Fresh Air, Frolics, Cocktails & Murder: Myfanwy Cook Explores Seasonally-Inspired Settings
by Myfanwy Cook
Seaside resorts come in all shapes and sizes, from windswept working-class Blackpool to the socialites’ sun-drenched Nice and Monaco or the literati’s Florida Keys. The authors who have chosen to set novels in these places that usually only come alive for a season have used them as a colourful backdrop for murder, intrigue and romance.
In the 1720s, Scarborough in Yorkshire was one of the first recorded seaside resorts, and rolling bathing machines may have been invented by Benjamin Beale, a Quaker, as a means of making certain that ‘modesty’ prevailed. Certainly, by 1750, in English seaside resorts such as Margate, bathing machines were a common sight. In M.C. Beaton’s Beatrice goes to Brighton (Robinson, 2011) the main character, Hannah, is delighted with the experience and the opportunity to escape from her whalebone stays. The ‘machine’ also acts as a suitable setting for Lady Beatrice and Lord Alistair Munro to indulge in a romantic moment.
The eighteenth-century resorts, in contrast to many popular twentieth-century destinations, were the domain of the aristocracy. However, it wasn’t until the 1860s that Nice and Monaco in Europe, and later Long Beach and the Hamptons in America, started their rise to fame amongst rich socialites.
The spirit of these glamorous resorts has been captured in Mrs Hemingway (Picador, 2014) by Naomi Wood, which is set partly in 1920 in Antibes and reflects the luminous light and fragile gaiety of the time and people. A similar sense of ethereal and tangled, tortured love is to be found in Beautiful Fools (Duckworth Overlook, 2013), a work of biographical fiction by R. Clifton Spargo about the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald during their 1939 holiday in Cuba. In contrast, A Hundred Summers (Putnam, 2013) by Beatriz Williams conjures the havoc that the 1938 hurricane causes on her imaginary community of Rhode Island socialites alongside the emotional storm raging within the community.
Deauville, Biarritz and the English Riviera are resorts whose popularity with the ‘high society’ of the day was transient. Their ‘hey-days’ are now past, but they have all provided authors with an ideal venue for murder. Murder at the Brightwell (Allison & Busby, 2014) is a traditional mystery with two ‘bright young things,’ Amory and Milo, acting as the detectives. Author Ashley Weaver’s imaginary English seaside resort hotel recreates the essence of the period as enshrined in the Art Deco Burgh Island Hotel, built in 1929, and the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, both in Devon and featured by Agatha Christie in her novels.
Seaside resorts for the less affluent members of society have also been highlighted in novels such as The Ladies Lending Library (Harper, 2009), by Janice Kulyk Keefer, where a group of Ukrainian Canadian women in the 1960s confront the dilemmas caused by the period’s rapid social change. Alison Atlee’s The Typewriter Girl (Gallery, 2013) provides insight into the role of women in Victorian Britain through main character Betsey Dobson, who is singled out to become a tour manager for Idensea’s Pier and Pleasure Building Company.
Interestingly, one characteristic of all seaside resorts, with a few exceptions, is their limited shelf-life. The Brighton of the Regency period resort set no longer exists, but as the tide of time changes it uncovers new resorts, which have been rebranded as ‘coastal resorts’ and with them the flotsam and jetsam needed to write entertaining fiction.
The continuing fascination of authors with seaside resorts is understandable, because often the rules of the society of the period were suspended and time spent there was not just about improving one’s health — it also offered the possibility of adventure. As Alan Brennert’s character Eddie sums it up in Palisades Park (St. Martin’s, 2013), they were also places ‘where you could forget the mess that is going on in the world, or the heartaches you’ve got in your life.’
About the contributor: Myfanwy Cook runs creative workshops on such themes as: The Art of Using Words, Historical fiction based on in-depth research on specific places and sites; Engaging Characters; and Science Fiction. She is a member of the HNS editorial team.
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Published in Historical Novels Review | Issue 73, August 2015
