Reader journeys

One of the most difficult aspects of making HayleyWorld to get my head round has been imagining and designing the possible reader journeys through the text. How can we (my development partner & I)

• personalise a reader's journey while still retaining an element of control?
• make sure that readers can take different paths through the narrative and still read/experience something that feels like a coherent narrative?
• make readers feel like they're getting to know William Hayley in a away that mimics encountering him in real life?

I'm still near the start of the reader journey design process, but I have a start point that Contentment are in the process of implementing for our first prototype (which should be ready within the next couple of weeks).

At the moment, the idea looks like this:

As you can see, I still have questions about how much content to deliver before giving readers a chance to either choose more, or move on to another topic. But how will they get there in the first place?

It took me a while to work out how the app should start. But then I realised that it should begin in the way that William Hayley characteristically began his relationships with friends.

So, I embarked on my first element of semi-fictionalisation. I edited together – mostly from phrases/lines Hayley actually used, but with a few of my own (mostly obvious) tweaks  – a Hayleyan letter and sonnet, addressed to the reader…

"The past

Sussex

My dear Friend

Please allow me the liberty of addressing you thus as, I believe I have reason to hope, such you will soon become. Having some important Topics I wish to share with you, I have thrown them into here, and entreat your acceptance of the following history, that you may peruse at the greatest Ease to yourself.

Before you begin, I would beg you to look on my peculiarities with affectionate indulgence and I hope only that what follows may be thought worthy of you to whom I have taken the liberty of addressing it.

Ever your affectionate

WHayley

SONNET

Kind Friend! who reads in far off future years,

I pray thy generous heart will care to know,

A poet who lov’d to laugh yet oft shed tears

And wishes this – his story – to bestow.

Accept this volume:- through these pages flow

Sincere effusions of a long-passed mind!

Herein the untold truths my heart will shew,

Of artists, poets, friends and loves combin'd!

In this fair copy may thy eyes discern

The turns of mortal life herein outlin'd:

Whate'er the lessons from these words we learn

May all their blessings in you be entwin’d!

Thine be that joy which Friendship's bosom fills;

And thine eternal peace, devoid of ills!"

 That's the beginning that every reader will see. But then how to set each one off on their particular journey?

My initial plan was to give them a long form at the beginning. But my research into how people develop and sustain relationships led me to realise that this would be wrong. I need to create the illusion of conversation, which has two main implications.

• the reader needs to be asked for smaller tranches of information about themselves at various (but not too many) points in the app
• to have any chance of creating and sustaining the illusion that readers are getting to know William Hayley, they couldn't just be given a series of impersonal forms to complete. He would need to ask them questions. And would need to do so in an entirely Hayleyan manner…

So I wrote this. It is, I think, is more fun than an impersonal form, and has the advantage of allowing for "conversation" between Hayley and the reader without the reader being able to ask the sort of questions that an app will be unable to answer…

Also, given that the act of exploring HayleyWorld means readers are taking an interest in William Hayley, isn't it only right and proper that he should show an interest in them?

Blogging hiatus

I haven't blogged about making HayleyWorld for months. This isn't because I haven't been doing anything to make HayleyWorld (although life has intervened and I am now a part-time, not full-time PhD student. Rather, the work I've been focusing on left me with little to add to the blog. Eliza remains fascinating, as does the relationship between her, William Hayley, and Thomas Alphonso Hayley's mother Mary Cockerell. I will also have more to add on the subject of first/third person, as I'm in the midst of a bunch of reading around it.

Mostly, I've been working with my development partners at Contentment towards producing a first prototype. And that's taking time, as – of necessity – it's a side project for them, and one that, inevitably, throws up a bunch of unexpected and unpredictable development issues that need tackling…

But, if I'm completely honest, those are excuses.

My brain simply doesn't come up with ideas for blog posts all the time (to be fair, it has one or two other things to focus on, so I shouldn't be too cross with it). However, yesterday morning it did, and a these will follow over the next few weeks, with the first coming soon after this one. Soon, in this instance, = an hour or so after this one. Unless I don't finish it before I have to go out and eat fish & chips with friends, in which case it'll = tomorrow. But you didn't want or need to know that, did you?

