The Blog is Back for Stir-Up Sunday

Clothes in Books has been on hiatus while the proprietor sorted out a house move and dealt with some other projects. But now it's back! The important date of Stir Up Sunday could not be ignored... and this should be the first of more regular entries, including the usual Christmas posts. Thank you to all the lovely regular readers who checked in, looked at old posts in the absence of new, and asked me how I was. (I'm fine)

And now, back to the books....


Apple Bough by Noel Streatfeild

published 1967




The last Sunday before Advent is Stir-up Sunday:  the Book of Common Prayer collect (prayer) for the day begins "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people".  And people make their Christmas puddings today.




Last year I did a stir-up Sunday entry, and it provoked splendid discussions. People who listen to the Archers (UK radio serial based on a farming community) knew all about it, vicariously. There were a few people who still did it. And then Elly Griffiths (yes, I'm name-dropping, she of the Ruth Galloway books) reminded me that there is this scene in Apple Bough by Noel Streatfeild


Christmas started when Mrs Bottle said:

‘I shall need you all for a stir Monday. This one comin’ is stir-up Sunday.’

‘the stir-up collect, you mean?’

Mrs Bottle beamed. ‘That’s it. You can’t stir your pudding, not before that’s been said.’

So that next Monday evening they all went into the kitchen to stir.

The pudding mixture was not in a kitchen bowl but in an old-fashioned china washstand basin. It had pink flowers on it. Mrs Bottle said she kept it special. She had her sleeves rolled up and she was stirring a great mass of rich, dark pudding with a wooden spoon.

‘Youngest first,’ she said. ‘Take ‘old of the spoon, Ettie. Then shut your eyes and wish.’

Mr Bottle had come to watch. ‘But don’t tell nobody what you wished or you won’t get it.’

I probably wasn’t going to spend the day making pudding anyway, but her intervention ensured that I spent it re-reading this book… 




Elly G also said 'Candidates for some of the worst parents in children’s literature?’ And truly, reading this book as an adult is jaw-dropping – they really are the end. There are four Forum children, and one of them is a child prodigy at the violin, and so the whole family trails round the world while he tours and enthrals audiences everywhere. Except in the UK – child performers are not allowed there, he has to wait till he is 12. The other children get more and more restive about being parcelled up and dragged along, but say nothing because they don’t want to hurt their parents’ feelings. The parents are completely oblivious and say ‘Citizens of the world!’ and ‘Learn geography this way!’ The children plot and plan. Absolutely everything is being sacrificed to his career, but the genius boy is not happy either, is apparently not well (completely unnoticed by the parents, of course), he is making himself ill. It is all quite dramatic and


SPOILER


ends happily. But it is very  hard for Streatfeild to make the parents anything but negligent, narcissistic and completely selfish. (You are not meant to hate them).

There are some standard Streatfeild tropes: one of the siblings is a dancer & Madam Fidolia (from Ballet Shoes) makes an appearance. And another child is an actor and ends up in a film.

I am always fascinated by the lives of children in old books – I once wrote an article about The new Gothicism of children's books (slate.com) because it seemed children of the past had so much more freedom, and less jeopardy, than modern ones. (My article is nearly 20 years old now, but I don’t think things have changed much.) In this one they are generally quite cosseted, but for example the children (and the youngest is very young) go swimming off the Devon coast regularly, their grandfather staying at home and saying, oh I expect there are other people around who are strong swimmers and can keep an eye on you… [Somewhat like my adult reaction to Swallows & Amazons  ‘as a mother I was faintly horrified by the lack of care and safety. A running joke is that young Roger can’t actually swim, he just pretends to be able to, in order to go on the camping trip. There isn’t a lifejacket in sight as far as I can tell. The author certainly sides with the children, who finds the parents (‘natives’) very dull and liable to worry.’ Oh dear, old age.]

Throughout the book, the genius child and his violin-playing are referred to as a fiddler, fiddle-playing, a fiddle teacher, a fiddle. I thought this was the height of affectedness. Elly G says that a character in Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido (an all-time great book, and can't believe it has never featured on the blog) takes the excellent line that you have to earn the right to be that affected… 

Top photograph is from 1910, a family in Toronto doing their pudding. William James took the photo, which is in the City of Toronto archives.

