Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [9]
Susanna’s interest in the novel flagged. But even as a youngster, Catharine was the kind of person who liked to finish anything she began. She plodded on with the story entitled “The Swiss Herd-boy and his Alpine Marmot,” which enthralled Susanna and Sarah. However, Mrs. Strickland and Eliza—the bad-tempered eldest sister who always regarded herself as a third parent to the youngest children—discovered Catharine’s manuscript one day when they had returned from Norwich. They were horrified that Catharine was “scribbling such trash” and confiscated it. Susanna, who was far too headstrong to accept rebuke meekly, was outraged. Catharine, a much more easygoing child, made less of a fuss—and was allowed to keep her manuscript when she promised to use it for curling papers.
A flat-bottomed wherry making its way down the winding River Waveney.
On fine days, the girls often left their books behind and walked between dense hawthorn hedgerows to Southwold, a mile from Reydon. In those days, Southwold was a busy fishing village with its own cod fleet and a reputation as a smuggler’s haven. Great black-sailed wherries—slow, flat-bottomed boats that could navigate East Anglia’s shallow, silty rivers—brought sackloads of corn and barley into the harbour, where they were transferred to London-bound brigs and schooners with heavy, seaworthy keels. Barrels of malt were unloaded onto the quay and trundled off to the local brewery, owned by the Adnam family. The Stricklands could watch all this maritime activity, visit the library and shops, or on summer evenings cheer their brother Sam’s successes when he played cricket for the Southwold village team. They could brave the stiff sea breezes and, clutching their bonnets to their heads, climb up Gun Hill overlooking Sole Bay and inspect the ancient cannon there. Or they could walk along the miles of flat pebble beach. “We loved to watch the advance and recoil of the waves, the busy fishermen among the nets and boats, and the happy children on the sands,” Catharine later recalled. “But there was a greater fascination still to us in the search for treasures left by the flood-tide or cast upon the shore by the ever restless waves.” Shining pebbles, bits of jet or amber swept south from the Yorkshire coast, shells and fossils accumulated along the window ledges of the children’s bedrooms.
Most of the information about the Stricklands’ Suffolk childhood comes from Catharine herself, who at the end of her life wrote out her memories for her grandchildren. Her account reflects her own sunny view of life, and her preference for “bright glad thoughts” over dreary memories of reduced circumstances. Catharine had an enviable sense of her self and confidence in her place in the world. Throughout her life, she radiated grace, good cheer and affection for everyone around her. Her sister Sarah spoke of her as “the Katie … the pet of the household.” Her blue eyes always sparkled with happiness and curiosity about the world. She had a warm smile and an air of stolid contentment, and even as a baby Catharine “never cried like other children—indeed we used to say that Katie never saw a sorrowful day—for if anything went wrong she just shut her eyes and the tears fell from under the long lashes and rolled down her cheeks like pearls into her lap. We all adored her.”
The key to this sense of self-worth and extraordinary invulnerability must be the unusual relationship she had with her father. Catharine’s sisters all acknowledged that she was her father’s favourite child. No matter how irritable Thomas Strickland might be with the gout, or the noise and mess made by his large brood, he never snapped at Katie. She