Behind the novel
Article published in 'The Publishing News' Date?
By now I was hooked. I didn't remember any reference to an illegitimate cousin in Woodham-Smith’s biography of Nightingale, so I reread it, and no, not a word. But whose name did crop up like a beacon? – Richard Monckton Milnes, no less, the only man Nightingale seriously considered marrying, and whose note of rueful reproach she took to the Crimea: ‘I hear you are going to the East….You can undertake that, when you cannot undertake me…’ And one final footnote on Monckton Milnes. By the end of his life he held the most comprehensive collection of erotic literature in England. What would Miss Nightingale have made of that? Next I dug deep into Victorian medical practices; cholera and amputations became my temporary field of expertise. When a novel is taking shape, everything is relevant and exciting.
In the end, instead of being apologetic about my lack of qualifications as a war writer, I took my ignorance as a license to begin. My heroine, sheltered, secure, smug is cosily ensconced in a Clapham drawing room, compiling a scrapbook, when the war starts. But she is drawn deeper and deeper, until, in the words of Florence Nightingale, she is ‘steeped up to (her) neck in blood.’
It’s all a far cry from Ladybird History. But more and more I see the past as a hologram: what I notice depends on how hard I stare, and where I’m standing. And sometimes the relevance of the past is so painfully manifest, I cannot bear to look.
It’s all a far cry from Ladybird History. But more and more I see the past as a hologram: what I notice depends on how hard I stare, and where I’m standing. And sometimes the relevance of the past is so painfully manifest, I cannot bear to look.
This time what struck me in biographies of Nightingale were the struggles she had with other women, the jealousies, intimacies and rages. By now I had my subject. Following my old habit of writing about powerful women acting against the grain of their historical context, my heroine, Rosa, wants to nurse in the Crimea but isn’t accepted by Nightingale. When Rosa goes missing, her timid cousin, Mariella, has to go after her. Leigh Smith Bodichon and Monckton Milnes had given me my themes: women with radical ideas and a huge capacity for love, hidden pasts, the private turmoil within public lives.
But in planning the book thus far I had overlooked the blindingly obvious – that Nightingale’s adventures in the Crimea came about because England was engaged in an ill-conceived and reckless war with Russia. What had begun as something well within my experience – the passions and ambitions of women – became the story of a war. I went to Sebastopol and saw the inside of a Russian bastion, stood on the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, and was staggered by the narrowness of Balaklava Harbour. It was late October and the week that had begun warm enough for T shirts became unendurably cold. In 1854 the British troops had disembarked in hot sunshine, and were instructed to leave their tents and winter coats on board. Within a couple of months they were dying of frost-bite. Their generals, for whom planning appeared to be an anathema, hadn’t even bothered to learn about the Crimean weather.
Florence Nightingale
Camp at Balaklava
<TITLE>Katharine McMahon, national bestselling and award-winning author of The Rose of Sebastopol, The Crimson Rooms and Season of Light</TITLE>
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<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Welcome to the official website of Katharine McMahon, author of The Rose of Sebastopol (chosen for Richard and Judy's Book Club 2008), The Crimson Rooms and The Alchemist's Daughter.">
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<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Katharine, McMahon, author, novel, books, Rose, Sebastopol, official, Alchemist, Season, Light, romance, romantic, historical, writer, history, books, book, writer, readers, Crimson, rooms, Katherine,">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Welcome to the official website of Katharine McMahon, author of The Rose of Sebastopol (chosen for Richard and Judy's Book Club 2008), The Crimson Rooms and The Alchemist's Daughter.">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">