A story told across four decades, in three volumes.
Maiden Manoeuvres is the first of three in The Sisters’ Saga, which tells of three sisters and the compromises they must make to reconcile love’s delusions with the demands of reality. This historical fiction novella focuses on the eldest sister, Henrietta Burbridge in the early 1800s in colonial Sydney and Calcutta. Henrietta’s sisters collect flowers to catalogue and make detailed drawings. But Henrietta is not like them. She lets the petals scatter where they may.
Dearest Daughter is the second of three in The Sisters’ Saga, which tells of three sisters and the compromises they must make to reconcile love’s delusions with the demands of reality. In this short historical fiction novel, the lives of the younger sisters, Rose and Beth Burbridge are turned upside down by Henrietta’s return from India. In colonial Sydney between 1825-35, Henrietta asks why, if matrimony is the bedrock of the family, is it so hard for love to survive marriage? But her sisters must answer a very different question: How much would they trade for matrimony?
Widow’s Wake is the last of three in The Sisters’ Saga, which tells of three sisters and the compromises they must make to reconcile love’s delusions with the demands of reality. In this short historical fiction novel, over the course of a single voyage from Sydney to London in 1847, Henrietta must reconcile the regrets of her past in order to truly cast aside her widow’s weeds and embrace the adventures ahead. She is the heroine of the colourful tales she shares with young Mr Morgan Mayhew. However, their 1847 voyage from Sydney to London will be one tale neither will ever divulge.
An updated version of the biography of Lady Dowling which I published in 2017 is now available. See my correction to my previous ‘just released’ post. The updated version no longer includes the image, but is otherwise unchanged (and hence wasn’t required to get a new ISBN or publication date).
Interested in a copy? The paperback version is currently $25 from Barnes & Noble Australia, and the ebook is currently free if you are using ‘Kindle Unlimited’ with Amazon Australia.
You never know what’s going to lead you to a short story. My latest story evolved from a visit to the State Library of New South Wales for a talk on some of the interesting historical artefacts and materials from their collection. During the event, I was intrigued by the story of Frederick William Birmingham, a civil engineer at Parramatta in the 1860s, who designed a flying machine which he unsuccessfully tried to sell to the Americans. He had been inspired by a dramatic vision of a flying vessel which he described as an ‘Ark’, manned by a man-shaped ‘spirit’. Birmingham’s vision of a UFO, long before such manifestations entered popular culture, was compelling. However, his increasing levels of obsession and paranoia meant that he became insolvent and ended his days in the asylum. For a comprehensive account of the primary documents and Birmingham’s life see Chris Aubeck’s ‘Birmingham’s Ark‘.
(Public domain image)
Inspired by this story, I wrote an account of entirely imagined
events of a fictional character, living in the Parramatta asylum in the late
1800s. After some thought (and several rewrites!) I decided to use fictitious
names within my story, since I felt I was departing a long way from how
Birmingham himself would have interpreted his experiences.
It was great news when I learned that my story ‘Asylum’ was awarded First Prize in the 2019 Inaugural Margaret Cech Writing Competition which was run by the Southern Highlands Branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, New South Wales. The story appeared in The Writers’ Voice (the bulletin of the FAWNSW) this month and, as the competition allows authors to retain their copyright, I have reproduced the story here.
Hope you like it!
Asylum
by Alison Ferguson
Dr
Williams cleaned his spectacles and, after refolding his handkerchief into his
top pocket, tried again to make out the scribble under the blots of ink that
raced across each page in the dog-eared bundle on the desk before him. He
sighed. It was useless. Perhaps if the light were better? It was too early to
call for an orderly to light the lamp. Rifling
through, he selected a page with relatively fewer crossings-out and smudges and
took it over to the long windows to peruse again in the shaft of afternoon
sunlight. This time he made out a few words: flying machine, rotors, strange alien figures. He sighed again. It
was no use. The lunatic’s account of his visitation was indecipherable and, no
doubt even if he could read the writing, incoherent.
