Storytime
GROWING UP WITH BOOKS
JANE SULLIVAN
First published in 2019 by Ventura Press
PO Box 780, Edgecliff NSW 2027 Australia
www.venturapress.com.au
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Jane Sullivan 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any other information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-925384-67-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-925384-69-7 (ebook)
Cover design: Christabella Designs
Internal design: WorkingType Design
In memory of
Arthur Horner
Victoria Horner
David Sullivan
CONTENTS
1.THE STORY OF PISK
The Myths of Greece and Rome
by H. A. Guerber
2.CURIOUSER
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
by Lewis Carroll
3.A BOY AND HIS BEAR
Winnie-the-Pooh
The House at Pooh Corner
by A. A. Milne
4.THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN
The Castle of Adventure
by Enid Blyton
5.MAMMA ON THE BOOKSHELF
Finn Family Moomintroll
by Tove Jansson
6.THE FLASHING EYES OF BETTY ROLAND
The Silent Three
by Horace Boyten and Stewart Pride, illustrated by Evelyn Flinders
7.GENIUS BURNS
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
8.MR TOAD AND THE GATES OF DAWN
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
9.I’M GOING TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC AS HARD AS I CAN
The Enchanted Castle
by E. Nesbit
10.A SOCKDOLAGER ON THE MUZZLE
The Magic Pudding
by Norman Lindsay
11.SHE WAS THE PROFESSOR OF GREEK AT OXFORD
The Warden’s Niece
by Gillian Avery
12.THE VERY END OF THE WORLD
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
by C. S. Lewis
13.THE SHUDDER AND THE COLD SEED
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert Wise
14.SANDWICHED BETWEEN MILES OF ROCK
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
by Alan Garner
15.THE TEMPTATION AND THE CURE
The Myths of Greece and Rome
by H. A. Guerber
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
REFERENCES
THE STORY OF PISK
The Myths of Greece and Rome
by H. A. Guerber
It’s ten o’clock at night and there’s still just enough light to read by. I’m in bed and everyone thinks I’m asleep. But I’ve got my favourite book of the moment and I’m devouring it.
I’m eight years old. I’m wearing my Ladybird Adventurer pyjamas, of course. White fleece top with a pattern of pink stars, and trackie pants in matching pink. A bit hot for summer, but who cares. The Ladybird Adventurers are children just like me who have adventures while wearing their pyjamas. They star in a strip cartoon on the back page of a comic I read, and every now and then they yank the neck of their tops sideways so you can see the Ladybird label and they point to it. It’s as if the ladybird is the source of all the excitement.
Tonight I’m not reading about the Ladybird Adventurers. I’m reading one of my parents’ books, a stately old tome with a cover in olive leather: Myths of Greece and Rome, by H. A. Guerber. I know little bits of the stories practically off by heart, and I know the pictures too, which are black and white on shiny paper. They show fat, almost naked people clutching swirly bits of drapery, and white statues of naked people fighting huge snakes or turning into trees. Thanks to those statues, I know what men look like. They have little taps to do their pee. I don’t want one myself, thank you very much.
There are gods and humans and nymphs and dryads. There is lots of fighting and the women are always getting abducted. Abduction means you get carried off by a god or a man or an animal. If you’re lucky you might turn into a tree first, like Daphne. I wonder what that feels like, having your legs stick together and bark growing up them and your hair turning into twigs and leaves. Why is that better than being carried off?
“My favourite story is Cupid and Pisk. I don’t usually like soppy love stories, but this one is different.”
My favourite story is Cupid and Pisk. I don’t usually like soppy love stories, but this one is different. Cupid visits Pisk at night and they lie together in the dark, kissing. She doesn’t know what he looks like because she’s never seen him in daylight, and he warns her she mustn’t try. But of course her jealous sisters go on at her and she gets curious and fearful he might be a monster, so she lights a lamp when he’s asleep. The light shows a beautiful young man. Then a drop of burning oil lands on his skin and he wakes up, and with a sorrowful cry he leaves her forever. Poor silly Pisk. My first sad ending. I love it so much.
Once I tried to tell my mother how I felt about the story of Cupid and Pisk. She was puzzled until I told her what happened. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you mean Psyche.’ She pronounced it Sykie. I don’t remember whether she explained to me that Cupid was Love and Psyche was the Soul. I only cared about Pisk.
We live in St John’s Wood in London. My bedroom has birds on the wallpaper. There’s a small window where I can see the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in the distance, and sometimes I hear the hollow clap of horse hooves as the soldiers from the barracks in Ordnance Hill ride down the road. My sister Julia sleeps in the bed next to mine. When it gets too dark to see, dark enough for Cupid to visit, I close Mr Guerber’s book. I don’t believe in torches under the bedclothes, it feels like cheating. Just as well, for otherwise I would never sleep at all.
“I am a compulsive reader. Cupid and Pisk, the Ladybird Adventurers, and a host of others… I need them all.”
