  William George Chandler, a banker and one-time mayor of Mobile, and the Baroness von Roques.

Background:  Florence’s father died when she was a baby.  Her mother married twice more, the final time to a German baron. Florence grew up in Europe, educated privately by governesses, spoke French and German fluently. She was pretty, vivacious and sophisticated.

 

The Victim:

Name:  James Maybrick

Born:  October 25, 1838, Liverpool England

Parents:  William and Susanna Maybrick. 

Profession:  Cotton Broker.  His business required him to travel regularly to the United States.  In 1871, he settled for a time in Norfolk, VA, to establish a branch office of his company.

 

Background:  In March of 1880, Florence Chandler met James Maybrick on a ship from New York to Liverpool, England.  When the boat docked 8 days later, they were engaged. Florence was 18 and James was 42.  The two were an odd couple. While Florence was petite with dark, wavy hair and big blue eyes, James was portly with florid cheeks, typical middle-aged Englishman.   Despite their age difference, the couple was wed over a year later on July 27, 1881 at St. James Church, Piccadilly in London. For three years, the couple divided their time between Norfolk and Liverpool before settling permanently in Liverpool.

The couple had two children, a son named James Chandler known as “Bobo” and a daughter Gladys Evelyn. They moved into Battlecrease House in a suburb of Liverpool, a huge house that had over twenty rooms.  By necessity (Florence wasn’t going to clean those rooms herself!), they employed a gaggle of servants including two maids, a nanny, a nursemaid, a footman etc. Florence had no close friends in Liverpool, although she led an active social life with parties, teas, benefits, and charity dances.  Her husband’s family was suspicious of her and her mother, considering them to be adventuresses.  Her husband’s ex-fiancée and her two sisters came and went freely from the Maybrick home. 
 
Florence had no idea how to deal with servants or how to run a household.  She and her mother had led a peripatetic existence in Europe and the United States, never settling anywhere for long, because of their finances.  She had no idea how to budget.  When her husband was having financial difficulties, he put her on allowance of £7 a week, out of which she had to pay the bills as well as the servants.  Florence borrowed money from money lenders in order to pay creditors which left her increasingly in debt. She lived in fear of her husband finding out exactly how much money she owed.
 
After 5 years of marriage, Florence discovered that James not only had a long-term mistress, but they also had several children. As soon as Florence found out about Maybrick’s mistress, she stopped sleeping with him.  Lonely and wanting a little romance, Florence began an affair with a businessman named Alfred Brierly but the affair was short-lived. When Maybrick discovered her affair, there was a violent row during which Maybrick assaulted her. Divorce was impossible. While Maybrick would have been able to divorce Florence for her adultery, Florence would have had to prove not only adultery but cruelty, desertion or incest for her to obtain a divorce.   Maybrick might have been able to take her children from her, and if he divorced her for adultery, he was not obliged to support her.

Death:

James Maybrick’s health deteriorated suddenly in April of 1889, and he died fifteen days later on May 11. His brothers were immediately suspicious as to the cause of death and had his body examined. After an inquest, at the age of 27, Florence was arrested for the murder of her husband. Florence was tried at St. George’s Hall, Liverpool before Justice James Fitzjames Stephen, and convicted and sentenced to hang.

Florence’s case is interesting for following reasons:

• Case led to two important changes in the law.  The first was the Criminal Evidence Act of 1898.  For the first time a person accused of murder was allowed to give evidence on their own behalf.
• The second was the criminal Court Appeal Act of 1907.  This came about because of the conduct of Judge Stephen during the trial.  Although he was a well-respected judge, Stephen had suffered a stroke four years because the trial and his mind was clearly befuddled.
• Thirdly, the press had a huge role in the proceedings.  The case was reported on not only in the Liverpool paper, but in all 21 daily papers in London, as well as in several newspapers in New York and the United States.  In the beginning, before the trial started, the press was vehemently against Florence, treating her as an evil murderess.  It wasn’t until the trial started that the press started to write articles in Florence’s favor.
• After the verdict, there was a huge public outcry.  Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor Halsbury concluded that while Florence did give her husband arsenic with the intent to murder him, there were grounds for reasonable doubt as to whether it was the cause of his death.  She was given a reprieve; her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment instead.

 There was never a chance that Florence was going to get a fair trial. The case against her was complicated by intrigue, adultery and drug abuse, and the British establishment was convinced of her guilt.
 

Whether or not Florence is an innocent victim or a cold-blooded killer, she should not have been convicted because:

·         The doctors could not agree on how James Maybrick died.  One doctor thought it was arsenic poisoning, another thought it might have gastroenteritis.

