“I was stitching for a sailmaker.”
In October 2021, the Huntington Library in California hosted the first international conference about the work of Hilary Mantel - an ideal location given that this institution is the holder of her papers. At that conference, I was invited to give a paper about stitching in the Cromwell Trilogy. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference could not take place face-to-face, but thanks to the hard work of the organisers and technicians, it went ahead virtually, was recorded, and various Mantel scholars from different disciplines connected from a distance.
I called my paper She is embroidering her thoughts with Helen Barre’s Needle, and I still think about this choice of title quite a bit.
Why Helen?
Helen is a beautiful young woman with two children who comes to Thomas Cromwell for help in 1533 after being abandoned by her husband. She and her children become part of his household.
Why Helen’s needle?
Helen isn’t the only character who sews in the Trilogy - far from it. In preparing my paper I put together a chart showing who stitches, their stitching specialism, and what they make. But Helen’s needle is, for me, central to understanding the significance of stitchery in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy.
In Mantel’s words, Helen ‘unwinds the thread of her tale’ to Cromwell, and is therefore inextricably linked – to a reader interested in textiles – to needlework tools and techniques. My textile-filled reading of the Trilogy has led me to use a further Helen reference, this time in the title of this Substack - The Thread of Her Tale.
When Cromwell first meets Helen, she explains that, when her husband first left her in about 1530, she was ‘stitching for a sailmaker’ somewhere in Essex. Cromwell notes that Helen’s hands are “skinned and swollen from rough work’” (Wolf Hall, Anna Regina). This sailmaking reference has intrigued me for years, and Hilary and I had some correspondence about it. I wish we had had the opportunity to discuss it properly.
I am not a sailmaker - and I am not any sort of researcher into 16th century sailmaking, but I can confirm that from a 21st century stitcher’s perspective, sailmaking is rough work. Sailmakers’ needles are terrifying - I remember the first time I saw one, wondering what it was, and thinking I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of one.
And then there is the question of how to get such a needle through through heavy sail canvas. A finger thimble would be useless; you need a Sailmaker’s Palm – a leather strap that goes around your hand with a metal pad that fits in your palm. That way, you can employ all your strength to push your needle through the canvas. I have a Sailmaker’s Palm in my sewing basket, but it is far too big for my hand. I suspect such tools are designed for larger and stronger hands than mine, and indeed Helen’s. No wonder her hands are battered. And no wonder, as the trilogy progresses, the nature of Helen’s stitching changes to something more pleasurable.
Now I am very conscious that the amazing Simon from Footnotes and Tangents is arranging a slow read of the Cromwell Trilogy in 2024, and looking at the responses from readers planning to participate, I can see that for many, this is their first read so I won’t say any more about Helen now. I don’t want to give away spoilers (I don’t think that Helen’s sailmaking is a spoiler). All I will say is that it’s worth looking out for Helen: her stitching opened up a whole new world for my reading of the novels, and I will write more about Helen’s stitching when Simon’s readalong gets to a specific place in The Mirror and the Light.
In my studio
More Cromwell Cloth work. I’m still at the stage of wondering if it is going to work, but I have quilted up two of the pieces now and - apart from a slight research detour - I think it’s going to be ok. I think they need some further lettering, and a binding element (something to do with the River Thames, which is a standard feature of my work, given it is so important in the novels), but I am starting to think the piece will come together. So that’s the next six months sorted.
I got distracted revisiting some of my previous academic work from my previous life: I wrote an article about Maurice Elvey’s 1918 and 1927 films of Hindle Wakes in 2018, and due to the ridiculous, frustrating slowness of academic publishing, only signed off on its publication last week. I had actually decided to withdraw the article some time ago; publication has taken so long that my life has completely moved on; it is no longer of any material benefit to me; and I didn’t want to give it any more headspace. But after some email correspondence with one of the journal editors last week, I was eventually persuaded to change my mind. And Maurice Elvey’s 1927 Hindle Wakes is a great film, which still survives, so he deserves an article about it, even if it is now nearly 100 years after it was made.
What caught my eye?
Sailmaking. I went to visit the Mary Rose for the first time since 2018 (what is it with 2018 this week?) and took a friend who has never seen it before. It was amazing to walk through the first gallery, and then be able to say “Richard, come and look through this window!” and see his first excited reaction to seeing a ship that sank in 1545, and the space in which she is preserved.
I was after looking at some thimbles - of which there are many. It seems that many members of the crew carried thimbles for running repairs, and lots have survived - ring thimbles, fingertip thimbles, thumb thimbles. There are pins too, and some remnants of thread. There are also the remains of sailmakers’ palms in the Mary Rose collection, but these are not on display.
However, I did see a piece of one of the sails that sank with the ship. Which brings me back to Helen Barre, her hands, and that rough and heavy work.
Love this. And now I need to pay more attention to Helen, thanks to you.
Ooh you have to think about spoilers now!