London's Burning by Lydia Syson

Of course I should have brought binoculars.  Vast though it was - this panoramic wooden sculpture of London’s mid-seventeenth-century skyline, rising from a flat barge in the middle of the Thames - it looked worryingly far away.  And there was a boat in the way.

As you can see, Sunday was a dull, grey afternoon.  We had pitched up absurdly early, friends and family, hoping to find a good spot on the riverbank, which we did.  Armed with a small picnic and some wine, we leaned against the very comfortable wall in front of the Sea Containers Building, watched the world and the water go by, and caught up on life. It was almost three hours before the burning was due to begin.  But I’m a committed queue-er.  I'm used to  sitting for hours by the river outside the Globe theatre to secure my favourite stage-side groundling view and conversation and good cheer always make the minutes slip by with amazing speed. Our previous experience of Artichoke public art events had convinced us it would be well worth the wait. 

The finale of the 350^th anniversary commemorations of the Great Fire of London - previewed in part here by fellow History Girl Imogen Robertson – was promised to be spectacular.  Hundreds of young Londoners - schoolchildren and young people 'not in education, employment or training' - had collaborated over months to bring to life American ‘burn artist’ David Best’s vision of the Restoration capital. 

London 1666, David Best, London's Burning,
a festival of arts and ideas for Great Fire 350.
Produced by Artichoke.
Photo by Matthew Andrews.

The crowds gathered behind us…we got talking to a few strangers…and joyous anticipation  flickered and caught hold.  Even the security guard who had to run along the sandy shoreline below us in pursuit of a few triumphantly stray spectators was kind and good-humoured as he retrieved them. Free public art brings peculiar health-and-safety headaches and London 1666 was ambitious: fire and water on top of unpredictable audience numbers.  The Great Fire 350 website certainly suggested a slight anxiety about overcrowding with its insistence that the best views would be online. That seemed unlikely.

As darkness fell, we saw the dome of St Paul’s begin to move, washed with smoke and colour and finally flames: the beginning of ‘Fires Ancient’, a projection by Martin Firrell.  

From Martin Firrell's website.

Out on the river, pinpricks of torchlight moved about the framework of the small city, only to vanish.  Last checks, we assumed, and worried a bit about getaways.  A few pleasure craft seemed to be cutting it fine.  On the dot of half-past eight, the first spark appeared, right at the heart of the sculpture.

 

From the other side of the river...as it started.
London 1666, David Best, London's Burning,
a festival of arts and ideas for Great Fire 350.
Produced by Artichoke.
Photo by Matthew Andrews.

Just as it had in the city itself 350 years earlier, fire soon took hold and slowly spread.  Little by little, the exquisite intricacy of the sculpture’s latticework construction stood out ever more blackly against the flames, perfectly visible.  

London's Burning, as above, photo by Oliver Rudkin

A brief, southerly gust of wind, and we felt the heat of it on our faces. At first I thought I’d imagined its warmth, but then it came again, and it was even warmer.Building after building caught light, spire after spire. The crackling intensified.  It had begun like the sound of rain pattering on a hard roof – the kind of summer shower you don’t notice until you look outside and run outside to gather in washing.  Soon it sounded vengeful. The entire barge was alight. 

As above.

The clouds of smoke rushing upwards and eastwards developed an alarming but enchanting underbelly of embers, an abundance of golden sparks.  

The fire-fighting boat which had been hovering nearby moved swiftly in to direct a cooling jet of spray at the danger.

I no longer wanted binoculars.  It felt pointless even to take photographs, yet also impossible not to make an attempt, at least from time to time.  No image, moving or still, could possibly convey the complete experience of a performance like this – sounds, smells, sights and that invigorating sense of mass pleasure all combining to provide a extended magical moment, the more magnificent for being shared with so many. There were gasps as the larger structures collapsed, one after another, spires folding and beams breaking. At one point somebody tried and failed to set off round-singing - "London's burning, London's burning..." Mostly people stood mesmerised, from time to time confiding their wonder in low voices.  This was wonder laced with horror. The spectacle - a visual oxymoron, perhaps - lasted for almost three-quarters of an hour. It was the ultimate in twenty-first-century urban sublime. 

Yesterday morning I was working nearby and couldn’t resist stealing away along the Embankment to see what, if anything, remained.  

Nothing.  The barge had vanished, leaving thoughts and memories.  

Something I learned this year was that on September 6^th 1666, London was a city of refugees: 80 per cent of the City had lost their homes. The rich rebuilt, but the destitute had to survive for years in shanty-towns on the outskirts of London. There will be events today in central London to commemorate this aspect of the Great Fire, and think about contemporary resonances. 