Second image is the label for a canned pudding – of course the antithesis of what Mrs Bottle is creating.

Third image is from a farmers’ magazine from 1920, an advert for flour. So old-fashioned, but then NS was always an old-fashioned writer even where, as in this book, the children wear jeans sometimes…

Comments

  1. So glad to see you back and hear that all is well!
    I bought Apple Bough for my niece last Christmas, read it before wrapping it up, obviously, and was in two minds about whether to give it to her.
    The parents really are awful and the book has that trope, typical of the time, I think, that children never tell anyone how they really feel about anything important. The characters in Antonia Forest's books are similar - never let on that you're terrified of something, or you don't want to do an activity or go somewhere, or even that you really do want something!
    Like Petrova in Ballet Shoes wanting to read a mechanical handbook instead of being read to and playing Happy Families, but never saying so, even though it would have been fine if she had.
    (Also I don't recall many good clothes moments in Apple Bough).

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    1. (sorry that was me being Unknown)

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    2. Thanks for coming back too! Yes it is a very weird book, but I have a soft spot for it because it turned up in our school library, a new shiny copy and I was delighted with it. And there NS was, still going more than 30 years after Ballet Shoes. The children wearing jeans is about as far as the clothes get...

      Yes, the attitudes to family life look more and more strange as I get older - I think I thought the moral framework of these books was absolute, with their 'don't be soppy - don't tell - especially don't tell your parents - keep calm and carry on'. It looks very unhealthy now. It reads even more oddly in historical novels written in that era. I love Forest's Nick Marlow/Shakespeare books, but they really are the 'contemporary' Marlows transported to the 1590s/1600s.

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    3. Moira @ Clothes in Books21 November 2021 at 18:27

      And yes this is me Moira/CiB not Unknown, everything has gone to pot! I am on another computer (monitor troubles on mine) and am apparently signed in as someone esle in fact. Tchah.

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  2. So glad you are back! Guessed that the house move has taken up a lot of time and energy.
    I was surprised to see that the date was 1967. As you say, very old-fashioned in tone and attitudes.

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    1. Moira @ Clothes in Books21 November 2021 at 18:30

      Thanks Chrissie, it's nice to be back and so nice to hear from people! I have been very slow sorting myself out, and blogging was the easiest thing to drop, but I did miss it. The book is a strange melange, and if you read it blind you would be hard put to date it.

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  3. ‘the stir-up collect, you mean?’

    Mrs Bottle beamed. ‘That’s it.'

    Clunky exposition! I had an awful example from Jamrasch's menagerie that went something like "The whaling's finished," he grinned, "They be all going for this oil from the ground, see?" (And that was why I couldn't read it.) And from the Murdoch Mysteries: "Oh, you've just come from Chicago? I hear they're building monstrosities of steel and glass..."

    Fiddle, fiddler etc are vulgar expressions aren't they? As you say, only safe if you're really posh.

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    1. Moira @ Clothes in Books21 November 2021 at 18:32

      Oh yes, all cringe-making. Also all those people telling each other things they would already know - 'that's your daughter is it?' 'Yes, your niece.' You'd think people would have found better ways round all this by now.

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    2. "How's Bob? You know, your husband."

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    3. 'How's your job going? It must be hard work running a major civil service department'

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  4. Moira: I have never heard of Stir Up Sunday. As a Catholic it is Christ the King Sunday today. It sounds like a grand tradition. And then I was so surprised to see the photo was from Toronto. Maybe the tradition did not move west to Saskatchewan.

    Glad you are back. I missed you! Don't move again.

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    1. Thank you for kind words Bill, and like everyone who moves I am saying 'I will never move again'!
      I think of it as Christ the King Sunday also, and it is Youth Sunday too in the UK. No time for puddings. I'm thinking it is more a Church of England thing, honestly, but I may be wrong.

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  5. Glad you're back!! Was wondering what was going on and why you'd been pretty quiet (and of course, being deaf, could only look politely at the podcast announcements....!) Had a lot going on myself too, alas....I moved too, and had other stuff occurring...

