Storytime

by Jane Sullivan

  What was my experience of violence at this time? I dabbled in it. A group of girls led by the retail magnate’s daughter had once roughed me up in a very mild way that left me with no physical pain but plenty of humiliation. Real fighting, exchanging blows, was something boys did. Fights often erupted out of the blue in the playground and before we onlookers could feel anything other than surprise, a teacher would pounce on the fighters. Boys in those days were caned but girls weren’t. I did a bit of gentle wrestling with some boys, who probably went easy on me because I was only a girl. I had no idea how to punch someone so my fist wouldn’t hurt and I was terrified of being hit back. But I could be fierce when I got the chance. My friend Polly’s older brother Tom was a tease who often reduced her to tears, and at one birthday party a group of girls in princess dresses descended on Tom and held him down to exact revenge on Polly’s behalf. As far as I remember we pulled his hair, tweaked his nose and ears, scratched. I felt a savage joy. There was no retribution, but I did hear afterwards that of all the avengers, I was the worst.

  Bunyip would disdain to do such a thing. He never indulges in vulgar fisticuffs, though he comes up with some clever tricks; and he never speaks the insulting slang. Instead, he fires up himself and others with thrilling oratory. I keep expecting the proles will just laugh at him, but they are in awe. It’s as if Lindsay is having a good laugh at pompous speechmakers but also acknowledging their power. Bill and Sam are liable to fall into total despair when things don’t work out, but Bunyip can always rouse them once more with a lot – an awful lot–of well-chosen words. I notice that though all the slangy insults come back to me, I haven’t remembered a word of Bunyip’s speeches. Nonetheless, they are infectious: Bill has a go at it himself, in his rough-and-ready way, when he parodies a lawyer’s speech in the court scene.

  “It’s as if Lindsay is having a good laugh at pompous speechmakers but also acknowledging their power.”

  I can see now there’s a bit of slippage going on. There are aspects of this story I once loved – the insults, the violence, because of course nobody is really hurt – that now make me a little uneasy. As I think more about the story, my unease deepens. Bunyip is a polite, upright gent, yet he supports all this roughhouse stuff. He delivers a stern homily in verse on the evils of pudding thievery. And yet Bill and Sam were once pudding thieves themselves. In one of the endless songs of their exploits at sea, Bill relates how he and Sam were once shipwrecked on an iceberg with the ship’s cook, Curry and Rice. They survive for months on nothing to eat but ice, growing thinner and thinner, but the cook gets fatter and fatter. One night they discover him by an eerie fire, eating a pudding. At this point, Bill leaves out a verse ‘owin’ to the difficulty of explainin’ exactly what happened’ and goes on to the last verse. Nobody knows exactly what happened next, but they think the cook must have fallen off the iceberg.

  “There are aspects of this story I once loved – the insults, the violence, because of course nobody is really hurt – that now make me a little uneasy.”

  ‘That won’t do, you know,’ Albert interrupts, and tells Bunyip how Bill and Sam spent ages trying to push Curry and Rice off the ice. Bill concedes the cook might have got ‘a bit of a shove’ but that’s immaterial: the point is that this is how they got the Pudding.

  What are we to make of this song? It was quite clear to me when I first read it, though I hadn’t remembered it particularly, and it’s quite clear to me now: Bill and Sam are not just thieves, but liars and hypocrites and murderers. They deliberately pushed Curry and Rice into the sea and stole his pudding. Bill goes on to indulge in a moment of sorrow for the cook, then begins to sing his favourite ballad, ‘Ho, aboard the Salt Junk Sarah…’ And that’s it: no recrimination, no real remorse, and no further questioning from Bunyip, who appears entirely unshocked. And now I remember that as a child I wasn’t shocked either. It didn’t change my feelings about Bill and Sam one bit, I still loved them. Indeed, I found the picture of Curry and Rice spouting water in the sea while his murderers cling to the iceberg very funny.

  “What kind of an unfeeling brutal child was I? I can only suppose that the jollity of the story, its up-tempo pace, its feeling of naughtiness, that anything goes, allowed me to let them off the hook with scarcely a pause for thought.”

