47. Jane and Mary Findlater — Crossriggs with Julie and Shawna Benson

KIM ASKEW: Hey, everyone! Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I’m Kim Askew…

AMY HELMES: And I’m Amy Helmes… When you think of literary sisters, Kim, who springs to mind for you?

KIM: That’s pretty easy. The Brontes: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Right?

AMY: Right. But that said, they never really collaborated on writing novels. The sisters we’ll be discussing today actually wrote books together in addition to each publishing novels on their own. They were literary celebrities in their day (counting the likes of Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling among their admirers). One of their joint efforts — Crossriggs — is considered to be their finest work. (It’s the book we’ll be focusing on today.)

KIM: Yes, and in the book, there’s a scene where there’s a sailing trip to an island off the coast of Scotland, and it’s been suggested that it likely influenced Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Though the sisters wrote several bestsellers in their day, Amy and I had never heard of Jane and Mary Findlater before we started this podcast. I’m guessing many of our listeners haven’t either. Amy, you and I know what it’s like to write novels as a partnership… it’s not all that common, actually. But I can imagine that writing with one’s sister comes with its own unique advantages and disadvantages.

AMY: Yeah, one would guess. But hey, let’s not guess… let’s get a real “sister act” to weigh in on this, shall we?

KIM: I love it. We’ve got screenwriter siblings Shawna and Julie Benson with us today to weigh in on the Findlater sisters.

AMY: There couldn’t be more perfect guests for chatting about today’s lost ladies, and I can’t wait to introduce them, so let’s raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music]

AMY: Our guests today are screenwriting sisters Shawna and Julie Benson. You may know their work from the CW’s critically-acclaimed series, “The 100,” or Netflix’s Wu Assassins. They are co-producers and writers on the forthcoming Nickelodeon animated Star Trek: Prodigy series, which I can’t wait to watch and also get my kids hooked on. The Benson sisters have also written a couple of titles for DC Comics: “Green Arrow'' and “Bat Girl and the Birds of Prey.” 

KIM: (Oh my gosh, we’ve had some cool guests but you … you’re pretty cool.) Clearly they’re sci-fi and comic book nerds, but they are also classic lit lovers, as well. And having penned episodes of the Emmy-award winning series Emma Approved (it’s a follow-up to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries for all you Jane Austen fans among us), they’re kind of perfect for this. 

AMY: I basically picked up Julie in a bar almost 15 years ago. (She’s laughing when I’m saying this.) We were both waiting for our respective other friends and we were sitting at the bar watching Jeopardy!, which was on the TV above the bar, and we got to talking. And I soon discovered that she and Shawna are not just Midwest transplants after my own heart, but they are also two of the coolest, funniest chicks I’ve ever met. So ladies, thank you for joining us!

JULIE BENSON: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having us! We are big fans of the show. I think I've listened to every episode now. I love it; I'm obsessed. And it gives me this long list of books that I accrue each time that I need to read. So it's also giving me anxiety. Thanks for that.

SHAWNA BENSON:It's been a long time since I've been able to read something that wasn't just for work.

KIM: Right? 

AMY: Okay, so I can think of plenty of brothers in Hollywood when I think of sibling teams, but not as many sisters spring to mind. Are you guys kind of like the proverbial unicorns in Hollywood? Like a sister team? 

JULIE: Oh, I mean, yes, we’re a little bit of a rare breed. But we have met the other sister writing teams — we’ve made an effort to kind of go out and find them. So there are a few of us, and we try to get to know each other. You know, we've always joked, “What if all of the sister writing teams came together and made a show? Like, made a series?”

KIM: Oh, yeah, I love it.

SHAWNA: Most people probably don't know maybe all the TV writing sister acts, but they might know one of the more famous film writing sister acts, which is the Ephron sisters, right? Nora and Delia wrote You've Got Mail and Bewitched together and then of course there are other sisters who are also novelists. There's four of them. So Amy and Hallie were also writers which I didn't know until I was researching.

JULIE: Wait, those are there other sisters?

SHAWNA: Yeah. Nora, Delia, Amy and Hallie. 

JULIE: There you go!

KIM: So I'm guessing that like Amy and I, you two maybe hadn't heard of Jane and Mary Findlater before now.

JULIE: We had not. It was so cool to see a powerhouse writing sister team like this.

SHAWNA: Who wasn’t a Bronte.

AMY: Exactly. In researching them, I believe that you two share some similarities with them. Let me just throw out a couple of details, and you can weigh in here: So Mary Findlater was born in 1865, and her little sister, Jane, was born 18 months later in 1866… so they were close in age.

JULIE: Shawna and I are also close in age. We were born three years apart on the same day. So it doesn't get much closer than that. (Well, I guess technically it does: twins.)

KIM: Yeah, right, exactly. But the same day? That’s pretty cool!

JULIE: Yeah, the same day, and Shawna has never let me live it down for raining on her third birthday.

