Author Guest Post by Gabrielle Kimm + Giveaway of His Last Duchess

Passages to the Past is pleased to bring you a guest post from author Gabrielle Kimm, whose novel His Last Duchess, was released on October 1st by Sourcebooks!  In addition, the kind people at Sourcebooks have sponsored a giveaway for a copy of His Last Duchess to one of my lucky followers!

And now, please help me welcome Gabrielle Kimm...

I often get asked, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ My answer is inevitably something along the lines of: ‘It’s not really that I get ideas … they tend to get me.’ For me it works like this: the idea doesn’t exist, and then it does, and then it’s there in my head, and I can’t imagine it ever not being there. That’s probably no help at all to aspiring writers – but it is the truth. 

It was certainly like that with the inspiration for ‘His Last Duchess’. One day I had no idea I was going to write a novel, and by the end of the next I had the whole plot structure, the cast of characters, the setting and the era clear in my head. It was a truly extraordinary day. 

Although His Last Duchess is a historical novel – it has at its heart the ill-fated marriage of the fifth duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, and Lucrezia de’ Medici and it takes place in Ferrara in the middle of the sixteenth century – it all actually began with Victorian poet, Robert Browning’s monologue, ‘My Last Duchess’, rather than with historical facts. I came across the characters as Browning’s creations, rather than long-dead, real-life aristocrats, and it was only when I had the idea for the novel, and started researching that I began to piece together the historical truth behind Browning’s fiction. 

The actual facts behind Browning’s poem are these: Alfonso d’Este (unnamed in the poem) married Lucrezia de’ Medici in 1559, and less than three years later the poor girl was dead, at the age of seventeen. Historical sources have mixed opinions as to what caused her death: some cite natural causes (tuberculosis, plague and anorexia being some suggestions), but far more historians believe that somebody had a hand in her demise. Most probably, her husband. Alfonso had for several years been under huge pressure to produce an heir, as the powers-that-be in the Vatican had declared that should he produce no legitimate issue, they would reclaim the titles and the lands, leaving the Este family with only the towns of Modena and Reggio in their portfolio. Alfonso would have been horribly aware that, if this were to happen and his rights to Ferrara removed, his extraordinary, hugely powerful, nine-hundred-year old dynasty would be utterly emasculated. In the end, of course, this is exactly what happened. 

(Just by the by, in an extraordinary co-incidence, a direct descendent of Cesare d’Este, the cousin who ended up inheriting what was left of the duchy, lives in a village about two miles away from where I live in Sussex. How unlikely is that?! ) 

Browning’s poem is narrated by the duke. He depicts him talking to the emissary from the father of his second wife-to-be, standing before a portrait of his last duchess – poor dead Lucrezia. He is highly articulate –clearly verbally dextrous, despite his protestations that he has no ‘skill in speech’ – and he seems charming and cultured. He is polite and pleasant to his guest. At the start of the poem, he uses words like ‘wonder’, ‘depth and passion’, and ‘earnest’ to describe his late wife; you get the feeling that he is treasuring her memory as much as he clearly treasures this painted image which is kept so carefully hidden behind a curtain. But then he begins listing the poor woman’s faults, one after another. By the time he has all but openly admitted that he ordered her death, his very courtesy seems menacing, and you can easily imagine the raised heartbeat and the wide-eyed wariness in his listener (who must surely be hoping that he will be allowed to return home safely, having been party to this alarming confession). 

For a time I was worried that the character of the duchess, as portrayed by Browning, would not be sustainable across a whole novel. He describes her as having a heart ‘too soon made glad, too easily impressed.’ She liked ‘whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.’ This worried me. I wanted to stay true to Browning’s creation, as I was specifically planning this book to be the back story to his poem, rather than just to historical facts, and, if I were to remain faithful to the poet’s description, it seemed to me that the duchess would be either an indiscriminate, promiscuous little hussy, or a sort of simple-minded, love-everyone sweetie – a Renaissance Pollyanna, if you like. Neither of these alternatives appealed to me in the slightest. But then it occurred to me – in the small hours of one chilly morning - that the description of the duchess is not Browning’s. It’s the duke’s. And this description of her is being offered by the man who has just admitted to having had her permanently silenced. Did I believe him? Did I trust him? Not in the slightest! 

I began to feel that the duke’s view of his wife was fundamentally distorted, either deliberately, in order to blacken her reputation, or unwittingly because of some psychological flaw in his make-up. Discovering what ‘his last duchess’s real personality was like, and finding out exactly why the duke’s view of her is so inaccurate, has been what has entertained me so much in writing this novel. I do hope Mr Browning would have approved of what I’ve done with his characters!

Thank you, Gabrielle, for stopping by with such a fabulous guest post!  

ABOUT THE BOOK

The chilling story of Lucrezia de Medici, duchess to Alfonso d'Este, His Last Duchess paints a portrait of a lonely young girl and her marriage to an inscrutable duke. Lucrezia longs for love, Alfonso desperately needs an heir, and in a true story of lust and dark decadence, the dramatic fireworks the marriage kindles threaten to destroy the duke's entire inheritance–and Lucrezia's future. His Last Duchess gorgeously brings to life the passions and people of sixteenth-century Tuscany and Ferrara.

 
For more information, please visit Gabrielle Kimm's WEBSITE and BLOG.


  GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

- To enter, please leave a comment below and include your email address (only comments with email addresses will be entered in the giveaway).

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- Giveaway ends on October 28th.

GOOD LUCK!