Castelli Book Club

“I have always written all my life,

even when I was a little girl

instead of playing with dolls

I would sit there and write stories”

"Meet the author"

Margaret Stenhouse

In her own words. Writer and journalist Margaret Stenhouse (active member of the Castelli Book Club) recently published “The Flight of the Last Stuart King” and we decided to read it for our September book. It was a nice surprise, we all got caught up in the story of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie's younger brother and the last direct heir of the royal House of Stuart, when he was forced to flee Frascati and seek refuge in the Kingdom of Naples, while Napoleon invaded Rome.

While visiting the cathedral in Frascati, where Henry Stuart is well remembered for his good deeds as a bishop, Margaret got intrigued by this little known character and decided to investigate his story, searching and reading local books and documents written in Italian. Through a long string of facts she was able to pinpoint about many key figures of the period, like Horatio Nelson, Lord and Lady Hamilton, the King and Queen of Naples, the spy master Spiridion Foresti, the Ottoman commander Bey Abdul-Kadir and the Pope Pius VII, she masterfully weaved a fascinating plot line about the Cardinal’s venturesome escape to the south of Italy, through the horrible Pontine marshes, then to Corfu, Padua and Venice.

Blending history and fiction Margaret wrote a book that slowly captures the reader with its vivid but delicately described characters and scenes from a period of our history that is long gone but not forgotten.

During the Book Club meeting at her place, we discussed the book with Margaret and subjected her to lots of questions to satisfy our curiosity about her work. She complied graciously. And since we are so lucky to have another writer in our club, Tatiana Strelkoff, the two of them posed for a cute photo!

Enjoy.

You mention Henry Stuart as the last legitimate pretender king of Scotland, England and France, so why France, because of the fact that Mary Stuart was for a short time also queen of France, then he had a claim?

Many Scots escaped to France to get protection in a Catholic country, there was this thing called the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland against England (the alliance was formed for the purpose of controlling England's numerous invasions), and moreover royal families often inter-married, like Mary, Queen of Scotland married the king of France, her first husband who died after a short time.

You were born and raised in Scotland, so how did you learn history at school, was it written impartially or not ? Did you feel deprived of the Scottish kingship somehow?

Well the English defeated the Scots, so that answers this question … LOL

Of course we are very proud of the fact that the Scots once defeated the English, there was this big battle of Bannockburn in 1314, which was very important to establish Scottish independence from England, because Edward I king of England was doing his best to taking over Scotland. It’s rather interesting ‘cause Robert the Bruce was a  great Scottish national hero together with William Wallace, whom you all probably know as Braveheart who then was executed (poor man) and Robert did hold a claim to the Scottish throne and he managed to defeat Edward at this battle of Bannockburn, and they say he was probably supported by the Knights Templar, it seems they had this mounted cavalry of knights who helped win the battle. There is this chapel outside of Edinburgh (if you’ve read Dan Brown you know about it), Rosslyn Chapel, and the Earl William Sinclair, who built it in the 15^th century, was originally a Norman knight, together with sir James Douglas he took Robert the Bruce’s mummified heart in a casket on a crusade to the Holy Land, as per Bruce’s deathbed instructions (it was taken back to Scotland after Douglas’ death in battle and buried there).

So Robert’s grandson was the first Stuart king (Robert II), his mother having married a High Steward of Scotland, then all the way down to Mary Queen of Scots, and the Union of Crowns with her son James VI becoming king of England.

Later on came the Glorious Revolution with its religious issues against all things catholic, James II deposition and replacement by his daughter Mary and husband William III of Orange, then the exclusion of Catholics from the succession and the arrival of the Hanoverian nearest heirs, then a series of German monarchs who hardly even spoke English.

Tell us how you came to write historical fiction. Did you employ a specific method, such as research facts on original documents first, then elaborating a timeline and then distributing the details along the various steps or other? How did you start ?

It took me 5 years. I had a sort of interest in Henry, him being a descendant of the Stuart family and also his brother Charles being very famous in Scotland, lots of songs and legends about him, even though he lost the campaign to get his throne back. I hardly knew anything about Charlie’s brother, then I went to the Cathedral in Frascati and saw the memorial, I am always drawn to little known characters, and once I discovered all his vicissitudes and struggles, I thought this is a really interesting story; I’d like to investigate it and know more about it. So I got very caught up and became very fond of him. I re-wrote it twice. I started reading about the King of Naples, seeing who was where and when, and then connecting people and facts, this is the interesting part – connections.

Did you have access to specific documents here in the Castelli?

I went to the British Library, and then read several books by Italian writers who describe his time in Frascati, but none wrote about this period when he escaped, because it’s not well documented, the letters he was sending home didn’t really get through.

So while he definitely was in Naples while Hamilton was there, I invented the part he went to the reception; and of course the Pontine marshes, that part is well documented and quite horrific (the book about S. Maria Goretti describes very well the conditions these people lived in there).

Then I got very interested in the Queen of Naples as a person, she was a highly educated woman from the Austrian court, but she ended up with this dreadful husband, who was just totally unequipped to reign. I became very sympathetic towards her, of course her letters are fictional but I used the kind of language that was in her other letters.

Using documented facts I built up letters, conversations and thoughts that are fictitious but express how I imagined those characters to be.

I first wrote the book from Gigi’s point of view but I soon found it didn’t really work, so I changed it. The whole character of Gigi is invented, and that’s a good example of historical fiction, because his story adds a nice touch to the book. Being a devoted servant was a typical attitude of the time, servants actually identified themselves with their master. So I did elaborate on that.

This is the first novel you write, because your first book was more factual. Did you like this experience? Would you do it again?

Well it took me a lot of time to write it. When I decided I had to finish the book I was getting up at 5 am every day just to get 3 hours of peace with no interruptions so I could work. A man seems to be able to shut himself away like he’s in a sanctuary, but a woman gets called all the time. It takes a lot of work and concentration.

What about selling the book? Is it easier nowadays to become known through self-publishing?

Not really, in the past the publisher invested in authors, they printed, distributed and did all the promotion, but they don’t seem to do that anymore. I put this book on Amazon myself; they’re wonderful to buy from, but what a hassle to sell through them! You need to have a partita IVA and send them a box of printed books you pay for by yourself as a start. And no promotion gets done even by my publisher unless you pay a fee for it, such as 300 euro for being evidenced in a book fair! Then again I’m writing in English and I live in a country which is not an English speaking country so it’s very limited and in Rome when I published my first book there were about 7 or 8 English bookshops while now I think there are only 2, and they will only accept authors who are a safe bet, having sold already a certain amount of copies.

Well it’s just a labour of love, I never expected to make money out of it, but it’s some great satisfaction. I mean, I have always written all my life, even when I was a little girl, instead of playing with dolls I would sit there and write stories. It’s just part of me really, so I thought why not making something concrete?

So I have done something concrete but I am well aware I cannot spend another 5 years on another book, I am not so young anymore so I need something simpler that doesn't require so much research. there is something I would love to do now, writing about the young art models coming from the country (such as Anticoli Corrado) and the artists themselves: the girls were really beautiful, they came to Rome, sit on the Spanish Steps where artists would find them. But it's not easy to find information about them because they were not really famous. If I wrote a fiction it would be easier, I could write about anything I like, true or not doesn't matter, although publishing fiction is even more difficult, you need something sensational to get people interested. We'll see.