  What kind of an unfeeling brutal child was I? I can only suppose that the jollity of the story, its up-tempo pace, its feeling of naughtiness, that anything goes, allowed me to let them off the hook with scarcely a pause for thought. I was like Bart and Lisa Simpson laughing at the tortures of Itchy & Scratchy. Curry and Rice was horrid and greedy and mean and fat, and I didn’t give two hoots whether he lived or died. But I cared a lot about Bill and Sam.

  There’s a get-out clause for me: whoever sings a song in this story is a highly unreliable narrator. Sam sings an affecting ballad about how he rescued a fair maiden from a shipwreck and was rewarded with her hand in marriage, but admits afterwards that all that had happened was that the maiden, an earl’s daughter, had given the humble sailor five shillings for his trouble. So maybe the song about Curry and Rice wasn’t true either? You can’t survive for months with nothing to eat but ice, can you? Whatever the case, it was an issue that never troubled me. In the universe of The Magic Pudding, you could get away with murder.

  “In the universe of The Magic Pudding, you could get away with murder.”

  I begin to wonder: did Norman Lindsay get away with it when his book first came out? After all, he had a notorious history as an artist and writer. Today his paintings, drawings and etchings, often Dionysian scenes featuring satyrs and naked nymphs, are highly prized in some quarters and avidly collected. They are loaded with innuendo but not particularly wicked: to me, his nudes always seem on the verge of simpering ‘Ooh, you are a one.’

  As far as I can remember, my parents thought his nudes rather vulgar. So it was a huge surprise to me to discover years later that my mother, whom I thought of as a nice silver-haired woman in a cardigan, had had a bohemian youth, and a precocious talent as Victoria Cowdroy, professional artist and sculptor: a star student from the age of fourteen at East Sydney Technical College (later the National Art School), she knew Norman and his family and she was a great admirer of his art. The Lindsay influence is obvious in her teenage work, and she came to specialise in superb drawings of saucy nudes. ‘No one has drawn such naked women since Norman Lindsay took the field in eighteen – God-knows-when!’ said the poet Hugh McCrae, who also described my eighteen-year-old mother as ‘bold as brass, she flashes herself wittily through the air’. She also posed naked herself, for her own sculpture: there’s a lovely pensive photograph of her circa 1926, wearing a flapper’s hairstyle and nothing else, probably taken by her future first husband, George Bunting. Now I wonder why she didn’t say anything to me when she saw me engrossed in The Magic Pudding. Something like: ‘I knew the man who wrote that story and did the drawings. He was a wonderful artist.’ But then she never did talk much about the life she had before she married her second husband, my father.

  “Lindsay did more than disturb the religious. At times his art was regarded as seriously scandalous.”

  McCrae said my mother suggested ‘some madcap creature, disturbing the religious by clapping her hands on Sunday.’ Lindsay did more than disturb the religious. At times his art was regarded as seriously scandalous. An anti-religious drawing, The Crucified Venus, was removed from a Melbourne art show in 1913 and the Society of Artists president had to threaten to remove all the other artworks unless the drawing was put back. In the US in 1939, conservatives burnt several of his nudes in a fire on a train. There were rumours that he led a kind of Hugh Hefner life at Springwood, his retreat in the Blue Mountains, with his artist model playmates. Certainly he enjoyed being rebellious and outrageous, and inciting others to rebellion and outrage, especially when he was young. He and his brothers Lionel and Percy were leading lights in bohemian enclaves such as the Ishmael Club in Melbourne, where they drank, wor
shipped a singularly ugly idol Norman had carved out of wood, and performed bawdy obscene rituals that mocked more respectable clubs.

  Some of his novels that would cause no ructions today were considered so scandalous they were censored in the old wowserish Australia. Redheap, a comic story of life in a country town based on his youth in Creswick, Victoria, was published in 1930 and promptly banned for twenty-eight years. Age of Consent, about a middle-aged artist who loves a teenage girl, was published in Britain in 1938 and banned in Australia until 1962.