I’m also left remembering my very first introduction to the Great Fire – a lit-up scale model made for the old London Museum (originally housed in Kensington Palace) - and the memorable awe this always inspired when I went to see it as a young child.  As I got older, I noticed its flaws – the cotton wool smoke, the boy caught implausibly running through a flame.  But when Imogen wrote last month that she felt sorry for people born in London, as they could never have the pleasure of visiting the capital for the first time, it made me laugh. We're happy with that! I’m a Londoner, a proud Londoner, and brought up by several generations of Londoners too. The whole city was my playground, as it is now my children’s, and I was always blessed with older relatives who had long delighted in being Londoners.  They shared its secret spots and stories with me and my siblings and cousins, and untiringly took us up the Monument and St Paul's and on the river and in and out of the City's churches, squares, museums and parks. I’m thanking my family now. 

Photo by Oliver Ruskin, details above.

PS.  Some children's fiction thoughts for the Fire of London: Two of my sons were particularly gripped by Pippa Goodheart's Raven Boy.  My daughter read and re-read Mary Hooper's At the sign of the Sugared Plum and its sequel Petals in the Ashes to the point of obsession. Any other suggestions?

www.lydiasyson.com

Competition winners May

The winners of copies of Mary Hooper's the Disgrace of Kitty Grey are as follows:

WonderlibrarianCPD23Blog (Sue)
Ruan Peet
CharmedLassie
Marjorie
Francesca Scanlan

Mary chose the winners herself and found it very hard, since they were all argued for so passionately. In the end there were two Emmas, two Persuasions and one Pride and Prejudice!

To claim your prizes, pleas contact Emma (!) Bradshaw at Bloomsbury:  Emma.Bradshaw@bloomsbury.com

Congratulations!

May Competition

We have five copies of Mary Hooper's new book The Disgrace of Kitty Grey to give away as prizes in our May Competition. (UK only)

Just answer this question in the Comments section below:

Which is your favourite Jane Austen novel and why?

(Any reference to Colin Firth will disqualify you!)

The Return of Mary Hooper

We are delighted to welcome back former History Girl Mary Hooper as our May guest. Mary's new book The Disgrace of Kitty Grey has just been published by Bloomsbury and is already getting rave reviews. It celebrates 200 years since the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Kitty Grey is a dairymaid living in the country who is sent up to London to buy a copy of the latest must-read novel. Here we print an extract from the opening chapter:

 
Suddenly nervous about why the two young ladies had asked to meet me in secret, I hurried through the kitchens, went up the servants’ stairs and stood

waiting in the hallway between the drawing room and the front parlour, just as Miss Sophia and Miss Alice had requested.

I checked my nails, smoothed down my pinafore and sniffed. I was not used to being right inside the house and the air seemed to close about me stiflingly; an inside sort of air, stuffy and tickling my nose, a mixture of the previous night’s coal fires, the fibres of the thick wool carpets and the scent from the bowl of dried rose petals on the hall table.

I looked at my reflection in the glass of the nearest portrait and tucked a few wayward strands of hair under my cap. Lady Cecilia was known to be a stickler for cleanliness, especially in the dairy, and I couldn’t help but be worried that there had been a complaint against me. But then surely Milady would have asked Mrs Bonny, the housekeeper, to tick me off, rather than dele- gate the reprimand to Miss Sophia and Miss Alice, who (not just from my own observances but according to kitchen gossip) had little else in their heads but hand- some young gentlemen, ballgowns and supper dances.

I sniffed again and wished for them to hurry them- selves so that I might learn my fate, whatever that was. I gazed down the hall; from where I was standing I could see right up to the double front doors one way and back the other to the little room (I had heard Lady Cecilia call it a petit salon) where she took tea at precisely four o’clock every afternoon. All along the walls of the passageway, placed at the same distance from each other, were portraits of the family. These were mostly gloomy- brown old things, starting with Lord Baysmith the Army Major, stuffed into tight red dress uniform outside the salon door, down to Miss Sophia and Miss Alice (lighter, brighter) in blue dresses with white sashes. Directly opposite the Misses was an oil portrait of their older brother, the present Lord Baysmith’s son and heir, Peregrine, who was away at school.

I counted the portraits: fourteen in all, going back years and years and depicting all the notable Bridgeford Hall residents. There was, I knew, a much more recent portrait of the present Lord Baysmith with Lady Cecilia, dressed as if for a ball but, strangely, sitting under a tree on the estate with two enormous hunting dogs borrowed for the occasion. It had been painted, apparently, by
someone very famous, and now hung over the fireplace in what they called the grand salon. I had only seen this painting a few times but I liked it very much, for in the background the sun could be seen glinting on the river, far away, and upon this river my sweetheart, Will, worked as a ferryman. The painting showed, faintly, a rowing boat with (I had convinced myself) a smudged representation of Will inside, his strong brown arms pulling at the oars.

