The Lost Child (31 page)
When you've finished painting me in red and black,
to suit your fiction, lies and facts,
and you've recognised the truth of me,
that over live or die I'll live in dreams.
My place of safety, liberty
is the only reason my heart still beats.
So when you're sick of war and you want me back, overlooked aspirations of all I lack,
my ship will still be sailing on,
off the edge of ambition and into the sun,
where you can race to find the man,
who always was, and still is, your son.
This book owes a lot to so many people. Tony, Bryony and Julia Yelloly generously put their entire family archive quite literally in my hands. Every biographer dreams of stumbling upon a dusty old box that's lingered in an attic for a hundred years. That's what happened to me and I can't thank them enough.
Mary and Paul Sanders-Hewett also shared their precious and inspiring family treasures with me, as well as offering research back-up that was well beyond the call of duty. Patrick Baron lent me books, showed me his wonderful paintings and kindly allowed me to interrogate him at length. These three families - the Yellolys, the Sanders-Hewetts and the Barons - are Mary's direct descendants and their kind and imaginative support made the writing of this book a real pleasure.
Meanwhile, Steve and Elaine Hill of Woodton Hall generously let me interrupt their Sunday lunch and invade their home, as well as providing a great many interesting facts. The Reverend John Buchanan of Beccles proved a fascinating and informative email correspondent. David Turner of Narborough Local History Society and Joanne Nadelson of Narborough Hall kindly gave me a moving and memorable glimpse of Mary's childhood landscape. Jonathan Plunkett helped me track down the real Carrow Abbey with the help of his late father George Plunkett's meticulous and atmospheric photos, and Jeremy Howard of Robinson's (Britvic) spent several patient hours with me in the long, dark corridors at Carrow (not to mention giving me a lift to the station). Maggie Wood at the Warwick Doll Museum never managed to track down the Tyssen doll, but I very much appreciate all her efforts in trying. And the indefatigable Monica Churchill of All Saints, Woodton did finally find Mary for me when I had almost given up - what would I have done without her?
Though she's been dead almost a hundred years, thanks are also due to Florence Suckling. This book would have been so much harder to write without access to her excellent 1898 family history
A Forgotten Past
(now long out of print), which I've quoted at length. Thank you to Julia Yelloly for loaning me the published book, and to Mary Sanders-Hewett for giving me access to the wonderful original manuscript. I don't know what Florence would have made of my book - I suspect she thought she'd written the definitive Yelloly/Tyssen family history - but I came to rather love her bossy, judgemental, yet always vivacious, company.
However, if Simon Finch of Simon Finch Rare Books had not come across an album of paintings at a Suffolk auction and known it was special, and if Peter Straus of Rogers, Coleridge & White hadn't seen it and straight away thought of me, Mary and I would still be strangers to each other. A big thank you to both.
Finally, thank you is a very inadequate word to express what I feel about the countless people, teachers, doctors, counsellors, family and dear friends, who supported Jonathan and me as we struggled with a problem which some days - no, many days - threatened to overwhelm us.
You made us tea, you let us weep, you listened to us at length when we were boring even ourselves. You offered endless insight and wisdom and practical help, but you were also wise enough not to insist upon looking for answers. Best of all, you somehow continued to care for and believe in our boy and didn't recoil as we learned the terrible lesson that Mary Yelloly's parents must have also learned: that you can make your babies and you can love them with every single cell of your being, but you can't make them safe, you can't in the end choose how their lives turn out.
So many of you so often said: 'If only there was something we could do to help.' Well, there was, and you did it. You stayed with us through this big, sad, terrifying, momentous thing, and this book is also for you.
J.S.M., London, August 2008
Julie Myerson is the author of seven novels, including the bestselling
Something Might Happen,
and two works of non-fiction, including
Home: The Story of Everyone Mo Ever Lived in Our House,
which was dramatised on BBC Radio Four. Her latest novel,
Out of Breath,
was published by Jonathan Cape in February 2008. She lives in London and Suffolk with her husband and teenage children.
The text of this book is set in Bembo. This type was first used in 1495 by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius for Cardinal Bembo's
De Aetna,
and was cut for Manutius by Francesco Griffo. It was one of the types used by Claude Garamond (1480-1561) as a model for his Romain de L'Universite, and so it was the forerunner of what became standard European type for the following two centuries. Its modem form follows the original types and was designed for Monotype in 1929.