On Monday, the 12th of June 1871, just a year and three days after Dickens' untimely death, a doctor writing for the London Daily Chronicle penned an article entitled Poisonous Wall Papers, where he describes a house visit to a woman who had fallen ill only to find her husband suddenly developing strange symptoms. His article reads as follows: "I had lately a case of scarlet fever which I treated. neither the husband nor child of the lady took the fever. When the disease was declared, the husband went into a small bedroom The very first night. while sleeping in it he felt much discomfort, his sleep being unrefreshing and disturbed by frightful dreams, and he rose in the morning languid and weak, with much nausea and dull headache. Towards evening the symptoms abated considerably. After the second night and day following there was a repetition of the same symptoms, with morning exacerbation and evening abatement. He now changed his room and from that hour his symptoms steadily and gradually disappeared. A servant occupied the haunted chamber and immediately became affected in the same way as her master. On being allowed to inspect the apartment, i very speedily gave judgment as to the cause of the mysterious visitation. on the sleepers therein, the green of the period was palpably visible, and on testing the paper, the large quantity of arsenic evidently present fully justified the judgment I had given. I must not enlarge or I could fill a few of your columns with cases quite as clear and to the point as that which I have now briefly given. And here the doctor ends his article with the appeal Can no movement be got up to render the manufacture of these papers charged with poison an illegal thing?
Dominic Gerrard:Today's guest is a novelist and literary historian who has been affiliated with the Californian Dickens project for over 20 years. An alumni of Swarthmore College and the University of California, he has written extensively on Dickens, publishing for Oxford University Press on Nicholas Nickleby and Barnes Noble on Great Expectations, plus numerous articles for broadsheets in London and San Francisco. In 2018, he published his debut novel, the Spirit Photographer, and his latest book, the Company, is the focus of our chat today. Set in 1870 and written in the gothic tradition of Henry James, but with a clear focus on how we live our lives today, the Company follows the story of the Braithwhite family as the shocking discovery of a deadly poison lurking in the celebrated luxury wallpapers of their family business, threatening to destroy everything they have.
Dominic Gerrard:Inspiration came for our guest to write this book whilst on a visit to London's John Soane's Museum where, in the gift shop, he picked up a new title written by Lucinda Hawksley, called Bitten by Witch Fever, which uncovers the true story of how a stunning yet lethal green pigment found its way into people's homes, lacing wallpaper, furnishings and children's stories with arsenic. I'm thrilled to welcome the brilliant John Michael Vareci and, returning to the podcast to read excerpts from John's book The Company, and a key quote from Dombey and Son is the wonderful Sophie Reynolds. John, welcome to Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire 🔥 It's wonderful to have you with us.
J.M. Varese:Dominic, thanks for having me today.
Dominic Gerrard:And we're going to be talking about your new book, and something that I really found very powerful about reading The Company that feels very relevant today is that collective denial where there are truths that we don't want to face, and I think it's really cutting in in our societies at the moment. You know, with climate change and whether or not we should be wearing masks or not still that kind of thing And you have this respectable family with this terrible secret And it's very, it's very difficult sometimes to know who the good people are actually, and you spin that very well throughout. And for people who haven't picked up your book yet, could you give us a little bit of what the setup is with the characters?
J.M. Varese:Sure, i'll give you a
J.M. Varese:I'll give you a little summary of the book, as best I can.
J.M. Varese:The story is narrated by Lucy Braithwhite. She and her brother are the remaining heirs to The Company And it's a situation where when the story begins, the father is long dead and the company has been basically run for the past 18 years or so by his best friend. His name is Mr Luckhurst And this is a bit of a spoiler, but it's happening still early in the book that I'll give it away. Okay, you'll sanction this one. You're okay, yeah, sanction this one. So what happens in this is in the very first chapter. So the first chapter sets up the situation of the family and Mr Lukhurst as the, the avuncular parent of the two Brathway children who are now in their early 20s. He's been running The Company and they have, you know, as heirs to fortune often do have sort of been living these blissfully ignorant lives in their Marlborough house right in the center of London. Their entire lifestyle, their entire existence is dependent on The Company and in turn dependent on Mr Lukhurst, who's running The Company, and at the end of chapter one he dies, lucy and her brother, john. John has actually been kind of an invalid all his life because he is sickly. He has periods of maybe being able to run the company at some point and then he gets sick again, and so there's been years and years of is John going to run the company? Is he not going to run the company? Lucy, from the very beginning you know that she knows that he will never run the company. So Mr Luckhurst dies and there's this immediate question of what are they going to do? And they also don't know anything about running the company.
