Childhood reading and intellectual freedom

 

In the recent sunny weather in the UK I was reminded of a favourite quotation from revered author Peter Dickinson:

“Nobody who has not spent a whole sunny afternoon under his bed rereading a pile of comics left over from the previous holidays has any real idea of the meaning of intellectual freedom.”

I have mentioned it before, in a piece that explains various aspects of Dickinson and my reading

Some Deaths Before Dying by Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson was a posh boy, the same age as my mother, and he was on holiday from Eton: and still his words would have resonated wholly with a townie girl reading comics in a small house in a big city, on holiday from her state day school.  

I have kept up a staunch interest in children’s books since my own days as what was then known as a bookish child. I did quite like playing out, and some sports and games, but my favourite thing always was reading, and one of my favourite places in the world was the local library. I have written about these matters on the blog many times, eg here

National Libraries Day: A List

I have strong views that, on the whole, children should be left to get on with reading whatever they want, and that it is better that they read something rather than nothing, even if some items are seen as downmarket or trash-y.

A long time ago I did write an article about some aspects of children’s literature that I didn’t like, an item than in its day went viral

The new Gothicism of children's books.

---but on the whole, I’m all for Peter Dickinson’s idea of intellectual freedom, as shown in my love for Enid Blyton, school stories, and even grown-up tosh. As I said in a blogpost once:

Dress Down Sunday: The Clue in the Castle by Joyce Bevins Webb

“I’m always ready to mock JD Salinger/Buddy Glass for the line ‘The Great Gatsby… was my Tom Sawyer.’ Probably because [obscure school story] The Clue in the Castle was my Middlemarch when I was a young thing. Someone gave me the book when I was maybe 8 or 9, and I read and re-read it over and over, and can remember every detail of the plot. (Well inasmuch as anyone can, it is very complex.)”

This sums up my reading, because I have also read, several times over, The Great Gatsby, Tom Sawyer and Middlemarch, as well as all of Salinger.

People will often say ‘Oh I wasn’t ALLOWED to read Enid Blyton’ in a smug way as if it was a special privilege, but I can be very straight-faced about that. I don't usually boast about my widespread reading, but see here:

That Guardian list, and my best books

Enid Blyton didn’t stop me…

I took out whatever I wanted from the library, a kindly librarian encouraging me to experiment with adult books from an early age.

Not everyone is as lucky as I was. Here are some stories:

 

1)  Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour is her masterpiece: a novel about the lives of the Anglo-Irish, looking back a the early 20^th Century. There is a plot strand that is sad, absurd and only too believable, about a boy who is discovered

alone in the boys’ tree house… with what could only be a book – a book, and at 3 o’clock on a perfect afternoon.

As if that is not enough, he lies and says it is Robinson Crusoe, when actually it is poetry. There is an endless aftermath to this event, and the subsequent sacking of the governess. (I featured this reference also in my post on Robinson Crusoe in popular culture )

 

2)  We recently looked at the Count of Monte Cristo and learned that all Dumas’ books were under threat of censorship at one time. In Charlotte M Yonge’s The Young Stepmother (1861), it’s another of his books that is subject to disapproval: The Three Musketeers from 1844, which pretty much would be seen as a solid children’s book now.

The stepmother of the title, Albinia, is smoothing young Gilbert’s pillow:

The corner of a book peeped out. It was a translation of The Three Musqueteers, one of the worst and most fascinating of Dumas’ romances.  ‘You wont tell papa!’ cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more real and present terror than he had previously shown. 

‘How did you get it? Whose is it?’ 

‘It is my own. I bought it at Richardson’s. It is very funny. But you wont tell papa? I never was told not; indeed I was not.’

Albinia suggests a compromise:

‘Will this satisfy you, Gilbert? You know there are some exciting pleasures that we must turn our backs on resolutely. I think this book is one of them. Now you will let me take it? I will tell your father about it in private, and he cannot blame you. Then, if he will give his consent, whenever you can come home early, come to my dressing-room, out of your sisters’ way, and I will read to you the innocent part, so as to get the story out of your brain.’

Which seems a strange compromise, but the young stepmother is certainly trying… she is familiar with the book because her own brother ‘got it by some mistake among some French books. He read some of the droll unobjectionable parts to my sister and me, but the rest was so bad, that he threw it into the fire.’

It’s hard work keeping up with the rules in a Yonge book.

 

3)  Meanwhile, in a book I just featured, 

The Late Mrs Prioleau by Monica Tindall,  there is a book that no child would want to read:

He had heard far too much about being made worthy, and his faith in prayer had been badly damaged some time previously when he was given Southey’s Life of Wesley for Christmas instead of a bicycle.

4)  In Antonia Forest’s Cricket Term, young Nicola Marlow gets into trouble at her boarding school for bring back in her suitcase a book that is banned for pupils her age: Mary Renault’s Mask of Apollo – as featured in this post on Ancient Greek theatre, sorry if it shocks you. (She smuggles it in between pyjamas and gym shorts, thus reflecting as it happens two recent blog interests.)  

I think Nicola should be allowed to read what she wants, but Miss Cromwell says rules must be obeyed. Her punishment is that Nicola must read all the books from a list provided by the teacher, before reading anything else. Oh how we wish Forest had shared the full list. We hear about a few of them. I love Nicola being sucked into Dombey and Son:

It was slushy, it was yuk, she couldn’t care less if that wetter-than-wet lad died, but all the same it was sad…

And then asking Matron: ‘when people die do they go on talking up to the very last minute?’

When she finishes the list, she is going to celebrate by reading Hornblower from beginning to end – ‘well perhaps not to end: she wasn’t actually mad keen on Bush being blown to bits and Hornblower growing old.’

Very different books for me, but I am in tune with Nicola’s style of reading, it is very familiar to me. (I feel just the same about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy as she does about Hornblower: I’ve read the first two countless times, and the first half of the third one, but I find the end of the story too sad. And really it was Antonia Forest who gave me permission to stop)

This is a niche topic, but I’m sure some readers will have stories either of their own childhood reading, or of children in books loving, defending or hiding their choices.

Bring them on in the comments please....

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