REVIEW: The Far Distant Oxus

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The Far Distant Oxus: Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock. Jonathan Cape, 1937 (fourth edition)

I’ve been keeping a look out for this book since hearing the story of two teenage girls who were inspired to write a story by Arthur Ransome’s 'Swallows and Amazons' series, and who not only succeeded but got it published. The copy I found was a bit fragile, so I had to read it carefully. The story proper is accompanied by a cheerleading introduction by Ransome himself, outlining the story of how it was written, sent to him and then published. That is a story I could stand to hear in more detail: how they kept it a secret, the mechanics of co-writing and what it felt like when it was a success. He also emphasises that it is a story written for children, by children.

Knowing this, I hope I don’t sound too patronising when I say that I sincerely found it accomplished. I would have liked a little more adult involvement in its production, for the dialogue, in particular, was a touch too artless. The utterance ‘Umn,’ makes far too many appearances. But it conveys the sense of being in the moment and a sense of place really well.

The story is that the Hunterleys, Bridget, Anthony and Frances, have come to Cloud Farm in Exmoor, Devon, to spend the end of their summer, hosted by the Fradds. Their parents are abroad in Sumatra, and the main appeal of the holiday for the children is ponies, an element that doesn’t appear in Ransome’s books. Energetic Bridget chooses Talisman, Anthony chooses Timothy and Frances Treacle. In the second chapter, they see a mysterious ‘boy on a jet-black pony’ that he rides beautifully.

He soon makes contact with him, and they learn that his name is Maurice, his pony is Dragonfly and he has a black dog named Ellita. He also has great plans for the summer and introduces them to Peter and Jennifer Clevertons, owners of Grey Owl and Goosefeather. They very quickly become a gang, transforming the moor into the Persian desert of poetry – the farm is renamed Aderbaijan and the local town Cabool (which must be Kabul). The Oxus of the title is the name they gift the river they ford to build a hut and, over the course of their holiday, find the source of and then traverse down and along to the sea, which must be the Exe.

There’s the sense of easily stepping between reality and make-believe that Ransome played on. The children half-heartedly create a map, but are more interested in renaming places they go and in the animals they encounter there. Frances and Jennifer and the slightly older Peter and Anthony play shorter-term pretend.

I was going to say that apart from the expeditionary party, their adventures are realistic, but they are given an amazingly free rein from a modern perspective. This was the 1930s and they’re clearly middle class. The Fradds are in loco parentis, Mr Cleverton is the only actual parental figure (a less hands-on Uncle Jim figure, and I use the name advisedly, as he doesn’t do anything Captain Flintish). Of course, cars were rare. But Maurice spends a lot of the summer living outdoors, essentially, though he disappears and then returns with new supplies, presumably from his home.

But they do lack a Susan. Meals are the responsibility of all, directed by the older children, who sometimes make mistakes, but nothing too dire happens to them. Maurice’s bad planning saves him from being too idealised, but he is an interesting figure. All the others, younger than him, look up to him. He remains enigmatic – when we first meet him, he almost has a mystic experience, and he leaves the pages of the story dramatically. It is interesting that two teenage girls conjured him up and have all three female characters admiring him.

The children’s brushes with modern life – exemplified the most by a visit to a Butlin’s park for the day – are almost shocking. There is no plot, or their encounter with a boy from a home might have led to more than one event. Instead it’s an account of what they did over the summer, a mix of the down-to-earth that’s exciting to them out of novelty – helping to harvest or whitewashing - and trips that they can half-pretend are much grander affairs. In the final chapters, as the holiday comes to an end and they do things for the last time, there’s a sadness allied with a mater-of-factness about it. The authors are old enough to have some perspective on this, but not the bittersweetness of an adult perspective – Peter believes that there’s always something super to come.

‘The Far Distant Oxus’ really is an impressive, vivid achievement. The Ransome influence has been transformed into something that’s grown from the authoresses’ experiences – their characters rightly don’t think much of ‘Swiss Family Robinson’.

JourneyLeaf has written a post about the appeal of the book and a little more about what its authors did, which apparently includes writing sequels.

(Edited lightly on 26/5/19.)