The House of Arden by E Nesbit: Part 2

published 1908

She made her mind up--ran indoors and up the stairs and straight to The Door--she found it at once--shut the door, and opened the second chest to the right. "You change your clothes and the times change too-- Change, that is what you've got to do; Cooroo, cooroo, cooroo, cooroo," said the pigeons or the silence or Elfrida.

"I wonder," she said, slipping on a quilted green satin petticoat with pink rosebuds embroidered on it, "whether Shakespeare began being a poet like that --just little odd lines coming into his head without him meaning them to." And her mind as she put on a pink-and-white brocaded dress, was busy with such words as "Our great poet, Miss Elfrida Arden ," or "Miss Arden, the female Milton of nowadays." She tied a white, soft little cap with pink ribbons under her chin and ran to open the door…

The door opened, not on the quiet corridor with the old prints at Arden Castle, but on a quite strange panelled room, full of a most extraordinary disorder of stuffs--feathers, dresses, cloaks, bonnet-boxes, parcels, rolls, packets, lace, scarves, hats, gloves, and finery of all sorts. There were a good many people there: serving-maids--she knew they were serving-maids--a gentleman in knee-breeches showing some fine china on a lacquered tray, and in the middle a very pretty, languishing-looking young lady with whom Elfrida at once fell deeply in love. All the women wore enormous crinolines--or hoops.

observations: In this entry earlier this week I explained how I came to re-read this childhood favourite – with due respect to blogfriend Daniel Milford-Cottam.

I really intended to do just one blog entry form this book, but in the end the huge range of clothes the children wear was too tempting. And as it turns out, the earlier entry was hugely popular and successful, with great comments from readers - I now have a long list of fine books they recommended. 

The first entry was 1807: this one is 1707. Like all time travellers, Elfrida and Edred have to worry about altering historical events. At one point Elfrida gets into terrible trouble, so: 

Elfrida has always believed, and always will believe, that the disaster was caused by her knowing too much history. That is why she is so careful to make sure that no misfortune shall ever happen on that account, any way. That is one of the reasons why she never takes a history prize at school. "You never know," she says. And, in fact, when it comes to a question in an historical examination, she never does know.

The whole thing is strangely and unexpectedly reminiscent of the bodacious and outstanding Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure - both stories show the benefit of having your protagonists not be too clever. As Bill and Socrates say, 'The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing' -  Ted replies, profoundly,  'That's us, dude.' I think Elfrida and Edred would agree.

And for those who worry that history isn’t taught properly in UK schools, compared with the olden days of perfect education: 

"I wish I could remember what was happening in history in 1807," said Elfrida, "but we never get past Edward IV. We always have to go back to the Saxons because of the new girls."

The children take their camera back in time with them and take pictures of their ancestral home as it used to be, so they’ll be able to restore it in later times. (Strange link with Dracula, where Jonathan Harker is busy using his Kodak at Dracula’s castle – on the blog here, in a Guardian piece on non-anachronisms here ) They are looking for the lost family treasure, and that aspect is somewhat unresolved, and the final chapters are rather strange. But still, a great book.  

One picture is Watteau’s The Worried Lover from the Athenaeum, the other is an illustration from an early edition of the book.