THE WITCHFINDER'S SISTER by Beth Underdown. An interview with the author by Adèle Geras

Some time ago, I downloaded this book to my Kindle because I'd read a favourable review of it in the Times. Full disclosure: I love books to do with witchcraft and I've written on this blog about just such a one by my friend Livi Michael. That was about the Pendle Witches and this novel speaks in the voice of a sister of the infamous Witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins. At the back of the book there's a piece by Underdown in which we discover that Hopkins had siblings but that little is known about them. This gap in the history gives the writer the space to create Alice, elder stepsister of the man who spread terror and destruction in the Tendring Hundreds of Essex and Suffolk during the 1640s. Many women were hanged and before that, subjected to terrible tests to discover whether or not they were witches.

Alice is a wonderful fictional creation who writes with a voice that is clear, unsensational and intelligent and which seems to reach us through the centuries with the power of someone speaking directly to us. It's a voice that carries weight. It is full of emotional understanding. It describes everything in a way that is plain but deep; full of emotion but also unhysterical. The real events that unfold are known to anyone interested in the period, but Alice, speaking about her brother, provides a context and a background that is most persuasive. Why does a man become a Witchfinder? What impels him? Are there psychological reasons for his dreadful fixation for rooting out women with supposed supernatural powers? And what of Alice? Why is she returning to Manningtree after the death of her husband in London?

Others play a part in the disclosures that follow: Alice's mother-in-law, Bridget, whose life has been entwined with that of Matthew's late mother; Rebecca, one of the accused women; men of varying degrees of stupidity and greed; many others in the community.

The witches Hopkins brought to their horrific ends are seen to be everything we suspected they might have been: slightly deranged, or eccentric, or strange looking, or gifted in the matter of using herbs and natural remedies for this or that, but with no more supernatural powers than a chicken. Still (and this is one of the best things about this novel) there is also the unexplained. There is such a thing as ill-wishing: people do sometimes want bad things to happen to their neighbours and their enemies. Above all, there is childbirth and the changes that it can wreak on even the most balanced of minds. Now we call such behaviour 'hormonal' and we know about post-natal depression but that's a very modern concept. It wasn't even properly talked about and understood as late as the 1970s.


Beth Underdown has woven a story of grief, anxiety, depression, longing, and the love of a sister for her brother together with an account of a febrile time of religious wars and desperately wild and frightening superstition.


The tone of the telling is compelling throughout. You are entirely in Alice's head, apart from several quotations from historical accounts. I am not going to spoil anyone's pleasure by leaking the surprise in the narrative, but there is one. Read this book and find out what it is...you won't regret it.


I asked Beth some questions via email and I reproduce her answers below. The photographs are also Beth's, taken in the Manningtree area.

1) The Witchfinder's Sister is a very accomplished début and I wonder whether it really is your first attempt at novel or whether there are any other novels in your bottom drawer. Had you been writing for a long time before you were published?


It really is my first novel! I was interested in the seventeenth century
before I came across the story of Matthew Hopkins, and at the point
that I found the subject of The Witchfinder’s Sister I’d completed a
chapter or so of a novel based on the life of the herbalist Nicholas
Culpepper. But it didn’t really feel vital (I think due to a lack of
villain!)


And as soon as I started to research the Hopkins witch hunts, I
changed tack straight away. Before starting work on The Witchfinder’s
Sister I’d been writing bits and bobs of short fiction for years. But I’d
never sent anything off, or finished or indeed been happy with much
of what I’d written. I think I was waiting for the right topic – the right mould
to pour my jelly into!
2) Can you outline where you interest in history comes from? Were you a bookish child?

I was an extremely bookish child – most of my free time was spent
reading, until I left home for university. And I always liked history,
too, and studied it up to A-level – but I never got brilliant marks.
I have quite a bad memory, so being examined on dates wasn’t
perhaps my strong suit.


I think the interest in history was always there – but maybe it came
in the first place from family holidays – my parents liked hiking, and
we holidayed a lot in the UK, places like Scotland and Cornwall.
Castles, standing stones and things like that were used as treats to
convince my brother and me that long hikes were a good idea!


