PERSONAL: weekend haul

[feather_ghyll]

I got a chance to go into a proper, if tiny, second-hand bookshop over the weekend. I don’t recall whether I’ve written about thi particular shop before here or not. It’s the sort of shop where you have to be willing to devote time to searching and even literally kneel down if you’re a children’s book collector or, er, a bookish child. I had a bit of a misanthropic spell there. I’d like to say it was idiot holiday-makers who clearly only went into bookshops when they came across them unexpectedly out of the daily run, but it was people in general. It was mainly the lack of space, books are essentially in piles, three deep in one small room. I scattered some piles about three times and got stepped upon.

Still, I got all of the books that I’m going to discuss next (and more) there:

The Adventurous Rebel: Eileeen Graham. C&J Temple, 1949?.

This is a historical adventure for older girls. I am getting tired of the way early twentieth century children’s writers automatically side with the Royalists (oh those gay cavaliers!) all the time. Here, our heroine is Avril, a self-avowed butterfly with no real idea of how easy her life is, in many ways, even after her parents’ death and the fall of the home where she held court for seventeen years. For her friendship with his daughter, Roundhead Colonel Norton – a man fond of imputing the parentage of Belial to anyone who earns his disapproval – has taken her into his strict home. Bored and squashed, as well as disgusted by the disloyalty, Avril has enough and decides to run away dressed in conveniently left-behind clothes of her cousin’s.

As becomes obvious in the ensuing adventures, impetuous Avril doesn’t do planning. She wants to reach a relative’s home, has little money and is lucky to fall in with a young man who is also loyal to the king, capable with his sword, if tailed by a shady character issuing murky threats against him. Captain Tony Carne thinks ‘Kit’ is a girlish lad, they quarrel because he thinks she/he is a bit strange and she/he has a hair trigger, she/he runs away or Carne gets into fights, she/he gets tied up a lot, he rescues her. For a stretch, this is the content of several chapters. Avril seems to learn little, most of the scrapes are because of her hot-headedness and although she’s tomboy enough to get out of some scrapes, there’s a growing tendency in her to act like the silliest of romance heroines. I could live with Carne being so blind to the fact that 'Kit' is a girl, but the writer gets into needless confusion by her refusal to stick to things as Carne would see them when Avril faints or they are separated, when he’d think of Kit and use masculine pronouns. The reader ought to be trusted to understand that they were following Carne’s POV. But she complicates things to a nonsensical degree in those passages.

Unintentionally funny line: She told Aunt Lea about Celia's betrothal and listened with apparent concern to the good lady's twittering comments of surprise and delight.

I then read (an overpriced copy given the edition and its condition)

Still Glides the Stream: DE Stevenson. Fontana, 1965.Will Hastie returns to the Borders having stayed in the army after the second world war, but, now in his mid thirties, he means to settle and make a go of things at home. He grew up with the family next door, almost counting Rae his brother and Patty his sister, but Rae died in the war, leaving his parents broken and hopeless. Patty now has a fiancée, who should help her, but Will - unaccountably doesn’t like him. A telling picnic gone wrong shows Patty that she doesn’t like him that much either, but Will has gone off to investigate a mystery thrown up by an enigmatic message from Rae that arrived after news of his death. In the south of France, where Rae died, Will discovers that his friend found and married a beautiful Frenchwoman, and she bore him a son, Tom, in many ways Rae to the life again. Will eventually brings them home, where Tom heals his grandparents and Patty feels she should be happier than she is. It's all very gentle, and I liked it more than I did the last Stevenson that I read, although I was in some anxiety that Stevenson would pair off the ‘right' couple (to my mind), something she doesn’t always do.

This book loosely follows up Amberwell and Summerhills with a visit there that reminded me of people visiting Rosamund’s castle in the Abbey series. I read Amberwell when I was too young to grasp it, really. I wanted it to be more of a book about children and their big house than it was, and then it was a long time after when I read Summerhills.

The Treasure of the Trevellyans: Doris Pocock The Commonwealth Library 2 Ward lock 1959

is a perfectly fine family adventure book about the large brood of an impecunious if well regarded artist who inherits the family seat. Given what the weather is like these days, I like that Pocock does not give them a wonderful Cornish summer. It rains. A lot. The bored family come across a legendary treasure that an ancestor claimed to have hidden 'somewhere on the land'. Searching for it gives them something to do, with the twins Bundle and Bunch (a boy and girl, and I never remembered which was which because of the nicknames) going down a well and up a chimney. Going outdoors is good for Dennis, the eldest son, who has been working too hard for exams he doesn't believe he will pass, to his sister Chloe, the eldest girl and second mother's relief. Dreamy Ivor and discontented Doreen learn to direct their talents in a good direction and stowaway cousin Pomona (I waited in vain for them to give her a nickname or call her the less frightful Mona) enjoys the companionship of a large family and puts up with the privations that she never had to face in her spoiled, easy lfe before. Of course, the treasure is never found, but many other things are. As I said, it's fine, better than many other similar types of stories, but better writers would probably have been subtler with similar material.

Comments

siding with royalists

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I so agree about that! One of the reasons I like Rosemary Sutcliff's Simon so much: it shows both sides in a realistic way.

I like The Treasure of the Trevellyans. There was a particular incident in a book which I remembered from childhood reading but I'd no idea which book it was. Years later I was delighted to find it was this one. Her school stories are unpopular but this family one works for me.

Sounds a good shop, in spite of the discomfort. Oh my poor old knees; charity shops always put children's books on the floor, too.

Re: siding with royalists

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

There's something so knee-jerk about it, even if children's writers of the time didn't want to be seen as espousing republicanism, it's an important point in British history and going for the better dressed side so automatically makes me flap my hands.

What was the incident that you remembered? I can't remember any of her other books off-hand, but I felt some pleasure at coming across her name, so they engendered goodwill.

I always get some books at the shop, but it always frustrates me, because I'm sure there are books I'd like to buy that I can't get at. It's a tiny space and the only wy to display the stock better -with less threat of injury to shoppers - would be to display less of it.

the incident

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Strange, it was about the girl playing Mendelssohn on the piano and pleasing her relations. Something about it must have struck me as odd, because I remembered it for years.

Re: the incident

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

It's odd how little things stay with you, isn't it? THings with a personal resonance that's hard to explain. I remember the scene, where Pomona the cousin is shown to be a better player than the Trevellyan girls, because of latent talent and more application, presumably, but unlike the artistic talents of the other children, not much is made of it in the rest of the story, although the point with the other kids is that they haven't had the opportunity or stimulus to develop them, while what Pomona needs is to run a little wild with her cousins.