Category Archives: Cornwall

03/19/15

Thursday Thoughts: Book Club

How stimulating it is to have an in depth conversation with enthusiastic readers!

I recently shared this pleasure with The Rosebuds, a long established group of widely read women who got together to discuss The Miner & the Viscount.

The Rosebuds take it in turns each month to choose the book they all read and to share dinner. Mary Beth Heil was our hostess and she put on a tasty spread complete with cottage pie and hard cider. So appropriate for a conversation about Cornwall!

And a lively conversation it was. Where did you get the idea for the story? Where did the fictitious characters come from? Were you or your family part of the characters? Were politics really like that? Sounds worse than today. We followed the map in the book, the places sound beautiful. What do they actually look like? What was it like growing up in Cornwall? What parts of the story were true and what parts did you make up? Did the story of the great diamond actually happen?

Gourmets that they were, they wanted a recipe for a Cornish pasty. They pronounced it “paysty”. I said “pahsty” is the proper way. “Paystyies” take practice: they’re what you twirl in opposite directions.

They so enjoyed meeting with the author and getting insights into the process of writing a big book. As Mary Beth wrote, “Richard, It was so wonderful for you to come to our book club.  Everyone enjoyed hearing the ‘story behind the story’ and how personal the book is to your life.  Thanks again and I will pass on the info right now to all the members.  We will spread the word.”

Let me know if you would like me to talk to your book club. I would enjoy it; such fun. I hope you would too.

 

 

 

 

03/12/15

Thursday Thoughts: Don’t Read my Novel on the Beach!

My book has just received the kindest review on Amazon (you can see it here: http://amzn.to/1AhLXp7) from a dear friend in my Monday Morning Writers Group. This was a great effort – working with the computer does not come easily. Much appreciated.

This group gave constructive feedback and comment throughout the entire 5 years of research and writing. It was a privilege to receive such valuable criticism, often with cheerful twitting and warnings against too much information, bodice busting and the like – which stimulated just three years ago a poetic response (with apologies to Noel Coward).

Don’t read my novel on the beach, Lady Rockingham

Don’t read my novel on the beach, Lady Rockingham
Don’t read my novel on the beach.
The shore is overcrowded,
The temperature’s often hot,
And you certainly could not
Expect to read much plot,
Just absorb all it would teach.
It’s a good book
So take another look,
There are few acts,
But you’ll learn some facts,
And then you too can preach.
But anyroad, Lady Rockingham, good Lady Rockingham,
Don’t read my novel on the beach.
Regarding yours,
Dear Lady Rockingham,
Of Monday, March the fifth,
You spoke with pith,
And made it clear
It mayn’t be such a good idea
For writing to be my sole career
Unless, I add more humanity,
Even some inanity
From a sexy little peach,
Pray even then Lady Rockingham,
Don’t take my pen, Lady Rockingham,
And never read my novel on the beach.
Don’t read my novel on the beach, Lady Rockingham,
Don’t read my novel on the beach,
My villain is really nasty,
A single dimension cad,
He devours many a Cornish pasty
So he can’t be all that bad,
The viscount’s diet is healthy,
He’s privileged and wealthy,
(Though a little smuggled brandy
Tends to make him awfully randy),
It’s from the tin, dear,
Down the mine, dear,
But aargh, Lady Rockingham,
Don’t go too faarr, Lady Rockingham,
I never dreamed
I’d get so steamed
If people ever read my novel on the beach.

© RJCH — March 5, 2012

 

03/5/15

Thursday Thoughts: The Patron Saint of Cornwall

March 5th is St. Piran’s Day and the Cornish celebrate it with enthusiasm! Piran is the patron saint of tinners and of Cornwall. The legend of St. Piran is a great favorite. I chose it for the Prologue of The Miner & the Viscount. The story speaks to Cornwall’s mystical origins rooted in the Celtic culture and language and to the importance of tin. Piran, or Pyran (Cornish: Peran) was an early 6th-century Cornish abbot and saint, supposedly of Irish origin. It was Piran’s demise and miraculous escape that gives him legendary status.

According to many contemporary accounts, Irish heathens, perhaps Druid priests, tied Piran to a mill-stone and rolled it over the edge of a cliff into the stormy Irish sea. However, I don’t believe the artist got the details  quite right, because actually Piran was spreadeagled on the millstone. It must have really hurt!

St. Piran

St. Piran

Anyroad, the storm immediately calmed and Piran floated safely over the water to land upon a sandy beach on the Cornish coast that became known as Perranporth. Happy St. Piran’s Day!

