Elizabeth Gaskell, Wife, Mother and Writer

It is no wonder that so many women have taken up writing over the centuries. It is the perfect form of work for them, you can write anywhere, at home surrounded by your hopefully increasingly dusty house, in cafes and even watching television with your children. You don't even have to write as such, you can just sit there and think about your work everywhere you go.

Heathwaite, where Elizabeth came to live with her aunt when she was a year old

I was in Knutsford at the weekend. One of the gems of Chesire and immortalised by television as being the original model for Cranford though of course the filming was elsewhere. Parts of  Knutsford have changed since Mrs Gaskell wrote about it but the two main streets, King Street and above it Princess Street remain much the same, I think and many of the buildings which she knew are still intact.

She was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in 1810 in Chelsea but her mother died shortly afterwards and she went to live with her aunt, Hannah Lumb in Heathwaite, the lovely house which overlooks the heath. It may seem cruel to us now that her father sent her off to live in Chesire when she was a year old. He married again and had other children and it could be several years before Elizabeth saw him.

Dr Holland's house

She went to school in Warwickshire but it was in Chesire that she met William Gaskell who was junior minister of Cross Street Chapel in Manchester. They were married at the parish church in Knutsford and after their marriage they lived in Manchester but Elizabeth was often at Knutsford, she was very fond of her aunt and referred to her as 'my more than mother'.

Elizabeth was a Unitarian and she and her husband taught in Manchester. Her family did great charity work during the cotton famine caused by the American Civil War. Unitarianism, the religion of Elizabeth's family, was way ahead of its time, teaching tolerance towards all people no matter what their religion.  Her husband, who had his own literary career, taught the poor and held welfare committees, and many of their friends were social reformers and religious dissenters.

They had several children but Elizabeth only started to write, encouraged by her husband, after the death of her baby son.

She wrote Mary Barton which was about the poor and disadvantaged in Manchester. It was regarded as subversive by many because people assumed that the hardships the poor endured were their own fault due to their thriftlessness and vice, a view which some people still believe today. ( Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. )

Worse was to follow.  Elizabeth wrote Ruth, a novel about an unmarried mother. I think what I like most about Gaskell's work is that she takes on subjects which other people were afraid to write of. It was said that even some of William's congregation burned the book. She was indeed a very brave woman.

The building on Princess Street supposed to have been used as Miss Matty's house in the stories.

Brook Street chapel in Knutsford where Elizabeth, her husband, William and two of their daughters are buried.

Typical Knutsford, beautiful old houses

Her best known work of course is Cranford but I prefer North and South where Margaret Hale comes north with her family and discovers what the world is like which centres around a cotton mill.

 Women are so important in her novels. Interestingly too she was fond of using dialect. If you can make dialect comprehensible to people from other places I think it can stamp your stories as products of where they came from but enable everyone to enjoy them.

Mrs Gaskell is also known for the biography which she wrote of Charlotte Bronte. Apparently she visited the house in Manchester three times and once hid behind the living room curtains because she was shy with visitors.  Mrs Gaskell wrote ghost stories. Charles Dickens helped her with these and published her work in his magazine, Household Words.

I was pleased too to note that Elizabeth Gaskell spent time in Newcastle upon Tyne with Rev. William Turner's family and in Edinburgh. Born in London she may have been but I like to claim her as a real northern writer and true northern woman.

The Silver Slug

The Tyne, the Tyne, the coaly Tyne,

Queen of all the rivers.

That's what we like to think here in the north east. Of course I'm particularly keen on the Wear  because I live in Durham and I love the Tees too because I have friends there. I could go on, I'm hung up on rivers.

Last Saturday I ventured up to Newcastle to the Sage at Gateshead, to attend a session of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival. It was a perfect day, rather like today in fact, we don't get many, we have to make the best of them and I walked through the city to the riverside.