·         Maybrick didn’t have enough arsenic in his system at the time of his death to kill him.

·         She was the victim of the Victorian double-standard.  While her affair was broadcast in court and her letters published in the newspapers, Maybrick’s affairs were given short shrift.

·         Arsenic was everywhere in the Maybrick house, most household cleaners used it as did many medicines at the time.

·         A city chemist testified that he had supplied Maybrick with quantities of arsenic over a lengthy period of time.

·         James was a hypochondriac and drug addict.  He’d become addicted to arsenic and morphine after being treated for malaria.  Both drugs were also considered to be aphrodisiacs in the 19^th century.

·         Florence had very little motive to kill her husband.  In her husband’s will, she and the children were left with very little.  She would have been better off with him alive but legally separated.

·         The infamous double standard was applied to their behavior. While Florence’s affair with Brierly was known and talked about in court, her husband’s affairs were treated lightly as if they were of no consequence. 

The evidence against her:

•  In April 1889, Florence had bought flypaper containing arsenic from a local chemist’s shop which she later soaked in a bowl of water.  She claimed that she had planned to use the arsenic for a beauty treatment (not uncommon at the time).  She even produced the recipe at her trial.
• Shortly afterward, Maybrick was taken ill on April 27, 1889 after self-medicating with a double dose of strychnine.  His doctors were called but his condition continued to deteriorate.
• In May 1889, Florence wrote a letter to her lover Alfred Brierly which was intercepted by Alice Yapp, the nanny who disliked Florence.  Yapp passed it along to Edwin Maybrick, who shared it with his brother Michael.  Michael ordered Florence to be played under house arrest.
• On May 9, a nursemaid reported that Florence had tampered with a meat juice bottle which was found to have a ½ grain of arsenic.  Florence testified that her husband had begged her to administer it to him as a pick-me-up.  However, Maybrick never drank it.
• Many people believed that Florence’s motive was that Maybrick intended to divorce her which would have been social ruin.

 Aftermath:

• Florence Maybrick was finally released in 1904, after fourteen years in custody.  She moved back to the United States, where she lectured protesting her innocence.  Wrote a book called My Fifteen Lost Years.
• In later life, she became a recluse, living in a squalid cabin in CT with only her cats for company.
• She never saw her children again. Died penniless and alone on October 23, 1941 and was buried in the grounds of the South Kent School.  Her only possessions were a tattered family bible, pressed within the pages, was a recipe for soaking flypapers for use as a beauty treatment.
• Her case inspired several novels including Dorothy L. Sayers STRONG POISON and Marie Belloc Lowndes LETTY LYNTON.

 Innocent or Guilty – You decide

Personally I think that Florence was innocent.  She was beautiful but flighty; I don’t think that she was smart enough to come up with a plan to kill her husband.  Although the marriage had gone sour, the two had reconciled before his death.  Florence admitted in court that she had put arsenic in her husband’s meat juice but insisted that Maybrick had asked her to.  There was also way too much arsenic in the house, none of it concealed. Of course it is entirely possible that Florence counted on that fact becoming known.  Unfortunately for Florence, her husband’s family never liked her, and was more than eager to blame her for James’s death.  Maybrick had a long history of abusing drugs and poisons such as arsenic.  It is conceivable and more than likely that his body just couldn’t take it anymore which lead to his death.

Further Reading:

Victoria Blake – Mrs. Maybrick:  Crime Archive, The National Archives, 2008
Trevor Christie, Etched in Arsenic, Harrap, 1968
A.E. Graham and Carol Emmas, The Last Victim, Headline, 1999

Book of the Month: The Creation of Anne Boleyn

Title:  The Creation of Anne Boleyn

Author:  Susan Bordo

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin

Pub Date:  April 9, 2013

How Acquired:  Bought

What it's about:  Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.

Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto “mean girl,” feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies.

What the critics are saying:

"A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike"
—Kirkus Reviews

"Ms. Bordo offers a fascinating discussion... a strangely tasty book."—The New York Times

"The University of Kentucky humanities chair does a superb job of separating fact from fiction in contemporary accounts of Boleyn’s life, before deftly deconstructing the myriad and contradictory portraits of her that have arisen in the centuries since her death. . . . The young queen has been the source of fascination for nearly half a millennium, and her legacy continues; this engaging portrait culminates with an intriguing exploration of Boleyn’s recent reemergence in pop culture." —Publishers Weekly

About the author:  SUSAN BORDO, Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at University of Kentucky, is the author of Unbearable Weight and The Male Body.

