by Liz Trenow
1728
Anna Maria and Mary moved to Princes Street, Spitalfields, in London.
1737
German botanist and botanical artist Georg Ehret settled in London.
1746
Joseph Walters, silk weaver, married at Christ Church.
1755
An Easy Introduction to Dancing published.
1759
Thomas Gainsborough and his family moved from Suffolk to Bath.
1760
King George II died on October 25, succeeded by his grandson George III, aged 22.
1761
On September 8, George III married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he met on their wedding day. The coronation followed a fortnight later.
1762
In May, 8,000 weavers paraded to Saint James Palace. The next day, 50,000 weavers assembled and marched to Westminster. In August, journeymen weavers organized the Book of Prices.
1763
Anna Maria Garthwaite died in Spitalfields.
1763
Thousands of weavers took part in wage riots, breaking into the house of a notorious master, destroying his looms, and cutting his silk, later staging a hanging of his effigy. Soldiers were sent to occupy parts of Spitalfields.
1764
Huguenots led campaign against the import of French silks.
1765
Siege of Bedford House: weavers marched with black flags in protest at the Duke of Bedford’s opposition of a bill that would have prohibited the import of French silks. A new act was passed, making it a crime punishable by death (a felony) to break into any house or shop with the intent to maliciously damage silk.
1768
The Royal Academy founded—and accepted women artists. Thomas Gainsborough was a founding member.
1769
A group of journeymen formed the Bold Defiance, which met at the Dolphin Tavern in Cock Lane (modern Boundary Street, in Bethnal Green), to protest against masters who ignored the Book of Prices. In September, Bow Street Runners and troops raided the Dolphin and made four arrests.
1769
In December, John D’Oyle and John Valline found guilty of attacking the looms of Thomas Poor, a weaver working for the notorious master Chauvet. They were hanged at Bethnal Green. Rioters tore down the gallows and rebuilt them in front of Chauvet’s house, smashed his windows, and burned his furniture. Two weeks later, more alleged “cutters” were hanged.
1771
Further silk weavers’ riots in Spitalfields.
1772
First recorded address of Walters silk business (Joseph I and his son Joseph II) in Wilkes Street, Spitalfields.
1773
First of three Spitalfields Acts passed, regulating weavers’ wages.
1774
Thomas Gainsborough and his family moved to London.
References
Here are just some of the books, exhibitions, libraries, and websites that helped my research:
Books
Cunnington, Cecil Willett. Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century. London: Faber & Faber, 1964.
Gwynn, Robin D. The Huguenots of London. Brighton: Alpha Press, 1998.
Hay, Douglas, and Nicholas Rogers. Eighteenth-Century English Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Plummer, Alfred. The London Weavers’ Company 1600–1970. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1972.
Porter, Roy. English Society in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Penguin, 1991.
Rothstein, Natalie. Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century. London: Bullfinch Press, 1990. © Victoria & Albert Museum.
Rothstein, Natalie. The English Silk Industry 1700–1825. Unpublished manuscript in the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Vickery, Amanda. Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Warner, Sir Frank. The Silk Industry of the United Kingdom. London: Drane’s, undated.
Exhibitions, libraries, and websites
Denis Severs’s House at 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields. www.dennissevershouse.co.uk.
The Fashion Museum, Bath. www.fashionmuseum.co.uk.
The Georgians exhibitions at Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace gallery.
Georgians Revealed exhibition at the British Library (London, 2013) and the accompanying book of the same name.
The Huguenot Society and Library at Gower Street. www.huguenotsociety.org.uk.
John Roque’s Map of London, 1746. www.locatinglondon.org.
The National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674–1913. www.oldbaileyonline.org.
Spitalfields Life daily blogs by “The Gentle Author.” www.spitalfieldslife.com.
The Worshipful Company of Weavers. www.weavers.org.uk.
Reading Group Guide
1. The Hidden Thread’s heroine, Anna Butterfield, is based on a real life English designer who inspired the author’s work. If you had to choose a person to write about, who would it be? What kind of story would you tell?
2. From the prologue to the first chapter, we can see that there is a stark contrast between where Anna grew up and her new life in London. How do these two settings influence Anna and her decisions throughout the novel? Do you think where you were raised ultimately affects the decisions you make?
3. Anna is soothed when she gets to draw the natural world and escape from her hectic London life. Do you have a hobby or artistic venture that lets you escape from the world? How is that experience similar to Anna’s?
4. What do you make of Anna’s relatives, the Sadlers? Why do you think they are set on Anna and the dashing Charles Hinchliffe becoming engaged? Are they good guardians for her?
