The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (45 page)

Last but not least, thank you to my daughter for becoming more adorable every day. I have created many characters over the past few years, but none nearly so fascinating as you.

Historical Note

As I was writing it, I jokingly referred to
The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla
as my Halloween book. You may have noticed, however, that Halloween, as such, does not make an appearance in the historical part of the story.

The origins of Halloween as we know it are murky. One version has it that Halloween originated in the Celtic festival of Samhain, a time when the dead wandered among the living. Later, in the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV transformed the celebration into a Christian holiday, Hallowmas. The name “Halloween,” or “Hallowe’en,” comes from the festival of Hallowmas: All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows’ (or All Saints’) Day, and All Souls’ Day, in which the dead are remembered.

Either way, the tradition of the evening of October 31 as a night on which ghosts walk goes back a very long time. As for the other practices we associate with Halloween . . . sources have it that “mumming and guising” were popular in the Celtic fringe (Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), but they don’t seem to have taken much of a hold in England. There was also a form of trick-or-treating: going door-to-door collecting “soul cakes” to pray for those in purgatory. Bonfires were lit as well, either to guide the souls to heaven or to scare them away from the living (depending on whom you ask).

The Reformation appears to have put paid to many of these practices in England. In the seventeenth century, the introduction of Guy Fawkes Day—a commemoration of the 1605 plot to blow up king and Parliament—meant that the bonfires moved a few days, to November 5. Elements of the older holiday remained in rural communities in England, with bonfires, carved turnip lanterns, bobbing for apples, and other traditions that varied by locale, but the gentry did not observe these rituals. Halloween, as we understand it, would have been unknown to Miss Sally Fitzhugh or the Duke of Belliston, although they might have been aware of the superstitions attached to the night as practiced by the tenants on their estates.

The modern holiday of Halloween, with its costumes, jack-o’-lanterns, and trick-or-treating, is generally held to be a mid-nineteenth-century Irish export to America. For those wishing to know more about the history of Halloween, I recommend Lisa Morton’s
Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween
.

The vampire, however, would not have been unknown in early-nineteenth-century London. While we associate the vampire myth with Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel,
Dracula
, the legend of these bloodsucking creatures of the night goes back much further. The eighteenth century saw vampire panic in various outposts of the Austrian empire. In his
Dictionnaire Philosophique
of 1764, Voltaire includes this précis of the vampire: “These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite.” Sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?

The vampire legend pops up in English literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although many refer to Byron’s 1813
The Giaour
as the beginning of the vampire in popular literature in England, his is not the first bloodsucker on the page. Robert Southey’s 1801 epic poem
Thalaba the Destroyer
includes a vampire, followed, in 1810, by John Stagg’s
The Vampyre
. In his introduction to his poem, Stagg explains that his work “is founded on an opinion or report which prevailed in Hungary, and several parts of Germany, towards the beginning of the last century: It was then asserted, that, in several places, dead persons had been known to leave their graves, and, by night, to revisit the habitations of their friends; whom, by suckosity, they drained of their blood as they slept. The person thus phlebotomised was sure to become a Vampyre in their turn; and if it had not been for a lucky thought of the clergy, who ingeniously recommended staking them in their graves, we should by this time have had a greater swarm of blood-suckers than we have at present, numerous as they are.” But the vampire (and his “suckosity”) really came into his own in England in 1819, when Lord Byron’s physician, Polidori, made waves with the first vampire novel, named—wait for it—
The Vampyre
.

Miss Gwen, of course, is highly indignant that Polidori gets the credit for the first vampire novel when her
Convent of Orsino
came out thirteen years earlier. She attributes this to the male bias in critical literary studies.

Moving away from the occult, I owe one last historical mea culpa. On the back cover of the novel, the autumnal social whirl is referred to as “the Little Season.” That term came into use only later on in the century, as a means of differentiating the September to November social season from the Season proper in the spring. However, since it has become a commonplace in novels set during the period that the Season takes place during the spring, I was afraid that if I didn’t make clear that we were in the social subseason, there would be pointing of fingers and cries of “But that’s not the right time for the Season!”

In fact, the Season was something of a moving target. The Season developed as a means of entertaining those eminences who came to town to do their duty in Parliament, which meant that the Season tended to overlap with the parliamentary sessions. From the eighteenth century through the early nineteenth century, this meant that there was just one Season that ran from roughly October to May. Starting around about 1806, the Season began to gradually shift later and later, with the opening of Parliament pushing back from November to December to January, until, by 1822, the opening of Parliament and, with it, the Season had settled into the stretch between February and July. By the middle of the nineteenth century, one had two official social loci: the Season, which took place during the spring and summer, and the Little Season in the autumn.

One final note: Despite what Eloise may have said in that last chapter, Sir Percy Blakeney, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel, was not, in fact, a genuine historical character.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the veracity of the Pink Carnation (whose book is coming up next).

Photo © Sigrid Estrada

The author of ten previous Pink Carnation novels,
Lauren Willig
received a graduate degree in English history from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School, though she now writes full-time. Willig lives in New York City.

CONNECT ONLINE
laurenwillig.comfacebook.com/laurenwillig

A CONVERSATION WITH
LAUREN WILLIG

Q. Wasn’t this book supposed to be about the Pink Carnation?

A. As those of you who follow me on my Web site know, Pink XI was originally meant to be about the Pink Carnation. It seemed like such a tidy end to the series: Miss Gwen’s book followed by Jane’s.

