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.]


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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.)



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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. 



















Comments

  1. Oh, I always liked this one very much. Lovely to see it highlighted here. Honestly, I always liked the book better than the film, but either way, it's a great story. Thanks, both.

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    1. To be honest, I haven’t seen the Shirley Temple film, as far as I recall. I can remember a tv series we saw as kids but all I remembered of it till I recently read the book was an old man and some mountains. It’s a great read.

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  2. whose socks deserve their own article

    Pfft. Stripes; how pedestrian.

    Argyles, now...

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  3. "But Johanna Spyri didn't write them"! That explains a lot. Going to have to reread (last did so about 20 years ago).

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    1. Apparently the others were cobbled together long after Spyri died, using stories as a basis that she had written but which didn’t have Heidi in them at all.

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  4. Was it set in the late 19th century but written later? (I'm seeing a lot of leg'o'mutton sleeves...) What was the inspiration of 50 years previously?

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    1. According to Wiki there was another European novel 50 years earlier that had a strikingly similar story. As for the fashions, you’d need to speak to an expert! I think the book is set late C19; not sure about the film.

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  5. The sickly child cured by nature (and the influence of a lively friend) is a bit reminiscent of The Secret Garden. Though Clara is a lot more sympathetic than Colin.
    I remember watching a TV series of Heidi when I was quite young, so probably mid 1980s. I think it was dubbed, though that didn't bother me at the time (it would now!).

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    1. I think the tv show was in the same rotation as Belle And Sebastian, The White Horses, The Singing Ringing Tree etc - where they just had a narrator over the top and you could hear the original foreign language in the background. Those were the golden years of tv...

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  6. I saw the Shirley Temple movie before reading the book (her movies played ALL the time on TV when I was a kid), and I liked the book better than the movie. One thing that really stuck in my memory was Heidi saving all the soft, white bread rolls to take back to the old lady whose teeth were too weak for the hard, black bread rolls the mountain people ate.

    I did like the actress who played Clara (Marcia Mae Jones). It was nice that she got to play a sympathetic part since she played the horrible Lavinia in Temple's version of A Little Princess a few years later. We cheered as kids when Lavinia got the scuttle full of ash dumped on her head and all over her box of chocolates! Just looked her up on imdb to verify her character's name, and it was nice to see she worked well into her 60s. So many child actors burned out or couldn't get work as they aged out of kid parts.

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    1. Oh yes, the rolls! Heidi has a delightfully direct notion of how to solve a problem. Clara didn't really have the expected ark, did she - I mean, I kind of assumed I wouldn't like her and later I would, but she's just plain nice.

      What did you make of Alm-Uncle's signature dish: a chunk of cheese toasted in the fire? I haven't quite had the nerve to try it out in the naked flame on the gas stove...

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    2. Funny...the rolls stuck in my mind, but the cheese didn't. Sounds great to me! Athough I'd hate to do the clean-up if something went awry.

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    3. Yes, exactly - I can't really get the practicalities sorted in my mind.

      (Btw, I've been researching options but I can't rustle up an excuse for mentioning Clara's "ark" instead of her arc". It was just a plain old mistake.)

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    4. S'o.k. I knew what you meant.

      Yeah, I know about baked Brie, but that's usually en croute, right?

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  7. The picture of Heidi in my head is much different than Shirley Temple. Lighter hair, pig tails. I don't know where I got it from, though. Or whether I ever read the book. It sounds good, I would not mind trying it some day.

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    1. I don't remember a description, to be honest, but apparently she has dark brown hair in the book. I suppose once Shirley played her, she became the model. But there's a new (2015) German film where she looks a bit more like you'd think from the book.

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    2. There was a version made in the 50s that I think was European. I was very small so it's not completely clear in my mind. But that particular Heidi had long brown braids, which I had, and my aunts thought she looked like me. I was very flattered!

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    3. Oh yes, 1952, there are pictures in IMDB to prove you're correct.

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    4. Cool! My memory is not completely dead yet.

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