Memoirs of a Private Man (31 page)

But in all three classes of novel one has to attempt a degree of historical truth as well as a truth to human nature. Man has not changed, but his reaction to certain life patterns has. Unless the writer can understand these and transmit his understanding to the reader, his characters are simply modern people in fancy dress. Similarly there must be a geographical truth. Cornwall has particularly suffered from the writers who have spent a few months living there and have decided to write an epic set in the county; in fact it could just as well have been set in Kent, Yorkshire or Cumberland for all it matters, but Cornwall, they think, is more romantic.

I believe it to be most important in the third category (where all of the characters are fictional) to deal as much as possible in historical fact. I have an inventive brain, but I could never have devised all the events which fill the pages of the
Poldark
novels. It would be tedious to enumerate all the sources – indeed it would mean hours of research in reverse, tracing the origins of this event and that, back from the novel to the manuscript, the old newspaper, the map, the out-of-print book, the contemporary travel book, the parochial history, the mining manual, the autobiography.

As a selection: Jim Carter's arrest for poaching, his imprisonment in Launceston Gaol; fever, and blood incompetently let by a fellow prisoner, Jim's subsequent death. From a line in
Wesley's Journal
.

Description of Launceston Gaol. From Howard's
State of the Prisons
, 1784 edition.

Ross's attempt to start a copper-smelting company in Cornwall to compete against the companies of South Wales which used to send the coal and take the copper away by sea; and the failure of the attempt. Not precise as to detail, but accurate in general terms about such an attempt which was made at that time.

The two wrecks at the end of
Demelza
and the rioting miners on the beach. Taken from a report of such a double wreck on Perranporth beach in 1778.

The voting procedure at Bodmin for the election of two Members of Parliament in 1790. Factual.

The occasion when a rich young woman, Caroline Penvenen, calls in Dr Dwight Enys, and when he gets there asks him to attend to her dog. The further occasion when he is called in to the same young lady because it is believed she has the morbid sore throat, and what he finds. Both are related by Dr James Fordyce in his book on fevers which had a limited circulation in 1789.

The smuggling in
Warleggan
. Most details are factual; also the way in which Ross, apparently trapped, escapes detection.

Conditions in the French prisoner-of-war camp at Quimper are chiefly taken from accounts given by Lady Ann Fitzroy, who for a time was imprisoned there.

The struggle for power in Truro and the quarrel between Lord Falmouth and the Burgesses supported by Sir Francis Basset is almost all derived from the contents of a single letter written by Mr Henry Rosewarne, the MP newly elected in defiance of the Boscawen interest, addressed to Lord Falmouth, explaining the reasons for the Corporation's defiance and defending his own actions. Corroborative information came from Cornelius Cardew and others.

The riots in Camborne, Sir Francis Basset's suppression of them, the death penalty for three of the rioters, two reprieved, one, Peter Hoskin, hanged: all factual.

The character of Monk Adderley was based on a character in the original William Hickey Diaries. Details of the duel between Adderley and Ross came largely from the life of John Wilkes.

The run on Pascoe's Bank in Truro, the pressure by the other banks, the anonymous letters deliberately circulated to create a panic. All factual, except not exactly as to date.

Dwight Enys saving the injured miner by giving him what is now called ‘the kiss of life'. From a case related in John Knyveton's
Surgeon's Mate
.

So in the case of the Penzance lifeboat.

So in the case of the stagecoach. The original excerpt from the
Morning Post
for Monday, 23rd of November 1812, is printed in
The Miller's Dance
in its entirety. As far as I know, the mystery of the robbery was never solved. I went up to Gloucestershire to examine an eighteenth-century stagecoach in detail and worked out, at least to my own satisfaction, how it could have been done.

As for Bella Poldark, I do not think I would have ventured to tell her extraordinary life story, were it not for the history of Charlotte Cushman, who was born in Boston in 1816.