SHAWNA: Yeah, she's the gift that keeps on giving, I say, and, you know, when we were young, we got a lot of joint birthday gifts…

JULIE: That totally sucked.

SHAWNA: … But of course, now that we’re older, it’s fun, actually, to have the same birthday. We enjoy it.

AMY: Okay, next fact about the Findlaters: They lived together for the entirety of their lives — they were together for 80 years and were only apart from each other for very brief spells twice in their lives.

JULIE: We had been living together in a condo in Hollywood, pretty much since we moved to L.A., and it was because,you know, rent is so high, and we were writing together. It just kind of made sense. It was always supposed to be short-term, but like 17 years later…

SHAWNA: Ahem... it's 19.

JULIA: Okay, 19 years later (and you wonder why I'm still single). But don't worry, we didn't move too far apart. In January, I literally moved downstairs in the same building. So now we have distance, you know, but I can't imagine 80 years! 

KIM: So wait, are you also Scottish? Because that would be really perfect.

JULIE: I'm fairly certain when we did the Color genetics test, not only did I ruin any chance of being able to commit crimes in the future and getting away with them scot-free, but we were shocked to discover that our ancestors were almost entirely from this one tiny circle on the map that basically was like UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and other parts of eastern Europe, potentially.

SHAWNA: I like to dye my hair red, but as far as we know, we don’t have any actual gingers in the family, alas.

AMY: We’re just going to say you’re Scottish. “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” (Congrats to any listener that gets that reference.) Okay, so getting back to the Findlaters and their Scottish heritage, they were born in Lochearnhead, Scotland. Their father was a minister… their mother, incidentally, was a bit of a writer, too. She and her own sister actually worked together to translate a book of German hymns. So the sister-act thing ran in the family.

KIM: And the Findlaters’ parents were older when they got married, but (this is important with respect to the book that we’re talking about, Crossriggs) their marriage was actually a true love match. They were said to be very affectionate and happy together. We’ll circle back to that later.

AMY: From what I’ve read, both girls were very pretty. They inherited their father’s dark, Mediterranean features, which was unusual for a Scotsman. (So maybe not gingers!) Actually, there was a little scandal having to do with this, though. So Mary and Jane, when they were adults, they learned that their grandmother (their father's mother) had actually gotten pregnant thanks to a Spanish pirate who had come around during a storm. 

JULIE: That’s incredible.

AMY: Yeah, I’m picturing Johnny Depp. Like a swarthy, hot pirate, right?

JULIE: Yeah, I just have to get it in my, you know, the mental picture. Okay, I’m ready. Yeah, all right.

AMY: The fact that they were anecdotally descended from a Spanish pirate sort of explained why the girls had darker features than most of the locals. And needless to say, the sisters were pretty stunned by this revelation. Right? Who wouldn’t be?

KIM: I’m shocked right now, just hearing about it.

AMY: Yeah, even just meeting a pirate would be very shocking. Mary and Jane did a little digging, and they eventually uncovered some information that sort of cast doubt on the pirate story (surprise, surprise). But it did open up another can of worms about their father’s true paternity and they ultimately came to accept that he was likely “illegitimately” conceived as the saying goes… 

KIM: So basically, they blamed it on the pirate. 

AMY: It’s a better story.

KIM: “The pirate did it.” Yes. Okay, but anyway, if you want drama, there’s actually more. As Amy mentioned, both sisters were quite fetching, and Mary was even called “the prettiest girl in the world” by some locals. She got engaged when she was a young woman, but was warned by a family friend that it would, “be unwise to expect a relationship with the kindest husband to be as harmonious and perfect as that which existed between her and Jane.” So Mary began having serious misgivings about getting married, because she knew it would mean being separated from Jane. She ultimately called off the engagement. Her fiance was so furious that he threw the engagement ring into the fire!

JULIE: Mary did the right thing, because clearly her fiance wasn’t sufficient because who throws a ring in a fire besides Frodo?

KIM: Totally! There had to be a Lord of the Rings reference.

JULIE: Okay, so I can totally relate to, you know, “the prettiest girl in the world” thing. Like, I deal with that on a daily basis. It’s really hard to live with, you guys. But no, seriously, I get that feeling of like, you better find somebody who gets along with your sibling. That makes sense.

SHAWNA: Might I refer you to the classic song “Sisters” from the movie White Christmas, which sums up the philosophy? Are you ready? Can we do it?

JULIE: Are you going to sing it?

SHAWNA: Let’s do it! I said we should!

AMY: Oh, please!

KIM: But we need fans though. But go ahead.

JULIE: All right, pretend we have fans.

KIM: Yep. 

SHAWNA and JULIE: [singing] “Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister/And lord help the sister who comes between me and my man!!!”

JULIE: I have no idea how that song goes. I realized halfway through it.

KIM: That was great!

AMY: You guys harmonized! 

KIM: Oh my god, and you can harmonize! Anyway, ultimately the sisters realized they didn’t ever want to get married. It was a conscious choice for them.

