Given the point in history when the Forfarshire disaster occurred, news about the dramatic rescue undertaken by Grace and her father spread with surprising speed. But the journalists’ eye for a good story was already at work. Even the earliest reports exaggerated Grace’s part in the rescue, almost entirely eliminating her father from the episode, and adding sentiment where the facts had given none. Descriptions of Grace hearing the screams of the survivors from Harker’s Rock, for example, are rather dramatic since it would have been virtually impossible for Grace to hear these given the distance and the raging storm. The myth and fiction of Grace’s story was already at play. The sensationalizing of news events and the desire to create heroines and heroes from tragedies is clearly nothing new.
Grace was perfectly placed to fulfil the desire among Victorian society for romance and heroines. She was, by all accounts, a pleasant young woman in looks and demeanor. That she lived such an isolated life and wasn’t easily accessible to the public or the journalists keen to tell her story only seems to have increased the desire for people to know more. Her name undoubtedly fed the more romantic narrative of her story. As I wrote The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter I often thought that I would have been accused of overreaching if I’d given a fictitious heroine the name Grace Darling. Fact, once again, proves stranger than fiction.
As much as Grace is known for her courageous rescue, she is also known for her reluctance in accepting the fame that followed. It must certainly have been alarming for such a private woman to find herself under the public’s gaze with the boat trips and the artists sent to paint her, not to mention the correspondence that was sent to her—similar to the paparazzi and their prying lenses who we see tormenting modern celebrities. From the portraits created by the artists who visited Longstone, Grace’s image was easily transferred onto pottery and kitchenware, which, when mass-produced, found its way into homes across the country, ensuring that her name, her image, her story, and her fame continued to spread. The imagination of poets and writers filled the gaps in her story, romanticizing her time and again in plays, poems, and ballads. Even William Wordsworth penned his own tribute to her.
To many at the time, Grace really was an angel without wings. She offered the perfect vision of domesticity, a role model for the age. Outwardly, she was a devoted daughter, dedicated to spending her life with her parents at Longstone. But surely there was more to Grace. A woman who would set out in such a violent storm, and who saw death and tragedy, was clearly not the typical Victorian lady, prone to fainting. Grace had some gumption about her. And she was, after all, only human. So what of her feelings; her flaws? Surely there were people in her acquaintance who she didn’t care for. Surely her parents and siblings sometimes frustrated her. Where was the Grace the reporters didn’t write about, the capable young woman struggling to escape from the conventional role assigned to her, the passionate young woman in love? Those were the questions I wanted to answer in writing this fictionalized account of her life.
It certainly seems that fame did not sit well on Grace’s shoulders and one can only wonder if the unwanted attention had some sort of psychological impact on her. Stress was not a word used by the Victorians, but could it have been that which led to her physical weakening and, eventually, to the consumption (or tuberculosis, as we would call it now) that killed her? What we can be certain of is that her death so soon after the events of the Forfarshire disaster, at age twenty-six, only fanned the flames of adulation as Grace Darling the heroine became something of a saint. Had she lived a longer life, married, and drifted back into domestic obscurity, perhaps we wouldn’t know as much about her. As with Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, or Princess Diana, the tragic death of a young woman in her prime only leaves us wanting more. Like the unfinished portrait in the story, Grace’s story was, in many ways, incomplete.
Grace Darling was not only a heroine of her time, but someone who people of a certain generation will remember learning about at school. Whether through the Grace Darling song or the dramatic childhood tales of this classic Victorian heroine, Grace’s story has been told many times in the 180 years since she first came to our attention. I hope we will continue to share her story with younger generations and ensure that we remember women like Grace, forgotten heroines whose stories are confined to the shelves of secondhand bookshops and the records of the newspapermen who captured their stories.
After all, at a time when women still fight for equality, we all need our heroines. Perhaps now more than ever.