08/27/15

Thursday Thought: How 45 Minutes Took 5 Years

I was asked to contribute a guest blog for the prestigious Historical Novel Society. It is about how my novel came to be written.

Click here: http://awriterofhistory.com/2015/08/18/the-miner-the-viscount-by-richard-hoskin/

Although I did not realize it at the time, the birth of The Miner & The Viscount began when a professor friend asked me to contribute a Cornwall segment to his lecture series on aspects of the history and culture of Great Britain. I was recently retired and glad to embark on a new career as a lecturer, holding engrossed audiences in thrall.

“How many lectures would you like?” I asked. “Eight? Six?”

“Actually, one,” he replied, “and no more than 45 minutes including Q & A.”

Not quite what I had in mind but at least it would not take much effort, since I knew all about Cornwall having been born and bred there. I did some research to flesh out details, realising that stories from my childhood only skimmed the surface. The result was Cornwall: History, Mystery, Mansions and Mines. It proved a lot of effort for 45 minutes but at least I got them singing a rousing “Trelawney” at the end.

It seemed a pity to leave it at that. My New England wife suggested that since I loved Cornwall and enjoyed history, I should use the material to write an historical novel. She would help with editing. I was convinced. It would be a big project, imagined it would take at least a year. Moreover, I was passionate about telling the story of my Cornwall to a wider world.

The timeframe I settled on was the late 18th century. Widespread change was emerging: the agricultural and industrial revolutions and the invention of the steam engine, social unrest and the rise of Methodism, popular education and the influence of women, political corruption at home and expansion of empire overseas, the beginnings of the Enlightenment.

I assembled sources. Steven Watson, my tutor at Oxford, published The Reign of George III. My brother-in-law, Dr. J.R. Ravensdale had written the volume onCornwall for the National Trust. Lewis Namier devoted an entire chapter to the machination of the 44 Cornish MPs in his breakthrough work The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III. There were biographies of William Pitt the Elder (whose grandfather bought Boconnoc), the journals of John Wesley, books on mining, scores of articles to be woven into a coherent pattern. And then there was John Allen’s History of the Borough of Liskeard published in 1856 by John Philp, founder of The Cornish Times.

But above all were my personal experiences of growing up in Liskeard, living in those beautiful places, knowing those sturdily independent people, absorbing their legends and their story. This is what got my imagination surging.

Following expert advice, I planned to begin with an outline. I decided to build my story around Cornish gentry in great houses and miners and farm labourers in tiny cottages. I picked famous historical figures to mingle with my fictitious characters. I thought up a title, The Miner & the Viscount. I picked a start date, 1760. I typed the title and “Outline” on a fresh document. Then I got stuck.

The only outline I ever created was one summarising what I had already written, to keep things straight. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, my good man.” “But my lord, you already had me flogged in Chapter Six.”

I just started writing drafts. Fortunately, as I got into it the characters magically took over. Their loves, their hates, partnerships, rivalries, joys, sufferings, doings: their story became my story. I would finish a chapter and stare at my computer. What ever would happen next? And Willy Bunt would come into my mind. “Us just ’as to get on with it, zir, Oi’ll tell ’e what Oi’d do if Oi were ye.”

Location Research

Location Research

After three years and six rewrites I had a finished manuscript. A research trip to Cornwall would enable me to fill in a few details, add a little local colour. We visited Liskeard, Port Eliot, Boconnoc, Lanhydrock, Bodmin Moor, the tin and copper mines down west, absorbed the countryside, heard more stories about the people who lived there in the 18th century. We met Maureen Fuller, Grand Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh and she agreed to translate some dialogue into the ancient Cornish language, adding so much authenticity.

Back in Kentucky an experienced member of my writers’ group offered to burnish the final version, a little tweak here and there. After three more rewrites, 25,000 more words, and two more years we sent the manuscript to the publisher.

The story of Cornwall was finally mine to tell. Well, perhaps with a little help from Willy Bunt.

05/14/15

Thursday Thoughts: John Caddy

John Caddy

John Caddy

 

John Caddy grew up in Hibbing and Virginia, iron mining towns on the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. His great-grandfather, Tom Caddy, was one of the Cornishmen who came to Upper Michigan for the copper and iron mines in the 1870s and 80s after the collapse of hard rock mining in Cornwall. 

John describes himself as “an aging poet whose spirit is more lively all the time.” He first visited the land of his roots in 1992, performed his poetry and formed close attachments that led to his being made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh.

