Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle (27 page)

Eldon would have been proud that Annie had rescued the boy from the fire. She had behaved in a loyal way to those in her charge. She had been a good member of the expedition.What she thinks now is that she will go back to Ireland by herself, back to County Clare, to try and find out what happened to her family. Eldon would like that. And even though the letters he sent there were never answered, if she went herself and made enquiries, there might be someone who would recall the Phelans. Yes, this is what she will do.

Annie holds her head up as straight as she can. This photograph is all Isabelle will allow her to give. This is all Isabelle will have to remember her by. She wants it to be a good likeness. “I’m ready, Isabelle,” she says.

The winged boy falls to earth. Isabelle watches his slow flight down, the streaks of smoke articulate from the trailing ends of his feathery arms. The knot his small body makes in the air.

It is the perfect photograph, and she has missed it.

This is what she has always feared. That she will not be able, no matter how she wills it or orchestrates it, to create an image as pure and true as this. That what she does is not really about life, about living. It is about holding on to something long after it has already left.

Like grief Like hope.

Life is the unexpected generosity of a kiss.

It is the falling moment. Unrecorded.

I am indebted to the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron for their haunting inspiration.

Thanks to the Corporation of Yaddo, where some of this book was written.

I would like to thank M. Lindsay Lambert for his expertise in Victorian photography, and my grandfather, Ronald Brett, for his imaginings of Sussex life in 1865.

Thanks, as always, to Frances Hanna.

In particular, I am grateful to my editor, Phyllis Bruce. Her kindness, thoroughness, and keen judgement have made me a better writer, and
Afterimage
a better book.

The photographs described in
Afterimage
are loosely imagined renderings of a series of photographs taken by the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron of her housemaid, Mary Hillier.

The quotes from Sappho are taken from a translation by Mary Barnard.

The quoted passages of the whaling diary are from the
Journal of the Margaret Rait—1840—1844
by Captain James Doane Coffin.

The quoted passages and descriptions of McClintock’s voyage in search of Franklin are from
The Voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic Seas: A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and His Companions
by Captain Francis Leopold McClintock; London, 1859.

The quoted passages from John Franklin are taken from
Arctic Breakthrough: Franklin’s Expeditions 1819–1847
by Paul Nanton.

The question of the unusual nature of the relationship was always at the heart of the story of Isabelle and her Irish maid, Annie.

Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs were the primary inspiration behind
Afterimage.
What was it about them that captured your imagination?

Cameron’s photographs are quite famous, and so I had seen individual images in the past, but the first time I saw an exhibition was in 1998, and it included a series of her maid, Mary Hillier. I started to cast around, trying to find out more about Hillier, but because she was a maid there was little available on her life. There was, however, a lot of information about Cameron, and so I started there—but the question of the unusual nature of the relationship was always at the heart of the story of Isabelle and her Irish maid, Annie.

All the photographs in the novel were based on Cameron’s actual photographs. In all my historical novels I try to be faithful to one particular thing, and in
Afterimage
it was the real-life photographs and the photographic process that Cameron used to create them.

In your novel, what is the relationship between Isabelle’s photography and her husband Eldon’s cartography?

One is an art form that is in its death throes (cartography), and one is an art form that is just beginning (photography). I liked the
idea of the tension that opposition could create within a household.

Isabelle’s confidence in her artistic vision wavers when others don’t take her seriously. Was this also true of the real-life photographer Cameron?

Cameron was an anomaly at the time. There weren’t women photographers when she took it up. In fact, photography itself was in its infancy as an art form and a profession, and perhaps this is why she was accepted within it. Territory hadn’t been properly staked out yet. Everything was still very experimental. So Cameron was able to take up photography relatively late in life, at the age of forty-eight, and become a success. Where Cameron didn’t find inclusion, and in
Afterimage
where Isabelle Dashell also has trouble, is within the world of the male allegorical painters, such as Watts. They didn’t take photography, regardless of the gender of the photographer, seriously as an art form.

How did you tackle the research for
Afterimage,
which delves into everything from Ireland’s Great Hunger to Arctic exploration?

There was a massive amount of research required. But what I did initially, to maintain some order with it, was to break the book down into subjects—early photography, Cameron’s photography, life in Victorian England, the Irish potato famine, Franklin’s doomed trip to find the Northwest Passage, the history of map-making. There was a lot to learn and it took the better part of two years.

“Everything was still very experimental. So Cameron was able to take up photography relatively late in life, at the age of forty-eight, and become a success.”

“I think Eldon has never been very comfortable in his own skin.

Several of the characters in
Afterimage
long to be someone other than themselves, most intriguingly Eldon, who in one passage says that he wishes he were Annie’s equal. Why?

Annie has no wish to be anyone other than herself. Her struggle is in finding out what that self comprises. I think Eldon has never been very comfortable in his own skin. He was a sickly child, and his physical weakness has kept him from the adventurous life that he desired. He feels a real kinship with Annie but also feels that their respective societal positions prevent their closeness. He is not a man who is tied to his societal position, and I think he would relinquish it if he could. He would change his circumstances if it would allow him to make a better connection with someone. This is where he differs from Isabelle and is really a much more sympathetic character. She has no wish to change but, rather, requires change from others.

In the beginning, Annie seems a pawn in the hands of her masters. At what point and how are the roles reversed?

Yes, initially they use her for their own purposes. But they underestimate her intelligence and her willingness to learn. And so, while they’re using her, she’s educating herself, to the point, at the end of the book, where she feels confident making decisions for herself and rebelling against their idea of who she is. By playing with identity, trying on
the roles both Isabelle and Eldon give to her, Annie is actually able to discover an identity of her own and act from the newfound power of that place.

With which of the novel’s three main characters do you feel the most connection?

I feel connected to all three of them, but I suppose that I probably am most like Isabelle Dashell in that I am driven, as she is driven, to create. It doesn’t feel like a choice, more of a compulsion, and I think that is how it is for her. All of her best energies get put into the making of her photographs, and the vision she has for her work drives all of her decisions. When I was a young writer, this was very much how it was for me.

Do you take photographs yourself, and if so, do you see any parallels between photography and writing?

I used to do quite a lot of photography and did my own developing. I was a bit obsessed with construction sites at one time, and I remember taking a lot of photographs of scaffolding. I liked the contrast in photography between the capturing of an image and the rather lengthy process of developing that image. And I liked that the taking of the photograph was all about light, and the developing of the image was done in the dark. Of course all that has changed now with digital photography and printers. But there was something very satisfying about watching an image slowly reveal itself in the developing fluid. I suppose in that way it was like
writing, although to be honest, it never felt to me like writing at all.

“I suppose that I probably am most like Isabelle Dashell in that I am driven, as she is driven, to create.”

“I love art in all its forms, and I take a lot of inspiration from it.

Do you find that other art forms often influence your writing in the way that Cameron’s photographs did
Afterimage?

I am constantly influenced by other art forms. Art cross-pollinates. I love visual art and spend time in galleries whenever I’m in New York or London or other big cities. I listen to music, sometimes even while I write. I see a lot of films and go to the theatre when I can. I love art in all its forms, and I take a lot of inspiration from it.

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.

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.