I am a compulsive reader. Cupid and Pisk, the Ladybird Adventurers, and a host of others… I need them all.
The books that kept me up late at the age of eight, which I read over and over again while chomping an ill-advised treeful of green apples at bedtime, which had me squinting at pages under the covers and ruthlessly careening through chapters with cursory mumbles of ‘oh no, I accidentally started a new one’ – were H. A. Guerber’s The Myths of Greece and Rome, and Roger Lancelyn Green’s A Book of Myths, illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. Their scant, iridescent tales of vagrant gods and golden ancient landscapes made me a pagan for life.
Enthralled, I read of the fierce, resolute, dignified female deities Isis, Cybele, Demeter, and my own goddess, grey-eyed Pallas Athena, to whom I solemnly poured libations of cold tea. I lived in mysterious Babylon, austere Scandinavia and wandered the olive groves of Arcadia. A blessed re-prieve from ghastly modern reality, the hush of old dusks and bright noondays stays with me still.
Kate Holden
What were the first stories? Voices in the dark. I don’t remember my parents ever reading to me, but they used to tell me bedtime stories they made up as they went along. My mother’s stories were about Erg and Ug the cavemen and Marmaduke the mammoth. My father’s stories were about Septimus the frog, and they always ended the same way: ‘Down, down, dived Septimus to the bottom of the pond…’ It’s only now as I’m writing this that I realise my father was using the ritual phrases to hypnotise me into sleep. Usually, it didn’t work. I just en
ded up wanting more Septimus.
There must have been a moment when I discovered I could tell stories to myself by reading, and it must have come quite early. For quite a while, I thought reading was a mix of memory and guesswork. I would learn picture book stories off by heart and recite them, and I was convinced I was reading. I proclaimed ‘Mr Hip packs his dumborah’ with great pride, and was surprised when my parents laughed. I knew Mr Hip (a hippo, not a cool customer) packed something strange with three syllables, but I couldn’t get my head around ‘portmanteau’. I loved long words, which I collected. My favourites were ‘isosceles triangle’ and ‘banking facilities’. I had no idea what they meant.
“My favourites were ‘isosceles triangle’ and ‘banking facilities’. I had no idea what they meant.”
At school, we read boring books about Janet and John, and murmured dull chants: ‘Run, John, run.’ I hid proper books under my desk lid and read them on the sly. At home, I could read what I liked, which was everything except Janet and John. I discovered heaven, which was the St John’s Wood Library, and an even bigger heaven with a huge flight of steps and lions by the door, like Trafalgar Square, which was the library in Marylebone Town Hall. I fell in love with the special library book bindings and the deep-etched round stamps on the covers. Nothing was better than bringing home a new set of library books and opening the first one and breathing in that library smell of musty intoxication. And every now and then, I’d get a new book as a present. How thrilling to tear open that book-shaped parcel under the Christmas tree. How devastating when it turned out to be a toy in a book-shaped box.
Perhaps you think that made me seem virtuous, studious, even smug. Not so. In the 1950s and ’60s, excessive reading for pleasure was regarded with the same suspicion that later attended excessive television watching or video game playing. While few continued to believe that reading novels corrupted young virgins, the habit was seen as mere escapism, a refusal to face reality. And yes, I did use books to escape: I discovered that when I was hiccupping and sobbing and kicking the furniture in distress and fury, the only way to calm down was to read. I was told I was a bookworm, which was apparently bad. I was warned I’d strain my eyes and get round shoulders, which turned out to be true. I was commanded to get my nose out of that book and go and play in the fresh air. Even my parents, who approved of reading in theory and had a little library of their own, said this sometimes. My father was too busy creating his strip cartoons to read anything but newspapers. My mother read the occasional paperback: I remember one title, The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa. I thought I could read everything, but that book was far too mystifying for me.
“yes, I did use books to escape: I discovered that when I was hiccupping and sobbing and kicking the furniture in distress and fury, the only way to calm down was to read.”
Once formed, the reading habit stuck, and it was far more than a habit. I have read compulsively all my life, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that reading has made me what I am. Memories of Mr Guerber’s book turned out to be quite useful at school, and even more useful at the University of Oxford, where I studied English Language and Literature – what else? Reading in turn led to a desire to write, and I became a journalist – and, much later, a writer of fiction. Today I specialise in newspaper columns and articles about books and writing, where I try to pass on something of my passion to other readers. As a judge of literary awards, I’ve binged on more than a hundred books in a couple of months. It’s not the way I prefer to read, but I can do it, and I never regret it afterwards. But memory is an odd thing. A couple of years ago I was required to read about sixty books of Australian poetry. I read some fantastic poems, but I can’t quote you a single line. And yet I can rattle through ‘Jabberwocky’, which I read when I was seven, a poem that doesn’t even make sense. This might be because I read many of my childhood books over and over again, but it still doesn’t explain why I can sometimes remember word for word what I read almost sixty years ago. What did the svarts cry when the firedrake blood sprang up to the roof of their great cave? ‘Eeee—agh—hooo!’