5. Why do you think Anna is drawn to Henri, the French weaver? What do they have in common? What do you think are the biggest challenges their relationship face?
6. What do you think of Miss Charlotte helping Anna and Henri create his master piece design? If you were in her position, do you think you would do the same? What is she risking?
7. In this world of London propriety, Anna must adhere to strict social rules to secure a prosperous marriage and maintain her reputation. Imagine living in this world. What would be the advantages? What challenges would you face? Do you think you would risk it all like Anna and pursue a different life?
8. Describe the political temperament of London at this time. What challenges does Henri face as a Frenchman? How does prejudice, both racial and gender, affect both Henri’s and Anna’s lives throughout this novel? Do you think any of these issues are still present today?
9. Describe Henri and Anna’s relationship. At what times did they fail each other? How did they prevail?
10. There is a lot of technical terminology about the art of silk weaving throughout The Hidden Thread. How did this affect your read? What was something you found interesting that you had not known before?
Read on for an excerpt of
by Liz Trenow
Ava
ilable now from Sourcebooks Landmark
Cassette 1, Side 1, April 1970
They told me you want to know my story, why I ended up in this place? Well, there’s an odd question, and I’ve been asking it meself for the past fifty years. I can tell you how I got here and what happened to me. But why? Now that’s a mystery.
It’s a deep, smoke-filled voice, with a strong East London accent, and you can hear the smile in it, as if she’s about to break into an asthmatic chuckle at any moment.
They’ve probably warned you about me, told you my story is all made up. At least that’s what those trick-cyclists would have you believe.
Another voice, with the carefully modulated, well-educated tones of a younger woman: “Trick-cyclist?”
Sorry, dearie, it’s what we used to call the psychiatrist, in them old days. Anyway, he used to say that telling tales—he calls them fantasies—is a response to some “ungratified need.”
“You’re not wrong there,” I’d tell him, giving him the old eyelash flutter. “I’ve been stuck in here most of me life. I’ve got plenty of ungratified needs.” But he’d just smile and say, “You need to concentrate on getting better, my dear, look forward, not backward, all the time. Repeating and reinforcing these fantasies is just regressive behavior, and it really must stop, or we’ll never get you out of here.”
Well, you can take it or leave it, dearie, but I have to tell it.
“And I would very much like to hear it. That’s what I’m here for.”
That’s very kind of you, my dear. You see, when you’ve been hidden away from real life for so many years, what else is there to do but remember the times when you were young, when you were meeting new people every day, when you were allowed to have feelings, when you were alive? Nothing. Except for me needlework and other creations, they were the only things that would give me a bit of comfort. So I tell my story to anyone who will listen, and I don’t care if they call me a fantasist. Remembering him, and the child I lost, is the only way I could hold onto reality.
So, where do you want me to start?
“At the beginning would be fine. The tape is running now.”
You’ll have to bear with me, dearie. It’ll take some remembering, it was that long ago. I turned seventy-four this year so the old brain cells are not what they used to be. Still, I’ll give it a try. You don’t mind if I carry on with me sewing while I talk, do you? It helps me concentrate and relax. I’m never happy without a needle in my fingers. It’s just a bit of appliqué with a buttonhole stitch—quite straightforward. Stops the fabric fraying, you see?
She is caught by a spasm of coughing, a deep, rattling smoker’s cough.
Hrrrm. That’s better. Okay, here we go then.
• • •
My name is Maria Romano, and I believe my mother was originally from Rome, though what she was doing leaving that beautiful sunny place for the dreary old East End of London is a mystery. Do they all grow small, the people who live in Italy? Mum was tiny, so they said, and I’ve never been more than five foot at the best of times. These days I’ve probably shrunk to less. If you’re that size, you don’t have a cat’s chance of winning a fight, so you learn to be quick on your feet—that’s me. I used to love dancing whenever I had the chance, which wasn’t often, and I could run like the wind. But there have been some things in my life even I couldn’t run away from—this place being one of them.
The strange thing is that after all those years of longing to get out, once we was allowed to do what we liked, we always wanted to come back—it felt safe and my friends were here. It was my home. When they started talking about sending us all away to live in houses, it made me frightened just to imagine it, and if it was worrying me, what must it have been like for the real crazies? How do they ever cope outside? You’re a socio-wotsit, aren’t you? What do you think?
“I’m happy to talk about that later, if you like, but we’re here to talk about you. So please carry on.”
I will if you insist, though I can’t for the life of me imagine what you find so interesting in a little old lady. What was I talking about?
“Your mother?”
