Beans on toast or Ortolan?
Have you ever sat in a coffee shop or a pub that uses old books to enhance its retro décor image? Aesthetically, it is certainly pleasing but you have to wonder, are the aged tomes carefully selected or are they bulk bought and randomly upended like coal or turf or spuds. You never really see any punters browsing through the faded hardbacks. Most will be reading their iPads, smart phones or the sports pages in the newspaper. Can I suggest that the next time you are in a book-lined hostelry you have a browse, because recently I found two little treasures.
The first find, published in 1940 by Warne, is called The Blue Feather Club, written by one Elisabeth Alldridge. The brown cloth hard cover sporting a blue feather caught my attention. It was a gift. The inside cover reads, ‘Tom with love from Gilles. Canterbury August 1942.’ Could Gilles ever have imagined that her gift would end up as part of a décor display in a Dublin hotel and that it would be the subject matter of an article in twenty-first century cyberspace? I expected it to be one of those typical, clipped English school stories; all Latin grammar, lacrosse and swimming galas. Clipped it was, but not a gymslip or a straw boater in sight. The Blue Feather Club is a magnificently produced nature book that would outshine any children’s natural history website today. The plates, illustrations and diagrams would be considered exemplary by any modern botanist or ornithologist.
The Blue Feather Club charts the transformation of two young Londoners, recently moved to the countryside, into keen young naturalists. It’s the kind of book that makes you wish that television and the World Wide Web had never happened. Part of its whimsical charm is the archaic and politically incorrect language. The narrative is preachy, stilted and hilarious in equal measure; it is a book of its time. With characters like Uncle Nuts it would never sit comfortably in a modern school library. Indeed, shades of Enid Blyton can be detected from page two when Brian and Hilary are taken by surprise in the forest:
‘The voice was quiet and not at all frightening, except for the suddenness of it, but as they had not seen anyone about, Brian and Hilary turned, half expecting the speaker to be someone queer, such as a hermit or a gypsy. Instead, they saw a tall man with a very brown face.’
Hence forth this chap is known as the Brown Man.
What with talk of queer folk and gypsies and brown faced men, Ms Alldridge has managed to raise the hackles of every right-thinking equality nerd before we are even finished page two; and this book has two-hundred-and-forty-five pages. Chapter two, incidentally, is entitled ‘The Brown Man has an Idea’, a revolutionary concept perhaps, for a white Anglo-Saxon author in the nineteen forties. And Alldridge insists on using the capital B and the capital M; a capital vintage nod at inclusiveness you might charitably assume.
You may (or may not) be interested to learn that Elisabeth Alldridge illustrated the first three Worzel Gummidge books for Burns, Oates & Washbourne in the nineteen thirties. She also illustrated A Book Of Common Trees by Richard Morse for the Oxford University Press in 1942. That is of course when she was not pitting her own protagonists against ‘quare folk’ like hermits, gypsies and chappies with very brown faces who are never given a name. With the bar man’s bemused permission, I leave the building with The Blue Feather Club in my bag.
Found in the same hostelry on a different day, my second treasure is a little bit of middle England that found an enthusiastic audience in the West of Ireland. Whenever I spot a very old version of a children’s classic I have to open it, always hoping to find clues about previous readers. This time I hit the jackpot. It is a copy of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows, originally published in 1908. I hold an extremely dilapidated 1950 hardback edition; the ninety-fourth imprint to be precise, and it is spent for the noblest of reasons; overuse. The exhausted message stamped on the first page in large green lettering by Galway County Libraries reads, ‘Worn out and withdrawn from circulation.’ What a wonderful swansong for any book. It was loved and read to death by little Galwegian thumpers. It was purchased by the library service on 6 December 1957 and the borrower stamps date from 1957 to 1961; a palimpsest of rural childhood; fingerprints, ink stains, other stains I don’t even want to think about, pencil drawings, sums and practice handwriting.
