Old houses and historical fiction

 

I love visiting old houses. Medieval castles, 17th and 18th century châteaux, Georgian houses… Houses lived in by famous people. Houses preserved in such a way that time seems to have frozen, for hundred years or more… Stepping into the lives of people gone, of people past, feeling all the while as if I was the ghost, intruding into a world that is not my own. I love looking at the quaint, antique furniture. I love imagining what it would have been like to live in such a place. And for that reason, I find that old houses are an invaluable source of information and inspiration to write historical fiction.

Old houses and gardens can provide wonderful settings for historical fiction. As you walk on their grounds, as you gaze upon the ancient stones you can easily imagine the people who once dwelled there, who once walked on these paths, who looked at the same manor/chapel/castle as you do. When I create a novel, I tend to “play” the scenes in my head like the scenes from a film: for that reason, the setting and the costumes are very important to me, to help me visualize and produce those scenes, even if I do not describe them in the actual written passage.

 

For the same reason, interiors are very important. What better way to have a glimpse at the way people lived centuries ago, than to look at their drawing rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, furnished as they were all those years back, as if they were still lived in? A copper pan, a Chinese vase… A pile of scones, a painting by Constable. Dueling swords above the mantelpiece… Meissen plates, silver forks, sweet-peas picked that morning in the kitchen-garden… Morris wallpaper, letters on a writing desk… A goose-feather quill, a gilded clock... Small details, tiny details that somehow call back to life a patchwork of different historical periods.

I try to imagine my characters, the ones I’m currently writing about, others whose story I still have to invent, pushing the door, entering the room. Choosing a book from the shelves of the library, sitting down by the bow window. Or embroidering a cushion, as they look at the gardens and at the hills afar and a spaniel, tired out from a walk in the forest, sleeps at their feet. I take in the different details, some of which will make it into my novel. Objects, rooms, views, buildings...

As Winter Came and Went is set in the early 19th century and the characters live in and visit a number of fine houses, manors and such. I based myself on real houses to write about some of those fictional ones. Others are a mix of many different historical ones, with the architecture of one and the interiors of another. Gardens also play a role and I work in the same way, drawing inspiration from the different parks, woodland-gardens, kitchen-gardens, orchards, etc. that I visit.

 But I was not only inspired by “grand” houses. Stables, farms, longhouses, churches, thatched-cottages are so many historical buildings which are essential to the setting of my historical fiction novel, and to the feeling of authenticity which I strive to give it. A pub on the road-side, a cluster of cottages… An old post-office, a tiny village church… All quaintly historical. And with a little imagination, what stops you from going on a time-travelling journey as you walk along the cobbled streets of a small fishing harbour and look at the same horizon on which the wives and children of sailors projected their hopes and their fears?