Courtesan's Lover (47 page)

A huge thank you to my lovely editors—Rebecca Saunders and Louise Davies in the U.K., and Shana Drehs in the U.S.—for their tender and expert care of my book, and of me. Also thank you to my ever-wise agent, Judith Murray, and to my very special dedicatees, Cathy Mosely and Sahra Gott.

Once again I was amazed by the generosity of the people who offered help, advice, and expertise as I was writing
The
Courtesan's Lover
. The first five chapters of the book (as they then were) formed my dissertation for the MA in Creative Writing I did at the University of Chichester—heartfelt thanks are due to Karen Stevens, my dissertation tutor. My writing-group friends—Annie Thomson, Chloe White, Mandy Park, and Becky Paton—workshopped sections of the book with great insight and honesty—as ever, I'm very grateful. David Dorning, from the department of Book Conservation at West Dean College, conducted an unprecedented experiment into the burning of vellum-bound books for me. Gordon Frye instructed me in Renaissance military matters with considerable expertise and great humor. Stuart Martell helped with all things seafaring (and hid his astonishment at my initial ignorance with great tact). Lesley Davies, the curator of Tutbury Castle Museum, in Staffordshire, was very helpful in the matter of unravelling the intricacies of sixteenth-century methods of contraception. Barry Stone is an expert on the history of the
castrati
in the Renaissance, and he was extremely generous with his store of fascinating information. Larry Ray, speleologist, told me about the extraordinary underworld network of caverns that lies beneath the city of Naples—the
sottosuolo.
Afifah Hamilton, medical herbalist, kindly advised me on first aid treatments of the period.

A number of books were also invaluable:

The
Adventures
of
Captain
Alonso
de
Contreras
—translated by Philip Dallas (Paragon House 1989).

The
Book
of
the
Courtesans
by Susan Griffin (Pan 2001).

Courtesans
by Katie Hickman (Harper Perennial 2004).

Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy
—edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (CUP 1994).

Daily
Life
in
Renaissance
Italy
by Elizabeth Cohen and Thomas Cohen (Greenwood Press 2001).

Inside
the
Renaissance
House
by Elizabeth Currie (V&A Publications 2006).

Sex
Work
:
Writings by Women in the Sex Industry
—edited by Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander (Cleis Press 1987).

The
Ship
by Björn Landström (Allen and Unwin 1961).

What decided you on writing a sequel to His Last Duchess?

The
Courtesan's Lover
isn't really a “sequel,” in that there's no plot progression from one book to the other, but I suppose it could be described as a “spin-off.” Francesca was a secondary character in the first book, but she has taken center stage here. When I had finished writing
His
Last
Duchess,
I felt that I had discovered all I needed to know about almost all my characters. I was happy to let them go, and to leave them to their own devices. I say “almost”…Francesca Felizzi just wouldn't go quietly! She kept intruding into my thinking, and demanding to be listened to, and over a number of weeks it began to dawn on me that I was going to have to give her a book of her own. I knew that she had escaped from Ferrara and set off for Napoli, but other than that, I didn't really know too much about her plans at that point.

Was it hard to get into the mind of a courtesan?

In some ways it wasn't at all difficult to get into Francesca's mind—I knew her well before I began even planning
The
Courtesan's Lover
, and I was already very familiar with how she thinks and feels about things. But the minutiae of the life of a courtesan and how that would impact upon Francesca's thinking and emotions was something new for me, and it took a fair amount of research.

I began by reading up about the lives of the more famous courtesans: Katie Hickman and Susan Griffin have both written excellent books about the subject, and their accounts were both fascinating and entertaining. The more I read, the more interesting became the possibilities for the ways in which my novel might unfold. What really struck me as extraordinary was the fact that many of these women were basically what amounted to independent entrepreneurs, in a world where women in general had almost no autonomy, either socially, sexually, or financially.

Fascinating though this was, it didn't seem quite enough, in terms of truly getting under Francesca's skin, so I also researched into the lives, experiences, and opinions of women in the modern sex industry, trying to get my head around the psychology of how these girls survive in such a challenging, dangerous environment. I felt quite humbled by much of what I read.

What were the most interesting factors in your research?

Oh, I have learned SO much over the course of researching this novel. It's strange how these things turn out: in the process of uncovering the motivations of my character Modesto (originally planned as little more than an “extra”), I found out all about the
castrati
—the appalling tragedy of the thousands and thousands of little boys who were castrated over the course of a couple of centuries, to keep them as lifelong soprano singers. That was gruesomely fascinating and ultimately very revealing about Modesto as a person. Because of what I discovered, Modesto burst out of his original parameters and became a fundamentally important character in the narrative.

I spent a lovely day at West Dean College, near Chichester, in the book conservation department, with conservator David Dorning. I felt enormously privileged, because not only did I see some beautiful sixteenth-century books and learn how they were made but I also saw and handled some
brand-new
sixteenth-century books! David's students were actually making books as they would have been made at that time, so I saw books that looked as they would have looked to my characters—pristine and fresh and unused. David was great—I asked him what would happen to a vellum-bound book if you burned it, and after having expressed surprise (“as someone who conserves books, I've never actually tried deliberately destroying one…”), he then set about trying it out to see, and recording his findings for me.

Through the wonders of the Internet, I met a lovely man called Gordon Frye, an American who has taught me a great deal about both the Spanish and Italian armies in the sixteenth century—and the depth of his knowledge is exceeded only by the generosity with which he shares it.

And then, possibly most unexpectedly, thanks to a marvelous woman called Lesley Smith, I discovered how women in the sixteenth century tackled the problem of contraception. Erm…with citrus fruit.

Is sixteenth-century Italy a particular love of yours?

It is now.
His
Last
Duchess
was set in Renaissance Italy because of Browning's poem. Browning's monologue,
My
Last
Duchess,
which inspired my first novel, is narrated by the fifth duke of Ferrara, so, when I decided to tell the back story to that poem, the setting and era of my novel were dictated for me. I was landed in Ferrara, in 1559. As
The
Courtesan's Lover
continues that story, I remained in the same era, though the location has shifted a few hundred miles. There is a great vitality and passion about both the country and the era, I've found—an intensity of colors and sounds and tastes and personalities which makes for a most pleasing setting for a novel.

Will you stay with Renaissance Italy in the future?

I may well come back to it, but the new novel I have just started writing is set in Paris, toward the end of the seventeenth century, so I'm in the process of discovering a whole raft of
new
sights and sounds and tastes and smells and social niceties. Lovely! I'm really enjoying it.

What about writing practices? Are you one of those writers who needs a strict routine? So many words a day, come what may?

Absolutely not. Probably the easiest way to explain how I work is just to say that I write in every moment in which I don't have to do anything else. (And quite often I write in many of those moments in which I ought to be doing something else, too.) That might be no more than editing a single paragraph or perfecting a phrase on one day, or writing flat out for six hours and completing a whole chapter on another. But come what may, I write something every day. I am not teaching so much these days—no more than a couple of days a week on the supply lists—so I am able to devote at least three full clear days a week to my writing, which feels like a great privilege.

Photo Credit:
Charlie Hopkinson 2010

Gabrielle Kimm is the author of one previous novel,
His
Last
Duchess
.