AMY: And I’m going to refer to a biography of the sisters that was written by an acquaintance of theirs; her name was Eileen Mackenzie. She wrote, “Mary’s quick tongue and keen-edged sense of the ridiculous would have been somewhat daunting to potential lovers.” So Mary, the elder sister, was considered the more “tempestuous” of the two, while Jane, the younger, was considered the “sweet one.” Mary could not suffer fools, while Jane was more the patient one. Jane loved children, the biography says, while Mary loved some children. (I laughed out loud when I read that.) So Benson sisters, does any of this square up with your own personalities? How are you two alike or different?

JULIE: Okay, so I am the younger sister, but I think I'm totally the “Mary,” and I have real trouble suffering fools, and I'm very impatient. I do like kids, but in a way where you can play with them and they think you're the cool aunt and then you can go home.

SHAWNA: Right. Julie is sadly right on this score. I am the older sister, but I relate more to Jane, who is younger. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm sweet. 

JULIE: No, definitely not. 

SHAWNA: I certainly have the patience thing down!

AMY: I sense an insult, Julie.

SHAWNA: Never! Julie, though, is the quick wit of the two of us. I’m like the slow burn, dry wit. 

AMY: So speaking of wit, I will say this about the Findlater sisters (and it kind of maybe also reminded me of you guys, from what I know). They sounded kind of sarcastic and cynical. You wouldn’t imagine these lovely Victorian women being cynical, but here’s an anecdote: Together they sometimes made up imaginary tea parties consisting of all the most boring people they knew, apparently. I guess they found certain people to be extremely tedious, so they made that their entertainment, just having, like, fake tea parties with the losers.

KIM: I love them.

JULIE: I’m obsessed with them.

SHAWNA: I now have an image in my head of like, Mean Girls, but with them sitting around with, you know, like stuffed animals in place of their imaginary friends and going, “You can’t sit with us!” 

JULIE: Yeah, I can totally relate to the sarcasm and cynicism. But I'm not sure we've done the “tea party full of drips” thing.

AMY: You’re never going to admit that, because any of your friends might be listening.

JULIE: That’s true. But I mean, it does sound like a really good way to sort of suss out characters for our writing.

SHAWNA: I don’t know why we never thought of doing that, because it’s kind of genius! Okay, yeah. We’re going to do that now: tea parties, real or imagined.

JULIE: Yeah.

SHAWNA: Yeah.

KIM: Incidentally, they also had an older sister named Sarah. Her nickname was Mora, the Gaelic version of Sarah. But they had absolutely nothing in common with her, and she apparently was a bit of a drip, as my mom used to say.

AMY: She was probably at those tea parties.

KIM: Yes, I am sure she showed up. It doesn’t sound like they actually had a ton of affection for her. And sadly, in adulthood, she suffered from mental illness, on and off.

AMY: Oh, now I feel bad for saying that.

KIM: I know. I kind of feel bad too.

SHAWNA: All right.

AMY: As children, the harsh Scottish climate kept them indoors for weeks at a time. I basically kind of think this forced them to really use their imaginations because life was so dreary on the Scottish moors (or wherever they were). They had a series of governesses… one in particular, named Annie Lorrain, went on to be a famous botanist. She’s the one who introduced the girls to Shakespeare and also taught them critical thinking. But then they also had this cook, a “Mrs. King” who entertained them with horrifying “murder” stories.

JULIE: Yeah!!!

AMY: So you can start to get the sense of how their childhood might have shaped them into writers. And then, also, get this: Their mother believed that the girls needed to see “real life,” so she would take them to see dying people so they could know what someone’s last tortured hours were like. Not surprisingly, they were super creeped-out by this.

JULIE: Oh my god!

KIM: I mean, whoa. And then Mrs. King is telling them murder stories?

AMY: We’re going to have to read more of their books to see if Mrs. King makes a cameo somewhere.

SHAWNA: But that does kind of explain some (not to get ahead of ourselves), but it does explain some sections in the book about death that you know, make a whole lot more sense knowing about that.

AMY: Comfortable with the morbid.

KIM: Yes. Going there. So Julie, Shawna, was there anything about your own childhood that might have steered you two into writing? Did you have a “Mrs. King” of your own? Or were you writing things together as kids?

JULIE: Shawna says that we were writing from a young age, because we would play Barbies together, and I would constantly complain that she wasn't playing Barbies right. Because Ken (and yeah, she had to play Ken because of course, I was Barbie) he would decide he didn't want to hang out with Barbie after her shift at McDonald's, and they’d go ride around in the Corvette. He would get all snooty about it. So I would get mad at Shawna. So I guess you can see we've been writing for most of our lives.

SHAWNA: It’s a little scary how that mirrors our process now.

JULIE: It’s not true, but we also used to write and perform little plays in Shawna’s best friend Susan’s basement.

