Kitty Barne's Visitors from London by Paul May

Here are a couple of quotes from Kitty Barne’s 1940 Carnegie Medal winning book Visitors from London.  The four Farrar children have arrived in the Sussex countryside to spend their school holidays on a farm with a youthful aunt named Myra. 'Steadings' is a nearby farmhouse, rented by a writer friend of theirs, that has been empty for a couple of years. This writer friend has lent it to be used by evacuees.  

“. . . it was to be used for the overflow of London children if there was a war . . . They were all to be moved out of London, the children, millions of them, in three days . . . How many did they think they could take?

‘What aged children?’ inquired Myra . . . ‘What age and what sex?’

But that, it seemed, was more than Miss Williams or anyone else could tell her. The idea was that the children came to the London stations, and if a train was there, drawn up at a platform, they got in it and went. Any children, any platform, any train, to any place. As for their age, schoolchildren were between five and fourteen. How many could they take?”

The government have apparently promised to provide everything, but luckily Myra is practical and realistic. “Beds, blankets, mattresses—they’ve been promised, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come.”

It’s impossible not to hear the echoes of today’s government’s panic and muddle. Nothing changes!

This is the last of my wartime Carnegie reads and it's slightly dizzying to realise that it was published 80 years ago. I approached it with some trepidation when I finally managed to track down a copy. Four middle-class children on holiday from their boarding schools encounter four evacuated working-class families from London. It could be what a friend of mine once called ‘a minefield of naffdom’. Only it isn’t that at all. It turns out to be an outstanding piece of observational writing. I can’t remember ever reading such brilliantly observed very young children anywhere else outside of picture books—I’m talking about 2, 3 and four-year-olds—and it’s not just the small children either. This book is overflowing with economically drawn, fully-realised characters. Without looking back at the book I can count up twenty that I can summon up clearly—quite distinct from each other, each with their own, memorable personality. 

Frontispiece by Ruth Gervis

At times, especially at the beginning, the language used is a little dated, especially so in the internal monologues of young Jimmy Farrar. To a child in 1940 I’m sure this would have sounded fresh and contemporary, but it raises an interesting question for today’s children’s authors about how far it’s worth sacrificing longevity for the sake of that modern feel. Here’s Jimmy:

“. . . it was queer, it really was, the way David and Gerda remained dead nuts on horses though they hardly ever saw one. There was no money for extras like riding in their family. Came of having ridden in India, he supposed, when he and Sally were too small to do so. Now a car was worth looking at. Every blessed one of them different . . .’

I don’t mind this at all myself. I’m sure it’s how Jimmy and his contemporaries talked, but I suspect it may be one reason why this particular Carnegie winner is out of print, hard to find, and undeservedly forgotten. Not a huge amount happens, but everyone is changed by their experiences. Here are some examples of those young children I was talking about. In this first extract the families from London have just arrived after an exhausting journey.

“Hardly had they gone through the gate when they ran into a small boy. He had on a coat far too big for him, and his head with its large grey cap stuck out from the collar in a bewildered tortoise-like way.

            ‘Please, wot’s the way out of the park?’ he asked them in a wavering voice.

‘Way out of the park? But this isn’t a park,’ said Sally.

‘I got to get fish and chips for mum. I got a shillin’, but I can’t find no way out to the streets. I bin all round. No cops to ask either, there aren’t.’

            It was Ernest. His big grey eyes, ringed with fatigue, were swimming with tears. The moment Mrs Huggett had gone his mother had fancied fish and chips for a bit of supper, and sent him out to get some. He’d promised dad to take care of mum but he couldn’t find no shop . .  . If this wasn’t a park he didn’t know what it was.”

And here are some children playing on their own. This scene could come from any Nursery or Reception class (complete with well-meaning adult asking stupid questions, or well-meaning ten-year-old in this case):

“It was a hot day and no one was wearing very much. Cyril was driving Ireen, harnessed with a piece of rope. Sydney, in a pair of bathing drawers, was playing a game of his own up and down the steps where once poor Mr Bloss’s parents had climbed to mount their horses. He travelled up them, gave three stamps, and came down again; that was the whole game, but he’d made it up himself so he was happy playing it. Benjy was sitting in Syd’s bed of earth, digging with Syd’s spoon, busy planting his three wooly balls. Syd had lost interest in these possessions.

            Feeling interested, but rather out of it, Sally decided to tackle Benjy.

        ‘What are you doing, Benjy?’ she inquired.

‘Plantin,’ said Benjy.

‘What, potatoes?’

