When Julian Lovelock's Swallows,
Amazons and Coots was first published (2016) I was pleased to see a new
academic analysis of Ransome's canon to join Peter Hunt's Approaching Arthur
Ransome and the various PhD thesis on his novels such as Hazel Sheeky Bird's
Camping and Tramping, Swallows and Amazons: Interwar Children’s Fiction and
the Search for England amongst others. On reading Lovelock's work this
anticipation of pleasure became something of a disappointment as can be seen in
my review on Amazon
UK and the extended version of it that is available on the All Things
Ransome Website (Lovelock
Review.)
Though I admit there was much of
the analysis in Lovelock's book I disagreed with, there were some aspects I did
not. In an attempt, in the academic manner, to give a more considered view I
have read the book again, and this time as I did so I made extensive notes,
both in support and disagreement of his views to clarify my thoughts.
This paper is a further
discussion of Lovelock’s book and my views on the some of the points he raises.
It is not exhaustive, I found the more I read (including comparing some of his
views with those of others) I realised I would probably end up with enough
material for a volume of my own.
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There is one particular recurring
aspect of Julian Lovelock’s analysis of the Swallows and Amazons series
of novels by Arthur Ransome that I found very difficult to understand and come
to terms with, this was his insistence that each of the novels has quite
extensive comic elements, some he claims even having 'visual comedy', though
how this is possible in a written work I find, as a concept, difficult to
grasp.
As a regular reader of the
Ransome canon for around fifty-five years, both for pleasure and latterly in
serious consideration, during that time, even as a child, I have yet to encounter
anything I would describe as 'comedy'. Yes, the occasional humorous remark or
incident that brings a slight smile to mind but nothing to evoke a 'laugh out
loud' reaction as Lovelock says it does for him (p. 193.) Peter Hunt in his
book Approaching Arthur Ransome agrees with the analysis of Fred Inglis
in his work The Promise of Happiness – 'Ransome takes life seriously,
unselfconsciously so...' (quoted in Hunt p. 86), and in Hunt’s own discussion
of William, the pug, in Coot Club he states 'This is about the only
occasion in the whole canon where Ransome indulges in his sense of whimsy...'
(Hunt p. 127.)
Throughout the chapters in
Lovelock's book there are fifty or so references to what he considers the comic
or humorous aspects to Ransome's novels, many of those cited are, in my view, a
misrepresentation of what Ransome is writing about and so trying to convey to
his readers.
There is always a difficulty in
discussing humour of any kind, with it being one of those subjects that are
beyond objectivity. It is well known that what appeals to one person’s sense of
humour can do nothing for another's. In my own case this applies to slapstick
comedy and any humour that has the intention to belittle or underhandedly
insult someone, or exploits a weakness in them - these fail as humour for me on
all counts. This does not mean, of course, I don't find things funny, far from
it. I was fortunate, in my view, to have grown up in the tail end of the era of
The Goon Show and Tony Hancock on the radio, then on through the years
of Monty Python and their ilk on television.
I am well aware that many would
be mystified by this, just as I am in why others find the likes of Laurel and
Hardy or Charlie Chaplin in any way amusing.
Additionally, I find some modern examples of humour funny that I realise
are something of a mystery to many people much younger than myself.
Even allowing for the notion that
people have different ideas as to what constitutes 'comic', ‘humorous’ or
'funny' I feel that Lovelock's analysis in this aspect of Ransome’s work is
misplaced; his characters are all children growing up and trying to deal with
the world around them, their difficulties maybe minor compared to those many of
us have had to contend with as children and adults, but they still have to be
dealt with.
Some adults have such lives as
this, whilst others seem to be free of such things. For example, I had a great
aunt on my mother's side of the family who went through life with comparative
ease. In her old age she once said to my mother that she would quite happily
live her life over again without any changes. Whereas my mother, who was
middle-aged when this conversation took place, thus far had a life that was
tinged with tragedy – death of her only sibling in war-time, death of her first
born child when he was only ten years old in a road accident and then widowed
in her early forties. My great aunt clearly could not comprehend why my mother,
through these circumstances, had a different view from herself.
