Readers have said to me that the novels in the Wentworth Family saga reveal or draw upon a strong sense of location, and I would admit that happily. With settings in Devon and Brittany there is bound to be a vibrant sense of place, and if you will forgive my loyalties I think that both regions have distinctive characteristics. I am not one for championing one region of a country against another, or relying on a region to establish timeless qualities of personality. But the prehistoric stones of Carnac in southern Brittany are an unmistakeable landmark, and the rounded moors in the south and north of Devon bookmark the countless wooded combes across the county that often feel as if no one has stepped into their leafy silence in decades.
But there is more to location than just a backdrop. I asked a group of writers recently about whether they felt that they needed to visit the places that they wrote about, and I was slightly surprised by the lack of certainty in the response. For myself, I find that I am repeatedly writing about places that I have come to know, and tracing patterns on the ground. Needless to say, the more rural the location, the less it may have changed. Here in Devon it is possible to confirm that the pattern of farms around a given area has been there since the Domesday Book, with not much else added, and the shape of small country towns has changed little over time. I like old buildings, and so for me it is a pleasant task to work out what was around in the period of my novels, the 1790s, at least in the grid of streets, removing in my mind the later built additions, peering behind rendered facades, and furtively sneaking down alleys into mews and stable-yards.
Oddly enough, even in the metropolis of London older maps reveal that the lines of roads have not changed much in the centre. One significant alteration lies in the consolidation of the embankment, but even with that affecting some sites, the old ‘stairs’ that gave access from the waterside to the warehousing on the street above can still be found. These may have had a small quay or landing-stage attached to them, and smaller boats would then offload cargo from the ships that anchored in the Pool of London right up to London Bridge. Further out, a village like Hampstead has developed greatly, but the general lines of it remain largely unchanged, with the expansion of more modern dwellings partly constrained by the extent of the Heath. These are locations for some of the dangers in the third novel, Lady at the Lodge.
While I would accept that there is something similar in the towns of central Brittany that feature in the novels, notably Pontivy with its chateau and Auray with St Goustan just across the bridge, there are scenes in all of the novels that occur inside or in the immediate vicinity of two townhouses owned by one of the leading characters, Laurent Guèvremont.
In Pontivy, the delightful chapel of St Ivy and the imposing church, the market-places and the bridge, and the chateau itself featured in Lady at the Lodge are all there on the ground and can be visited, and the old prison in Auray from The Baron Returns still exists and even opens its doors (and no doubt its cells) to visitors on certain days in the summer. Yet quite where the townhouses would be remains elusive, although there are suitable facades in suitable locations. Characters grow out of the ground and the environs, but they are warm-blooded, and insist on a life of their own. Their hopes and fears, loves and losses are the pulse of novels, and though they move across and through them they are not to be found captured in the buildings and pathways of historical research.
Yet perhaps they can be followed. Even if you cannot find the crowded Little Pig tavern from The Baron…, the old town in Quiberon has its bustling bars, and it takes very little to look out and imagine the formidable British ships of the line rolling their towering masts in the gentle swell of the sea in Quiberon Bay.
Graham Ley 