‘Yus. Potatoes and gravy.’ He hadn’t thought it out, but that would do.” 

A trip to the beach

Visitors from London was based on Kitty Barne’s own experience as a house mother looking after evacuees. She was married to Noel Streatfeild’s cousin, Eric, and it was at Streatfeild’s suggestion that Barne had turned to writing children’s books. After her promising career as a musician had been cut short by a botched operation which left her deaf in one ear, Barne had made a name for herself writing, producing and directing amateur theatrical performances for the Girl Guide Association, as well as serving as their music and drama adviser. By 1936 she was worn out by the work and found herself in hospital with a breakdown. Streatfeild, fresh from her triumph with Ballet Shoes, urged her to write a story about a musical child. This was She Shall Have Music, a book which lost out in the 1938 Carnegie Medal competition to Streatfeild’s own The Circus is Coming. 

Kitty Barne

Visitors from London is illustrated by Noel Streatfeild's older sister, Ruth Gervis, and the process of illustration was a truly collaborative one. Gervis describes it: 'After I had read over the MS, we would meet and then, her good ear towards me, her eyes shining, her face alive with interest, she would discuss her characters. I used to make dozens of quick sketches of every single character until I had got them as she pictured them.'

It's hardly surprising that Visitors from London reflects to some degree the conventional views of the time about the roles of men and women, but there are plenty of strong female characters in this book, not least 12-year-old Lily who acts as a mother to her two younger siblings. ‘I’m twelve I am. Two years I’ve bin looking after them. Mum she went to hospital and she said Lily, if I don’t come back you mind them.’ Lily is incredibly competent and practical, and she even travels with a tin-opener!  Then there’s Daphne, a volunteer who’s going to be a land girl and wears slacks. Here’s her first appearance: ‘She strolled on long slim legs over to the byre, and they saw her in the shadow leaning against the door, and talking to the cowman.’ Economical, elegant prose.

But Kitty Barne waits right till the end, when the husbands turn up, to show us why Mrs Thompson, with her two children and new-born baby, is so timid and miserable. ‘Mr Thompson had come down, as he told his wife at once, with the intention of taking her back to London. He had had enough of being by himself, enough of boiling the kettle and making himself tea when what he wanted was something hot and something ready when he got back from work.’

And then we see Mrs Thompson in the back of the van as they are about to leave: ‘Roly peered in and saw Mrs Thompson, a jelly of tears, sitting in a dark corner of the van, Myra Jinny (the baby) in her arms. ‘Been so kind . . . don’t want to go,’ she sobbed.’

This really is a very good book by a very good writer. She wrote many more books and I’m looking forward to reading them.

Visitors from London is out of print.

Paul May's website is here.

Go to books by Vanessa Harbour

If you celebrate Happy Easter, if not, I’d say enjoy the day but it seems a little inappropriate considering the current circumstances. We should all be at home unless we are keyworkers. If you are a keyworker, I’d like to say thank you for all you are doing.

This is going to be a short post this month as it is a holiday weekend. I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about books that you go to when you feel the need to be cheered up, your comfort blanket books. Or am I the only one who has those? As a family we have them, we also have our go-to films and tv programmes. They used to be Shrek, Friends and Ally McBeal, particularly for my daughter. Recently she had surgery and I found her watching Friends again as she was too ill to read.

I have some go-to books for when I am feeling overwhelmed and I need to escape I will often reread one of the following.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. I have loved this book since I was a child. My mother introduced me to it. It was a book I’d often read when things were difficult at school.

Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell. I was introduced to this book by my sister Jacky. It is such an evocative story and of course, it is about horses.

Then there is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG by Roald Dahl, I know these might be contentious, but they are still stories I love.

Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse, again another very evocative story. I love her descriptions of food.

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, such a powerful book based in World War 2. Something I can easily get lost in.

Finally, is the first Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J K Rowling, I read this with my children. I also studied it at university. It has fond memories, so for me, it is like being wrapped in a big hug.

I have only really looked at the MG and YA books that I use. I do have some adult books that I reach for occasionally but I must be honest most of the time I reach for one of the above if I am feeling anxious or I need to escape from the real world for a bit. Judge me if you want, but they are in the main beautifully written.

What are your go-to books if you have them when you need to escape?

Dr Vanessa Harbour

@VanessaHarbour

www.vanessaharbour.co.uk

http://chaosmos-outofchaoscomesorder.blogspot.com

The Carnegie from the Beginning by Paul May

I’ve just started on a project that’s been in my mind ever since a friend in the Schools Library Service showed me a shelf in their offices containing all of the Carnegie medal winning books. I’ve started reading them all, from the beginning. 

