Inspirations - "Patterns" by Amy Lowell

I read this poem as part of a literature correspondence course in high school, and it came to mind the other night as I was writing Amelia's first scene. While the poem itself was written one hundred years after Amelia lived, the general sentiment of women trapped in rigid patterns remained the same.

For me, one of the reasons that I read romance is that, even though the genre itself is perhaps a familiar pattern, I'm always eager to see heroes and heroines breaking the rules and creating their own lives. Historicals, and particularly Regency historicals, set up this conflict beautifully -- in contemporaries, there are fewer well-known societal rules, and so there are fewer rules to break. Since books are a form of escape, I would rather see societal conflict that is superficially unrelated to my own life, instead of contemporary stories about women trying to juggle careers and families. Then again, Amelia is in essence struggling with that same issue -- but seeing it in a different time period removes it slightly and gives the reader a chance to view it from a fresh perspective.

Here's the poem:

PATTERNS
Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

What do you think? Why do you read romance?

Sneak Peek - Amelia's First Chapter!

Tonight I made progress on rewriting the opening chapter of An Inconvenient Marriage. I've struggled with previous attempts, but tonight it just felt right. I can't quite explain the feeling -- the closest I can come is to say that it's like an old song that you know by heart, but you just need a small nudge in the right direction to get started. Once you've started, you can easily get the rest; it's just the first line that's hard to find. That's exactly how this felt; once I found the right moment in which to open the chapter, the rest flowed fairly well.

For your reading pleasure, I've included Amelia's first chapter below. It's still rough, so bear with me, but I hope you enjoy it (and that it gets you ready to buy my book, if it ever comes out!)


Staunton House, London - 14 June 1811

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to pry the pastoral paintings off the walls, slash through the innocent gaiety of shepherds and milkmaids, and burn the canvasses in the nearest fireplace.

She wanted to run away, move into her dream cottage in Sussex, and never talk to anyone in Society again.

But Amelia Staunton was the daughter of an earl, and none of these actions were options for her. Instead, she paced up and down the tight confines of her sitting room, fists balled at her sides, as she tried to regain control of her emotions.

If all she felt was anger, she would have known how to temper her reactions. But dread nearly outweighed her rage -- and while she had spent years controlling her emotions under the harsh scrutiny of the ton, dread was not an emotion she was used to feeling.

She heard a tentative knock on the door and forced herself to take a breath. When she had left the breakfast room an hour earlier, her mother was shaken but resolute; Lady Augusta would not seek to reopen the conversation this quickly. There was only one other person in Staunton House who would disturb her when she was closed up in her sitting room.

She opened the door and ushered Madeleine into the room. “Did you know what Mother was planning?” Amelia demanded.

Madeleine looked confused; she had been the Stauntons’ ward since childhood, and the countess treated her like a daughter rather than a confidante. “What are you talking about? I came to check on you because I just saw Lady Augusta and she looked distraught.”

Amelia sank into a stiff side chair, the uncompromising lines of the seat mirroring her mood. “We always thought she was marriage mad, but today she proved it.”

“Did she bring up Lord Broughton again? I thought you were quite explicit in your rejection of his last proposal.”

Amelia shook her head. “She said that after six years, she could no longer trust that I would give any man the opportunity to win my hand, and so she decided to arrange a solution for me.”

Madeleine frowned. “She’s not planning another house party, is she? With the number of eligible bachelors she invited to the last one, you would think she arranged a hunting retreat!”

Amelia said nothing. Instead, she picked up an open copy of the Gazette from a side table and thrust it into Madeleine’s lap.

Madeleine scanned the page, eyes narrowed in confusion -- until she found the paragraph that Amelia intended for her to see. “You’re engaged?!”

Amelia snatched back the paper. “’Lord Rossendale announces the engagement of his sister, Lady Amelia Staunton, to Malcolm MacCabe, Earl of Carnach.’ Of all the things she could do! I doubt that Alex even knows that she arranged this. He’s been in the Caribbean for months, and he could not possibly have sent the announcement.”

Madeleine waved that point aside. “Did she even suggest this engagement to you before she made it official?”

“No. She has apparently had this in mind for awhile, though. She said that she tried to hint to me that I should find a husband this year, because she did not finalize the arrangement until it became clear that I would not make a match this Season.”

“Please tell me that she told you before you read the paper!” Madeleine said.

Amelia grimaced. “Yes -- but barely. I was already at the breakfast table, paper in hand, when she came in, and the look of horror on her face when she saw me should have been a warning.”

“Is there nothing you can do to change her mind?” Madeleine asked, concern for her friend bringing out a hint of the French accent that she had all but lost after decades in England.

“You know as well as I do that publication of my engagement in the Gazette is a coup de grace. And Mother knows how averse I am to causing a scandal. Can you imagine the sensation that would occur if I jilted an earl? Particularly after my well-known rejection of half the eligible bachelors in the ton.”

“The gossips would enjoy it,” Madeleine allowed. “It’s so unfair, though; most of those men only offered for you because they wanted to be the one to win ‘the Unconquered.’ It is not like you were shameless flirt!”

“If I could wring [NAME]’s neck for writing that silly poem, I happily would,” Amelia muttered. [NAME] had self-published a slim volume of poetry, a practice that was all the rage in London -- but his poem “On the Unconquer’d’s Cornflower Orbs” had cemented her nickname and given Madeleine and her brothers fodder for months of teasing.

“At least your secret remains safe. According to Sebastian, none of the wagers at White’s regarding your marital status had anything to do with your writing -- and Sebastian would certainly find if anyone in London suspected the truth.”

Amelia rolled up the Gazette and tapped it impatiently against the chair. “It hardly matters now. This Malcolm MacCabe could order me to stop publishing, and I would have no legal recourse to continue.”

