Storytime
Page 27
Now I see I could have done something about it. I could have taken the first step, reached out to another girl in my class – any girl – and talked to her, without waiting for her to approach me. It would have been very hard, but I could have done it. I could have faked confidence, and eventually I would have found something like it anyway. It’s both liberating and disconcerting, at this late stage, to realise that I was not as helpless as I thought I was. Disconcerting, because now there is a temptation to blame myself for my childhood unhappiness, and I don’t think that would help.
So where was that courage I was learning in my books, to confront my deepest fears? Why didn’t I reach out? Shyness, timidity, terror of being judged and found wanting, terror of rejection and ridicule. A certain pride. Suspicion, seeing other girls as rivals, not as potential friends. Above all, a sense I was as I was, and nothing could be done about it, as surely as if I wore Maria’s dreaded ‘Slut’ label.
I know these feelings very well, because sometimes I still have them. But I have learned over the years to hide them, to hope for something better; to front up to strangers professionally as a journalist; to socialise, even to be charming on occasion. And I have found that I like my colleagues and love my friends; I suspect that some of them at least have had those feelings too, and have learned the same skills to cover up. My diffidence and reserve were not insurmountable, then; but they lurked in my genes. I think my mother had the same character, even more than me, perhaps, or at least in the years when I knew her. Quiet, reclusive, shunning company, piking out of parties, pleading headaches, scornful of suburban rituals like coffee mornings. And yet complaining she never went anywhere, longing for human contact. In her final years, my husband took her down to a shopping mall. She didn’t want to go shopping. She sat wide-eyed, taking in all the astonishment of people.
“My books helped me deal with some of the most difficult things about being young Jane the introvert, the bookworm.”
My books helped me deal with some of the most difficult things about being young Jane the introvert, the bookworm. The puzzle of other people, all seemingly so much braver than me. The terror that I would disappear into some tiny, ever-contracting world that had no contact with reality. The greater terror that deep down, such a fate was what I really wanted. And even the sense that books were luring me into that fate. They were both the temptation and the cure. They tempted me to escape from the problem of myself, but they also helped me to visualise myself as a different, more confident person. It is still a mystery to me why I idolised the unbelievably gutsy Betty Roland, but felt out of sympathy with the much more complex and human Jo March. Perhaps Jo was just a bit too like me, except for her outgoing nature, which made me jealous.
The few friends I had – Polly from down the road in particular – were bonded to me by means of stories I told. I made up adventures and we acted them out. There were concessions to Polly’s obsession with all things horsey, so we galloped around on invisible ponies; but my stories were about otherness, other people with strange languages and customs. I called them Children from Other Lands. It seems I was always trying to escape into a realm of gold where there was a more perfect me.
“My books could not perform miracles for me. I was still locked in the prison of self, for better and for worse. But they gave me the rabbit hole, the gates of dawn, the wardrobe, the way into a land where I could be free”
My books could not perform miracles for me. I was still locked in the prison of self, for better and for worse. But they gave me the rabbit hole, the gates of dawn, the wardrobe, the way into a land where I could be free, courageous, and anybody or anything I wanted to be. And I brought traces of that country back into my boring life as a 1950s and ’60s schoolgirl in suburban London.
“What intrigues and appals me now is that I always assumed H. A. was a man.”
One last thing. Although I made a rule for myself that I wouldn’t go back to read myths and legends, I can’t resist another look at the story of Cupid and Pisk… well, I suppose I’d better call her Psyche now. H. A. Guerber’s book is available online through Project Gutenberg, so I look it up.
First, a word about the author, Hélène Adeline Guerber (1859–1929), a British historian who wrote eleven books about history, myth and opera, including histories for grammar school children in the nineteenth century. We really should know more about her, for surely it was unusual then for a woman to be such an authoritative figure on mythology, and for her books to have survived to the present day. What intrigues and appals me now is that I always assumed H. A. was a man. Maybe she wanted us to think that, because it gave her work more prestige, and boys and men would read it.
“when I think about it, I know why I remembered a different story. I liked it better.”
The Cupid and Psyche story is much more complicated than I remember, and reads more like a fairytale than a legend. Venus is jealous of Psyche’s beauty, so she tells her son Cupid to kill her. He creeps up on her at night with his bow and arrow, but a moonbeam shows him her lovely face and at the same time one of his arrows accidentally pierces his own skin, so he falls in love with her and steals away, leaving her unharmed.
But Venus doesn’t give up. She torments Psyche so relentlessly that the poor girl decides to do away with herself by jumping off a precipice, but Cupid gets the South Wind to carry her off and drop her on a distant island. She takes up residence alone in an enchanted palace where invisible servants wait on her. At night, Cupid begins to visit her and declares his love, which she happily returns, though she has no idea who he is or what he looks like (presumably he doesn’t tell her because he doesn’t want mum to find out).
