Preface
This book is the result of a transnational friendship, which grew from shared scholarly interests. It was written to explore specific elements that stories written for teenage girls in Britain and the United States had in common, centred around the themes of friendship and femininity. Our book is not the first treatment of school stories, but our goal has been to offer a particular perspective on how certain aspects of femininity transcended the national roots of individual stories. Moreover, we have focused on series of books that followed central characters from school through university and into adulthood. The sources on which we draw have frequently been dismissed as frivolous, but we stake a claim that they function as valuable historical sources for an analysis of informal education and girlhood.
The book is intended to appeal to a wide audience in both Britain and the United States: historians of education, of women, of gender, and of children and childhood as well as literary scholars. The enthusiastic Friends of the Chalet School (FOCS) are just one example of the ongoing general interest in these stories by those who have enjoyed them since they were children and those who found the books as adults.
The book begins with an overview of the sources we are using and a discussion of the theoretical framework offered by transnational historical analysis that reads the sources together, rather than seeking comparisons between countries. We then move on to discuss five themes related to aspects of femininity demonstrated in the school and college stories: authority, domesticity, possibility, responsibility, and sociability.
The illustration on the front cover from the Marjorie Dean series written by Pauline Lester shows the heroine in her Hamilton College study. The significance of sociability is immediately apparent. Taken together with the text to which the illustration refers, other themes in the book are also represented. Marjorie and her authority are centre stage, the scene reflects the dominant friendship group’s responsibility for the well-being of the less popular girl, and the possibilities that college life provides for their future careers are reflected in the filled bookshelves.
Glenside, PA, USA
Nancy G. Rosoff Winchester, UK Stephanie Spencer
acknowledgements
A project like this requires support from many people, for which we are deeply grateful. We would like to thank our families, who have provided patient support as the project unfolded. We are both only children (though not, we would like to think, the spoiled obnoxious ones so often portrayed in our sources), so our immediate families are small. This book is dedicated to Stephanie’s husband, Peter Spencer, who encouraged us, cheered us on, and put up with disruptions to his home as we wrote, and Nancy’s mother, Buddy Rosoff (formally named Rose), who read drafts and proposals, reviewed possible cover images, pushed us to get the book finished, and served as a constant source of support. Sadly, Buddy died as we neared the finish line—she was adored by us both and is deeply missed.
We have had the opportunity to present various iterations of our work at many conferences over the years and the book has benefitted from questions and comments raised by those who took time to come to our papers. We are indebted to those who attended sessions at the History of Education Society (UK), the International Standing Committee on the History of Education, the Australian & New Zealand History of Education Society, Network 17 of the European Education Research Association, the Society for the History of Children and Youth, Women’s History Network Conference, Children’s History Society, and the American Historical Association. We very much appreciate the anonymous readers who read our book proposal and made valuable suggestions that shaped the manuscript.
The Centre for the History of Women’s Education at Winchester has provided the opportunity to present our work in seminars and actively demonstrated the importance of sociability and female friendship that we discuss in Chap. 3.
Working on a project across two countries and time zones has been a challenge, but we have benefitted from the available technologies that made intellectual travel across time and space possible. Nancy is also deeply grateful to Stephanie and her family for allowing her to take up residence from time to time as we worked on the project. That our families have become intertwined is one of the ancillary benefits of the book.
As we have learned to use media like Twitter and have written an occasional blog, we appreciate colleague and friends who have followed us, retweeted our posts, and pointed us to important information. We are especially grateful to @chaletfan, @HistEdSocUK, and @histchild, who have responded to us tweeting as @chwess, @nancyrosoff, and @teenfictions. Our blog can be found at https://teenfictions.wordpress.com/ The project benefitted from the work of student researchers who worked with Nancy at Arcadia University; their attention to detail has been a great help: Madison Dorschutz, Lauren Piccone, and Catherine Hill. The University of Winchester provided some very welcome sabbatical time for Stephanie as we worked on the first draft of the book.
