Not duffers and still afloat
Juliet Townsend
APPROACHING ARTHUR RANSOME by Peter Hunt Cape, 114.99, pp. 192 It is early morning on Wildcat Island, but the Swallows are up and about. John is at the lookout with his telescope, Susan, needless to say, is bent over the fire cook- ing a nutritious breakfast Titty is staring dreamily down the lake towards Rio Bay, the Boy Roger is consuming his first bar of Chocolate. Suddenly there is a cry of 'Ama- zons ahoy!' and the little sailing dinghy, Tam by two figures in red 'Shiver 0' Shanters, slips into the anchorage. Shiver my timbers, lads!' cries Captain Nancy. Four generations have passed since the first readers entered into Arthur kansome's world of independent self- sufficient children — 'If not duffers won't drown better drowned than duffers' — as the Swallows' father's famous telegram giving permission for their first island camp laconically put it. Perhaps he would not have been so san- guine had he foreseen some of the hazards they would face. Before producing Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome had already written 26 books of which only 90e, Old Peter's Russian Tales, had been intended for children. In Approaching /1...rthur Ransome Peter Hunt describes how Ransome served a long apprenticeship as a journalist and writer of technical books, and both these influences can be seen in the spare narrative style and detailed Kiplingesque descriptions of how things work which typify his children's novels. As a reporter he had led an adventurous life in Russia during the Revolution — his second wife had been Trotsky's secretary — and in China, later to inspire Missee Lee. His return to the scenes of his childhood holi- days in the Lake District in the 1920s marked the bringing together of many ele- ments in his life which were to inform his books for children, his friendship with the Altounyan family — the originals of the Swallows — his passion for sailing, his love of the lakeland countryside, his fascination with the practical skills needed for survival in the wild.
This fascination attracts some readers and repels others. When John or Nancy light a fire it stays lit, their igloo is of envi- able stability — the rest of us, no doubt in Ransome terms 'duffers', may find this mildly irritating. Many would agree with Geoffrey Trease, quoted here when he complains of the 'breezy healthiness' of Ransome's characters, going on to say, 'They take plenty of soundings at sea, but they plumb no emotional depths'; and with Rosamond Lehmann who describes them as 'totally external; symbols of cooperative efficiency'. Yet the generations of readers who have ensured that all the books have remained in print for over 60 years and sold five million copies, would surely not agree. To them the Swallows and Amazons, Dick and Dorothea and the characters from the stories set in the Norfolk Broads and on the East Coast, Tom Dudgeon, Port and Starboard and The Death and Glories, are the boon companions of the holidays they never quite had. For in Arthur Ran- some's*world, adventure is accessible. The
villains are not international spies but the kind of yahoos anyone might meet, like the loathsome Hullabaloos in their noisy motor cruiser surging through the Broads, swamp- ing dinghies and coots' nests in their wake, or the devious egg-collector, Mr Jemmer- ling in ,Great Northern, who, like the Hulla- baloos, commits the cardinal Ransome sin of wearing garish pyjamas at sea in place of more workmanlike rig.
Ransome would have agreed with E. Nesbit that the most important attribute for a children's writer is a peculiarly vivid recall of his own childhood. He maintains that 'In writing about children one is writing about one's own childhood as well as theirs', and his memories of his boyhood holidays by Coniston Water, sailing, fishing and camping, shine through his writing and refresh his readers just as they must have refreshed him as a boy when he returned for the term-time to his home in Leeds. Of course the world he describes no longer exists. Today, in Lakes and Broads the hated Hullabaloos have triumphed. The two little boats, Swallow and Amazon, would nowadays jostle for space in a mari- na and cars full of invading 'natives' (Ransomese for outsiders) jam the narrow country lanes. Yet the four years in the 1930s covered by these books remain miraculously preserved for us, with their details of daily life and their easy accep- tance of a straightforward moral code 'part naval, part familial'.
It is perhaps inappropriate to apply to this world the fashionable ethical judg- ments of our own day. Peter Hunt subjects Ransome to a sort of trial by ism, and we are asked to consider whether his work exhibits classism, racism, ageism and sex- ism, from which ordeal, although 'undeni- ably sexist', he emerges surprisingly unscathed. The author does, however, mention critics' doubts about the cultural correctness of the charming pidgin English spoken by Missee Lee, 'Better plofessors at Camblidge, better marmalade at Oxford.' Peter Hunt's own style is sometimes trying. The main characters are localisers' and
each [character] is allowed more foreground- ' ing, and only in the case of Susan does the monomania become not only a little tiresome but authorially endorsed.
In spite of all this I found the book full of interest and agreed with many of the author's judgments, including his prefer- ence for We Didn't Mean to go to Sea and Pigeon Post among the books. This is a work of literary criticism rather than biography, and Hunt is good on the style and structure of the books, pointing out that Ransome's description of the prose of Defoe could be applied as appropriately to his own:
His style is as simple and effective as a brick- layer's hod. He carries facts in it, and builds with them alone. The resulting books are like solid Queen Anne houses. There is no affec- tation about them, but they are good for 'matter of fact' people to live in.
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