Royal Navy versus the Slave Traders: Enforcing Abolition at Sea, 1808—1898, by Bernard Edwards, 2007
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, by Adam Hochschild, 2006
Young Edward’s shouted commands to his little toy ship are lifted directly from: A Middy of the Slave Squadron, by Harry Collingwood (1910).
I’m indebted to Professor John Mullan, author of What Matters in Jane Austen: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved, (2014) for daring to ask the question, “Can we think that Colonel Brandon, Mr. Knightley or Captain Wentworth are indeed virgins before their marriage?” That question would also apply to Edmund Bertram; prig though he is, he’s only human. And of course, Mullan is also insightful on many other aspects of Jane Austen’s art, as well!
Dido's Lament is a beautiful aria from the English opera, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Look for the version sung by Janet Baker on YouTube.
The famous abolitionist William Wilberforce does not appear in this novel but he moves behind the scenes. He was also a social reformer, and he and his associates, known as the “Clapham Sect,” were devotedly religious and can be seen as the precursors of the Victorian age, an age that was much more concerned with good and evil, public morality, and the reform of public manners, than the Regency Age. The debates and movements that this small group of people set into motion are one of history’s hinges or great turning points, and so they have elbowed their way into this story.
Mr. Thomas Clarkson’s memoir appeared in 1809, in time for another of my new characters, William Gibson, to read aloud from it at Mrs. Butter’s dinner party. The slave “Mary” that the three abolitionists discuss in Bristol is inspired by the story of a slave named Mary Prince, whose autobiography was published in 1831. The abolitionist James Stephen really had two fiancées in his youth, as recounted to Fanny and Mrs. Butters.
St. James's Palace really did burn in January 1809 and there was a major explosion in Portsmouth on June 24th, 1809, which happened as described in Mrs. Price’s letter.
William Gibson recites to himself from “The Task,” by William Cowper, while in the hold of the Agincourt.
The HMS Solebay and the HMS Derwent were real ships, and were led by the real Captain Edward Columbine against the French colony in Senegal. The brief Times newspaper article that Mrs. Butters sent to Fanny is the actual newspaper article with the first news of the loss of the Solebay. But the real-life Derwent did not capture a slave ship during this, the first tour of duty for the West African Squadron. In subsequent years, ships of the West African Squadron did apprehend dozens of ships, despite a cripplingly high mortality rate from malaria and yellow fever.
Did you spot all the cameo appearances of characters from other Jane Austen novels? The Smallridges, Sucklings and Bragges are mentioned in Emma. The Smallridges were to have been Jane Fairfax’s employers until her engagement to Frank Churchill was revealed. William Elliot, the cad who meets Fanny in Oxford, is from Persuasion, and Miss Lee’s lost love is none other than Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.
Finally, may I ask, if you enjoyed this book, please take a few moments to leave a review at Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you very much.
Lona Manning
Zibo City, Shandong Province, China
Amazon author page:
www.amazon.com/Lona-Manning/
Preview of A Marriage of Attachment
The sequel to A Contrary Wind
Now available in ebook and paperback through Amazon
April 1811
Thornton Lacey, Northamptonshire
“I am not angry.”
“Forgive me if I dispute that assertion, my dear. After twenty-seven years of marriage, I recognize this frosty silence.”
“This is merely resignation, sir. The resignation of a much-tried woman whose husband believes what he is told by any random stranger while refusing to give credence to the same information offered by his wife.”
“I simply enquired of the man mending the hedge if this was the road to Thornton Lacey.”
“And I told you, not a moment ago, ‘this is the road to Thornton Lacey,’ and then you talked to the man mending the hedge, and asked him if this was the road to Thornton Lacey, then you graciously informed me, ‘this is the road to Thornton Lacey’—I, who took great pains to obtain—”
“And there, I think, is the parsonage.”
“A parsonage-house? Surely not. Not for a village of such limited extent as this. It must be the country home of some independent gentleman. Edmund Bertram would have to wring a guinea from every parishioner for marrying and burying to maintain so handsome an establishment.”
“I think you do him an injustice there, my dear. I think, left to his own devices, Mr. Bertram would not have attempted half so much. Mary and her brother commissioned a great many improvements, she told me so herself.”
“That accords more with the character of Mr. Bertram as I knew him in London,” Lady Delingpole acknowledged. “And in the end, Mary did leave him to his own devices. He deserves better! But, I can never scold Mary as she deserves, not when I remember her dear mother.”
“I believe I see our host stepping out to greet us, Imogen. So, now that you see his house, are you content to stay here for the night, in preference to an inn? I think we shall be tolerably comfortable, though it is a bachelor establishment.”
“Yes, Miss Bertram is in town, so we shall have no hostess tonight. But I believe we may do very well.”
The carriage pulled up to the handsome front portico of the dwelling of the right honourable Reverend Edmund Bertram, where every servant of his modest establishment was assembled.
Edmund swiftly glanced over his shoulder to see how his housekeeper, Mrs. Peckover, was bearing up. She had spent the last week in a quiet frenzy of preparation; the
