Compass directions, a children’s classic, and is North best?

Stuart Little by EB White

published 1945

 

[I’m planning to look at some other compass-points-in-books in a future post, so please let me know if you have any favourites, for any of the directions – see the end of the post]

 

When my daughter was first reading books for herself (and if you are truly interested you can read more about what led up to that, here) we were living in the USA, and she read EB White’s Stuart Little, which I think it is fair to describe as an American classic, but not at that time well-known in the UK, ie I had never read it. (I think the subsequent films brought a wider audience).

She came to me, very put out, and said ‘I don’t understand the end of this book, are there some pages missing, it doesn’t seem right.’

Oh well, I said tolerantly, ‘I will read it and explain’ – assuming whatever was troubling her would be obvious to me. That showed me what having children is like (as if I didn’t already know) because I was as surprised as she was. The book is a strange tale of a very small creature, some kind of human/mouse hybrid, living with a family and having adventures. Stuart Little loses his friend, Margalo, a canary who flies away. So Stuart sets off in his small car to find him. So you know what will happen right? Only you don’t because

 

SPOILER

Stuart Little doesn’t find Margalo. We leave him in a most uncertain state, still looking, still determined to find Margalo, but with no guarantees. It is as abrupt, unexpected and disconcerting an ending as anyone could find in any book anywhere, and I could NOT explain it to my daughter. I am still mystified by it.

I think perhaps not reading EB White as a child means I don’t fully appreciate him – I was ‘not bothered’ about any of the books, although the first line of Charlotte’s Web is one of my favourites of all time  - a discussion for another day, we must make a list – “Where’s Papa going with that ax?" In my blogpost I said 'We have to bow to popular opinion – everyone else loves it.'

But strangely the final couple of pages of Stuart Little were confounding, and made no sense for children, but they were beautiful, I love them. The annoying and badly-behaved, sorry, charming, lovable, Stuart meets a telephone repairman who is climbing poles, and they have a chat.

The repairman says:

 “There’s something about north, something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion…’

‘Following a broken telephone line north, I have come upon some wonderful places,” continued the repairman. “Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch in pastures rank with ferns and junipers, all under fair skies with a wind blowing. My business has taken me into spruce woods on winter nights where the snow lay deep and soft, a perfect place for a carnival of rabbits. I have sat at peace on the freight platforms of railroad junctions in the north, in the warm hours and with the warm smells. I know fresh lakes in the north, undisturbed except by fish and hawk and, of course, by the Telephone Company, which has to follow its nose. I know all these places well. They are a long way from here—don’t forget that. And a person who is looking for something doesn’t travel very fast.”

And then,

Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north. The sun was just coming up over the hills on his right. As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.

 

And that’s the end of the book. IKR? Impossible, but also the paragraph from the repairman lives in my mind. What a picture of the places he worked…

[This would also remind you of Wichita Lineman, generally agreed to be one of the best and most haunting songs ever written.]

And this got me thinking about directions, compass points, and what writers make of them.

In Dorothy L Sayers’ Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane encounters a young undergraduate who says this to her:

"Seeing you cross the quad in this direction, I turned in that direction like the needle to the North. Dark," said Mr. Pomfret, with animation, "and true and tender is the North. That's a quotation. It's very nearly the only one I know, so it's a good thing it fits."

When I first read this book as an impressionable teenager I thought this was exquisitely funny, and a very good thing for him to say, and I must admit that I copied it myself in conversation (even though I knew a lot of quotations). I had, of course, no idea where it came from. Much more easily solved these days: it is from Tennyson’s The Princess:

O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,

That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,

And dark and true and tender is the North.

The sentiment is repeated several times, so we’ll take it that Tennyson liked the North, and perhaps DLS did too. (Leeway for authorial invention with both)

SO – we need more authors, and more comments on compass points. Ode to the West Wind? East is East and West is West? Please make suggestions (including North).

I have some in mind already, and will round up everyone’s – I know many of you will enjoy the challenge.

ADDED LATER: since writing the post I came across this in a biography of Anthony Trollope - his wife Rose getting cross with her resident niece.

The niece, Beatrice, writes to a friend: 'I have been interrupted in my letter by a long sermon from my Aunt Rose...Why that absurd tirade I can't tell! Probably the East Wind has got into her brain.'

I had to STOP finding lovely pics to decorate this post, I was getting carried away and saving too many. I was not looking to show the infuriating endearing rodent, so found these atmospheric pictures of the countryside and the telephone poles.

Lineman on telephone pole at the Casa Grande Valley Farms, Pinal County, Arizona | Library of Congress  by Russell Lee

Highway along Connecticut River on the New Hampshire side across from Brattleboro, Vermont - intermediary roll film | Library of Congress  by Jack Delano

[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Corn blowing in the wind near Suffield, Connecticut] - digital file from original neg. | Library of Congress by Jack Delano

 

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