South Coast historian Duncan du Bois has produced a new take on life in the colonial days of Alexandra County in the form of a novel titled Liaisons – Life in a colonial county.
Contextualised within the period 1860-1875, it is based on the fortunes and hardships of two fictitious immigrant families and their interactions within the sugar-growing community.
Besides liaisons that involve tragedy, love, sex, violence, murder, attempted rape and near-drowning in the Mkomanzi River, issues such as women’s rights, social conventions, indentured labour, predatory capitalism and racial divisions are examined in the context of their time. Emerging from some potentially fatal experiences is the heroine of the tale – Anne Prescott.
The heroine does not emerge until several dramas have occurred. In fact Anne Prescott, as the youngest Prescott, is almost neglected in the early chapters and that is by accident, not design.
Writing the book took Duncan 75 days.
“The only planning I did was at the outset to create the two fictitious families and their origins – in Yorkshire – from where many of the Byrne settlers came I pored over a school atlas to find the name of a town that I liked and found Dewsbury,” he said.
“Looked up its history so as to fit my fictitious Prescott family into it. So the references to the industrial revolution are all correct.”
Liaisons is a critical fabulation – that is, it employs credible fictional invention to fill the gaps or silences alongside presences in the historical record.
As such, Liaisons is a gentle dip into circumstances that prevailed in the Umzinto, Park Rynie, Scottburgh and Umkomaas areas over 150 years ago.
“I found institutions such as the Anglican Church in Umzinto, which I have visited, it and the fictitious pub called the Cutty Sark, were useful venues in fleshing out issues and in promoting dialogue. Regarding dialogue, I adhered to Archer’s style: keep it to a minimum.”
“With Liaisons, I learned how to take a small historical development which I had read in my archives and make a lot of mileage out of it by tossing it around among some of my characters in the fictitious Cutty Sark pub.”
Liaisons is a fraction short of 88 000 words. Starting a new chapter was mostly difficult for the author because he felt the need to switch to another aspect of the story or era.
“One needs to keep servicing various aspects within the wider story rather than just hitting on the main characters or main thread. In Liaisons I had plenty of scope in terms of actual historical developments,” he said.
“I was careful to keep them short and directly linked to a character or to a discussion in the Cutty Sark pub. I also used letters to the press as a means of providing critique on the social conventions of the age.”
Duncan is also the author of Sugar and Settlers: A history of the Natal South Coast 1850-1910.
Liaisons is available from The Bookshop in Scott Street, Scottburgh. The author also hopes to be able to add Ramsgate Stationers as an outlet for the book.
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