North West Reads Book 23: The Tutor by Andrea Chapin

Lufanwal Hall was not one of the grandest houses in Lancashire. It was seat of the de L’Isle family, whose ancestor had arrived in England with William the Conqueror and this line had served monarch and country down the generations. The sixteenth century, however, had proved to be a challenge for the de L’Isle family and many others in Lancashire as England had moved from being a Catholic to a Protestant country after Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Lancashire remained a Catholic stronghold and the de L’Isle family would suffer the consequences of this dangerous and unsettling century as the monasteries were dissolved and any dissent fiercely and brutally put down.

Katherine de L’Isle had suffered more than most from the upheavals of the Reformation. Her family had been killed in a house fire that she had barely survived, scarred by the flames as she escaped her burning home. This had been the aftermath of the Earl’s rebellion of 1569, a direct challenge to the rule of Elizabeth I. At only 11 years old and now an orphan, Katherine had come to the home of her uncle, Sir Edward de L’Isle, her father’s older brother. Here at Lufanwal she had grown up, had married a much older man, had a child who died young and a miscarriage before being widowed. Now at the age of 31 she had settled into a quiet life. New suitors had been brought to her, but she had turned each one down, all had something that did not suit her.

Her late father had noted that there was something that could not be tamed in Katherine, she had an independent spirit, and, in fact, a good mind. This was something Sir Edward picked up on when she came to Lufanwal. Katherine loved his library, one of the largest and best stocked in the North. He taught her to read then taught her Latin and Greek, the sort of education that was generally only given to royal women. This love of books and learning created a much closer relationship with her uncle than with his wife, Matilda, who had always been a little distant with Katherine. She was Sir Edward’s second wife. He had three children by her, Ned, Isabel and Grace. His sons by his first marriage, Harold and Richard, also lived at the hall with their wives, Mary and Ursula. Katherine would help with the younger children but in her own time she would go to the library, a favourite comforting space.

Sir Edward and his household practiced their Catholic faith clandestinely; the hall contained a hidden chapel and several priest holes. Their priest, Father Daulton, hid in plain sight as Master Daulton. The price Sir Edward and the family paid for their loyalty to their faith not only reputational. Sir Edward had had to sell land to pay recusancy fines and, as Catholics, their loyalty to the crown was always open to question; he had also suffered a year in prison under suspicion of involvement in plots in support of Mary Queen of Scot’s claim to the English throne. For Jesuit priests the danger was all the greater as if caught a traitor’s death awaited them. When Father Daulton was found murdered, and not for his money as his purse was still on his body, the family fears the attention from the authorities and potential persecutions and arrests. This death marked the beginning of a time of crisis for the whole household, but for Katherine this period, the latter half of the year 1590, would bring her own personal upheaval as the cohesion of the rest of the household began to disintegrate.

Katherine liked Father Daulton and misses him. She had been able to talk to him, he had been a good man. Walking the grounds, Katherine enters the old Chapel which had been turned into a schoolroom with all its previous Catholic trappings removed, and wall paintings whitewashed over. Thinking that she was alone she had repeated her father’s comment about her being like a wild horse before noticing that a man was lying down in the chapel. He is a stranger who doesn’t introduce himself but facetiously comments on what she said aloud. Katherine asks who he is, and he replies that he is a horse trader from Warwickshire; Katherine leaves the Chapel and seeks out her uncle to report the presence of this stranger. He says that he will ask Quib, his servant, about this. Daulton’s death was a reminder of the dangerous times in which they lived, and they had to be cautious around strangers. However, this stranger was in the employ of the house as a tutor to the children, as Katherine discovers the next time she walks the grounds.

The sound of singing was coming from the Chapel which Katherine goes to investigate. Amongst the scholars there was the ‘horse trader’ singing an inappropriate song about marriage to widows. He gives his name, Will Shakespeare, a self-declared rascal and rogue. It seems to Katherine that this Will Shakespeare likes to challenge and shock people. This behaviour should have been a red flag to Katherine, and at first she is not at all impressed with the new tutor. He carried himself like a lord, far above his station in life, and some of his comments to Katherine are laced with double-entendres, both disrespectful and inappropriate. It was his comment regarding her reading Plutarch, no knights and maidens in his work and, in Shakespear’s opinion, far to rigorous and writer for women, that angers Katherine who then proceeds to put him in his place. He was brought up sharp by how much more learned she was than him.