  There was nothing to excite wowsers in The Magic Pudding. No sex (indeed, no female characters, apart from a couple of ladies in the songs and the wife of a rooster) and except for the Judge’s bottle of port, no alcohol. But bucketloads of cheek, a total disrespect for authority and a flurry of near-knockout blows. And the fact that the heroes are murderers. Did anyone pick that up in the reviews?

  Well, almost. ‘There is a dark history attached to the way in which they acquired the delicacy,’ ventured The Argus review. But the reviewer didn’t seem bothered by it and nor did anyone else: all they saw was happiness and fun. The Bulletin said that though many of the northern European fairytales and fantasies are grim and sinister, ‘this gay and characteristically sunny Australian book only goes as far as humorous assault and battery, and has no shadows at all.’ The only thing reviewers found to complain about was that the price of a guinea was too high for a children’s book.

  “The only thing reviewers found to complain about was that the price of a guinea was too high for a children’s book.”

  Surprisingly few later commentators seem to have pursued the dark side of The Magic Pudding. But I found a 2002 paper by Greg Watson, ‘Violent and racist undertones in early Australian children’s literature; the proof’s in the Puddin’’, which damns by statistics: a violent act or intention is performed or mentioned in ninety-seven different paragraphs, or 15.5 per cent of the text; and in all cases where they come to blows, it is the heroes who initiate the violence. He also picks up on the murder: the heroes ‘appear to be guilty of a far greater crime than stealing.’ Another paper by Christopher Kelen, ‘The Magic Pudding: A mirror of our fondest wishes’, takes an allegorical view of the story, claiming that what makes it satisfying for Australians is its analogy with the unspoken terms of the country’s dominant narrative of rights of possession. In other words, Bill and Sam have stolen the Pudding and murdered its owner in the same way that the early settlers stole the land and murdered its first inhabitants… and we turn a blind eye.

  “In other words, Bill and Sam have stolen the Pudding and murdered its owner in the same way that the early settlers stole the land and murdered its first inhabitants … and we turn a blind eye.”

  This might be a valid way of looking at the story, but I am certain Lindsay was not consciously attempting any allegory. In his day, no-one questioned the rights of the settlers or the gold-diggers. I am not so sure whether Lindsay was consciously trying to be subversive by making his heroes murderers. He wasn’t always being naughty. There were dress-up parties at Springwood and nude models, but there’s no evidence of orgies. Indeed, Lindsay seems to have been far too serious a workaholic for that kind of carry-on. His creative output was colossal. In the 1920s, he’d start work in the early morning, producing water colours, etchings and sculptures during the day and writing a novel chapter in the evening. For a change he’d make furniture or construct model ships. Interestingly, when you consider the fighting in The Magic Pudding, he was also a keen amateur boxer, who kept a pair of gloves in his studio and boxed whenever he could find a sparring partner.

  It sounds as if he wrote The Magic Pudding almost by accident. He had a disagreement with Bertram Stevens, editor of the magazine Art in Australia, on the subjects children liked to read about. Bertram said they liked stories about fairies; Lindsay said they liked stories about food. (I’m with Lindsay on this, never could abide fairies, though fairytales and the fairy palace are another matter.) Stevens told George Robertson, the publisher at Angus & Robertson, who made a bet with him: he was on a fiver if he could persuade Lindsay to write such a book.

  It was a good time for some light relief. The First World War had just ended, and one of the casualties had been Lindsay’s brother Reginald, killed at the Somme. Lindsay was already well-known for his caricatures of koalas (then known as native bears), and as he began the book he promised ‘a bear on every page’. No doubt his own childhood came back to him as he wrote and drew. It’s thought his father was the model for the pompous Uncle Wattleberry, whom young Bunyip has to escape; and there are accounts of the ten wild Lindsay children having to subdue themselves and mind their manners when elderly aunts and uncles visited and their mother served these relatives all the best treats, which might well lead to a wish for politeness to be sugared, hanged, jumbled, tumbled and banged.

  And yet, like A. A. Milne, who was so frustrated that stories about a boy and his bear overshadowed everything else he wrote, or Tove Jansson, who could vomit on her Moomins, Lindsay at times seemed to think very little of his book after it came out, and found anything to do with it quite tedious. An edition published in 2008 includes letters between Lindsay and his publisher in which the author-artist rivals Albert for tetchiness, and in one reply to a lady who asked for permission to recite it in public, he wrote that he was very tired of this ‘little bundle of piffle’.