It has never struck me in all my
readings of the canon there was a possibility Ransome wrote with the intention
of being humorous, and when I raised the topic on TarBoard (the long
established Ransome Online forum) some of the comments in response seemed to
suggest I was not alone in this view. For me, in his novels, Ransome actually
wanted to show that there was a great deal of seriousness in the lives of
children, as there had been in his own childhood. Lovelock points out in his
introduction ‘His [Ransome’s] childhood was not a happy one, … at the age of
nine, Ransome was enrolled at a boarding preparatory school, … it was a
disaster, and young Arthur was bullied and lonely.’ (p. 3.) There is another,
and to me unrealistic, view of childhood as being a period of one's life free
of troubles of whatever kind that has been perpetuated from the mid-twentieth
century with the comment that has become something of a cliché - ‘School days
are the happiest days of your life’. Thankfully, there is more recognition that
this is not the case for a significant number of children whom long to escape
to the world of adulthood, they may not be much happier in doing so but at
least they have been able to leave their childhood behind. As Hunt comments in
his discussion of the character's emotional lives '...one might suspect,
Ransome was a shrewd child psychologist.' (Hunt p. 85.)
As a child reader of Ransome, for
me, amongst his books attractions were the lack of detailed descriptions of
time spent at school, no negative heavy-handed interferences by adults, no
'teasing', no harassment and related emotional difficulties that many children
have to suffer, including failing to be taken seriously by adults and being
belittled by other children. This is made clear in Great Northern? by
Roger’s reaction to being mocked by the young McGinty. As Lovelock points out
‘…he leaves the mocking message ‘THE SLEEPING BEAUTY’ that so angers Roger.’
(p.204.)
Ransome's ability to identify
with children and express feelings they may be having rather than writing
directly for them, is one of a number of aspects that makes him stand out as an
author of books that may include children amongst their readers. This aspect of
Ransome's style has clear connections, explored by Lovelock and others, with
his own childhood and the loss of his father. Despite being a child, in the
broadest sense, he learnt from an early age that life is a serious business and
has to be dealt with, and occasionally it just had to be endured.
Even whilst being unaware of
Ransome’s background as a young reader I immersed myself in his books, and was
richly rewarded with an alternative childhood that fulfilled some of my
emotional needs at the time for around a year or so. It also gave me a broad
knowledge of many subjects that still serves me well today, Ransome’s ability
to describe things and explain how they work has influenced many of his
readers, and some of those who are now well known individuals acknowledge this
role he played in
their own childhoods.
A further attraction of Ransome's
books is that the adventures the children have are (with the obvious exceptions
of those in Peter Duck, Missee Lee and possibly Great
Northern?) all rooted in the realms of possibility. Yet in his introduction
Lovelock refers to the characters exploring a 'dressing up box' (p. 13) and
being involved in 'the make-believe of games.' (p. 22.) On reading this I was
reminded of Wittgenstein’s discussion on defining ‘games’ ‘How should we
explain to someone what a game is?’ (Philosophical Investigations p.33)
and he then goes on at some length of the difficulties in doing so.
For me, the characters do not
posses a 'dressing up box' and what happens in the books are not 'games', they
are not pre-planned or engineered by the children themselves or the adults that
assist them in doing so just for enjoyment as games are usually perceived. They
make plans of how to spend their time and sometimes those plans are thwarted by
circumstances (on the few occasions they are hindered by adults it is not with
malicious intent, as an example Great Aunt Maria in Swallowdale and The
Picts and The Martyrs acts out of what she believes to be the 'right' thing
to do in looking after her nieces, albeit quite forcefully.) Lovelock views
this from a different perspective, he describes each of the books beginning
with a disappointment which then is overcome, he sees this as '...one of the
gateways through which the children enter an imaginary world where they leave
the everyday world behind and, to them, their games become real.' (p. 184.) My
reasoning here is, that if you believe they move to an 'imaginary world' then
we have to assume they are still involved in 'games'. In a complete contrast to
Lovelock Hunt describes what they do (their adventures) '… [As] 'real'; they live in a recognizable
world with recognizable laws and values.' (Hunt p. 14.)