J.M. Varese:So there's a lot of mystery And in a very almost fairy tale-like way, essentially, someone shows up on the doorstep. His name is Julian Rivers and he has this very young, alluring, beautiful, smart man who shows up, kind of a Dorian Gray figure, immediately charming, and he actually has been co-running the company from a remote office in Devon. And the Braith White children, both Lucy and John, have never heard of this person, but he's so captivating and so charming that they immediately just take him in. And that's the setup for the story. You know who is he.
J.M. Varese:John at one point calls him the man from nowhere, but he seems to know everything about the company, everything about what's ever happened in the family, and the tension in the story is between him and Lucy, because Lucy is narrowing the story, so you get everything through her eyes. And what begins to happen almost immediately with the arrival of Julian is John's health starts to decline again, and in one episode very early in the book, john begins to see spectral visions in the wallpaper of the family's house, and they grow worse. And so John is having these night terrors and being perhaps literally haunted by ghosts the ghosts of the company, and it's a mystery. So that's the setup. Yeah, i'll kind of leave it there.
Dominic Gerrard:That's a very good summary. I mean, you did write it, but that's still a very, very clear summary!
J.M. Varese:Sorry, dominic, it's a long summary, But that's not a tool. Not a tool.
Dominic Gerrard:I'm not sure When I was reading it, with the arrival of Julian Rivers, and I don't know why, i got something of a Bulgakov Master And The Margarita vibe. Oh, with the devil arriving in Moscow, you know because? and then there's a question mark. But what's great is a question mark over him, because you don't know if he's good or bad. It's very difficult and it's very complicated and very confusing And with the denial that hidden family secret also of course there's. That occurs in Dickens novels as well, You know you think of.
Dominic Gerrard:Lady Deadlock, but also plays, like All My Sons, or Long Day's Journey Into Night. you know where? what's happening in the room upstairs, what's going on? It's a very creepy frightening.
J.M. Varese:It's a Gothic novel And the secret is a core element of the Gothic tradition. Right, the secret, the repressed, the return of the repressed, the insistence on continuing to repress that secret I mean, i'm always fascinated by that. That's one of the great things in Dickens. Right The secret that always comes back This is one of the elements of Dickens that is so Gothic is that return, the haunting and the return of the secret. And of course, the secret is embedded in the wallpaper. You do discover as you know, we won't give this one away but you do discover what the family secret is and you discover it through the wallpaper.
J.M. Varese:For John, for example, in the company, being sick in bed and getting sicker and sicker as the novel goes on, and having these visions in the wall. What is making him sick? Is it the arsenic that he's breathing in every day because his sister won't let him out of that room? Or is there some sort of supernatural thing coming out of these walls? And is the arrival of Julian Rivers, you know, simply a physical thing, or is he some sort of presence?
J.M. Varese:I'm playing with all those ambiguities. That's why, for this book for the company, the model was really, if you asked me, one model for the company that was the most influential would be James's The Turn of the Screw, one of my favorite books of all time, narrated by the governess Everything you see is through her eyes, famously one of the most ambiguous books in all of literature. Right, because you only know what she sees. Whether you believe that the ghosts in that novel are real comes down to whether you believe her and whether you believe how sane she is. But this is one of the you know, sort of one of the magnificent things about first-person narration that you can do.
J.M. Varese:You can introduce all of these ambiguities so that your book has multiple readings. I think James actually said the ghosts are real. You know, like he just skimmed out and said it. But of course there's readings of Turn of the Screw, everything from she's completely insane and she's actually killed the children or Miles at the end, to the ghosts are real. I love that. Most of the people in my life are deep readers and we're always talking about literature and we love that ambiguity, that richness that kind of ambiguity and that kind of reading gives to the experience you know. So I wanted to write something like that.
Dominic Gerrard:Well, you certainly did. That was actually something I was going to mention was the fact that you keep things to use your word ambiguous because I can't solve it, the reader cannot solve it, so it goes round in the reader's mind.
