THE KATES HILL PRESS, DUDLEY,
ENGLAND
SYNOPSIS of THE
HAIRY MOUSE by CLARICE HACKETT
Why does Josiah Hackett hate his
son? And why is he plotting with Jabez Darby for a marriage with Harriet,
Jabez's daughter, although she is a lot older than Philip.
This is a story of two industrialists
and their families, dwelling in the Black Country at the turn of the late19/20th
century. Josiah Hackett owns a brickyard with a claypit of phenomenal
proportions; while Jabez Darby is making a fortune from a wall-tie he invented
and put into manufacture. The two are planning to sink a mineshaft in
properties they own which lie alongside. If their offspring marry it will keep
the concern in the family
Phillip already has a
sweetheart, the sister of one of his Oxford friends. His grandfather had left
him the money to go to university. He doesn't want to marry Harriet. 'She wears
corsets' he told his father. Philip said he wanted to marry a girl, not a
woman. Girls didn't wear corsets.
Harriet was a career woman, born
out of her century. She was the reason for her father's success in business;
she more or less ran the whole show. She had no soul mate but could see the
unsuitability of marrying Phillip who had only just begun to call her Harriet;
previously it had always been Miss Darby. They get a lot of pressure from the
two older men but agree to strive to overcome this.
Soon Harriet is to meet Patrick
Finney an educated Irishman, with whom she falls hopelessly in love. But
Patrick has left a past behind him in Ireland and is in no position to respond
to Harriet's obvious feelings.
Maggie, a Welshwoman who keeps a
lodging house, holds a bible class in her kitchen, but this is in reality a
séance, which at that time was against the law. Phillip, Harriet and several others
from the chapel are excommunicated from their places of worship when it is
discovered they have attended one of Maggie’s séances, but Harriet doesn't
mind. Her mother who had died some months before had come through at the first
meeting. The message she gave spelt hope to Harriet who was determined to marry
Patrick. The talk of marriage between Philip and Harriet was definitely off
when Philip's sweetheart Miriam announced she was pregnant.
What was the mystery of
Maggie? Why did she show such a great
regard for Philip?
Doris, housemaid to Josiah
Hackett could have said, but she came from country-stock in Shropshire and knew
how to hold her tongue.
Meanwhile work on the mine was
not progressing, the weather was very wet and flooded the low-lying fields
where the coal lay. Jabez has a bad stroke, probably due to the stress about
the mine. Patrick was the only person
who could do anything with him at this time, and this began a new relationship
between them.
Josiah is at last forced to
confess the truth to Philip. His wife’s baby died three days after being born
and was exchanged for Maggie’s baby. Why then has Philip got the birthmark of
the Hacketts, a small mole shaped like a hairy mouse? This gives Phillip the upper hand, why has he got the mark if
Josiah didn’t conceive him?
Miriam has twins less than a
year her first last baby. They have to buy a larger house.
Harriet despite many traumas
finally marries Patrick and then gets desperate for a baby of her own. She
adopts a little girl, the child of Patrick's old sweetheart and his brother,
and then finds she is pregnant after all. Longing to see her new son she sees a
big resemblance in him to her late father, and rejects the baby right away.
But time has a way of moving on,
time and life sort out their problems and with the death of Queen Victoria
marking the end of an era, the families disperse and go their separate ways.
These are the main characters of The Hairy Mouse. A true social history of the
Black Country runs through this story, and it also embraces the invention of
the first British petrol driven motorcars.
Clarice Hackett. 2003