Tracy Chevalier’s Fantasy Dinner: the novelist meets her characters

Receive free Food & Drink updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Food & Drink news every morning.

You know how sometimes you have a dinner party because you owe people? Maybe they had you to dinner three years before and you’ve never reciprocated. I’m throwing a dinner party for several people I owe big time. They’re all real people who’ve been characters in my novels. I want to have them over to say thank you, and also: sorry about stealing your story. I’ve invited them to the most appropriate building I can think of: the British Library, where I’ve researched and written about them.

First to arrive, exactly on time, is Louisa Pesel, expert embroiderer and leader of a group of women who made cushions and kneelers for Winchester Cathedral in the 1930s. She is a brisk headteacher type, with grey hair in a neat bun and a firm handshake. She looks approvingly around the entrance hall with its high ceilings like a cathedral’s. She will have sherry, thank you.

Not long after, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer arrives. Reddish hair, a strong nose, grey eyes, he has a rich, low voice like a cello. I’m struck dumb by the presence of this artist whose paintings I know as well as I know my own face. I fumble with a bottle of champagne, trying to steady myself. Luckily, Pesel is not at all intimidated and starts pointing out the handsome glass rectangle that houses the King’s Library of old volumes. Pesel is one of those useful people you always want at a dinner party, to Sort Things Out.

Good thing, too, because the next three guests are all tricky. I seem to specialise in difficult characters. First up is the plant collector William Lobb, fresh from South America and California, seeds of exotic redwoods and monkey puzzle trees spilling from his pockets. Weather-beaten and exhausted, he accepts a glass of champagne, knocks it back like it’s whiskey and holds the glass out for another shot.

William Blake tries to come to my defence by distracting the others with another recitation. Bless him

Close on his heels is Lyme Regis fossil hunter Mary Anning, who grumbles that she’s only been to London once and why aren’t we at the British Museum instead, where she may have some fossils on display? She frowns at the champagne I hold out and demands a cup of strong tea. Lobb spies a kindred spirit, and soon they’re swapping tales of the most surprising specimens they’ve found, as well as complaining about collectors who pay for specimens but never get their hands dirty.

The last two guests have still not arrived. But the food’s ready, so we repair to Humanities 1 Reading Room for a starter of potted shrimp, accompanied by a crisp Sancerre. We then move to Rare Books and Manuscripts, where the light is dimmer, for lamb chops cooked in garlic, rosemary, onions and wine, with potatoes and asparagus to accompany them, all washed down with a fine Antinori.

Then the doors crash open and a dishevelled figure in a dusty evening coat rushes up to us. Welcome William Blake, poet, painter, printer, wild visionary. He spies the lamb on our plates and begins to shout out one of his poems:

Little Lamb who made thee 
Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o’er the mead . . . 
“Oh, give over!” Anning cries.

“Now, Mr Blake, do sit,” Pesel orders. “You’re very late, you know. Your supper will grow cold.” She pats the seat beside her, and I know she’ll keep an eye on him and not let him completely dominate.

“But who is this with you?” Pesel asks. A short, middle-aged woman in a shawl and long skirt has materialised and is hovering uncertainly. “Welcome dear! Come and sit.”

The woman looks baffled.

“She doesn’t speak English,” I explain. “Only Venetian. This is Maria Barovier, glassmaker and inventor of the Rosetta bead. She’s in my next novel.”

“Oh Lord,” Lobb groans.

“Poor thing!” Pesel sighs.

“Do you have to?” Anning rounds on me. “Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

“But there are stories to tell here,” I defend myself, “and you haven’t told them. So I have to.”

Bless him, Blake tries to come to my defence by distracting the other guests with another recitation.

But it is Vermeer who saves me. He picks up the bottle, pours a glass and holds it out to Barovier. “Antinori,” he says. “Buon vino.”

Her eyes light up at words she understands. She takes the glass, nods at the painter and drinks.

“And tiramisu for pudding!” I add, hoping that will be the icing on the cake of the evening. I smile at Vermeer, and he nods. Perhaps this means he has forgiven me for everything I’ve written about him and his girl with her pearl.

Tracy Chevalier is an author and a Trustee of the British Library, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first