I thought I ought to do this partly because there are quite a few names on the list that I had never heard of, to my shame. I'm not sure if this will be an occasional series or a monthly one, but this month I’ve read the first three winners.

PIGEON POST (1936) by Arthur Ransome is the book of which his wife, Evgenia, said ‘it’s not very much worse than the worst of the others.’ She also told him, later that year, that WE DIDN’T MEAN TO GO TO SEA was ‘flat, not interesting, not amusing.’ Luckily for Ransome, hers was not the only opinion he listened to. However, it’s probably fair to say that PIGEON POST is not Ransome’s most successful book, and it was said that it won the inaugural Carnegie partly in recognition of the achievements of the Swallows and Amazons series as a whole.

I remember enjoying the book as a child, and re-reading it now it strikes me just how important is Ransome’s ability to produce a vivid sense of place. He loved the Lake District and he knew and loved its people, who spring brilliantly to life on the pages of the book—station porters, farmers and their families, an elderly slate miner. But the plot feels forced.

I think this is partly because Ransome is very aware that Nancy Blackett, the chief inventor of the make-belief transformations of the real world around them that drive the early books so successfully, is now getting a little too old for this. And, indeed, the younger children notice in this book that at times the older ones are acting ‘almost like natives’. For me the most interesting thing about PIGEON POST is the treatment of Titty’s terror and distress when she finds that she, alone of the children, is able to dowse for water with a forked hazel stick. Ransome gives her an inner life of a quite different order and complexity to any of his other characters.

Eve Garnett’s THE FAMILY AT ONE END STREET, which won the prize in 1937, was written quite deliberately to counterbalance the overwhelming preponderance of middle-class children in children’s fiction, and in books like PIGEON POST. Garnett was a painter and illustrator who was commissioned to make drawings for Evelyn Sharp’s 1927 book THE LONDON CHILD. Garnett was horrified by the conditions she found ‘in the poorer quarters of the world’s richest city’ and THE FAMILY AT ONE END STREET was part of her effort to do something about this.

I hadn’t read this book before and was surprised to find that it is at least as much about the adults as about the children. It’s very entertaining and beautifully written, and I love the way the children seem to be completely trusting of most of the adults they meet, happy to hop into a car with them to go to a party or let them buy them a boat ride. In fact almost everybody seems to be terribly kind to almost everyone else, apart from the nosy neighbour two doors down and a bunch of French sailors who are understandably angry when a small boy nearly kills himself stowing away on their ship. Even the posh people are very kind to the poor people. It seems from the perspective of 2020 a very innocent world where people are happy even when they are hungry, and I wonder if Eve Garnett felt that there were some things that just couldn’t go into a book she intended for a young audience. 

George Brown, the Labour politician, grew up in the East End of London, and in his autobiography he says ‘it was a happy childhood, with a wonderful spirit of equality among the people of our neighbourhood.’ This is what Eve Garnett captures so well, but George Brown also describes the time after his father was sacked for his part in the General Strike of 1926: ‘Every Friday I had to go to the workhouse with a little sack to collect our allotment of bread and treacle. I was bitterly ashamed and bitterly angry.’ This is what we don’t see in THE FAMILY AT ONE END STREET.

Many publishers turned it down, saying that they thought it 'not suitable for the young'. I think they found the depiction of working-class life shocking, even though the incidents with child protagonists are insightful and funny. It’s certainly very different from Arthur Ransome though it shares with Ransome's book the distinction of never having been out of print.

From IS IT WELL WITH THE CHILD?

Eve Garnett also produced a book of drawings of children in 1938. In this she illustrates snatches of dialogue and anecdotes sent to her from around the country. She also painted a 40-foot long mural in the Children’s House in Bow which shows children being led out of East End poverty into the green countryside. There’s a web page with pictures of the mural, which is badly in need of conservation and looking for donations!

And on to 1938. This year’s winner was THE CIRCUS IS COMING by Noel Streatfeild. Streatfeild was a giant of twentieth century children's literature, even though, at the beginning, she saw her children's books as a sideline and maybe even a distraction from the adult novels which she continued to write throughout her long career. Her first book, BALLET SHOES, was a runaway success. Streatfeild writes of passing a bookshop in Oxford Street where 'a sight met my eyes which astounded me. One entire window was given up to piles of my book, and around the window like a frieze hung pink ballet shoes.'  My 93-year-old mother, whose memory is in tatters, saw me reading Angela Bull's biography of Streatfeild and instantly recalled being eleven years old and desperate to read the book.

