THE LAST RUNAWAY by Tracy Chevalier. A review by Adèle Geras

On March 29th of this year, Tracy Chevalier herself wrote on this blog, all about how she researches her novels. It was a fascinating piece and I said in the comments box at the time that I was longing to read the novel. Now I have read it, and I enjoyed it very much and would like to draw it to the attention of those people who love a good historical novel which manages to convey a whole lot of interesting information about a period (pre Civil War America) which we don't know terribly well, but who also want a rattling good story, which will involve them in the lives and loves of its protagonists.

Chevalier is drawn to the artistic or craft process. In her most famous book, The Girl with the Pearl Earring she goes into some detail in order to show us the way Vermeer mixed his paints; the way the paintings were set up and you closed the novel knowing a great deal about what it was like to be a painter at that time, as well, of course as what it was like to be his model. In perhaps my favourite of Chevalier's novels, The Lady and the Unicorn, the subject is the weaving of the famous set of tapestries presently in Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Here, our heroine, Honor Bright, leaves England to accompany her sister Grace to Ohio, which might just as well be on another planet. When Grace dies, Honor is left to make her own way in this strange new world, and the story of her adventures is full of romance, trials and tribulations, discoveries and awakenings. The book moves along swiftly. We see most things from Honor's point of view and there are her letters scattered through the text. She becomes aware of the existence of the Underground Railroad, a way of helping black slaves escape from their servitude in the South to safety in the North. The historical detail is very accurate and we hold our breath with Honor, who, towards the end of the book is hiding her part in the Railroad from her husband and family.

For me, though, the most beguiling aspect of the novel is the quilting. Reading about 'quilting frolics' and the different roles that quilts then played in a woman's life was enthralling. The different styles, the variations and nuances and colours and fabrics are cleverly mirrored in the patchwork way the book works: a bit of farm life, a bit of a letter, a memory of home, a whiff of a love story, a threat of great danger, and someone at the centre of it trying to make sense and harmony of her life as best she can. The characters in this novel, from milliners, to bounty hunters, to all the worthies of the Quaker community, and the (mostly) women who surround Honor most of the time, are all very well brought to life. The black characters too, strange to Honor, are given their fair weight in the story and one of the best moments is when Honor sees a quilt made by one of the Negro (sic) women and remarks on the difference between the two styles of quilting she has met in America, both of which are different from what she was used to in England.

I don't know whether Tracy Chevalier will take it as a compliment, but I intend it as one when I say that I think The Last Runaway is a perfect teenage novel, too. I think that anyone from about the age of 14 who likes an exciting, romantic, historically accurate novel will enjoy this book and I would urge fans of, for instance, Celia Rees's Witch Child, to try Tracy Chevalier. I am wondering where her curiosity will take her next.

Cecil Jackson-Cole - grand father of charities, by Leslie Wilson

In early 1971, the telephone rang at our house at what my parents, who kept early hours, considered the ungodly hour of ten o'clock. My mother picked up the receiver, and a male voice said: 'Mrs Baker?'

'Yes?' she answered, wondering who it was.

'Would you like to live in London?'

It was before the era of cold calling, and she almost put the phone down, thinking she was talking to a lunatic, but instead, she said: 'I don't want to go and live in London, thank you.'

The unknown caller then asked if he could speak to her husband, so she went - with great misgivings - to get my father.

Photo courtesy of Andrews
Charitable Trust

The caller introduced himself to Dad, saying that he was Cecil Jackson-Cole, that he'd been hearing about my father on and off for the past ten years, and that he wanted to employ him. He suggested my father might like to take a senior post at Help the Aged. My father agreed to go and talk to Mr Jackson-Cole in London, and though he didn't want the post at Help the Aged, they put together a role for him, working half of his time as personnel manager at Andrews and Partners, the estate agents, and the other half dealing with personnel for Help the Aged and the umbrella charity, Voluntary and Christian Service, which existed to set up charities. And so my family came into the orbit of a great man - though not in physical stature; he was short and rather plump - and a great eccentric.