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    1. It's been a hard year for everyone Daniel, and I very much hope things might start getting better for you? I am really glad to be back, I miss blogging when I don't do it, and very much miss the interactions with friends.

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  6. I read Apple Bough a couple of times, but it was never a favourite of mine; like you, I found the use of the word 'fiddle' extremely irritating, but I found the children irritating as well, especially boring old Myra, who besides being non-musical seemed to have no interests or skills whatsoever. It was, however, the first time I even came across a mention of the wondrous Ethel Smythe (Ettie, the youngest, is named after her) so I have that to thank it for...

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    1. Oh that is interesting! I discovered many of my cultural heroes via children's books, but that one passed me by. Bad parents... wasn't it you who mentioned the poor children in a book by Philippa Pearce and Brian Fairfax-Lucy, Children of the House? I am uncovering all kinds of bits after the break from blogging, and that was one of them. Terrible family life...

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    2. Yes, The Children of the House has just about the saddest last chapter of any book ever written (let alone a children's book....).

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    3. It was dreadful, you just so wanted them all to get over it and have a happy life... [spoiler alert]

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  7. This is actually available on Open Library (link below), so I am looking forward to a nice read in front of the fireplace. No stirring up, though, our Christmas desserts on this side of the pond tend towards pies ( I really don't know anyone who bothers with the notorious and much-maligned fruitcake). I am negotiating with a bachelor farmer neighbor for a swap involving a rhubarb-strawberry pie and a couple of pounds of pecans.

    https://archive.org/details/applebough0000stre_y8f0/mode/2up?view=theater

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    1. Your life is always a joy to contemplate Shay. Good luck with that.
      I'm not a fan of rich dried fruit desserts myself, and when I took over the family Christmas I threw out those traditions and offered whatever I thought would go nicely and was easy to do in advance. I believe there was mumbling and muttering from some of those travelling to my house, but the cook always gets the final say...
      Enjoy the book: it's not her best but definitely worth a read and perfect to read in one go in front of the fire

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    2. I got as far as Myra being made to give up her dog, and had to set it aside. There are things, as my late mother used to say, up with which I will not put.

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    3. Oh that's hilarious Shay (or alternately, very serious and a matter of principle). I think it is helpful of you to warn others what may be coming, and that it could be triggering.

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  8. I have such a hard time envisioning a pudding that stays edible so long! This is a Streatfeild I reread seldom - I suppose I liked the orphans more but it is upstairs and probably deserves a reread. Coincidentally, The Children of the House is in the same bookcase!

    In Juliet Overseas by Clare Mallory, an author I only found as an adult but love, the heroine is sent to her mother's boarding school in England from NZ and has difficulty adjusting (mostly due to what in the US we call Mean Girls). One of the things that helps her make friends is a fruit cake that is sent from home that more resembles loaves and fishes than any culinary delicacy I have encountered. The fact that it is still edible after coming from NZ is quite amazing to me even before she shares it with the entire school! I had holiday fruit cake once or twice as child and found it quite nasty. It was quite a Boston custom at one point.

    Constance

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    1. Yes, it is a worry when food is THAT long-living. But dried fruit items do have a reputation for being long-lived. I must look up the book you mention, neither title nor author is familiar. There's a Jennings and Derbyshire story where one of them gets sent a cake at boarding school, and he has promised slices to so many people that it is a fearsome worry. but then the teachers accidentally eat it all so that solves that, poor boy. NOT the loaves and fishes in this case!

      When I lived in Seattle, there was a standing joke that fruit cake was both horrible and lasted forever, and that people just kept giving the same one to each other.

      In the UK we do like it!

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    2. N.S. constantly re-used her characters and family settings, there was always a bossy sibling enforcing the violin practice in memory of a dead parent...'Art thou weary art thou languid...'
      Wonderful stuff, thank you! LizzaAiken

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    3. Yes, and it is one of the joys, finding the same character types pop up. A put upon grumpy middle sibling, and an old friend/retainer of the family who tries to look after everyone.

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