PBOTD 25th April: Eleanor Helme - Jerry, the Story of an Exmoor Pony

-
Eleanor Helme, like so many pony book writers after her, believed firmly in the superiority of the countryside over the town. Her first two books (Jerry, the Story of an Exmoor Pony (1930) and The Joker and Jerry Again (1932)) were both co-written with Nance Paul. 

The hero of the book, Robin Marson, and his family are well off enough to buy the pony. The only thing that stops them riding is the fact they live in London. Robin's foal is kept by a local farmer until the family move down from London to Exmoor.  Fortunately for the progress of the story, this move takes some years, by which time Jerry is old enough to be broken in and ridden about the moor.  

Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1930, 1st edn, illus Cecil Aldin
I do like the description of the pot-hunting boy who appears at Exford Show, which Robin and his pony Jerry have also entered. Here he is, dressed in splendid newness, but somehow all wrong. He's the precursor of Susan Pyke and all those other pot hunters who ruined things for the honest but poor pony lover. (And, if you read Horse and Hound, every year the correspondence columns bring the same thing up again: beautiful ponies, professionally produced, sweeping all before them at minor shows). 

The boy's beautiful black pony has won at Olympia. The Londoner has clothes which are loud and exaggerated , he has “artificial show-ring mannerisms” and has come down from London specifically to win at a small country show.  Not only that, he relies on a groom, rather than looking after his pony himself, a character defect that was to resonate through many pony books to come.

“Now then, Jerry boy, we’re just going to beat him.  He’s not going to come down from his old Olympia and think he can mop up everything just because it’s a little country show.  It’s a jolly good show, and I’d like to see him out on the moor…..  And what d’you think, he’s only just gone out – hasn’t done anything for the pony himself, and there’s the Olympia prize ticket stuck up on the post where the pony is!””

 The Londoner is a good rider, but Robin and Jerry eventually vanquish him; the honest, hardworking countryside wins out over the affected, idle  town.  

Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949
Without Cecil Aldin, who illustrated both the Jerry books, there would have been no gymkhana. His grandchildren complained to him that very few classes in shows were open to children, so he organised a show at Cloutsham Meadow on Exmoor in 1926.  The show, with 14 classes open only to children, was a roaring success, and Aldin was asked to organise another at Dunster.  This he did, and it featured a Handy Hunter course designed by show expert Captain ‘Chips’ Russell Wood (then as now the worried parent was in evidence:  parents complained the course was dangerous, not realising the vicious barbed wire on the course was actually string which had been knotted and painted).  Cecil Aldin gave the pony book heroine and hero something to aim at:  the Handy Hunter class.  
The Jerry stories were the only pony books Aldin illustrated. They were done towards the end of his life, when his output had decreased because of his arthritis. Sadly, Jerry and the Joker fell victim in a later printing to a different non-Aldin jacket:  Aldin’s jackets had been produced when pen and ink drawings on the equine dustjacket were the preferred method of illustrating them (why, I am not quite sure.  The school story fan had colour in plenty, with the gaily jacketed offerings of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School.  Biggles’ dustjackets were in full colour, so why was the horsy child denied?  Did the stern workmanlike appearance one was supposed to observe in one’s riding dress extend to what one read?)  Aldin’s jackets for Helme do appear a little dour, printed as they are on a wrapping paper brown background, with the red title lettering not quite managing to lift the whole.  The replacement is a reasonable effort but it is not Aldin.

~  0  ~

I have a page on Eleanor Helme on my website.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more