Here is one of his poems about Cornwall and the spirit of its miners. It was published in the book With Mouths Open Wide, New and Selected Poems in the section “Presences the Blood Learns Again”.  Learn more about John at http://www.morning-earth.org

 

COMING TO GRASS

Cornishman: a man at the bottom of a mine, singing.

They came to grass at the end of the day.
They climbed from the Dark to grass
and carried the Dark up with them.

After a long day of night with only
the head’s candle for light,
after aching hours of sledging iron
against candle-gleamed borer,

Grass was the surface they climbed to
through a thousand feet of Dark—
Over and over they pulled their weight up the rungs
as their hearts rang the ribcage,
to come up to light and grass-green,
but to carry Dark with them unseen.

Dark changed the strong men,
shortened their tempers, stubborned beliefs,
roughened their tongues—
Dark led them to think
they were the ones who could see.

But in the mine, in chapel, in pub,
Bearing this Dark is what taught them to sing.

04/16/15

Thursday Thoughts: Natural Amphitheater

The foreboding opening scene of The Miner and the Viscount is set in a magnificent natural amphitheater, Gwennap Pit, just southeast of Redruth. At the time the story opens, and into the early 19th century, Gwennap parish incorporated the great Poldice mine and was dubbed the “richest square mile in the Old World”. Stannary Rolls record sales of tin back in the 14th century. The intensive felling of trees for charcoal to smelt the ore has left a stark moorland landscape. Today Gwennap forms part of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site.

Gwennap Pit

Gwennap Pit

 

Gwennap Pit may have been formed by the collapse of a working mine. Mary Fryer is from Illogan in Cornwall, and she told me she had played in the Pit as a girl. Mary is a Tangye and her family is connected to mining. Her great great grandfather Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye manufactured hydraulic pumps used to drain the mines.  He was named after the great Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick.

My wife Penny and I went to Gwennap Pit during our research visit to Cornwall in 2012. I stood at the rim opposite her some 200 feet away and we conversed in normal speaking voices.  She said, “I can hear and understand every single word you say.”

I whispered to myself, “First time in years.” She shouted back, “I heard that!”

Gwennap Pit’s acoustic properties made it a marvelous place for meetings. John Wesley visited Cornwall 32 times and preached at the Pit many times. He wrote in his Journal of preaching there to  “two and thirty thousand souls.” Read Chapter 68 for a description of one of John Wesley’s great sermons, when he charged the gentry to pay heed to those in great need.

Gwennap was owned at one time by the Williams family of Scorrier House, respected Cornish mine operators, who gave it to the Methodist Church in 1978. The famous Lt. Col. J.H. Williams was a descendant who was born in St. Just. He served in World War II with the British Fourteenth Army in what was then known as Burma. He was skilled in training elephants and played a major logistical role in the campaign.  After the war he joined a teak company. I remember when I was a boy at Clifton reading his wonderful book “Elephant Bill” about his experiences.

Researching an historical novel turns up so many connections!

 

03/25/15

Thursday Thoughts: Megaliths

Cornwall is rich in neolithic monuments. The famous Cheesewring is near the village of Minions, which was once a tin and copper miming center. The village is some 3 miles from Liskeard, my birthplace.

How was this extraordinary structure created? Was it an example of the engineering feats of our ingenious Celtic ancestors? There is a simpler explanation. The Cheesewring was formed when the saints and the giants were both inhabiting Cornwall. The giants had lived there longer and were annoyed by the saints moving in and ‘taking over’; putting more stone crosses up, making wells holy and taking too many tithes (taxes) from the harvest.

One day St. Tue heard the giants discussing the best way of ridding the county of the saints so he decided to challenge the leader (Uther) to a trial of strength. This took the form of a rock throwing contest and if the saints won then the giants would have to renounce their wicked ways; but if the saints lost then they would have to leave Cornwall, never to return. Uther was a champion rock thrower whose specialty was balancing larger rocks on top of smaller ones, and St. Tue was very small so in theory there should have been no doubt about the result.

After gathering twelve flat rocks of varying sizes Uther took first throw. The rock landed about 100 feet away towards Stowe’s Hill. St. Tue picked up a rock, looked to the skies and suddenly the rock felt as light as a feather in his hand. He cast it toward the first thrown rock and it landed neatly on top. So they continued until there was only one rock left and it was St. Tue to throw. This too landed perfectly on the pile and, not wanting to admit defeat, Uther suggested that they throw ‘one more for luck’.

