About a week ago, I finished the first draft of a new novel. (Yay! Happy dance inserted here!) The romantic scene at the climax was so much fun. It’s the story of a young telephone operator in boomtown Melbourne 1888, who listens in to high society, and decides to get rich by dubious means.
I’m not sure what to call this novel.
If you don’t like either, have you got a suggestion?
Costly Calls
Telephones were the buzz tech of the 1880s. In 1881, less than a decade after the first telephone patent was filed in Boston, far-flung Melbourne, Australia, opened a telephone exchange. By 1888, Melbourne had round-the-clock service and a telephone directory of more than a thousand subscribers.
Talk was not cheap over the new technology - ‘one telephone set complete’, plus the provision of a mile of line, cost £12 a year. In comparison, a parlour maid’s annual salary was around £40.
Even in Victorian times, women were recognised as competent operators. More so than men, in fact.
If ever the rush of women into the business world was an unmixed blessing, it was when the boys of the telephone exchanges were superseded by girls. Here at its best was shown the influence of the feminine touch. The quiet voice, the deft fingers, the patient courtesy and attentiveness—these qualities were precisely what the gentle telephone required in its attendants.
From The History of the Telephone, by Herbert Casson, 1910. (Also below).
A Victorian telephone operator had a prestigious and demanding position, at the hub of the new technology.
It is she who meets the public at every point. She is the despatcher of all the talk trains; she is the ruler of the wire highways; and she is expected to give every passenger-voice an instantaneous express to its destination.
Some of them were heroic in a crisis:
The operator in Folsom, New Mexico, refused to quit her post until she had warned her people of a flood that had broken loose in the hills above the village. Because of her courage, nearly all were saved, though she herself was drowned at the switchboard.
My heroine does not meet such a tragic end, you may be pleased to know.
Conversations that Keep
I spoke on the phone recently to someone I haven’t seen for years. He was a youth pastor, when I was in my final year of school and early years at uni. We live in the same city but somehow, I don’t know, just haven’t got together…
He’s undergoing chemo at the moment. So perhaps seeing him might have been a shock, and got in the way of talking. But his voice was immediately warm, thoughtful, listening. Our friendship came out of its box, alive and breathing.
When he’s talking to me, he picks his way through words, like he’s finding the right notes for a song. He’s a muso. Amongst other things he makes his own tenor ukuleles. He says this is one of the most productive seasons of his life. The church where he and his wife belong has opened a workshop. He goes down each week and teaches people how to make ukes, and they create music and community. Wonderful.
We shared news about children and creative projects, filling in the gaps of decades. I told him I remembered youth group dinners in their kitchen, and funny things they had on their pinboard. Then he told me that thirty years ago I gave him a copy of a poem (not by me). He still has it on his pinboard, even though he’s not much into poetry, he says. I think he kept it because it was a gift, and it represented something he valued.
That’s lovely on its own. I felt liked and esteemed. But then he said that, in this season of his life, the words of the poem had come to mean a lot more. I was moved to silence. (If I’m honest, to tears).
I thought: some conversations, some relationships, are buried treasure. Remember the 1956 Olympic brick I found in the weeds of my backyard?
Like the brick, many words and deeds have disappeared under the mud of years. They’ve disappeared, but they’re not gone. They are hidden, solid, in someone’s heart.
I’m so glad I know about the poem. It encouraged me, to think that things I give, and words I write or speak, have lasting value. I hope – trust, even – that I’ve laid many more good deposits, in the bedrock of other people’s lives. Whether I know about them or not. And you have laid them too, whether you see them or not.
Talk back to me
Each time I sit down to write this newsletter, I ask myself what I can share to entertain you, and how I can maybe add value to your thoughts. I love to know when I’ve hit the mark. Or missed it. So by all means tell me what you think. If there’s something you’d like to hear more of, I’m open to that too.
You’re welcome to leave a public comment. (The comment button was being difficult last year, but hopefully that’s sorted!) You can also email in reply.
Love and best wishes,
Alison L
Poetic PS
If you were wondering, here’s the poem I gave my youth pastor, below. The words are very dense, and take a bit of pondering, but stick with it. I still love them. They are buried treasure left by a nineteenth century poet.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
When the feminine touch is described as "The quiet voice, the deft fingers, the patient courtesy and attentiveness..."
Is the author describing all women of that era or just some? I suspect the description only applies to girls who have been properly brought up.