My work in progress (I've got to find a title soon!) is more demanding still. I bought a copy of Bradshaw's Handbook to work out the railway journeys between Derby and Bristol, Bristol and Liverpool and Bristol and Middlesbrough. Trying to decipher them is not the easiest of tasks - but a walk in the park compared with trying to figure out US train timetables in the mid nineteenth century. Things are made even more complicated by the numerous small railroad companies, the frequent mergers, the way these changed at state borders (often requiring passengers and luggage to decamp and cross the state line to board another train!). There were special "emigrant trains" that took passengers west - sitting and sleeping on narrow wooden benches. The author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote vividly of his own trip across America on one of these in 1879 when he was 28 and on his way to California to join Fanny Osborne, the older married woman he had fallen in love with. He "chummed up" with a couple of other chaps - Stevenson buying a tin washbowl, another fellow a towel and the third a piece of soap – when the three of them had finsihed they would loan the kit out to other passengers - nice! The other transport-related challenges of my WIP include a transatlantic voyage - in steerage - as shown in the illustration above and riding the horse-drawn trams of Bristol - which came into use just months before the book starts. Maybe next time I'll forget about my displacement theme and write a novel where everyone stays at home. My next WIP challenge will be investigating the world of nineteenth century dentistry - how do you fancy a set of dead men's choppers in your mouth? Watch this space for my visit to the British Dental Museum.
Comments