SHAWNA: So yeah, my best friend Susan and I were super into PBS shows like Mystery and Masterpiece Theater. So we mashed them together and wrote our own Mystery Theater shows. It had a theme song, it had an opening…

JULIE: We had commercials.

SHAWNA: The whole thing. It was a big production, let’s just put it that way.

AMY: I want Laura Linney to be doing the introduction to these videos. I hope that you did videotape them.

SHAWNA: Thankfully, those videotapes are locked away in a very secure vault, because it’s basically mutually-assured destruction if either one of us releases them.

KIM: I’m calling Geraldo Rivera after this.

JULIE: They’re fantastic. I do want to get them out and kind of re-look at them because it's just ridiculous. We thought we were so clever.

SHAWNA: Oh my god.

AMY: I assume you guys did not live in a manse?

JULIE: Yeah no.

SHAWNA: Uh-uh.

KIM: The Findlaters did. But money was always tight, and they were not well-off. They were living on a minister’s income. Actually, in our research, we discovered that their childhood home is now a B&B, so we could go there and stay.

JULIE: Yeah, we’re leaving, what? Tomorrow?

SHAWNA: Tomorrow. Yeah.

AMY: I want to go! Oh my gosh!

KIM: I’m going with you.

AMY: I checked it out. It’s a nice house. It’s not, like, a glorious mansion.

SHAWNA: Is it like a McMansion?

AMY: A McMansion, yeah, but like a Victorian McMansion. Yes.

KIM: It’s cozy. Yeah.

AMY: Their financial situation became even more dire when the girls were in their early 20s and their father passed away. The mom and three daughters all ended up moving to another town, and they were poor. Apparently at one point the girls had to buy “paper shoes.” I don’t know what paper shoes are, but I’m guessing maybe they were made out of cardboard? They were also very insecure about the clothes they wore, because they were never dressed in the latest fashions (and I think they got teased about that.) And Jane wrote her first novel on the back of scraps of butcher paper she managed to procure from a local grocer. Do you have any “starving artist” anecdotes? Shawna? Julie?

JULIE: We might be living one now, thanks to Covid unemployment! Yeah, seriously, most of my career in Hollywood was making, you know, little to nothing and being super overworked and overstressed. And we were lucky to have supportive parents. But yeah, there was a lot of bringing our lunches to work in, you know, plastic containers, and wearing out of date clothes and trying to convince everyone I was just super into vintage, but it was really all I could afford.

SHAWNA: So before Julie and I became established writers, I had a totally different career. I worked for Disney, but in the IT department for 13 years. 

JULIE: Nerd! 

SHAWNA: Yeah, I know. So I got laid off in 2009 when the recession hit, and of course now I say it's like the best thing that ever happened to me. But at the time, I went from having a very comfortable income to zero income. And I know I was luckier than most, you know, my budget was a lot tighter back then, just like Julie's was. 

JULIE: So yeah, so we can kind of relate.

AMY: So you were almost at the “cardboard shoes” phase.

KIM: So wait. I just want to ask a side question. Julie, did you convince Shawna to basically… I mean, were you very instrumental in her deciding to do this? Or was she already kind of working with you on things?

JULIE: Yeah, she wanted to be a writer, and I thought I was going to produce. And so when she moved out here, I was doing the development thing, and she was taking night classes at UCLA for writing. And at one point, I was doing these notes for some writers and I felt kind of like a jerk because I was giving notes to writers, and I had never tried to write a script. I had gone to film school. I’d done all the things But I was like, “You know, I should try to write a script before I tell people how to write a script.” So I recruited Shawna to write one with me, using all of her free knowledge that she was getting at UCLA. And then we wrote our first pilot together, which was called Moonrise, and it was basically Deadwood on the moon. And then that got us some traction, and we realized we should start doing this together. So it kind of just fell into it a little bit. 

SHAWNA: Yeah. 

KIM: I love it. So like your situation, the Findlaters’ financial situation quickly improved once younger sister, Jane, published that first book that Amy mentioned, The Green Graves of Balgowrie. It was an immediate hit, and instantly they  were befriended by people like famous stage actress Ellen Terry and Lady Dorothy Gray, the wife of a well-known British statesman. (The sisters would go stay with her at her estate, which was featured in the “Downton Abbey” Christmas Special.) 

AMY: Eventually, both sisters’ writing careers took off and they were suddenly skirting the periphery of celebrity. They never became outlandishly rich, but they were always able to make a comfortable living through their writing from that point forward. 

KIM: They eventually moved to Devon, England to be in milder climate for their mother’s health, and they befriended author Kate Douglas Wiggin (and we devoted an episode to her last Christmas. She’s the author of The Birds’ Christmas Carol, which we discussed then, as well as the more well-known Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.) On a girls’ trip with Kate, the weather was lousy, so Kate suggested they use the time to collaborate on a book together instead. The book was called The Affair at the Inn, and the sisters each went on to write several more novels with Kate Wiggin (whom they knew by her married name, Kate Riggs.) The Findlaters actually dedicated Crossriggs to Kate and her sister, Nora.