J.M. Varese:The flavor and the feeling of James can be in there, making it a little bit more clear and concise for the modern audience. I do use dashes excessively, i'll admit to that, and one of those reasons, emily Dickinson, and one of those reasons is because dashes are one of those things. It's a technique. James uses them all over the place classically to not finish a sentence, which is often what creates that ambiguity, because you put the dash there for the reader and then the reader needs to finish the sentence. The reader needs to wonder what the last three words of the sentence would have been if the sentence had been finished. And I love that about James and about Dickens. Does it a ton too right? Even supposing in Bleak House, the way Bleak House ends, even supposing, even supposing what Right? Esther Sparson, one of the most ambiguous lines in Dickens, if not English literature.
Dominic Gerrard:So Yeah, i wonder if you'd be interested to know the moment in your book that I found the most chilling, just the description of Julian Rivers on his horse being watched outside the window, you mean when he looks up at her. Yeah, he eventually looks up at her, doesn't he? But he's out there with his servant boy, rob. I think I don't quite know why, i can't quite explain it, but there was something sort of baked into it, you know, and the reader were kind of caught between those two spots Lucy looking out, and it's just, it must be the way it sits in the novel and the way it just falls in.
Sophie Reynolds:My throat closed for a moment and the air in the room grew thick. And though the sun was bursting in the sky above shadows puddled the ground. In my uncertainty, i parted the curtain to confirm my suspicion, not thinking that I might not remain undiscovered. But Mr Rivers, responding as plainly as if I had called to him, glanced up towards the window, tipped his hat and rode off. That night it was to begin.
J.M. Varese:When he looks up like that, it's again. It's sort of blurring the lines between the supernatural and the real in a way, because he's sort of just down there on his horse, there's no reason for him to look up. But if there is some sort of weird supernatural element to him and he knows everything and he sees everything, he would look up. I mean, think of it. If he is the devil, right, he's not the devil, but if he is the devil and all seen, he would look up.
Dominic Gerrard:I love that. You just said that Julian Rivers isn't the devil and you wrote it. But I'm sitting here thinking, well, i'm not sure I agree with you. Actually I'm talking to the author and I'm sort of saying you might have got that wrong. Actually, the idea that your host of characters, you can think that, do you feel that in creating and writing that things, that they take on a life of their own, that actually you're not so much in control of them that they, when they're out in the world?
J.M. Varese:Tobias Wolf has one of these great lines, which is one of my favorite about authors in their work, which is once it goes out, it's no longer your work, and I do believe that That's why I don't know I'm also. You know, i turned 50 last year and kind of later. You know I'm moving into sort of the second half. I have to kind of let a lot go, you know, and you can't control this stuff.
Dominic Gerrard:Yes, I have to say you know we've been. We're talking a lot about the sort of supernatural and the hints of the supernatural in your book. But something that was also very powerful was, I thought, the moment where Lucy Brathwaite visits the company offices and she sees a worker stirring green paints and the description of the sores.
Sophie Reynolds:The man set down the pale and began stirring the poured pigment into the chalk. As the two ingredients mixed, the color became brighter and the whole of the substance transformed into the most brilliant shade of green. The man gripped the outer edge of the bucket, as with a wooden paddle. He stirred, and on one of his knuckles, which protruded like a rock under his skin, i noticed a rather large saw That saw the bright red ruby shimmering above the liquid emerald. That is what I most remember, the alarming color of that saw. The man stirred. The saw was dried and flaked around the edges, But in the center the saw glistened as the man held onto the bucket. Would the awful thing burst, i wondered? would it bleed into the mixture? Would it contaminate that singular color with a droplet from something so awful?
J.M. Varese:You're hitting on a very important element there, which is the modern resonances of this book, which have to do with the inexhaustible and limitless tendrils that a company or corporation or capitalism, if you will has The idea that there's the store down near the strand beautiful wallpaper, people coming in and buying, But underneath all that are layers and layers and layers of other industries, other locations, other people, all kinds of other things happening to make that thing possible.
J.M. Varese:And in this novel that's a lot of ugly stuff And there's a reason why the mining and the arsenic operations are all out in Devon. I mean, in the 19th century that is where they were. But nobody wants to go into the wallpaper store to buy their beautiful wallpaper and see the guy with sores all over his hands stirring the stuff that you know. No one wants to know that a family of four died from arsenic overexposure to make their wallpaper. Nobody wants to know that hundreds of people died in mining accidents to make their wallpaper. So all that stuff, just like it is today. Just like it is today.