I try to imagine a little girl with red hair and freckles wearing a patterned summer dress, a knitted cardigan, ankle socks and brown sandals, sitting at a large farmhouse kitchen table reading about the escapades of Mr Toad, Ratty, Mole and Badger in that most English of Englands. She has just returned from the library and the excitement is palpable; I quite envy her. Will she scan the chapter names before she starts reading? Will she puzzle over the title of chapter 5, Dulce Domum, the Winchester College song (Sweetly at Home) written by Robert Ambrose in 1876?
Contrariwise, I surmise, could there be a little girl in Yorkshire, also sitting in a farmhouse kitchen, just about to start reading Irish children’s classic, The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey by Patricia Lynch? Will she be equally besotted by Seamus and Eileen’s adventures with an enchanted teapot, Long Ears the donkey, leprechauns, golden eagles, the Salmon of Knowledge and Finn in that most Irish of Irelands?
This find reminds me of the importance of libraries. I think of all the children in County Galway who borrowed The Wind In The Willows between 1957 and 1961. They will now be in their late sixties and early seventies. It must have been a defining moment in their little lives and it would not have happened without the public library. At least that was one service that was truly useful to children in nineteen fifties Ireland.
Now for a curmudgeonly gripe. I frequently notice that self-help manuals, collections of recipes and ‘how to’ handbooks rank highly on the hardback, non-fiction bestseller lists. That means they are classed in the same category as say, history or philosophy. I am not impressed; not because I am a cranky teacher, but because self-help manuals, collections of recipes and ‘how to’ handbooks have only one thing in common with real books; they are printed on paper. Handbooks and manuals should be on another list, and good luck to them on that other list.
In conclusion, I am always intrigued when I hear someone announce (because they never just say) that they intend to write a ‘book.’ I wonder what will sit between the front and back covers. Will it be advice on how to insulate your attic, or holiday on a shoestring? Will it be a fine piece of literature, historical research, or philosophical enquiry? They can all be called ‘books’, or can they? Could somebody in charge please do something with these ‘best seller’ lists, like for instance, separate the books from the other ‘printed matter? Saying that you are writing a book is a bit nebulous; it is like a chef saying, ‘I am going to cook a meal.’ But will that meal be beans on toast, or Ortolan?
Copyright © Berni Dwan 2015
Have you ever sat in a coffee shop or a pub that uses old books to enhance its retro décor image? Aesthetically, it is certainly pleasing but you have to wonder, are the aged tomes carefully selected or are they bulk bought and randomly upended like coal or turf or spuds. You never really see any punters browsing through the faded hardbacks. Most will be reading their iPads, smart phones or the sports pages in the newspaper. Can I suggest that the next time you are in a book-lined hostelry you have a browse, because recently I found two little treasures.
The first find, published in 1940 by Warne, is called The Blue Feather Club, written by one Elisabeth Alldridge. The brown cloth hard cover sporting a blue feather caught my attention. It was a gift. The inside cover reads, ‘Tom with love from Gilles. Canterbury August 1942.’ Could Gilles ever have imagined that her gift would end up as part of a décor display in a Dublin hotel and that it would be the subject matter of an article in twenty-first century cyberspace? I expected it to be one of those typical, clipped English school stories; all Latin grammar, lacrosse and swimming galas. Clipped it was, but not a gymslip or a straw boater in sight. The Blue Feather Club is a magnificently produced nature book that would outshine any children’s natural history website today. The plates, illustrations and diagrams would be considered exemplary by any modern botanist or ornithologist.
The Blue Feather Club charts the transformation of two young Londoners, recently moved to the countryside, into keen young naturalists. It’s the kind of book that makes you wish that television and the World Wide Web had never happened. Part of its whimsical charm is the archaic and politically incorrect language. The narrative is preachy, stilted and hilarious in equal measure; it is a book of its time. With characters like Uncle Nuts it would never sit comfortably in a modern school library. Indeed, shades of Enid Blyton can be detected from page two when Brian and Hilary are taken by surprise in the forest:
‘The voice was quiet and not at all frightening, except for the suddenness of it, but as they had not seen anyone about, Brian and Hilary turned, half expecting the speaker to be someone queer, such as a hermit or a gypsy. Instead, they saw a tall man with a very brown face.’
Hence forth this chap is known as the Brown Man.