Cecil Jackson-Cole - generally known as 'CJC' was born in 1901, and I'm afraid I know nothing at all about his early life, except that he told me that as a child his family didn't have much money, but they had an aunt who lived in great style in a house she called 'Richborough'. Little Cecil assumed that meant she wanted everyone to know that she was wealthy. He himself became a wealthy man, but there was nothing ostentatious about him; he dedicated his wealth to assisting others.
The list of charities who were helped or set up by CJC include Oxfam, Help the Aged (now Age UK), Action in Distress (now Action Aid), and Toc H, but there are undoubtedly many more. He owned a series of furniture shops in London, called Andrews and Partners, but he disposed of the furniture business and used the name for an estate agent's instead. It was never widely known, but the estate agency's purpose was to fund Voluntary and Christian Service, and this remained the case during all the time that my father worked for the organisation.



The first Oxfam shop in Broad Street.
 Photo courtesy of Oxfam archive



Cecil Jackson-Cole was one of the founders of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which was set up during the war to aid the starving people of Greece while it was being blockaded by the Nazis. At the end of the war it was suggested that the job had been done, and that the committee should disband, but but CJC leaped to his feet saying, ‘There is a world of need out there, we have been effective, so we must go on.’

Oxfam has gone on, and it will be 70 years old this year.





CJC with his wife Theo at my wedding
Photo by Michael Wheeler



He was interested that I worshipped with the Quakers - I later became a Quaker - because he also worshipped with the Society of Friends. I don't think he was ever a member, but he certainly lived out the Quaker testimony about simplicity of lifestyle. He lived in a flat in Hastings (I think it was Hastings, somewhere on the South Coast, anyway). I went there once with my parents, to have lunch with him, and I have a memory of shabbiness and brownness, the way old-fashioned places used to be in the 70s. Not at all like a millionnaire's residence.

His only treasure seemed to be a set of African carved animals, exquisitely made in a variety of lovely woods. He said something like: 'Animals are so beautiful, I love to look at them.' He handled these carvings with an almost childlike delight and wonder.
I remember how, at lunch that day - we had his favourite dish, lasagne, followed by tinned fruit or something similarly unluxurious - he asked me very seriously whether I thought that it was more effective for a charity to appeal to people with images of horror - it was the time of the Biafran war, when we were shocked by images of skeletal babies - or to show them positive things that they could help with. I said I thought positive was better than shock - I opined that people turned off the shocking images quite fast. I was still very young - in my first year at university - but he really wanted to know what I thought and treated me with a respect that I remember well, though probably my answer to his question only reinforced what he was already thinking.

Not that he was always an easy man to work with; a man so driven and dynamic was bound to have his shadow side. Luckily, CJCs colleagues and employees had the support, when there were difficulties, of his first wife, Phyllis. Phyllis was dead, but CJC talked to her every day - I'm not sure how - and she gave him advice - evidently very good advice - on staff relations. This tubby, unremarkable-looking little man was in touch with angels and otherworldly powers as well as with the dead: I remember him telling me that he had endured attacks by Satan and beaten them off by calling on the name of Christ.

He had a habit of saying 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?' and sometimes my father would telephone him and say: 'You asked me to ring you, Mr Jackson-Cole.' CJC would answer: 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?'

He came to my wedding with his second wife, a delightful woman called Theo, and at the end of the film that was made of the day is a shot of CJC directing the cars out of my parents' drive, with an expression of solemn satisfaction. My father said, when he saw the film, that he must have been saying: 'Ye-es. Anyone e-else?' as he directed the cars out.
My father told me that when he was dying, in 1979, CJC was engaged in an argument with God. 'I can't go yet,' he said. 'I've got so much more to do.' Then he was seen to listen to God's reply, which must have been convincing, because he gave way, saying: 'All right. I'll go now.' Then he died.

He left behind him a legacy of charitable work which continues today, and millions of people have been benefited by his initiatives. I am proud that my father was associated with some of them. I also am privileged to have known, however slightly, a man who made such a constructive mark on history.