(Parramatta Hospital for the Insane, 1875)
‘Dr
Williams?’ One of the orderlies hovered by the door. ‘Was you wanting to see Mr
Cleary? It’s just that we puts the inmates out in the garden of an
afternoon. ‘elps settle ‘em for the
night, you see.’
Drawing
his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket, Dr Williams considered whether he’d
make the three o’clock coach back into Sydney town if he left now. Caught between going and staying, he shifted
his weight from one foot to the other. If any other colleague but Dr McIntosh
had urged him to delay his return to London solely for the purpose of reading a
patient’s journal, he would have dismissed the notion. Well, he was here now
and, since the journal in question could just as well have been in hieroglyphs,
he’d might as well see the patient in person.
‘Bring
Mr Cleary in to see me. Oh, and,’ he added, ‘when Dr McIntosh arrives, bring
him straight up to join me.’ He felt the tea-pot ‘And some fresh hot water.’
Mr
Cleary must have been waiting just outside the door for he came in directly. He
was a short man, rail-thin and his eyes, wide and staring, looked to be
strangers to sleep.
‘Glad
to meet you. Glad to meet you,’ Mr Cleary said, holding out his hand in
greeting. ‘Dr McIntosh told me about your interest in my discoveries.’
Dr
Williams was taken aback. If it weren’t for his oddly startled gaze, the
patient had every appearance of any sane man meeting another of his professional
class. Mr Cleary was a civil engineer, Dr Williams reminded himself that even a
professional man could lose his grip on reality. He repressed a shiver at the
thought.
‘So,
what are your thoughts on my journal, Dr Williams? Mr Cleary had seated himself
in one of the large leather chairs by the window, the lines in his face now cut
in sharp shadow in the slanting light.
‘I,
I confess I cannot say,’ Dr Williams began. ‘I found the writing difficult—’
‘Ha!
You doctors are usually the ones with the bad handwriting, what?!’ Mr Cleary’s
joviality edged toward a note of hysteria.
Dr
Williams took the chair opposite him and spoke slowly and, he hoped,
soothingly. ‘I’d like to hear your story directly from you, if I may. As Dr McIntosh
told you, I am most interested.’
At
this, Mr Cleary settled back into his chair and, closing his eyes as if to
better remember, began his story.
‘It
was late and my usual nightcap of milk and cardamom had gone cold by the time I
finished reading and retired for the evening. I woke abruptly, coming into full wakefulness
without a trace of lingering stupor. I was seized by a sensation of great energy
and I threw on my coat and walked out of my cottage into the winter night. I
strode off, heedless of where my footsteps were taking me. The streets of
Parramatta were dark and, without any lantern to guide me, it was by the
radiance of the stars sprayed across the heavens that I found my way into the
park. Two points of light emerged and
grew steadily larger and, as they came closer, I saw they were vaporous and
swirling. They hung before me, unsuspended by any means I could discern, and
their shapes reassembled till I perceived that they were two heads, the first
appearing as our Lord Bishop and the second at the Governor of New South Wales.
I began to shake, fearing that I had lost my mind.’
Mr
Cleary stopped talking abruptly and leaned forward. ‘You know I’m not insane,
don’t you?’
‘I,
I —,’ Dr Williams was caught off guard.
‘I’m
only in here for my protection. They are after my discoveries, you see. Dr McIntosh
suggested this would be the safest place.’
‘Of
course, Dr McIntosh is very wise in these matters.’ Dr Williams looked to the door. The orderly
seemed to be taking a very long time to return with the hot water.
Mr
Cleary resumed his reflective posture, and in the same sure tones of one
telling an oft-told story, continued, ‘Darkness, heavy with dew, fell like a
cloak about me and I turned this way and that, unsure of how to return home.
Then came a vibration, a thudding so intense that the beat of my heart leapt to
join its rhythm. How was it that no-one from the town came running out to find
the source? Louder and louder it came until I was upon it, whereupon the noise
fell to a low hum. A cylindrical shape, tapered at both ends, hovered at waist
height above the ground. At its highest
point it would have been perhaps twelve feet; its diameter perhaps twice that.