My thoughts:  It seemed fitting that I should choose The Creation of Anne Boleyn on the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution.  When I first picked up this book, I felt a sense of schadenfreude.  This was a book that I wish that I had written but once I started reading it, I felt a sense of kinship with the author.  She gets it! She was just as obssessed with Anne Boleyn as I am! If you were annoyed with The Tudors or you just want to dig deep into the life of Anne Boleyn and how people's perceptions of her have changed over the centuries, I urge you to pick up a copy of this book.  It is must for every Anne Boleyn fan out tehre.

Review: Black Venus

Title:  Black Venus

Author:  James MacManus

Publisher:  Thomas Dunne Books

Pub Date:  May 7, 2013

How Acquired:  From the publicist

What it’s About:  A vivid novel of Charles Baudelaire and his lover Jeanne Duval, the Haitian cabaret singer who inspired his most famous and controversial poems, set in nineteenth-century Paris.

For readers who have been drawn to The Paris Wife, Black Venus captures the artistic scene in the great French city decades earlier, when the likes of Dumas and Balzac argued literature in the cafes of the Left Bank. Among the bohemians, the young Charles Baudelaire stood out—dressed impeccably thanks to an inheritance that was quickly vanishing. Still at work on the poems that he hoped would make his name, he spent his nights enjoying the alcohol, opium, and women who filled the seedy streets of the city.

 One woman would catch his eye—a beautiful Haitian cabaret singer named Jeanne Duval. Their lives would remain forever intertwined thereafter, and their romance would inspire his most infamous poems—leading to the banning of his masterwork, Les Fleurs du Mal, and a scandalous public trial for obscenity.

My thoughts:  I knew very little about Charles Baudelaire before reading this book.  I had read some of his poetry in one of my French classes in college, and I had heard something about Jeanne Duval, but that was all that I knew.  So when I heard that a new novel was coming out about Baudelaire and his mistress Jeanne Duval, I was eager to read it.  First of all, the cover is beautifully rendered; I would have picked up the book just for the cover alone.  There were so many things that I enjoyed about this book, the intimate view of bohemian Paris, that some might be familiar with from the opera La Bohème.  The book starts in 1842, when Baudelaire is about to turn 21; he’s a dandy who spends his allowance on expensive clothes, fine wines and food, and his nights hanging out with his bohemian friends in the cafes and restaurants of Paris. But Baudelaire is different from his friends, he’s aware of the hypocrisy of their lives.   They are not true bohemians; they have warm homes and families that they can retreat to after a night out on the town.  His mother worries about his extravagant lifestyle, that he is determined to ruin himself.  Baudelaire believes that he will be the greatest poet that France has ever seen, although he rejects the Romanticism that has prevailed in literature since the end of the 18^th century.  He wants to write about the reality of life, pain, death, and sex.  Unfortunately for Baudelaire, what sells are poems about nature, flowers and love.

One night on the town, he stumbles into a cabaret where Jeanne Duval is singing.  She’s a mulatto from Haiti, who fled her homeland, hoping that Paris would offer her a better life.  In a way, both Baudelaire and Duval are both outcasts which draw them together.  That and their mutual desire for opium.  MacManus does an amazing job of recreating this world for the reader, not just delving into Baudelaire and Jeanne’s worlds but also the outside world.  Paris during this period is changing, from the monarchy of Louis Philippe to the reign of Napoleon III, from a Paris that has changed little from the middle ages to the modern city of wide boulevards that Baron Haussmann created.

What I found difficult was trying to understand not what drew Baudelaire and Jeanne together but kept them together for 16 years.  As MacManus describes the relationship, Jeanne was not in love with Baudelaire or he with her.   Was it lust? Or their mutual love of opium that kept them together.  Jeanne not only slept with his friends, but she was openly disdainful of his work, believing that he would never be a success as a poet. Once she realizes that Baudelaire no longer has the money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she would like to become accustomed, why does she stay with him? MacManus can’t answer that question.  In fact, he writes that neither Jeanne nor Baudelaire knew what kept them together.  They seem to be two people who can neither live with each other or without each other. That kind of co-dependency can be unpleasant after a while.

Truthfully, I found both Baudelaire and Jeanne not very sympathetic or likeable people.  Although the book is incredibly well-written, it wasn’t easy to spend time reading about people you just want to smack.  I found Baudelaire to be selfish, childish, jealous and petulant.  Jeanne is made of tougher stuff.  She’s smart enough to know that because of her color, she would never be able to launch herself as a courtesan the way Marie Duplessis was able to. 

While Black Venus didn’t fulfill all of my expectations, I did find it a compelling read of an era that one doesn’t often find in historical fiction.