JULIE: By the way, I looked this book up, and they each took a character and wrote that character’s POV in the book. So I’m desperate to read it, because I think that would be interesting to see how in the world they cross those streams.

AMY: Yeah, triple seems really hard. And I guess it kind of was, because little Mary wrote wrote to her friend about the collaboration with Kate Wiggin and she said, “Dear Kate is an Angel, but an Angel with no taste in adjectives, and if I have ever by any luck achieved one that is descriptive she always deletes it and carefully substitutes the old, old, well worn one that has jogged along with its noun since the beginning.” 

JULIE: Ohhh!

KIM: Burn!

JULIE: Yeah, you know, writing teams, It’s really tough. It’s tough to work with other people.

AMY: And that’s a really funny quote, obviously, but it also goes to show that writing jointly with another person is not always easy. That said, the three novels the sisters wrote together are widely regarded as better than any of the books they wrote separately, which is interesting. So Shawna, and Julie, do you think, from your own experience, that they would have had an easier time writing together than they did, maybe, while working on projects with Kate? Does being in a sibling relationship help you just cut all the crap?

JULIE: Absolutely. You can be much more open and honest with each other than we would be with a “stranger,” right? If we had a “Kate” in the middle of this, I would feel really sorry for that other writer. And at the end of the day, the best idea wins. So although, you know, we do get along, we've had our creative dust-ups and it is harder to be with someone when you're trying to be on your best behavior, you know? It's harder to be creative that way.

SHAWNA: This is a point where I wish I could disagree with my sister just to prove a point. But she's right. As siblings, you know, you grow up together, and you have the advantage of the same lived experience. So we kind of over the years unknowingly developed a kind of twin speak. I can look at her and she looks at me and we know immediately what the other person is thinking. People get really weirded out by it.

JULIE: It’s happened in writers’ rooms where they’re like, “What are you guys doing?” We’re like, “I don’t know! What are you talking about?” So yeah, poor Kate, in this situation.

SHAWNA: Yeah.

KIM: So Kate Wiggin, who was American, actually encouraged the Findlater sisters to do a U.S. tour, which they did around 1905. They were not very impressed. They found New York to be full of showy people wearing over-the-top jewels and dresses, and they were amused/disgusted by it all. But they did befriend William James and his wife, Alice, which is how they were introduced to writer Henry James. 

AMY: Yes, and I have the best Henry James anecdote, and I think you guys are going to laugh so hard. I love this story so much. This happened after their tour of the states when he was living in London. So they had a correspondence where Henry James said, “Oh, yes, I would love to have lunch,” but he was really kind of persnickety about it. They agreed on a date and he was like, “but you must come at 1pm sharp, do not come late. I need it to be this time. It's really important. My time is precious.” So the sisters are kind of intimidated and nervous, you know? He's a great author. So on the day in question, they are absolutely certain that they show up at the right time. They knock on the door. Somebody opens the door, and they are not expected. Like, “What are you doing here? This is the wrong day.” 

JULIE: That’s my nightmare.

AMY: It gets better. So Henry James is like, “You got the date wrong. But now that you're here, come on in. I'll have my cook make you lunch.” So picture the two girls sitting there trying to have lunch feeling completely embarrassed. They don't even want to stay for lunch. I'm sure I can picture it all. They're just like, “No! We'll come back!”

KIM: Yeah, “It’s no trouble at all,” but it’s really a ton of trouble. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah. He’s making a big deal out of the fact that they came on the wrong day. They sit through this awkward lunch. They go home and look at the correspondence … they had the date right!!!

JULIE: Oh my god!

KIM: I think he might have been effing with them, honestly.

JULIE: Yeah! He was just on a power trip!

KIM: I could see him doing that. Yeah.

AMY: When I picture the two of them at this lunch, I picture you two having this, like, comically, awkward, like, “You got the date wrong!” “No, you got the date wrong!”

JULIE: Screaming at each other behind everyone’s back, like, “I’m going to kill you when we get home because you totally embarrassed me in front of my friend, Henry James.”

SHAWNA: There’s something interesting when you learn that people have famous friends. Like, they all kind of knew each other in some weird way, and they interacted with each other. And I don't know, it just seems like such a small world that on so many levels with these artists … but you kind of get it, because once you get to a certain level, then all the people you know are kind of at the same level. So it's always fascinating to me. 

KIM: As we mentioned at the top of the show, they were befriended by lots of well-known writers, including Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf. In 1920, Mary first reached out to Virgina with a letter saying she admired her work, and Virgina wrote back: “I am particularly glad to think that writers whose work I admire should find anything to please them in mine.”

JULIE: Oh, I would barf and die if Virginia Woolf said that to me.

KIM: Totally.

