Back to the Classics 2021 #6

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

A children’s classic. I like them well enough when I read them, so I don’t know why I need this challenge to push me to read classics like Oz books or Peter Pan.

The Five Children and It – E. Nesbit

The setting is the Kent countryside in 1902. Four brothers and sisters - Cyril, Robert, Anthea, Jane, and the two-year-old Lamb who is otherwise unnamed - are left in the care of a young housekeeper while their parents go away to care for a sick granny. While playing in a deserted gravel pit, the kids stumble across a Psammead, or sand-fairy. Homely and grumpy as we’d expect an ancient being to be, it grants them a wish a day with the stipulation that the effects of the wish wear off promptly at sunset.

I hate spoilers so I will not describe any wishes or their effects. Leastways, the kids wish for predictable things but also make unintentional wishes that the literal sand-fairy grants with a gruff “A nice thing you've let yourselves in for!” Suffice to say, the kids and sometimes Lamb get into high adventures and hilarious difficulties. Nesbit deftly pulls off the juxtaposition of magic right in the midst of our mundane plane.

Also interesting is that Nesbit assumes a cool aunt tone when addressing the kiddish reader. She never condescends, her wording is perfect as to pitch and vocabulary. She assures readers she’s just for fun, not improving: “Lending ears was common in Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am getting too instructive.” What lessons there are often about ‘knowing thyself’ a.k.a. emotional regulation and are woven seamlessly into the action. On consequences after Anthea has raised money in an unethical way: 

She was feeling very cross. She knew she had acted with nobility and discretion, and after that it was very hard to be called a little silly, especially when she had the weight of a burglared missionary-box and about seven-and-fourpence, mostly in coppers, lying like lead upon her conscience.

Nesbit, in fact, often underlines that kids have a conscience, even if at times that integrity is a fortress besieged:

'Shut up, can't you?' said Robert; but Cyril couldn't. You see, he felt in his heart that if there SHOULD be Indians they would be entirely his own fault, so he did not wish to believe in them. And trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.

She assumes her audience are great readers, with nods to “dear” Mr. Kipling and F. Anstey’s The Brass Bottle (1900). There’s a keen Huck Finn-type send up of certain books for young readers:

Robert felt pleased at being CALLED brave, and somehow it made him FEEL brave. He passed over the 'varlet'. It was the way people talked in historical romances for the young, he knew, and it was evidently not meant for rudeness. He only hoped he would be able to understand what they said to him. He had not always been able quite to follow the conversations in the historical romances for the young.

The children try to be courageous, courteous, valiant, and gallant, but they talk and act like kids. The older brother argues against coming clean to their mother, thus:

'Do you think so?' said Cyril slowly. 'Do you think She'll believe us? Could anyone believe about a Sammyadd unless they'd seen it? She'll think we're pretending. Or else she'll think we're raving mad, and then we shall be sent to Bedlam. How would you like it?' - he turned suddenly on the miserable Jane - 'how would you like it, to be shut up in an iron cage with bars and padded walls, and nothing to do but stick straws in your hair all day, and listen to the howlings and ravings of the other maniacs? Make up your minds to it, all of you. It's no use telling mother.'

As a big brother who used to impart a great deal of dubious information – if for no other reason that it is simply amusing to do so - I have to give it to Cyril for an admirable line of alarming patter.

I recommend this highly to hardcore readers that are looking for something different, after escaping the howlings and ravings of the other maniacs at work. I haven’t the foggiest notion if the magic would pass the rigid standards of today’s fantasy fans. Nor do I know whether the hip minors of today who are also readers would like this. I do gather that Nesbit is not nearly as popular in the US as she seems to be in the UK. Strangely, Disney has not made franchises out of the many books Nesbit wrote, but there are many TV and movie adaptations listed in IMDB.

Note: Another advantage of this challenge is finding out about writers one has never heard of and their curious lives. For a brief overview of Nesbit’s unconventional and tumultuous married life with a serial philanderer who had about 15 affairs and her own romantic dalliances in her bohemian literary set, see the article in JSTOR E. Nesbit and the Happy Moralist by Gloria G. Fromm. It’s so shocking it’s funny but one also feels how awful it must have been for their kids.