Interview with Mike Rendell – Author of ‘The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman’

As more and more of us are drawn to investigate our past imagine how it must feel to inherit a trunk bursting with 18^th Century journals, diaries and personal treasures that belonged to your great- great-great-great grandfather?  It was a gift treasured by author Mike Rendell and he has kindly agreed to share the story behind his ‘Journal of a Georgian Gentleman – The Life and Times of Richard Hall, 1729-1801’.

Hello Mike,

Richard Hall obviously felt compelled to keep a note of family and historical events for future generations and I know you have a love of family history.  Was this inspired by your inheritance or did you already share Richard’s strong family connection? 

 I had a bit of a wobble when I went through the trauma of a divorce thirty years ago but apart from that I have always felt a very strong sense of ‘family’. I remember getting my Gran to go through albums of Victorian photographs when I was 12 years old so that she could identify all these distant relatives who would otherwise be nameless and ‘lost’. I would spend hours going through the papers and always thought I would be a historian and would write up the diaries as a family history. It has taken a long while to get round to it, but I am glad I did it eventually!

You retired from law in 2003 to write his story.  Was this ever an option or was it something that, having gained ownership of the papers, you were compelled to do? 

 I am acutely aware that I am the custodian – and an accidental one at that – of all sorts of family papers. But it is difficult to pinpoint why I decided to write about Richard Hall, who lived in the 18^th Century, rather than about his children and grandchildren whose life in the Victorian era is just as well documented. Indeed I have never even read all the letters from my grandfather from the trenches in the First World War – or those from my father in the Second World War – because they are too personal. They just sit in a trunk …. waiting! The advantage of writing about someone long-dead is that you can be more objective. But it took a long while for Richard Hall to get under my skin enough for me to want to write about him. At first he seemed such a pious prig and it was only when I saw his life in context of my own – the battle to run a business, to bring up kids, to cope with health and relationship issues etc – that I could see that it was a life worth writing up. And yes, writing is a way of making sure the papers are not lost. My children are not particularly interested in family history – or indeed any history – so it is a real problem deciding what to do with the boxes and boxes of papers!

With such a cornucopia of original documentation at your disposal, how did you begin to organise and structure the journal?  

Originally it was a mixture of wanting to understand what all the diary entries meant (and therefore looking them up on the web) and wanting to preserve things for future generations. My mother was coming up to her 90^th birthday and I thought it would be nice to write it as a story for her and all the family – ‘this is where we came from’ – and initially I printed off a single copy and had it properly bound with a leather spine and marbled boards. Then I decided to edit the whole thing so that it became less of a family-based story and more the general story of what life was like for ‘the man in the street’ in 18^th Century England. Unfortunately the mainstream publisher which I had lined up for the project lost interest so it then took a while to come up with a publisher who would do the book ‘my way’. I always hate books with separate plates at the end, referring you back to ‘see page so-and-so’. I wanted the illustrations – and there are hundreds of them – to be spread throughout the book and to enhance the text. But in answer to your question: where did I start? In the middle of course! I hate beginnings – they are always difficult. So I started in the middle and did chapters 5 and 6 and then built backwards and forwards form there. Illogical, but it worked for me!

I love the fact that you have expanded on entries from Richard’s journals to reflect both local and historical events and beliefs of the time.  How difficult was it to find research that actually matched his records?   

Not difficult at all. It was all part of wanting to understand the context of the diaries, by finding out ‘what did this mean, what did it involve, how did it happen, and why?’ The diaries posed the questions and I simply trawled aimlessly through the web, night after night, until I came up with the answers. It was a delightfully unstructured way of doing research. If I got bored I missed it out, and if I liked something I put it in. Simples!

There are some fabulous images of original paper cuts-outs within the journal.  Can you tell us who would have made them and why?

The paper cut-outs were a real bonus. At first I came to the sexist conclusion that they must have been done by Richard’s daughter but now I am fairly certain Richard did them himself. He was a hosier who specialised in embroidery, so fine work with scissors would have been second nature to him. There are about 50 or 60 of the cut-outs, often simple depictions of the world in which he lived. I have no idea why he did them or who he intended them for – they have simply been preserved in a couple of notebooks, inserted one per page. My guess is that he made them for his younger children when he re-married, in just the same way as he drew animals like goats and squirrels to amuse them. Only when I had written the book did I get the chance to research the paper cutting and discovered that there is a long-standing tradition of this in Germany (where it is known as scheren schnitte) and it is still extremely popular in the States, where they have museums dedicated to the topic, along with their own Guild and newspaper.

You have recently given a talk at St Magnus the Martyr in London, the place where Richard worked as church warden 250 years ago.  What was it like literally walking in his footsteps? 

That was a real bonus. It is slightly eerie being in a place and knowing exactly when a distant ancestor was walking in the same place 250 years before. St Magnus is a lovely Wren church by the Thames, next to where the family lived at Number One London Bridge. Nowadays it is fairly ‘High Church’ with incense etc but back then it was far simpler and more to the taste of Richard Hall. The talk was great – after years of running scared from public speaking I suddenly discovered that I love doing it. Talking about the Eighteenth Century has become a passion, and it is one I love to share.

You’re latest project is a Georgian novel set in England, have you now left your ancestors behind or do they play a role in this too?

Ah the novel! I wrote it as an antidote from writing up the diaries because I felt constrained by having to follow the truth all the time! With a novel you can take the story wherever you like, you can decide personalities, events, the lot. I started from the viewpoint of ‘I know these family members, but what if….?’ In other words I used my imagination to fill in the blanks left by the diaries. What if the daughter got pregnant? What if the son was a gigolo? What if mother battled with alcoholism? I kept the dates, and the family tree, but changed the actual names, and wrote one chapter at a time from the viewpoint of each member of the family in turn. As such it is the story of what life might have been like at One London Bridge in the 1700s, complete with all the family tensions which exist within every family. But will I get it published? I don’t know if I will bother. I might publish it as an e-book, but not in actual print. Frankly I have moved on, and far prefer doing my blog on 18^th Century history. This takes up several hours of each day – I just write about the things which intrigue me. Maybe I will publish them as a series of vignettes, I am not sure. If anyone likes Georgian History do have a look at the blog, it’s on http://georgiangentleman.posterous.com

And as for the book, well, I have given myself two years to give it as much of a push as I can, with talks, with the blog etc. My ambition is to get it into paperback, but for that I really need sales to take off. Meanwhile I can see sales clicking up one by one, week by week, on Amazon. I can also sell the books individually when I give talks. It is great fun – you end up knowing each buyer as an individual, and although the book will never make me rich, the feedback is more than I could ever hope for! And if anyone would like to find out more, do have a look at my website which is at http://mikerendell.com  It also gives you an e-mail address which is info@mikerendell.com and I will be delighted to respond to anyone who is interested in the 18^th Century in general, or the book in particular. I find that there are loads of people out there who are Jane Austen, or Georgette Heyer, or Emily Bronte fans, and who want to know what life was like in the Georgian era. Hopefully the book and the blog give some of the answers!

 

Huge thanks go to Mike for giving such fabulous answers and if anyone wishes to have a look at the book for themselves you can find it here http://www.amazon.co.UK/Journal-Georgian-Gentleman-Richard-1729-1801/dp/1846245230

For me it’s a definite ‘keeper’!

Rachael

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