The Reading Column

Akhila Seshadri
A foreword: I was asked recently if I wouldnt review or do a column for adult reading. I
declined. My life and passion is with what children read, why and the how of it as well.
So, all my columns are for both adult and child readers. As I have said before, well
written childrens literature can be enjoyed both by adults and children alike. So, here
goes

This time, I focus on a writer rather than a book or a series.

E. Nesbit
Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can't stand them
all over the shop - eh, what?'
These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel very
young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him names to
ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things, because he is not
nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not irritated. And we could not think it
ungentlemanly of him to say we were like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is
very nice indeed - only not on furniture and improper places like that. My father
said, 'Perhaps they had better go to boarding-school.' And that was awful,
because we know Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us
and said, 'I am ashamed of them, sir!'
Your lot is indeed a dark and terrible one when your father is ashamed of you.
And we all knew this, so that we felt in our chests just as if we had swallowed a
hard-boiled egg whole. At least, this is what Oswald felt, and Father said once
that Oswald, as the eldest, was the representative of the family, so, of course,
the others felt the same
We went away when it was over. The girls cried, and we boys got out books
and began to read, so that nobody should think we cared. But we felt it deeply in
our interior hearts, especially Oswald, who is the eldest and the representative of
the family.
These are the words that begin the book called The Wouldbegoods. By E.
Nesbit.
My own introduction to this wonderful writer for children was through her all time
famous classic: The Railway Children which has also been made into a movie.
The story concerns a family who move to a house near the railway after the
father is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state secrets to
the Russians. The three children, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, find amusement in
watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers.
They become friendly with Perks, the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman
who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. He is eventually able to help prove their
father's innocence, and the family is reunited. (The framing of an innocent man
was possibly influenced by one of the events in France, prior to the First World
War: The Dreyfuss Affair, where a Jewish officer was accused of selling military
secrets to the Germans)
I came across these books when I was browsing through the childrens section
at Landmark searching for a book for my son, (who began reading since his
Upper Kindergarten days!) and I was running out of books for him to read.
I was intrigued to find that E. in Nesbit stood for Edith. So, Nesbit was another
woman writer who wrote books about children. (Another one I discovered was
P.D. James, the famous crime writer).
Having grown up on Enid Blyton, it was a relief to find an author who wrote
about children as if they were people, and not as a species, that had to be kept in
a strict moral straightjacket, where the good ones are noble and the bad ones are

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Akhila Seshadri
bullies and spoilt brats. Nesbit, however, represents them in their idioms and
languages and shows them in many shades, rather than in black and white
characters.
Gore Vidal, in his review of E. Nesbits writing, in the New York Review of
Books, says that E. Nesbit was one who wrote about children, rather than for
children. I, however, feel they are not vastly different.
A writer writing for children does not need to write completely differently. A truly
successful childrens writer does not work terribly hard to create a style that is
different from a book for adults. Most people who write for children, see them as
people, with all their faults and foibles, a lot like adults, even if not really adult,
in the manner in which they deal with their circumstances, their peers. They need
not be talked down to.
Of course, if I wrote for children, I would be very careful with language, with
themes, specially violence and sexuality.
Children simply need to grow to hold these carefully. (Many adults dont!)
Going back to the quoted text, the story is narrated by one of the Bastable
children, who first made our acquaintance in Treasure Seekers. Through the
book, the writing is in the style of the boy (I wont let out who wrote, the fun is in
finding out. In fact, the narrator asks you to guess which of the children is
writing.)
Nesbits sense of childrens prose is amazing. For instance, in the last chapter,
the child-narrator attempts good prose:
The shadow of the termination now descended in sable thunder-clouds upon
our devoted nobs. As Albert's uncle said, 'School now gaped for its prey'. In a
very short space of time we should be wending our way back to Blackheath, and
all the variegated delightfulness of the country would soon be only preserved in
memory's faded flowers. (I don't care for that way of writing very much. It would
be an awful swot to keep it up - looking out the words and all that.)
To speak in the language of everyday life, our holiday was jolly nearly up. We
had had a ripping time, but it was all but over. We really did feel sorry - though, of
course, it was rather decent to think of getting back to Father and being able to
tell the other chaps about our raft, and the dam, and the Tower of Mystery, and
things like that.
To explain her writing, and her understanding of life and imagination of children,
I wish to quote Gore Vidal:
In a well-ordered and stable society (England in the time of the fat Edward),
children are as clearly defined a minority group as Jews or Negroes in other
times and places. Physically small and weak, economically dependent upon
others, they cannot control their environment. As a result, they are forced to
develop a sense of communality which though it does not necessarily make them
any nicer to one another at least makes it possible for them to see each other
with perfect clarity, and it is part of Nesbit's genius that she sees them as clearly
and unsentimentally as they see themselves, making for that sense of life without
which there is no literature at any level.
Truly, she is also a genius in that she weaves in almost imperceptibly, into her
writing, facts and experiences of her childhood and imagination.
One can classify, if one wanted to, her writing into two kinds:
One that is about children and their experiences. In these, there are several
children, typical of the Victorian England, usually one parent in trouble or absent,
and in circumstances of monetary difficulty. The efforts of children are always