Madeleine frowned. “Do you really think that Lady Augusta would arrange a marriage with someone who is so against your work? She may not have wanted you to publicly acknowledge it, but she was always supportive of your efforts.”

“I doubt that he even knows about it -- Lady Sophia is one of Mother’s oldest friends, and even she does not know that I am an authoress. But I simply cannot risk that he will try to stop my work. The Unconquered Bride sold so well, and I want to finish Gaston and Veronique’s story by October so that it can be published by Christmas.”

“It was clever of you to use your own notoriety to sell books, even if no one knew you wrote it,” Madeleine said. “But surely you can finish your next book before your wedding -- Lady Augusta cannot expect that you’ll marry the man before next year at the earliest.”

Amelia slumped back into her chair as the dread overcame the last vestiges of her rage. “The wedding is in August,” she whispered.

“August?!” Madeleine shrieked.

“Yes. The trip she was planning to visit Lady Sophia this summer is actually for the wedding.”

“But why so soon? You will not even have the chance to meet him before the wedding.”

“Something about his father’s will -- Mother did not explain the details to me, but she said that he has to marry by August or forfeit his inheritance.”

Madeleine laughed grimly. “It sounds like something out of one of your books. Lady Augusta said that the MacCabes live in a real castle -- but your marriage is too Gothic for words.”

Amelia paused, the feeling of dread skittering to a stop. Madeleine’s words triggered a fleeting thought in her mind, and she seized on it. If one of her characters found herself in an arranged marriage to a dastardly nobleman in a foreign castle, what would she do?

“Mother arranged a marriage for me -- but she never said that I had to stay married,” she said, a speculative grin spreading across her face.

Madeleine gasped. “She will kill you if you get a divorce! Not to mention the shocking expense and the terrible scandal.”

“No, I know I cannot divorce him. But surely I can convince the man to send me home if I convince him that we will not suit.”

Madeleine pondered this for a moment. “What if you do not succeed?”

“I will,” Amelia said, her confidence returning as she envisioned the scenes that she could cause in a remote castle in the Highlands. “He never comes to London, so there is no fear that word of my behavior will spread. All I have to do is convince him thoroughly that I will not be a good wife, and he will send me packing. And Mother will be so annoyed that she may actually relent to my desire to set up a cottage with you in Sussex. If I am married I can act as your chaperone, and we can stop spending endless hours with all the tiresome people in the ton.”

“I hope that you are successful! Once you’re married off, Lady Augusta will turn her sights to me, and I have more difficulty telling her no than you do.”

“You may want to say yes sooner than I did,” Amelia laughed. “If I had known she would do this, I would have taken Lord Broughton’s proposal.”

Madeleine snickered. “That poor man -- you would have broken him within a fortnight.”

“And been bored silly for the rest of my life,” Amelia agreed. “But at least he would have been too dense to notice my writing, even if I set up a printing press in the drawing room!”

She stood up, eager to put her foul mood behind her and consider her plan in more detail. Madeleine rose too and quickly hugged her. “You had better succeed,” Madeleine said, half laughing and half anxious. “I cannot imagine London without you.”

Amelia felt a twinge of sadness, and she smiled brightly to hide her thoughts. She had grown up with Madeleine and shared a sister-like bond with her -- a bond that she intended to protect from her unwelcome marriage. “I will succeed,” she promised. “He may be an earl, but I have turned down earls before. And he must be rather weak-willed, or else he would not have allowed his mother to arrange a marriage for him. I will be home within a fortnight, and we will never have to think of Malcolm MacCabe again.”

Madeleine's Story - Brainstorming Phase

I just spent the last couple of hours (plus some of my commute today) brainstorming the storyline for my next romance novel. I had always intended for it to be about Madeleine, who is the best friend of the heroine in my current book and also, conveniently enough, a French girl orphaned during the Revolution who has lived with the Stauntons since she was five. Drama, right?

I originally intended for her to be secretly in love with the eldest Staunton son, who is now her legal guardian (but since she's 25 and he's 33, this isn't creepy in the way that you might think). In addition to being a hot English earl, he's also a collector, and I thought that perhaps something in her back-story played into an artifact that he just acquired. However, upon further reflection, she might end up with Ferguson instead -- Ferguson is the best friend of the hero in my current book, and feigns being an insane, selfish dilettante to infuriate his father, who despises the fact that Ferguson will inherit the dukedom. The father has ordered Ferguson to find a bride -- and I'm thinking that Madeleine would be a good initial start. Both of them have reasons to feign an engagement -- Augusta Staunton, who basically raised Madeleine, is pressuring her to find a husband, and Ferguson realizes that a Catholic-born French girl with a small dowry and no family connections is the best way to drive his father mad. What neither expects is that their charade will turn all too real.

Add in a betrothal from the past that comes back to haunt Madeleine, Ferguson's need to balance his desire to ignore his father with the responsibility he feels toward rebuilding his Scottish estates (inherited from his mother after his father has already devastated the woman's ancestral clan), and some other ridiculous twists, and this is definitely showing some promising seeds.

Writing is an interesting process. I can have an idea someplace -- in this case, in a flash as I was driving down the 101 at seven a.m. -- and see the general outline almost immediately. But, it then takes several grueling months to understand the twists and turns in these characters' paths, to find the scenes and the conversations  that move them inexorably from point A to point B, and the personalities that make people care about finding out what happens to them. Or, rather, I *hope* it takes several grueling months -- I think I could finish a good first draft in three months if I diligently worked that much writing into my schedule, and I certainly can't afford to take three years like I have with my first book. But now that I know that it's possible to find a polished gem within the piles of gravel, I think the second book will be much easier.