J.M. Varese:So the company is also kind of early version of these multinational conglomerate type places that have like lots of different interests in different industries. It's not just about wallpaper And actually and that was something I got from Lucinda again that you know thank you, lucinda, if you're listening, i could not have written this book without you. She talks about in her book how William Morris, how he funded what he did because he inherited huge amounts of shares in the Devon great consoles in the early mid 19th century. I think I forget what year, and so the arsenic that was going into his wallpaper was coming from his own mines.
Dominic Gerrard:Yeah, it's interesting. You know, talking about the mining, it did remind me somehow I don't know why I had a sort of flash of the ghost of Christmas present, the moment where he takes Scrooge over the sea and they go down into the mines. And there's another really fun moment where you go into Covent Garden and you have this very elaborate set piece of the descriptions of all the things that are on the stores.
Sophie Reynolds:The market offered what was most exquisite in London rows upon rows of carrots and parsnips and the green sprouts piled high in cascading pyramids. Apples of all colours, chestnuts and prickly skins, and heaps of quints and persimmon, all waiting to be brought home and peeled.
Dominic Gerrard:So it's a bit like Scrooge in the Christmas present visiting on a different day not at Christmas and seeing all the things on offer there. Was that a conscious nod in some way to Dickens? I mean, actually a lot of 19th century authors would go into huge detail in that way as well, but was there something off that?
J.M. Varese:That's a really interesting question, Dominic. So, first of all, almost everything in the book is either a conscious or a semi-conscious nod to Dickens. So that's one. But the Covent Garden stuff I wasn't thinking of Christmas Carol, I was thinking of David Copperfield going into the Pineapples and not being able to afford anything. And I love Covent Garden. I mean I love that area of the city, I love the building, I love the energy of it. I mean that's, you know, completely overrun with tourists like myself now. So it's quite a navigate sometimes, but it's just, it's such a neat area of London.
Dominic Gerrard:So when we were, when we were exchanging emails ahead of this interview, one of the last things you mentioned to me was the connection to Dombian Sun in this, in this novel. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that, because actually and this is my moment of truth here I haven't read Dombian Sun yet, so I'm a complete blank. I've read your novel completely innocent of that extra layer that's connected to it.
J.M. Varese:I mean most people will be in your shoes, because most people have not read Dombian Sun. It's not really one of the. you know the ones. oh, i must read. It is the one I tend to recommend. It is absolutely one of my favorites of his. It's so brilliant. It's 1847. So it's just before David Copperfield in 1850.
J.M. Varese:And it is in that middle period where he is graduating from the Pickwick Nicholas Nicol B Oliver twist, sporadic narrative humor, you know, more episodic tales, less structured. It is the first novel that he actually got to plan. I believe he stops working, doing all of his other jobs that he was doing, the editing for various periodicals. I mean he starts his own periodicals coming up, but I'm talking about working for other people, the legal work he was doing and so forth. He had been holding down a number of jobs and he leaves all of those and he plans out Dombie. You'll see a structure to Dombie that none of those earlier novels have. and then all of the novels after Dombie have that magnificent structure where things like the part 10 really has something major and there's a first and second half of the book, although he does that in Nickel Beep but not in as elegant a way, there's nothing against those earlier novels, obviously They're wonderful, he's kind of learning on the job almost to himself.
J.M. Varese:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then you have all these interpolated tales and things that find their ways. All of a sudden everyone's at a tavern and some person starts telling them a story or something. I mean this is page filler, right, although Bob Patton will tell you that nothing is page filler. But in Dombie you really see it For fun.
J.M. Varese:Sometime, when you have time, just sort of relook at one of the early novels structurally and then go read Dombie and what you'll see is this careful plotting where the Captain Cuttle sections and the Edith sections and the Mr Dombie sections, and they all get plotted out so that you're getting the structure that then finds even more resonance in David Copperfield. And then by Bleakhouse you have the jewel structure And every novel after that you have Little Dorrid, you have Great Expectations, you have our mutual friend. These are all magnificently structured books that have And when I say structure I mean I'm literally talking about the architecture of the book Like when certain characters disappear, reappear, how the numbered parts end, because of course with Dickens we're always needing to think in 20 numbered parts What that 19 and 20 part is going to look like, as the famous double number at the end of the serial, part 10 is going to look like, because part 10 is always the midpoint. These become so beautifully structured after Dombie And that's one of the reasons why I love Dombie so much, because I feel it is. He really comes into his own at that point and can sort of be a novelist without worrying about it. He's trying to get married during Pickwick and get his house settled and then he has to move and just all this kind of stuff, and by Dombie he's really coming into his own.