AMY: They were also longtime friends with the writer Mary Cholmondeley, who is on our list of future lost ladies to cover. And they were lifelong friends with Charlotte Stewart who went on to write historical books under the pen name Allan McAuley. The three of them became friends as teenagers before any of them even thought about publishing books. But speaking of books, I think it’s time we discussed the Findlaters’ most well-regarded title, Crossriggs!

KIM: Yes! Crossriggs was published in 1908, and incidentally, the original working title of this book was Pitmilly. (I think probably Crossriggs was the wiser choice in this case). Julie, do you want to give our listeners a quick, spoiler-free introduction to the plot?

JULIE: No!

KIM: You’re going to make Shawna do it?

JULIE: Yes.

SHAWNA: So this is a “slice of life” story about a small Scottish village called Crossriggs, where the protagonist, a young woman named Alexandra Hope (or Alex, as she's more commonly referred to) lives with her eccentric father, whom she's named after. And we're introduced to the Hope family’s neighbors and their own foibles. But the story really kicks into gear when Alex's sister Matilda, who has lived in Canada for many years, returns to the family home and Crossriggs recently widowed and with her five young children in tow. So the meager budget that used to suffice for Alex and her father now has to be stretched to feed a full house of eight, which, no surprise, is impossible. So Alex looks for ways to make money to support them all, which is a challenge for women in this time period. By that era’s standards. Alex is a spinster... 

JULIE: How dare you! 

SHAWNA: I know, it offended me too. I mean, she's like in her 20s in this book, I think, so it's not like she's ancient. I mean, she's not even as old as us! 

JULIE: Yeah, let's not say that. 

SHAWNA: In any case, Alex has already turned down one marriage proposal from a wealthy, but boring, man. And she shows no interest in marrying anybody. But Alex is clever and funny, and she talks her far more aristocratic (but nearly blind) neighbor, Admiral Casillis, into hiring her to read to him after he approves of her lovely voice.

JULIE: Which, she reads the newspapers or something, right? She’s just like his Alexa. Oh! Get it? Alexa! It’s like I’m a writer or something!

SHAWNA: So in her visits to his home, she meets the admiral’s nephew, Van. And despite the fact that Van is much younger than Alex, they become really good friends. Now, her sister, Matilda, is on the hunt for a new husband, but Alex (who isn’t interested in marriage) is the one who finds herself with suitors everywhere, kind of like dropping out of the sky, and one of them to her shock and dismay is Van. Now this younger man declares his affection for Alex, but she is certain that Van’s puppy love won't last being so young, and even if it was true love, Alex can't reciprocate because she's already in love with someone she's known most of her life: her neighbor, Robert Maitland! But he's a married man, and so Alex's love must remain unrequited! So throughout the novel, Alex struggles with the financial difficulties, her love life, and even her sister Matilda is a bit of a drip and kind of useless. And the ending is quite a surprise. And, you know, that's kind of the basics, I think, without getting too spoilery.

KIM: Way to go! [claps]

AMY: That was wonderful. Good job. So readers ate this book up right from the start as soon as it was published. Women readers, in particular, were incredibly smitten by this character of Robert Maitland. And Shawna, it’s said that the sisters based Mr. Maitland on a real-life family friend they knew well growing up, someone who has his own literary connection. Would you care to explain that a little bit?

SHAWNA: I'm so glad you asked me about this, and I even wore a shirt to commemorate this particular moment.

JULIE: Oh, you did!

SHAWNA: So Dr. Joseph Bell, who was 18 years their senior ... the sisters had a bit of hero worship for this guy, and they knew him when they were teenagers. So Dr. Bell is actually the real-life inspiration behind the character of Sherlock Holmes. 

JULIE: (Shauna is currently wearing a Sherlock Holmes t-shirt.)

SHAWNA: So he must have been a really captivating guy to have not only inspired Sherlock Holmes, but also Robert Maitland, who is this character that the sisters have written about and modeled on him. It's pretty cool.

AMY: Okay, so of the two sisters, Alex is definitely the one we can identify with, right? Matilda is sort of disappointingly blah and conventional, whereas Alex has these rich, truthful, sarcastic, unexpected inner thoughts. What did you like most about Alex, our heroine?

JULIE: I just thought it was so fascinating, because she's so contemporary. I mean, you could write this today. All of her commentary, it's like, she should just have a blog. She's just sort of griping about all the boring dudes all over the place. And she had bigger fish to fry than to worry about all these dudes’ feelings. You know, the umbrage I had was with her sister, like you said, Matilda, because there were times where I wanted to reach through the pages and just strangle her. She was made obsolete and kind of useless by this “grieving widow” thing where she couldn't even go out and do shit or else she’d be seen as an uncaring widow. So it was like this patriarchal society that forced her to be kind of codependent on her sister in a way, because she wasn't allowed to do anything or take a job. And it was like, “Girl, you have five kids.” It's like she didn't even do anything to raise them! I think it mentions one time she puts them to bed. I was like, “Oh, well done. Congratulations.”

AMY: Let’s not even blame society and patriarchy for this one, because she’s just a pill. She’s nice, but you just want to slap her.