However, its gleaming surface was what drew my gaze. I longed to touch it, so
smooth did it look, without any visible rivet or join.
Although
it looked seamless, an aperture appeared and a creature such as I had never
seen, nor could have imagined, emerged and beckoned me to follow. It was oddly
humanoid, though its arms seemed disproportionately long. Strangely, as soon as
I saw it, I felt calm and certain: as certain, in fact, as I had ever felt in
my fretful life. I have no memory of how I entered the vessel; for now, it
seemed to me that it must be a kind of ship, though propelled by some mechanism
unknown to me. Once inside, the being
indicated a kind of table, although closed on all sides, and centrally located
before a curved porthole, through which I could make out the dark shapes of
trees in the park. Inlaid within the surface of the table were banks of
brightly-coloured lights and buttons. The creature began to explain something
to me, with some urgency. I could not make out its language, but I recognised
the mathematical symbols it was using. I
realised it was a series of formulae, though unfamiliar to me.’
Mr
Cleary fell silent and it took a moment for Dr Williams to break from the spell
that his story had cast.
‘Ah,
the tea,’ Dr Williams said, clearing his throat, as the orderly re-entered.
Closely
behind him, Dr McIntosh manoeuvred his bulk through the door. ‘Ah, good. So,
you two have got to know one another,’ he said, vigorously shaking their hands.
‘If I might interrupt, Dr McIntosh,’ the
orderly said. ‘It’s time for Mr Cleary’s walk.’
Mr
Cleary opened his mouth as if to object. There were tea-buns on the plate
beside the freshly-primed teapot and, for a moment, Dr Williams feared that Dr McIntosh
would invite the patient to stay.
‘Yes,
yes, can’t be disrupting routine, can we?’ said Dr McIntosh, his arm loosely
draped across Mr Cleary’s back, accompanying him out after the orderly. ‘Safest
time for you to be walking abroad, my good fellow, with these chaps on watch.’
Mr
Cleary shrugged off the doctor’s arm. ‘I’ll be having my notes back before I
leave.’
Dr
Williams shuffled the pages back together. Clasping them tightly to his chest,
Mr Cleary followed the orderly without a backward glance.
Dr
McIntosh, after filling his plate with bun, sat down Mr Cleary’s vacated chair.
‘So, then, what do you make of all that? Extraordinary, don’t you think?’
Dr
Williams sipped his tea thoughtfully before replying. ‘I really don’t know what
to make of it.’
‘Go
on. I know you London chaps are making strides with these sorts of cases. It’s
not everyday that colonials such as myself get to hear any of the latest
thinking.’
‘Well,
I think you dissemble good doctor. I’m quite sure you have read as much of the
new writings in philosophy as I have.
Why, I saw you had a copy of Schopenhauer in the original German on your
bookshelf. Well, all right then, if you
insist.’ He took a breath. ‘If we consider that our experience of the world, as
received through our senses, shapes our perception, then visions such as Mr Cleary’s
might be said to arise from a temporary disturbance of sensation, caused, for
example, by some passing illness. To some extent at least, his vision reminded
me of the common occurrence of hallucinations in cases of fever and the like.’
‘And
yet?’
‘Yes,
you’re right. There’s something that doesn’t fit. He is eccentric in his manner
and certainly excitable in temperament, but it is difficult to consider the man
a lunatic. He is essentially rational and his account of his experience is cogent
and lucid. But, at the same time—’ Dr Williams broke off and, rising to his
feet, returned his empty cup to the tray.
He walked back over to the window and looked down to the grounds, now
bathed in gold in the setting sun.
Dr
McIntosh came to stand beside him, munching on the last of his bun. ‘At the
same time, he’s suffering from considerable paranoia. He is convinced that the
American government—’
‘The
American government?’ Dr Williams’ eyes narrowed. ‘Now, he really must have
lost his reason.’
