A Disappointing View of Childhood

Who remembers reading Ballet Shoes, White Boots, Curtain Up, The Painted Garden, The Circus is coming, and all those other wonderful Noel Streatfeild books? I still read them with as much enjoyment as I did when I was a child, but I’ve never got round to trying any of her adult fiction. So, when I saw A Vicarage Family (A Biography of Myself, it says on the front), I had to have it. This is a Fontana Lion published in 1984), so I imagine it’s aimed at children, and it’s written in the third person singular, which makes it read like a novel, especially as names have been changed. Noel Streatfeild herself becomes Victoria Strangeway, the middle sister of three girls, the plain one, the non-conformist rebel who is always in trouble.

The sisters, their brother Dick, and their cousin John (who spent much of his time living with them) seem to have had a very odd upbringing indeed. Their vicar father was very austere, unconcerned with home comforts or what he considered to be fripperies – I get the impression that more uncomfortable things were, the better he liked it. Perhaps he felt it proved how strong his faith was. He had a strong sense of duty and responsibility to his parishioners, and very strict standards, not just for himself, but for the children as well, and there were punishments for quite minor transgressions. In many ways his wife seems to have been as unworldly as he was, caring nothing for her appearance, or the importance of creating a beautiful home. A lot of the time she appears quite cold and hard-hearted, but has obviously been traumatised by the death of a child, at a point before this memoir starts. Despite all this the children are obviously loved, and they adore their parents, especially their father.

Religion obviously permeates every aspect of their lives. The only person I can think of whose childhood is in any way similar is Jeanette Winterson. Just as she produced craft work based on stories from the Bible, so Victoria/Noel, her sisters Isobel and Louise, brother Dick and cousin John, name their rocking Nebuchadnezzar!

Adherence to their father’s religious principles causes social problems and makes them feel people will laugh and ostracise them for being different. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy when they attend a children’s party during Lent, when they are only allowed to eat bread and butter. At the party they find the bread and butter is liberally sprinkled with hundreds and thousands; so, not wishing to appear rude, Vicky and her older sister Isobel eat it… lots of it! And their younger sister Louise succumbs to a sugar rose from the cake, then acts as if she’s committed a mortal sin, though I’m not sure if she really feels contrition, or is just play-acting, enjoying the drama, and looking for sympathy. Back home they confess to having broken their Lenten fast, and have to do penance by reading the first nine verses of Matthew IV, where the Devil tempts Jesus during his fast in the desert.

And their mismatched outworn, outgrown, clothes cause the girls just as much anguish. Isobel wears cast-offs from a cousin whose wealthy mother has exquisite taste – but what suits the cousin doesn’t necessarily suit Isobel. And the copies of her clothes, made up by a local dressmaker using cheap material, are a disaster. But neither the girl’s mother nor their father can see anything wrong with their clothes.

We follow the family through their move to Eastbourne, accompany them on holidays, trips to relatives, and school, and we get to meet their family, friends, servants, and the stalwart Miss Herbert, who is part governess, part nanny, part maid, part vicar’s secretary, and part home help.

Noel Streatfeild

Actually, I found this slightly disappointing. Like Christopher Milne’s The Enchanted Places, it offers glimpses into a bygone way of life (Streatfeild was born in 1895, and her memoir takes us up to the death of Cousin John in the early days of WW1). However, unlike Milne she doesn’t provide much insight into the way people felt and thought, and there are no reflections on life, the universe and everything, no sense of an older person coming to terms with their younger self. It’s a much more straight forward narrative, but what does come across – and what I found interesting - is the way Streatfeild’s drew on those childhood experiences for her writing. All those ‘underdog’ children, the plain, gawky girls, the outsiders, who lack feminine wiles, girlish charms and womanly accomplishments obviously have their origin in the young Noel’s childhood and the way she saw herself. They’re rags to riches stories, where a ‘Plain Jane’ child turns out to be the one with talent, or the one who finds true happiness, doing what they want to do.

