Liz: It’s the last episode! And it was tremendous fun to write. We’d always intended to bookend the first and last episodes with scenes at the theater. The relationship of the court and the theater in Restoration London was intimate and mutually affectionate—one of the first things Charles did when he was restored to the throne was reopen the theater that Oliver Cromwell had rigorously suppressed. Aristocrats wrote plays and playwrights drank with aristocrats and women got to act for the first time and they all slept together and had a wonderful time. Charles ushered in a second Renaissance of the arts in England—music, architecture, decorative arts—but no art form is more emblematic of the Restoration than its theater. So we had to weave the theater through this season as much as we could, even if it was not the central focus. It’s a perfect symbol of the joy and pleasure that Charles restored to his kingdom.And here in Episode 13 it’s also Christmastime, another joyful tradition that the Puritan Cromwell so joylessly put down. It was illegal during the Interregnum to celebrate Christmas. No hanging holly, no singing carols, not even so much as a special church service.I found this ballad, written the first Christmas after the Restoration, called Merry Boys of Christmas, or The Milk-maid's New Year's Gift. It includes the stanza:
Then here’s a health to Charles our King, throughout the world admired
Let us his great applauses sing, that we so much desired
And wisht amongst us for to reign, when Oliver ruled here
But since he’s home returned again, come fill some Christmas Beer.
Isn’t that delightful?Delia: Christmas Beer (possibly as opposed to small beer and ale, which was very low-alcohol, and drunk as if it were water because—unlike water—it didn’t make you sick) wasn’t the only indulgence people got to enjoy, post-Cromwell. You could roast a goose at Christmas or take a walk on a Sunday without risking a fine. Women could paint their cheeks and lips if they pleased without fear having their faces scrubbed clean by Roundhead soldiers. People began to wear colors again and feast on Saints’ Days instead of fasting from sunrise to sunset. Men got their wigs and lace out of mothballs and nobles and rich merchants brought their rings and gold chains out of hiding. People sang on the street again.And the big irony of all this? Cromwell loved music, and when his daughter got married, he threw a feast, just like the ones that got ordinary folk thrown into prison. He even hunted and played bowls for pleasure, just like a noble. And as for his clothes. Well. He may have dressed like a plain soldier to impress the troops, but when he was at home in Hampton Court and (yes) Whitehall, he dressed in silks and colors, with ribbons at his knee and elbow and scarlet cloaks and buckettop boots. His court wore peruques and lace, just like the cavaliers.So it can be argued that one of the things Charles II restored to England was the acknowledgement that fun and beauty weren’t just for the powerful, but for anybody who wanted (and could afford) them. Freedom of pleasure, as well as (relative) freedom of religion.Liz: Yes! One of many reasons to love Charles II: his generosity of spirit. I feel we’re coming full circle (appropriately enough, for the season finale) to one of our earliest conversations about Whitehall: the attractive quality of goodness. Ours in an age of the anti-hero in narrative fiction: the flawed, damaged, and even harmful, cruel, bad-acting protagonist. I love an anti-hero too, certainly—it makes for exciting storytelling. And characters who are flawed and damaged are, in a word, human.But from the beginning, we’ve talked about the old-fashioned idea that goodness can be immensely appealing too—or at least we find it so, and hoped our readers would agree. Catherine was a good person: well-intentioned, kind, loving, and eager to do her duty as she saw it. That meant that historically she’s been largely overlooked. I know that I feel more than ever, after thirteen episodes, that I love her for all of that.Of course, it helps that we’ve had her counter-balance in the splendidly self-serving Barbara, for whom I have always had a lot of sympathy and admiration. All of Whitehall’s central women characters—Catherine, Barbara, Jenny, Eleanor—as well as Dona Maria, all the Ladies of the Bedchamber, even the talked-of late Lucy Walter—do their best to work within the rules their times decreed for women, and make the best lives for themselves. The Restoration was a period that gave them more room to do that than their mothers had, thanks to a cultural reaction against the Puritans, and, again, to Charles’s generous example.And there’s a hint in this final episode that there was even more freedom perhaps for women within the theater, now that Charles has opened the door to them.Delia: Yes, Catherine! She doesn’t show up in the histories much (except for having to share her husband with half the female population of London), but she wasn’t simply a wronged and barren wife with a taste for religious relics. Though she had a temper, which she didn’t always suppress, with consequences we saw in the early episodes, she was, by all accounts, unfailingly kind to everybody around her—her servants and dependents no less than the nobles of the court, even to her husband’s mistresses and bastard children. Once the fireworks of their early acquaintance died down, she became close friends with Barbara. She befriended several of Charles’s other mistresses, too—particularly Louise de Kérouale, who always treated her with respect and deference. After Charles’s death, she pleaded with James II to spare the rebellious Duke of Monmouth. When she went back to Portugal in 1699, she took care of her nephew, who was suffering from depression after his mother’s death, and served as Regent for her brother Peter II when his health began to decline in the early 1700s.Catherine’s wasn’t a flashy life, but it was a good one. And I’m glad to have had the opportunity to learn more about it.Liz: Indeed. Maybe one of the best reasons for writing historical fiction is the chance to learn these stories and get to know the people, as though they were long-long friends we never met. It’s been a great pleasure getting to know Catherine, and all the rest of them, real and imagined and re-imagined. I hope our readers have enjoyed it too, and love our characters as much as we do.