Throughout his book Lovelock
seems, as many of us long-standing readers are, occasionally somewhat confused
and troubled by the nature of Nancy as a character. I have explored some
aspects of Nancy’s character myself in a previous paper, and concluded that as
she has no basis in reality, being a pure invention on Ransome’s part, this
makes her different from all the others. It also means that sometimes Ransome
even contradicts himself in how she is portrayed. Early on Lovelock states
‘Captain Nancy is a tomboy…’ (p. 32) and that and that her behaviour can become
marked by ‘…over-familiarity and rudeness…’ (p. 32). The notion of Nancy as merely a ‘tomboy’ I have
also discussed before and I feel that this description is usually
nothing more than an easy ‘get out’ for those that have not read the books in
any depth and tend to lump her in with characters of lesser children’s
literature, such as that of Enid Blyton, where a 'strong' female has to be
explained in some way as they go against what is socially acceptable at the
time the author is writing. Obviously, Lovelock does not fall in to this
category so it is somewhat surprising he uses this term against type.
Nancy is a very complex
character, as Lovelock observes ‘…Nancy is frequently more emotionally aware
and more farsighted than her companions.’ (p. 48.) In Winter Holiday it
is she that is immediately accepting of the Ds joining the polar expedition,
whereas somewhat surprisingly, the Swallows have their doubts – ‘…Dorothea overhears the always
generous Nancy arguing for their inclusion.’ (p.74, my emphasis).
As for Nancy being rude,
certainly she is indeed often direct and outspoken but nearly always because
she knows in her own mind that she is right. She will not be deterred from
making her point or standing her ground when dealing with adults, in
particular, those who tend to dismiss children in such situations without
listening to or considering their point of view. To accuse a child of rudeness
when they show an adult it is they who have been in the wrong, is a far too
easy reaction of some adults both now and more so at the time Ransome was
writing. As Lovelock puts it '...Nancy often proves herself to be the most
considerate and empathetic of the older children.' (p. 109.)
A further aspect of Nancy that
makes her such a complex character is that she is the eldest of the children,
just slightly older than John as far a we can ascertain. By the time of their
adventure recounted in Great Northern? takes place she would be sixteen
years old, about to move from childhood to adulthood, a move that may of course
have already occurred, and a very significant change for any young woman. As
Lovelock observes of the previous novel 'Nancy, now aged fifteen, hovers
uncomfortably between childhood and adulthood...' (p. 186.) Of course, age is
no indicator of maturity or depth of knowledge (my great aunt that I referred
to earlier lived in to her seventies but still behaved as if a rather naïve,
somewhat ignorant teenage girl.)
In his analysis of The Picts
and the Martyrs Lovelock makes two very salient points about Nancy –
‘Throughout the Swallows and Amazons series we have seen glimpses of
Nancy’s sensitivity.’ (p. 194) and ‘Was the Great Aunt also an overbearing
pirate in her youth who has been left unloved and embittered? Is this what will
happen to Nancy in her turn?’ (p. 196). I would argue we have seen more than
just 'glimpses' and I am reasonably confident through my own readings in
stating that Nancy will not end up ‘unloved’, certainly she will always be
loved by her fellows (if we can allow ourselves to extrapolate from their
characters we are provided with by Ransome.) Had Ransome been able to let his
characters grow older in to the early years of adulthood, the life of Nancy
would have been the most interesting and given him the greatest scope as a
novelist, again being a creation entirely of his imagination.