What with talk of queer folk and gypsies and brown faced men, Ms Alldridge has managed to raise the hackles of every right-thinking equality nerd before we are even finished page two; and this book has two-hundred-and-forty-five pages. Chapter two, incidentally, is entitled ‘The Brown Man has an Idea’, a revolutionary concept perhaps, for a white Anglo-Saxon author in the nineteen forties. And Alldridge insists on using the capital B and the capital M; a capital vintage nod at inclusiveness you might charitably assume.
You may (or may not) be interested to learn that Elisabeth Alldridge illustrated the first three Worzel Gummidge books for Burns, Oates & Washbourne in the nineteen thirties. She also illustrated A Book Of Common Trees by Richard Morse for the Oxford University Press in 1942. That is of course when she was not pitting her own protagonists against ‘quare folk’ like hermits, gypsies and chappies with very brown faces who are never given a name. With the bar man’s bemused permission, I leave the building with The Blue Feather Club in my bag.
Found in the same hostelry on a different day, my second treasure is a little bit of middle England that found an enthusiastic audience in the West of Ireland. Whenever I spot a very old version of a children’s classic I have to open it, always hoping to find clues about previous readers. This time I hit the jackpot. It is a copy of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows, originally published in 1908. I hold an extremely dilapidated 1950 hardback edition; the ninety-fourth imprint to be precise, and it is spent for the noblest of reasons; overuse. The exhausted message stamped on the first page in large green lettering by Galway County Libraries reads, ‘Worn out and withdrawn from circulation.’ What a wonderful swansong for any book. It was loved and read to death by little Galwegian thumpers. It was purchased by the library service on 6 December 1957 and the borrower stamps date from 1957 to 1961; a palimpsest of rural childhood; fingerprints, ink stains, other stains I don’t even want to think about, pencil drawings, sums and practice handwriting.
I try to imagine a little girl with red hair and freckles wearing a patterned summer dress, a knitted cardigan, ankle socks and brown sandals, sitting at a large farmhouse kitchen table reading about the escapades of Mr Toad, Ratty, Mole and Badger in that most English of Englands. She has just returned from the library and the excitement is palpable; I quite envy her. Will she scan the chapter names before she starts reading? Will she puzzle over the title of chapter 5, Dulce Domum, the Winchester College song (Sweetly at Home) written by Robert Ambrose in 1876?
Contrariwise, I surmise, could there be a little girl in Yorkshire, also sitting in a farmhouse kitchen, just about to start reading Irish children’s classic, The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey by Patricia Lynch? Will she be equally besotted by Seamus and Eileen’s adventures with an enchanted teapot, Long Ears the donkey, leprechauns, golden eagles, the Salmon of Knowledge and Finn in that most Irish of Irelands?
This find reminds me of the importance of libraries. I think of all the children in County Galway who borrowed The Wind In The Willows between 1957 and 1961. They will now be in their late sixties and early seventies. It must have been a defining moment in their little lives and it would not have happened without the public library. At least that was one service that was truly useful to children in nineteen fifties Ireland.
Now for a curmudgeonly gripe. I frequently notice that self-help manuals, collections of recipes and ‘how to’ handbooks rank highly on the hardback, non-fiction bestseller lists. That means they are classed in the same category as say, history or philosophy. I am not impressed; not because I am a cranky teacher, but because self-help manuals, collections of recipes and ‘how to’ handbooks have only one thing in common with real books; they are printed on paper. Handbooks and manuals should be on another list, and good luck to them on that other list.
In conclusion, I am always intrigued when I hear someone announce (because they never just say) that they intend to write a ‘book.’ I wonder what will sit between the front and back covers. Will it be advice on how to insulate your attic, or holiday on a shoestring? Will it be a fine piece of literature, historical research, or philosophical enquiry? They can all be called ‘books’, or can they? Could somebody in charge please do something with these ‘best seller’ lists, like for instance, separate the books from the other ‘printed matter? Saying that you are writing a book is a bit nebulous; it is like a chef saying, ‘I am going to cook a meal.’ But will that meal be beans on toast, or Ortolan?
Copyright © Berni Dwan 2015