This is my second favourite building in the whole world, after the cathedral. It sits there on the Gateshead bank of the river and has such attitude. It's so up itself you can't help but admire and inside it has concert halls and meeting rooms and cafes and bars and one of the best views, looking out over the river to Newcastle. It was thronging with people at the various goings on, there were people from Durham Photographic Society ( to which I belong, but don't tell anybody, my photographs are obviously not so hot but we go to the pub afterwards which is incentive enough for me ), a trio of women singing like a barbershop quartet, just because they wanted to in front of the cafe on the ground floor and other people just there for fun or presumably as part of the many classes and and happenings which makes the Sage such a wonderuflly vibrant place.

This of course is the famous blinking eye bridge which won many awards when it was built. It's best seen at night when it changes colour every few seconds. I timed my getting there perfectly because it was the time for tilting.

A navy training vessel going underneath. I waved at the all the cadets and they waved back.

The old Baltic flour mill beside the Sage, now an art gallery and such. The best thing about it is the building itself and the cafe of course and the cake and coffee and the lift and the views.

And this of course is the Tyne Bridge. I was born in Newcastle and I'm so stuck on the area I couldn't go and live anywhere else. Some people might say it's sad to be so tied to one area but in order to write about a place you  have to love it fiercely. In fact to write about anything you have to feel so passionately about your subject that you can't not write and that's the point really, through all this. The writing is the thing and everything else follows as long as you are faithful to your loves.

Afterwards I went with friends to La Tasca across the river and had calamari and salad and then chocolate profiteroles and lots of red wine and coffee.  Perfect!!

Writing about your Passions

My agent always tells me that I have far too many tea parties in my books. Actually I think she means that I spend huge amounts of time telling about chocolate cake and what sort of wine people are drinking and describing three course meals instead of getting on with the story. Up to a point this is true but I enjoy good food and wine and enjoy writing about them and am happy to edit some of it out if I get carried away.  Recently I have taken to reading the wonderful stories of Donna Leon and her Venetian detective and the stories are well written and well plotted but the best thing of all about them is that food and wine is described at length and is one of the most important things both about the books and about Venice.
I've been to Venice twice and if I had to live somewhere other than Durham I would choose Venice. Italians have just the right attitude to food, they eat late at night and drink good wine and are the best cooks in the world.
I have Elizabeth David's Italian Food, I bought it many years ago and it's one of the best cookery books I have ever read. I can spend a whole evening reading cookery books even though I rarely cook.
I'm the same with gardening. I read the books which Christopher Lloyd who is the Elizabeth David of the gardening world wrote and Gertrude Jeykll for the way that she turns colour into brilliance. I don't garden very much, Howard does the difficult bits and I make tea and talk about plants and it's really more of a social thing than anything else. Living on your own is okay most of the time but it's very nice to have lots of conversations on subjects you care about. I prefer other people's splendid gardens and to go to Howard and Sharon's walled garden and nursery at Whitworth Hall and see how these things are really done, like I love to go to good restaurants.

A week after my birthday - I had five weeks to celebrate being sixty and somebody suggested to me last week that when I'm seventy I should spent a whole year celebrating which sounds fine to me - they took me to the Black Bull at Frosterley in my beloved Weardale. It was cold and dark outside but in this restaurant and pub the open fires were burning.

The wine list was short and the merlot we chose was so thick it was like drinking fruit. The food was what used to be called nouvelle cuisine except that the portions were big. Decorative and wonderful to taste. Perfect. The Black Bull is run by Diane and Duncan Davis and their three children. The food is sourced locally, the beer comes from breweries at Allendale and Durham. The chef, I am told, is Mr Davis himself, a genius with food and his wife runs front of house. She's lovely. She let me go back and take photographs the day after I'd  been there for dinner.

Above the bar the pub's own peal of bells.  The floors have pieces of Frosterley marble laid in among the flags. I spend my summers in the dale and will be making many more trips the short distance to this wonderful restaurant.

