PBOTD 13th August: Marjorie Mary Oliver & Eva Ducat - Sea Ponies

-
Sea Ponies is one of my favourite holiday adventures. Besides allowing children independence, holidays can act as vehicles of change. It's a truism in pony books that the countryside is liberating, and one of the earliest exponents of this point of view was Marjorie Mary Oliver. Her loosely connected The Ponies of Bunts (1933), Sea Ponies (1935) and Ponies and Caravans (1941) all have more or less the same plot: children who are constrained in some way experience the liberating experience of the countryside through a woman determined to defy convention and live a life surrounded by a collection of children and animals (though mostly ponies), children and ponies alike being managed with casual authority. 


Roger, hero of Sea Ponies, is one of the most pathetic of the townie children. Sent to England and his aunt for his health, away from his parents and India, he is muffled up even in the heat of summer. Hideously fussy Aunt Matilda thinks pips in jam are dangerous, and seizes every chance to forbid indulgence in the lethal substance, and in anything else that might be even remotely fun.

The repressed nature of Roger’s existence is contrasted with the utter lack of care for what anyone may think that is expressed by Chris, one of the children who lives in freedom with Miss Rhoda and her collection of animals, and who eventually takes Roger on and sets him free. Waiting with some of the other children and ponies to meet a train, she stands casually on the back of her pony. She so inspires Roger with her insouciance that he throws his hated muffler and hat onto the station roof. Poor subdued Roger is convinced Chris and her friends must despise him. As he trails along after Aunt Matilda, he turns and looks back at the children.

“Chris was again standing like a circus rider on Tag, and as he turned she raised her hand and waved to him, and then Bunch and Geoffrey waved too. Roger dropped behind Aunt Matilda and waved back with all his might.”

 
I love this picture of a child suddenly transfigured, even though in Sea Ponies, as in the other books, nothing much happens to challenge the happy endings. Everything ends in a glorious sunlit world where everything has worked out (and everyone lives in the country).
~  0  ~
More on Marjorie Mary Oliver

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