It would have been nice to see some pictures of Streatfeild and her family, but as changes their names I suppose this was not possible, because it would have revealed their identities. Overall, I was disappointed with this book. I didn’t dislike it, but I felt something was lacking, and couldn’t put my finger on what that something was. I think it has to do with the fact that is not quite an autobiography, and not quite a novel: it falls somewhere between the two, and doesn’t quite come off. 

Short Story Sunday: Wartime Again...

Sunday morning is here again, so I shall try to gather my thoughts and decipher my notes and come up with a few brief comments on some tales from The Persephone Book of Short Stories. Actually, I visited my Younger Daughter in London on Thursday and planned on calling at the shop and treating myself to a couple of volumes when, but I left the address at home! However, I’m planning a mini-tour round the Bloomsbury area on a future visit (I like to have something to look forward to), and I might get Cheerful Weather for a Wedding, and A Writer’s Diary, neither of which is a short story, and that is what this post is supposed to be about. So here goes… Three from the early 1940s…

It All begins Again, by Helen Hull, published in 1941, was not one of my favourites. Set in America (just before the US joined WW2) it centres on Mary Bristol, now in her mid-seventies, widowed, and recovering from illness. Despite having made a decision never to live with any of her children, she agrees to spend the summer with her daughter Vera, son-in-law Clem at their country house. Mary is reluctant to fall in with Vera’s plan, but lacks the strength to offer any opposition.

Vera was like that, insistent and unsubtle in projecting upon someone else the necessity for doing what she herself wished. Mary liked showing her up, and perhaps one reason she didn’t want to live with her daughter was that she knew she’d have to hold her tongue. It was one thing to catch Vera up in an afternoon call, when Vera could take her injured feelings home and forget them in some new scheme. But under one roof!

That doesn’t augur well for the future, does it? A happy family life would not appear to be on the cards at all. And what kind of relationship does Mary have with Vera? What kind of mother likes to show her daughter up?

As news of the war in Europe filters through Mary remembers other times and other conflicts. She recalls her childhood, when he father returned from a Southern jail, sick and shattered by his experiences fighting in the Civil War. She thinks about her husband Will, and Tom, their elder son, who died after WW1, ‘the neat surgery job done on his interior after Verdun being inadequate for many years of service’. And she listens to her grandchildren, Hilda and Bill, both engaged in conflicts with their parents as they try to select their own paths through life and love.

In some ways Mary reminded me of Lady Slane in Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent, perhaps it’s simply because they are both elderly women who don’t really like their grown-up children much, reflecting on the past. But I didn’t find Mary a very sympathetic character (I think it was that early comment about liking to show her daughter up that put me off), and the tone is darker and bleaker. Mary takes a wider view of humanity than Lady Slane does, and she doesn’t like what she sees. She’s not looking to recapture the girl she once was, or to achieve personal peace, harmony and a balance in life – she’s searching for answers to the chaos around her, and her bitterness and despair shows through. There's a sense of disillusionment here I think.

A land where a man can be free, and his children after him, she thought. Free? We have thought the world was run for us, that we could go on turning always in those narrow, petty, selfish cells. We are losing them again, peace freedom. We had the only as a promise. My father, my sons, and now these children. They have lost them, having no dream to hold them safe, to strive to keep them. They are blind and empty, passionless…

Defeat, by Kay Boyle, was written in the same year as It All begins Again,but  is much more to my taste. We’re in Europe, watching French soldiers making their way home after the fall of France.

They had found their way back from different places, by different means, some on bicycle, some by bus, some over the mountains on foot, coming home to the Alpes-Maritime from Rennes, or from Clermont-Ferrand, or from Lyons, or from any part of France, and looking as incongruous to modern defeat as survivors of the Confederate Army might have looked, transplanted to this year and place (with their spurs still on and their soft-brimmed, dust-whitened hats), limping wanly back, half dazed and not yet having managed to get the story of what happened straight. Only, this time, they were the men of that tragically unarmed and undirected force which had been the French Army once but was no longer, returning to what orators might call reconstruction but which they knew could never be the same.