Also for my birthday I went to the Fat Buddha in Durham, one of my favourite places - very often during the week I go drinking red wine in there and the food is excellent. A friend took me, last weekend, to a place called The Dudley Arms in a tiny Yorkshire village called Ingleby Greenhow. The pub is next to the butcher's shop and I call that a match made in heaven because the butcher owns the pub. The restaurant is like a huge barn and has its own gallery where people can eat. I had one of the best steaks I have ever eaten and a friend to drive me home. What more can anybody ask of a birthday?

Northern Lasses - Catherine King and Leah Fleming

Catherine King is from Rotherham. She lives mostly in Hampshire which is very posh, children spend weekends riding ponies and people own houses with thatched roofs and have thick glossy lawns in their gardens. Leah Fleming lives in an idyllic village in the Yorkshire dales, the kind of place where people have labradors in matching pairs and roses around the doors. So meeting them at The Boar's Head at Ripley seemed fitting, Ripley being one of those villages which has a castle and a deli, and hens roam the village green.

We met there for lunch last week and spent the afternoon in the pub. Catherine had only been there once before, Leah and I go back years to when we started RNA North and have had many happy days at The Boar's Head.
They are both successful writers, they both write historical novels, they both have books about to be published so there was lots to talk about.

Winter's Children is published on November 11th by AvonChristmas on a farm in the dales will never be the same again for the Snowdens after foot and mouth has destroyed their herd but the resident spirit of the house has other ideas. The coming of a child and her mother will change everything as it has done in the past.  This book is perfect for when you are sitting around the fire on a winter's night with a glass of mulled wine, listening to Sting.

This is Catherine's fifth Victorian saga set in Yorkshire and is about a foundling who does everything she can to escape her lowly life as a scullery maid only to end up in the dreaded workhouse.  The hardback is out on December 2nd and the paperback will be published on March 17th 2011 by Sphere. http://www.catherineking.info/

And yes, the hens. We gave them apples from the back of Catherine's car. She grows them in her beautiful southern garden. It has been a very good year for apples, and for the best selling Northern Lasses.

My Northumbrian Birthday

I got a tour of my favourite places for my birthday at the weekend. This is me on the beach at Alnmouth mid morning, drinking Moet.  The sun  shone, people exercised their dogs and my kid walked me up the sand.

We went to Barter Books in Alnwick. Everybody should go there, it's based in the old railway station, has its own private carpark on the edge of Alnwick, there are open fires, good food and thousands of secondhand books. Little trains run on the tops of the bookcases. You can take your kids and your dogs. We had coffee and biscuits over an open wood fire. There is the old buffet where they serve soup and hot food. There are lovely seats. The staff are knowledgeable and encouraging. You can stay all day if you like. It's bliss. My very favourite bookshop.

My last surprise was a visit to Alnwick Gardens where Sunday lunch had been booked in the treehouse.

Squidgy cheese hot, with salad, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, hot chocolate brownie with ice cream. When you go to the loo you have to go up winding stairs to the tower. There is a big fire in the middle of the main room and fantastic views on all sides and the best thing of all on my birthday, the company of my lovely daughter.

 

Giving Talks

Houghton le Spring library, librarians and friends

Being a natural show off I love giving talks. When writers first get published people assume that they are good at this. Most writers are absolutely terrified of gettng up in public and talking to an audience and not just writers, apparently it's one of the things that bothers people most.

I was nervous at first and then one evening I decided to go for broke and talk without notes or cards and it worked much better. I made eye contact with the audience right from the beginning and they are there because they want to be there so they urge you on to do your best.

 When I first went to private school my dad decided that I ought to try and cultivate a  better way of talking, being brought up in a pit village I had a thick accent. So he decided to pay for elocution lessons at school. That brought into my life a wonderful teacher by the name of Margaret Marshall.  It was quite funny really but when I came to take the exams along with a lot of very middle class girls some of whom had been 'taught to talk proper' from birth  I got several distinctions. I think we had all imagined that I wouldn't be very good at this but then nobody had thought about my grandmother.