Unfortunately, Katherine becomes intrigued and fascinated with him, especially after he had declared that he was really a poet, not a tutor. Katherine loved poetry as did Sir Edward, it was a love that created a special bond between them. But Sir Edward had now left Lufanwal and had fled abroad. Another priest had been found dead, executed and his head put on a pike on the Preston Road. Fearing a crackdown Sir Edward had left for the safety of the continent. With him went his steadying influence. Family discipline began to break down in the absence of the head of the household. Matilda was unable to exert the same power as her husband and neither Richard nor Harold were able to step into his shoes. Katherine had lost the one person in her family that she was closest to and who could furnish her with good advice and support. His absence reveals how isolated she was as a family member, brought into the household but not accepted by all as a part of the family. She was essentially the poor relative they had to care and provide for who had repeatedly refused to take herself off their hands by taking new husband to support her. Katherine had no fortune and no dowry, and Sir Edward’s absence brings home to her that she was more alone and vulnerable that she had realised.

Maybe this was why Katherine began to be drawn to the young poet, a man keen to learn and improve the art form he had chosen as his career. She challenges him to write better poetry than Philip Sidney, who he had disdainfully dismissed as repetitive. She reads his sonnets, suggests improvements to them; but the teacher and student relationships shifts to one more daring and intimate, and Katherine’s infatuation with Shakespeare grows and deepens. She knows he is married and has three children and can see how he mocks his social superiors. At a family meal he appears in fine clothes that he may have used in his acting job or may have acquired from another rich patron. This contravened sumptuary laws. But Katherine does not heed these infractions as all those who fall in love unwisely invariably do. Such is her obsession that she barely notices John Smythson, the architect who has been employed to build a new wing on Lufanwal. His hands, unlike Shakespear’s, are rough and his face lined but his manner is kind, gentle and thoughtful; in his presence Katherine realises she feels safe.

As the servant gossip about Katherine’s visits to Shakespeare, the de L’Isle family face further disruption and upset when Richard allows three women accused of witchcraft to be housed in the cellars. They were being marched to Lancaster Castle for trial. He felt that this would curry favour with the authorities and diminish any suspicion regarding their loyalty to the crown in the wake of Sir Edward’s flight abroad. The family, however, are terrified of the women and fear for their safety. Ursula is particularly affected by their presence. Later, when her dog dies, she is convinced it was caused by the witches cursing it. Her mental health declines, and her behaviour becomes erratic and alarming; the servants say that Lufanwal is cursed. This was a family in crisis, one that was full of secrets, and these secrets would have tragic outcomes.

There is some joy, however, when Ned, who had been living in Italy, returned. He and Katherine were close, and she had missed him. It was not long before he knew of her acquaintance with Shakespeare, and he was not the first to advise her that this man was a ‘lewd’ fellow and not a good man for her. By now Katherine was besotted with him. Shakespeare was writing a poem inspired by the classical story by Ovid about Venus and Adonis, one that Katherine knew well. The parallels between Shakespeare’s retelling of the story and Katherine’s troubled and confusing relationship with him were not lost on her. She cannot stop reading his work, cannot break with him even when he causes her pain. But she has to confront the evidence before her, that he gives gifts to other women, and makes promises to them that she knows he will never keep.

Katherine, possibly for the first time in her life, is truly in love, and shows all the vulnerability and confusion of that state. Shakespeare’s quick wit, repartee and showiness covers flaws in his character and Katherine fails, for a time, to acknowledge his self-centred ambition and how he uses her to forward it. She gives her heart too freely and the family are too preoccupied with their own troubles to protect her; but at least she does have the support of the younger members of the household, both family and servants, who persevere and work to turn her from him and towards a better future.

It only took the removal of Sir Edward, the rock that held the family together, for the hidden underlying problems of the de L’Isle family to surface. The religious tensions only add to their problems. Sir Edward’s absence left Katherine vulnerable to a man both wily and conniving, but this forces Katherine to confront the life she had fallen into and her feelings that she had allowed the rest of her youth to pass her by, that she had been just existing and not living. She comes to accept that there would be no future with Will Shakespeare, but the feelings he had aroused in her would spur her on to one more deserving of her love, her kindness and her intelligence.