Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them Catherine Johnson

The gorgeous cover by Laura Bird and Bella Otak

It was three years ago in a post for this Blog that I mentioned Princess Caraboo as one of my favourite people from history. I mentioned I'd been writing a book about her for years and that a publisher was interested. Well, it's coming out in 24 days. I am nervous and excited and terrified - the usual pre publication angst.

Last week in an interview about something else a perceptive young woman reminded me that most of my books,  even Sawbones, have liars as central characters (Loveday teaches Ezra lying is sort of OK). This might be the old canard about us mixed race people (like bisexuals in gender politics) being never one thing or another, never pinned down, always shifty, untrustworthy, never belonging anywhere.  And Princess Caraboo, the inspiration behind this book, the Devon cobblers daughter who passed herself off as a Princess in early 19th century England was most definitely a liar.

Princess Caraboo of Javasu, Thmas Baker 1817

To recap the true story, Mary Wilcox was a young woman  who  loved dressing up and stories and who'd lost a child (and probably suffered at the hands of 19th century doctors who had tried to treat her 'mental exhaustion' with grim surgery). She was walking west from London (possibly back home) and begging en route. She had begged before pretending to be French and when she collapsed on the road outside Bristol she pretended to speak no English and was rescued from the workhouse by a the local Lady of the manor, Mrs Worrall (who was very interesting herself, she was an American born bluestocking with a penchant for the exotic).

Princess Caraboo Edward Bird 1817

Mary Wilcox retreated into character, she was examined by academics who proclaimed her a bona fide South Seas Princess - she couldn't be anything but royalty she was too pretty - and even though she tried to run away - she was bought back and continued the pretence. She was about to set out on a lecture tour when her true identity was revealed. The newspapers were all over her, here was an ordinary girl who'd fooled the upper classes! She was a cause celebre and the public loved her, she escaped punishment and Mrs Worrall paid for her passage to America to start a new life.

That wasn't the end of the true story - Mary didn't do well in the states, I expect because many new American immigrants had all done a little re-inventing already. She returned, lived quietly and became a successful business woman, breeding medicinal leeches for the Royal Bristol Infirmary. If you are interested, the best factual book about her life is by the satirist John Wells who wrote the script of the 1987 film staring, the then American heartthrob Pheobe Cates, it's called simply Princess Caraboo.

That, in a nutshell, is the truth I built my tissue of lies that is The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo, about.

And aren't all stories pretence? Of course there's always truths in every tale. But for most of us writers isn't the joy of writing trying out other people shoes? Being a different person with an infinitely more exciting life?

I want as little real edge of seat anxiety in my actual life. I want consistency, no shocks please. But in books, in stories I can indulge in all of those terrifying life or death, heart in mouth situations, that are scarily exhilarating.

In The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo I've borrowed from Mary Wilcox's true story but changed an awful lot. I do hope anyone who reads it enjoys it a little bit. It's out on July the 2nd.

Catherine

Rachel Dolezal

* Proof that this sort of thing still happens is the incredible, couldn't-make-it- up-story, revealed this week - that of  American academic Rachel Dolezal, a woman who headed up the local branch of a civil rights campaigning group and who self identified as a black woman  (she posted photographs of herself with a black man she said was her father amongst other things)  but who was 'outed' by her parents as white. A kind of reverse 'Tragic Mulatto'. And, by the way, is that my story all along? Tragic Mulatto, the not quite white woman doomed to never fit in? To almost 'pass'? But to live their life in fear of being revealed as something else? See An Imitation of Life, a film from the 1950s, or from the 1820s, The Octaroon, a sensation play by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. Answer, by the way. No.

Hijacking History or the Alarming Burglar Alarm of Ye Olde Cornwall Catherine Johnson

OK I'm starting with Poldark. Yes the new one. Calm down ladies this isn't Aidan Turner topless. This was in the paper. It's a screen grab. Cast your eye up to the house in the background. No, not Aidan Turner, the house. There between the down pipe and the shiny shiny modern glass window a boxy, twenty first century, burglar alarm.

BBC's new Poldark rescuing Demelza

No I didn't notice it ether, but I did read an article about the fabulous teeth of the lead characters and how the screenwriter  - congratulations Debbie Horsfield - argued that at least the peasantry should have some visible decay. I think we're all used to the glaring teeth on TV and I can forget most things if the story is good. (Although I was wondering about the bridles). And I thought Poldark with it's galloping and frocks and more galloping and tricorns was actually pretty enjoyable Sunday night fare.

So that got me thinking about the liberties I take with history. I expect most of you know my I am crap story by now, but yes, history lessons and me? Not a good mix. My report for History, aged 14 said;

'Catherine's written work is completely inadequate and disorganised...'

I did so poorly in what is now Year 9, I was barred from taking the O level. In fact, my mark for the end of year exam was the worst in the year. I am not a historian. So I can be excused if I don't get everything absolutely spot on, can't I? 

Well, let me say loud and clear I'm not talking about the big stuff, it's a matter of pride that mostly, nearly, almost, everything is as it should be, is as near to how it was as I can possibly make it. It irks when reviewers argue you got your facts wrong when you didn't. 

But I cannot lie. There are times when I have bent historical facts to my will. 

In The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo, out in July (I am sorry but you'll get a lot of this from me over the next few months) I took a real story and sort of riffed on it. Mary Willcox was real, but the story I've told has meant messing about with her age, shifting the time line around, in order to reference Frankenstein since you ask, and making up people who did not exist. I wanted so to tell her story as a novel but I ended up reshaping (crafting?) and embroidering and downright inventing so much that it is almost complete fiction. There is a disclaimer in the book, so that's OK, isn't it?

And the script I'm working on at the moment set in the latter half of the eighteenth century. I've stuck to the truth of the background facts. My characters are all inventions, but it could have happened. I'm worried about boats and sailings and desperately making sure it really could have actually worked.

I think that's all I aim for. Could have been. I wouldn't stick Queen Victoria on the mobile phone in the background or put someone in a regency frock with platform heels. I like to do the right thing.

But I have to admit in Sawbones there was one anachronism I couldn't get round. It wasn't revolvers rather than pistols, it wasn't any of the medical science. It was that most unremarkable piece of door furniture the letter box. Paris had them in 1790 but they weren't commonplace (note common place it could be argued that a modern man like William McAdam - my hero's master would have had one fitted) in London until the start of the nineteenth century. I tried to get around the letter box but couldn't. I needed one. So I kept it in.

Are there any things in your books that shouldn't be there? Have you noticed anything in your reading that's bought you up short?

Go on, tell all....