"A Parcel of Patterns", Jill Paton Walsh

I was inspired to get out my copy of "A Parcel of Patterns" by Jill Paton Walsh (nowadays better known for writing 'approved continuation' Lord Peter Wimsey novels, which as a DLS fan I've never been able to bring myself to read) after hearing a recent dramatisation on the radio of the story of the Great Plague in the village of Eyam, "A Greater Love". As I had vaguely remembered, the two accounts differ in many ways, especially their treatment of the character of Emmot Sydall and her lover from outside the beleaguered village, Roland Torre. Although I've been to Eyam myself -- I walked through it on a youth-hostelling trip in Derbyshire on my way to Chatsworth -- I don't know any of the real-life history of the plague there beyond the vaguest of common folklore: the money left in vinegar in the hopes of disinfecting it, the outdoor sermons where people could stand far apart from their neighbours in an attempt to avoid infection.

I'm guessing with hindsight that the narrator of "A Parcel of Patterns" is probably fictional, and that she may have taken on parts of the history of the real-life Emmy Sydall. But I have to say that on the whole I suspect that Paton Walsh's version of events is the more accurate( Read more... )