And then circumstances intervened.

Part of it was Sally’s fault. I had always intended to write a book about Sally Fitzhugh. If Turnip had a book, Sally had to have one too. It was, Miss Fitzhugh informed me, non-negotiable. But I had meant for Sally’s book, like Turnip’s, to be a Christmas book, out of the structure of the official series. There were just a few problems with this. Turnip went with Christmas like mistletoe with pudding. But Sally . . . didn’t. I plotted and I planned, but that Christmas book just wouldn’t come together. I tried to set her up with a relation of Lord Vaughn. I threw in pipers piping and geese a-laying.

I should have remembered Sally’s feelings about poultry. . . . Any holiday that included multiple species of birds was not for her. She flatly refused the partridge and became quite rude about the French hens.

Halloween, on the other hand, suited Sally beautifully. Counting my two stand-alone novels,
The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla
is my thirteenth book. I couldn’t resist the idea of writing a Halloween book for number thirteen. (Black cat sold separately.) And, ever so conveniently, by the end of
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria
, Miss Gwen had just written the best seller of 1806,
The Convent of Orsino
. For a very long time (we’re talking circa 2006), I had been itching to write a vampire spoof, transposed to the early nineteenth century. Having Miss Gwen as the author of the 1806 equivalent of
Twilight
provided me with the perfect opportunity to get in a little vampire mockery.

Also, if I ended the series on Pink XI, it would be an odd number, which would make the display of covers on my website uneven. Twelve was a much more symmetrical number. Twelve Pink books. It had a nice ring to it.

There were also some less-frivolous reasons. The Pink Carnation’s book needs to take place, for various historical reasons, in late 1807.
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria
is set in the spring of 1805. That’s a big gap. I also wanted us, before the series ends, to get a last visit with some of our old characters. Jane’s book, for the same historical reasons mentioned above, takes place in Portugal, a long way from London, the Vaughns, Turnip, and the rest of the gang. It seemed hard to end the series without getting to see a little bit more of them. Meanwhile, in the modern part of the story, Eloise and Colin needed a little more time to get their affairs in order.

All of these were factors in the balance. The final decider? Real life took its toll. I knew that I was going to be writing Pink XI on a tight deadline, with a newborn. I hadn’t had much experience with newborns, but I knew enough to realize that they generally involve a lack of sleep and something called “baby brain.” I did not want to tackle Jane Wooliston’s book with baby brain. Thirteenth book plus baby brain sounded like very bad luck, indeed. . . .

And that, my friends, is how Sally Fitzhugh got her book.

Q. When will we finally have the Pink Carnation’s story?

A. This is it, folks. The end of the line. Pink XII, aka The Next Book, aka The Something Something Moonflower, will be Jane’s book and the last book in the series. It’s been a much longer run than I had ever imagined—at one point, the idea that the series would stretch to six books would have boggled my brain—but it’s time to wrap things up.

The nice thing about taking the time to write Sally’s story in between is that it gave me an extra year for the details of Jane’s story to percolate and mull. The series has been building to this book for a long time, so I want us to go out with a bang!

Q. Does that mean no more Pink books after Pink XII?

A. I’m not ruling out the prospect of Pink spin-offs. I still have a number of characters, like Kat and Tommy, whom I’d like to see settled, and I’ve wanted, for a very long time, to write a mystery novel featuring Colin and Eloise. I’m also itching to do a novella about Jane in that missing time between the end of
Purple Plumeria
and the beginning of her book. On the other hand, I’m committed to writing two more stand-alone novels (the next one, set in the 1920s, will be coming out in 2015), so it all depends on how quickly the prose flows and how much extra time I can carve out to play with my old Pink friends.

Q. Did what I think happened with Eloise and Colin happen with Eloise and Colin?

A. You’ll just have to wait for the next book to find out! But I will say this: that was not how I intended the last chapter of this book to end. There I was, pounding away at the keyboard, swigging my second decaf venti skim peppermint mocha of the morning, convinced that I knew where that scene was going—when Colin surprised me as well as Eloise.

You will, however, be relieved to know that Colin isn’t renting out Selwick Hall after all. We’ll see him and Eloise back there in Pink XII. . . .

QUESTIONS FOR
DISCUSSION

1. The Duke of Belliston’s introduction in the novel is shrouded in mystery and distorted by fantastical gossip about him being a vampire. Did this color your initial perception of him? Or do you think the mysteriousness of his character made him more intriguing?

2. “Just because the man scorns society doesn’t mean that he’s an unholy creature of the night.” Even before Sally has met the duke, she defends him from the slanderous gossip of the
ton
. What do you think this says about the type of person she is?

3. How do you think the deaths of Lucien’s parents and his strained relations with the surviving members of his family shaped his character? How does his family situation impact his relationship with Sally?

4. Lucien and Sally are both very strong-willed individuals who prefer to be in control of various situations that arise. Do you think that either of them has the upper hand in their relationship at the beginning? Do you feel that the power dynamic between them changes over the course of the story? How do you think this will this affect their relationship going forward?

5. Do you think Sally and Lucien make a good couple? What about each of them makes them perfectly suited for each other? What makes them perhaps not perfectly suited?

6. Discuss Lucien’s motivations for running away to the Americas in the aftermath of his parents’ deaths. Do you think his fears were justifiable? If he had stayed (and tried to avenge his parents’ deaths), do you think he would have grown up to be the same man? How do you think he will make amends for his actions moving forward with Sally by his side?