Five Minute History with Nancy Jardine
Tailored Truths, Book 2 of the Silver Sampler Series, continues my main character Margaret Law’s story, spanning the years between her being sixteen and twenty-eight. The main location of the novel is Dundee, Scotland, though she also spends some time in Liverpool and we find her in Peterhead at the end of the book.
So what is Dundee like in 1856? How does it compare with Edinburgh where she’s been living for the previous four years as a private tutor?
Dundee is decidedly different! Instead of living in an Edinburgh New Town townhouse – a prestigious location that demonstrated the wealth of the Edinburgh middle classes – the lodging house room that Margaret rents in Dundee is small and barely furnished. The location isn’t anything to shout about but since the landlady will only rent rooms to respectable, unmarried men and women who have decent jobs, it’s a good notch or two above the grimy accommodation that the bulk of Dundee workers inhabit. Margaret’s never lived on her own before so it’s quite a learning curve as she seeks employment. Her savings are meagre but she’s wary of sharing a room with someone she doesn’t know in order to cut costs.
The streets of Dundee are rank, public sewers haven’t yet been laid, and the detritus from chamber pots and animal dung litters the cobbles in most of the areas she frequents. In the city centre streets, the young sweepers attempt a clear up but it’s an ongoing challenge. Day in day out, Dundee smells badly and it’s not only coming from the stinking mills, the slaughterhouses, or from the fishy smells of the docks. In the mid-1850s, there’s no running cold water piped into the majority of the houses. The wells that people rely on for a water supply are fetid, infection-ridden and disgusting, contributing to the frequent diseases that come and go with alacrity. When little water is available, it’s near impossible to keep clean in the sooty atmosphere, pollution from the mill chimneys creating a constantly settling dark dust. In short, Margaret makes a valiant attempt at personal cleanliness but that’s not the case for many of the citizens of Dundee.
Job are hard to come by. Margaret initially tries to find a teaching job, then as a private tutor, but to no avail. She’s well-educated but has no teaching certificate. It’s embarrassing when the ‘Dame’ Schools, who prepare young females for running their own households after marriage, won’t employ her. She can cope with the teaching of very basic reading, writing, counting and sewing for those girls, but she’s never learned to cook, nor to do laundry! The dressmakers and milliners don’t need anyone, and shop work isn’t to be had either. Most Dundee females are employed in the linen and jute mills. Margaret has to swallow any pride she has left and apply to the mills.
She knows that the raw jute is shipped in from Calcutta and that the Dundee mills process it using whale oil to soften the fibres before it can eventually be woven in different grades. What she hasn’t appreciated is that the ongoing Crimean War means the British Army and Navy need lots of linen and jute products. They need sacks for transporting food and other supplies. Dundee makes the finest sails for sailing ships across the whole world. The army uses the finished product to make tents – not to mention bales of linen and jute being used for making uniforms.
Eventually, Margaret secures a sack-sewing job that will barely keep her head above water. Pragmatic about the situation, she doesn’t complain about the coarsest jute roughening her fingertips, or the large needle making the tips of her fingers calloused after even the first day. After a couple of years of boring repetitive stitching, she’s delighted when her best friend Jessie gets married and she moves into the vacant lady’s maid position. This is a boost to Margaret’s esteem. She now has the opportunity to travel out of Dundee with her mistress, Marianne Baxton, the daughter of one of the Dundee ‘Jute Barons’. Life is more refined and Margaret gets a taste of how the wealthy of Dundee are living. The contrast between rich and poor is stark!
When Marianne visits friends in Liverpool, it’s a revelation. In the role of a companion/ chaperon she visits the Earl of Sefton’s Croxteth Hall with Marianne. And when Marianne is invited to share a private box at the Theatre Royal in Liverpool for an opera performance, Margaret accompanies Marianne. It’s the stuff of dreams, making memories that are unlikely to be repeated for someone of her class. Again, the class divide is quite revealing. The Baxtons are seriously rich but they’re not landed gentry!
The Victorian era was one of huge class divides. Through Margaret’s eyes in Tailored Truths the reader experiences only some of the discrepancies that existed. Technology was also making rapid progress, in some respects making life easier for the few rather than the many who could benefit from new-fangled machines!
An engrossing Victorian Scotland Saga (Silver Sampler Series Book 2)
Is self-supporting success enough for Margaret Law or will her future also include an adoring husband and children? She might secretly yearn for that though how can she avoid a repeat of relationship deceptions that disenchanted her so much during her teenage years?
Employment as a lady’s maid, and then as a private tutor in Liverpool in the 1860s bring thrilling opportunities Margaret could never have envisaged. Though when those posts end, her educational aspirations must be shelved again. Reliance on her sewing skills is paramount for survival when she returns to Dundee.
Meeting Sandy Watson means love, marriage and starting a family - though not necessarily in that order – are a striking development though it entails a move north to Peterhead. Yet, how can Margaret shed her fear of commitment and her independence and take the plunge?
Jessie, her sister-at-heart, is settled in Glasgow. Frequent letters are a life-line between them but when it all goes horribly wrong, the contents of Margaret’s correspondence don’t necessarily mirror her awful day-to-day realities.
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Thank you so much for hosting Nancy Jardine today, with such a fascinating article on the historical setting of her new novel, Tailored Truths. A really interesting post.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club
Thank you for inviting me to give some background to Tailored Truths, today. It's always a pleasure to be out and about.
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