THE WILD GIRL

Kate Forsyth

If historical fiction is one avenue for us to access historical fact then “The Wild Girl” is more than up to the task. Besides the tiny little details stirred in like sugar in your tea, such as the war between the British and Americans more than thirty years after America won independence from the British and some of England’s history under George 111, it is the unveiling of the pertinent details of the experiences of the people of Hessen-Cassel, Germany, in early 19^th century which is really fascinating. Dortchen Wild’s family and the Grimm family’s story reflect the experiences of their little kingdom beginning with the escape of their Kurfurst, the occupation by the despotic Jerome Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars, occupation by the Russians, back to the French and then, after Waterloo, the Kurfhurst’s return.

All of this is wonderfully described but it is the love story between Dortchen and Wilhelm which has been so beautifully told and imagined in ‘The Wild Girl’. This is truly gorgeous, turn the page stuff with lovely little snippets of the tales Dortchen told Wilhelm and which went to make up some of the Grimms Brothers  Fairy Tales we grew up with. Like Wilhelm, Forsyth believes that the truth has to be exposed and it is her portrayal of some ugly experiences as the cause of the barriers between Dortchen and Wilhelm that kept me reading well into the night and picking it up again a mere few hours later.  

 

 

Like the early versions of fairy tales, this is not a children’s book. It is simultaneously a gripping, gritty, beautiful and fascinating story about the lives of people who really lived and loved and lost and I urge you to read it.

 

 

 

 

Therese Noble

My mother and her mental illness.

When I was nineteen I was hospitalised in the Blue Mountains Hospital with rheumatic fever. Really!! Fortunately, unlike Robbie Burns, I survived. While I was hospitalised my aunty Mary visited me. She put a parcel on my bed. It was the first instalment of her collection of Georgette Heyer novels. I have been hooked ever since.

How did I contract rheumatic fever, I don’t hear you asking? Let me tell you anyway. A few months before I was in hospital, my father was contacted by his mother. My grandmother told him that she had been contacted by Social Services to say that my mother was trying to get in touch with her three daughters.  At that stage we were, I think,  18, 16 and 12. She hadn’t seen us for ten years!! All those promises my father made to his young daughters to see their mother regularly after he had left her in a mental institution in Brisbane were not fulfilled.

Now she was in Austinmer in the New South Wales South Coast. My sisters and I caught the train from Katoomba to Central Station and then from there to Austinmer. I wore a thick woollen suit, I already had a sore throat and we arrived in Austinmer in the pouring rain.

We walked through the rain to her boarding house. It was a very emotional occasion but I don’t remember much about the first time we saw her a few months earlier for what seemed like the first time. I remember that she really didn’t know who we were even when we were standing right in front of her. On that first occasion my aunty Mary was with us and she assured our mother that we were her daughters.  We were nervous and anxious but not nearly as much as she was. My mother doesn’t cry often but  she cried that day.

When the three of us arrived on this particular occasion in May she was at the front door where she had obviously being watching vigilantly, very much hoping that the weather had not prevented us from coming.  Having only a room in a boarding house didn’t give her much scope to cook for us as she would have liked, to welcome us into a home, but I remember that she did have a home-made cake so she must have been allowed to use the kitchen. I  remember that her landlady was very kind to her.

My mother awakens a degree of kindness towards her in nearly everyone who meets her. I don’t think I’ve met a person who doesn’t like her.  Lord knows, as any of you who live with a mentally ill person knows, she wasn’t, isn’t, always easy to cope with.

My mother’s story, briefly, is that she and her two younger brothers were removed from their parent’s care in Broken Hill. They were taken to a foster home in Guildford, Sydney. My mother was twelve and was considered too old to be fostered while both of her brothers were taken by good families. She told me something of her anguish at losing them because she was their older sister and she felt responsible for them. It was a real wrench and , of course, she was to be left all alone.

 Mum’s schizophrenia was well and truly apparent by the time she married my father when she was 23. One of her brothers, Billy, was mentally challenged. That’s all I know. The other one, Ken,  became an accountant and lived in Melbourne. Unfortunately, he appears to have completely wiped his older sister from his life.  He knows she married my father, and our family name is rather uncommon, but he has never made the slightest attempt to find her. Perhaps there is a good reason. She has asked me to trace him and I have tried a couple of times but her family name is not all that unusual. I didn’t like to disappoint her but  I haven’t met with any success.