08/28/14

Thomas Newcomen

I am pleased to welcome a guest blogger, Susan W. Howard, now of San Jose, CA., and a descendant of the illustrious Hornblower family of Cornwall. This link will take you to the biography of Joseph Hornblower  http://penwood.famroots.org/joseph_hornblower.htm

Susan gave a talk about her researches at the Cornish Gathering in Milwaukee. She has written this brief portrait of Thomas Newcomen, who is credited with being the inventor of the atmospheric steam engine, which would “do the work of five horses.” One was built at the Wheal Vor mine as early as 1710 and by the time my story opens in 1760 as many as 70 were at work in Cornwall. The engine worked by injecting cold water into the steam cylinder to create a vacuum. The later designs of the Scotsman James Watt and the great Cornishman Richard Trevithick used the energy of expanding steam.

The Newcomen Engine

The Newcomen Engine

Thomas Newcomen, inventor of the atmospheric steam engine, was a modest and devoutly religious man who left behind few records of his life. Some eighteenth century scientists such as Royal Society member John Desaguliers had difficulty in giving Newcomen credit for his invention. Desaguliers wrote that the engine that began pumping water from the mines at Coneygree colliery near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712 came about “very luckily by accident.” Newcomen in fact did possess the intellectual capacity and practical experience to build the engine. He relied upon his close-knit circle of fellow Baptists to supply help and needed expertise. Among them were John Calley, Humphrey Potter, and Joseph Hornblower, who built Newcomen engines in Cornwall. Newcomen may have begun building an engine at Wheal Vor in Cornwall as early as 1710; the Royal Cornwall Museum gives him credit for a machine built there in 1716.

Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth, Devon in 1664. He became an ironmonger and while in his early twenties he visited mining regions in the West Midlands and Cornwall to sell and to manufacture metal tools and small household items. No record of an apprenticeship survives, but bills for ironmongery and purchases of bulk iron have been found. Letters written by his contemporaries do contain references to Newcomen and the steam engine. Two of Newcomen’s own letters have survived, and as far as can be discovered, no portrait of him was made. Apparently he began experimenting with steam engines in the mid-1690s. The extent that the ideas of other inventors or scientists influenced his work is a matter of conjecture. Inventor Thomas Savery had already been granted a patent for a “fire engine,” so Newcomen joined in a partnership with him to build an engine suitable for pumping water from the mines. Eventually more than 2,000 atmospheric steam engines were built. Newcomen was also a lay preacher, a trustee of the Netherton Baptist chapel (near Dudley) and an Overseer of the Poor. After his death in 1729 at the London home of fellow Baptist Edward Wallin, Newcomen was buried in Bunhill Fields, a nonconformist cemetery in London; the location of his gravesite, like so many of the details of his life, remains unknown.

Note: Desaguliers quote from L.T.C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen, (Landmark Publishing, Ashbourne, Derbershire, 1997) 46.

08/15/14

Cornish Genealogy

I was delighted to be a speaker in mid-August at the 2014 International Gathering of the Cornish American Heritage Society. My topic, The Cornish Chronicle, tells the story of my native shire drawn from my historical novel The Miner & the Viscount.

 A major purpose of the Cornish American Heritage Society is to help members track their ancestry and find out about their own family history. See www.cousinjack.org

Tracing family roots is a particular fascination for the Cornish people. We are, naturally, special. We are Celtic, a unique race with our own language, spiritual connections, culture, traditions, and character. Cornwall itself is remote, self-contained, with scenery that ranges from picturesque towns and villages, fields and woods to rugged moors and rocky cliffs. Perhaps our isolation instills our character. We Cornish are sturdily independent; some even say we are stubborn.

Why are we so fascinated with our antecedents? Perhaps it is because of the eternal questions we ask ourselves. What is the purpose of our existence? Why were we put upon this earth? What hereditary characteristics or abilities make us the way we are? What places do we came from, and what communities are we part of? Perhaps we validate ourselves by knowing about our origins. There are some excellent resources to aid our search. www.ancestry.com is an extensive general source. For the Cornish in particular, the Cornish Global Migration Programme is a treasure trove. It is based in Murdoch House in Redruth. It was founded by our family friend,Dr. F. L. Harris, and ably directed for many years by Moira Tangy (cousin of my friend Mary Tangye Fryer). Its current director, Mike Kiernan, is speaking to the International Gathering. Find out more at www.murdochhouse.org/CGMP

Murdoch House by the way was the first house in Britain to be lit by gas, another example of Cornish inventiveness.

For those of you who would like professional help in tracing your Cornish roots, try Rachael Eustice at http://www.cornish-cousins.com in Penzance. If you are interested in the great emigration to Australia take a look at the Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra at www.hagsoc.org.au/

You will discover many, many resources as you follow the trails that most interest you. You might also want to look at my essay, entitled “ancestry.com,” which I’ve posted on this website under the Meet the Author tab.

 

 

 

07/24/14

Try the first chapter!