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Akhila Seshadri
about alleviating their impoverished conditions. (The description of large houses,
two or three servants and interesting food, really do not seem to us, in this
degenerate age, where getting house, housemaid and finances to take care of us
and our daily bread always seem insufficient!). Things go wrong in almost every
chapter. The children have their code of honour and live by it and we like them
for it, despite all their wrongdoings. In the end some of their troubles go away.
The Second kind is about children who come across a Fantasy creature or
object and have magical experiences. Many of these experiences lead children
to feel that magic is terribly inconvenient and difficult.
The Psammead: in Five Children and It is a peevish, difficult to please, wise
and sarcastic creature that lives in sand. When children wish to be as beautiful
as day, they find that people dislike their looks and feel they look like gypsies.
Another one is the Phoenix, the bird that loves flattering verses on its form and
beauty, and one that is really wise.
In Enchanted Castle the children find a mysterious castle and a ring.
Nesbit never lectures or gives moral lessons. Indeed, some of her philosophical
expressions bring a chuckle very much like Wodehousian writing.
Talking further about their situation in the Wouldbegoods, the young narrator
turns philosophical:
We were the Treasure Seekers, and we sought it high and low, and quite
regularly, because we particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it,
but we were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped Father with his
business, so that Father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big red house on
Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived when we were
only poor but honest Treasure Seekers. When we were poor but honest we
always used to think that if only Father had plenty of business, and we did not
have to go short of pocket money and wear shabby clothes (I don't mind this
myself, but the girls do), we should be happy and very, very good.
And when we were taken to the beautiful big Blackheath house we thought now
all would be well, because it was a house with vineries and pineries, and gas and
water, and shrubberies and stabling, and replete with every modern
convenience, like it says in Dyer & Hilton's list of Eligible House Property. I read
all about it, and I have copied the words quite right
It is a beautiful house, all the furniture solid and strong, no casters off the
chairs, and the tables not scratched, and the silver not dented; and lots of
servants, and the most decent meals every day - and lots of pocket-money.
But it is wonderful how soon you get used to things, even the things you want
most. Our watches, for instance. We wanted them frightfully; but when I had
mine a week or two, after the mainspring got broken and was repaired at
Bennett's in the village, I hardly cared to look at the works at all, and it did not
make me feel happy in my heart any more, though, of course, I should have
been very unhappy if it had been taken away from me. And the same with new
clothes and nice dinners and having enough of everything. You soon get used to
it all, and it does not make you extra happy, although, if you had it all taken away,
you would be very dejected. (That is a good word, and one I have never used
before.) You get used to everything, as I said, and then you want something
more. Father says this is what people mean by the deceitfulness of riches; but
Albert's uncle says it is the spirit of progress, and Mrs Leslie said some people
called it 'divine discontent'. Oswald asked them all what they thought one

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Akhila Seshadri
Sunday at dinner. Uncle said it was rot, and what we wanted was bread and
water and a licking; but he meant it for a joke.
About her:
Edith Nesbit (1858 1924), grew up to be an unconventional adult in her own
times. She and her husband were founder members of the socialist Fabian
Society, which was a forerunner of the Labour Party, and their home became a
centre for socialist and literary discussion. Their friends included some of the
times greatest writers and thinkers, including George Bernard Shaw and H G
Wells.
Everything about Edith showed her as a woman trying to break out of the mould
demanded by English society at the time she expressed her individuality
through her clothes, hairstyle, lifestyle and her habit of speaking forcefully on
almost any subject.
E Nesbit she always used the plain initial for her writing and was sometimes
thought to be a man started to write for children after years of successful
writing for adult magazines.
Nesbits darker side included her philandering husband whose illegitimate
offspring she brought up as her own. But, the success of a writer for children is
that none of that sadness is reflected in the books. She died of throat cancer,
possibly on account of excessive smoking again a fight to break out.
I recommend that you begin from:
The Railway Children
then read
Five Children and It
Phoenix and the Carpet
And The Golden Amulet in that order as it is a series.
Move on to
The Treasure Seekers
The New Treasure Seekers and finally,
The Wouldbegoods.
End Note:
A lot of the problems with education, schooling and mind based growth is due to
the fact that the sort of books children read are either practical books that have
facts in them or silly books about high school romance or poorly written fantasy.
These books do not help children develop a sense of imagination. They do not
help children ask questions, work out problems about themselves and life.
Surely, if a child engages him/herself well, he/she would question all accepted
notions, thinks originally and comes upon his/her own answers. The problem with
Indian society as anywhere else is the lack of, or even absence of, imagination.
To go back to Vidal,. and though a reading of E. Nesbit is hardly going to
change the pattern of a nation, there is some evidence that the child who reads
her will never be quite the same again, and that is probably a good thing.
Happy reading.