 

Back to the rheumatic fever. Because I was in that thick woollen suit all day, and believe me it was soaking wet , and I had a sore throat, when I returned home from Austinmer to Woodford I was already  sick. The trip took place on a Saturday. By Monday morning I felt as if I had being run over by a steam roller. I had a raging temperature and every bone in my body just ached. If it wasn’t for the pain I would have thought I was paralysed because I couldn’t move. Nor could I imagine what could possibly have happened to me overnight to occasion such pain. A trip to the doctor, a throat swap (of a throat so sore I could barely open my mouth) and a blood test and I was in hospital for the next five weeks, not allowed out of my bed, and visited by interns from Sydney to pock and prod at this patient with rheumatic fever at the ripe old age of 19 – which is apparently quite old to be contracting this illness so there is no sarcasm here.

The Elizabeth of my novel is modelled on my mother, who is at heart  kind and generous and accepting and patient. She is intelligent, well-read and she recites whole passages that interest her by heart. She is fanatical about good health, exercise, good food. I have not lived with her since I was seven years of age and anything I know of these things I learned before then.

 

 

The Sound of Music

The Lady of the Lake

I make quite a few references to music, mostly classical given the period – 1833. This is rather cheeky of me because I am definitely not a musician of any description. It is all research. I refer to Schubert (1797-1828), Mozart (1756-1791), both Austrian (notice Schubert was even younger than Mozart when he died), Beethoven (1770-1827) and the Englishman,  John Gay and his ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ (1683-1732). I have my protagonist as a accomplished pianist. For any pianists out there, is Ave Maria a particularly difficult piece to play? Hannah attends a recital of Chopin’s music at Drury Lane but it is not by the genius himself. He did visit London but well before and after my dates.

Franz Schubert wrote the score to the beautiful Ave Maria in 1825. It was inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s poem, ‘The Lady of the Lake’.  My heroine, Hannah, is Scottish and so I couldn’t resist some references to her countrymen’s great writers, even if there are a few degrees of separation. 

 See the following information from 'SongFacts' for more information.

The original words of Ave Maria (Hail Mary) were in English, being part of a poem called The Lady of the Lake, written in 1810 by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). The poem drew on the romance of the legend regarding the 5th century British leader King Arthur, but transferred it to Scott's native Scotland. In 1825 during a holiday in Upper Austria, the composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) set to music a prayer from the poem using a German translation by Adam Storck. Scored for piano and voice, it was first published in 1826 as "D839 Op 52 no 6." Schubert called his piece "Ellens dritter Gesang" (Ellen's third song) and it was written as a prayer to the Virgin Mary from a frightened girl, Ellen Douglas, who had been forced into hiding.

The song cycle proved to be one of Schubert's most financially successful works, the Austrian composer being paid by his publisher 20 pounds sterling, a sizable sum for a musical work in the 1820s. Though not written for liturgical services, the music proved to be inspirational to listeners, particularly Roman Catholics, and a Latin text was substituted to make it suitable for use in church. It is today most widely known in its Latin "Ave Maria" form.

I have always loved the music of Ave Maria but I mostly listen to just the score. I have not been able to find a better rendition that that of the Chinese pianist, Lang Lang, available on YouTube. I challenge you not to be moved.

I even took the resolution of my love story into the music room where my protagonist is playing Beetoven's Fur Elise. It some sections played with only one hand, which is handy (no pun intended). No spoilers though.

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE WORLD OF HORSE RACING.

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE WORLD OF HORSE RACING.

Is there any animal more magnificent than a thoroughbred? What is its worth to its owners,  those who see these noble creatures as nothing more than a ticket to a fortune?

We may feel frustrated, jaded, cheated in our 21^st century world. We know that history repeats itself. There can be no comfort in the fact that we did not invent the idea of cheating, doping, squeezing, switching horses. 

Double dealing was, rather, par for the course (I know, I’m sorry about the terrible pun). As a matter of fact, the ruling classes, that comparatively small band known as the landed gentry in 18^th and 19^th century Britain, did more than turn a blind eye to cheating, they practised it rampantly.  Even the royal princes were in on the game and these ruling classes, who are setting the example for the working classes, should take pride in the vigour with which these lessons were learned. Mind you, they didn’t exactly welcome the competition or the ..ah.. new atmosphere that now pervaded this sport of kings, but I’m not here to write about that.

My manuscript Elizabeth’s Daughter is set in 1833 and my protagonist, Hannah, is the daughter of a successful breeder of thoroughbreds. Nicholas Foulkes’ Gentlemen and Blackguards describes horse racing during this era in captivating detail and so I decided to research the winner of the 1833 Derby, run at Epsom.  I was absolutely delighted with what I found.

Dangerous - Wikipedia

The winner of the 1833 Derby was a colt named ‘Dangerous’.  Dangerous’s owner, Mr Isaac Sadler,  went to some trouble to ensure that  Dangerous won. This was not unusual behaviour. The colt’s form before the Derby was nothing spectacular, running seconds or un-placed in previous races. Despite this, Sadler felt confident enough to bet heavily on his own horse, which was also a late entry, on odds of 30-1. Obviously  very few others shared his optimism.