Researchers are always dependent on the professionalism and knowledge of librarians and archivists. We would like to thank the London Library, whose eclectic cataloguing and shelving under the topic of education invited browsing in the stacks and revealed some unusual and helpful contemporary sources, and the British Library, for its extensive collection of school stories on which we drew. Interlibrary loan librarians at Rutgers University—Camden, the University of Winchester, and Arcadia University ensured that we had copies of hard to find books and essential secondary sources. We also found many of our sources through the wonders of modern technology, shopping on Abebooks and eBay. In-person shopping in secondhand bookshops yielded excellent results.
Every project benefits from serendipity and one highlight was the discovery by Catherine Holloway of an exercise book in the archives of a working class technical school in Kent that listed the reading habits of one of its young pupils. School stories, including some of those mentioned here, formed a good proportion of her list. Retrospective thanks are due to all the readers over the space of 50 years who thoughtfully wrote their addresses into their books and allowed us to search neighbourhoods on
Google Earth. These unexpected pieces of evidence confirmed our sense that the stories were read by girls from a range of backgrounds.
We owe a special debt of gratitude to Girls Gone By Publishers, particularly to Revd Clarissa Cridland. Girls Gone By publish quality reprints of many of the titles we used. These reprints include useful essays on the publication history of the books, written by those with extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the stories and their characters. Revd Cridland read a draft of the book and offered valuable corrections and suggestions. Girls Gone By hold the copyright to the Chalet Books and graciously gave us permission to quote extensively from them. The literary heirs of Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dr. Vivien Hornby Northcote and Modwenna Rees-Mogg, kindly gave permission to use quotations from the Dimsie books. Dr. Northcote was generous with her time in an early telephone call and in reading and commenting on a later draft. We spent some time trying to track down copyright holders for the American books published by Henry Altemus, A.L. Burt, and Dodd Mead, but they have proved elusive, and any further information will be welcome. All mistakes are of course ours. When we began this project, Nancy said to Stephanie that the most important factor was that we would remain friends when it was finished. We have met that goal and our friendship has been deepened by this work.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
For Britain and the United States, the 50 years of social, political, and cultural change between 1910 and 1960 included two World Wars and the subsequent anxiety of the Cold War. In this book, we argue that there were, however, some continuities of expectation as to the gendered role that middle and upper class young women would, and should, play that crossed time and place. In his discussion of the relationship between the family and society in postwar Britain, Chris Harris observed, ‘To recognise empirical diversity is not to deny the existence of structural regularities that underlie it and cultural values that inform it.’1 Similarly, this book explores how we can identify gendered norms that underlie the expectations of femininity within two capitalist societies in the early part of the twentieth century. We suggest that the genre of the school and college story offers one way to explore how girls were informally educated into a performance of femininity that was recognisable on both sides of the Atlantic. The popularity of the school and college story offers a rich source through which to examine prescriptions for femininity that were accepted by the reader (who continued to read these books through many editions) and acceptable to the adults who may have purchased the books as presents and allowed them into the home as suitable reading.
1 Chris Harris, “The family in post-war Britain,” in Understanding Post-War British Society, ed. James Obelkevich & Peter Catterall (Routledge: London & New York, 1994), 45.