J.M. Varese:And then of course it makes complete sense that after Dombie he writes David Copperfield, which to me is it's not my favorite Dickens novel, but it's the quintessential Dickens novel. It is exactly midpoint in the career 1850, and it has everything. So when people ask me what? because people are always asking me I've never read Dickens, what Dickens should I read? And I'm always torn because I think great expectations is the greatest. To me, that's the apogee. But David Copperfield is in a way more accessible and just representative more of Dickens because he this is Priellen Ternan, this is still close enough to Pickwick where you get that joyous Chester, tony and Dickens when he's not yet gone into the Bleak House, little Dorit periods. Anyway, dombie is right before that Wow, i completely derailed from your question.
Dominic Gerrard:No, no, no, no. this is perfect, This is perfect. This is what I was really wanting to know. Was the connection, then, from your novel, the company, to Dombie and some where they meet, or what the inspiration was?
J.M. Varese:So the whole idea of the company actually came from Dombie and some You probably wouldn't know that just reading it. I mean other than the fact that it's about a company. I have considered it. You know different points, calling it Brathewide and company, or Brathewide and Sun even, but I didn't want to make it too obvious connection to Dombie. And really it's Brathewide and daughter, if you really think about it, which is a connection to Dombie, because when you, when you read it, there's a line in Dombie and Sun which is mostly about Florence, the daughter and the family. It's not, it's really not about the son, it's Dombie and son. There's a line in there which says Dombie and son was a daughter after all, with a big exclamation point. It like ends one of the numbers or something like that where Florence does something major.
J.M. Varese:So Dombie and son. It is about a mercantile family. They are not old money, they have earned money in industry And so they don't have titles, in other words, and so there was very certain class. They are extremely wealthy but they don't have blood. That's Dombie And one of the reasons Dombie wants to marry. She has no money, but she she has that connection, so he eventually marries her, but A Dombie and his family and his house in Marlborough are wonderful models for all of this stuff that I needed to set a 19th century wallpaper company. I mean, the house is in Marlborough because that's where Dombie's house is, that's where a man of that kind in the mercantile business, who had become extremely wealthy, would have set up shop. And in fact I've done all these kind of crazy Dickens reconnaissance things over the years And I was determined to find the house that I thought Dickens modeled Dombie's house on, and we'll never know for sure. I do think I found it and it's on Weymouth Street and it's exactly why it's on the corner of Weymouth And I can't remember one up from Harley. So there's Harley and then there's another street and it's that street and the corner of Weymouth. And I mean because Dickens, as you know, describes a lot of his houses very exactly and will situate things in certain areas of London without saying exactly what street they're on, although sometimes he does say exactly what street they're on. And so Dombie was a magnificent model for an actual company. So that's one. But really, really, what instigated the idea? It's in Chapter 12 and it's a particular sentence, and it's when Paul Dombie is he sent away to Dr Blimbers Academy.
J.M. Varese:So little Paul Dombie is one of Dickens's great sentimental figures. Like little now He famously kills Paul Dombie, a third away into the book. Paul Dombie is sickly, sickly little boy. He's always in bed. They send him to Brighton, thinking it might make him feel better, and to school and everything. He never gets better. He dies And of course all of England in the world is, you know, sobbing, yes, outraged, outraged and sobbing over the death of Paul Dombie. So he's also very prescient. He's like father time in Hardy. He's a little boy, much too old for his years, and you know how Dickens has always these repetitive phrases and repetitive descriptions for people. For Paul Dombie, for little Paul Dombie, it's old fashioned. The kids at school always call him old fashioned And he is a loner And again sickly. And there's this one sentence that has always struck me in the book and it's in chapter 12.
Sophie Reynolds:He was intimate with all the paper hanging in the house, saw things that no one else saw. In the patterns found out miniature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls and squinting faces leering in the squares and diamonds of the floorcloth.
J.M. Varese:So there's Paul Dombie seeing all this stuff in the wallpaper that nobody else sees And I just thought what is that story of a sick little boy in bed who we know is going to die, looking at this wallpaper? And what is he seeing? What is he seeing in those patterns? And that started to be the question. And there's another. slightly, i think you'll enjoy this. It's very unexpected, but that idea, combined with one other idea, another one of my favorite novels and movies of all time is The Shining.
