Whispers from the library at West Horsley Place

 My latest piece ‘Whispers from the library’ has just been installed at West Horsley Place as part of the ‘Hear my voice’ exhibition. At the start of the project, the artists taking part were invited to a tour of the house and gardens and asked to respond with a textile work inspired by the venue and giving a voice to someone linked to the place. My piece was inspired by the early sensation novel Paul Ferroll written by Caroline Clive in 1854 and the subject of a letter found in a copy of the book in the library at West Horsley Place. The letter was written by Caroline to Richard Monckton-Milnes, a previous owner of the house, the creator of the Crewe book collection, and an advocate for women writers at the time.

 

The book begins with Paul Ferroll murdering his wife so that he can marry another woman and ends with him escaping from prison after being condemned to hang for the crime. The net curtain acts as a sieve trapping whispers from the book in the library. The bobbin lace represents sound waves emanating from the library and the embroidered lines capture the voice of Paul Ferroll’s wife as she narrates her side of the story. Her words are a cry for justice.

 

The Victorian readers of the book were confused by its dubious morality in allowing a convicted murderer, who stabbed his wife in cold blood while she was asleep in her bed, to evade justice. Caroline Clive felt obliged to add a concluding chapter to the fourth edition of the book in which Paul Ferroll dies in exile, thus allowing natural justice to prevail where the law of the land had been subverted. It is this final chapter that is the topic of the letter in the library. However, many readers were not satisfied with that ending either and she was obliged to write a prequel entitled Why Paul Ferroll killed his wife. It is in this book that we learn some of the wife’s story and the love triangle that underlies the crime, told from his point of view, however her voice can now be heard in the whispers from the library at West Horsley Place.

 The exhibition opens next week and runs until the end of October (4 August-31 October). Other artists exhibiting include Machiko Agano, Beverly Ayling-Smith, Anne Jackson and Alice Kettle. The curators are Lesley Millar, Alice Kettle and Clare Clinton.