Leaving home

Text 1: A Letter from the Credit River, by Ann Thewlis

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Dear Mother, We are arrived at last at our land on the Credit River, after seven weeks at sea and three more upon the roads, and I take up my pen by the light of the fire because we have not yet a candle. I will not pretend the voyage was anything but dreadful. We were a hundred and forty souls in the steerage, in a space you would not give to forty sheep, and little Mary was so sick for the first fortnight that I thought we should lose her, and sat up with her every night thinking of you and wishing I had never left the Dale.

Our land is all trees, great dark trees of a size you would not credit, and William and the boys are at them from first light with the axe. We live in a shanty of logs with the gaps stuffed with moss, and the cold in the night is beyond anything at home. There is no church within twelve miles and no neighbour within three, and I have not heard a Yorkshire voice since we left Liverpool. Some evenings I walk to the edge of the clearing and look east, which is foolish, for there is nothing to see but more trees.

And yet, Mother, every tree that falls is ours. There is no landlord here and no rent day, and no steward to touch his hat to. The children have meat three times in the week, which they never had in their lives, and Thomas, who is nine, has a pig of his own and is prouder of it than a squire. I would give a great deal to sit in your kitchen again for one hour. But I do not think I would come back to stay.

Text 2: A Word at a Time, by Cerys Bowen

An original contemporary memoir.

I left Cwmderwen on a wet Sunday in September, with two suitcases, a box of my mam’s Welsh cakes and a job offer from a design agency in east London. The whole street came out to wave, which was mortifying and lovely in equal parts. Mrs Hopkin from number nine pressed a ten-pound note into my hand and told me not to come back with a posh accent. I promised, and cried as far as Abergavenny.

London gave me everything I had gone for. Within three years I was leading projects for clients I had read about in magazines. I had friends from Lagos and Lisbon and Seoul. I could buy a coffee at two in the morning, see a play on a Tuesday, walk past ten languages on the way to the Tube. In the village, nothing had happened since the pit closed; in London, everything happened all the time. I loved it, and I still do.

But I lost something I did not know I had. In Cwmderwen everyone knew my name, my mam’s name, and her mam’s name too, and nobody was ever a stranger for long. In London I lived in a block of forty flats for two years without learning a single neighbour’s name. I stopped speaking Welsh, because there was no one to speak it to, and last Christmas I reached for a word I have known since I was three and it was not there. I would make the same choice again. I just wish someone had told me that you do not leave a place all at once. You leave it a word at a time.

‘Both writers present leaving home as a loss rather than an opportunity.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about each writer’s experience of leaving home
• explain how far you agree that both writers present leaving home as a loss rather than an opportunity
• compare the ways the writers present what they lost and what they gained.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.