Another skill that Ransome has as
a writer also leads many to make interpretations of his work, to me, often
erroneously. In this manner Lovelock attempts to analyse the books to show how
they reflect colonialism, Empire and the ‘loss’ of the way of life that existed
in England (and again I will use this deliberately despite three of the books being
set elsewhere) at the time he was writing about (the early nineteen-thirties.)
In Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale the children refer to
themselves as ‘explorers’ and in all the books, other than the meta-fictions,
describe the local people they encounter as ‘natives’. Even Nancy and Peggy
take on this usage to talk of people they have grown up with!
In Swallows and Amazons
the Swallows do regard the island on their arrival as being unexplored and so
available to be, in a sense, ‘taken’ (in more recent readings I have concluded
that prior to Commander Walker giving his permission for the expedition, Mrs
Walker had already made arrangements for them to go camping there and probably
had contact with Mrs Blackett, as the impression is given in later books that
her family ‘own’ the island.) The Swallow children are all familiar with the
plots of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Stevenson's Treasure Island
(Titty particularly so), and perceive the island in the lake in the same way as
Stevenson and Defoe did their islands. For the Swallows, perhaps naively, the
island is an 'undiscovered country' (though clearly not in the sense Hamlet
uses the phrase in Act III scene I of Hamlet.) It is a place to be
explored, mapped and named because for them it has not been done before. As far
as they are aware nobody lives there or knows anything about it, and when they
encounter the Amazons it then becomes very clear to them they are not the
first. Though this is something of a disappointment it does not deter them from
mapping and so naming its geographical features, even negotiating with the
Amazons over such matters, and continuing to make it their temporary home. When
the Swallows arrive, not that it was ever their intention, there are no
resources to be plundered, no native peoples to rule over or oppress, the usual
activities of colonisation
The two main geographical
districts of England that Ransome set his novels, the Lake District and the
Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, both have at various times suffered with an over-popularity
by tourists that has led to physical damage to the landscape and disruption of
the way of life of those that are members of families who have lived and worked
there for generations. The Broads in particular, had in the 1930s (the time
Ransome was writing about) seen the introduction of motor cruisers for holiday
hire, which changed the whole nature of the area from the days when it was
purely populated with sailing vessels. It is this change that Ransome was not
happy about, and he drew attention to it through Coot Club and The
Big Six, a problem that would continue in to the 1960s and 1970s. This was
not some view through rose-tinted spectacles hankering for a probably
non-existent golden age; Ransome was concerned about the damage to the area in
many senses but for the natural world in particular. Both books alerted people
to this danger, as Lovelock points out in his analysis of the discussion in The
Big Six between Tom, the Death and Glories and the eel man Harry Bangate
(p. 155-6), Ransome was not reflecting on the loss of Empire etc. despite the
description of the photographs and news cuttings in Bangate’s vessel, but the
preservation of the countryside that was clearly under threat from the increase
of motorised river traffic used by visitors.
When it comes to politics and the
implied references in the novels, as Lovelock quotes Paul Foot’s discussion of
Ransome and to politics in the books ‘The subject simply doesn’t arise.’ (p.
11) yet despite this for Lovelock it does seem to be there in the background
'...the resolutely middle-class writer of what can seem to resolutely
middle-class and imperialist tales.' (p. 10.) Ransome’s political views are
difficult to perceive, in his journalist days he worked for a left-of-centre
newspaper (The Manchester Guardian) and obviously took a great interest
in the Russian Revolution which would enable us to place him roughly in a
position on the political spectrum if we made some broad assumptions. Yet on
his return to the UK with Evgenia it seems from his writings, both public and
his private letters, that politics were a thing of the past in his life. This
makes it very difficult to relate what happens in the novels to his political
views, and perhaps a dangerous path to take. As Lovelock explains referring to
a note in Ransome’s MI5 file that states ‘He has, I think, no special political
views.’ (p. 7.)