Fashionable Diseases, Posthumous Diagnoses & Eliza Hayley

From 3-5 July  2014, I was at the Fashionable Diseases Conference at Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, inhaling information and ideas about illnesses – fashionable and unfashionable, psychological, physiological,  real and represented, imagined and imaginary – throughout the long eighteenth century and presenting a paper: "Marvellous mental infelicities": William Hayley, his first wife, Eliza, & William Cowper, "the most interesting of Sufferers".

I came away characteristically over-stimulated, thoughts and questions bubbling away in my brain, (and, naturally, tumbling out my mouth), having encountered a range of fascinating people presenting and discussing a deliciously wide range of perspectives.

And I left with one big question mark. It hangs over the concept, meaning and practice of "diagnosis" in general, and of posthumous diagnosis (especially of individuals who died a couple of hundred years ago) in particular.

There was a clear consensus that, for several reasons, attempting posthumous diagnosis is an unequivocally bad idea.

1. What's the point? They're dead so there's no chance of curing them
2. It distracts from talking about the more important aspects of an individual's work (in this context, the individuals concerned were, predominantly, writers)
3. It says more about the diagnoser and their context than it does about the person being diagnosed or whatever illnesses/conditions they may or may not have had
4. In almost all cases, this can only be pointless speculation: the diagnosis can never be confirmed, rendering the practice, in Roy Porter's words (I believe), a parlour game.

Yet, the impulse to do it is, it seems, almost irresistible: if it wasn't, I think it's unlikely that

      a. so many people would do it
and
      b. so many people would be so dead against it

I am guilty of a. So, the following may read as pure self-justification, but I hope there's a bit more to it than that. To be fair to me, I am a lifelong and enthusiastic hypochondriac (in the present, not long-eighteenth century, sense), and it was, at least in part, my generally anxious fascination with matters medical that drew me to William Hayley in the first place.

Also, as someone working biographically, I'm finding the process of exploring possible diagnoses particularly useful in framing my thoughts on Hayley's first wife, Eliza.

The best description I've yet encountered of Eliza is by the poet Anna Seward. She wrote it shortly after Eliza's death in 1897:

Fire in her affections, frost in her sensations, she shrunk from the caresses of even the husband she adored. Hence, while she had a morbid degree of tenaciousness respecting his esteem and attention, she was incapable of personal jealousy; and would amuse herself with the idea of those circumstances, with which she could so perfectly well dispense, being engrossed by another. …

… With sportive fancy; with no inconsiderable portion of belles-lettres knowledge; with polite address, and an harmonious voice in speaking, and with the grace of correct and eloquent language; with rectitude of principles, unsuspecting frankness of heart, and extreme good humour; she was, strange to say ! not agreeable, at least not permanently agreeable. The unremitting attention her manner of conversing seemed to claim, her singular laugh, frequent and excessive, past all proportion to its cause, overwhelmed, wearied, and oppressed even those who were most attached to her; who felt her worth, and pitied her banishment from the man on whom she doated.
(from Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, vol 5 pp22-25)

William Hayley – despite his medical knowledge and his particular interest in mental health issues – found himself unable name or, over the long term, meliorate to her condition. He recorded that "The fluctuation of her spirits was rapid to an alarming degree", "Though she is not, and perhaps never may, fall into absolute insanity,

the state of mind, to which she has long been subject, is to all who tenderly regard her, an evil much more distressing than madness itself; it is a state not easily described. At times suspicion and pride (the two frequent forerunners of absolute insanity,) appear its chief characteristics; at other times, depression and melancholy.

and that, as "one of her most attentive medical friends" said

“Her whole frame is full of pins and needles; at every turn they run into her, and she imputes the blame to the first cause that occurs to her agitated fancy.”
(Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, Esq.  Vol 1, p210, p342, p484)