KIM: Totally.

JULIE: But anyway, Alex was also super judgy at times, which is something I found to be a really nice character flaw, and her having a tendency to sort of speak freely. For myself, I have always been the type to kind of “step in it” too. So I don’t know, I just thought that was a great character flaw, and yet it bothered me that she was that way. I wanted her to be better.

AMY: I get her bitterness, though, because everyone in the village (including her own sister) is pressuring her to accept this marriage proposal. I mean, she had several, but one of the marriage proposals is this boring dud of a guy, James Reid. And couldn't we all just groan in sympathy with Alex over everybody pushing her on this? I know I've been there. Let me tell you a little anecdote which reading about Alex and James Reid reminded me of: There was a point in time where somebody was trying to fix me up when I was single. And this is what they told me to try to entice me. They said, “Amy, I think you'd be perfect together. He really likes pizza. And I know that you like pizza too.” And I'm like, “Honestly? That's why I'm supposed to like this guy?”

KIM: I can’t believe someone said that to you. [laughing]

AMY: Every person in America pretty much likes pizza. So you didn't do a lot of research here.

JULIE: I will say though, my L.A. bar is very low at this point, like, “Hey, man, if you like pizza, please call me. I’m also a fan of pizza.” If your friend wants to hook me up with somebody …

SHAWNA: It sounds like this guy is the guy for you!

JULIE: It’ll give us something to talk about.

KIM: It’s like, “This person eats, and you eat too!” Anyway, in the book, she actually talks a little bit more about romance right away. I want to read the first line of the book, which I think says a lot in a few words: “Romance, I think, is like the rainbow, always a little from the place where you stand.” That’s the narrator speaking, but as we know, the Findlaters did make a conscious choice not to marry. What kind of statement on the institution of marriage do you think they were trying to make with this book, Crossriggs?

JULIE: You know, you mentioned that the girls’ parents had this happy, romantic love relationship/marriage for many years. So it's interesting that they seem to be issuing a criticism of marriage, or at least the options available to women. You know, our parents just celebrated their 50th, and although they're a shining example of what a marriage could be, it hasn't forced me to run out and just marry the first warm-body, pizza-loving guy that I can find. 

SHAWNA: And it hasn't really done that for me either. So our parents raised us to be independent and choose what kind of life we want to have, whether that includes marriage or not. And I would say love has not been absent from our lives entirely, but I'd say finding a soul mate or a life partner who can keep up with us is kind of a challenge, you know, and that made me think that maybe the Findlaters realized this, too. Like, if they couldn't find someone to match them perfectly, like their parents were matched, then wouldn't they rather be single or just hanging out together?

JULIE: Yeah, so the statement was kind of like, probably just the fact that they gave women the option to be like, “Or what if you don't do that?”
It’s like it was the first time anyone was presenting that as an option.

SHAWNA: Here’s an idea, ladies…

JULIE: Talk more about this “not having to settle for somebody” thing... That sounds … I want to hear more about that. 

KIM: Yep, yep. So this discussion is really a throughline that runs throughout many of their books: their rejection of the idea that the life of a woman who doesn’t marry is basically a waste. That marriage isn’t always the answer, especially for certain women who have the kind of intellectual and emotional temperament that doesn’t allow them to just “settle” like we were talking about. And it makes sense, because the Findlaters were writing during a time of transition between the restrictive Victorian society they grew up in and the era of the “new woman.” In that sense, Alex has made up her own mind about marriage (she’d marry, but only with her equal), but her big struggle, really, is figuring out what the alternatives are for her. How can she ensure that her life isn’t a waste, no matter what society thinks of it? Essentially, what is her purpose? Matilda asks her, “What do you want, what do you expect from life?” and she answers, “All or nothing. All is what I want, and nothing is what I expect.” 

JULIE: I seriously want T-shirts of that. It gave me chills when I read it in the book.

KIM: Totally. And yet their last name is “Hope,” so take that as you will, I guess.

AMY: It’s not just marriage and her “options” that really frustrate her. It’s also the sphere of womanhood and poverty that she’s relegated to. She was basically working her ass off. Their housekeeper has to go away for a time and she and Miranda (sort of) are taking care of the house, their father, and the five children. So one afternoon, Robert Maitland (the married hottie) comes by after a walk in the hills (a refreshing, idyllic walk in the hills) and she blasts him. This is the quote, she accuses him of, “looking as if you had been on some mount of transfiguration, whilst we have had such a petty and disgusting woman’s day, though perhaps some of us would have liked quite as well you to lie by the side of of a burn, and look at beautiful things, and come home to write history...” 

JULIE: I’d like to report a murder…

KIM: Yeah, seriously.

AMY: But that said, Alex never shies from work and I think at one point, she’s doing three jobs at once to pay the butcher’s bill. I love that she’s not this perfect noble character, though, and she has a lot of bitterness about, you know, the circumscribed life that she has to live. Did you guys have any other favorite scenes or passages from the book that come to mind? 