I slipped into a little reverie, smiling to myself as I thought of Will. We had been walking out together secretly for some months now, and the time was coming when he must call on Mrs Bonny and Mr Griffin the butler with a request that we be allowed to see each other formally. This would mean that we could meet openly after church on a Sunday or, if the ferry business was quiet, stroll to the village on a summer’s evening. After we had been granted permission and walked out together for several years, we might be able to wed, providing my family were in agreement and we had somewhere to live. I was hoping that he might speak to Mrs Bonny soon – and I’d dropped plenty of hints that he should – but he was very much a waterman by trade and by type (that is, he did not give a stick for conven- tion). Moreover, I was slightly worried that, not being aware of social pitfalls, he might say the wrong thing at the wrong time and spoil our chances.

Miss Sophia and Miss Alice suddenly came through the drawing-room door, giggling together. Miss Sophia looked at me, put her finger to her mouth to indicate I should not speak, then said in a low voice, ‘Is there anyone around, Kitty?’ (I should say here that although I was born Katherine, everyone in the house called me Kitty, as Katherine had been thought too much of a name for a milkmaid.)

I bobbed a curtsey. ‘No, miss. Everyone’s about their duties.’

‘I don’t mean servants! I mean family.’

I shook my head. ‘I haven’t seen anyone.’ How would I see anyone, I thought, unless they came into the dairy? ‘Your mother is still abed, I believe,’ I added. I knew this because I’d passed through the kitchens and heard one of the upstairs maids complaining that she couldn’t get into Milady’s room to lay the fire and it was going to set her back for the entire day.

‘Because we’ve got something secret to do,’ said Miss Sophia. ‘Something we want you to assist us with.’

Mary Hooper is a very popular writer for children and young adults. Her brilliant historical novels have a huge fan base, as do her contemporary novels for teenagers. At The Sign of the Sugared Plum was selected as part of the 2010 Booked Up scheme and Fallen Grace has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2011. Mary lives in Henley-on-Thames. www.maryhooper.co.uk

We will have copies of The Disgrace of Kitty Grey to give away in our May competition on 31st May.

A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE - Mary Hooper

I came across this fascinating book by Peter Earle when looking through the extensive bibliography in one of Peter Ackroyd’s many books on London (he can’t write them all himself, surely?) It’s out of print now and costs over £70 second hand, but my local library found it for me on the stacks. 

A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE is a motley and captivating collection of statements, mostly just a sentence or two, given by witnesses or plaintives in various court cases from the Seventeenth Century onwards, grouped under headings such as “Entertainment”, “Neighbourhood and Home” and “Eating and Drinking”. For instance, being asked where they lived, witnesses answered not with house numbers and streets (the numbering of houses only began in the 1720s), but with a description:

 “In a garret”

 "In part of a cellar”

“On the pipes that belong to the Water-house at the Bridge”

 “In one room in Shoe Lane which I furnish myself”.


Researching my first historical book, AT THE SIGN OF THE SUGARED PLUM, and wondering what employment to give my main character, I found various witness statements mentioning what people did for a living:
“He was employed in taking care of cattle and driving them to and from Smithfield Market.”

“Great numbers of idle persons doe daily go about in the footpaths with wheelbarrow wherein they carry oysters, oranges, decayed cheese, gingerbread and other wares to sell.”

“Her employment was to sweep the doors before gentlemen’s houses...”

“He undertook to be a lamp-lighter, which employment he follow’d about Newgate Street”

And then I was thrilled to find: “I make choclett cakes for people of quality and gentleman’s houses”, which gave me the idea of letting Hannah run a sweetmeat shop.

The most colourful language is to be found in defamation cases, mostly brought by women against women. These slanders often related to a woman’s lack of chastity, but unfortunately I couldn’t make use of them in a book written for 12+. You might be interested to learn, however, that “whore” was easily the most common term of abuse, often qualified by:

 Nasty...saucy...painted...trolloping...fat arse...pocky...everybody’s...eternal, etc.

 Sometimes this popular word was substituted by another epithet: bitch, jade, slut, beast, puss, bawd or moll or, my two favourites: Mrs Impudence and Mrs Bitchington.

 Sometimes this abuse carried the hint of a story:

"One stallion won’t serve your turn, you must have two”

"You showed your arse as common as your face to all the ship’s company”

“You’ll turne up your arse to anybody for a pint of two penny ale”

And this, with its accusations of both impropriety and dishonesty: “You’ve had the pox and haven’t paid your doctor.”