My grandma, Elizabeth Gill had a very clear speaking voice. Thank you again, Grandma, for giving me something so useful. I'm the woman who never needs a microphone. When I speak at a library in Durham you can hear me in Newcastle. There isn't a hall so big that I can't be heard good and loud at the back.

 My daughter is the same, she doesn't fear getting up in public because I too encouraged her to have lessons on how to do such things and more and more people are required in their jobs to get up and give presentations so I always thought it was a useful thing to learn. You can go on courses for it now. My dad had to pay for elocution lessons all the time I was at school because I enjoyed it so much and I also got good parts in the school plays. I never did lose my Tow Law accent, I'm pleased to say and I'm proud of where I come from.

Writing is one of these solitary things that it's lovely to get away from.  I really like meeting people, librarians are amongst my favourite people of all, they read the books I read and will happily spend hours discussing them, they are enthusiastic and wonderful and organised.

I used to give lots of talks at W.I.s and all kinds of groups and this year I've done several talks. I spoke at my local soroptimists dinner the other night, then yesterday I went to Houghton le Spring library. If you haven't been do go. The library is ten years old and is gorgeous!! It's very like the one in central Sunderland  ( where I spoke earlier in the year ), with lots of light, huge windows, a cafe, different rooms all over the place and the library itself is spacious and bright. The librarians of course are fantastic.

This is me, wearing my new Monsoon dress at Houghton yesterday. I had such a good time.  It's Houghton Feast where they do up the town with decorations and have all manner of events and invite lucky people like me to give talks.

I am giving talks at other libraries soon, so in case anybody is nearby and wants to go to one I'll list them. The Crook group is having a history event this autumn.

I'm at Langley Park at 2.30p.m.  on Friday October 29th
Esh Winning at 2.30p.m. on Tuesday November 2nd
Shildon at 2.30p.m. on Tuesday November 16th
Cornforth at 4p.m. on Tuesday November 23rd

Saltholme - Not Just for the Birds

I once set part of a book in Seaton Carew, the little seaside town which became a popular bathing place for the Darlington Quakers early in the nineteenth century. I sent my family - a middle aged woman, her son, lodger and two smaller children away from the pit village where they ran a pub, The Golden Lion and gave them a week on the coast. This the book that my daughter and her friends read and liked when they were teenagers because it starts when the four main characters are about thirteen. I didn't know I had written a teenage novel until then.

Yesterday I went back to Seaton Carew and what a pretty place it is with its different pastel coloured houses and hotels on the front, its green, its arcades and fish and chip restaurants. We ate at a wonderful place called  The Almighty Cod.  We had cod, chips, mushy peas, white bread and butter and a big pot of tea for £4.99 each and the fish was as fresh as you would expect it to be, wonderfully flaky, the chips were thick and well cooked, the tea was strong - who could resist the smell of fish and chips freshly made?

And then we went to Saltholme Wildlife reserve and discovery park and I am going to go many many times, it is the perfect place to write. It's run by the  RSPB and their staff and volunteers.  There is a big play ground for children, a cafe for those who have been out in the fresh air. All the windows are huge and look out over the lakes and the hides, the land is flat, there are wonderful walks laid out to the hides and around the lakes. It exudes a feeling of complete calm. Kate Humble, RSPB President, officially opened Saltholme in March 2009.

Above,the famous transporter bridge from one of the hides.
You get into Saltholme free if you arrive on foot or by bicycle. If you come by car it's only £3 and members get in free.
Lapwings in flight.

Designed to resemble a kingfisher this is the main building at Saltholme with its glorious views.

People sitting upstairs outside. It was the perfect day, warmer than most of the summer has been, with barely a breeze.  We spoke to two volunteers who had been in a hide all day, I can't think of a better way to spend time, with a flask and a sarnie, and one of those big binocular type telescopes or whatever they are. One gentleman let me look through and see a redshank, I was really pleased! There were coots and ducks and we could see way over flocks of noisy geese. It's a paradise on earth for birds and other wildlife and for people too.

The shop where you can buy everything you need for the birds in your garden and a lot more besides!