Isn’t that a haunting scene? And doesn’t it paint the image so clearly? Boyle tells you everything you need to know about the general situation, then moves seamlessly into the way it affects individuals. Here we have two escaping soldiers, who meet with great kindness from a courageous young schoolmistress with French flags and red, white and blue bunting – an act of defiance against the Nazi Occupation. She gives the fresh clothing, and food, and they agree that ‘a country isn’t defeated as long as its women aren’t’. There is more kindness at a farm, where the duo eat bread and soup, and enjoy a glass of red wine before being shown to the attic where they can sleep.

Then, in a small town, on July the Fourteenth - the French national holiday – grim reality intrudes, and you suddenly realise that not all women were as brave as the schoolmistress, and that many people did what they could to survive, even if it meant fraternising with the enemy. After his return home one of the soldiers describes what happened, and is surprisingly charitable as he tries to make sense of events. But he has tears in eyes as he thinks about it.

I loved this story. It was sad and reflective, offering a very personal view of life in France in the early days of Occupation. And I found it especially interesting read alongside Vere Hodgson’s wartime diaries, Few Eggs, and No Oranges, and the comments she makes about the Fall of France, and the Vichy Government, and General de Gaulle, and the Occupation. I must find a decent history about war-time France, and try to find out a little more.

Finally, I can’t forget Mollie Panter-Downes’ Good Evening, Mrs Craven,  written in 1942, which features in a collection of her short stories published under this title (also produced by Persephone), which I reviewed here, and I think every single one of the tales is an absolute gem: the author’s prose and characterisation are faultless. You can tell I’m a huge fan of Mollie Panter-Downes, and if you read nothing else in The Persephone Book of Short Stories, you should read this one. It is quite, quite perfect. Better still, buy the MPD collection, then you can read them all!

A Bookish Gift, all the Way from Australia!

A parcel from Australia!

Woo hoo! The postman arrived a couple of days ago with a package for me, all the way from Australia, and a lovely picture of a possum on the stamp! And inside the padded envelope were two parcels, beautifully wrapped in old maps, with a little note from Pam, who lives in Tasmania, and runs the excellent Travellin’ Penguin blog, where she not only writes about the books she reads, but also about her searches for vintage Penguins, and her travels on her motorbike. I love looking at her photographs and reading about her adventures – finding out about other countries is one of the great joys of blogging, especially as I’m not much of a traveller. I’ve learned more about Australia from Pam and other Aussie bloggers than ever I did at school! 

Books unwrapped... the little dogs on each one are like post-it
notes, perfect to use for notes as you read.

Anyway, one little parcel contained a copy of The Carousel, by Rosamunde Pilcher, whom I’ve never read, but I was the winner in Pam’s prize draw for this book, which was a lovely surprise, because I rarely win anything. She did tell me I was the winner, but I didn't realise she was also sending a 1947 edition The Art of Reading, by Arthur Quiller-Couch, because I had expressed an interest in it. Wasn’t that kind of her? And it was so thoughtful of her to wrap them individually – it was like a birthday or Christmas!

'm looking forward to reading both these, but I resisted the temptation to sratr either of them immediately, because I’m off on a day trip to London to visit my younger daughter, and I’ve slipped the books into my bag so I have things to read on the train there and back, and while I’m hanging around waiting if there are any delays (and there usually are). So thank you Pam for the gift of books!

An Enchanting Book of Memories

I meant to write this up in advance and schedule it to appear yesterday (oh, how can I begin to describe the delights of the New Laptop, which does all these clever things at the click of a key!). However, I’ve spent too much time in the garden, then flopped out in my armchair too tired to do anything!

