As we live…
Trish Carn looks at three examples of family history
Antony Barlow’s new book is an account of the service and lives of various branches of his family over several hundred years and encompasses many of the better-known Quaker names.
The title of the book, ‘He is our cousin, Cousin’: a Quaker family’s history from 1660 to the present day, is taken from William Shakespeare’s Richard II. His family, Antony Barlow says, were a family of cousins. A relative, describing the nineteenth century family, said: ‘We were a clan of between seventy and eighty first cousins and the circle was enlarged by the inclusion of second and third cousins.’
Antony’s research included the 1616 family Bible owned by James Lancaster, a contemporary of George Fox, and many family letters and photographs. The portraits and his quotes from the letters give a feel of the times. Almost half of the book is about the life and service of the family since 1900, which, according the Ben Pink Dandelion’s preface, is entering ‘a more recent past largely untouched by academic study’. It includes the family involvement with the Friends Ambulance Unit, Woodbrooke and the Bournville Village Trust.
The book is a personal Quaker family history to honour the service of various of Antony Barlow’s ancestors. I found the book – crown quarto in size – awkward to hold. An editor and some help with the photos would have improved it.
‘Twelve years ago in the chaos of my grandparents’ attics I opened a black trunk and found on the top a sixteen-page document dated 1829, which appeared to be the rantings of an unnamed hypochondriac, but in the end turned out to be descriptions of the agonies of my great-great-grandfather Edwin Eddison.’ This is how Sara Woodall begins Voices from a Trunk: The lost lives of the Quaker Eddisons 1805-1867.
This discovery led Sara into another world, which she opens to the reader. There is information on ineffective medical remedies, some history of the cities of Leeds and London in the mid-nineteenth century and an explanation of Quaker involvement in industries from banking to biscuits and from stockings to railroads. Well illustrated from various sources and with a three-and-a-half page bibliography, this book was a fascinating and well-researched read.
One Yellow Door: A memoir of love and loss, faith and infidelity by Rebecca de Saintonge is a ‘memoir, which deals honestly with the complex ethics of infidelity in a marriage where one partner is severely disabled.’
Rebecca was happily married to Jack although they ‘were from different planets. Her father was a diplomat: his a jobbing bricklayer. Her mother choreographed mimes and let the washing go mouldy in the clothes-basket; his baked wonderful rice puddings…’ Six years into their marriage, while living and working in Zimbabwe, Jack began to suffer from an unknown illness. Parkinson’s was diagnosed. Several years later, the diagnosis was changed to the rare Diffuse Cortical Lewy Body Disease. Jack’s brain was physically shrinking. He slowly faded physically, dipping in and out of dementia. Most of the book is taken from Rebecca’s journals, beginning with Jack’s diagnosis in 1994 and ending with his death in 1996. It is an honest portrayal of the grief, frustration and ‘just plain coping’ that were necessary as his body and mind shut down.
I found this a very personal and moving book. It challenged me to think how I, or indeed others, would deal with such a situation.
One Yellow Door: a memoir of love and loss, faith and fidelity by Rebecca de Saintonge. Darton, Longmann & Todd. ISBN: 9780232532050. £8.99.
Voices from a Trunk: The lost lives of the Quaker Eddisons 1805-1867 by Sara Woodall. Blackthorn Press. ISBN: 9781906259426. £24.99.
‘He is our cousin, Cousin’: a Quaker family’s history from 1660 to the present day by Antony Barlow. Quacks Books. ISBN: 9781904446606. £15.00.