He also tells us that, "While he retained his health, and the native cheerfulness of his spirit, a lively imagination afforded him the best possible antidote for the marvellous mental infelicities of his pitiable Eliza. When he could no longer divert her volatile mind with lively sallies of fancy, she considered Eartham as a dungeon" (ibid p339). On one occasion "at a time when his health was cruelly shattered":

She said to him, with an air of innocent naïveté that proved she spoke only from painful ennui, “You were once the most agreeable man in the world, but you really have lost all your talents,” to which he mildly replied, “I believe, my dear, you speak something near the truth, according to your own ideas of it; yet it seems rather hard to hear it from you.”
(Memoirs of Thomas Alphonso Hayley p120)

I read Eliza's letters along with what Hayley and others say about her and I can't avoid speculating about her condition. Given that my medical qualifications don't even extend to an O level in biology, this is, at best, cheeky. But, for me, it's all part of trying to understand what made her tick, to get a feel for what she was like and why.

I think there are five possibilities, as follows

1. Asperger's: on the basis that she "she shrunk from the caresses of even the husband she adored", and that her social and conversational behaviour didn't conform to norms/social mores.
2. Attachment Disorder: on the basis of her early life experience. Her mother had gone mad following the deaths of several of her children, and Eliza was the result of an attempt to cure her by getting her pregnant. And on the basis of her innocently naïve bluntness about her husband's loss of talents, her avoidance of touch and the nature and mode of her conversation.
3. She was a healthy, intelligent and educated woman who was massively stressed by a combination of the limitations society and culture imposed on women at that point in time AND her unusual personal circumstances.
4. A possibility that I haven't thought of/am unaware of.
5. A combination of some or all the above.

So a range of speculative diagnoses, a range of possibilities. And I'm left pondering

1. Why I feel the need – particularly given my total lack of medical credentials – to try to work this out.
2. The fact that I have focused on three potential diagnoses that, while not exactly "fashionable diseases", are, at present, floating around in public consciousness.
3. What it means for a lay person to try and diagnose someone. How far is it about about labelling or pigeonholing and/or trying to help/support and/or understanding and/or making allowances for, knowing how to react to, making judgements about – or being morally judgemental of – the individual we are trying to pin a diagnosis on? What does it mean about how we see ourselves in relation to others?
4. How different individuals react differently to the same diagnosis: how for me a diagnosis could feel like a relief, a liberation, the first step to managing or curing a condition, while for someone else, it could feel like stigmatising label, a failure , simply, confirm a belief that all is decaying.
5. If one is researching and writing a biography and its subject's physical or psychological condition has a significant impact on their life and experiences, can one, should one avoid thinking about a diagnosis? Or, is it not the speculation, the exploration, that's problematic, but the drive – where it exists – to prove or argue one possible diagnosis over the others?
6. And how has what it means to make a diagnosis – both during the lifetime of an individual, and posthumously – changed over the centuries?

I'd be very interested to hear people's views…

A bit more Eliza

In May 1784 when Hayley's play Lord Russel is performed in Chichester – and he's in London, we find Eliza attending a rehearsal and, not only giving the actors notes, but also suggesting, in a letter to her husband, a change or two in the text…

She also has an active social life. Most days when she's not breakfasting, dining or staying with friends and relatives, Eliza seems to receive at least one visitor – often several. One of the people she sees socially (and doesn't seem very fond of) is Mrs Frankland. Mrs (Lady) Frankland was a celebrated rags-to-riches case: a beautiful young bare-foot American barmaid in a tattered frock, who attracted the attentions of an English aristocrat who educated her, took her as a mistress and eventually – after she dug him out of the rubble he was buried under during an earthquake in Lisbon – married her.

She spent the last few years of her life in Chichester where, years after her first husband died, she married a wealthy banker called John Drew.
More about her here.

