Authors Interviewing Characters: Hannah Dolby
We’re thrilled to feature this character interview by author Hannah Dolby!
No Life for a Lady
The most joyful book of 2023! Violet Hamilton is a woman who knows her own mind. Which, in 1896, can make things a little complicated…
At 28, Violet’s father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing.
Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier.
Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.
Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton’s vanishing before it’s too late?
A delightfully quirky and clever book club read, perfect for fans of Dear Mrs Bird, The Maid and Lessons in Chemistry.
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Interviewer, Ladies’ Domestic Harmony Magazine, 1896
Mrs Frantsom: “Miss Hamilton, I am delighted you could join me today to represent our readers and talk about how you strive to achieve the lofty ideals of Victorian womanhood in your daily life.”
Violet Hamilton: “Thank you. I’m not sure I am the right person” –
Mrs F: “You come highly recommended by another of our readers, a Mrs Withers, who administers several worthy charities in Hastings & St Leonards. She said you are the first person she would recommend as embodying the values of our magazine.”
VH: “Are you quite certain? She normally wouldn’t be so…so nice.”
Mrs F: “Quite certain. Now, tell us a little about your day. You live with your father, is that right? How do you make sure his home is a contented one?”
VH: “Yes. I … am quite good at making sure he has kippers for breakfast.”
Mrs F: “No need to be modest. Tell us more! How do you structure your day, the little domestic considerations, the challenges of managing a small household? Your mother is absent, is she not? So it falls to you?”
VH: “Yes, she disappeared from Hastings pier nearly ten years ago. I have always wanted to know what happened to her. It puzzles me greatly, that she vanished with no explanation. I should like to know-“
Mrs F: “We need not go into that here. It might upset our readers. It would be better, in fact, if we could say that she sadly passed away, and that you are a great comfort to your elderly father, the widower. Perhaps you make him his favourite dishes, read to him each evening, ease his sorrows with your cheerful company?”
VH: “He isn’t elderly and she might still be living, as far as we know. Why is a dead mother better for your article than a missing one?”
Mrs F: “Our readers do not need an unsolved mystery. It would jangle their nerves. They want hope, and succour. To know how you have succeeded in making a happy, harmonious home, creating a wholesome refuge for your grieving and troubled father-“
VH: “He is not grieving. I have a technique called Bundle and Squash, that I use to fold up shirts in drawers. It’s very quick. It does cause a few creases, but it is much faster than the usual way. Do you have a shirt? Shall I show you?”
Mrs F: “No… no. That sounds…no. You are of an age, perhaps, where you should be married. Have you not encountered a gentleman you favour? Or have the gentlemen in Hastings perhaps… not found you to their liking? You seem a little pert.”
VH: “Pert? Several gentlemen have shown a partiality to my person. It is simply that I do not want to get married. I am quite happy being a spinster.”
Mrs F: “You have chosen, then, to sacrifice the joys of marriage to dedicate your life to your poor father,”-
VH: “No, not at all. If I could find a useful employment of some kind, I would seek my independence. I do not want marriage for… for various reasons, but one of them is that I should like to be allowed to follow a career.”
Mrs F: “Ha ha.”
VH: “No, I am entirely serious. I should like to be an engraver or a botanical artist or perhaps a governess, if I were skilled at it. But if I am honest, I am not very good at any of these things. It is a problem, isn’t it? But I am resolved to carry on, and keep trying different occupations until I find one I am good at.”
Mrs F: [silence]
VH: “Perhaps these topics are not right for your magazine. Hats. Would you like to talk about hats? They are very large at the moment. I am not very much in fashion, I’m afraid. I prefer to be comfortable, which is why my clothes perhaps look a few years out of date. But if we are talking fashion, then I am very much in favour of rational dress, of any dress in fact that allows us to run about and breathe. And perhaps ride the new safety bicycles. Aren’t they splendid?”
Mrs F: “I think… we are getting a little off track. Do you have, perhaps, a little recipe that you would like to share with us? A household tip? Not shirts. Do your servants use a clever solution to clean your window panes?”
VH: “I have a method I call the banshee, that involves leaving the cleaning for quite a while and then doing it all in an enormous hurry, in a single day, like a banshee. Edith, one of our servants, gets quite annoyed with me for it, but I find I can only face the utter relentless drudgery of housework if I do as little as possible and then at high speed. It saves quite a bit of time.”
Mrs F: [silence]
VH: “It might not be the way other people would do it.”
Mrs F: “What about your duty to… God, to your father, to yourself, to family? Where is your conscience?”
VH: “My duty is, I think, to find my mother. I do not think she would want me to stop searching and it seems my conscience will not rest until I find her. Housework does not keep me awake at night in the same way.”
Mrs F: “I cannot understand…here it is. Here it is. The letter from Mrs Withers. And now I read it properly, it says you are the last person. Not the first person. She has challenging handwriting. The stroke of her ‘l’ looks like an ‘f’… You are the last person she would recommend for this interview. And here on the back, she recommends someone else altogether. Well.”
VH: “Well.”
Mrs F: “Thank you for coming. I won’t be…printing it.”
VH: “No, of course. But if you need a lady journalist to write for you… no, alright then. I understand. Thank you. Goodbye.”
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Buy NO LIFE FOR A LADY HERE
Hannah Dolby’s first job was in the circus and she is keen to keep life as interesting. She trained as a journalist in Hastings and has worked in PR for many years, promoting museums, galleries, palaces, gardens and even Dolly the sheep. She completed the Curtis Brown selective three-month novel writing course, and she won runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Awards for this novel with the prize of a place on an MA in Comedy Writing at the University of Falmouth. She currently lives in London.You can follow Hannah on Twitter @LadyDolby
Category: On Writing
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