‘No,
no,’ said Dr McIntosh smiling. ‘There’s a lot of interest in the idea of
developing some kind of machine that can fly. He did indeed take his designs to New York to
show the American government officials there shortly after the events he
described. However, he refused to leave the material with them so they dismissed
him out of hand. He ended up on the streets and it was only through the good
offices of his friends and workmates in the Parramatta office that the funds
were raised to bring him back. He was clearly unfit for work by then, I
convinced him to come here. But governments are interested in flying machines,
you know. The military advantages are obvious. Why, even my own scientific
dabbling in that direction elicited a letter of enquiry from the British
colonial office.’
‘What?
Were they telling you that designing a flying machine wasn’t what they were
paying you a stipend for?’ Dr Williams’ lips twitched.
Dr
McIntosh chuckled ruefully. ‘Well, yes. But it’s going to happen one day. My
own design used steam, but the thing that’s so interesting in the schematic
that our Mr Cleary has drawn up is that some kind of alternative propulsion was
involved.’
‘And
that is, what? You’ve seen the drawings?’
Dr
McIntosh fell silent.
‘Ah,
he doesn’t know or he won’t tell you.’
‘I’ve
seen his sketches but he won’t let them out of his sight. It took every ounce
of persuasion to convince him to leave his journal here for you to read. I
honestly don’t know what’s going on. These strange beings seemed to have
imparted something to him but whether he actually understands what they, or his
own mind, has told him, I don’t know.’
The
two doctors looked down to the garden as the orderlies rounded up the
straggling patients to bring them inside for the night. Finally, only Mr Cleary
was left as the indigo-blue of twilight infused the scene.
‘What’s
that?’ Dr Williams gasped.
Seeping
through the shadows, vapours of mist assembled into a long cylindrical rolling
cloud, too low to the earth to be of the natural world, and moving
independently of the light zephyr stirring the tree branches.
Dr
Williams couldn’t wrench his eyes away to gauge his colleague’s reaction but he
felt Dr McIntosh’s hand grab at his shoulder as if clinging to the physical
world.
The
tiny figure of Mr Cleary below stretched out its arms as the cloud, if cloud it
were, moved to engulf him.
The
two doctors stayed, transfixed, till darkness obscured the scene.
There
was a soft knock at the door.
‘Will
you be wanting to make the night-coach back into Sydney town, gentlemen?’ The
orderly enquired.
‘Yes,
yes,’ said Dr Williams. ‘Nothing else to be done here.’ He turned to his
colleague, ‘Dr McIntosh?’
‘No,
you’re right,’ said Dr McIntosh. ‘We’re all done here. Best to be off.’
Two or three looks when your swain wants a kiss,
Two or three noes when he bids you say “yes,”
Two or three, smiles when you utter the “no,”
Two or three frowns if he offers to go,
Two or three laughs when astray for small chat,
Two or three tears tho’ you can’t tell for what,
Two or three letters when your vows are begun,
Two or three quarrels before you are done,
Two or three dances to make you jocose,
Two or three hours in a corner sit close,
Two or three starts when he bids you elope,
Two or three glances to intimate hope,
Two or three pauses before you are won,
Two or three swoonings to let him press on,
Two or three sighs when you’ve wasted your tears,
Two or three hums when the chaplain appears,
Two or three squeezes when the hand’s given away,
Two or three coughs, when you come, to “obey,”
Two or three lasses may have by these rhymes,
Two or three little ones,—two or three times.
I particularly liked the ‘coughs’ in relation to the marriage vows. The blue-stockings of the late 1700s were clearly having an effect.
This poem may well have been familiar with the paper’s readers. With a little more foraging about online, I found it on page 52 of ‘The Humourist’s Miscellany: Containing original and select articles in poetry, on mirth, humour, wit, gaiety, and entertainment’ which was published in London by Crosby and Letterman in 1801.
Diversion done, it’s time to get back to it. Or, perhaps I could work on a title suitable for the 1800s?
What is it about history that insists on slipping out of your mind (or out of my mind, at least)? History at school was never fun because of the stubborn way that only the most trivial information presented itself at times of crisis, such as during exams. As a child, I consoled myself with the observation of Sellar (Aegrot: Oxon) and Yeatman (Failed M.A., etc. Oxon) that:
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.”*
Perhaps this is why we enjoy historical fiction so much—it helps bring the past alive in stories that stick. Some writers of historical fiction are so proud of their research that they desiccate their tales to the point where we might just as well read non-fiction (not mentioning any names). Thankfully, some writers mix and bake their tales with the lightness of a soufflé and Jodi Taylor, author of the Chronicles of St Mary’s, is one such writer.