© The Author(s) 2019
N. G. Rosoff, S. Spencer, British and American School Stories, 1910–1960, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05986-6_1
1
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The genre has attracted a range of scholars who have examined the formation of femininity in fictions focused on a national readership.2 In this book, we bring together, for a transnational discussion, novels published in two societies that had much in common as well as many differences in their social and political contexts. The stories that we focus on were not intended for a transatlantic audience. Unlike some of the British stories that were widely exported to Australia and New Zealand, they were expected to be read by an audience that was familiar with the school and college structure of their homeland. Although the books were intended for diverse audiences, we argue that we can identify some aspects of femininity that were fundamental to the experience of girls in both geographical regions as they prepared to take their place in adult society. The growing strength of international women’s movements across this period may be better understood if we recognise that, despite national differences, there were commonalities between women that were secured in diverse ways during their adolescent years. One of those ways, we argue, was through the fiction that they consumed as their leisure reading. From the thousands of books published that drew on school and college lives, we have selected series books by four popular authors who took their heroines through their early days at school into adult life. The continuity of these series that followed the main characters from adolescence into adulthood offers a focused subset of school and college stories that enables us to examine how readers would be educated into aspects of femininity. Readers could follow their favourite characters’ growth to maturity, as they became responsible citizens, wives, and mothers, yet retained the ‘essence’ of their younger selves. As Rosemary Auchmuty observed, series stories allow us to ‘observe the authors’ views on a range of topics about women of all ages and at most stages of their lives.’3 The following introduction briefly sets out the origins of the school and college story before explaining our choice of books and authors for this study. It then highlights the three themes that underpin our analysis of the main chapters: the role of fiction, the construction of femininity, and the significance of female friendship. The chapter closes with a summary of the main chapters
2 There has been continuous interest in the genre by scholars of girlhood since the 1980s. The British books have been the subject of most research, but as Chap. 2 highlights, this discussion has been taken up by scholars of American girls’ literature.
3 Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls (London: The Women’s Press, 1992), 5.
that demonstrate the multifaceted and complex nature of girlhood in the first half of the twentieth century.
The School and college STory
The emergence of the popularity of stories set in educational settings unsurprisingly runs parallel to the development of formal education in Britain and the United States. In 1910, a 15-year-old girl in Britain might have been at school. If she were middle or upper class, she might have been at home with a governess; if working class, she could have been at work. By 1960, her granddaughter or great granddaughter was approaching the minimum school-leaving age, having benefitted from the 1944 Education Act that provided free secondary education for all. Very few girls would have been educated at home. In the United States in 1910, a 15-year-old girl would have been more likely to have attended public high school, though the likelihood of doing so could also have depended on social class. By 1960, almost all girls attended compulsory education to the high school level.
In Britain, the publication of Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes in 1857, describing school life at Rugby school for upper class boys, is usually recognised as the first of the school story genre.4 The stories of L T Meade in the late nineteenth century were the forerunner of the girls’ school story. Sweet Girl Graduate (1891) tells the story of Priscilla, a girl from a poor background who achieves a place at ‘St Benet’s,’ and The Rebel of the School, published in 1902, is set in a large girls’ day school.5 Themes of friendship, and lessons that snobbery is unacceptable, established the genre that was then developed by Angela Brazil. Brazil (1868–1947) was the first of the widely recognised ‘Big Four’ authors of the girls’ school story in Britain. Brazil’s stories were self-contained novels set in both day and boarding schools that covered a short time span.6 She was followed by Elinor Brent-Dyer (1894–1969), Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1885–1970), and Elsie J. Oxenham (Dunkerley) (1880–1960), with the
4 Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. By an Old Boy (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1857).
5 L.T. Meade, A Sweet Girl Graduate (London: Cassell & Co., 1891) and L.T. Meade, The Rebel of the School (London; Edinburgh, W. & R. Chambers, 1902).
6 See, for example, The Leader of the Lower School (London: Blackie & Son, 1913) and For the School Colours (London: Blackie & Son, 1918).
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genre reaching a peak of publication in the 1920s and 1930s. Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, published between 1946 and 1951, focused on a girls’ boarding school and the fortunes of Darrell Rivers and her friends as they move up the school and remained popular with readers into the 1960s.7
In the United States, the ‘growing up’ story that established the girls’ genre was Louise Alcott’s Little Women series. Little Women, first published in 1868, followed the March sisters into adulthood with Jo, the central character, maturing from a rumbustious teenager into the matriarch of Little Men 8 Josephine March is a very similar character to Josephine Bettany, the heroine of the later Chalet series by Elinor Brent-Dyer suggesting that Brent-Dyer was fully conversant with the American stories. A second, much read, American series that included a school setting was the Katy books, written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, Alcott’s contemporary (1835–1905), writing as Susan Coolidge.9 In the books that are the focus of our discussion, the British characters refer to the school story genre, usually suggesting that their ‘real’ school is far superior to the fantasies presented to an earlier audience. In the American series that we discuss here, the desirable traits of femininity lauded by Alcott and Coolidge are developed within the context of the twentieth-century American society that offered more alternatives for young women beyond domesticity. Setting the plot within the boundaries of school or college enabled authors to focus on the children as emerging autonomous individuals, negotiating their way through the expectations of peers and those in authority without the security of, or interference from, their parents. Even if the reader had no personal experience of the institution of school or college, she was aware of its existence and therefore its potential relationship to the real world. School stories in that context were then more grounded in the real world than, for example, a fantasy island, offering the possibility for the reader to identify more readily with the cast of characters. The number of school and college stories advertised in the back pages of such books as the Marjorie Dean series reflect a growing and continuous
