Children’s novels read by adults often seem very different from one’s memories when you read them the first time around. Swallows and Amazons is no exception to this rule. In my memory the novel described a long summer spent messing around in boats – in fact it only lasts a little over a week. It features the four lively and imaginative Walker children – John, Susan, Titty and Roger. They camp out on a small island in a lake (the lake is never named but it is clearly based upon Lake Coniston, where Ransome once spent a summer teaching the children of some friends to sail) and have adventures. Later they are joined by the Blackett children, two girls (the Amazons) who they initially feud with but quickly befriend. Their island – Wild Cat Island – seems small to adult eyes – they can run from one end to the other in minutes – and is close to home. It is a tribute to the author’s ability to capture the children’s imaginative play so realistically that younger readers join in and are able to see the adventures through the children’s eyes.
Age and gender determines role of the crew of the Swallow – John is captain, Susan first mate (which seems mainly to involve cooking and washing up), Titty (renamed Tatty when the novel was dramatised for television recently) is able-seaman, and Roger is the ship’s boy. As the eldest John assumes a leadership role, and is stiff-upper-lipped even in moments of crisis. He gets upset when his integrity is challenged by an adult, but manages to suppress his emotions. A discrete word with his mother on one of her visits to the island helps him overcome this upsetting experience. Susan embraces the domestic role she is allocated, bossing the other children around and at one point declining to join in their play because she has too much tidying up to do. Titty is a stereotypical tom-boy, and it is no surprise that it is her adventurousness that helps the Swallows win their war. Roger the youngest is often told he is not allowed to do things (such as hold the matches) but he accepts these constraints without too many protests – he knows his place.
As is almost always the case in novels of this genre, parents are conspicuous by their absence. The Walker children’s father is in the Navy, in Malta on route to Hong Kong, although he remains in charge of the major decisions such as whether to allow the children to camp out on the island, answering in typically brusque fashion “Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown.” The Blackett children’s father is never mentioned. But they aren’t left to run as wild as they believe – their Australian mother (who obviously is quite relaxed about the risks they take sailing on the lake) drops in on them regularly, and the people at the local farm where they get milk every day report back to her on their activities.
The Swallows challenge the Amazons to a war to decide leadership of their group. This is quickly won by the Swallows, due to Titty’s bravery, and they then agree to join forces against a common enemy – the Blacketts’ uncle Jim who they call Captain Flint. Hostilities with Captain Flint have been declared because he won’t play with them, deciding instead to write his memoirs. The Amazons start the war by letting off a firework on his houseboat roof, although the Swallows end up getting the blame for this. This was a more innocent time when an adult playing pirates with children was not a cause for concern or comment.
There is a lot of nautical detail in the novel, with long sections devoted to the minutiae of sailing which I make no apologies for skipping occasionally. Does this make much sense to you?
Nancy took a length of rope from the stern and made a noose at one end of it. Then she and Peggy hove up the barrel till it rested on the gunwale in the bows. John and Susan held it there, while the Amazons came ashore with the rope and one of the oars. Nancy fixed the rope round one end of the barrel and made it fast so that it could not slip. Then she took two turns of the rope round the oar and brought the rope down and through the loop, then along the top of the barrel and round it, to make another noose at the end, then twice round the oar and down again, and made it fast.”
The structure of the novel is strongly reminiscent of the Famous Five/Secret Seven books by Enid Blyton – rosy-cheeked English children roam freely across the idyllic countryside eating unpleasant pre-war food and drinking ‘pop’, yearning for adventure and eventually stumbling across it. Class prejudice is not as obvious as in the Blyton books, but is implicit in the children’s attitude towards the locals, who they refer to as savages. Fortunately there is none of the casual racism that often mars Blyton’s stories. There is some sexual stereotyping, particularly as regards Susan’s domestic role-playing, but this is offset by Titty and the Blackett’s tomboyish approach to play.
I always start these blog posts with the novel’s title, the author’s name, and the date of publication. If I am not sure of the date I will pencil in a guess, then check it and correct as required. My first guess at when Swallows and Amazons was published was 1905, 25 years earlier than when it came out. Why so badly wrong? The simple explanation is that the novel has a distinctly almost overwhelmingly Edwardian atmosphere. The children are all irrepressibly middle class, incredibly well spoken and highly independent. Their families are clearly prosperous – the Walker children’s baby sister, Vicky, is looked after by a nurse (aka a nanny), and the Blackett children (the Amazons) have a cook. Domestic servants were fairly common in middle class families in the nineteenth century, but by 1930 they were increasingly rare. The First World War and alternative work opportunities thereafter for women in retail and clerical roles led to a dramatic fall in numbers of servants, although the interwar slump had started to reverse that trend before the outbreak of the second World War ended it for good. Overall there is an old-fashioned feel to the novel, suggesting that it is set in an earlier age when children could run wild and be trusted with sail-boats, matches and axes without social services being called to investigate. It’s possible the novel is set in the pre-War period although there are no time references to indicate that – which in turn gives it a nostalgic timelessness.
Ransome went on to write a whole series of Swallows and Amazons novel. This might be unfair but I suspect they are all very similar – why change a winning formula? I was expecting something more nuanced and interesting from someone who spied for Britain in revolutionary Russia and who met some of the key protagonists personally, but I don’t think this was just a matter of Ransome writing children’s stories to pay the bills – it seems as if Swallows and Amazons was the book he always wanted to write, and his obvious affection for sailing and the Lakes shines through.
The Reading Bug 