Cynthia Harnett's 'The Writing on the Hearth' 1971

 

Methuen first edition - 1971

Cynthia Harnett clearly did her historical homework - as she did with all her novels set in the fifteenth century. In one of them - The Load of Unicorn (which I shall be reading next) - she set forth her method.

Writing a book of this sort is rather like a detective story in reverse. There are clues all the way through it but they are not put there by the author to help the reader to unravel the plot. The clues in this sort of book are bits of history, and facts about people and about places that really existed. It is the author's job to find them all out, and then knit them together so that a story comes to life.

Ewelme Church, Almshouse and School

The Writing on the Hearth is set in the period 1439-1441 and concerns young Stephen who lives in the village of Ewelme in Oxfordshire with his sister Lys. Both parents are dead, the father - a soldier servant to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, having been killed a decade earlier after the siege of Orleans. Their guardian is a surly stepfather Odo, a ploughman. One friend of Stephen's is Doggett, an old soldier, who had been a friend of his father and had fought at Agincourt in 1415. Doggett's stories of the war were never ending. Other fictitious figures are Master Simon Brayles, the Duke's Chaplain at Ewelme Hall and Sir John Saynesbury, the local parson.

Closely intertwined with these figures from the author's imagination are real life historical characters, actual places and events. The Duke of Suffolk and his wife Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer, Speaker of the House of Commons, and granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, established the school (which Stephen attends) and the cloistered almshouses from their profits from the East Anglian wool trade in 1437, and endowed them with estates in four counties. Ewelme School is said to be the oldest school building in the UK still in use as a local authority school. Alice was buried in the church and her alabaster tomb, almost undamaged, consists of a canopy of panelled stone, beneath which is her recumbent effigy. The space beneath the tomb chest encloses her sculpted cadaver.

The story encompasses the real historical faction fighting that was going on at the time. Humphrey duke of Gloucester had returned in triumph from his Calais expedition in 1436. He and his second duchess, Eleanor Cobham, stood high in royal favour. However, the harmony between Henry VI and his uncle and heir apparent did not last for long. In 1440, Gloucester opposed the release of the duke of Orleans (captured by Henry V at Agincourt) from captivity so he could negotiate peace with France. The Gloucesters became an object of the king's displeasure. The duchess laid herself open to a possible charge of treason and sorcery - imagining Henry's death so that her husband could inherit the throne. She had to endure several days of humiliating public penance, walking through London's main streets as if she was a common prostitute. Among others arrested as accomplices in the black arts, was  the fashionable astrologer and necromancer and member of Gloucester's household, Master Roger Bolinbroke, also Master of St. Andrew's Hall, Oxford University.. He was hanged, drawn and quartered for his share in the plot. In opposition to Gloucester was the duke of Suffolk and his party and, for the period covered by the novel, he comes out successful.

All the above are skilfully woven into Harnett's story, with young Stephen often getting first-hand experience of the ebb and flow of political events. In addition, the author continues to portray, as accurately as possible, life for the ordinary person in mid 15th century England. Lys becomes a kitchen wench at the nearby Goring nunnery, later progressing to the status of a lay sister. Stephen, thanks to the patronage of the Suffolks, is bound for Oxford - first to St. Edmund's Hall and later to St. Mary's College (Oriel College). As with Ring Out Bow Bells! - the novel I read prior to this one - the author's didacticism is very much in evidence. As she writes in her Postscript, but if Stephen and his story are fiction, his problem is a basic one, as valid today as ever it was - the problem of sifting good from evil. To him it came in the guise of witchcraft. The author ensures that the bad do not go unpunished, whilst the good get their reward. If only this was as straightforward today, in our increasingly dystopian world.

Interestingly, this was the first of the novels not to be illustrated by the author. On this occasion, Gareth Floyd did the honours. Cynthia Harnett can be excused, as by now she was 77/78 years-old.