The St Mary’s series (nine novels and numerous short stories by 2018 and still going) is sometimes located within the science fiction genre but it has only one sci-fi premise: that time-travel is possible. The only other general assumption is that, if anyone is going to do time-travel responsibly, then it’s an historian. The fun comes when we learn that the historians employed at St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research are entirely irresponsible in their all-consuming passion to find out what really happened. They specialise in exploring times that involve historical controversy, anywhere from the time of the dinosaur to recent World Wars. With just a soupçon of romance and sadness, these novels provide an easy way to become absorbed in the past.
They are available in hard and paperback as well as ebook and audiobook (which is how I became acquainted with them—great narration by Zara Ramm). The first of the series is titled, Just One Damned Thing After Another, although there is a short story prequel available, The Very First Damned Thing.
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*If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading ‘1066 and all that: A memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’ then I recommend the experience. Amazon has it available very cheaply and there are some free pdfs floating about the internet too.
There is nothing like the behavioural reinforcement of posting your daily word count to maintain writing momentum. Thirty days after setting myself the NaNoWriMo challenge, I’ve hit 50,894 words and have a completely new way into my embryonic novel (NB: very long gestation period…but I won’t go there…just enjoying the moment).
Click on this link for a taster of where it’s all going:
“. . the Destiny of my life was cast on seeing for the first time an ‘Apollo’ in the handsome Captain Cowin of the 73rd Regiment. Even at this long period I blush to make this romantic confession, nevertheless the age of 12 may offer an excuse. ”
Lady Dowling: Daguerreotype photo print of carte de visite, around 1860.
2020 CORRECTION!! Unfortunately the daguerrotype that I thought was Harriet Mary Dowling is an image of her niece, Harriott Mary Norton (nee Walker). Many thanks to the reader who alerted me to my error! I have now updated the biography to remove this error!
I was reading the memoir of Lady Dowling*, a very distant forebear of my husband. I was already intrigued, but this was the passage that captured me. Three years later, I have finished putting together a short biography of this flighty, restless woman (for details, see under Publications on this site). What I’ve learned in the process includes:
Never believe a memoirist (they leave out all the interesting parts),
Never trust a man who keeps a journal (they put in all the interesting parts), and
Never think your research won’t be contradicted by your next search of Trove.
I’ve also learned that I’m not alone in grappling with a million writing dilemmas. With this knowledge, I’m continuing to explore the border zones of creativity in the portrayal of historical people and events.
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*Dowling, H. “Memoir of the Early Life of Harriott Mary Dowling Nee Blaxland: Or Sketches of India and Australia in Old Times.” In Dowling family papers 1767-1905: Manuscripts, Oral History & Pictures, State Library of New South Wales, Catalogue DLMSQ 305, Item 5, 1875.
Bringing history alive takes something very special and it is clear that Melissa Ashley has that skill. In ‘The Birdman’s Wife‘, she has blended her thorough enquiry into the life of the artist, Elizabeth Gould, with a creative realisation of how the main events in her life unfolded.
Until this work, far more people have heard about John Gould, Elizabeth’s husband for his art and science as a zoologist, mainly through his well-known book, ‘The Birds of Australia’, originally published in 1848. However, Elizabeth’s life was to change on being introduced to him by her brother:
“I still found it hard to believe that on the strength of my brother’s mention of my passion for sketching and painting, Mr Gould had insisted we meet, inviting me to his rooms to make him a drawing.” (quoted from Ashley, chapter 1)
Six children and hours of painstaking contribution as a natural history artist to her husband’s work later, Elizabeth’s short life was over, aged 37 years.
As you can see from the short quote from ‘The Birdman’s Wife’ above, Ashley has captured both the social stance of the nineteenth century woman and her use of language is pitch-perfect for the historical period.
