I’ve been asked one particular question several times now, and it’s one I never anticipated: “Is Liriodendron real?” The answer is a resounding “Sort of.”

For those who haven’t read NEWPORT, Liriodendron is the Chapman family’s “summer cottage,” the mansion where most of the novel takes place. It occupies a prime spot of oceanfront real estate, but you’ll never find it on a map. Its location is deliberately blurry because, no, Liriodendron does not exist in Newport, Rhode Island.

It does, however, exist in Bel Air, Maryland.

Although Bel Air’s Liriodendron has been described as “belonging on the cliffs of Newport…,” the real and fictitious mansions only superficially resemble each other. Both were designed and constructed around the same time (1897-1898), but by different sorts of people for different reasons. Bel Air’s Liriodendron was the summer residence of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, one of the “Big Four” founding physicians of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Born in New Jersey and educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kelly specialized in gynecology and obstetrics. During most of the year he, his wife Laetitia, and their nine children lived at 1406 Eutaw Place in Baltimore City. As the heat of summer descended, however, they decamped for Bel Air, where the temperatures were cooler. Unlike a gilded Newport summer, a grand season of over-indulgence and society did not await. For the Kelly family, Liriodendron was more of a family getaway than a place to “be seen.”

Designed by Baltimore architects Wyatt and Nolting, Liriodendron is a two-and-a-half story, stuccoed brick Palladian mansion currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  I became aware of it during my band days when I played weddings there. I thought it was beautiful with its grand staircase, fireplaces, and graceful terrace. Places like this can’t help but inspire. The house – along with its name – stuck with me.

Let’s talk about that tongue-twisting name for a moment. “Liriodendron” is the botanical term for the tulip poplar tree. With all due respect to Dr. Kelly, who named his summer home, “poplar” would have been much easier to say.  (Apparently, “The Poplars” was in early contention for the name of the estate.) When I needed a name for my fictional Newport cottage, Liriodendron came to mind for several reasons. One of those reasons was that for Bennett Chapman, my new-money magnate, “more” equaled “best,” and I suspected that he’d approve of a five-syllable name for the summer home he intended as his calling card to the upper echelon of Newport society.

Fortunately for the Kelly family, the real Liriodendron was less of a status symbol and more of a home. It stayed in the Kelly family until 1980, when ownership passed through agreement to Harford County, and the estate became part of Heavenly Waters Park. It’s now managed by the Liriodendron Foundation. You can visit if you’d like; there’s a weekly open house on Wednesdays between noon and 7 p.m.

As a postscript, here’s an interesting fact I turned up while researching this post: Howard and Laetitia Kelly, married for fifty-three years, both died on January 12, 1943, he of heart disease and she in a coma six hours later, in the hospital room next to his.

There’s a book in that.

Liriodendron

I’ve been thinking about my love affair with historical fiction. It goes way back to my childhood, when burying myself in the pages of a book meant a trip to other times and places.

Books were better than movies for me. A book provided the set, characters, and plot but allowed my imagination to fill in some details. My very favorite books inspired me to write my own version of fan fiction before fan fiction was cool. Some authors might have been surprised to learn that a character they’d never created had hijacked their plot and now starred in a whole new version of the storyline.

My preferred historical “vacations” changed as I got older. My favorite era in middle school was colonial America, which made sense since I grew up in 18th century Annapolis. But then I started sliding backward. I slipped through the Jacobite risings in the Scottish Highlands, down past Charles II and the English Restoration, and straight into Tudor England.

By the time I hit college, I was a history major with an emphasis in medieval studies. But after I’d written a few novels, I changed course again and found myself drawn to the late 19th century, an era that had never enticed me before. From there it’s been a continued upward drift. Newport takes place in 1921; the novel I’m currently working on is set in the early 1930s.

It’s even more fun to write historical fiction than it was to read it. Once again, I get to immerse myself in a time period different from the one I inhabit on a daily basis. I get the opportunity to research random events and inconsequential details to my heart’s content. And this time my characters aren’t photo-bombing somebody else’s story. The setting and plot details are my own.

I worry that despite all of my best efforts to accurately re-create the texture of an era, some pesky anachronisms might creep in. But even with that pressure, I believe that authors of contemporary fiction have a much tougher time telling their stories than I do. Why? Because technical advances have made it difficult to build tension in any story set in modern day.

I offer the following examples:

Your protagonist, an amateur sleuth with a nose for solving crime, has a hunch the popular new guy in town isn’t on the up-and-up. But how to prove it? (Well, what do you think Google is for?)

The gorgeous woman who just introduced herself to the protagonist stirs faint memories; he knows he knows her, and he knows she knows he knows her. But, how? (Check Facebook first. If that fails, back to Google.)

The protagonist has information that could change the course of humanity. He must find a way to share this information immediately! (All right, then. Let’s just try a few cell phone numbers, because just about everybody is accessible all of the time these days.)

So, it’s pretty clear I lack the imagination to write a contemporary novel at the moment. We’re all better off if I stick with historical fiction.

And that’s just fine with me.

When I began thinking about the novel that would become NEWPORT, location images floated across my mind. They looked like Annapolis. There was a picturesque historic district dotted with homes and buildings that traced their foundations through four centuries. There was a beautiful waterfront. There was also a naval presence, even though that would not play a big part in my story. (Annapolis is the home of the U.S. Naval Academy, so the city streets are filled with midshipmen dressed in white uniforms during the warmer months, blue in the colder.)

Anyone who grew up in Annapolis can tell you that it’s the atmosphere of the place that gets under your skin: the beauty of the water views, the realization that you are walking streets once walked by generations and generations before you, the timeless feel in which anything could happen. It’s the perfect setting for a story…

…except that my characters had other ideas.

I had just begun to write my new manuscript (set in 1910) when the dreamy protagonist(female) bowed out, introducing another character in her stead. And what a character! Adrian de la Noye came with very definite ideas about what he wanted to say, and most of them bore very little resemblance to what I’d already started to write. I figured out quickly that 1910 was out: the book would take place in 1921. It was also clear that Adrian’s story was far more tangled than the placid one I’d originally had in mind. I was a little slower to catch on that Annapolis would not be the stage. Apparently I was frustratingly slow, because after a week or so of trying to squeeze Adrian’s story into my chosen setting, I woke up one morning with the word “Newport” etched on my mind.

I had never been to Newport, but I’ll grab any excuse to travel somewhere. And so, one rainy week in March, my daughters and I took off on an adventure to Newport, Rhode Island. And here’s what I found:  a picturesque historic district dotted with colonial-era buildings, a beautiful waterfront, and the home of the U.S. Naval War College. In addition I got glittering gilded-age mansions, an oceanfront view. and a city with a long history of being a playground for the wealthy. It turned out my initial imagery for my new story had been correct. I just didn’t have enough information in my personal databank to know that my subconscious was showing me Newport, not Annapolis.

Adrian was satisfied. Set loose in the location of his choice, his story began to unreel.

My own Newport adventure continues to be a wonderful, surprising trip. With Annapolis in my blood, Newport has always felt familiar, and it’s a joy learning more about this fascinating place that has lent its  texture to my novel.

I  am not a travel writer, nor do I plan to discuss Newport’s history at length. (For those aspects you’ll need to go here or here.) I like the quirky undercurrents of places, the people and stories that might  not make every guide or history book. Those are the Newport stories I hope to share here on occasion.

I still hope there’s an Annapolis story in my future. But for now, I’m happy to spend time with my hometown’s kissing cousin, Newport, Rhode Island.