Mary Louisa Molesworth (1839–1921) was more preoccupied with social status than
either of the two former writers. She was always careful to stress that her characters
were the children of gentlefolk, and dwelt much upon the marks that identified them as
such. She wrote over a hundred books, and is remembered for stories such as Carrots
(1876), about sheltered and protected children, very young for their age. All that is
required of them is that they should be happy and contented, and above all childlike.
Fathers and mothers lead their own lives downstairs; it is nurse and the other siblings
who impinge on young lives. (Americans tended to view this arrangement with
amazement if not abhorrence. Eleanor Gates’s The Poor Little Rich Girl (1912) describes
how the 7-year-old daughter of a wealthy New York couple suffers at the hands of her
nurse, and longs only to be with her parents.)
The turn of the century brought a new development, a view of children preoccupied
with their own imaginative games in a world where adults are, with a few exceptions,
uncomprehending aliens. In the wake of Kenneth Grahame’s nostalgic essays The
Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), there was a torrent of verse and prose
proclaiming that it was children alone who held the key to the universe. The ideal child
was the imaginative child. E.Nesbit (1858–1924) made her adults shadows in the wings
while her child characters, centre stage, played out their fantasies. The child like Albert-
next-door who does not want to dig for buried treasure is dismissed with contempt. In
The Story of the Treasure-Seekers (1899) and its sequels, the six Bastable children have
no mother, and a father so broken by business failure that he plays very little part in
their life. They are genteelly poor, but there is always a presence in the kitchen to bring
them meals and to clear up the mess. In The Railway Children (1906) Father has been
wrongly imprisoned, Mother writes feverishly to support them all, while the three
children devise more practical schemes than the Bastables’ to rescue the family
fortunes. The neatly happy outcome to everyone’s troubles has always made this book
popular.
‘“I think it would be nice”’, says one of the Railway Children,’ “to marry someone very
poor, and then you’d do all the work, and see the blue wood smoke curling up among
the trees from the domestic hearth as he came home from work every night”’. But this
was much more the American style. English writers for many years to come assumed a
middle-class background free from domestic responsibility. In Enid Blyton’s Famous
Five stories (1942–1963) the children can be certain that everything will be provided for
them—the picnic baskets will always be filled by a kindly retainer—while they solve
mysteries and capture international gangs of criminals. Nesbit provided even the
struggling Railway family with someone to cook and clean.
This was also to be the case with Noel Streatfeild (1895–1986). Her talented children
come from middle class backgrounds, and however straitened the circumstances, there
are loyal and loving servants to prop up the often scatty mothers. The great difference is
that her best-remembered juvenile characters do not play; with single-minded purpose
they are inching their way forward in their chosen sporting or artistic careers;
Sebastian, the musical prodigy in Apple Bough (1962), for instance, can rarely be
persuaded to put down his violin. Streatfeild’s first book, Ballet Shoes (1936) was
published in an era when the holiday adventure story reigned (Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon
Post, Joanna Cannan’s A Pony for Jean, and M.E.Atkinson’s August Adventure were
TYPES AND GENRES 337