7 Blyton wrote the St. Clare’s series, set in another school and published between 1941 and 1945.
8 Louisa M. Alcott, Little Women and Good Wives (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868) and Little Men, Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1871).
9 Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873).
consumer demand. The publishers A L Burt suggested further reading of books on their list for ‘clean, wholesome stories … if you have enjoyed reading about the adventures of the new friends you have made in this book.’10 Seth Lerner emphasised the role of the library in his analysis of children’s literature, claiming that ‘The rise of American children’s literature is, to a large degree, inseparable from the rise of the public lending library, and by the 1870s the libraries had become the guardians of children’s reading.’11 Scholars have identified similar growth in the genre in the British press. While this growth establishes a good rationale for an exploration of the construction of femininity in these stories, the sheer numbers pose a problem for the researcher in making decisions about sources. In the next two sections, we explain our rationale for choosing the stories featured in this book and offer short biographies of our chosen authors.
The novelS
Many school and college stories followed Brazil’s formula for setting each book in a different school, over either a school term or academic year. Inevitably, this meant that the characters could not be fully developed and the formulaic new girl, problems, resolution, happy ever after plots, while worthy of note in terms of the seemingly endless demand, do not allow for a more detailed exploration of how the authors saw their heroines developing into responsible adults. In this book, we explore series novels that follow the characters from school into higher education and/or their adult lives. In the United States, these are the Grace Harlowe (1910–1924) and Marjorie Dean (1917–1930) series, both written by Josephine Chase but under different pseudonyms (Jessie Graham Flower and Pauline Lester, respectively), and the Joan Foster series (1944–1952), written by Alice Ross Colver. Specific geographic locations for the schools and colleges attended by the characters are not provided, but suggest the northeastern United States as the novels indicate that the colleges attended by the central characters are a day’s train ride from New York City. Grace and Marjorie both attend public high schools, Grace at Oakdale and Marjorie
10 Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, College Senior (New York: A. L. Burt, 1922).
11 Seth Lerner, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 275.
at Sanford. The novels include friendships with the boys of the local boys’ high school and careful profiles of each heroine’s parents and their role in her upbringing.
Grace and Marjorie as well as some of their friends continue their education in ‘the Land of College’ in residential institutions that bear much resemblance to the early women’s colleges such as Mount Holyoke, founded in 1837. Grace continues on to Overton College and Marjorie to Hamilton. The similarity of some of the plotlines suggests that the success of the Grace Harlowe series encouraged its author to revise and update her plots for a later audience; therefore, analysis of both series provides the opportunity to identify the longevity of some aspects of femininity in the light of changing social context. Joan Foster, Alice Ross Colver’s heroine, reflects considerable change in the attitudes and opportunities open to young women of the immediate post World War Two period. A central plotline is the tension between new opportunities for employment and travel available to young women and the more traditional pull of marriage and domesticity for the heroine and her friends.
In Britain, we focus on the Dimsie series (1921–1941) written by Dorita Fairlie Bruce and the Chalet School series (1925–1970) written by Elinor Brent-Dyer. The British writers cover a large geographical area that reflects the regions known to the author. Dimsie Maitland comes from, and returns to, Scotland, but her school is set in the south of England, a setting familiar to readers of the wider genre. Attempts to update the Dimsie series in the 1980s by publisher John Goodchild suggest that the publishers at least felt that school series should have some relevance to their contemporary audience. These reprints are not discussed here, nor are the abridged Armada editions (see below) of the Chalet stories, as our focus is a historical enquiry into the books’ informal educative role for girls up to 1960.
