THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA
Mary Medlicott offers the first of a short series of articles about storytellers in novels.

(From F&F#43 Autumn 2002)

A Victorian Storyteller - and a woman!

We've probably all read something by Thomas Hardy. But it probably wasn't The Hand of Ethelberta, a largely neglected novel now overdue for new attention – if only because its heroine is a professional storyteller.

When Hardy began The Hand of Ethelberta, he was in a dilemma. Although trained in architecture, he had wanted to pursue life as a poet. But poetry generally does not pay. He wrote and published several novels and, careful not to reveal his lower-class origins, began to be taken up by London society. Then Far From The Madding Crowd was a triumph but it also put pressure on him. Deciding that `he had not the slightest intention of writing for ever about sheep farming, as the reading public was apparently expecting him to do,' he was unsure where to turn his talent. Is it possible that he briefly toyed with becoming a professional storyteller?

The Hand of Ethelberta was published in 1876. It presents a woman of lower-class origins who has fortuitously made a good early marriage only to be quickly widowed. Her mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin, has kept her within the family but, possessing creative talents, Ethelberta has anonymously published a volume of poetry which fascinates London. Discovering the poems' authorship, her mother-in-law cuts her out of her will and after her death, Ethelberta is left wondering what she is going to do not only to support herself but also the numerous siblings whose education and improvement depend on her. Poetry, as Hardy knew, will not provide. That's when Ethelberta hits on the idea of professional storytelling. It has the novelty she needs for a chance of success: `Ordinary powers exhibited in a new way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.'

Ethelberta possesses various advantages predisposing her to success in her new profession. One is native talent: if ever she could be persuaded to tell a story, `she will bring it out that serious and awful that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones.' She has an affecting singing voice and, singing in company, knows how to create and hold an atmosphere. She also has an arresting appearance, her hair and head-dress being of the type which `though not extraordinary or eccentric, did certainly convey an idea of indefinable novelty'.

Ethelberta is clear what sort of stories she wants to tell. Daniel Defoe, she considers, wrote the right kind of thing. His style was appropriate too, `abounding as it does in colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper ... but have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real.' Convinced that `tales of the weird kind were made to be told, not written', Ethelberta is also aware of `the professional storytellers of Eastern countries, who devoted their lives to the telling of tales'. The very night she learned about them, she had been on the point of sending a publisher a story she'd written. She `unfastened the manuscript and retained it, convinced that I should do better by telling the story.'

Decision taken, Ethelberta prepares. When a former suitor happens across her declaiming from a tree-stump in a country glade, he cannot believe his ears. She is giving a first-person account; it's full of dramatic misadventure. Have these things happened to Ethelberta? Of course not. To make them up, Ethelberta has used a remarkable resource – true stories of upstairs/downstairs life told her by her father who is a butler in a great London house.

Ethelberta proceeds to action. Confounding contemporary expectations of female behaviour, she rents London halls. She even has posters advertising her performances and soon is the talk of the town. Sitting to tell, she gives a compelling appearance of truth and naturalness – `as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of friends.' Audiences love the sense of magic and Ethelberta fully exploits her storytelling techniques: `When she reached the most telling passages, instead of adding exaggerated action and sound, Ethelberta would lapse to a whisper and a sustained stillness, which were more striking than gesticulation. All that could be done by art was there, and if inspiration was wanting nobody missed it.'

Sadly there are pitfalls. Ethelberta's hypochondriacal mother - also a secret to Ethelberta's circles – disapproves of her daughter's venture: `A story-teller seems such an impossible castle-in-the-air sort of a trade for getting a living by – I cannot think how ever you came to dream of such an unheard-of thing.' Her forebodings prove well-founded. As novelty begins to dissipate, initial charm undermined by repetition, audiences start to drop and though Hardy makes clear that, a new season starting, things might well have improved, Ethelberta decides that, to secure her future, she will have to seek another marriage. By the end of the novel, she has married a lord.

So where did Hardy get Ethelberta? His own childhood provided potential precedents: his mother and grandmother were wonderful funds of local lore and legend. Yet Ethelberta is different: she draws on the intimacies of domestic storytelling to create a new and original stage presence. Another possible inspiration occurred when Hardy went to see Charles Dickens delivering one of his public `readings', events which gave dramatic life to scenes and characters from his novels. Like Dickens, Hardy was fascinated by the theatre. When first in London, he'd taken lessons in stagecraft, participating in a show based on `The Arabian Nights'. Perhaps he saw himself as a male Scheherezade. Or maybe some female storyteller in the 1870s provided a blueprint for Ethelberta. So far, if so, no Hardy scholars seem to have tracked her down. Failing to recognise the distinctiveness of oral storytelling as an art, they may not have thought to look.

The Hand of Ethelberta was ahead of its times, not only because it subverted Victorian gender and class conventions. Even as it was being written, private reading was developing into a mass entertainment and thus contributing to change in the social conditions in which England's oral traditions had flourished. Creating Ethelberta as the pioneer of a new kind of oral tradition, Hardy also put in her mouth a hope for the future - `that a time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet of a professed romancer.' What a pity Hardy is not alive now to see the extent to which that wish has come true.

Mary Medlicott September 2002

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