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Monday 1 December 2008

The Young Pretenders

The view from the nursery

Juliet Townsend

Charlotte Mitchell, in her thoughtful and well-informed introduction, which includes much interesting biographical information about the author, points out that The Young Pretenders belongs to that popular class of Victorian novel which hovers between the nursery and the drawing-room. Although it is about children, and views the bewildering grown-up world through their eyes, it was written with both a child and adult audience in mind. Part of the enjoyment for the older reader lies in the merciless light the innocent but tactless candour of childhood sheds on the shallow pretension of the sophisticated world, ‘Giles always said Uncle Charley had married one as would be more for ornament than use,’ Babs blithely informs Aunt Eleanor — and how right she was. The humour of this story, and there is plenty, relies on this sort of juxtaposition.

The pathos is what immediately strikes a child reader. Children have a pronounced sense of natural justice. When I optimistically sent my daughter to stay with a French family, she only learned one sentence: ‘Ce n’est pas juste!’ The sense of the unfairness of being punished apparently for nothing pervades this book. ‘ “Oh, Teddy,” she wailed, “why did it all turn out so dreadful naughty? I don’t understand!” ’ Aunt Eleanor is beyond redemption, but her husband, the thoughtless young soldier, Uncle Charley, is gradually won over by the charms of his little niece, although he must share some responsibility for committing that most unforgivable of crimes, forgetting to fill the Christmas stockings.

Charlotte Mitchell comments on the prevalence of baby talk in this book and many others of the period, Mrs Molesworth’s Herr Baby, for instance. This certainly seems to have been a Victorian obsession, from that arch exponent, Ruskin in his letters — ‘Di wee Ma, How does oo tink me’s to sist till the 22nd! Oos velly cooel’ — downwards. One of the great linguistic revolutions of the last 100 years is the complete demise of baby talk — not even babies seem to speak it now. It is as much a forgotten language as the Ge-ez of the Ethiopian Coptic liturgy. To modern readers it can be a barrier to enjoyment, but it is definitely worth persevering to get to the heart of this book.

Edith Fowler casts a bright light on a particular kind of Victorian home at a particular moment in time, with a mixture of humour, perception and sympathy. She leads the way up the steps of the tall house in Onslow Square and ‘a long, long way up to the funny little nursery,’ and it is a pleasure to follow her.

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