September 1870

September 1870 is the date attached to the opening birth scene at Treetops Manor, Hartshill, near Nuneaton. It anchors the secret at the heart of Sunday Small’s origins: Lavinia Huntley bears a daughter, and Ashley Huntley orders the child concealed rather than acknowledged. The scene gives the novel’s later revelations a precise starting point, while the long delay before the mother and daughter meet makes the date a measure of how long the truth remains buried.

Setting and the birth

The date appears alongside Treetops Manor, where Lavinia is in a perilous condition during labour and slips in and out of consciousness. After the nurse intervenes, a newborn girl cries; Zillah sees that the child has blue eyes and blonde curls matching her mother’s. The birth is not presented as welcome news within the household: when Ashley learns the baby is a girl, he responds with anger and orders that she be disposed of.

The attempted concealment is made concrete by the preparations that follow. A midwife intends to testify that the baby was stillborn so that a death certificate can be issued on that basis. Ashley says that Matthews, his valet, should prepare a grave. An hour later, Zillah carries the baby toward the orchard, where two small graves already hold Lavinia’s daughters who were genuinely stillborn in earlier years. Matthews waits beside an open hole, but when he reaches for the bundle, Zillah strikes his hand away and holds the child close.

A secret held across the narrative

September 1870 therefore marks more than a birth: it establishes the concealed history that shapes Sunday Small’s identity. The contrast between the two earlier stillborn children and the living girl in Zillah’s arms makes the danger of the moment unmistakable. The plan to report a false stillbirth and the prepared grave show how the household’s authority is being used to erase the child, while Zillah’s refusal to surrender her gives the opening scene its decisive resistance.

The novel returns to the consequences of this secret much later, rather than resolving it at the moment of birth. When Sunday is held captive, Miss Frost reveals that she has been watching her since she left the workhouse and connects her hostility to Sunday’s supposed rivalry over Albert Pinnegar. Tom and two constables arrive and free Sunday. That rescue resolves the immediate danger, but it belongs to a different strand of the novel’s chronology; its placement near the eventual family reconciliation helps bring the long-running conflicts toward their close.

Retrospective significance

The emotional counterpoint to the birth scene comes when Sunday, encouraged by Tom, approaches Lavinia during a Mothering Sunday service and offers her violets, addressing her as her mother. Lavinia embraces her, and Sunday cries in her mother’s arms. This reunion makes the opening date newly legible: the baby whom Ashley tried to erase is the daughter who eventually claims her place with Lavinia.

By dating the birth precisely but withholding its full human meaning until much later, the narrative turns September 1870 into the beginning of a prolonged separation and a delayed recognition. The opening’s threatened grave is answered not by an immediate explanation of the child’s fate, but by the eventual public gesture of a daughter offering flowers to her mother. The date thus anchors both the concealed origin and the reunion that gives it meaning.