THE CIRCUS IS COMING was Noel Streatfeild's third book for children, written after intensive research which involved travelling around Britain with Bertram Mills's circus. The opening sentence is hard to beat: ‘Peter and Santa were orphans.’  (It's the plainspokenness I admire, the desire to get on with it.) The children have been brought up by their Aunt Rebecca who, having been lady’s maid to a duchess, thinks that she knows the correct way to bring up children (the duchess’s way) This results in the children being very ignorant. They have never met many people either, certainly not ordinary people. Then their aunt dies and, rather than allow themselves to be sent to separate orphanages, they run away to try to find their Uncle Gus, who is a circus clown and an acrobat.

They arrive in London and sit on a step to wait for a pawnbroker to open so they can get some money. They are saved by a man named Bill who takes them in, feeds them, and puts them on the right train. He tells them: ‘I’m taking a chance on you two . . .’ There’s no suggestion at all that they might be taking a chance on him. In 1930’s Britain it was the child’s duty to be polite to strangers, not run a mile. Or so it seems from these books.

Uncle Gus is a far more fully-realised adult character than is normally found in children's fiction, and I was surprised to find myself being invited to see inside his head. Perhaps it's the adult novelist being  as interested in this adult as she is in the children, but unlike with the Eve Garnett book there is no doubt whatsoever that this is a book written for children.

There’s some wonderful stuff here about the children’s ridiculous prejudices being challenged and undone, some of it very relevant today. For example, it turns out all the circus children from Germany, Russia and France can speak AT LEAST two languages, and even though they go to school in a different town each week they are way ahead of Peter and Santa.

The descriptions of circus life are fabulous, and the different ways in which Peter and Santa came to terms with their new life were absorbing and really well done. I especially liked the end of the book, and I’d say that the final paragraph is one of my top three ever. An excellent first sentence, a brilliant final paragraph and great writing all the way through. 

Angela Bull's excellent biography has this story from Noel Streatfeild's schooldays at a rather staid Ladies College, which tells you a lot about her. Noel had started a class magazine WITHOUT PERMISSION. 

‘She was summoned to the headmistress’s study, where Miss Bishop tore the precious magazine to shreds and forbade her to write another issue. This searing injustice provoked Noel to her worst act of defiance. She invented the Little Grey Bows Society.

The aim of the society was to be rude to the teachers. Every girl who joined got a little grey bow as a membership badge, and was awarded a hundred marks, one of which was docked each time she was polite in class. It was intended that the person with them most marks left at the end of term should win a prize.’

It ended badly, of course, and Noel’s parents were asked to remove her from the school.

Still, she had the last laugh. And I cannot resist including this little gem from Angela Bull's book. Having become, according to one critic, a classic in her own lifetime,' friends noticed her tendency at parties to begin every remark, 'Of course, speaking as a writer—'

PIGEON POST and THE FAMILY AT ONE END STREET are still in print, but THE CIRCUS IS COMING, rather surprisingly, is not. Angela Bull's very lively biography is readily available second-hand.

Next month: Eleanor Doorly, Kitty Barne and Mary Treadgold.

Paul May’s website

Too Much Plot! by Susie Day

Reader, I have a problem.

I’m addicted to plot. I might start a new 9-12 book with all good intentions of a strong, clear A thread (sparky 11-year-old Billie wants to find out more about her mum, who died when she was five, and discovers more than she planned) and a fun B plot (she’s starting at secondary school). But then I go and give her brothers. Three big taking-up-space brothers. One’s getting married and wants her to be bridesmaid, so she decides to be their wedding planner. One’s having an existential crisis about packing lettuces in a Tesco warehouse (his first of six jobs, all of which he gets fired from). One’s struggling with being the school rugby star and all the girls who want to nibble his ear on the bus, when actually he’s not all that fussed.

Then there are her three new school friends: the one who can’t work out how to fit in at Big School either, the desperately anxious one, and the one who is apparently intent on making Billie’s life miserable (though , of course, it turns out she might be quite miserable too). And then there’s funny, self-sacrificing Dad who runs a greasy spoon... and lovely Miss Eagle at school whose Hero project sets Billie off on the quest to find out about her mum... and Dr Paget and Dr Skidelsky who live over the road...
 

It’s a lovely book, I think. It’s funny and serious, heartfelt and bittersweet and ultimately very kind - like the Pea’s Book series it spins off from. But it's a bit full. Pleasantly stuffed, but perhaps better if it didn't have that fifth roast potato. Too long to be class readers, except for an extremely patient class (and teacher!).