There is, naturally enough, the converse risk of becoming too preoccupied by history. One can so easily detect the midnight oil, the desire to instruct. But novels are about life. If a reader wishes to pursue a particular subject, textbooks by the thousand exist. An author tends to be reluctant, once he has discovered something, at great trouble to himself, not to make the best of it. But the temptation must be resisted. It is a recurring discipline which should be exercised by every novelist who does research, whether the research is into the Peninsular War or into modern techniques of assassination. What is not relevant is irrelevant.

In my view, the historical novel at its best is not a spurious form of art because the past of itself is not a shard that one can dig up and measure and piece together. No one can do this, however conscientious, because history is not an objective science. Historical truth is not mathematical truth. The past has really no existence other than that which our minds can give it. Even the pure historian is at the mercy of hissources, and his sources usually are other fallible, or prejudiced, or forgetful human beings.

In my one book of short stories there is a story about the death and the burial of William the Conqueror. All the material facts for that came from a contemporary account by Ordericus Vitalis, which is as near as even the most conscientious historian can get to the truth of that matter. If I had written this as an essay and punctuated it with numbers and asterisks and then notes at the bottom saying Ord. Vit., page 231, and following with
ib
.,
ib
.,
ib
., people would no doubt have been more impressed. But in fact Ordericus Vitalis was thirteen when William died. In other words he probably depended on an eyewitness, or possibly even hearsay, and who knows how good
his
information was?

I am not trying to equate the good historian with the good historical novelist. Each has different aims. The latter, in pursuit of these aims, is more likely to err than the former. But each, in a subjective profession, is fallible.

And
the pure historian – like the good novelist, though in a lesser degree – moulds the past, whether he intends to or not; he colours it with his own personality. All good historians set their personal impression on the past: Thucydides, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, Rowse – go through them all, and they all do that, for it can't be otherwise.

Probably the only way of judging a work of art is to try to measure or judge the integrity of intention. If it has that, it may be a masterpiece. Or it may be a very poor and flawed work. But with such integrity it can't be all bad, and it can't be all lost.

When I wrote the first
Poldark
it was suggested to me – though not by my publishers – that I might have it put out under another name. I rejected this, preferring to take all the blame – or all the praise – without the shelter of a pseudonym. Also, for such a purpose, I have never written quickly enough. I have a very long list of publications, but this is because I started young and have been writing for a very long time. At the height of my production I came to write a novel about every eighteen months. Now it is about two years. Three novels have each taken three years to write. (I have been fortunate in that, once I began to earn a living from writing, I always earned enough to be able to take my time. In my earlier years I would have eagerly accepted some other literary activity to help augment my pitiful income, but it was not offered. When it was offered I was able to turn it down, so I have virtually never done any peripheral literary work in my life.)

From the earliest years I have always felt that it was up to the public to buy me by name rather than style or subject. This arrogant view has only partly been vindicated. Had I kept to one style I know I should have become a richer man. But so what?

Distributors, booksellers, and, alas, the public (who are the final arbiters) all like to be sure of what they are buying. Why should a shop that has developed a substantial clientele with a taste for Wilkins' marmalade be expected to try to sell them the same firm's strawberry jam instead? The remark made by Wilfred Lock, about my fifth novel being ten years ahead of the others but that commercially he could shake me, has been confirmed and reconfirmed through the years.

Collins were delighted when I returned to
Poldark
after a lapse of twenty years.
The Black Moon
was launched with great acclaim. I remember meeting their chief London rep a few days after publication and, along with his continuing – if a little forced – enthusiasm, his dropping into the conversation the fact that the book was piling up unsold at Hatchard's and Harrod's.

There has been a lot of stimulus and relaxation in moving from one style to the other. Ideally, perhaps, one should have used the styles alternately – and this happened for a time in the early Fifties – but one can't discipline one's impulses – or I don't. The sparse, fairly taut story-telling of a suspense novel, with its stronger frame of events and its sharp conclusive ending, is just as much fun to write as the longer, more leisurely, more exploratory style of the historical novel. Why should I have given up either? Or why crouch in one's study endlessly writing too many books when there is so much else to be found in life?

