On the subject of bonnets.

Posted on 30/11/2023

After a period of not writing much due to the demands of a job and the rigours of coping with a parent with Alzheimer’s, I am now back on my perch. This is a somewhat sagging chair in front of a desk that apparently was once a sea captain’s. I have no real evidence of this, other than a family rumour, but what is scattered over it, and crammed into its many cubby holes, certainly look as if they have endured an ocean storm.

I am embarked on a book set in the year 1856. It is my first attempt at a novel that does not have a contemporary setting and one of my most challenging tasks is conjuring up the period so that it feels authentic. I have read a lot about the context in which I am endeavouring to make my characters speak and act – the impact of industrialisation, the carving up of the landscape, the new religious fervour that gripped communities, the development of the police force, the technological advances. I have watched many films and admired and learnt a lot from the novels of more accomplished historical writers. I am in short, somewhat equipped to tackle my subject. And yet…I am beset by the thorny problem of what to do about the carriages. And the tea cups. And the slow walks around gardens. And above all, the…bonnets.

I remember seeing a TV drama set in the 70’s in which the living room, where most of the action took place, was a riot of the decade’s chief motifs – geometric shapes, olive green and mustard yellow upholstery, wall hangings, mushroom lamps. The people that populated this room flicked through the radio times wearing big collars, whist their children occasionally bounced in on space hoopers or whizzed past the window on chopper bikes. It was like the seventies as displayed in a museum- with all its main tropes mashed together into a nightmarish concoction. I am worried that this is where bonnets and tea cups will lead me too- a kind of Victorian theme park.

All the same, I want to get it right. I live in fear of introducing a bit of kit that was not even a twinkle in its inventor’s eye for another thirty years, or making my characters dress in ways they would not have. My late father, the historical novelist Barry Unsworth, who was a master at recreating the past and making it live and breathe into the present, told me a story about a letter he had received from one of his readers. The letter was objecting, in the strongest possible terms about the fact that one of the characters in his latest novel had been described as swimming a certain kind of front crawl that was not in use during the period in question. My father reported this to me with a kind of rueful impatience – he said writers of historical fiction were not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence. It is enough, he announced, that the bits that are not on record, cannot be disproved, or (better) words to that effect. What I took from this story was that even someone who was as scrupulous with their research as my father was, could raise indignation amongst readers even if in this case the reader in question was surely unusual in being so committed to the historical accuracy of swimming styles.

As I write, I am endeavouring to take heart from this. I am also trying to ensure that no gardens are walked around unless it absolutely serves the plot (and even then there will be no mention of parasols and gloves). No one will ever sip from a cup or descend from a carriage unless there is nothing else they could credibly do. Above all, where bonnets might feature- with lace or velvet trim, fastened or unfastened, even cast aside on sofas- I really need to think carefully about whether that bonnet needs to be there at all.