Researching between the lines in search of Ruth's story
The Zen of a lever arch file
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Last week I spent two nights in Oxford. The purpose of my trip was research. Research takes a certain amount of planning ahead as the archives are very popular indeed. In particular the archives of the Oxford colleges as was revealed to me by the archivist who said there’d been a real upswing in recent years, of bringing forth the women who worked in intelligence, and of course many of these women were well-educated.
This statement about the upswing was later emphasised when I went into Blackwell’s and found a whole shelf dedicated to newly released books such as Propaganda girls by
, Her secret service by , Wise Gals by Nathalia Holt and Mission Europe by . Needless to say, I wanted to buy all of these books, but the wallet did not allow for such extravaganza. I took photos though, to allow for a suitably covert future trickle-feed of these books onto my shelves.As autumn is now upon us and I promised to tell you more about what novel three will be about, I will live up to this promise and reveal that the person I’m researching is my grandmother-in-law, with the aim of writing a fictional account of her life from her time at Somerville College to roughly the point when she met my grandfather-in-law, possibly at the New York’s World Fair, possibly at a party somewhere in The Rockefeller Centre in the early 1940s.
Ruth, as she was called, did indeed end up working for the British Security Coordination in New York, but that will only be a small part of my novel. It’s the road that led her to the BSC that I find fascinating. What motivated her to take that step, to become an “apron string” as Donovan called these women who weren’t in active service, but who were typing and filing and therefore vital to aiding the propaganda effort under William Stephenson’s (given the name “Intrepid” by Churchill) leadership.
So the reason for my day at Somerville College then was to find out what life was like there in 1937-39 before Ruth’s parents, with the imminent threat of war, urged her to return to New York, and which in a series of unfortunate events set her on the path towards the BSC.
During my research day I was given a room in the library where the walls were lined with shelves full of books and with a view out towards the courtyard. It really was the perfect day to be sitting there, with rain pouring down outside, and with documents being brought for me to read.
All in all, there wasn’t much material available from that time, a couple of yearbooks and one reminiscence by a former student later turned lecturer who had typed up notes from her diary. These notes were quite clinical in tone, but they contained much useful information on curfews, meal times, the rules of visiting, the etiquette for teas and dinners, what the rooms looked like (coal fires all around), what the relationship was between students and lecturers (“fearful” versus “snarky” it seems).
There was also a diary written by a young girl describing the days just before she came to Oxford and then her first few days in the college. The original document must have either been lost or too fragile to handle, because these were printed out sheets of word-processed text. I’m unable to quote excerpts from this diary here, because the college owns the copyright and I would first need permission from them, but let me tell you that I both laughed out loud, and then I wanted to cry.
The diary was beautifully written, with sparing and concise, yet poetic, prose about how she’d prepared for going to Somerville by reading Gaudy Night, about the buildings and canals of Oxford bathing in moonlight, and about a date (for tea of course) with a young man, this girl suddenly being struck by horror at the thought of whether she’d be expected to pour the tea or not.
At the same time the diary was infused with insecurities, a young girl wishing she was more beautiful and less stupid, juxtaposed by a phrase on how she was going to bed now to read some Virgil, and I thought how nothing ever changes. At the passage where she writes that all she does is cry since her arrival, because she’s just not good enough for this college, I wished I could reach ninety years into the past, take this girl by the shoulders and say “Seriously? You’re not only good enough, but brilliant!”
With these two documents, one factual and one emotional, I got a deeper sense of what life was like at the college. But what about Ruth?
She was there. She was there first in the yearbook on the page for admissions, and in a later yearbook on the page for graduations. Really, that was all I could have hoped for, the archivist had warned me that there were no records left of her specifically. And yet I decided to persevere and read through the yearbooks from start to finish. Only a few pages in I found her - she’d been awarded the Maude Violet Clarke grant. Next to this statement was a footnote to the effect that the recipient of this award withdrew, owing to the war emergency - just a few words, and yet so telling.
Even more telling was the next paragraph on how, out of all the societies, the music society had been the most active that year, persevering through the hardships and impending doom “for their own enjoyment”. I never met Ruth, but I’m able to deduce through knowing what I know of her through my husband, her grandson, who remembers her well and who has inherited her incredible musical talent, and who still plays piano using Ruth’s sheet music, and also through having found out through my own research that, at Radcliffe College, Harvard, Ruth had been the head of the music society, that this sudden flourishing of the Somerville music society would have been all her doing.
After five months of research, I now have so much material to organise, but I feel there’s still a lot to go through and I don’t know yet when I will feel ready to start writing. But I do know it won’t be until all the children have been settled and delivered to their various schools and universities, and until I have attended Sandy’s funeral on the sixteenth of September. Until then I can do nothing but keep reading.
Once I’ve got my head together again, I plan to print out all the old print material I’ve found and downloaded, and organise it into sections in a file that I can label, then keep on my desk and flick through for easy reference. In the midst of my recent sadness, this thought fills me with joy.
I will also work out a schedule for the, probably monthly, in-depth essays on the historical occurrences and prominent figures that touched Ruth lives and which will be a perk for paying subscribers. I hope you will come with me on this journey that I’m about to embark on 🙏
In other writing news:
My read of the week was Fixion Lessons from August by
because I kind of recognised all of it, especially the bit on the confusion about how time works.
I aaaaalmost made it into the Guardian when
very kindly recommended The Shape of Guilt in a comment on the article What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in August💕I received a new paying subscriber💕 To my paying subscribers, have no doubt that your support is what enables me to keep writing stories in a very real and tangible way!
On the request of my Swedish publisher I divided up the text for the picture book that will be published in October next year into page spreads, with notes and thoughts on how I envisage the illustrations.
I applied for a Swedish grant that opens up twice a year for Swedish authors, journalist and translators.
A small, but for me, touching thing – over pizza in The White Rabbit, my husband’s old uni-friend, whom I hadn’t seen for about fifteen years (due to the mayhem of bringing up children, working full-time and whatnot) brought out his phone and promptly ordered a copy of The Shape of Guilt.
Did I mention that I went to Oxford to do some research? It took up most of my week, so…
… no rejections, no acceptances and no submissions.
Still, still, still reading Under the Volcano by Malcom Lowry, mostly because I didn’t bring it with me on my travels. Sorry Malcolm, I needed a holiday from your sometimes impenetrable prose.
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Oh wow, this is all just amazing. Between you and me and everyone else who reads this comment, I have applied for a grant that would enable me to go to New York for research, but it's highly competitive so we')) see. I'll find out in March 2026, by which time I hope to be well into the first draft, or "the brain dump" as I like to call it.
And I've just finished one about female agents who were sent to France. What I'd really like though is a book on the quiet ones, the ones who just worked in the background as if at a normal office job, but just typing up top secret material. I was hoping there's be something in the archives of the BSC, but they burnt it all. I'm currently reading the "catalogue" that four writers were tasked to write by the BSC in 1945 about the BSC before they burnt everything. One of those writers were Ronald Dahl before he started writing books for children. I'm looking for clues in this book about what these background women actually did. So far I haven't got a very clear image of what it all looked like.
Well, Ruth's life sounds fascinating, Lisa! And so does the diary of that shy girl at Oxford all those decades ago. This morning, I bought THE SHAPE OF GUILT, but cannot add the photo here on the comments, just to prove it :-)- I am looking forward to starting reading it tonight, after finishing a translation that is proving to be a poisoned chalice!