The ‘so much else' has been largely hedonistic. Until well past forty I played tennis to distraction. With no natural talent for the game whatever, and no coaching, I became fairly good out of sheer application. I never played for Cornwall, though twice invited to do so – the deterrent being to drive to somewhere like Criccieth in North Wales, to spend each day playing competitive tennis for one's county and each evening dancing until the small hours: a normal young man's dream of delight, but not mine; I never had the stamina.

But I came to play with a number of county players from other counties which were much stronger than Cornwall, and not a few of the near-top English players, people who got usually to the second or third round at Wimbledon though never beyond. Of course I could not have lived with them at singles, not even the women. At doubles I was good enough not to spoil their game.

Perranporth at that time attracted a wonderful collection of good tennis players – the knowledge that some were coming would attract others – over a period of about eight weeks a year, beginning mid- July. Three hard sets of men's doubles on a sunny summer morning, with kindred souls, is one of the rare pleasures that I would ask for again if I ever get to heaven.

In the earlier
Who
'
s Whos
to which I contributed I used to list one of my hobbies as ‘ beachcombing'. My love of the sea, especially the Cornish sea, has already been made plain. It seems to run in the family. My brother had no greater ambition than to sit in the sun on some Cornish strand. My son once said that if windsurfing had been invented when he was a boy he might have chosen not to be an academic but to be a ‘beachcomber' instead. I don't know how serious he was.

On the north coast swimming is rarely possible; surfing is all. Before the Malibu, body surfing was the universal occupation. In
Poldark
'
s Cornwall
I have described some of the peculiar joys of surfing. I will only repeat briefly some few moments of the wonderful summer before my son went to Charterhouse in the September.

All through that splendid decade, if a summer's day broke bright I would begin to write immediately after breakfast and go on until Jean let me know, about noon, that the picnic was ready. Then we would bundle the things – including the children if they were home – into the car and dash off to West Pentire or Treyarnon and spend the day sitting in the sun and surfing when the time and tide were right, returning home about seven, for me to do a little desultory work before a late supper.

That was quite a reasonable arrangement in most summers – I could seize the good days and work in the bad – but in that summer there was no let up. The fine weather set in on the 9th of July and went on until the end of September. Not merely did I neglect my work, but Jean got utterly sick of cutting sandwiches and packing picnics. But as summer did not relax, neither did we. The difficulty about our English summer, and more particularly about a Cornish summer, is that one can never, never take the next day for granted. So often one has been deceived by a halcyon two days and stayed in the second day, knowing exactly how to enjoy the third, and the third dawns with grey skies, a strong wind, and a 20-degree drop in temperature. We didn't trust it that year, and the summer went on and on. So for virtually ten weeks we picnicked and sunbathed and surfed every day, gradually turning more and more boot-polish brown.

My son was due to be delivered to his new school on the 18th of September. The 17th was largely taken up with preparations and packing, but in the early evening he and I escaped onto Perranporth beach on an incoming tide. An almost breathless evening but the sea was monstrous. It was one of those seas when a surfer catches one wave, is borne along a dizzying way, then dropped upon another, and so upon another, and even sometimes on a fourth.

As we staggered together out of the sea joyfully exhausted after our fifteenth run, Andrew said to me: ‘Daddy, people who haven't done this haven't lived.' He was about right. It is my second request from Paradise.

I have driven cars ever since I was eighteen. The number has not been great because I prefer to live with a car and get to know it. First was a Morris Minor, a small four-seater with a folding roof and an engine given much to piston wear (one always seemed to be discussing ‘rings'). It was the only car I know that, being delivered to us new, was used for six months before I noticed that the number plate on the front differed from the number plate on the back. It was also delivered with the footbrake only just working; the handbrake itself, operated only on the transmission shaft, being the only means of bringing the car to a stop. I decided to take my mother to the cinema in Newquay. On the way a herd of cows was crossing the road in leisurely fashion. I applied the brake and nothing happened, except that we drifted into a cow. Everyone was very courteous; the cow was not hurt, the car not damaged, the farmer was apologetic, and I more justifiably so. We continued on our way, saw the film and got in to drive home. By then it was night, and we found our headlamps to be squinting skywards at the stars.