Ah yes, me poor mum. Another reason to believe she was Italian is my coloring. I’m all gray now, faded to nothing, but my skin used to go so dark in summer, they said I must have a touch of the tar brush, and my shiny black curls were the envy of all the girls at the orphanage. Nora told me the boys thought I was quite a looker, and I learned to flash my big brown eyes at them to make them blush and to watch their glances slip sideways.
“The orphanage?”
Ah yes, Mum died when I was just a babe, only about two years old I was, poor little mite. Not sure what she died of, but there was all kinds of diseases back then in them poor parts of the city, and no doctors to speak of, not for our kind, at least. They hadn’t come up with antibiotics or vaccinations, nothing like that—hard to believe now, but I’m talking about the really old days, turn of the century times.
I never heard tell of any grandparents, and after he’d had his fun, my father disappeared off the scene as far as I knew, so when she died, I ended up at The Castle—well, that’s what we called it because the place was so huge and gloomy and it had pointy windows and those whatchamacall-ums, them zigzaggy patterns around the top of the walls where the roof should be.
“Castellations?”
It was certainly a fortress, with high iron gates and brick walls all around. To keep dangerous people out, they told us—this was the East End of London after all—but we knew it was really to stop us lot running away. There was no garden as such, no trees or flowers, just a paved yard we could play in when the weather was good.
Inside was all dark wood and stone floors and great wide stairways reaching up three or four stories; to my little legs, it felt like we was climbing up to heaven each time we went to bed. It sounds a bit tragic when I tell it, but I don’t remember ever feeling unhappy there. I knew no different. It was warm, the food was good, and I had plenty of company—some of them became true friends.
The nuns was terrifying to us littl’uns at first, in their long black tunics with sleeves that flared out like bat’s wings when they ran along the corridors chasing and chastising us. Most of ’em was kindly even though some could get crotchety at times. No surprise really, with no men in their lives, and just a load of naughty children.
It was a better start in life than I’d have had with my poor mum, I’ll warrant. Pity it didn’t turn out like that in the end.
Read on for an excerpt of
by Liz Trenow
Available now from Sourcebooks Landmark
The History of Silk owes much to the fairer sex. The Chinese Empress Hsi Ling is credited with its first discovery, in 2640 BC. It is said that a cocoon fell from the mulberry tree, under which she was sitting, into her cup of tea. As she sought to remove the cocoon its sticky threads started to unravel and cling to her fingers. Upon examining the thread more closely she immediately saw its potential and dedicated her life thereafter to the cultivation of the silkworm and production of silk for weaving and embroidery.
—The History of Silk by Harold Verner
Perhaps because death leaves so little to say, funeral guests seem to take refuge in platitudes. “He had a good innings…Splendid send-off…Very moving service…Such beautiful flowers…You are so wonderfully brave, Lily.”
It’s not bravery: my squared shoulders, head held high, that careful expression of modesty and gratitude. Not bravery, just determination to survive today and, as soon as possible, get on with what remains of my life. The body in the expensive coffin, lined with Verners’ silk and decorated with lilies and now deep in the ground, is not the man I’ve loved and shared my life with for the past fifty-five years.
It is not the man who helped to put me back together after the shattering events of the war, who held my hand and steadie
d my heart with his wise counsel. The man who took me as his own and became a loving father and grandfather. The joy of our lives together helped us both to bury the terrors of the past. No, that person disappeared months ago, when the illness took its final hold. His death was a blessed release and I have already done my grieving. Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
After the service the house fills with people wanting to “pay their final respects.” But I long for them to go, and eventually they drift away, leaving behind the detritus of a remembered life along with the half-drunk glasses, the discarded morsels of food.
Around me, my son and his family are washing up, vacuuming, emptying the bins. In the harsh kitchen light I notice a shimmer of gray in Simon’s hair (the rest of it is dark, like his father’s) and realize with a jolt that he must be well into middle age. His wife Louise, once so slight, is rather rounder than before. No wonder, after two babies. They deserve to live in this house, I think, to have more room for their growing family. But today is not the right time to talk about moving.
I go to sit in the drawing room as they have bidden me, and watch for the first time the slide show that they have created for the guests at the wake. I am mesmerized as the TV screen flicks through familiar photographs, charting his life from sepia babyhood through monochrome middle years and into a Technicolor old age, each image occupying the screen for just a few brief seconds before blurring into the next.
At first I turn away, finding it annoying, even insulting. What a travesty, I think, a long, loving life bottled into a slide show. But as the carousel goes back to the beginning and the photographs start to repeat themselves, my relief that he is gone and will suffer no more is replaced, for the first time since his death, by a dawning realization of my own loss.