Jessie Fothergill – a forgotten northern novelist

Jessie was born 170 years ago in June 1851 in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, the eldest child of Thomas and Anne Fothergill. Her father Thomas came from a Yorkshire family of Quakers, whose ancestors featured some noteworthy characters. These included John Fothergill, an 18th-century physician who is said to have given the first lecture on mouthto-mouth resuscitation, and Samuel Fothergill, who wrote extensively about his travels across the United States as a Quaker preacher. Thomas himself was eventually compelled to leave the movement for marrying a non-Quaker. Jessie’s father worked as a cotton merchant in Manchester in partnership with another businessman called Alexander Harvey. In 1858 the pair bought Sladen Wood Mill at Summit near Littleborough with a view to producing their own cotton cloth. This proved to be an astute move. The business thrived, with significant sales to overseas customers as well as those closer to home. As a result the Fothergill family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, moving to Bowdon in Cheshire where Jessie attended a private school before continuing her education at a Harrogate boarding school. However, the family suffered a downturn in fortunes when Thomas died in 1866. Shortly afterwards Jessie moved with her mother and siblings to live at Sladen Wood House in Littleborough, which was situated near to the cotton mill purchased by her late father and his business partner in 1858. Jessie appears to have taken this change in the family’s circumstances in her stride. When Victorian writer Helen C Black interviewed her in 1890 for Notable Women Authors of the Day, Jessie recalled her first impression of her new home, “I quite well remember going home to this place for the first Christmas holidays after my father’s death and being enchanted and delighted – despite the sorrow that overshadowed us – with the rough roads, the wild sweeping moors and fells, the dark stone walls, the strange, uncouth people, the out-ofthe-worldness of it all. And the better I knew it the more I loved it, in its winter bleakness and its tempered but delightful summer warmth”. The first of Jessie’s novels to be published, Healey, was inspired by the area around Littleborough. The town itself appears in the novel thinly disguised as “Hamerton”. In writing the novel Jessie also drew heavily on her observations of everyday life there, recalling later how she took note of “the routine of the great cotton and flannel mills, the odd habits, the queer sayings and doings of the workpeople”. The main female protagonist in the novel, Katherine Healey, is portrayed as a successful businesswoman who manages her brother’s large business and property on his behalf. This flies in the face of the conventional view of the role of women at the time, where it was generally considered “unfeminine” to be involved in business. Jessie’s heroine, Katherine Healey, is portrayed as being all too aware of how society views her, “A masculine person (I must be masculine, you know, I do a man’s work), one so strong-minded in appearance as I am, can never be liked”. Tellingly, Jessie herself seems to have shared her heroine’s disregard for conventional femininity, remarking to Helen C Black of her younger self, “There was little of the young lady about me”. Healey received several enthusiastic reviews. The Manchester Examiner even compared Jessie to literary great Elizabeth Gaskell, commenting that “Since Mrs Gaskell’s unrivalled story of Manchester life, there have been written few more powerful Lancashire stories than Miss Fothergill’s Healey”. However, neither Healey nor

Tellingly, Jessie herself seems to have shared her heroine’s disregard for conventional femininity

Above: Portrait of John Fothergill (1712-80), Jessie Fothergill’s ancestor

its successor Aldyth proved to be commercial successes when first published. In 1874 Jessie travelled to the German city of Dusseldorf to study music, along with her younger sister Caroline and two friends. She stayed for a total of fifteen months in Germany, and it was here that she started writing the novel which eventually brought her most commercial success, The First Violin. This Victorian romance may seem remarkably tame by today’s standards, but one of its subplots featuring a sympathetic depiction of a married woman’s affair with another man, for whom she eventually leaves her husband, caused much consternation at the time. Henry King, the publishers of Jessie’s first two novels, declined to publish The First Violin, and at least one other considered it too hot to handle, before it was finally accepted by another and published in 1878. Unlike all of Jessie’s other work, the first edition of The First Violin was published anonymously. Bearing in mind her Quaker background, it has been suggested that some members of the Fothergill family were unhappy with the way in which the extra-marital affair was portrayed in the novel and insisted that the Fothergill name not be attached to it. Jessie’s own views on religion appear to have been liberal for the time. In Notable Women Authors of the Day Helen C Black recalled how at one point Jessie showed her the motto engraved on the ring she was wearing, which read “Good fight, good rest”. This motto, explained Jessie, “embodies all I have of religious creed”. Despite the early difficulties, the publication of The First Violin proved to be the turning point in Jessie’s writing career. Its popularity with the reading public ensured that she would never have any difficulty in finding a publisher for her books again. In many ways The First Violin, which was predominately set in Germany,