The book has been useful for sprinkling touches of realism through whatever I happen to be writing. Sometimes, on finishing a book, I’ll refer to A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE and go back and add a little local colour:

“In my journey I was thrown down by a hog, but without any hurt.”

“He cry’d faggots five for sixpence, by which he got twenty shillings every week.”

“Near the end of Exeter-street, I slipt into the kennel and fell down, for I had been to see a friend and was a little in liquor.”

“...the coach stopped in the middle of the street and she frequently put her head out of it to sing, with an intent as I believe to pick up some gentleman.”


The genuine voices of the people of London! I’m hoping A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE will be reprinted soon so that I can keep my own copy.

EXILED! by Mary Hooper

I’ve just finished a YA historical (not due out until Spring 2013) which originally
was going to be about a milkmaid, Susannah, fresh from the country, who committed
a minor offence and was sentenced to imprisonment on one of London’s ghastly
hulks (the decommissioned warships which were moored in the Thames). Whilst
researching what life was like aboard a hulk in the early 1800s, however, I
discovered something rather intriguing: that sometimes the hulks were used
as a holding bay for prisoners who were going to be transported.

So maybe, I thought, it would make a better story if Susannah were to miss out on
the hulk experience and be sent to Australia instead.

English gaols at this time were fearfully overcrowded, and to be exiled was a popular

punishment for both major and minor crimes from early seventeenth century until

1868. Until the 1770s criminals were deported to the United States, but following the
American Wars of Independence they began to be sent to Australia. It was seen
as a useful and humane alternative to execution, which would probably have been
the sentence of many if transportation had not been introduced.

A sentence could be for life or for a minimum of seven years, and convicts would
typically be expected to work in the colonies by farming, mining or helping to
build roads. When they had served their sentence – or most of their sentence –
they would be granted certain freedoms: to marry and raise a family, to work and
live where they pleased. In the unlikely event that they could raise the fare, they
could return to England.

I read more. Throughout the eighteenth century, women and their children were
regularly among prisoners deported to Australia, but in 1789 a cargo consisting
of about 230 women and children were sent to Botany Bay aboard a ship called the
Lady Julian. Some of these women were prostitutes, others had been convicted of

quite minor crimes, but their main reason for being transported was to enable them

to marry male prisoners already living in Australia and increase the population.

But first there was the year-long journey, during which they were encouraged to
become - ahem - friendly with the sailors.

In THE FLOATING BROTHEL, Sian Rees’ fascinating account of the Lady Julian’s voyage, she
tells how each shipmate was encouraged to choose a woman for the voyage. Sets
of baby clothes were part of the provisioning for the ship, for (as The Times
put it) it was hoped that “the salubrity of the sea air may, during the long
voyage, produce babies to every honest woman”. How the women felt about this,
and if they had any choice in the shipmates’ choosing of them, is not recorded.

So my main character misses out on being imprisoned on a hulk, but instead is sentenced
to be transported. Gaol fever was rife and life on board ship was harsh; what happens to
her on the way to Botany Bay? Does she even get there? You’ll have to read the book to find
out! I wish I could give you a title so that you’ll know it when you see it, but this hasn’t yet
been decided on. Suggestions gratefully received!

A VISIT TO MORTLAKE - Mary Hooper

When I was writing my book set in the household of Dr John Dee (At the House of the Magician) I did a little light research in the village where he lived: Mortlake, SW London. Sadly, there is precious little left now to connect the magician to the place, just a 60s block of flats named John Dee House and looking about as unmagical as it is possible to get. There is no trace of his herb garden, his library or the huge house visited at least twice by Elizabeth I, who rode over on her horse from the Palace of Richmond. One of Dee’s biographers says that the house shared a garden wall with the church, though, and I made use of this knowledge with a scene in my book where Dr Dee tries to raise a spirit from one of the graves (this scene prompted by a 16th Century illustration).

But Dee is not actually buried in the churchyard there, which was a disappointment. To see a fascinating tomb, however, you should make your way to the Roman Catholic church a few hundred yards away, where the explorer, poet, and translator of erotic books, Sir Richard Burton, is buried in a striking above-ground sepulchure. When I first saw it, some ten years ago, it was in a sad state of decay and looked more like an dilapidated air-raid shelter, half-lost in undergrowth. Now it is restored to its former glory and resembles an Arab tent being gently ruffled by wind, complete with Catholic and Moslem insignia, including crucifix, star of Bethlehem and gilt crescents which turn and shimmer at any movement of the air.