Dominic Gerrard:I didn't bring up The Shining because I'd already brought up all my sons Long Day's Journey and Tonight the master of the margaritian. he doesn't want any more non-British gothic references, but I fully feel like I know where you're going with this Carry on. I'll see whether I'm right.
J.M. Varese:So I love the novel and I love the movie. I mean the Kubrick movie is. it's a masterpiece of all time. And there is that face on little Danny Torrance riding around the Overlook Hotel on his big wheel. And when he sees these things in his face, the little actor who plays him is incredible And he has this terror on his face of seeing these horrible visions that he's seeing. Those two scenes Paul Donby looking at the wallpaper, dying in bed and Danny Torrance in the Overlook Hotel put those two things together and you have the whole genesis for this novel. Because the question then, becomes.
J.M. Varese:What did he see? So is that why you were thinking of The Shining?
Dominic Gerrard:Yeah, it was, i think, and I think just generally. I think I see it more in the Kubrick movie. I see it because the Native American connection comes out stronger, doesn't it, when you can see the patterns on the walls, and the carpet in the movie is so iconic, isn't it? Those, yeah, so when you think of it, you can see those patterns. So yeah, i really see that. But also because I think the company makes me think of recent times, of contemporary times really, which must be one of its driving forces. You know, it's not a parody, it's not a pastiche in any sense of the 19th century. That one bit in the Covent Garden market that I read was the only moment where I thought, oh yeah, there's a little wink and nod to Dickens. That was the only moment where I felt that that was Dickensian, it was actually very much your own voice as an American.
Dominic Gerrard:What is it about Victoriana that interests you, and so much of your life has been focused on Dickens. Is there anything? I mean? I'm fascinated with American history. I'm fascinated with the 20th century American history. You know Camelot and the 60s and all of that. Is there something special about that time?
J.M. Varese:the 19th century. It's sort of the why Dickens question that I've been asked for five years. It's really not I don't know that it's that deep or satisfying of an answer. But I spent a lot of, you know, like Paul Dombe, although I wasn't sick at all, but I spent a lot of time alone when I was young And I read a lot and I found Dickens at one point, you know, and I found Dickens and I just became consumed with Dickens, largely because the novels were so big. And you know, usually you hear people don't want to read Dickens because the novels are too long. It was the opposite for me, because they were the longest possible novels, they were the ones that I wanted to read And so I just spent a lot of time in them. You know, this is my I'm not talking really young, i'm talking sort of like preteen and then my teenage years in high school And then when I went to college I did undergraduate thesis on Dickens, just because I love Dickens And I.
J.M. Varese:They weren't teaching Dickens where I went to college undergrad in the US. There was no Dickens there There was. There was sort of barely a Victorian literature class there but there was one professor, phil Weinstein, who had done Dickens and was qualified to advise a thesis on Dickens, and so I spent my entire senior year in undergrad doing what kind of working on Dickens. That then gave me a writing sample for graduate school. It sort of paved the way for me to arrive at the Dickens project, where I went in 1997. I went out to work with John Jordan and Murray Baumgarten and Bob Patton and John Bowen from York, who was just becoming involved in the Dickens project at that point, and started.
Dominic Gerrard:Yeah, I love John Bowen. We did an episode on Barnaby Rudge together. Yeah, he's amazing And he's a big fan of your book actually, because he says reimagining Victorian haunting for a new generation. The company creeps up on its readers before it so splendidly pounces Yeah, The master of suspense has arrived, So John is a big fan.
J.M. Varese:He's very kind. I don't know about the new master of suspense. That's a lot to live up to, But John has a way with words really like no other Dickensian I've met. He's really.
J.M. Varese:He's just such an amazing scholar in person And I adore him And we've become very good friends over the years And anyway, he was getting involved at the time at Dickens project And so it's just one of these things, dominic, it's circumstantial. It's where I wound up And then I wound up putting down roots in this wonderful community out in California the Dickens project, which has huge international reach, and that really going to California and becoming deeply involved in the Dickens project is one of the experiences, if not the experience, that changed the whole course of my life.
Dominic Gerrard:Yeah, and it's 1870, isn't it? I wondered. I never asked you this, but is there a significance in choosing the year 1870 being Dickens's death?
J.M. Varese:year. Oh, that's interesting. No, it's not because it's Dickens's death year, although of course it is Dickens's death year. But the significance of 1870 is because I needed to set the novel precisely at a time when the family could still have some plausible deniability around the arsenic. By 1872, 73, you've got to be living under a rock to not know that arsenic is killing people in London in the wallpaper. But 1870, it's still conceivable.