Above: Blackstone Edge, near Littleborough

Left: Elizabeth Gaskell’s former home on Plymouth Grove in Manchester

was atypical of her work. In later novels Jessie returned to her northern roots for inspiration. Probation, set in the early 1860s during the time of the Lancashire cotton famine, is a prime example, which features again the fictional mill town of Hamerton. The success of Jessie’s novels enabled the family to move back to Manchester. By the time of the 1881 census they were living in Chorlton-OnMedlock, not far from the home on Plymouth Grove where Elizabeth Gaskell had lived towards the end of her life. In total, Jessie Fothergill produced thirteen novels during her lifetime, plus one published posthumously. Her work was generally well received, with one review in The Spectator comparing her to another of the 19th century’s literary greats, “There is in it enough genius...to entitle it to equality with, let us say, Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley, if not with the greater Jane Eyre and Villette...Where Kith and Kin is strong, and it is strong in many places, it would be difficult to say that Jane Eyre is stronger”. The novel to which this review refers, Kith and Kin, is another of Jessie’s works to feature a strong female lead character. Its forthright heroine, Judith Conisbrough, decides to pursue a career in nursing rather than to offer herself in marriage to a man “in exchange for a home and clothing”. Jessie was never afraid in her work to challenge the traditional Victorian view of the role of women in society. It comes as little surprise, therefore, to discover that Jessie, together with one of her younger sisters, Caroline (herself a published author), appears to have become actively involved in the votes for women movement, which was then still in its infancy. Evidence for the sisters’ involvement in the campaign comes in the way of two newspaper reports from 1891. In one Caroline Fothergill is described as taking “an active interest in woman’s suffrage” in her role as “travelling lecturer for the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage”. In another, on the same subject, Caroline is described as the “sister of Jessie Fothergill, the novelist and herself not unknown in a similar field of work”. Jessie could well have written more novels, were it not for the chronic respiratory illness which plagued her for much of her life. Increasingly she travelled abroad to milder climes during the winter to escape the worst of the Lancashire weather. During 1884-85 she spent thirteen months in North America, staying at a mountain resort in Pennsylvania. She later published a memoir, Some American Recollections, based on her time there. Soon after her conversation with Helen C Black in 1890, Jessie travelled to the continent in another attempt to improve her ailing health. Sadly it proved to be to no avail. The author died in Berne, Switzerland, on 28th July 1891 at the age of just 40. Despite the high praise and flattering comparisons with the likes of Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters during her lifetime, the work of Jessie Fothergill, like so many of the once popular Victorian novelists, has for the most part been lost to posterity. Sladen Wood House, where Jessie and her family once lived in Littleborough, has long since been demolished, but in recent years a blue plaque has been erected nearby to commemorate the novelist. It seems an entirely appropriate spot to remember the author who chose to write so vividly about the life of the people in this area some 150 years ago.

Right: Image from 1880 edition of Probation featuring the book’s heroine Adrienne

HISTORICAL

HAWKSHEAD

By Mark Bateman

Located in the South Lakeland area just north of Esthwaite water Hawkshead includes the hamlets of Hawkshead Hill and Outgate. For a small village it has a strong and rich history with literary connections to writers including William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.

William the Conqueror’s grandson, the last Norman king Stephen 1st included Hawkshead in his 1135 endowment of Furness Abbey. Amongst other structures the Cistercian monks built a ‘grange’ just north of the village. Parts of it such as the ‘hall’, the ‘Courthouse’ and the Mill Pond for their corn mill can still be seen.

The monks were extremely industrious and kept flocks of sheep on the hills known by the old Norse term, ‘herd-vik’ whose descendants are the famously hardy local black- woolled sheep the Herdwick. For four hundred years the monks ran Hawkshead as an early market centre for raw wool, yarn and the coarse homespun cloth worn by the labouring poor and known as ‘hodden grey.’ The small tarn at the end of Esthwaite water was believed to have been their fishpond and is still known as the ‘Priest Pot.’

In the 1530’s King Henry VIII set about the dissolution of the monasteries as part of his ‘divorce’ from the Catholic church. Local merchants moved in quickly to take over the wool, flax and hemp production and trade started by the monks. These products were used in the manufacture of sails, clothing, ropes, cords, and halters. Flax and linen were also supplied to Kendal for their growing ‘linsey-woollen’ (a plain coarse twill) production.