"she seem’d fitter to whine her good Man into the Act of feeding her child with pap than to fire his Spirit to the perpetration of Murder"

On Saturday 3 November 1787, William Hayley, George Romney and the Rev. Dr Warner went to watch Mrs Siddons play Lady Macbeth. Here's the review (of her performance, the subsequent farce and, um, the women occupying the boxes) Hayley wrote, the following day, in a letter to his wife Eliza…

 As I think it will amuse you to receive a full Account of our theatrical Amusement last Night I begin scribbling today to inform you that the dear Painter & Divine attended me to see Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth – 

The Pittore arriv’d at my Cell by 5 oclock to drink his Coffee with me; as soon as that short Ceremony was finish’d we proceeded to the Pit & luckily got excellent places three rows from the Orchestra — our old Acquaintance Mr Smith play’d Macbeth as He plays every thing, like a Gentleman & a Man of Intelligence, without the rare Gift of enchanting Genius – Mrs Siddons in the two first acts disappointed me much, & was infinitely inferior to my departed Idols Mrs Pritchard & Mrs Yates - By attempting to throw diabolical Spirit into her Countenance she made it Grotesque, & she display’d a most awkward Gesture with her elbow which put me in mind of a poor hawk in a Garden, attempting to fly with a Cut Wing. Her Features were to my Feelings so entirely out of Harmony with her Character that I was saying to myself every Moment
Her Eyes refute the Language of her Tongue 

Her Face indeed had the delicate air of a Woman just brought to bed, & she seem’d fitter to whine her good Man into the Act of feeding her child with pap than to fire his Spirit to the perpetration of Murder – But if her first Scenes were so unfortunate, the progress & close of her Part made us very ample Amends - The Banquet Scene she played with admirable dignity & Grace & her new dress as Queen was supremely magnificent & becoming - it was so much so that Romney suppos’d it the design of Sir Joshua — I have not yet mentioned the Passage where she most delighted us – it was the divine Scene of her soliloquy in sleep - I never saw in my Life a more perfect piece of Acting – Her night dress was admirably contriv’d for effect – by a sort of fine Bandage under her chin she gave to her Countenance an Expression perfectly new & her Features display’d indeed the royal Murderess worn almost to death by her Remorse — In this marvellous Scene she was many many degrees suprerior to the two great Actresses who in my Opinion surpass’d her (as I have told you) in the first part of the Play — Kemble play’d Macduff very well & shone particularly in the famous Scene of receiving the Tidings that his Wife & Children were massacred – We were tempted to stay the Farce for the sake of seeing Mrs Jordans in the Sultan - it is a little Musical & laughable Performance form’d on the story of Roxolane in Marmontel, the pert little capricious enchanting Slave who captivates the Grand Signor avec un petit nez retroussé — the comic acting of Mrs Jordans was as perfect in its way as the best Scene of Mrs Siddons & threw us all into some hearty Laughs — My reverend Neighbour & I walk’d home together as the Night was uncommonly fine, & tho I suffer’d a little in the Eyes from the Heat of the House yet this suffering was less than usual from the precaution of sitting near the cool Stage & altogether I have escap’d much better than I expected — The House was full but the Boxes exhibited an assemblage of the plainest women I believe that were ever collected in a Theatre so much so that I could not help saying to an Italian Gentleman who was talking near me in that Language that He must not judge of our Country Women by so unfortunate a Sample—

Eliza in Hayley's Memoirs… & in reality

Despite his best efforts – and I think he tried to be fair – you don't get much of a sense of Eliza as a person from William Hayley's Memoirs. Early on, he declares that

The warm language of poetry could hardly bestow too much praise on the heart and mind of the young Eliza; and the poet, who, in the character of her brother, had taken a pleasure in cultivating them with the purest fraternal regard, took still higher pleasure in praising them, when a series of utterly unexpected incidents had made the nominal sister, his wife.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time that he mentions his role in educating her.

Throughout, he calls her "his pitiable Eliza" and refers, again and again, to her mental health issues and his continued attempts to support her, even after they've separated. "The letters of Hayley", he writes (his Memoirs are in the third person):

to this very singular and highly meritorious mortal, afford a striking proof with what incessant tenderness and solicitude he endeavoured to counteract the infelicity of her constitution.