3) What was it about this story that appealed to you?

I think initially it was the shock of it – the scale of what had happened,
the number of deaths. From that came an outrage that propelled me
through some of the research – but I think what sustained me as I
developed the story was a growing interest not just in telling people
about the witch hunts, but also in figuring out why and how they
could have come to pass.


4) Did you have any private rules about mixing fiction with fact?

For this book, my rule was that everything to do with the women
who were persecuted in the witch hunts – their names, their stories –
should be kept as accurate as possible. Likewise, Hopkins’s movements,
and what is known about his life – where he was on a certain date,
for instance – all that should be accurate. But everything about his
emotional life is invented, or speculated – and Alice, Joseph and
Bridget are completely fictional. I think my private rules for this book
came from balancing a sense of an ethical responsibility to Hopkins’s
victims against the necessity of inventing full emotional lives for my
characters – and of telling an engaging story.


5) You are very sparing with the physical description but the places you wrtie about are very clear and present to the reader. Can you put your finger on how you evoked the Essex of the 1640s?

This is a very hard question to answer. I did a lot of wandering
around the Tendring Hundred (the area around Manningtree,
where the witch hunts began) with the oldest map I could find
– which was one from 1810, but still useful because it subtracted
railways and A-roads from the landscape. I looked into how the
agriculture, shipping and fishing would have changed. I also did a
fair amount of research into seventeenth century domesticity – 
what people ate, what different things cost. Beyond that, I think it 
was an effort of imagination – and I’m really glad you feel it works!

6) Are there any other pieces of fiction that influenced you in the writing of this book?

There are many writers I admire, but I think the works that influenced
this book most consciously were Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies.
I love how ordinary and vital the dialogue in those works is – how
well and how naturally they avoid the ‘thees and thous’ that are so
hard to pull off (but also hard to avoid) in historical fiction. I feel that
Hilary Mantel’s approach to the early modern period in fiction is
incredibly fresh and frank, and I’ve tried to replicate some of that approach in 
The Witchfinder’s Sister.
7) You teach Creative Writing at Manchester. How do you integrate the writing of fiction into your day job?

I’m on a 0.5 FTE contract at Manchester, and my colleagues have
been very good to me this year in allowing me to have half the year
teaching and half the year not. So I was teaching a full load between September and Christmas – and didn’t do a scrap of writing, but enjoyed it immensely! Then this semester I’m not teaching, and am
able to make some headway with Book Two and also do events and nice things like that for TWS.

8) How did WS come to be published? Do you have a follow up to WS? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

The Witchfinder’s Sister had a long road to publication. It started
with my agent, Nelle Andrew, who spotted me in the anthology put out
by the Creative Writing MA course that I took at Manchester (where
I now teach!). Nelle got in touch with me, and we met a few
times – the book was in the very early stages, but she seemed to
love and understand what I wanted to do with it, so I signed up
with her. Then some years went by while I worked on the book, but
also did a bit of living (a succession of different jobs, a marriage and
then a divorce, a painful illness followed by an operation that mostly
fixed it). At last I quit my day job to give the book one last proper
push, and Nelle found it a home with Katy Loftus at Viking, who was absolutely 
the best editor I could have hoped to meet.


There will be a sequel to TWS one day – and if you read the book
(Do not cheat and skip to end!AG) you might guess what and where
it will be. But next I’m writing something a little different – still
a bit Gothic, but later in history – 1899/1900. It’s about death,
but also love and friendship – and that’s probably as much as I can say 
at the moment!

 

APPLE DAY AT COPPED HALL by Adèle Geras

Once upon a time, O Best Beloved, there was no email. People sent one another postcards. The photograph below shows a caryatid at Copped Hall. One of the first cards sent to me by Linda Newbery, who's been a friend since the mid-1980s, carried a similar image.  This is my photograph but the one Linda sent had been taken by her mother, Iris Newbery, a wonderful photographer and one of the volunteers who, over the last 17 years,  has been responsible for the resurrection of Copped Hall from the ruin it was until quite recently.  Iris  often takes the photographs for the Friends of Copped Hall's calendar and Linda has sent me each one as it appeared. 

