Inventing real people

Writing about real people or events in a work of fiction might seem to have obvious advantages. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, where your character is concerned, you have access to previously existing ‘sketches’. These can include actual images – whether photographs, drawings or paintings – as well as verbal descriptions by those who knew the person. If he or she is very famous, other books – whether fiction or biography – might have already been published. There may be films, TV documentaries, or plays offering further enlightenment. There may also be one, or several, autobiographies. Surely having such a wealth of material to draw upon must make the writer’s life a whole lot easier?

Well, yes and no. Because fiction – in spite of a recent tendency towards blurring the distinction – shouldn’t be confused with memoir, or biography, or any of the other literary forms purporting to deal with fact. Its concerns are very different. One reads novels, after all, not primarily for information, but for psychological insight. Which is why novels in which the action is continually being interrupted so that the author can show off his or her research are often so dull. In trying to tell the reader all he or she has learned about a particular topic – say, climate change, or Arts & Crafts pottery – the writer has forgotten all about the characters, and trying to convince us of their reality.

I was mindful of this pitfall when writing Variable Stars, which is set in the 18th century and incorporates several historical characters. Although two of these, the astronomer John Goodricke, and his friend and colleague Edward Pigott, were relatively unknown outside scientific circles, one of them was not. As the sister of William Herschel, one of the most famous men of the age, and a distinguished astronomer in her own right, Caroline Herschel had been the subject of several biographical studies – the most comprehensive being The Herschel Partnership, by the scientific historian Michael Hoskin. She was also to feature in one of the chapters of Richard Holmes’s best-selling account of scientific developments in the Age of Reason (The Age of Wonder), which came out while I was mid-way through writing the novel.

That others had written about Caroline wasn’t, however, such a problem for me as the fact that she had written – and at length – about herself. Brief and inconclusive as they are, these two autobiographies – the first written when Caroline was in her seventies, the second when she was over ninety – contain such a wealth of detail, and so much razor-sharp observation, that a mere novelist can only gasp in envy. How could one ever hope to write anything as good, or with anything like the same authority? From the pages of Caroline’s journals a picture emerges, not only of an extraordinary time, but of a remarkable individual.

Born in Hanover in 1750, the eighth child of ten, to an impoverished musician and his embittered wife, Caroline can hardly have been said to have had an auspicious beginning. Smallpox, at the age of four, left her (as she laconically remarks) ‘totally disfigured’; an outbreak of typhus, some years later, nearly killed her. Her childhood was harsh – denied the musical education from which her brothers benefited, she was assigned the role of household drudge, terrorised over by her elder brother, Jacob. And yet her memories of this grim time are not entirely unhappy. Here she recalls a winter’s walk with her father:

I remember his taking me in a clear frosty night in the street to make me acquainted with some of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a Comet which was then visible…

A significant moment, no doubt, for the future astronomer.

Rescued from her unrewarding existence by her brother William, the twenty-two year-old Caroline found herself in Bath. Here, at William’s insistence, she was to train as a professional singer. From this time on, she divided her time between practising ‘5, 6 hours at the Harpsichord’ every day, and assisting her brother in his new enthusiasm – for astronomy. Over the next few years, Caroline built up a considerable reputation as a soloist, often singing lead soprano in one of the Handel operas or oratorios, which were then all the rage.

But her musical career was not to last. With the discovery, by William, in 1781, of what turned out to be a new planet, ‘Georgium Sidus’ (Uranus), the Herschel siblings’ peaceful existence in Bath came to an end. Overnight, William became internationally famous, and was conscripted by George III as his personal astronomer. Caroline, much against her will, was obliged to abandon her music ‘to be trained for an assistant Astronomer’. In this capacity (she wrote)

I was to sweep for Comets, and… write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my Sweeps…

adding wryly

But it was not till the last two months of the same year before I felt the least encouragement for spending the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost without a human being near enough to be within call…

In spite of the discomforts (and occasional hazards) of her new life, Caroline soon became as enthusiastic about star-gazing as her brother. Provided by William with a purpose-built ‘sweeper’ for detecting comets, she began at once to find them.

I have calculated 100 nebulae today

she wrote in her journal in 1786

and this evening I saw an object which I believe will prove to morrow night to be a Comet…

It did indeed prove to be a comet. Seven more comets, and numerous other astronomical ‘finds’ were to follow. A stipend from the King of £50 a year made Caroline the first ever professional female astronomer. She was still only 36 years old. She was to live for another sixty years (a remarkable enough achievement itself at the time).

Given the opportunity of translating such experience into fiction, the novelist is faced with a difficult choice. Stick too closely to the source material, and you run the risk of merely reiterating what has already been better expressed. Stray too far away from it, and you lose the freshness and immediacy of the original. There’s also the matter of historical accuracy. When you’re writing about real people – especially people as well-known as these – playing fast and loose with the facts isn’t an option.

So how do you ‘invent’ real people? It certainly isn’t as straightforward as it may appear. If you’re determined (as I was) to respect the facts, then all you can do is play around in the spaces between them. Where events are a matter of public record, one has little choice, it seems to me, but to leave well alone. The best you can do is to extrapolate from the evidence you’ve been given. Consider what might have happened, as well as what did.

For the most part, I tried to let Caroline speak for herself – to capture, as far as I could, the ‘voice’ conveyed so powerfully in her journals. I also wanted to show Caroline as others saw her, drawing on remarks in letters and journals by those of her contemporaries who knew her. That these included some of the most eminent figures of the age – Nevil Maskelyne, Fanny Burney, Jerome de Lalande – made it all the more important to get Caroline right.

But of course all this information, both autobiographical and anecdotal, added up to no more than a biographical sketch – a view, however accurate, of the outside only. What I wanted was to show Caroline from the inside: her thoughts, and feelings, and passions. And for this I had to make things up… to fill the gaps, so to speak, between those things that were of historical record and those about which I could only guess.

I had a lot of help from Caroline herself, of course. Because reading her diaries, it’s hard not to read between the lines. The more I got to know her, the more tantalisingly enigmatic she began to seem. Questions started to raise themselves. Why exactly, I wondered, did Caroline destroy ten years’ worth of her journals – which also happen to be those that cover some of the most interesting years of her life? It opened up a world of possibilities. From this and other ‘leads’ I found myself making a story – a sort of unofficial history. It’s as faithful as I was able to make it to the facts of Caroline’s life, although there are things in it which don’t appear in her account.

I’m glad to say that, reading it over now, I sometimes find it hard to tell which parts are Caroline’s and which are mine. I hope she would have approved and – as an artist herself – forgiven me my unscientific speculations.