 Sadler then not only collected the prize money but, as apparently his bet was large, considerable winnings as well.

One way of cheating at a race is to enter a four year in a three year old event. The Derby Cup is for three year olds. A four year old of course has more stamina and this is a particularly gruelling race. It is suspected that Dangerous was a four year old when he won. [The History of the Derby Stakes by Roger Mortimer.] One way of telling the difference is to check the teeth. Horses teeth are not fully grown until they are four years old and so checking a horse’s age by looking in its mouths is a simple matter if such a check takes place.

As far as Elizabeth’s Daughter  is concerned that is the end. However, in fact the story for Dangerous didn’t end there. He had won this race by a length after running the one and a half miles of the steep track. Before the race his jockey (in those days called ‘riding groom), Jem Chapple, noticed that Dangerous was lame and after the race he was lame again. Dangerous never recovered from that race. However, only Isaac Sadler, and presumably Chapple, knew this and because of Dangerous’s convincing win no owners wanted to run their horses against him again. Consequently he was given what is called a walk-over and Sadler collected the prize money for the next two races - at Stockbridge and Winchester. Shortly afterwards Dangerous was sold overseas.

Fortunes were won and lost on gambling of all sorts. Quoting from Foulkes's fascinating and erudite book  Lord F….. lost a vast fortune and was forced to raise almost £1 million (today £120,000,000). Foulkes is far from citing an isolated incident. He goes on to reference that it was common for the wealthy classes of the 1820s to bet between £5,000 and £6,000 on one race. This is in an era where he also references an estimate that in the 1860s £1 is the equivalent to £120 in the late 1990s!

Why are there so few Catholics in Regency romances?

Aspiring writers are encouraged to write the story they want to tell. I am an avid fan of Heyer. What writer of historical romance is not? However, when I was a teenager I was a bit curious, just curious, not affronted, as to why, in her many historical romance novels, she mostly avoided the Catholic question that was so rampant in the context of her settings, including the Regency period, where it was hotly debated in parliament. Why did she not write about this subject?

Yes, I know she had Dominica in Beauvallet marry, well Beauvallet, and I know her heroine was a Catholic in an Inquisition-infested Spain. Perhaps that justifies her marriage to a Protestant by Protestant clergy with the implication that her – safe – future in Elizabethan England is assured. But as a Catholic myself, I felt it was a bit of a cop out. I understand that Elizabethan England was not safe for Catholics, that Beauvallet was Elizabeth’s treasured buccaneer and that it was a patriarchal society. I mean I know that now. I didn’t really appreciate it when I was 19.

The novel I have written is set in 1833 during the short reign of William IV, so just before Victoria came to the throne in 1837. It is mostly true that the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 was the last Act of Parliament to grant freedom to Catholics. The Act of 1829 allowed Catholics to vote and to take a seat in Parliament. The first Catholic Relief Act was in 1778. This allowed Catholics the right to buy property, and in an environment where there was an increasing demand for more and more soldiers to fight the many wars on the continent, to legally join the army. It also repealed the penal laws, freeing Catholics from persecution and prosecution (fines, arrests, imprisonment, exile) for practising their faith. It also meant that the lucrative practice of informing against Catholics was stopped. The reward for successful information was £100.00. Now that Catholics could legally own property it also meant that non-Catholic relatives could no longer apply to the courts to be granted the property owned by Catholics.

The Act of 1791 gave Catholics the right to worship freely.

I can’t answer my question as to why Heyer, or for that matter Austen, didn’t treat these issues in their novels, except that apparently Heyer didn’t really set much store by any religion. I suppose that except for Catholics at that time, probably very few people living then cared particularly for a law that would have no discernible bearing on their own lives. But religious intolerance is nothing new, it is not the prerogative of any one country or era so there were Englishmen and women who were certainly very concerned because they distrusted, even hated, Catholics as the following record shows.

ROMAN CATHOLIC DISABILITY REMOVAL BILL.

HL Deb 16 April 1821 vol 5 cc220-64 [Lord Mansfield arguing for his objection.]

 For the sake, then, of the Protestants, he protested against this bill. To the securities it provided he alike objected: they went to remedy no anomaly, to reconcile no subsisting difficulty. England had long enjoyed the benefit of her present form of laws. During their operation she had made a rapid progress in all the arts of civilized life: her arms had gained her the highest renown; and her constitution had been the admiration both of Catholic and Protestant: it secured to all the fullest enjoyment of toleration and personal protection. They ought never to forget the fact, that with the existing form of government was inseparably interwoven the Protestant church: the one could not be affected without the other.

So this is some of the history of the story I want to tell in my first novel.  It is a story of a Catholic girl from Scotland who falls in love with an English Protestant Peer.  My working title is Elizabeth’s Daughter.