 The caryatids greet you as you go into the gardens. Opposite them are their male equivalents, the Telemons, see below. On October 9th, Linda took me and Jon Appleton and  Christian Keys       to Apple Day at the house, and for me it was like fiction coming to life, a sort of dream come true.

Linda's novel, THE SHELL HOUSE, (pub 2002)  features Copped Hall, though in a state far removed from its present condition. Linda changed things, as novelists often do and has added a grotto and a lake to the landscape,  but this was the place that inspired her.  I  love the book and I've wanted to visit Copped Hall for a long time.

Below is the view that greets you when you come up the  long drive. Copped Hall has been a place of habitation for several centuries.   From 1150, there have been families here, farming the land, building, and right up until the fire of 1917, it has been a home.  The Cranfields, the `Conyers and most recently the Wythes added to the original structure, made gardens, erected statues and created a house that could be seen from the surrounding countryside. Copped Hall overlooks three valleys and is a perfect example of a dwelling in a landscape - something that appeals deeply to the British. 

 Below is the present day façade of the house. After the fire in May, 1917, the Wythes did not restore the mansion. In 1952, the estate was sold and things from the mansion (staircases,  leadwork, gates, railings etc) were dispersed to dealers and others. One of the most touching things about the resurrection of Copped Hall is the effort being made to retrieve these items from the places they went to and a great many of them have been returned and put back where they used to be. After 1952, the gardens went to rack and ruin and there were also problems with vandalism.

It was clear to us, walking round the gardens, that archaeological work is still being done. Here is a photo of the excavation which hopes to uncover some of the Elizabethan remains discovered  on the estate.

In  1988 a group led by architect Alan Cox  got together to fight a proposal to put up offices on the land in the 1990s.  They won and the scheme was rejected.  They became the Friends of Copped Hall with the aim of buying the property and restoring it to its former glory. They gained support both locally and nationally for their principles.

Below is a picture of the Walled Garden, a place of supreme order and beauty. In the last fifteen years, it has changed from the tangled, messy jungle the original volunteers found when they took it over.  Iris Newbery has been a volunteer for many years and remembers these days very well. She is now nearly 91, but still volunteering. On the day we visited, she was in the office, in a gallery above the shop,  fretting over a printer which wasn't behaving properly. The laminator was also, she felt, on the brink of causing trouble.  She and others have each had a task that they've undertaken enthusiastically day after day, week after week, in all weathers. They have made an orderly paradise out of what was once a ruin and seeing it on a beautiful October day you realise how much work was involved. 

Here is one of the glasshouses. They were nothing but metal skeletons when the volunteers arrived to start the work.

And below is a heap of collected  bits of the decorative border to one of the paths which will be put back together again one day. Nothing that's rescued is thrown away. Everything that is found or bought from other owners is used imaginatively and intelligently.

And here is the gate of the Walled Garden. 

While the garden was being restored, work on the house was also continuing. The rooms of the mansion are still not exactly as they were. You can see bare walls, and roof beams and exposed areas which will one day be covered, but the soul of each room is there already. Here's the kitchen.

Here is what will one day be a most beautiful staircase. The Friends of Copped Hall are seeking money to restore it, bit by bit. Every little helps, as they say, and on Apple Day they displayed a number which people could text to donate even small sums and earmark them for this staircase. That's what I'm going to do with my donation because my photograph doesn't fully convey how wonderful it looks.

Here in one of the bedrooms is a dress displayed in a creative way which enables you to imagine previous owners, standing at the window. I'm a sucker for dressmakers' dummies and this is a particularly lovely outfit in front of a very nice view.

And this is a model of the house which is also a money box. You can put your notes and coins into a hole in the roof!

And here is another part of the garden.

Finally, what made Copped Hall extra enchanted for me was this discovery: it was where A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed for the very first time. You would have to go far to find a more perfect venue for such an occasion.

