Hiraeth*: A Poldark Fanfiction
*Untranslateable Cornish word, approximately meaning a longing for a place or a time, particularly one which might have come to pass had circumstances been different, a longing for a home, a place, or a feeling that no longer exists or never existed.
A/N: I resisted this for a long time, mainly because I have so many fics unfinished, but also because of the mess that was made of Poldark (2015-19) in Series 5.
Why? Why did it have to happen like that? Because there are another six books to the series, with far more compelling storylines that feature Clowance and Jeremy, and the arrival of Bella, and also with Valentine, and the effect of George's psychological abuse in his early life as to what a young man he becomes (he is hateful - sorry if this is a spoiler to anyone - but absolutely understandable given the way George treats him, and must have treated him post 1799, to when the books pick up again in about 1812. So much material here, Stranger from the Sea - self explanatory. The Loving Cup - a robbery and loot that needs stashing. So much in the remainder of the books (no more spoilers, I promise!)
But I also wondered where were all the Cornish scientists and engineers at the time? Maybe Winston Graham decided to leave them out deliberately, or else they did not fit in with the way he wanted to tell his stories.
Trevithick is a local hero in Cornwall and has his own day for the development of the first steam engine on rails; Humphry Davy co-founded the Cornwall Geological Society, and was more famous for being president of the Royal Institution, and discovering, due to electricity, that very reactive metals could be induced from ores, and within the space of about six months isolated most of the elements in the first two groups of the Periodic Table. He was knighted, and was even lauded by Napoleon, awarded a medal for his contribution to science.
Neither were mentioned, which was a sad, very sad omission, in my opinion.
I also went, several years ago, to a slate mine in Cumbria, in the Lake District, and remarked how much better the conditions were for the slate miners than the coal miners, in the Midlands. The guide was shocked, and stressed the privations.
"Luxury", I said, and reminded her of the firedamp (methane) that could explode with a naked flame, or the inconsistency of temperature (the slate mine was a standard 15C all year round. In a coal mine in the Black Country, miners would either freeze or boil, depending on the season. And, as well as similar respiratory diseases, they would come out black as Moors, the coal being a good disguise however, when they went Wassailng, or Guising.
I hope you enjoy, I shall be using the books plus the latest BBC series, 1-4 only,
PS - the books tell us that Ross has a younger brother, Claude, who died age 6 in 1771.
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In a dusty, damp attic of long-forgotten things lay a book. It was a bible, recording the history of the Poldark family.
Joshua and Charles are recorded, proud and true, as are their wives, Grace and Verity respectively.
Verity, their daughter, and Francis's names are pushed into the page, and their three brothers who died infancy, all inscribed with goose quill and India ink and, parallel, two branches: Ross and Claude, no less regarded by the hand that have recorded them.
She was born in sixteen ninety five but her date has been scratched over - a different hand had cruelly amended the date of Agatha Mary, sister of Charles and Joshua's father, to make out she was born two years later.
But in a different hand, that of Agatha Mary herself perhaps, a third branch had been added to Joshua and Grace's tree. The line is fresher, bolder, the book shut fast in haste, the haste betrayed with the imprint of the ink on the other side.
She, the chick, was cared enough about to have been recorded though she had killed her mother.
And was thought dead too, except the wife of a visiting engineer and mineralogist heard the mewling cries and the defiant movements of a tiny life laid tenderly by her mother.
Another Poldark, their lives as tempestuous as the sea that surrounded Cornwall, their moods as changeable, their fortunes tied with the up and down prosperity of their county's mineral wealth.
But, though she were born a Poldark, she grew up a Withering, led a life at a middle class home in prosperous Shropshire, was the epitome of her name and was as bright and and intelligent as both her father and brother.
"Because Edward Giddy is promising me a job within his living and I can doctor, and build up a practice, I can engineer in the time I have spare." John Withering told his daughter, as they rode within the stage that would take them from the blackness of the Midlands to the vastness of the sea.
"And then back home, father?"
"Ha, no, child."
It wasn't an unkind reply. Withering drew his daughter to him, her black curls resting on his greatcoat. "No, we can never go back to Maycroft, it is lost to us now."
"Lost?"
Jemima looked up into her father's blue eyes. He had not cried when he had heard that Robert had been killed in Paris, visiting Lavoisier as he had been, a pointless death of a young man who was on the brink of entering the Royal Institution, who had just sent Edward Giddy's son Davies a letter detailing Antoine Lavoisier's oxygen experiments. They had been close friends in Penzance, Robert and Davies, and their mothers had delighted in their closeness. It had been Davies that had encouraged Robert Withering to leave home and go to Paris, much to John Withering's disapproval. He had been cheered by the fact that Lavoisier was a nobleman, but, as time had gone on, that meant death, in France, no matter his contribution to science. Lavoisier had escaped; Robert had not. "A needless, pointless death," Jemima had overheard her father telling his own brother, Uncle William.
She had wanted to ask so many questions of her father, but her beloved mama had died through grief of the loss of her son, and the money that their father had put into a bluejohn investment in Derbyshire and come to nothing. Now their lives were going to change, and Jemima had no wish to trouble her father, who had borne so much, with her questions.
Save one.
"Mama...she told me I was born in Cornwall."
It wasn't a question, but a venturing statement. She wanted to know, now, what her mother had meant. It was true what Robert had said, sometimes when they had run around in the gardens at the back of the house, the long grass and the fruit trees, that, "You are nothing like us; mother found you with the pixies."
She was dark; Robert was fair and looked identical to their mother, his eyes shone the same blue as their father. But she never felt less loved by them. Which is why she felt she needed to know.
"I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you, Jemima Grace."
And for the remainder of the journey, beyond Bristol, lodging with John Withering's friend Beddoes in Bristol, on to Exeter, to the wild moor that separated Devon from Cornwall, from Launceston to Bodmin, and beyond Truro to Helston and then Penzance, Jemima's father told her of their life with Robert, as a young boy, as he, John, was paid as a mine pilot and engineer and had enough schooling to research new minerals and ores that might make the mine owners richer.
"That man was so wrecked with grief he hid himself away, I thought he was going to do himself in...". Herbert sighed into his daughter's hair. "I walked to Nampara myself to tell him of you."
Grace...Nampara...these were words her mama had told her, they were in her mind, in her dreams.
"And I may meet this...man?"
"No, child, for he is gone. Nampara is rack and ruin, so they say, his son away fighting in the Americas".
It took Jemima a long time to realise who her father had meant, how her life fitted into lives being lived already, between rocks hewn from rocks, between the bounty and the famine of the sea, a long time to realise she was one of them, those people at Nampara.
And Trenwith.
Poldarks.
But that was to come. As was her friendship with Davies Gilly, and her rejection of him for Richard Trevithick, and the revenge that Humphry Davy would take on behalf of his friend Davies for Jemima's rejection of him.
Now, a young child, dazzled by mathematics and the shimmering jewels of the earth and her father's brass measuring instruments, who could draw anything and said little, would alight with her father, stand with the little she had packed into a tiny case.
And look beyond the house that was to be her home, to the sea monster ranging in the black sea, that Jemima would realise, when morning shone over the land that was her new home, was a castle, stuck out there, in the sea.