There was no way of telling the time…

While most posts on The Thread of Her Tale directly relate to my reading of and stitched interpretations of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy, this post goes back to how I first became interested in reading about the past. I have already mentioned that I grew up reading a lot of Jean Plaidy’s historical novels, but I this week I am going to go back further to a book I first read when I was eight years old: A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley, and the lifelong impact of an encouraging primary school teacher called Mrs Etches.

First published in 1939, A Traveller in Time takes place at Thackers, a farm in Derbyshire, which was the home of the Babingtons centuries before; the head of the family, Anthony, became notorious for his role in the 1586 Babington Plot to kill Elizabeth I. In A Traveller in Time, it is the early 1930s when a young girl named Penelope stays at Thackers to recover from illness and finds herself transported back to 1582. She sees first-hand the Babington household, their loyalty to Mary, Queen of Scots, who was then imprisoned nearby, at Wingfield Manor, and their plan to free the Scottish Queen from captivity.

I have been re-reading A Traveller in Time this past week, and I am struck by how sophisticated Uttley makes the time travel - there’s a subtlety there, an almost shimmering dissolve between past and present. There’s also a strong sense of foreboding throughout: Penelope knows the fate of the Scottish Queen, because she can just about remember what she knows in the 1930s, even when she is living in 1582, and is told by the younger Babington son, Francis, that:

“It’s not possible unless you are a ghost, and you are visible enough. The future hasn’t happened. This is Now.”

But Penelope responds:

“I belong to the future, and the future is all round us, but you can’t see it. I belong to the past too, because I am sharing it with you. Both are now.”

This re-read has been particularly interesting because I have found that some things I really treasure in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy are present in A Traveller in Time. Textiles - particularly patchwork quilts, antique fabrics, and silk threads play a role; there is a wonderful description of a Book of Hours (and I think this must be where my enduring fascination with Books of Hours started); and the blurring of edges between the living and the dead. And of course both Uttley and Mantel had to manage their readers’ awareness of the real life fate of their characters. Uttley did this by setting her book four years before the greater horror of the Babington Plot while allowing Penelope to retain her twentieth century knowledge of the events of 1586-7. Mantel ensured that the reader only knows what Cromwell knows at any given time.

There are a couple of other connections. The actor Ben Miles - a brilliant Thomas Cromwell on stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company - also played Anthony Babington in a BBC Radio production of A Traveller in Time, broadcast in February 1995. In A Traveller in Time, Anthony Babington wants to free Mary Queen of Scots from the captivity of one Sir Ralph Sadleir. In the Cromwell Trilogy, we meet Sir Ralph in an earlier incarnation as young Rafe Sadler. And, yes, the real Rafe/Ralph was a close associate of Thomas Cromwell, and in later life was charged with keeping the Scottish Queen in captivity.

And Mrs Etches? Well, back when I was eight, I was obsessed with A Traveller in Time. My primary school class - taught by Mrs Etches for two glorious terms - was asked to write an illustrated book review, and I can remember drawing a portrait of Anthony Babington, complete with golden beard. I wanted to be at Thackers so much. I remember going to Stalybridge Library, braving the grown up section, and taking out what seemed to be an enormous hardback about Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser. Mrs Etches must have noticed me lugging this book around, and she was so encouraging. She asked me if I would talk to my class about what I had found out as a result of my reading.

Then something even better happened: Mrs Etches gave me her own paperback copy of Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots biography. I couldn’t believe it - a grown-up book, given to me simply because I was interested. I started to vaguely realise that studying history was something one could do. And earlier this year, on a visit to the National Archives, I ordered up documents relating to the Babington Plot. Eight-year-old me would never have believed that one day I would actually touch the signature of Anthony Babington himself.

And, Mrs Etches, I still have your book. It’s a bit battered nowadays but I treasure it.

Papers relating to the trial for high treason of Anthony Babington and co-conspirators and their plot to kill Elizabeth I

In my studio

Some much needed clearing, some painting, some initial sketching. And pins on a map, representing locations associated with Thomas Cromwell in Greater London.

And Bells. I made some progress with Anthony the Jester’s silver bells - and I also tracked down a Sixteenth Century bronze crotal bell to use as a model. If you look carefully, you can still just see the sunburst design on the lower half. When I got my hands on it, I was amazed to discover that this beautiful object could still ring, making the echo of a sound from five hundred years ago:

What caught my eye

I had a particularly frustrating day in the studio on Monday - nothing went right and everything was in a shocking mess. That evening, to cheer myself up, I decided to rewatch a great BBC programme called Art That Made Us. I’d intended to watch the episode that covers the embroidery of Mary. Queen of Scots, but pressed the wrong button and ended up with an earlier episode that included the Bayeux Tapestry. And actually, that was the best thing that could have happened. The graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix visited a Victorian Replica of the Bayeux Tapestry (which technically isn’t a tapestry, but that’s a whole other story) held at Reading Museum and considered it in the context of comic strips. The following day, I bounced back to the studio, did a lot of tidying and sorting, and cleared the decks for a new large-scale piece of Cromwell Trilogy stitchery.

If you see the replica of the Bayeux Tapestry at Reading Museum, you can get right up close to the detail.