My new book is turning out to be a great adventure. So thrilling for an author! Readers around the world tell me they find The Miner and the Viscount really interesting, a great story filled with fascinating characters, a page turner, as one reader put it.

Of course, I want everyone to read it. But you probably want to judge the book for yourself. Here’s my offer:

Sign up for my Newsletter and I will send you the first chapter of The Miner and the Viscount.  It’s an easy way to be introduced to the characters and plot of my book. If you like it and decide to buy a copy, you can easily do so right on my website.  If you decide to pass, no problem. But by getting my newsletter, I’m hoping you will soon change your mind and come around to purchasing a copy.

The Newsletter, by the way, is intended to share information and answer questions from readers wanting to know more of the background of the story, Cornwall itself, and the exhilarations (and travails) that went into writing the book.

Here’s the link to the newsletter/free chapter sign-up: http://eepurl.com/XMEor Be sure to check the box indicating you’d like me to send you the chapter.

Many thanks!

 

 

 

07/12/14

Who’s Who in The Miner & the Viscount?

One of the joys and, indeed, challenges of writing an historical novel is creating fictional characters and integrating them with real people from the time of the book’s events.  Interweaving real people with fictional persons helps enliven a bygone era and engage the reader in a way a dry, historical account might not.

I have my own favorite characters in The Miner & the Viscount; I wonder who yours might be.

Here is the cast of characters — the imagined and the long dead — which you can also find in the front pages of the book.

The Historic Characters

ELIOT FAMILY, of Port Eliot

Edward Eliot (1727-1804), created first Baron Eliot 1784

Catherine Elliston Eliot (1735-1804) his wife;

Edward James Eliot (1758-1797) their eldest surviving son;

John Eliot (1761-1823) their second son, first Earl of St. Germans;

William Eliot (1767-1845) their third son, second Earl of St. Germans;

John Eliot (1742-1769) younger brother of Edward Eliot

 PITT FAMILY, of Boconnoc

Thomas “Diamond” Pitt (1653-1726) East India merchant, Governor of Madras;

Robert Pitt (1680-1727) his eldest son, married Harriet Villiers (c.1680-1736);

Thomas Pitt, (1705-1761) elder son of Robert, former Lord Warden of the Stannaries, married Lucy Lyttelton;

William Pitt, the Elder (1708-1778) second son of Robert, married Lady Hester Grenville (1720-1803);

William Pitt, the Younger (1759-1806) second son of William Pitt the Elder;

Harriot Pitt (c. 1758-1786) younger daughter of William Pitt the Elder;  

Other Characters of Note:

Ralph Allen (1693-1764) Postmaster of Bath, entrepreneur;

Thomas Bolitho, merchant, investor, man of business;

Frances Boscawen (?-1805) widow of Admiral Edmund Boscawen, member of Blue Stockings Society;

Hannah More, intellectual, educator, member of Blue Stockings Society;

St. Piran (c. 6th century) patron saint of Cornwall and of tin miners;

Joshua Reynolds, portraitist, patronized by Eliots;

John Smeaton, inventor, first civil engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society;

Philip Stanhope, illegitimate son of Earl of Chesterfield, MP for Liskeard and later St. Germans, diplomat;

Reverend John Wesley, founder of Methodism;

John Williams, captain of Poldice Mine;

James Davis, Mayor of Liskeard;

Edwin Ough,Town Clerk of Liskeard;

Stephen Clogg, Councilman of Liskeard;

Thomas Peeke, turnpike witness

The Fictional Characters

PENWARDEN FAMILY

Addis, a tin miner in the Poldice mine; mine captain at Wheal Hykka; Lizzie, wife of Addis;

Jedson, a tin miner and younger brother of Addis;

Jeremiah (Jemmy), his firstborn son;

Jedson, second son;

Jennifer, his infant daughter

TRENANCE FAMILY, of Lanhydrock

Baron Trenance

Sir James Trenance, his son; becomes Baron Trenance upon the death of his father; later acquires title of Viscount Dunbargan

Lady Elianor, his wife

Honorable James Trenance, their son;

Honorable Gwenifer Trenance, their daughter;

Willy Bunt, valet and footman at Lanhydrock , then worker at Port Eliot;

Mary Bunt, née Abbott, Willy Bunt’s wife and former maid at Lanhydrock;

Catherine Bunt, their daughter, goddaughter to Catherine Eliot;

Charles Bunt, their son, godson to Charles Polkinghorne;

Joseph Clymo, steward of Lanhydrock estate;

Morwenna Clymo, his daughter

Tom Kegwyn, member of a mining family, ringleader at Wheal Hykka;

Reverend Peter Perry, Perranporth, Methodist minister;

Charles Polkinghorne, man of business for Port Eliot estate.