Most of your books are set in the past. What fascinates you about history, and what do you believe good historical fiction can offer to the modern reader?
I love to learn about another world, to discover things with which I’m not familiar. And I believe that historical fiction, done well, can give the reader a glimpse into that other world. There are threads that join our contemporary society to other eras, and the more we can learn about the past, the more we will understand our own world.
Afterimage and the Art of Julia Margaret Cameron by Helen Humphreys
The novel began with the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron.
There was an exhibition in the late 1990s of Cameron photographs at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in the show were several photographs of Cameron’s maid, Mary Hillier, dressed as the Madonna. The text that accompanied the photographs explained that Mary Hillier was expected by Cameron to remain in costume as the Madonna not just when she was being photographed but while she carried out her maidly duties in the Camerons’ Victorian household, and even when she went to the village. I remember thinking, when I read that, how strange that would be for a young girl—to be living as a housemaid while role-playing the mother of Christ.
At first what I wanted was to base my characters on the real mistress and maid, but when I tried to research Mary Hillier I found, not surprisingly, very litde. The histories of servants are seldom preserved, recorded history being largely the privilege of the upper classes. I found out that Mary Hillier was fourteen when she came to the Cameron household and twenty-eight when she left (when the household was dispersed because the Camerons moved to Ceylon). She married at thirty, had eight children, and lived to the age of eighty-nine—which was, for the time, very old.
“I remember thinking, when I read that, how strange that would be for a young girl—to be living as a housemaid while role-playing the mother of Christ.
The best one can hope for in historical fiction is to choose one thing to be faithful to and chase that down through the path of the book.
About Cameron there was, of course, considerably more information, and I realized soon after I started my research that, while I could work with a fictionalized version of the real Cameron, I would have to invent entirely the character of the maid. I had little to go on, in terms of their relationship, but I decided that Cameron and Mary Hillier were close, because Mary Hillier had named a daughter after Cameron, and because, in her writings about Mary, Cameron says: “The very unusual attributes of her character and complexion of her mind … deserve mention in due time, and are the wonder of those whose life is blended with ours as intimate friends of the house.”
History is impossible to get right. There is no way to return to the past and recapture it. The best one can hope for in historical fiction is to choose one thing to be faithful to and chase that down through the path of the book. In Afterimage I was faithful to the photographs and the photographic process of Julia Margaret Cameron. I used some aspects of her character—her imperiousness, her wild devotion to her artistic pursuits (the real Cameron once had her servants paint the roses in the garden white so that they would stand out better when she photographed them)—but it was the photographs with which I concerned myself. My novel is divided into sections, each section titled after a photograph taken by Cameron.
I decided not to use Victorian speech in Afterimage because I thought that untangling the vernacular would slow down the narrative,making the reader work too hard to follow what was going on. I also believe that the early photographers, like Cameron, were the beginning of our image-obsessed age and thus belong to our time more than they belonged to theirs, so I kept the speech and the perspective modern. This was also why I chose to concentrate on the photographs, because they are more understandable to us than some other aspects of life in 1865, the year in which my book is set.
I was lucky, in my research, to find someone who still used a box camera and glass plate negatives, so I was able to handle and examine that equipment. All of that helped me to imagine, as fully as I could, the experience of taking those photographs.
Cameron was not a careful film developer. Her negatives were often scratched, and there were bits of dust stuck to the photographs. Sometimes the negative was too washed out and the subject too blurry and indistinct, or the glass plate was actually broken and the cracks in the glass show up as cracks in the print. Now, these things make the photographs seem oddly modern, but at the time they were made, they were seen as seriously flawed because of this carelessness. Yet what I like about Cameron’s photographs is just this: the hurried quality of the developing, juxtaposed with the lengthy exposures and the long poses that the subjects were forced to adopt. This tension, I think, makes the pieces evocative.
When Cameron began taking photographs, photography wasn’t considered a true art form, and so she tried to imitate the painters of the time and portray allegorical and classical scenes so that she would be taken seriously as an artist. The allegorical tableaux, which seem remarkably old-fashioned now, were the order of the day in late Victorian England. But while Cameron set up her models to portray “Meekness” or “Love” or “The Angel at the Sepulchre,” her soft-focus technique worked against her. It was thought of, not in terms of artistic enhancement, but merely as her inability to focus her lens. Another thing that did not endear her immediately to her time was that she photographed her women models with their hair loose and down. This was considered scandalous and called her moral character into question.
Cameron was not a careful film developer. Her negatives were often scratched, and there were bits of dust stuck to the photographs.
“Another thing that did not endear her immediately to her time was that she photographed her women models with their hair loose and down.”
