Wasted On Children?

from Guest Blogger Colm Redmond

the book:

Heidi, by Johanna Spyri

published  1881 [translator from the German unknown, public domain]


[Heidi, aged 5 and wearing all her clothes at once on a warm day, is being hurried up a mountain by her aunt Dete, to live with her grandfather in the Swiss alps.]





All at once she sat herself down on the ground, and as fast as her little fingers could move, began pulling off her shoes and stockings. This done she rose, unwound the hot red shawl and threw it away, and then proceeded to undo her frock. It was off in a second, but there was still another to unfasten, for Dete had put the Sunday frock on over the everyday one, to save the trouble of carrying it. Quick as lightning the everyday frock followed the other, and now the child stood up, clad only in her light short-sleeved under garment, stretching out her little bare arms with glee. She put all her clothes together in a tidy little heap, and then went jumping and climbing up after Peter and the goats as nimbly as any one of the party…

The child, able now to move at her ease, began to enter into conversation with [the goatherd] Peter, who had many questions to answer, for his companion wanted to know how many goats he had, where he was going to with them, and what he had to do when he arrived there. At last, after some time, they and the goats approached the hut and came within view of Cousin Dete. Hardly had the latter caught sight of the little company climbing up towards her when she shrieked out: "Heidi, what have you been doing! What a sight you have made of yourself! And where are your two frocks and the red wrapper? And the new shoes I bought, and the new stockings I knitted for you—everything gone! not a thing left! What can you have been thinking of, Heidi; where are all your clothes?" The child quietly pointed to a spot below on the mountain side and answered, "Down there."

commentary: If ever a book was too good for children, surely Heidi is it. It is funny and sly, full of vivid characters (solid clichés rather than stereotypes) and bursting with juicy scenes. It’s quite light and inhabits a very safe universe – the nearest anybody really comes to being a baddie is being a bit grumpy; and admittedly you’d grow up pretty naïve if you thought all your problems would be solved as easily as Heidi’s.

But what a joyful read it is. It was published nearly 50 years before Shirley Temple was born (and possibly borrowed its plot from a book 50 years older again) but might as well have been created with her in mind. Heidi is full of energy, optimism and wayward resourcefulness, like many a child protagonist – but she is not one of those who charms on one page and irritates on the next. And when anyone doesn’t take to her we know for sure that they are at fault. (She is also a staunch Christian and so is everyone else – there is a strong Christian message in the book, that might be hammered home a little too often for some tastes.)






The grown ups are mostly stock characters and not exactly full of surprises. But the servants at the grand house in Frankfurt, Sebastian and Tinette, have a little more life in them than most. Heidi goes there to be a companion for a sickly child, Clara, and several lives are transformed as a result. In the second picture, from the 1937 film, Shirley Temple as Heidi stands between Clara and the stern housekeeper Fräulein Rottenmeier, whose outfit is a pale shadow of the one described earlier in the book, at their first meeting.

This lady was sitting very upright at a small work-table, busy with her embroidery. She had on a mysterious-looking loose garment, a large collar or shoulder-cape that gave a certain solemnity to her appearance, which was enhanced by a very lofty dome-shaped head dress. … Heidi was dressed in her plain little woollen frock, and her hat was an old straw one bent out of shape. The child looked innocently out from beneath it, gazing with unconcealed astonishment at the lady's towering head dress.

The main picture was too good to resist but is a cheat: it’s not from Heidi but from the set of the later film Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. The internet can not agree on whether the photo should be this way around or flipped horizontally, but anyway, in this version: Temple is on the right and her long-time stand-in Mary Lou Isleib is on the left. The chap in between whose socks deserve their own article is presumably the director, Allan Dwan. There are masses of pictures of Shirley with Mary Lou over several years, growing up together, and they are strangely fascinating. Well worth a look.

Heidi is available free on Kindle. There are five other Heidi books, but Johanna Spyri didn’t write them.

Shirley Temple has her own entry on the blog here.

With thanks to the Guest Blogger: you can see his other contributions by clicking on the labels below.