Catherine Cookson’s diary of despair
A previously unpublished memoir written by the author shortly before she died reveals her devastating four miscarriages and the nervous breakdown that nearly destroyed her
AS the old maxim goes, you should always write about what you know, and now it seems the hardships experienced by the heroines in Catherine Cookson’s novels were closer to home than her devoted readers ever knew.
One of the most prolific authors of the 20th century, before she died in 1998, aged 91, Cookson had secretly begun writing a memoir.
Recently discovered in the attic of the Edwardian home near Newcastle she shared with her husband Tom, Before I Go has now been published and gives a heart-wrenching glimpse into her personal life.
She reveals the four devastating miscarriages which meant she never had the child she longed for, her constant battles with illness caused by a blood disorder inherited from her father, her love for Tom, and the solace she sought in writing as she battled depression.
Although Cookson had penned previous autobiographies, including Our Kate, none of them touched upon the true personal anguish she experienced right from being a little girl.
Born Catherine Ann McMullen in 1906 in England’s industrial North-East, she was raised by her grandparents and believed her alcoholic mother, Kate, was her sister until she was six years old.
She left school at 14 to work in a workhouse laundry in South Shields before moving to Hastings at 23 to run a similar laundry. There she met an Irish woman named Annie “Nan” Smith and lived with her and Kate.
By 1933 Catherine bought her first house and took in lodgers to boost her income. In 1937 she fell in love with one of them, a teacher and Oxford graduate named Tom Cookson, something Nan took great exception to.
COOKSON wrote in her diary: “Before the war my personal life was a shambles. My mother was with me and drinking heavily. My so-called friend, Annie ‘Nan’ Smith, was making life hell because I had fallen in love with a young schoolmaster called Tom Cookson.
“We wanted to marry but I was afraid that if we did I would find him up the alley with his throat slit. Nan Smith was 11 years older than me and I had looked upon her as a mother when we first met because I had never really known a mother’s love.
“Kate didn’t come on to my horizon until I was almost six years old. I didn’t want her as a mother because she drank.
“So when Nan gave me presents and would run from here to hell for me, she seemed like the mother figure that I had never previously enjoyed. Her laughter turned to rage when she discovered I was interested in this lad. Nan gave me an ultimatum: if I went out with Tom we would find her hanging.”
Undeterred, Cookson married Tom in 1940 and two months later she was pregnant but tragically the baby was stillborn.
She wrote: “I carried my baby for six months. When Tom helped deliver his son on December 7, 1940, I was ready to die. My mother’s comment on my loss in her letter was merely to say, of Tom: ‘Well, he’s proved himself.’
“Tom was called up in 1941 and the chasm opened up in me again. I’d known loneliness before but this feeling was devastating, overwhelming and I was pregnant again.”
Tragically Cookson miscarried again at six months and recalled of her second son: “He didn’t get the chance of a life. He wasn’t allowed a grave because he wasn’t baptised. I felt so indignant for he had looked so sweet the first and only time I saw him.”
After Cookson suffered the loss of a third baby, she began to show symptoms of a nervous breakdown that would consume the next 12 years.
“The form my breakdown took was aggression. I wanted to do something terrible in payment for what had been dealt out to me in my 39 years. My mind was now a hell filled with hate, fear and a desire for retaliation. I lost all feeling of love; even my feelings for Tom went. I had to tell him so but he understood.”
Cookson began writing to cope with her depression and her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. She went on to write more than 100 books – selling 120million copies worldwide.
Famously her books were the most loaned by libraries for 17 years and in 1976 she and Tom moved from Hastings to her beloved North-East.
She received an OBE in 1985 and was made a Dame in 1993 both for her literature and her large donations to causes in the North-East and blood disorders research. Yet beneath all her literary successes there was enduring sadness. When Cookson died in June 1998, Tom passed away just 19 days later.
He left their £20million savings to charities to help those who were suffering just as his beloved wife had all her life.
Unbeknown to her readers until now, it seems that Catherine Cookson’s own resilience in the face of great adversity was the inspiration for the stoic fictitious heroines she created.
To order Before I Go by Catherine Cookson, Lake Union Publishing, £7.99 (includes £1 postage) call the Express Bookshop with details on 01872 562310 or send a cheque made payable to The Express Bookshop to: Catherine Cookson Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.com