So, here we go with another one off the September Book Stack (I’ve been very good so far, sticking to the list, and tying to read one book at a time). Here are my thoughts on The Enchanted Places, the childhood memoirs of Christopher Milne, son of AA Milne – and the original Christopher Robin – and I’m happy to report that it is every bit as enchanting as the title suggests, just as I hoped it would be.

It must be difficult to carve out your own path in life when your father is a much-loved author whose books for children have become classics – especially when the world knows you as the small boy with girlish hair, a smock and sandals pictured in EH Shepard’s drawings. I always assumed that at this period all small boys were dressed like that, but thinking about it now I recall seeing a photo of my father as a small boy (he was born in 1922, two years after Milne, so it’s the same time) and he was wearing baggy trousers which came down to his knees, a jumper best described as elderly, and a pair of big boots (and I mean big). But Dad was brought up in the East End of London, which obviously makes a difference. Were all ‘posh’ boys dressed like the young Milne I wonder?

Anyway, I digress. For a time Christopher Milne, who died in 1996, hated everything to do with Pooh and Christopher Robin, probably because he was teased about it at school,  but he did eventually come to terms with that created image of his boyhood self, and was able to look back fondly on what must, in many ways, have been a magical period.

This book concentrates very much on that part of his life. It does take his story further, but it’s his recollections of the years spent with his nanny (she left when he went to school at the age of nine) that are so enchanting. The family lived in Chelsea, but when Christopher was five his father bought Cotchford Farm for weekends and holidays. It was on the edge of the Ashdown Forest, in Sussex, and the woods and streams and fields became the boy’s playground as he roamed the area playing games with his toys, and this fuelled his father’s creative abilities. There seems to have been some strange kind of symbiotic relationship linking the two worlds of imagination, as Christopher Milne explains.

The young Christopher, with
his bear.

It is difficult to be sure which came first. Did I do something and did my father then write a story around it? Or was it the other way about, and did the story come first? Certainly, my father was on the look-out for ideas; but so was I. He wanted ideas for his stories, I wanted them for my games, and each looked towards the other for inspiration. But in the end it was all the same: the stories became a part of our lives; we lived them, thought them, spoke them. And so, possibly before, but certainly after that particular story, we used to stand on Poohsticks Bridge throwing sticks into the water and watching them float away out of sight until they re-emerged on the other side.

And the artist Ernest Shepard also had a hand in shaping things. He :

… came along, looked at the toy Pooh, read the stories and started drawing; and the Pooh who had been developing under my father’s pen began to develop under Shepard’s pen as well….

Most of the places and creatures in the Pooh stories were based on places were based on places and things that really did exist, and those that were made up blended in seamlessly and became part of the story. Only two characters were created by AA Milne: Rabbit and Owl, but Owl’s home really did exist – it was one of several ‘houses’ Christopher established in the trees around Cotchford. With Eeyore it was the other way round: the donkey was a gloomy-looking soft toy, but his dwelling place was dreamt up by Christopher’s father, inspired perhaps by his bedroom and study (the two darkest, dullest and dingiest rooms at Cotchford) or perhaps, by something deep within his own psyche. Wherever that place was, Christopher does not want to go. Nor does he make any effort to analyse the relationship between his parents, or their relationship with him.

And he has no nostalgia or regret for the past, not even for Pooh and his friends (who can be seen in an American Museum).. He writes:

I like to have around me the things I like today, not the things I once liked many years ago. I don’t want a house to be a museum. When I grew out of my old First Eleven blazer, it was thrown away, not lovingly preserved to remind me of the proud day I won it with a score of thirteen not out. Every child has his Pooh, but one would think it odd if every man still kept his Pooh to remind him of his childhood.

Christopher as an aduklt.

And he adds: 

I wouldn’t like a glass case that said: ‘Here is fame’, and I don’t need a glass to remind me: ‘Here was love’.

