Dear James
 
It’s been a long time since I wrote to you and I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know whether I would see you again.
 
Growing up together on your father’s estate, we saw each other every day. We played together. We studied together until I had to go and work in the kitchen. We walked in the garden and talked. And then you went away to war. To France. When you left, we were just children, but when you came home you had become a man.
 
My father told me that I had to keep away from you. That we were both grown and we needed to have friends from our own class. I watched you out with your father from my window in the gatekeeper’s lodge, and you didn’t even look for me.
 
That night you found me. You said that you were sorry. And you kissed me. It was the first time I had ever been kissed. You told me stories of the front, and you cried in my arms.
 
The next day you went back to war.
 
I didn’t have a mother to explain what was happening to me. Your mother’s maid, a girl not much older than me, told me that I was having a child.
 
Your mother found out. Said that I wasn’t to tell anyone. Not even you. Told me that my father wouldn’t lose his job if I married the gardener’s boy and went up to live in Northumberland on your uncle’s estate. Albert is kind. He looks after me and will bring Matilda up as his own.
 
I am making a bodice for our baby daughter from a linen sheet and scraps of lace, and I have sewn your name inside a seam, where no-one will see it.
 
I am going to burn this letter. But I just wanted to have one last chance to write these words. To say, James, I love you. I am ever your Lizzie

Lord have mercy on us all – they are going to blow us up. They’ve been and done and put gas in at the Wesleyan Chapel and none of us will be safe in our beds.

They make the gas from coal, so my neighbour said. They carry the coal to the retort house behind the inn on a horse and cart. All the way down the hill to the dock from the railway station with the wheels on skids. There’s a big furnace and you can feel the heat of it when you come past from the fields. And the smell – there’s nothing to describe it.

​On Sunday last, Reverend Stokes preached a sermon and lit the lights and Mrs Hamsey and I ran out, our aprons over our heads. Our Martha came to the house and told me not to be so daft, and that the Reverend had raised £8 towards the expenses of the gas fitting, but you’re not getting me back in that place. Not as long as I live. God will have to find me up the hill at St Stephens. 

​I never quite saw the point of swimming in the sea. And when I heard the story about Mr Landsen from my friend Jane, who'd read it in the paper that she gets from the butcher when she cleans his house – well, that just showed I was right.
 
My friend Jane knew the lady in the story – Mrs Olaf Landsen – May Jeffrey as was. Jane's family were Quakers in Scarborough and May was a Scarborough lady who had met Mr Landsen when she was on a walking holiday in Norway. Jane said that the lady played the piano and the violin most beautifully, and that she would play the violin to the trees and the birds as she walked. Can you imagine that? I wonder if the birds sang back to her.
 
Well, apparently May Jeffrey married this Olaf Landsen two years ago. Some kind of novelist, though I'm sure I've never seen his books at the subscription library in Whitby. Jane was there when they got wed – 1894, that would be. Lovely it was, Jane said – the bride in a white costume and Mr Landsen looking so fine. The Meeting House had been sold and the new one not yet built, so they married in the Registrar's office.
 
But that's not telling you the story, is it. Well, Mr Landsen had drowned, down at Stoupe Beck. It's a week ago now, because the butcher gets the newspaper from the baker, who gets it from the vicar, who gets it from the doctor. But news is still news when you've not heard it before. Jane came round with the paper, and we read the story together.
 
Mr and Mrs Landsen had been staying at Robin Hood's Bay for 12 months, so it said, and they went to the beach near Stoupe Beck to swim. It's pretty there, but the sea round here is as cold as cold, even on a summer's day. And the currents on that bit of the water are strong, so the fishermen say. I go down to the bay to collect the lobster pots for mending, and that's as close as I'm getting to the water. Why go in the sea when you've got a cosy kitchen and a sunny little yard.
 
Mr Landsen went into bathe. He was a good swimmer and went out some distance, but he got into trouble. As I said, the currents can be powerful around here. Jane said she'd heard from the Quakers that Mrs Landsen went in first and then she came out and gave her husband her bathing dress to swim in as they'd only bought one with them.
 
The paper said that there was a Mr Owen on the beach with two other men. He was from some place called Christchurch in Oxford. That's a long way to travel to see the sea, I think. Well, anyway, they heard Mrs Landsen shouting for help. Mr Owen was a strong swimmer, and he was the first to reach Mr Landsen, but the current meant that he couldn't rescue him, and they both sank under the waves. Mr George Hutton, who was driving his horse and cart on the sands, went in and pulled Mr Owen out unconscious, but couldn't get Mr Landsen. They had to give Mr Owen artificial respiration to get him breathing again. Poor Mrs Landsen – she wouldn't leave the beach because she really believed her husband had floated out to sea and reached some rocks, and was just waiting for rescue. I wonder if they've found his body yet.
 
Mr Hutton and Mr Owen were so brave. Not everyone round here can swim, you see. Some of the fishermen see it as bad luck – to be able to swim, that is – because they think it means your boat will sink one day. I think I will just stick to my kitchen and my sunny yard with its pots of lavender and rosemary and mint. And my cup of tea. 

Well. I'm so cross I don't know what to do with myself. You will never guess what that Mr Farsyde has done now. Look! Look at this handbill! He's gone and told the village that after next Thursday – 13 May 1864 that is – we have to ask his permission to dry our clothes at the drying grounds. I ask you.

You don't know what the drying grounds are? Well, you're a lucky one then. Got someone to do your washing for you have you? They do it different in the city I expect. It's where we dry our fishnets, and our washing. And he owns it. We've always used the drying grounds, but now he says it's an 'intolerable nuisance'. But where else can we dry our nets and our sheets? And the baby's tailclouts? Not in the house. There's not the space with me and Alfred and his mother and father. And the damp goes straight to his father's chest.

And if we don't get the special leave and licence he's asking for? He's just going to take all our drying things away. Our clothes, our nets and sails. Our washing lines and posts. Well, probably not him. He'll get someone as works for him to do it. And he says he'll auction what he takes away. Well, I can tell you something. He's not going to sell my drawers and my Alfred's nets. Over my dead body.

And the land where we take our ashes and our night soil – you know what night soil is, don't you?, Of course he owns that field too. We can carry on with that at least, as we've got a long lease on our cottage in Fisherhead. But some folk are going to have to ask now, and what will they do if he says no? Can you imagine.

​I was talking to Mrs Granger at the drying grounds – her brother's got a shop in the village – and she said that he rents from Mr Farsyde and the old bugger wants him to sign a new agreement. And new agreements are never good things. My Alfred said I shouldn’t talk like that about Mr Farsyde. He is Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant, and he owns our house and the drying grounds. So I should hush and do what he says. I don't know about that. But I do know that I don't expect Mr Farsyde ever had to do his own basket of washing. Or dry it neither. Perhaps if he did he might not be so particular.