Finally, Lovelock devotes a great
deal of his analysis to the role of Dick and Dorothea in the books, and of
Dorothea in particular. Both characters have their basis in aspects of the
person Ransome had strived to become - the knowledgeable, practical expert and
the novelist. It is interesting, to me at least, that Lovelock describes the Ds
as ‘…not children to whom one immediately warms.’ (p. 71.) Hunt's view is very
different 'Dorothea, is one of Ransome's masterstrokes. She … lives a happily
conscious double life, paraphrasing the reality around her into the worst of
clichés of 'ordinary' children's books... Together the D's provide a refreshing
and not always flattering gloss on the Swallows and Amazons...' (Hunt p.
72.) As a child, when I first read Winter
Holiday, I identified with them both straight away and the book still
remains my favourite of the novels. Aspects of the two of them were everything
I was in some ways, outsiders, having a need to be included, but as I mentioned
before, they only started out in that position until Nancy encouraged their
acceptance in to the collective adventures overruling the misgivings of the
others.
Dorothea sees almost everything
through novelist’s eyes and we are told of her written observations, her own
writing is not of great quality (from the snippets we are given) as she has yet
to develop as a writer, but she has a vivid imagination that is triggered by
the smallest events. Ransome does on occasions use her works to show the
shortcomings of other writers, but mainly he uses her as a device to explain to
us the reader what he is seeing as the invisible observer.
One of the biggest surprises with
regard to Dorothea is her role in The Big Six. When all seems lost as
the local members of the Coot Club are under suspicion from nearly all the
adult characters for criminal activity, it is she who believes in their
innocence and organises them all to work to prove it - '...the chief interest
in the novel lies in the way they encounter the injustices and prejudices of
adults rather than in their individual characters.' (p. 151.) Not only does
Dorothea organise the others she has to deal with some opposition from within, as
Lovelock puts it '… [she] takes charge, lightly shouldering Tom into the
background … [T]he Death and Glories may be sceptical, and sometimes resentful,
but they are swept along by her newfound confidence.' (p. 160.) I don't see it
as a 'newfound' confidence on Dorothea's part, it is just that she has at last
an opportunity to show her strengths; as Hunt views it '… the sole girl in the
cast masterminds the operation …' (Hunt p. 133.) In Winter Holiday and Coot
Club she is the newcomer and to a degree both in awe of those she meets and
reluctant to put her abilities in to action.
There is an irony in that
Ransome, who is often wrongly perceived by some as a 'masculine' writer telling
stories of 'male' activities, should have two central characters over the
twelve books that are female – Nancy and Dorothea. To add to this irony the two
of them are the strongest of the children, in the broadest sense, and the most
adult-like. Though Susan takes on the domestic tasks of mother and wife, it is
always clear to the reader that this is just a role she has been assigned, or
has regularly confirmed, by 'real' adults in the way they positively speak to
her or of her.
Nancy is not only in 'command' as
the senior part owner of the Amazon, but in that she controls the activities of
all the books she appears in. Dorothea on the other hand may not always act
like an adult but she views the events around her as if she was one, this is
reflected in her writing. In her observations of the world around, she always
takes what she sees as having the potential as source material for her novels.
We know from Ransome's
autobiography, his collected letters and Brogan's biography that there were
always strong women in his life. The most important ones of course being his
mother and his, in their different ways, two wives, but not always in a
positive way. He also had many female friends, many of whom he proposed to,
again who had their own strengths, which influenced him.
Once again I find myself
concluding that there is still much to be gleaned and written about Ransome’s
canon, and that it is remarkable a series of twelve novels written over eighty
years ago, ostensibly for children, still manages to generate so much interest
and serious analysis. In comparison Malcolm Saville, a near contemporary of
Ransome, wrote twenty-two novels in his Lone Pine series and many others
as well. It is also clear there are still many areas of Ransome's works and
achievement to be explored and for us enthusiasts to disagree over, but never
in ways that will deflect any of us from our long held interest.