The town was granted its first official market charter by King James in 1608 and the importance of the market can be seen in the very construction of Hawkshead’s streets and houses. In fact, there are no less than thirty eight known buildings of historical interest many dating from the 17th and 18th century when the town grew as a market town.

Local oak was used in the construction of town houses and their ‘pentices’ which was an extension of the area of a roof. The main function of them was to balance out heavy slate roofs but they also served a useful role for hanging fleeces, yarns and cloths that were for sale.

Many of the streets, and houses, in the village are named after their function, or appearance. For example Flag Street took its name from the Brathay flagstones that were used in the bridge to span the beck where fleeces, yarn and cloth was worked. In a similar way Spout House on Fountain street provided water for brewing and domestic use. The cobbled, Leather, Rag and Putty

street’ was once busy with cobblers, cloggers, saddlers, harness makers and clockmakers. Hawkshead’s ‘Market House’ was built in 1650 and featured an open arched shambles area beneath which local Butcher’s carried out their trade.

One of the most notable buildings in the town is the Hawkshead Grammar School which was founded in 1585 by Archbishop Edwin Sandys of York who petitioned Queen Elizabeth 1st to set up a governing body for a school. The school taught Latin, Greek, Arithmetic, Geometry, and the Sciences. The school closed in 1909 but now it is open to the public as Hawkshead Grammar School Museum from April to October and offers guided tours of the school rooms bringing the past to life.

Perhaps its most famous alumni was the Lakes poet William Wordsworth whose initials can still be seen carved into the desk he sat at. Wordsworth makes reference to childhood time spent at the school and in the hills around Hawkshead in his epic poem, ‘The Prelude’. Wordsworth spent his whole life from the age of twenty eight working on this poem to rival Milton’s, ‘Paradise Lost.’ The final version of the poem was published in fourteen volumes three months after his death and was only titled ‘The Prelude’ by his widow Mary, he had simply referred to it as ‘the poem.’

Wordsworth is not the only famous writer associated with Hawkshead; the world renowned children’s writer Beatrix Potter lived at Hill Top Farm Near Sawrey. Most of Potter’s tales (over thirty of them) concern the lives of animals including, ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ (now a major film) and ‘Jemima Puddle duck.’

Not only was Potter a prolific writer but she was also an avid farmer and bought much of the land surrounding Hawkshead to breed Herdwick sheep. She was also instrumental in helping to set up the National Trust and after her death in 1943 she left four thousand acres, sixteen farms and her herds of prize winning Herdwick sheep, and cattle, to the National Trust.

Fans of Beatrix Potter will find plenty of Potter- related places to visit in Hawkshead such as the Beatrix Potter gallery. Various locations in the town can also be spotted as appearing in her books such as the Johnny- Tow mouse archway between what is now the Co-Op and The King’s Arms.

Hawkshead is also well known for its churches and chapels. Its main church, ‘St Michael and All Angel’s’ was built in 1578 replacing a twelfth century chapel. It features twenty six distinctive biblical texts originally painted on the walls in 1680 and 1711. The village also has a Methodist chapel opened in 1862. The Quakers also established a burial ground at nearby ‘Sepulchre Corner’ in 1658 at Colthouse where the remains of slate benches which show where meetings were once held.

On a slightly more gruesome note, both the Parish Church and Sepulchre Corner overlook the field known as ‘Gibbet Moss’ where the corpses of law breakers were hung as an example to other would be criminals. These corpses no doubt came from a gallows erected on a drumlin in the area still known as ‘Gallow Barrow.’

These days Hawkshead is a thriving market town offering something for everything. There is a wide range of shops including, galleries, book shops, craft shops, artisan food including the famous Hawkshead relish shop, and outdoor activities shops. As well as this there are pubs, B&B’s and guesthouses.

There is always something going on throughout the year including National trail running races (open to all) and cultural events including classical music recitals at the church as well as jazz programs. Those who prefer to get active will find plenty of mountain biking and walking in Grizedale forest as well as national rally car stages.

Hawkshead is a great starting point to visit many great areas for walking for example at nearby Tarn Hows, Latterbarrow and Blenham Tarn. So when you’re looking for an interesting place to visit, with plenty to see and do, keep a beady eye on Hawkshead.