Never too Late by Claire Fayers

One of my biggest inspirations as I took my first steps into a full-time writing career was a woman I’d never heard of.

Adelaide Anne Procter was a poet and philanthropist who spent her life fighting for women's right and working with unemployed and homeless women. She was born in 1825, and was largely self-educated, reading voraciously. Her first poem was published when she was eighteen.

She was friends with Dickens and Thackeray, and she was Queen Victoria’s favourite poet. During her lifetime she was regarded as second only to Tennyson. Yet after her death she fell into obscurity.

I heard her name first in 2015. I was in that strange in-between stage of signing my first book contract and waiting for the book to come out, and as I waited I couldn’t help noticing that most of my fellow debut authors were decades younger than me. The whole book industry, in fact, seemed to be composed of young people. Every time I heard someone bemoan the fact that they felt past it at thirty, I’d flinch.

If people were past it at thirty, what did that make me? I should have worked harder earlier, written more books, submitted more query letters. Instead, I'd left it too late.

Then I spotted that Sandi Toksvig was speaking at the Hay Festival and, being a fan, I bought tickets. I've forgotten much of her talk now, but two things stood out. First, at the age of fifty, she was starting a political party because if you want things to change you have to do something yourself.

And then Adelaide Anne Procter. Specifically, an extract from one of her poems, The Ghost in the Picture Room. It's a long and somewhat odd ghost story about a runaway nun who returns to her convent as an old woman to find the Virgin Mary has kept her place there. Near the end, we read:

Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife,
Some pure ideal of a noble life
That once seemed possible? Did we not hear
The flutter of its wings, and feel it near,
And just within our reach? It was. And yet
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,
And now live idle in a vague regret;
But still our place is kept, and it will wait,
Ready for us to fill it, soon or late.
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.

I went home and looked up all I could about Adelaide Procter. Her poems can be an acquired taste, but her life was inspirational. She never made it to old age, or even middle age: she died of tuberculosis in 1864 at the age of 38, most likely contracting the disease through her work with the poor. It would have been her birthday this month and I think she'd like to know that her life and her words are remembered.

To all older writers, to everyone who wishes they’d started sooner and achieved more: we always may be what we might have been. There will be more chances. There is still time.



Claire Fayers is the author of the Accidental Pirates series and Mirror Magic. Website www.clairefayers.com Twitter @clairefayers