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| Edred and Elfrida walking down the street before their adventures begin. |
First
up is Edith Nesbit. I’ve always
loved The Railway Children, and the Bastable stories, and Five Children and It
and its two follow-ups, so I thought I’d love The House of Arden, which just shows how wrong you can be. I know
there are lots of people out there who really rate this book, but it didn’t do
anything for me, except make me cross.
Brother
and sister Edred and Elfrida Arden live with their aunt, who lets lodgings,
which is ‘one of the most unpleasant ways to make a living’. They’ve got no
money, their mother is dead, and their father has disappeared on an exploration
to South America, accompanied by the aunt’s fiancé. Strange how many children’s
books feature absent parents, either one, or the other, or both. Obviously this
enables children to go off and have adventures, but I do wonder if there’s some
deeper significance.
Anyway,
it turns out that Edred is heir of the Ardens, so they move to their ancestral
home, a crumbling castle which luckily includes a habitable (but run-down) house.
To restore the fortunes of family and castle Edred and Elfrida must find the
Arden treasure, hidden away centuries ago.
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| Prisoners in the Tower: Edred meets Sir Walter Raleigh while they are both imprisoned in the Tower of London. |
Helped
by pigeons they don garments found in old chests and are transported back in
time to periods matching the clothes. And wherever they go in time there are
two children who look just like them, and are their ages, with their names, and
they become those children.
This
was what I really, really hated about this book. I couldn’t get my head round
the way they travelled through time taking over other children’s lives, like
some kind of cosmic hijackers. It’s Quantum Leap a century earlier, but unlike
Dr Sam Baker they not allowed to change history. Personally, I thought it was
really spooky. And in case you wonder what happens to the other children (well,
I certainly did) they pop off and hang around somewhere else until they can return.
And they don’t notice anything is happening because they’re not special like
Edred and Elfrida…
And
don’t get me started on the magical talking mole (the White Mouldiwarp from the
Badge of Arden). Or the magical clocks which appear, made of daisies and such
like. Or the magical swans pulling a magical carriage made of magical
snowflakes.
Actually,
the magical elements in this book really annoyed me because, on the whole, they’re
twee and fluffy and pretty, and pulled out of nowhere, like a rabbit from a
hat. Children trapped on top of a tower in a snowstorm? No problem, let’s
conjure up a swan drawn snow-carriage to rescue them. Why swans and snow?
Because all things white obey the Mouldiwarp. Well that’s OK I suppose, and after
all it’s not really so very different from Cinderella going to the ball in a
pumpkin coach pulled by mice-horses, and I’ve no problem with that.
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| Time traveller: Elfrida in the Georgian era. |
So
why don’t I like this? I’ve tried to analyse my response, and I’m really not
sure, but I think it has to with the fact that I feel magic should be grounded
in some kind of reality or mythology, if that makes sense. Authors like Diana
Wynne Jones, JRR Tolkien and Ursula le Guin created characters who wield
enormous magical powers, which they use only in dire need. There is an emphasis
on balance, a sense that there is a cost to be paid for using magic, because it
can upset the equilibrium of the world, and have unforeseen consequences. They
have a responsibility to use their powers wisely, and they don’t magic
something out of nothing, or change the essential nature of something. If they
are not to be perverted to the dark good magicians must abide by some kind of
rules or guidelines. Even in fairy tales magic can be a dangerous business, and
you may not always get what you wish for.
The
final chapter (which involves a lot of magic) is one of the daftest and most
unbelievable things I’ve ever read. And there is, of course, a happy ending,
which has nothing to do with the treasure, and includes a repetition (or
recycling, if I’m being kind) of the most famous lines in The Railway Children,
which is sloppy writing, and I would have expected better from Nesbit.
Actually,
this post hasn’t gone in the direction I planned. I was going to write a few
concise paragraphs on The House of Arden,
and a little bit more on Elizabeth
Goudge’s The Runaways, which I also hated, but that will have to wait for
another day. And I didn’t mention Richard Arden, a mysterious boy from the past
who knows about Edred and Elfrida’s time. However, his tale is revealed in Harding’s Luck, the follow-up to The
House of Arden and deserves post of its own.
*The illustrations are by Harold Robert Millar,
from the original 1908 edition of the
book.