There's a website. It's at www.coppedhalltrust.org.uk 

The Hall hosts a great many cultural and educational events, though it's not open very often. It's best to look on the website if you want to visit, but I can promise you will love it. The volunteering continues into the catering too. I saw, (though I didn't eat) ranks of delicious - looking home- made cakes but I can vouch for a terrific veg and nut roast and salad.  50 p bought me Margaret Gervis's recipes for Mincemeat Cake and Tea Loaf on both sides of one piece of A5, beautifully laminated by Iris Newbery's laminator when it was in tip top condition...

THE ESSEX SERPENT by Sarah Perry. Adèle Geras

This is the wonderful cover of a novel which I read as a plain black and white proof.  I was enchanted from the first page, carried away by a rich confection of many different elements. It's a historical novel. It has a fantastical/mythical strand.  It's about developments in medicine and social conditions in the 1890s. It unrolls a landscape before our eyes. Above all, it's about love: different kinds of love but most especially that between Cora, the heroine and  William, a married vicar of an Essex parish, father to children and husband to a woman suffering from tuberculosis. 

I recently sent a few questions to Sarah Perry and she very kindly agreed to  answer them, so here is  what  the writer herself has to say. I'll add a few words  at the end of her remarks about my experience of the novel. 

ME: Can you remember your first inkling/tingling feeling/vision  before you started to write the book or began researching it? What was the (hate to say inspiration) little seed of the idea that impelled you? 

SARAH: I can remember very clearly, which I suspect is quite rare! About 4 or 5 years ago I was in the car with my husband driving through Essex, and we passed a sign to the village of Henham-on-the-Mount. He asked if I knew about the Essex Serpent – and I didn’t! He’d been reading an old 1930s book called Companion Into Essex, which had a chapter devoted to the Serpent and various sightings of mysterious beasts in the county. It immediately set off my imagination – I remember planning – out loud! – the novel, and by time we got home I already had most of the characters in mind. 

ME: Can you tell us a bit about your process? Did you do all the reading before you started writing or as you went along? Are you a diligent writer or a lazy one? Are you fast or slow? Do you edit as you go? At the end? Do you plan out everything very carefully? 

SARAH: I do have a process of a kind though I don’t think it’s a very good one. After I had that initial idea I did absolutely nothing – no notes, no planning – for a good couple of years. But the whole time I was thinking and pondering, and letting the characters develop, and reading here and there in books about surgery and the history of Colchester. Then, when I felt that it was about to burst, so to speak, I sat down in February 2014 and began to write. I got up again nine months later with a first draft. 

I do plan – but in my head, largely. I am not one of those writers who has lots of wonderful notebooks and handwritten drafts. Once or twice I had a stab at a plan on sheets of paper – but then I just never looked at them again. I think I leave it to my mind to sift and sort – and although I’m sure I forget lots of things. I always think that if something is worth making it into the novel, I will remember it! However, I did draw a little map of the village of Aldwinter and posted it over my desk.

I tend not to do too much editing of the draft as I go – that would be horribly dispiriting. Instead I get to the end and then print it out, and read through, and make marks on the manuscript. 

However, this time I was working to a deadline as my marvellous agent was going on maternity leave and I wanted her to see it before she went – so I didn’t do much editing of that first draft until it was in the hands of my editor.

So I suppose I am both lazy and diligent! It is very typical of my writing and indeed my character to do very little for a long time, and then to work with grim determination for many hours every day, neglecting myself and my family and friends in the process, until it’s done. 

ME: Do you have someone who is with you from the beginning and shares the work or do you hide it till it's done? Are you good at taking editorial or other advice?

SARAH: I occasionally discuss a line or a paragraph with my husband – or I might read him a section I am concerned about – but generally I kept it entirely to myself until my agent saw it, and intend to do the same with my current novel in progress. I think (though I suspect I am not the best person to ask!) that I am good at taking editorial advice, for two reasons: firstly, an MA and PhD taught me many a hard lesson in humility, and secondly, I trust both my agent and my editor implicitly. I think of their editorial skills as being essentially sorcery: with both books they have this uncanny knack of knowing precisely what I am trying to achieve, and how to help me achieve it. More than once, there has been a little scene, or a sentence, which in my heart of hearts I have know full well doesn’t work, but have tried to slip past them.  Unfailingly, they spot it! 