 

photo: Leo Reynolds







Friends, Faith and Far Horizons

by Marie-Louise Jensen

I'm delighted to be writing today about three of my favourite books for young people: Ann Turnbull's Quaker Trilogy. The third book, Seeking Eden, was published last Thursday. I read it at once and adored it as I had the previous two. For those who haven't read the books, here is a very brief review of each:

No Shame No Fear
is the story of a girl from a family of Friends who leaves home to find work in a nearby town. There she meets Will who is drawn away from his father’s Anglican faith to the Friends both spiritually, and by Susanna’s beauty. But a new law is about to come into force, outlawing religious gatherings outside the Anglican church, and Susanna and Will are both to find their faith tested in the time to come. No Shame No Fear was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Forged in The Fire

follows the fortunes of the young couple some years later. Will is working in London, trying to establish himself so that they can marry. Susanna follows him there. Their struggles to overcome the long time they have spent apart are further threatened by plague and then by the Fire of London.

Seeking Eden

Will and Susanna have decided to leave London, where they have been cruelly persecuted for their faith. Inspired by William Penn and the colony he has founded in the new world, they hope to start again and build a new life on distant shores. The story is told from the point of view of their son Josiah, who is every bit as rebellious and determined as his father was, with all his mother's impulsiveness too. His relationship with his parents is troubled as he goes through his teen years. Jos wants to be a man, to be independant and to make his own way in the world. But in America, Jos is to be faced with difficult choices himself. Can he reconcile the slave trade with the principles he has been taught? And what consequences will his choices have for his relationship with his family and with the girl he loves?

Earlier this week, I put three questions to the author, which she has responded to below. I'd like to welcome Ann Turnbull to the History Girls. It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Ann, can you tell us what drew you to writing about the Friends (Quakers) in the first place?

Thank you, Marie-Louise. It's lovely to be here.
In the early 1980s I began attending Quaker meetings and was involved with Friends for several years. I read the testimonies of the early Friends and felt inspired and fascinated by their unswerving commitment to their faith. When I read about whole communities being in prison and their children keeping the meetings going, I knew there was a story there – but it was nearly twenty years before I began to tell it.

Reading Seeking Eden, I’m very aware that you must have done a great deal of research in order to portray Pennsylvania, Barbados, the work of merchants and apprentices and the experience of Tokpa the slave in such an apparently effortless way. Could you tell us how you went about this?

I used mostly books – heaps of them - and museum visits. I also got hold of videos of Delaware and Pennsylvania, and a film, The New World. I use bibliographies to find titles and the internet to track down books. In particular I look for first-hand accounts. My ‘bible’ was Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, which was incredibly useful for finding out about the country, the wildlife and plants, and how the settlement of Philadelphia was managed. Of course there are always questions you can’t find an answer to, so there is quite a lot of guesswork in the details. I would have loved to have found the journal of an ordinary settler from the 1680s, but no such luck! However, William Penn was a great communicator; his writings give a vivid picture of this new land and its inhabitants – he was, after all, often writing to attract wealthy backers and new settlers. For the merchants and apprentices, I found a copy of a 1948 book about Quaker merchants in early Philadelphia which told me almost everything I needed to know.
Barbados was easier. I used a tourist guide and the Sufferings of Early Quakers covering America and the West Indies. This gave me detailed first-hand records of what was happening to Friends in Barbados at the time. I usually buy rather than borrow books as I don’t have easy access to major libraries, but I did spend a few days in Birmingham’s reference library and the wonderful university library.
For Tokpa’s memories and experience I visited museums: the Africa galleries at the British Museum (I went there three times!) and the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool, which was full of inspiring exhibits. I worked hard to verify everything - though I’m sure I got things wrong. But in the end you can’t get everything right. You can only try to make the story ‘true’ in the sense that you have imaginatively entered the minds of your characters and the world they inhabit.

What did you most enjoy about writing Seeking Eden and what did you find most difficult?

I like a challenge – and these were big, difficult themes and an environment that was new to me. I found that exhilarating. And I enjoyed, as always, the actual writing and construction of the story and seeing the characters evolve. 

The most difficult things?  Writing about places I had not visited – not being able to go to the libraries and museums in Philadelphia and walk around in the places where the first settlers lived.   Trying to imagine the inner lives of Tokpa and Miata and to create a convincing voice for Tokpa.   Fearing that it would never work, and trying to get it done on time (I was months late delivering!)

Ann, thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope that some of our followers will be inspired to read your wonderful books.