Creating Characters for Everlasting Lies
Many of the characters in Everlasting Lies were people I knew and some of them were imagined.
William (Bill) Charlton, who I described in the story to be the lover of my grandmother Vernon, really did exist, although I never met him. In the British Census of 1901 he and his family were living next door to Edina’s family. He was eight years old and Edina was 7. Through detailed research of various sources I found that Bill’s father was a coal miner, that Bill moved to live with an uncle who worked on the railway, and he fought in the British Army in WW1. Passenger records of ships leaving and arriving in England show him sailing for India in December of 1920 and returning from there in 1934, six years after the Vernon family had returned. A year after his return he married Clara and they lived in Brighton, Sussex, where he died at the age of 51 in 1944.
Charles Alfred Vernon was an enigma. For most of my life he was my grandfather - all the way up until I discovered, when I was 63, that he wasn’t. My grandmother was seven months pregnant when “Granddad” returned from WW1. But I’m pretty sure that his original name was not Charles Alfred Vernon because, after years of searching parish records, national records of births and census reports, I was unable to find any evidence of him being alive until the registration of his marriage to Edina June 1910. Some of the stories he told during my childhood mentioned that he had run away from his own family, he had a sister named Lily and a brother, who fought in WW1, named Abraham. The rest of his character and life is from my imagination.
The Fletcher family’s story, that is a prominent part of the beginning of the book, was written with the benefit of information taken from the British censuses of 1891 and 1901. A family with that name did live in Farnley North Yorkshire and consisted of John, the father, Ester the mother and children named Alfred b 1885, Abraham b1882 and Lily b1891. So I used that family as the one from which “Charles Alfred Vernon” ran away from, changed his name and started a new life. I have no conclusive evidence that this was my “grandfather’s” original family.
The facts surrounding Edina, my grandmother, are true. I have a copy of her birth certificate and marriage certificate and I can see from the censuses where she lived and who she lived with. I knew all of her children, Lily, John, Edna and, of course, my mother, Mantua. I also have the records of the family’s journey by ship from England to India on board the S.S. Mantua.
All of the book’s characters in India, including Sugata, are a figment of my imagination.
It seemed when I was writing Everlasting Lies that each one of the characters would be sitting on my shoulder as I wrote about them and dictating the words for me to put on the page. That was a very odd experience!
William (Bill) Charlton, who I described in the story to be the lover of my grandmother Vernon, really did exist, although I never met him. In the British Census of 1901 he and his family were living next door to Edina’s family. He was eight years old and Edina was 7. Through detailed research of various sources I found that Bill’s father was a coal miner, that Bill moved to live with an uncle who worked on the railway, and he fought in the British Army in WW1. Passenger records of ships leaving and arriving in England show him sailing for India in December of 1920 and returning from there in 1934, six years after the Vernon family had returned. A year after his return he married Clara and they lived in Brighton, Sussex, where he died at the age of 51 in 1944.
Charles Alfred Vernon was an enigma. For most of my life he was my grandfather - all the way up until I discovered, when I was 63, that he wasn’t. My grandmother was seven months pregnant when “Granddad” returned from WW1. But I’m pretty sure that his original name was not Charles Alfred Vernon because, after years of searching parish records, national records of births and census reports, I was unable to find any evidence of him being alive until the registration of his marriage to Edina June 1910. Some of the stories he told during my childhood mentioned that he had run away from his own family, he had a sister named Lily and a brother, who fought in WW1, named Abraham. The rest of his character and life is from my imagination.
The Fletcher family’s story, that is a prominent part of the beginning of the book, was written with the benefit of information taken from the British censuses of 1891 and 1901. A family with that name did live in Farnley North Yorkshire and consisted of John, the father, Ester the mother and children named Alfred b 1885, Abraham b1882 and Lily b1891. So I used that family as the one from which “Charles Alfred Vernon” ran away from, changed his name and started a new life. I have no conclusive evidence that this was my “grandfather’s” original family.
The facts surrounding Edina, my grandmother, are true. I have a copy of her birth certificate and marriage certificate and I can see from the censuses where she lived and who she lived with. I knew all of her children, Lily, John, Edna and, of course, my mother, Mantua. I also have the records of the family’s journey by ship from England to India on board the S.S. Mantua.
All of the book’s characters in India, including Sugata, are a figment of my imagination.
It seemed when I was writing Everlasting Lies that each one of the characters would be sitting on my shoulder as I wrote about them and dictating the words for me to put on the page. That was a very odd experience!
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