The story goes on as I’ve remembered. But to my utter astonishment, I discover that after the sad ending, there’s a happy ending. It takes a while to arrive, though. After Cupid vanishes, a terrible storm breaks and Psyche faints. When she comes to, the palace and its gardens have also vanished. After waiting in vain for Cupid, she decides once more to do away with herself, and plunges into a river (oh dear, she gives up so easily), but the god of the stream saves her. Off she wanders, lamenting and seeking Cupid again. The goddess Ceres advises her to enter Venus’s service. So she does, and relentless Venus gives her a hard time, and she would never be able to perform all the tasks set for her unless helped by the animals and insects, who all love her dearly.
At this point I’m thinking trilling Disney birds and Psyche wafting about on those silly butterfly wings of hers. But it gets darker, thank God. Venus sends Psyche to Hades to get a special box of beauty ointment. She gets through all the terrors safely and comes back with the box. But before handing it over, she decides to use a bit of the ointment to make herself look presentable, after all her tears and sleepless nights. You can hardly begrudge her that little vanity.
Alas, there’s nothing in the box but the spirit of Sleep, who jumps on Psyche and lays her low. Cupid spots her by the roadside, remembers their love, forces Sleep to get back into his box and wakes Psyche with a kiss; and off they go to Olympus to meet the gods, get Venus’s forgiveness, get married and live happily ever after.
How on earth did I forget all this? It’s as if I kept a diamond and threw out the tiara. The story of Cupid and Psyche is quite an epic, like half the fairytales I ever heard rolled into one. It also ticks most of my hypothetical boxes. And it can lead me to lots of conclusions about the value of suffering and endurance and the need for girls to resist curiosity and vanity and bad advice. (Remember, I never said I didn’t want morals; I just didn’t want overt morals, obvious instruction. To quote C. S. Lewis again: ‘Let the pictures tell you their own moral.’) But when I think about it, I know why I remembered a different story. I liked it better. The story of love lost and regained, of love and the soul reunited, is important, and I needed it in other forms. But the story I remembered, the story of love lost and the lost soul, is simpler and infinitely more poignant. Sometimes sad endings are better than happy ones. Particularly a
s this one isn’t very believably happy. I can’t imagine that Venus would become a miraculously nice mother-in-law. And why did Cupid feel that he had to abandon his love, but that it was okay for them to get together later? I don’t know if I had those objections the first time round, but what I still love is the tale I was trying to tell my mother. Not the story of Cupid and Psyche. The story of Cupid and Pisk.
“Young Jane misunderstood and misremembered and misinterpreted and mispronounced because she wasn’t that good at reading, not yet. But she took what she needed. Readers always do.”
Young Jane misunderstood and misremembered and misinterpreted and mispronounced because she wasn’t that good at reading, not yet. But she took what she needed. Readers always do.
I was never a reader as a child or teen, most of my free time was spent playing cricket or footy. When I first read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge at around eighteen or nineteen, everything changed. The novel is probably not such a good one (I spent much of my time as a literature student at university apologising for liking his work), but it was the right book at the right time.
It’s about a young American man, Larry, whose life is saved during the last days of the First World War. As a consequence he rejects conventional material living and embarks – via philosophy and eastern religion – on a lifelong quest for meaning. Among other things, this is the book that turned me into a reader. And I’ve been re-reading it and dipping into it ever since.
Steven Carroll
So let me now have a try at a revised list, a summing-up of what I needed from those books, even though I didn’t always get everything I needed:
• to be transported into a vivid, enchanting world of adventure
• to choose a character to become (sometimes more than one character in a single story)
• to use my imagination and experience to make that world my own, and that character both my hero and myself
• to feel a range of emotions with great intensity
• to feel a longing, and to be happy in the very fact of longing
• to confront my deepest fears and summon the trust and hope I could overcome them.
And children’s story qualities considered desirable that I didn’t need, although sometimes they helped:
• good writing
• plausibility
• variety
• well-developed characters
• female heroes
• morality
• unpredictability
• a happy ending
I never will get that first reading experience back, just as Pisk can’t get Cupid back. But I’m reconciled to that knowledge. I flatter myself that I’m much better at appreciating the intellectual and aesthetic appeal of books these days: the pleasure of a well-turned sentence or a powerfully argued idea. And yet, if I’m honest, I’m still looking for that emotional kick. I want to burst out of the ground in spring like Moley, or push Curry and Rice off the ice, or turn up dripping wet on the Warden’s doorstep, or open Thingumy and Bob’s suitcase and have the King’s Ruby blaze out at me, or have Aslan tear a hole in the sky for me, or shout ‘Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards.’
“if I’m honest, I’m still looking for that emotional kick”
I’ve also been thinking more about why, at this particular time in my life, I needed the emotional kick of returning to my childhood reading. It’s something to do with the way many people in the later stages of their lives take great journeys: a cruise, an epic caravan trip, or, in an increasing number of cases, a voyage to the Arctic or the Antarctic – to the end of the world. On a material level, this is about retirement, leisure, spending the kids’ inheritance, travelling while health still permits. But it is also an end-of-life journey like the last voyage of Ulysses, as Tennyson describes it, towards ‘that untravell’d world whose margin fades/For ever and forever when I move.’ Or towards that elusive little mystery that Alice can never quite pinpoint on the shelves in the knitting sheep’s shop.