Cameron favoured using her servants as models primarily because she didn’t have to give them a modelling fee. For this reason too, she photographed friends and neighbours: Alice Liddell, who when a child was the inspiration for Alice of Alice in Wonderland and was photographed by Lewis Carroll, was a neighbour of Cameron’s on the Isle of Wight; Tennyson was also a neighbour; and G.F. Watts was a friend. The character of the painter Robert Hill in my novel is based on G.F.Watts.
One of Cameron’s favourite models was her niece, Julia Jackson, who married Leslie Stephen and was the mother of Virginia Woolf. In fact, the photograph Cameron considered to be her best is one of Jackson. She was twenty-one and the photograph was taken in the month before she married her first husband, Herbert Duckworth.
Three years later she was a widow, and her aunt photographed her again—her face thinner, her expression tired and beautiful, the perfect Victorian tragic heroine—except that, unlike the models Cameron used to portray tragic historic poses, Jackson actually was the tragic heroine of her own life.
Virginia Woolf, in her capacity as publisher at The Hogarth Press, the publishing house she ran with her husband, Leonard Woolf, published a collection of photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron tided Famous Men and Fair Women. In this book are several portraits of Woolf’s mother. Virginia Woolf wrote a rather light-hearted introduction to the collection in which she mocks her great-aunt’s artistic enthusiasm but praises her photographs. She quotes Cameron talking about her work: “I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me, and at length the longing was satisfied.”
Woolf also wrote a play about her great-aunt called Freshwater, which was the name of the village on the Isle of Wight where the Camerons lived. This play was written for private production, performed in London in 1935 only for and by Woolf’s friends and relations in the studio of her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. In the play, as in the introduction to the collection of photographs, she makes fun of Julia Margaret Cameron’s rabid pursuit of artistic excellence. Mrs. Cameron herself is a character in the play and is given long speeches where she praises the quality of a policeman’s calves and brags that she has costumed her cook as a Queen, her boot-boy as Cupid. S
till, Woolf admired Cameron’s dedication and talent, and was pleased to have descended from that lineage of artistic spirit.
Woolf admired Cameron’s dedication and talent, and was pleased to have descended from that lineage of artistic spirit.
“I used some of Woolf’s light-hearted take on her great-aunt to create my Cameron-like character of Isabelle.”
I used Virginia Woolf’s play as part of my research for Afterimage. There was information in the play that seemed to have been passed down as family story. It was interesting to me that Julia Margaret Cameron’s maid Mary Hillier had been nicknamed “Mary Madonna” because of the number of times she was required to pose in this role. And from the play I also learned that Cameron would sometimes lock children in a cupboard to get that look of despair and sorrow that she wanted to portray in certain photographs. I used some of Woolf’s light-hearted take on her great-aunt to create my Cameron-like character of Isabelle.
I have great respect for the fact that Julia Margaret Cameron took up photography at the age of forty-eight. Coming to her vocation so late in life meant that she pursued it with everything she had, that she held nothing in reserve. I gave some of this to Isabelle too—the rush and the rushing as she tried to make the world bend to her vision, as she tried to chase down what was all too swiftly in flight from her.
Read On: Web Detective
www.rleggat.com/photohistory Photographer Robert Leggat’s site features ‘? History of Photography,” from its beginnings to the 1920s, as well as links to pages about significant people in the history of photography.
www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/features/photo_focus/cameron/highlights/index.html
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London boasts the world’s largest collection of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs, including the images shown here. Click “Biography” and other sidebar links for more about the artist.
www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/
artMakerDetails?maker=2026
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles also houses an impressive collection of Cameron’s photographs, which can be viewed here.
www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/ famine_01.shtml
Read about the Great Hunger in Jim Donnelly’s article “The Irish Famine” on this BBC History page.
www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/maphist/ mappinghistory. html Visit the British Library page “Learning Mapping History” to discover more about cartography through the ages.
To receive updates on author events and new books by Helen Humphreys, sign up at www.authortracker.ca www. bbc.co. uk/history/british/empire_seapower/launch_ani_mapmaking.shtml Explore the fascinating history of map-making through this animated, interactive site.
www.hhumphreys.com
See Helen Humphreys’ official website for the author’s news and reviews.
Copyright
Afterimage
Copyright © 2000 by Helen Humphreys.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40136-4
A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by
HarperPerennial, an imprint of
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Originally published in Canada in hardcover in a HarperFlamingoCanada edition: 2000
FIRST HARPERPERENNIALCANADA EDITION: 2001 This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2009
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Humphreys, Helen, 1961—
Afterimage: a novel / Helen Humphreys.
“A Phyllis Bruce book”.