Yes, there have been adult revelations – Shakespeare, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Emma, Middlemarch, Catch 22, Midnight’s Children, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the poetry of John Donne and T. S. Eliot – well, you can make your own list, can’t you? Oft have I felt like stout Cortez gazing at the Pacific from the peak in Darien, as John Keats in turn felt gazing on Chapman’s Homer, his own version of Mr Guerber’s book. Keats sat up all night to read it and when he came across a particularly energetic passage, he shouted with delight. Now there was a reader. Then he knocked off his sonnet by breakfast time.
“I have read compulsively all my life, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that reading has made me what I am.”
And yet I have never felt again the way I first felt with my nose in a book. I think I have always been trying to recapture that feeling in my reading, and never quite succeeding. What was it, exactly? Wonder, rapture, delight, surprised recognition, laughter – but also darker feelings that made my heart beat fast and my stomach turn over, and sometimes elicited a frantic urge to close the book before whatever it was sucked me in and destroyed me. But always, I read on. Books happened to me. I was helpless, I surrendered to them. They immersed me, engulfed me, swept me away into Keats’s realms of gold, which coexisted with the world I lived in, realms that seemed infinitely more rich and strange.
Many decades later, I feel a pressing need to revisit those early days. I don’t exactly know why. Of course nostalgia plays a part, but I think we underplay nostalgia as a pretty little wistfulness. It can be much more than that: it can be a deep yearning for something that we can’t identify without losing it, as Pisk lost Cupid. If I can’t recapture my initial feelings, at least I can look at them more closely. And the way to do that is to go back to the books that I loved – and perhaps one or two I didn’t love so much – and look at them again.
So I will choose about a dozen books that mean something particularly special to me. I will first record my memories of them, which might be hazy, or quite wrong. Then I will read them again, and record my new reactions. Because I have a journalist’s curiosity, I will also look around the periphery of the book – at the author, and so on. But I won’t stray too far into the territory of the biographer or the psychologist or the literary critic. This will not be a book about books. It will be a book about my experience of reading those books.
I will have to leave out an awful lot. I grew up in the era before the great flowering of children’s books from the 1970s onwards. I didn’t discover Roald Dahl or Maurice Sendak, let alone Dr Seuss or Harry Potter. But though children of my baby boomer generation had a very much smaller choice of books to read than children today, we still had plenty. I never feared I was going to run out of books. So for my re-reading, I set myself strict limits. No non-fiction or poetry books: I liked those too, but they were not so important to me as stories. No collections of myths or fairytales: only stories created by particular authors (sorry, Mr Guerber). Only books I read for myself in the truly formative years, which in my case were between the ages of seven and eleven – which leaves out most science fiction and all of Tolkien. Even so, my longlist is very long.
You are going to protest, I can tell, and I apologise in advance if I have left out your favourite childhood book. Why no Anne of Green Gables, or Charlotte’s Web, or Little House on the Prairie, or Huckleberry Finn, or Treasure Island? Because I never came across them. Why no pony books, or ballet books, or Arthur Ransome’s sailing books? Because I never got into them. Why no Peter Pan? Because I got impatient with a stupid book where the children had a dog for a nanny and Wendy had to look after the lost boys while Peter had all the fun. Why no Pippi Longstocking? Because the only thing I remembered about her was that she slept upside down in bed, and that seemed very silly to me. With your feet on the pillow and your head under the covers, you wouldn’t be able to read.
Thanks to the internet, it wasn’t hard to find these books again. A few of them I read to my son when he was small; others I haven’t seen for almost sixty years. I am excited and a little apprehensive, because I don’t want to be disappointed, to discover that the magic has all gone. But that’s a necessary risk.
The titles on the spines whisper to me enticingly, like old loves. But what sort of love is this? I feel a queer flutter of nerves. I’m going to go down, down like Septimus the frog, down to the bottom of the pond. Or maybe more like Alice, down into the rabbit hole. Who knows what I’ll find. I hope it will be something that might begin to explain what was so special, so burningly important about those books. Because I didn’t just want to read them. I needed to read them.
“I’m going to go down, down like Septimus the frog, down to the bottom of the pond. Or maybe more like Alice, down into the rabbit hole. Who knows what I’ll find.”
With each book, I will try to come up with a hypothesis about what it was I needed (as the New Oxford Dictionary of English has it, a hypothesis is ‘a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation’). Then I will test it with the next book, and perhaps form another hypothesis, and so on. That sounds methodical, doesn’t it, but maybe I’m just trying to impose order on my wild surmising.
Where I’m going, it’s deep and murky. I’m hoping – and also, if I’m honest, dreading a little – that I will discover not just the books, but also their reader, the child I once was.
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