Re-reading this, I  feel I have let the Pooh connection dominate, but it dominated (and blighted) Christopher Milne's life. However, the book covers much more that, for he also writes about his time in London, his friends Anne (in the town) and Hannah (in the country), his Nanny, the other servants, and his family life, as well as offering glimpses of his schooldays and later life. It's written by a man who seems to have overcome the problems which arose from his childhood, and was finally able to break free and establish his own path in life, yet was still able to look back with warmth, humour and love.

A Forgotten Novel That's Best Left Undiscovered!

It’s not often I give up on book, but I gave up on Hilaire Belloc’s Mr Petre. Actually, I was going to say I’m sorry to admit I didn’t finish this book, but then I thought why should I feel apologetic – after all, I don’t have to read things I don’t like, or can’t get along with. The days when I had to study books I didn’t enjoy have long since gone (thank goodness), and as far as I’m concerned, reading should be a pleasure, and this one wasn’t. I thought it was a forgotten novel that's best left undiscovered!

The blurb on the inside cover made it sound quite enticing, which shows just how wrong blurb can be (and it says he landed at Southampton, but the novel mentions the coast of Devon, and the Sound, so I assume he docks at Plymouth, but I’ll forgive the blurb write for that). Anyway, our hero arrives back in England, and sets off for London aboard a train feeling an ‘odd sense of freedom’ and ‘unnaturally careless’. But recent events blur and fade…

Then, overwhelmingly, in a flash, the truth broke upon him. He had lost all conception of his past: every image of it. He knew where he was. All about him, the landscape, the type of railway carriage – everything was familiar, but of any name of place or action or movement in connection with himself prior to that sleep nothing whatever remained.

He has no idea who he is, his luggage and despatch box remain unclaimed, and all he has in the world are the clothes he stands up in, £63 in English notes, and a handful of change.  

A taxi takes him the Splendide hotel – because he is obviously a man of taste and money, and en route he decides he is Mr Petre (or possibly Peter), which is something to go on. He is scared of being thought a fool and laughed at if he tells the truth and says lost memory and can’t remember who he is. So he gives this name at the reception desk, and when the clerk asks ‘Mr John K Petre?’ he says yes. And from that point on our Mr Petre is caught up in a whirligig of events over which he has no control, and no understanding. For John K Petre is a millionaire who has money and makes more, and everyone wants to know him, to seek advice, to make their own fortune.

The novel is a satire, targeting financial institutions, and city financiers and bankers and their hangers-on. And therein lies my problem I think, because my mind just shut down when I came to the stuff about investments and such like, and there did seem to be a lot of it. I couldn’t take it in, I didn’t care, and it was boring. I couldn’t even muster enough interest in the characters for them to carry me through: they were dull, flat and boring as well.

So in the end I gave up completely, and struck the book on the pile destined for Oxfam – but not before sneaking a look at the end, to find out what happened to Mr Petre, because I wanted to know if he got his memory back (yes) and whether he really was Mr John K Petre (no, but his name is Peter). He has to battle in the courts to clear himself on a charge of impersonation (he insists he never claimed to be John K Petre the millionaire, everyone just assumed he was) and he does get to live happily after, in his own quiet way.

I think the idea of making your central character an amnesiac is an interesting concept, but it means you never really know enough about him to be able to relate to him, and his character never seems to develop. Even when he regains his memory he remains remarkably colourless.

The novel was first published in 1925 (issued by Penguin 1947, number 633), but is set in 1953, which puzzled me – I thought perhaps it was going to turn out to be some kind of time shift story, and that would explain the memory loss, but this wasn’t the case. It’s not a vision of the future, like Brave New World, or Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the world in which it is set is exactly the same as the world which existed in in 1925, with the exception that cars, ships and so on are referred as rotors (Mr Petre – John K, not our Peter – is the Rotor King). This terminology is never explained, so it’s unclear whether Belloc envisaged a completely new method of powering transport, or whether rotor is merely a euphemism for motor, used perhaps to avoid any possibility of litigation.