Admire its eccentricity and read the plaque about Sir Richard’s life - but don’t go yet! You can climb a small ladder at the back and actually look into the tomb through what used to be a beautiful stained-glass window (but is now, thanks to vandals, just a glass square). Inside the tomb, the intricate, velvet-covered coffins of Sir Richard and his wife Lady Isabel can be seen, and hanging over them, oriental lamps which once shone a “dim religious light” through jewel-shaped facets of coloured glass. The floor is of white, veined Carrara marble and there are pillars in the shape of finely moulded bronze serpents. I could also see huge candles in silver candle sticks of graduated heights, immortelles and wreaths of long-dead flowers.

Sir Richard died in 1890 and the following year Lady Isabel wrote his biography, which was a great success. With some of the money earned she embellished the mausoleum by putting up festoons of camel bells in the roof of the tent, “so that when I open or shut the door...the tinkling of the camel bells will sound just as it does in the desert.” She visited the tomb regularly and spent what would have been her thirty-third wedding anniversary in there. When she died in 1896, she joined her husband permanently in a matching coffin.

Lady Susan (I wish!): by Sue (the peasant) Purkiss

In days of yore, when knights of old rode out into primeval swamps and did battle against Tyrannosaurus Rex – well, okay, when I was young – I used to read a lot of historical fiction. There was an excellent library in our town:  given by Andrew Carnegie, it was, and still is, the most impressive building in Ilkeston’s market square. I borrowed as many books each week as I was allowed to, and then went to work there as a Saturday girl, which meant that I could borrow as many as I liked.

I read a lot of everything, non-fiction as well as fiction, but historical fiction was an enduring favourite – Geoffrey Trease, Henry Treece (Have I got those the right way round?), Mary Renault, somebody who wrote bodice rippers about a girl called Angelique (Sergeanne Golon? Can that be right? What an excellent name…), Jean Plaidy – anything I could get my hands on. (Except Georgette Heyer. For some reason I didn’t take to her, though I know she has many fans among the History Girls.) Gail Rebuck has recently written an article about some research into how reading fiction develops empathy. It’s always good when research confirms what you knew already. I certainly used to enter fully into the worlds of the books I read, and feel that I was indeed the young Queen Elizabeth, the tragic Mary Queen of Scots, the gorgeous Angelique (though that really was a bit of a stretch).

But one day, it struck me that, living as I did on a council estate in an ex-mining town in the East Midlands, actually my ancestral self would probably not have been a princess or a Lady Susan at all – she would have been a skivvy or a peasant, living in a hovel rather than a castle. I’d read a book about the development of houses – I knew just how dreadful those picturesque thatched cottages really would have been. I wouldn’t have learned how to read, I wouldn’t have had gorgeous dresses and jewels, I wouldn’t have gone to court – I’d have been lucky to have a piece of ribbon and a hunk of dry cheese to call my own. I was outraged. How unfair was that?

So does historical fiction always take for its subjects the great and the (possibly) good? No, of course it doesn’t. There are lots of examples of books which take for their subject ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Back in the day, one of my favourite novels was Mist Over Pendle, by Robert Neill. This was one of the very few books which I borrowed over and over again. It told the true story of the Witches of Pendle, three witches with the fantastic names of Demdike, Chattox and Squinting Lizzie, who were accused and tried in Lancashire in the sixteenth century. But it told the story from the point of view of Margery, the young cousin of the local magistrate whose job it was to deal with the witches. What do I remember about it? I remember the atmosphere of brooding menace, like Pendle Hill which loomed over the countryside. But most of all I remember a description of a new dress Margery had. It was made in glorious colours, scarlet and russet and gold, and there were all these wonderful words I’d never come across before, like ‘sarsnet’ and ‘kirtle’. I could see the brightness of the colours, feel the luxuriant texture of the fabrics, experience the pleasure as Margery and I put it on for the first time. All by itself, that description was enough to take me into that place, that time, that story. (Incidentally, I looked Mist Over Pendle up, for the purpose of this post, and discovered that after being out of print for many years it was reprinted last year. So I’ve sent off for a copy – which is risky, I know: I hope it will live up to my memory of it.)

More recently, there have been masses of books about ordinary people: for example, Ann Turnbull’s Civil War story,  Alice In Love And War. This tells the story of a girl who follows the army in search of adventure.  Alice plunges you into visceral reality – you come to know the detail of how it would feel to be on the road in the seventeenth century. I particularly remember a description of camp followers making a meal over a fire. It’s vivid and convincing; you can practically feel the dirt crusted beneath your finger nails, feel the exhaustion and discomfort, smell the soup cooking in the pot. Alice’s story is every bit as compelling as that of the young Elizabeth Tudor.

And yet, and yet – the stories of Elizabeth and the other Tudors clearly exert a huge fascination over both writers and readers. They are the subjects of so many books, by Jean Plaidy, Dorothy Dunnet, Philippa Gregory and our own Harriet Castor to name but a few. Is it more rewarding to write about real – and ruling – figures from history? And if so, why?