As well as a voyage out, mine is a voyage back. A return. So my reading has been a voyage into discovery and rediscovery: to the gates of dawn, the cold seed, Aslan’s country beyond the rising sun. To young Jane’s country, and beyond: to the very end, where I began.
“my reading has been a voyage into discovery and rediscovery”
This has been a whizzing adventure. Thank you for coming with me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Vicky and Arthur, for introducing young Jane to story.
To all the writers and illustrators who created worlds for young Jane.
To the people who read this book, in part or in entirety, in draft form, and with thanks for their invaluable comments. They include: Antoni Jach and his Masterclass students; Race and Iola Matthews; Gillian Barnett, Lyndel Caffrey, Moreno Giovannoni, Rob Hely, Meredith Jelbart, Vivienne Kelly, Katherine Kizilos, Suzanne McCourt, Janine Mikosza, Ellie Nielsen, Ailsa Wild.
To Shenka Christmas, for writing to me and for reading my letter out loud to her mother, Gillian Avery.
To all those who lent me their books.
To Fiona Wood, for lending me her writer’s studio at Glenfern, where I began this book.
To Jane Curry, Zoe Hale, Sophie Hodge, Elizabeth Hardy and all in the fabulous Ventura Press team.
To the authors who so generously contributed their own memories of books from their impressionable years, between the ages of four and nineteen: David Astle, Emily Bitto, Steven Carroll, Blanche d’Alpuget, Trent Dalton, Moreno Giovannoni, Andy Griffiths, Rosalie Ham, Kate Holden, Toni Jordan, Leah Kaminsky, Cate Kennedy, Lee Kofman, Ramona Koval, Melina Marchetta, Alice Pung, Angela Savage, Graeme Simsion, Ailsa Wild, Charlotte Wood, Fiona Wood.
To my book group, for being such great friends.
To Christy and David Sullivan, because they were there for me.
Heartfelt thanks to you all.
REFERENCES
Chapter One
Book
The Myths of Greece and Rome, by H. A. Guerber Chancellor, 1995; first published 1907
Chapter Two
Books
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
by Lewis Carroll
My editions: Penguin Classics, 1998; The Modern Library, New York, no date
Lewis Carroll: A Biography, by Michael Bakewell
Heinemann, 1996
Film
The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, BBC TV, documentary directed by Clare Beavan, 2015
Chapter Three
Books
Winnie-the-Pooh
The House at Pooh Corner
by A. A. Milne
My editions: Methuen, 1957; Methuen, 1936
The Enchanted Places, by Christopher Milne
Pan Heritage Classics, 2016; first published 1974
It’s Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer, by A. A. Milne
Pan Macmillan, 2017; first published 1939
Articles
‘Far from well’, Dorothy Parker’s review of The House at Pooh Corner, The New Yorker, 2o October 1928
Film
Goodbye, Christopher Robin, directed by Simon Curtis, 2017
Christopher Robin, directed by Marc Forster, 2018
Chapter Four
Books
The Castle of Adventure, by Enid Blyton
My editions: Piper, 1988; Macmillan & Co, 1956
Other books in the series: The Island of Adventure; The Valley of Adventure; The Sea of Adventure; The Mountain of Adventure; The Ship of Adventure; The Circus of Adventure; The River of Adventure
The Promise of Happiness: Value and Meaning in Children’s Fiction, by Fred Inglis
CUP Archive, 1981
A Childhood at Green Hedges, by Imogen Smallwood Methuen, 1989
Chapter Five
Books
Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson
My edition:
Puffin, 1961
Other Moomin books include: The Moomins and the Great Flood; Comet in Moominland; The Exploits of Moominpappa; Moominpappa at Sea; Moominland Midwinter; Moominsummer Madness.
Sculptor’s Daughter, by Tove Jansson
Sort of Books, 2013; first published 1968
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
Sort of Books, 2003; first published 1972
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, by Boel Westin
Sort of Books, 2014
Chapter Six
Books
Colonel Pewter in Ironicus, by Arthur Horner
Pall Mall, 1957
The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction, by Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan
St Martin’s Press, 1981
Comic series
The Silent Three, by Horace Boyten and Stewart Pride, illustrated by Evelyn Flinders
School Friend magazine, Amalgamated Press, 1950–1963
The Silent Three of St Botolph’s, by Posy Simmonds
The Guardian, 1977–1987
Essay
‘Boys’ weeklies’, by George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, Victor Gollancz Limited, 1940
Chapter Seven
Books
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
My edition: Penguin Classics, 1989
What Katy Did, by Susan Coolidge (pen-name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)
Roberts Brothers, 1872
Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner
Ward, Lock and Bowden, 1894
A Bloodsmoor Romance, by Joyce Carol Oates HarperCollins, 1982