He picked up a huge stone and using all his strength threw it. It fell short of the pile, rolled back down the hill and landed at the saint’s feet. As the saint prayed for holy intervention an angel, visible only to him, appeared and carried the stone to the pile. Placing it neatly on the top the angel then vanished and the saints had won.

Uther promised to mend his ways and so did most of the other giants, although some went into the hills muttering about revenge.

Cheesewring

Cheesewring

02/11/15

Thursday Thoughts: Cornwall’s Trade with South Wales

Cornish Story www.cornishstory.com is the outreach program of the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter in southwestern Britain. It explores the story of Cornwall and the Cornish overseas in the past and present. They are developing a research project on the historic maritime connections between Cornwall and South Wales. This will be interesting to follow. Coal from south Wales plays an important part in my story. It fuels the new-fangled steam engines in the mines. In Chapter 52 the great inventor John Smeaton drives with the mine captain’s son, Jemmy, to get spare parts for the engine. By the way, Smeaton designed and built the lighthouse on the hazardous Eddystone reef off the southeast coast of Cornwall.

As they drove along the crooked track towards St. Just, they came across a large number of heavily laden mules in a train traveling towards them. They were carrying panniers strapped to their backs. The drovers gave them a cheerful wave.
“Look at all them mules, scores of them. What are they carrying?” asked Jemmy
“Mining coals,” said Smeaton. “Won’t be long before we get more steam engines installed, and there’ll be hundreds of them bringing coal from the Cornish ports, shipped by sea from south Wales. I’ve designed and built all kinds of contraptions for t’ coal mines, far away as Yorkshire. Coal’s being used more and more. Lot of money being made from coal. Dirty stuff to handle; still, where there’s muck there’s brass. That’s what we say in Yorkshire.”
Jemmy had to listen carefully when Mr. Smeaton spoke. He was quite difficult to understand, not like the Cornish. It must be because he was a furriner, from way up north in Yorkshire. Jemmy noticed that when Mr. Smeaton said brass it sounded clipped, short, not like his dad who said brass with a long a, took more time over it. Odd, and instead of saying “the,” Mr. Smeaton said “t”, but Jemmy was too polite to say anything.
“I wish I could be an inventor like you, Mr. Smeaton,” said Jemmy wistfully. “Must be very in’erestin’, thinkin’ up new things, tryin’ things out, and seein’ the world.”
Mule train

Mule train

08/28/14

Thomas Newcomen

I am pleased to welcome a guest blogger, Susan W. Howard, now of San Jose, CA., and a descendant of the illustrious Hornblower family of Cornwall. This link will take you to the biography of Joseph Hornblower  http://penwood.famroots.org/joseph_hornblower.htm

Susan gave a talk about her researches at the Cornish Gathering in Milwaukee. She has written this brief portrait of Thomas Newcomen, who is credited with being the inventor of the atmospheric steam engine, which would “do the work of five horses.” One was built at the Wheal Vor mine as early as 1710 and by the time my story opens in 1760 as many as 70 were at work in Cornwall. The engine worked by injecting cold water into the steam cylinder to create a vacuum. The later designs of the Scotsman James Watt and the great Cornishman Richard Trevithick used the energy of expanding steam.

              The Newcomen Engine

The Newcomen Engine

Thomas Newcomen, inventor of the atmospheric steam engine, was a modest and devoutly religious man who left behind few records of his life. Some eighteenth century scientists such as Royal Society member John Desaguliers had difficulty in giving Newcomen credit for his invention. Desaguliers wrote that the engine that began pumping water from the mines at Coneygree colliery near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712 came about “very luckily by accident.” Newcomen in fact did possess the intellectual capacity and practical experience to build the engine. He relied upon his close-knit circle of fellow Baptists to supply help and needed expertise. Among them were John Calley, Humphrey Potter, and Joseph Hornblower, who built Newcomen engines in Cornwall. Newcomen may have begun building an engine at Wheal Vor in Cornwall as early as 1710; the Royal Cornwall Museum gives him credit for a machine built there in 1716.

Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth, Devon in 1664. He became an ironmonger and while in his early twenties he visited mining regions in the West Midlands and Cornwall to sell and to manufacture metal tools and small household items. No record of an apprenticeship survives, but bills for ironmongery and purchases of bulk iron have been found. Letters written by his contemporaries do contain references to Newcomen and the steam engine. Two of Newcomen’s own letters have survived, and as far as can be discovered, no portrait of him was made. Apparently he began experimenting with steam engines in the mid-1690s. The extent that the ideas of other inventors or scientists influenced his work is a matter of conjecture. Inventor Thomas Savery had already been granted a patent for a “fire engine,” so Newcomen joined in a partnership with him to build an engine suitable for pumping water from the mines. Eventually more than 2,000 atmospheric steam engines were built. Newcomen was also a lay preacher, a trustee of the Netherton Baptist chapel (near Dudley) and an Overseer of the Poor. After his death in 1729 at the London home of fellow Baptist Edward Wallin, Newcomen was buried in Bunhill Fields, a nonconformist cemetery in London; the location of his gravesite, like so many of the details of his life, remains unknown.

Note: Desaguliers quote from L.T.C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen, (Landmark Publishing, Ashbourne, Derbershire, 1997) 46.

07/12/14

Who’s Who in The Miner & the Viscount?

One of the joys and, indeed, challenges of writing an historical novel is creating fictional characters and integrating them with real people from the time of the book’s events.  Interweaving real people with fictional persons helps enliven a bygone era and engage the reader in a way a dry, historical account might not.

I have my own favorite characters in The Miner & the Viscount; I wonder who yours might be.

Here is the cast of characters — the imagined and the long dead — which you can also find in the front pages of the book.

The Historic Characters

ELIOT FAMILY, of Port Eliot

Edward Eliot (1727-1804), created first Baron Eliot 1784

Catherine Elliston Eliot (1735-1804) his wife;

Edward James Eliot (1758-1797) their eldest surviving son;

John Eliot (1761-1823) their second son, first Earl of St. Germans;

William Eliot (1767-1845) their third son, second Earl of St. Germans;

John Eliot (1742-1769) younger brother of Edward Eliot

 PITT FAMILY, of Boconnoc

Thomas “Diamond” Pitt (1653-1726) East India merchant, Governor of Madras;

Robert Pitt (1680-1727) his eldest son, married Harriet Villiers (c.1680-1736);

Thomas Pitt, (1705-1761) elder son of Robert, former Lord Warden of the Stannaries, married Lucy Lyttelton;

William Pitt, the Elder (1708-1778) second son of Robert, married Lady Hester Grenville (1720-1803);

William Pitt, the Younger (1759-1806) second son of William Pitt the Elder;

Harriot Pitt (c. 1758-1786) younger daughter of William Pitt the Elder;  

Other Characters of Note:

Ralph Allen (1693-1764) Postmaster of Bath, entrepreneur;

Thomas Bolitho, merchant, investor, man of business;

Frances Boscawen (?-1805) widow of Admiral Edmund Boscawen, member of Blue Stockings Society;

Hannah More, intellectual, educator, member of Blue Stockings Society;

St. Piran (c. 6th century) patron saint of Cornwall and of tin miners;

Joshua Reynolds, portraitist, patronized by Eliots;

John Smeaton, inventor, first civil engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society;

Philip Stanhope, illegitimate son of Earl of Chesterfield, MP for Liskeard and later St. Germans, diplomat;

Reverend John Wesley, founder of Methodism;

John Williams, captain of Poldice Mine;

James Davis, Mayor of Liskeard;

Edwin Ough,Town Clerk of Liskeard;

Stephen Clogg, Councilman of Liskeard;

Thomas Peeke, turnpike witness

The Fictional Characters

PENWARDEN FAMILY

Addis, a tin miner in the Poldice mine; mine captain at Wheal Hykka; Lizzie, wife of Addis;

Jedson, a tin miner and younger brother of Addis;

Jeremiah (Jemmy), his firstborn son;

Jedson, second son;

Jennifer, his infant daughter

TRENANCE FAMILY, of Lanhydrock

Baron Trenance

Sir James Trenance, his son; becomes Baron Trenance upon the death of his father; later acquires title of Viscount Dunbargan

Lady Elianor, his wife

Honorable James Trenance, their son;

Honorable Gwenifer Trenance, their daughter;

Willy Bunt, valet and footman at Lanhydrock , then worker at Port Eliot;

Mary Bunt, née Abbott, Willy Bunt’s wife and former maid at Lanhydrock;

Catherine Bunt, their daughter, goddaughter to Catherine Eliot;

Charles Bunt, their son, godson to Charles Polkinghorne;

Joseph Clymo, steward of Lanhydrock estate;

Morwenna Clymo, his daughter

Tom Kegwyn, member of a mining family, ringleader at Wheal Hykka;

Reverend Peter Perry, Perranporth, Methodist minister;

Charles Polkinghorne, man of business for Port Eliot estate.