Review: A Spear of Summer Grass

Title:  A Spear of Summer Grass

Author:  Deanna Raybourn
Publisher:  Harlequin/Mira
Pub Date:  April 30, 2013
How Acquired:  Through Net Galley

What it’s About:  The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even among Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. As punishment, Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savanna manor house, Fairlight, until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming—yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Why you should buy it:  I’ve been interested in British Africa between the wars, ever since I saw the film White Mischief.  So when I read that one of my favorite writers, Deanna Raybourn, had a book coming out set in that time period, I couldn’t wait to read it.  I started the book on Saturday on my bus ride to Boston and couldn’t put it down.  From the moment that Delilah set her dainty foot on African soil, I was completely mesmerized.  I read it on the T, at dinner, during intermission at the Lyric Stage Company, before bed, and kept on reading it until I finished it on the bus ride back home to New York.  And then I was depressed, because the book was done and I had to say good-bye to Delilah and Ryder, two of the most interesting characters that I have met in historical fiction in a long time. Not even the knowledge that Raybourn has another book coming out set during the same time period could assuage my grief.  This book made me want to immediately book a safari in Africa but the Abercrombie & Fitch kind with the air-conditioned tents, and four star cuisine. 

What can I say about Delilah Drummond that hasn’t already been said by critics who have universally acclaimed A Spear of Summer Grass? Delilah is spoiled, petulant, impulsive, promiscuous, vain, sarcastic, intelligent, and too stubborn for her own good. It takes her forever to admit what we, the reader already knows, that she has not only fallen in love with Ryder White, but she has fallen head over heels in love with Africa.  Oh, and I have mentioned that she is fiendishly loyal to both ex-husbands and friends?  There times when I wanted to throttle Delilah, particularly when she is being beastly to her cousin Dodo.  But as Delilah grew and changed, so did my feelings towards her.  Delilah is like an onion, the book slowly peels back the layers to reveal the pain underneath.  Like many people, Delilah’s life was marked by the First World War.  She’s been trying to mask the pain by dancing, drinking and shagging the night away. By the time she does an impulsively heroic act towards the end of the book, I wanted to be her best friend.

And then there is Ryder White.  Be still my foolish heart, if it were possible to marry a fictional character, I would want to marry Ryder White.  How can one resist a man who can quote Walt Whitman? A man who can take down a lion with ease but who respects nature, the land and the natives? A man who is also kind and generous as well as being stubborn and proud? Ryder is a man’s man, handsome, brave and a little rough around the edges (all those years living in the Yukon and Africa).  He has been through a great deal of pain in his life but he doesn’t let it define him.  In fact, before you read Spear of Summer Grass, I suggest you read Raybourn’s prequel novella Far in the Wilds for a glimpse of Ryder before the novel starts.  I guarantee you will fall just as madly in love with Ryder as I have.

In fact, all the characters in this book are wonderfully flawed and deliciously quirky, including Tusker, Ryder’s aunt, Kit, the promiscuous self-absorbed artist, Rex and Helen, the long married couple with secrets, and Gideon and Moses.  I could gush all day about the wonderful scenes between Gideon, a Masai warrior who becomes Delilah’s protector and friend, and Delilah.  All these characters have suffered something whether it is loss of a loved one, or the pain of being a spinster.   It is Africa that heals them, that gives purpose and meaning to their lives.  Raybourn doesn’t shy away from describing just how hard life in Africa was, how few modern conveniences, the tensions between the colonialists and the natives, and the differing viewpoints on what direction Kenya or British East Africa should go in.  To the Europeans, Africa was their Wild West, the final frontier.  I do agree with some reviewers who felt that the political situation in Kenya is rather glossed over.  I’m still a little unsure as to what was going on at the time.  And I’m not sure that the novel needed a murder mystery.  It occurred so late in the book, that the denouement seemed rushed to me.  The book is at its best when the focus is on Delilah’s relationship with Africa, and her developing relationship with Ryder.

At first when I was reading the book, I tried to imagine what real life characters that lived in Kenya in the early 20^th century Raybourn might have based her characters on.  After a while I was so entranced by the story, that I started imagining what actors might play what roles in the miniseries (please make this happen).  I definitely see Hayley Atwell (Captain America) as Delilah, Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in Downton Abbey) as Dodo and Judi Dench as Tusker.  Who should play Ryder is the tricky one; I would have said Clive Owen about ten years ago or even Russell Crowe when I still liked him.  If Jonathan Cake were a big enough star, I would say that he would make an excellent Ryder as would Richard Armitage, if he lightened his hair.

The verdict:  A powerful and poignant novel about redemption and the human spirit told by a master storyteller.