  “Lindsay at times seemed to think very little of his book after it came out, and found anything to do with it quite tedious.”

  For a bundle of piffle, it’s done very well. It has never been out of print in Australia, and today is seen as an international children’s classic. It’s been adapted as a play, as puppet shows, as an opera, and as a (not very successful) animated film. Sculptures of Bill, Sam, Bunyip and the Pudding grace Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. A very handsome 100th birthday edition came out in 2018, with a slipcover, a short biography by Lindsay’s granddaughter, Helen Glad, and selected letters between Lindsay and his publishers, Angus & Robertson. Overseas, the book has been translated into many languages and was reissued by the New York Review Children’s Collection, created in 2003 to put out books that had fallen out of print or out of attention, with an introduction by Philip Pullman that insists the book defies explanation. ‘This is the funniest children’s book ever written,’ he wrote. ‘I’ve been laughing at it for fifty years, and when I read it again this morning, I laughed just as much as I ever did. There’s no point in trying to explain why it’s funny. If there’s anyone so bereft of humour that they can read these words and look at these pictures without laughing, then heaven help them, because they’re beyond the reach of advice, instruction or despair.’

  I still laugh aloud when I read it, but I’m not sure it’s the funniest children’s book ever written (I laughed even more at Winnie-the-Pooh). And I keep getting distracted by adult thoughts. It occurs to me now that there’s a perfectly reasonable way Bill and Sam could have saved themselves from starvation and aggravation with the minimum of fuss. Why didn’t they persuade Curry and Rice to share his Pudding until they were all rescued? Why didn’t they sit down with the Possum and the Wombat to share more Pudding – or if they didn’t want their company, just give them some takeaway slices? Sneaky as the thieves are, they would probably agree to a plan to give them access to their prize and save themselves from a hiding. After all, the Pudding is an infinite resource. But the moment I think up this caring, sharing version, I realise I don’t want it to happen. It would be like Itchy & Scratchy when the pacifist Marge Simpson gets her way. Boring. No conflict. Nothing to win, nothing to lose. Not funny. No story.

  “it’s not just boys who want to read about battles. I wanted those punches and flipper-blows on snouts.”

  Another version of the anecdote about Norman Lindsay saying what kids want to read states that he nominated ‘food and fighting’. It’s true, and it’s not just boys who want to read about battles. I wanted those punches and flippe
r-blows on snouts. I wanted Curry and Rice to drown. And why not? If reading Little Women now makes me want to push Amy off the ice into the freezing water for stealing Jo’s story (well, maybe not to drown, but still), why wouldn’t I want to push Curry and Rice off the ice for hogging the Pudding? And yes, I laughed at the victims. One of the reasons Lindsay’s book is so funny, unpalatable as it is to admit it, is because it’s so blithely, casually cruel. Does that make me, or any other child who reads The Magic Pudding, a monster? I hope not.

  A friend gives me a key to this disturbing knowledge about myself. She tells me that she once went to a talk by children’s writer Nina Bawden, who said that her childhood reading gave her immense solace because it showed her that she was not alone in having ‘unacceptable’ feelings and thoughts. Fictional characters reassured her that jealousy, selfish desires and even murderous hate did not mean she was on the path to becoming a serial killer. They taught her about the complexity of people, even allowing her to identify with villains on occasion.

  “they let it all out, and isn’t that what I, as a timid and powerless child, sometimes longed to do but knew I never would or could?”

  I’m not sure how far this applies to The Magic Pudding, which is not noted for complex characters or seething inner turmoil. Indeed, when anybody gets a feeling, they act on it almost immediately. But perhaps that’s just it: they let it all out, and isn’t that what I, as a timid and powerless child, sometimes longed to do but knew I never would or could? To stroll the land in freedom and per-petual leisure, in peerless company, always assured of a perfect feast, and when someone gets in your way, land him a sockdolager on the muzzle, whatever that is. It’s an exorcism, a purging. The Magic Pudding allowed me to release my violent feelings in a harmless way.