I must admit I used to read historical fiction partly as a way of learning about history. At my school, history was deathly dull. It seemed to consist largely of lists of  the inventions and advantages of the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions. So there’s one reason to read, and therefore to write about real figures – to bring history alive.

Another is that you already have the bones of a story there: all you have to do is add the flesh and the lovely clothing. Against that, there is a panoply of experts who are ready to pounce on any inaccuracy, any tinkering with historical fact. (You can avoid this if you go back early enough. That’s one of the good things about writing about the Dark Ages, as I found when I wrote about Alfred the Great – there aren’t too many incontrovertible facts, so there’s plenty of room for poetic license.)

Perhaps too there is something about historical figures and verisimilitude. One of the things novels have to do is convince you, while you’re reading, that the imagined world is a perfectly coherent and possible one. Perhaps the inclusion of historical figures provides a shortcut to this conviction – ie Henry VIII was real, he’s in this book, so the world of this book is real…? I certainly think it’s quite a canny move to have the occasional historical figure dropping in, even if the rest of the book is about ordinary people. When I read Mary Hooper’s Fallen Grace, I was thrilled when Charles Dickens had a walk-on part. It was almost like spotting a celebrity in the street. And it acted like an anchor: an assurance that this world and all the things that were happening in it were perfectly possible.

I like both kinds of HF. I like books about the movers and shakers of past times because they explore the complexity behind the time line, the extent to which the quirks of individual personalities influence great events. But I also like books about ‘ordinary’ people, the flotsam and jetsam on the sea of history. After all, that’s what most of us would have been. (Although maybe, just maybe, if I went far enough back I might have been an aristocratic Lady Susan? No? Oh well, all right then. I’ll just go off and scrub the steps. I know my place…)

A VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS - Mary Hooper

This is an excerpt from VELVET. It is Christmas in London, 1900. Velvet, an orphan, has been asked by her new friend Lizzie to share her family’s Christmas Day...

"Velvet managed not to open Charlie’s present until Christmas morning. When she did, she was disappointed - which was extremely wicked and ungrateful of her, she knew, but she couldn’t help thinking that Charlie’s mum must have chosen
the gift within: a pink-and-green flower corsage for an outer coat, made of felt and not at all fashionable. She’d been hoping that the box might contain a
pretty hair decoration with which to keep back her curls, or even a little silver necklace to enhance the Sunday-best dress that she intended to wear to
Lizzie’s house that day. But what was she thinking of, she admonished herself, for if it had been a costly piece of jewellery or something similar, then she
would have had to return it. A girl couldn’t accept a gift like that from a male friend unless they were engaged - and it wouldn’t do to give Charlie ideas. He was a sweet boy and she liked him very much, but he wouldn’t make a husband for her. He was part of the past which she intended to leave behind.

At Lizzie’s house she was delighted to find that the family kept a good Christmas, the sort she’d never had before. In the doorway hung a kissing ball of ivy and mistletoe, and in the hall the Christmas tree was liberally decorated with candles, gold foil and ivy ribbons. She felt shy at first, but was welcomed so warmly into the family that before long she was joining in
everything - even the raucous singing games around the piano – as if she’d
known them all for years.

Mr Cameron, Lizzie’s pa, was a source of amazement to Velvet. Whereas her father had always seemed to be teetering on the edge of a display of bad temper, Lizzie’s pa was a
happy-go-lucky chap who whipped off his jacket and waistcoat to show his daughters how to dance the hornpipe, and made paper hats for their dogs. When they sat down at the table and Lizzie’s ma discovered that she’d forgotten to put the stuffing in the breast of the roast goose, Velvet went cold, fearing a terrible row, but Mr Cameron had roared with laughter and called his wife a
flibberty-gibbet, then kissed her and said he wouldn’t have her any other way.

After the goose came a flaming plum pudding containing small silver charms: a
boot, a coin, a top hat, a dog, a lucky horseshoe and a ring. Velvet got the
tiny horseshoe (she decided that Lizzie’s kindly mum had arranged it that way)
and everyone made much of the fact that this was the best token to have and
that the coming year was bound to be very lucky for her. After the meal there
was charades, with forfeits if you didn’t get the right answer in a certain
number of minutes, then blind-man’s buff and – as the afternoon grew more
boisterous - a game with a Ouija board which Lizzie’s sisters played most
enthusiastically, getting in touch with all sorts of “spirits” but failing to
get anything sensible out of them. HSTRETYZZ said one in reply to a question
about his name, WERPRSIT said another when asked where he came from.

