John Lane The Bodley Head first edition - 1931
Thornton Waldo Burgess (1874-1965) was a prolific American author who had written over 170 books and 15,000 stories for his daily newspaper column. He was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod and, after school and college, accepted a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. He began writing bedtime stories for his young son after his wife died had died in childbirth. Burgess used his outdoor observations of nature when plotting his story books. His first book, Old Mother West Wind (1910), introduced many of the characters found in his later books and stories: Peter Rabbit, Jerry Muskrat, Billy Mink, Jimmy Skunk, Bobby Raccoon, Sammy Jay, Joe Otter and Grandfather Frog. Four of these later Bedtime Story-Books - 1913: The Adventures of Reddy Fox; 1920: Old Granny Fox; 1940: Reddy Fox's Sudden Engagement; and 1953: Reddy Fox takes a Bath - featured Reddy who lived with Granny Fox, who was the wisest, slyest, smartest fox in all the country round.
As for The Adventures of Reddy Fox, it is clearly aimed at the pre-teen reader and is certainly not for the 'young adult'. A more apt title would have been The Adventures of Granny Fox, as she is the undoubted heroine of the book, rather than her wilful jackanapes and increasingly arrogant grandson Reddy. She has to teach him caution, humility and, above all, common sense. His main enemies are Farmer Brown's boy and his Bowser the Hound. Granny is more than a match for the latter, leading him over hill and vale away from her and her grandson's foxhole. Reddy has retreated there having been wounded by Farmer Brown's boy. It is only thanks to his Granny subsequently removing them both to her old den that saves him, as the boy digs out the one they have speedily left in the night.
This story makes no apology for being anthropomorphic; the illustrations have all the animals portrayed in human clothes and their thought processes mirror mankind's. However, that probably endears Reddy, his Grandmother and all the others to the under-twelve juvenile reader.
I decided to read Beatrix Potter's story of Mr. Tod straightaway afterwards, as this was also aimed at a similar age group.
Frederick Warne later edition
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is too well-known to need any comments about her life and art from me. Suffice it to say that, although she was a respected amateur natural scientist and conservationist (the National Trust and the Lake District benefitted hugely from her legacies; and a recent book by Matthew Kelly in 2022, The Woman Who Saved the British Countryside, is not too far off the mark), she is best known for her children's tales featuring the likes of Peter Rabbit (published in 1902) and others.
Strangely for me, The Tale of Mr. Tod (first published in 1912) is like Thornton Burgess' The Adventures of Reddy Fox, not the most apt title. I would have called it The Tale of Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod; however, that's probably too much of a mouthful. Although, Potter more or less agrees with me in her first two sentences! I have made many books about well-behaved people. Now, for a change, I am going to make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod. I am sure youngsters reading, or being read to, the story would love the descriptions of the two scoundrels.
Nobody could call Mr. Tod "nice". The rabbits could not bear him; they could smell him half a mile off. He was of a wandering habit and he had foxy whiskers; they never knew where he would be next... Tommy Brock was a short bristly fat waddling person with a grin; he grinned all over his face. He was not nice in his habits. He ate wasp nests and frog and worms; and he waddled about by moonlight, digging things up. To the urban child, these simple sentences gave them a wealth of knowledge about animals they would probably never meet in real life.
The story is a simple one. Mr. Tod has several dens which Tommy Brock, without a by-your-leave, uses as if they are his own. On this occasion, he has whisked a group of young rabbits away for imbibing, under the nose of their baby sitter old Mr. Bouncer. He carts them off in a sack to one of Mr. Tod's homes. Not only this, he prepares the breakfast table and then goes fast to sleep in Mr. Tod's bed. Tod returns, attempts to rig up a bucket of water above the bed; is bested by Brock, who Tod finds subsequently having breakfast at his own dining table; they fight - then the snarling and worrying went on outside; and they rolled over the bank, and down hill, bumping over the rocks. There will never be any love lost between Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod. Meanwhile, two other Potter favourites, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny rescue the baby rabbits. Putting oneself in the minds of youngsters at the primary age, the story would strike several chords: it is good fun, the characters are well depicted and the moral that good defeats bad is clear. What elevates the story (in fact, all of Potter's tales) are the delightful illustrations - there are fifteen in colour and numerous black and white ones - which are admittedly anthropomorphic, but compelling all the same. My two favourites are copied below.
One assumes that the gentleman with sandy whiskers in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck (written four years earlier, in 1908) was the same Mr. Tod, although he had no name.
No comments:
Post a Comment