ME:  I think of the book as a many- stranded plait. What pulls readers through it and unites all the strands, so to speak is the Serpent. We do want to know what/if/how it is. How important is the element of mystery and discovery in the book?

SARAH: Vitally important, I think. All my life I have been a devotee of detective fiction, and I think it has trained me in the importance of some degree of mystery in every book – something to keep the reader turning the pages. And I think most very great fiction is, in some way, a whodunit, or a whydunit, or a willtheydoit! In Great Expectations we want to know who Pip’s benefactor is, in Crime and Punishment we want to know if Raskolnikov will get away with it, and so on. I don’t think there necessarily has to be a very definite answer  - but ideally there will be a solution, and it will not be one the reader could have predicted – but once revealed, will make absolute sense, the novel having been read! I don’t think I have successfully pulled this off yet but it’s something I hope to achieve one day: a good mystery, with a totally satisfactory ending.

ME: Do you read any contemporary novelists? And if so, who do you admire?

SARAH: Speaking of mysteries and endings: one of my favourite contemporary novelists is Sophie Hannah. Her mysteries are masterpieces of corkscrew thinking: I read them with my mouth open in awe. I’ve spoken to her a couple of times about writing and one of the marvelous things is that you realise she is an expert in the craft, really understanding it in the way a great pianist understands musical theory. The great love of my life is Hilary Mantel – I realise this seems an obvious response, but (as I am fond of telling everyone at the drop of a hat) she has been my idol since long before Wolf Hall. I stand in awe of her intellect, her wit, her bravery in her writing, the majesty and beauty of her prose, and her great kindness. I long to meet her but absolutely cannot, as I would probably just burst into tears. Until recently there were two novelists whose books I’d buy in hardback the day of release: Mantel, and Terry Pratchett. I wept so hard when I heard he’d died that my husband heard it from downstairs and came running up to see what the matter was. AS Byatt once called him ‘The Dickens of the twentieth century” and I absolutely agree: he was a master storyteller, and had a wit like a razorblade, but was also fundamentally kind and compassionate - that's rare to come by, I think. 

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And so to my opinion of The Essex Serpent. 

We start with  a short, mysterious prologue in which we almost meet the eponymous Serpent. We are intrigued and spooked,  but on the first page, in the first sentence, Perry gives a nod to Dickens: "One o'clock on  a dreary day and the time ball dropped at Greenwich Observatory."  We are once more in the real world.
The back cover of the novel lists the things you will find within it and I'm reproducing it because it sums up very well what readers will discover and enjoy. 

What this list can't tell you is how well Perry writes. She has found a language which is both plain and rich. Her descriptions of landscape bring the places she's describing to life in a way that takes you right into them. 

'The drizzle subsided and cleared the air, and without any sunlight breaking through the low white canopy the air flushed with colour. Everywhere reddish banks of last year's bracken glowed and above them gorse thickets burned with early blooms of yellow. "

Every character is so well described that you'd recognise them if they walked into the room. The love relationships are drawn with great sensitivity. We learn much about medical advances through the fascinating character of Dr Luke Garrett and about housing problems in London in the relationship between Martha, Cora's companion and maid and Luke's friend, Charles. Stella, the vicar's wife, is a very  unusual character who becomes more and more unhinged as the novel processes, partly because of the tuberculosis which ravages her body but maybe also partly because of something else... divine possession? 

And the Serpent? What's all that about? I am not going to tell you, but what  I will say is: the ending is most satisfactory. I can't give away important surprises that occur on the way to that conclusion, but there are losses and recoveries, visions and dreams,  arguments and debates. And everywhere love which is both destructive and creative, but in all events, unforeseeable. 

I reckon this book will be on many prize shortlists this coming year and if not, I will be very  put out. I loved it.