Could we pare it down next time, perhaps? asks my editor, gently, every time. I definitely will! I say gamely. And then I write the next one about two families blending together, and not just one family secret but a whole Year Seven classful of them, and a school performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that needs to be saved, and one entrepreneurial mum who runs her own company called Fairy Dusters, and one who might be a witch with magic powers (at least her daughter hopes so)...

The trouble is, I always write about big families; the sort of comfy, mildly chaotic collectives of that I grew up reading about. Noel Streatfeild’s Gemma books, with the effortlessly musical Robinsons. Arthur Ransome’s Swallows, and Amazons, and Ds. Enough ordinariness for there to be one character I could decide was like me, with all the oddball quirks and special talents to be just that little bit better.

But I never want to short-change any one character. Sketched-in background adults who occasionally mumble, ‘You’ll be late for school,’ are not for me. Same for siblings, and friends. I want there to be something for everyone to be doing, not just the protagonist. And that means an A plot, and a B plot, and then the entire alphabet.

I suspect, in part, it’s because I’m not all that fussed on heroes. Buffy’s great - but I care a lot more about Willow and the rest of the Scoobies. I always preferred Sally to Darrell in Malory Towers. I grew up shy; I think as I always saw myself as a sidekick - useful, even necessary, but never in the uncomfortable spotlight.

But I’ve resolved - since this is a New Year - to knock this nonsense on the head. Next, I’m writing a picture book, and there is no room in my 500ish words to cram in dozens of sub-plots. It’s the perfect creative exercise for me to learn how to trim. I’m starting with a cat, and the little girl who chooses him as a kitten to take home. With her brother and sister. And Mum. And Granny and Grandad.

Reader, I still have a problem...

Susie Day - books for kids about families, friendship, feelings and funny stuff
https://susieday.com/
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Old Friends Sheena Wilkinson

At a dinner party last week, a family friend said she was getting rid of an old bookcase. ‘And I’m just getting rid of the books too; after all, I’ve already read them.’  When I had recovered from spitting out my wine, I admitted that I have seventeen bookcases in my house (which is perhaps half the size of hers), full of books I have mostly read.

‘But why do you keep them?’ she asked.

‘I just – have to.’

There are two kinds of people: re-readers and non-re-readers. I became a re-reader out of necessity: as a child the local library couldn’t keep up with me, and besides, re-reading was fun. Reading a new book is like going to a party with strangers – it might be wonderful; you might meet exciting new friends; but it might equally be a disaster as you turn the pages sadly, finding nothing to tempt you and wishing you had stayed at home. Re-reading is like curling up by the fire for a gossip with old friends.

I have certain books which I reread every few years. I don’t know when the need will descend or what will spark it off. Sometimes a new book by a favourite author will inspire me with the desire to catch up on her backlist. Sometimes real life will throw something at me that can only be dealt with with the help of fictional old retainers – Antonia Forest’s Marlows got me through being laid up after an accident ten years ago; the months surrounding my father’s death were partly assuaged by daily escapes to the Chalet School.

But you know what happens! But there are so many new books! non-re-readers proclaim.

Yes, I know. I read lots of new books too. Maybe a hundred a year. And have a ‘to-read’ pile in double figures piling up in one of the seventeen bookcases.

But last week, I don’t know why, possibly because things weren’t going well in my WIP, I found that the only thing I wanted out of the thousands of possibilities in my bookshelves, was the Gemma series by Noel Streatfeild. Nothing else would do. Not her best books, and certainly not a model of good editing (Christmas happens twice in Gemma And Sisters within a couple of months.) I know every line of every gorgeous Betty Maxie illustration; I know not only what event is coming next but often every syllable of dialogue, but it doesn’t matter. I enjoyed every word. Again.

                                 

Lazy? Maybe. But sometimes you just want what you want. One day in 2012 I was walking down the Cromwell Road in London when I thought, This is where the Fossils live. And suddenly I needed to read Ballet Shoes. That moment. (Or at least when I got on the tube.) Because I had my kindle with me, I was able to gratify that. Maybe such instant gratification isn’t good for the character, and I probably stopped reading some worthy tome in order to wonder (again) which of the Fossils I would rather be (Pauline, though I know I’m meant to want to be Petrova); but I didn’t care. I was enjoying Ballet Shoes too much.  

Of course it’s comfort reading, and thank God for it. Christmas is coming, and I expect Santa will bring some new books. Possible new friends. But it’s OK if he doesn’t, because I’m going to be curled up by the fire with the Cazalets (again).