ISBN 978-1-55468-473-1
I. Title. PS8565.U558A38 2009 C813’.54 C2008-908021-1
RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.harpercollins.ca
Coventry
Helen Humphreys
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
NOVEMBER 14, 1940
SEPTEMBER 20, 1914
MARCH 5, 1919
NOVEMBER 14, 1940
MAY 26, 1962
Acknowledgements
P.S. — Ideas, Interviews & Features
Helen Humphreys Discusses Coventry
The Fictional World of Coventry
Read On: Further Reading
Read On: Web Detective
International Praise for Coventry
Also By Helen Humphreys
Copyright
Dedication
FOR MY PARENTS
Epigraph
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
—PHILIP LARKIN
NOVEMBER 14, 1940
The swallow arcs and dives above the cathedral. Harriet Marsh watches it flicker through the darkness ahead of her as she walks along the cobblestones toward the church. The bird moves in the night air with all the swiftness of sudden feeling, and Harriet stops at the base of the ladder, tracking the flight of the lone swallow as it shivers up the length of the church spire.
It is only when she is climbing the ladder that she remembers it is the middle of November. Swallows typically leave Britain by the end of October. This bird has stayed behind too long, will surely perish in the coming cold. Harriet stops halfway up the long ladder, looks for the bird, as though to warn it. The swallow has already disappeared.
The church roof is a dark tarpaulin hung from faulty stars.
“Bomber’s moon,” calls the boy from the roof of the chancel. His is the roof next to Harriet’s and she can see him strutting up and down upon it. The lead tiles are slick with frost and she is afraid he will slip and fall, but she can’t call out to warn him because she isn’t meant to be here. She is wearing Wendell’s overalls and his tin helmet. When he bundled his fire-watcher’s uniform into her arms, he said, No one will know you’re a woman. He said, It’s only for one night.
The moon is full and bright, and the ground below the cathedral is white with frost. Harriet has never seen anything so beautiful. The ground glitters like the sea and smells of earthy cold.
There are four fire-watchers on the cathedral, each on a separate roof of the building. They all wear overalls and a tin helmet. Each one has a bucket of water, a bucket of sand, and a stirrup pump with a thirty-foot hose for directing water into the flames. Harriet hopes she won’t have to use her stirrup pump because Wendell warned her it was really a three-person job, and he only gave her the most cursory of descriptions as to how it worked.
The moon has lit the city, and even though people have cinched their blackout curtains tight against the night, Harriet can clearly see the outline of every house. The brilliance of the moon unnerves her.
In Coventry, and in all the other British towns and cities, people wait anxiously for morning. Since the beginning of September the Germans have been engaged in a massive air offensive against England. There have been raids on London, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, and Manchester. There has even been talk of a full-scale invasion.
Between the middle of August and the end of October there have been seventeen air attacks on Coventry. The most serious damage from the bombing raids was the destruction of the Standard Motor Works, but Harriet remembers more clearly the Sunday night in August when the Rex Cinema was hit. She had plans to see the new picture playin
g there that night—Gone with the Wind. She was late leaving her flat, and by the time she reached the cinema it had been bombed.
A major industrial town full of motor works and armament factories, Coventry is a prime target, and everyone who lives here knows this. Some people are so nervous of an air attack that they have taken to driving out of the city in the evening and sleeping in their cars in the countryside. Almost every night the air-raid sirens sound and there are fire-watchers walking the roofs of the city. The fire-watchers are old men and young boys. Twice a week, Wendell Mumby, the elderly man who lives in the flat below Harriet’s, climbs up a ladder to this roof on the cathedral and keeps watch. This is the first night he hasn’t been able to come, and all because Harriet washed the front hall of their building and Wendell slid in the passage and twisted his knee. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to climb the ladder to the cathedral roof and begged Harriet to take his shift instead.
I’m here because I feel guilty, thinks Harriet, as she walks gingerly across the slippery roof. I could fall off and break my neck, I could get blown up, all because I wet-mopped the front hall too vigorously.
“Look!” cries the boy on the chancel roof, and Harriet stops watching her feet and looks out at the glowing horizon. She hears the drone of planes approaching.
“Fire!” yells the old man on the south chapel roof.
From the cathedral roof Harriet can clearly see the neighbouring spires of Christ Church and Holy Trinity Church. She can see the dark hunch of roofs and the rivering streets between them, but after that the buildings fall off into shadow. The fire appears as a small orange smudge in the distance. It seems so far away that Harriet feels more relief than worry at first, until she remembers that most of the large factories in Coventry are on the outskirts of the city, right where the fire begins to bloom across the horizon line.
Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle Page 22