SHAWNA: I have to say one of my favorite scenes is honestly this epic dinner party that takes place over two chapters — Chapter 31 and 32. And from a writer's perspective, these two chapters basically have everything. It has drama, it has plot turns, it has a crazy girl running around being really, super crazy. It has people talking about caskets and death. And Alex, you know, she's part of all of this like, she's not … what's interesting to me is as the protagonist, you would think that she'd be the person standing outside going, “Get a load of all this craziness that I'm listening to and witnessing it.” Oh, no. She's like a full-born participant of it. She talks about the night air and you know, the fact that “it's a strange kind of gaiety about a night like this isn't there?” said Alex, “like the pleasures of the Elysian Fields? Couldn't you fancy the shades of the dead meeting for bottomless enjoyment by the light of the moon on such a frosty night as this, all of us a troupe of ghosts just meeting in these well-known fields?” The best line goes to E.V., who's like, “The dead,” remarked Aunt E.V., “will be better employed, we hope, in the next life than wandering about regretting this one, Alex.” 

AMY: So good.

JULIE: So good.

AMY: Could you guys tell that the book was written by two different people?

SHAWNA: No. I think interestingly, when you talk about the fact that one of them wrote poetry, right...? 

AMY: Mary. Mary. 

SHAWNA: Yeah. And there was definitely ... there are some florid chapters that I'm like, I think Mary had to do — Oh, and also that critical eye. She definitely wrote a lot of the snark, I can tell. Like, Mary definitely wrote a lot of the snarky or kind of catty lines for Alex 

JULIE: For sure.

SHAWNA: But really beyond that, you can't tell. They really do have a singular voice. And that's what's interesting. Like, Julie writes something alone, I write something alone, we each have our authorial voice, but when we write together, it really is a different, unique perspective. Right?

AMY: People can’t tell, yeah. 

KIM: Crossriggs is sort of a Cranford-esque or Austen-esque novel in some ways. It’s the microcosm of sleepy village life and relations between neighbors of varying social status… all that. And Alex has a temper, like Emma, and she actually asks Robert Maitland (who’s a bit like Knightley in a lot of ways) to help her curb her temper in conversation… to basically help her hold her tongue. But then there are points where drama and tragedy occur. And we won’t spoil it by saying what that is, only that it might not be what you expect. 

AMY: As for the Findlater sisters, you know, people don’t know of them now. And basically, the onslaught of World War I changed tastes in literature, so that by 1920 their work began to be considered old-fashioned. But they took it in stride that their stars were waning. They simply said that, “The present age must make its own books.” So very gracious of them. They lived happily in retirement together until Jane’s death in 1946. Mary died in 1963. Sounds like they lived a pretty full life as artists, people, and sisters. Speaking of the present age, Shawna and Julie, is there anything you’re working on right now you want to talk about?

JULIE: I just realized when you said the dates that they died, by the way, like, that might have been the longest they’d ever been apart if Mary outlived her for another 20 years or so. And that had to be so sad for her. Anyway, on a lighter note!

KIM: [laughing] Yeah, yeah. What’s going on with you?!

JULIE: [to Shawna] Promise to die after me. I wouldn’t want to live 20 years and be bored and I don’t get to pick on you and all that fun stuff.

SHAWNA: All right, we’ll workshop it.

JULIE: We’re going to workshop our deaths, because we’re super into this now. We're actually developing a YA series with the Jim Henson Company. It's called The Witchlands by Susan Dennard. It's fantastic. You guys should read it, if you're all into, you know, cool world-building, two female leads kind of storytelling. And it's been really fun using our perspective as sisters to write it, because even though the two leads aren't sisters, they're kind of entwined in a way that they might as well be, right? And so fingers crossed, it gets set up. And there's so much story to tell. Like I said, there's, I think, six books already out. So lots of story there. Fingers crossed that we sell it. And if not, we’re just going to keep coming on the podcast and tell you about the books we read! 

KIM: Thank you so much, Julie and Shawna, for joining us. This was great, and we can’t wait to watch your next show! I’m a big fan of you guys.

JULIE: Oh, we're huge fans of you guys! And thank you so much for even thinking of us to do something like this. I mean, I couldn't even pronounce a word in the book, so we're not literary snobs. You guys, just get out there and read, and don't be afraid of these old, old-timey books because they're actually not old and musty. They're really contemporary. You just got to get into them.

KIM: Yeah. And listeners, we hope you’ll take their advice and read Crossriggs and let us know what you think of the ending, which we’re not going to spoil, but we want to know what you think. Tell us.

AMY: That’s all for today’s podcast. For a full transcript, check out our show notes, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode!

KIM: For more information, as well as further reading material, check out our website, LostLadiesofLit.com. And if you loved this episode, be sure to leave a review. It really makes a difference!

[start closing music]

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. “Lost Ladies of Lit” is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.