J.M. Varese:The articles are starting to come out in the 1850s, people are starting to get suspicious early on. But the sort of explosion of this thing becoming a real controversy and crisis is not happening until the mid-1870s and by the late-1870s. And I think again something I should know, and I don't know the exact year of the first arsenic-free wallpapers, but it's sort of around then. So 1870 is very significant because of the plausible deniability that I wanted the family to have And these articles, that sort of seep into the house that Lucy sees. The family knows that there's sort of this noise out there, but these articles that are coming into the house, they're now coming into the house because they're becoming more and more prolific And the family cannot deny this anymore And that's why 1870.
Dominic Gerrard:And it happens to be the year of Dickens' death, which is a terrible time, and at one point, lucy reads an installment from our mutual friend, doesn't she? She picks that up as well, i think that's good.
J.M. Varese:So she said no. What she actually says is that she's reading the last novel by Mr Dickens, Right, And that he's died and that she's going to miss his stuff. Basically, Yeah, Yeah, Which would of course be Edwin Drude. And is she really funny?
Dominic Gerrard:Of course it is. What am I saying?
J.M. Varese:It's Edwin Drude. Of course it is Edwin Drude. Well, you're thinking of the last Finnish novel, yeah, Thank you for recovering that for me.
J.M. Varese:Well, it's funny because I actually in a draft I got I can't remember what it was I got the. So the copy editor for the novel was this guy named Nick DiSomoghi. He's mentioned in the acknowledgments. He is literally one of the greatest copy editors in the world. I don't know how I lucked out with this copy editor, but he said something like I mean, he goes above and beyond a copy editor because he's not just copy editor. He's like could this thing really happen in this month? You're saying that it's cold here, but it's actually. She just lit a fire, like all that kind of stuff.
J.M. Varese:And there was something around Edwin Drude. I can't remember what I said, but he had worked out the months because this whole novel is taking place sort of between like October and December of this year. You can map it all out And I did have it mapped all out but I still got stuff wrong. You know you do It's complicated, you get stuff wrong. And he made this comment at one point He had gone up and looked up because when I wrote the set in size thing 1870, edwin Drude is out, that's what she's going to be reading He had gone and looked up when the monthly parts were coming out And he was like this is October And I think again, i, should know.
J.M. Varese:I don't, and I think he said Edwin Drude ended in September. Would she still be reading the serial part Or are you just like? I guess it's conceivable that she did, but like that amount of detail? But anyway, it's just a funny story that it like. As a Dickensian, i did not go and verify exactly when the serial part was coming out, i was just thinking 1870, and it was the copy editor who came in and said you better make sure that that part is out during that month Or you're going to have people question Interesting, isn't it?
Dominic Gerrard:Because the behavior is like when you have a period drama or you know something set in the 1970s and you compare it to actual footage from the 70s live footage of real people and you realize that not everyone is the height of fashion. You know, not everyone's wearing the top fashion. You know, most people are some people wearing clothes from the previous decade, you know, or even further. I think it's quite conceivable that Lucy could be reading serials from three years previously. If you collected them, you had them in the library or something like that, oh, and even better one.
J.M. Varese:That he did, though, was this was a great one, and this one I do remember because I had to actually work on it and change it. You know she reads poetry, so she's reading Polar Edge at one point and she's reading John Dunn. She's reading John Dunn and the copy editor says she really reading John Dunn, and they're like she's really reading John Dunn, because John Dunn in 1870, john Dunn is not widely read, it's more of a modern phenomenon. He only becomes much more widely read, i think, in 1890 with the publication of a certain edition. He's like in 1870, the only accessible editions from Dunn are going to be the very early editions that are published in like the 1760s or something like that, and I was like, huh, okay. I got on the phone with my editor and I was like how about we make it a dusty old version of Dunn? It's like okay, if that works. So I mean, i'm just telling you the reality.
Dominic Gerrard:It's a real fascinating insight into the writer's process in life. It's amazing. It is because it's really Oh wow, John, it has been so good talking to you. Thank you so much for your time and folks listening. The company is out now to buy and I will post links in the description wherever you're listening to this. Thanks for having me. Not at all, it's been a pleasure.
J.M. Varese:See you next time. Bye for now, john, bye-bye.