He also includes some comparatively anodyne extracts from her letters, some of which give a sniff of her archness, but none of her wit or sharpness. And, for some reason – unless I've missed the reference – he doesn't mention that she brought out two publications of her own.

The first was a translation of the Marchioness de Lambert's Essays on Friendship & Old Age, which came out in 1780 – the same year Mary Cockerell gave birth to Hayley's son, Thomas Alphonso.

Her introductory letter is followed by a poem. Both are addressed to William Melmoth who, in the introduction to his 1777 translation of Cicero's essay on friendship, had omitted to mention de Lambert "in speaking of the distinguished modern writers on Friendship", thus leading Eliza "though not intentionally, into those perils, that attend a novice in publication".

The poem is workmanlike, light-of-touch. In it, Eliza praises Melmoth's "soft Virgilian prose"…

 Whose beauties will outlive
The ruder verse I vainly frame,
To lovely LAMBERT’S injured name
     Full retribution give!

 and concludes in a manner both internationalist and feminist …

And France exulting, ranks her name
With those who constitute the same
     Of her Augustan Age.

Britain applauds so just a meed:
Let female worth, she cries, succeed,
     Where’er that worth may shine!
Let France unenvy’d boast her share
Of glory from her letter’d Fair,
     Since MONTAGU is mine!

Eliza's second work, written in 1788, but not published until 1796 – the year before she died – and then, anonymously, is the  cynical and "anti-Ciceronian" The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship: An Essay for the Times.

It is dedicated to a Mrs. N. "I determined," Eliza writes in the dedication,

to try my long meditated attack upon Friendship; trusting that it would dissipate the cold spleen with which I was possessed. Once embarked in such an undertaking, I found it expedient not to turn my hostile thoughts towards you, lest they should bend from their purpose before their task was accomplished.

"I pretend not", she claims,

to reason as a logician, but merely to conjecture as a woman. Relying therefore on that extensive indulgence, which is so liberally allowed to the weakness of my sex, I shall endeavour in the following pages to draw a comparison of the two sentiments of Friendship and Acquaintance.

It's an intriguing work: Eliza's argument isn't always easy to follow, and her analogies – like this one, for instance

A friendly letter which fatigues can be thrown into the fire, but friendly companions who are embroiled are not so easily disentangled.

– don't always quite work: which of the embroiled friends here is represented by the letter, and which by the thrower? Or, could one be the thrower and the other the fire?

Anyway, that's all I'll say for now, but I'll return to The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship in a later post. There's a lot to unpick in there…

Eliza Hayley's letters

According to William Hayley, his first wife, Eliza, was a poor, "pitiable" thing. The "fluctuation" of her "spirits was rapid to an alarming degree" and she suffered from "marvellous mental infelicities".  Whilst her early letters give a hint of this – scarcely a paragraph goes by without a mention of her spirits, ailments minor or major (her own and other people's: one letter is almost exclusively devoted to the effects and treatment of thread worms) and the time she's been spending with local doctors – they're also lively, opinionated and, in places, deliciously acid.

While William is away, a friend "presses" Eliza "exceedingly" to come for dinner, but she decides to decline because Mrs Bull, who's staying with them "absolutely makes me sick". Although, on the upside, "she has been very ill & low with a sore throat so I hope she is less talkative…"

The next letter describes how she and Sally Steele (the daughter, I think, of William Hayley's godfather) have, after a major falling out, now returned their relationship to a civil footing. Eliza "heartily rejoiced at having ended a very unpleasant affair (that has given me infinite vexation) entirely to my satisfaction." One problem with this quarrel was that it looked like William's close friend John Thornton was about to propose to Sally.

Eliza addresses this issue head on. She doesn't think it's right for Thornton "to sacrifice his Happiness to a private Pique" of hers and seeks to assure him that, whilst she and Sally could never be bosom buddies, "I dare say we shall like each other as much as is necessary."

She's slightly more vehement - and no less acerbic - on the matter in a subsequent letter. "I absolutely wish," she writes, for  Thornton "to marry Sally (if he means to marry at all) that he may not add an other such to our acquaintance."

Eliza by George Romney