At tea time everyone had a barley sugar stick from the tree, a slice of iced fruit
cake and a bon-bon, and when Velvet pulled hers with Lizzie’s mother she was
delighted to discover within it a tiny pair of nail scissors, a paper hat and a
joke (My dog has no nose. How does it smell? Dreadful) which for some reason sent everyone into near hysterics.

Complimenting Mrs Cameron on the wonderful fruitfulness of the cake, Velvet, looking around the table and
feeling very happy, wondered if her mother and father had ever had good times together. She decided they had not, for – from as far back as she could remember - her father had been an impossible man to please. Why, only last Christmas she’d made an effort to create a little cheer, buying a ham for their Christmas dinner and studding it with cloves, and her father had sniffed it, said that he hated cloves and thrown the whole thing to the floor.

He’d taken exception to the way she’d decorated the room, too, and tossed the evergreens outside saying they were a pagan tradition which he would not tolerate (although he was certainly not a religious man)."

ECTOPLASM by Mary Hooper

Following publication of Velvet, set in a medium's house in Edwardian London, I recently wrote a piece on Ectoplasm for the children’s book blog in the Guardian. This is an unexpurgated version.

Ectoplasm was purported to be a substance that exuded from a medium whilst in trance: a substance which, it was said, formed itself into the manifestation of whatever spirit the medium was in touch with at the time. It was said to flow from one or more of the medium’s orifices. Yes, even from there.

When I was researching Velvet I found a selection of rather odd photographs showing materials which purported to be this mystical stuff. Accounts of the day describing it say that it was a slimy substance, a fine muslin-like material, something like smoke, or of a rubbery dough-like consistency. Members of the audience, kept at a distance and literally in the dark, were warned against touching any ectoplasm which appeared. It depleted the medium’s own body, they were told. If it was touched, it could kill her. Have a look at these photographs and see if they convince you...

Some mediums didn’t bother exuding anything, but merely pulled the curtains tightly shut across the cabinets they used for going into trances, and appeared through a secret doorway dressed in heavenly white robes. There was a sexual element to all this; sitting in almost-darkness with an attractive lady medium, holding hands around the table, those Victorian gentlemen were getting a lot closer to a lady than they usually did. One evening, Pocky, a small “Indian girl spirit” materialised by Miss Florence Wood, kissed a Mr Gurney two or three times through her drapery and then went on to embrace a corn-merchant “repeatedly”. At a later séance, Pocky was actually exposed as Miss Wood, on her knees and swathed in white muslin. She pleaded that she had been “an unconscious instrument temporarily in the hands of an evil power”.

Another famous medium, Miss Katie Cook, materialised a shapely and attractive spirit who was frequently jumped on by sceptics anxious to prove (after touching her all over) that she was flesh. On one appearance she proved not very ethereal by struggling violently with a gentleman, scratching his face and pulling out his whiskers.

In 1882, The Society for Psychical Research was formed, and as a consequence mediums would sometimes be asked to submit to an examination before and after a séance to show they weren’t hiding anything. Discoveries made included a pump hidden under a carpet ready to inflate a swath of gauze-like material, a medium found with yards of muslin folded into a cube in her cheek, yet another with an assistant in the basement ready to blow up smoke through the floorboards. Mediums could also secrete materials under their voluminous skirts, and sometimes had their arms and legs bound up to prevent them producing anything when the lights went out.

The formation of the Society resulted in the numbers of mediums producing ectoplasm going down, and the numbers being prosecuted for fraud going up. If a Society member was present and the medium was canny, she would say that the dead were being uncooperative that evening and not even attempt to make contact with them. Nevertheless, all the leading mediums were, at one time, caught in wrong-doing and accused of fraud.

October Competition

More lovely goodies in our October giveaway for answers to the following questions. Leave your answers in the Comments below.

Alas, as always, books can be posted only to UK addresses so only UK entries are eligible.

To win one of five copies of Pauline Francis's Traitor's Kiss (Usborne)

Q: What did Elizabethans celebrate on 17 November with bonfires and bell-ringing?


To win one of five copies of Mary Hooper's Velvet (Bloomsbury)

Q: In Velvet, a regular visitor to Madame Savoya was Lily Langtree, a (real) society beauty and mistress to the future king. In the Sixties a song was inspired by her. What was it and who sang it?

Answers by 7th November, please.

CROSS DRESSING by Mary Hooper

Before anyone imagines the History Girls all sitting down to write booted and suited in pinstripe, just let me say that cross-dressing is the topic that Caroline Lawrence has kindly set this month, knowing that most of us have, somewhere or other, a reference to this in our historical fiction.




In THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND TIMES OF ELIZA ROSE, Eliza and Nell Gwyn (with whom Eliza is working as a maid) dress as boys to attend an evening of revelry at Foxhall Gardens. They wear dark velvet doublets slashed with gold and short breeches; with Nell’s being cut daringly high to show off as much of her shapely legs as possible, for she hopes to catch the eye of Charles II, the “Merry Monarch”. Nell Gwyn sometimes played boys on stage, too, clad in a lot less than she’d have to wear as a girl.

In THE BETRAYAL, which is the last book of a trilogy set at the court of Queen Elizabeth, my main character, Lucy, puts on a lad’s clothes to attend a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and, on the way out, gets spotted as a fine-looking boy. She is asked to join the company and play a small female part in the next play they are to perform. So then I have a girl, disguised as a boy, disguised as a girl. This was great fun to write, especially when the other players, thinking Lucy is a boy, comment on her marvellously natural feminine charms.

Lucy herself, for once unencumbered by corset, bodice, layers of petticoats and so on, loves the freedom that being dressed as a boy offers:

Dressed and capped to my satisfaction, the thought of the small adventure I was about to embark on put me in such high spirits that I couldn’t resist acting the lad all the way to the Curtain Theatre. Much to Sonny’s dismay I knocked off his cap, chased after a dog and even spent some time looking in the window of a barber-surgeon’s shop, pondering aloud whether or not I should go in and be shaved.

Historically speaking, for a girl to dress as a boy is regarded as sexy, daring and a bit naughty, but the circumstances have not so far risen in any of my books where it has been necessary for a boy to don a girl’s clothes. Shades of Danny la Rue: it just doesn’t have the same appeal that way round, does it? In the book I am currently writing, however, (no title yet) it will becomes necessary for the main male character to disguise himself as a woman - and I am hoping I can make it work without the whole thing degenerating into farce.

MEDIUMS - then and now Mary Hooper

“When the dead talk, the living must listen” – or so the strap line says of my new historical novel, VELVET, published 5th September. VELVET is a story about a medium – or, more precisely, about a girl who goes to work for a medium - and of course I had to do research for this which involved going to see “real” mediums on stage in small local theatres.

As the curtain opened on the first of these, the medium came forward to ask if anyone in the audience was a confirmed sceptic. I put up my hand (I was the only one) and she fixed me with a glowering eye and said, “Yes. I see.” After that, far from trying to change me to a believer, she didn’t look my way for the rest of the evening.

I was really hoping for more: the way one would quite like to see a nice ghost. I had very much hoped to be selected by the medium and receive an inspiring and uplifting message. Perhaps the spirits would know that I was planning to write a book about them and turn up to give a good performance?

Unfortunately, they did not. What happened in all three events I attended was, after passing on several messages that seemed to mean something to certain members of the audience (had they been planted there, I wondered?) the medium resorted to asking basic questions: had anyone in the audience someone in spirit called – say - Fred, or John, or Anne. Of course, most people did know someone deceased who had these not-very-unusual names, and it wasn’t difficult to fabricate stories around them. The medium would say, “I’m getting some disconnected messages here, tell me if some of them mean anything to you”, then throw in a few suggestions: Uncle Fred had had a great sense of humour/enjoyed gardening/liked to travel abroad/watched a lot of TV, and the audience member would seize on any that were relevant to him or her.

The medium would then go on to employ the type of “cold reading” used by Derren Brown, analysing the audience member’s body language, speech patterns, level of education, clothing, hairstyle, etc. and making high probability guesses – messages which were purported to have come from Uncle Fred.

Never did anyone receive a message which stunned and amazed them, a communication which could only have come from “beyond the grave”.

At the second event I attended, the medium resorted to asking the audience (rather desperately, for lots of spirits had come through but no one knew who they were) if there was someone in there tonight with a black handbag. About three quarters of the audience raised their hands, and then looked round at each other and laughed nervously. And this was the event at which the medium and her assistant were waiting in the foyer of the theatre to greet, talk with and “put the audience at their ease”. Hmmm...

Oh, and dates. Sometimes these were thrown in with random messages, the medium saying they were birth/anniversary/marriage or death dates. If no one claimed them as a date they recognised, the medium said they would “make sense later” when we got home and realised this was the date on which Auntie Rose/Grandma died. Or was born. Or....yes, you get the picture. I think that, given half a dozen different dates, most people would be able to make one of them mean something.

My book is set in 1900, and perhaps one of the most interesting things I discovered when researching it was that every single “big name” Victorian/Edwardian medium was accused of fraud, and only one of these was not convicted of any wrongdoing. I am not saying that speaking to spirits is impossible – just that I never found any clear evidence of it, now or way back then. I will let you know if I do.