The Chalet series focuses on a school that begins in Austria, moves to Guernsey, Herefordshire, and Wales during World War Two then returns to Switzerland. We do not discuss the last ten years of the Chalet series, stopping with Joey and Co in Tirol (1960). The exception to this is The Chalet School Reunion, the 50th book in the series, published in 1963, as it brings together a range of Chalet alumnae, enabling the reader to learn how their adult lives have developed. Formal education provision in Britain changed substantially in the 1960s; the move to large comprehensive schools would have rendered the Chalet School somewhat of an anachronism, perhaps changing the readers’ perception of the novels as
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belonging to the past, rather than the present, however distanced from their own experience that might be. Additionally, changes in legislation in the 1960s and the rise of the women’s movement marked a turning point in women’s lives that is beyond the remit of this book.
The Chalet series re-appeared in an abridged paperback Armada series between 1967 and 1995. Elinor Brent-Dyer welcomed this series in the Chalet Club News Letter. Describing it as a ‘BIG piece of news,’ she explained to readers that they would make the books affordable for everyone. At the same time, she was still publishing full-length hardbacks to continue the original series.12 Despite its rather peripatetic locations, at its heart, the school is run as a British boarding school. The pupils come from a wide range of countries and continents, which enables Brent-Dyer (and the reader) to observe national characteristics as well as commonalities of femininity. Such diversity is extolled as providing a wide experience for the girls, although race—in terms of colour—is not a feature of the books. From the context of the stories, it might be assumed that the readership itself was expected to be white and middle class, although, as discussed in the next chapter, more recent research suggests that the books had a wider appeal.
In choosing this specifically limited range of books to explore the informal way that the stories educated their readers about the right way to behave, we are able to trace the growth of the characters in depth and to discuss in detail how the authors framed female friendship as central to their journey toward adulthood. We should note that we have not used examples from every book in each series, but have drawn from multiple, representative volumes.
The auThorS
The authors of the books under discussion were professional writers who also wrote a range of other stories for young girls. As professionals, although it is unlikely that they would have created heroines who did not reflect their own expectations of the performance of femininity, they undoubtedly would have taken into account the expectations of their readers and therefore the wider social context in which they were writing.
12 Elinor Brent-Dyer, editorial letter, in Chalet Club News Letters, 16 May 1967, 67 (Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2016).
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This is especially true if their books were to be accepted by the public libraries.13 This book focuses on the text of the novels under consideration. While recognising the significance of aspects of author biographies, the analysis is primarily centred on the development of the characters against their transnational social context, rather than any approach that examines the creation of a story as an extension of the life experience of the author. Biographical information available on the authors varies considerably, as the brief pen portraits below make clear.
Jessie Graham Flower and Pauline Lester, Pseudonyms of Josephine Chase (1883–1931)
Josephine Chase wrote under multiple pseudonyms and authored books published by Henry Altemus and the A L Burt Company. In addition to the Grace Harlowe and Marjorie Dean books, she penned other series, including The Adventure Boys as Ames Thompson and the June Allen books as Grace Gordon. Her death certificate described Josephine Chase as an author and provided her address, a home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that she shared with her sister Edna, as well as indicating heart disease as the cause of death. The obituary that appeared in the New York Times noted that the ‘author of the Grace Harlowe stories, that have thrilled schoolgirls for two decades, died suddenly.’ The obituary included a curious statement from Chase: ‘“The only time people will ever know I’m an author will be when I die and they write my obituary,” she once said.’14 The editor of a new edition of Grace Harlowe’s Freshman Year of High School suggests that Chase worked as a secretary at the Altemus publishing house prior to becoming a prolific author.15 Otherwise, the contours of her life remain a mystery.
13 See Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) for a discussion of the role that editors and publishers played in directing the authors of the 1950s career novels. Acceptability for the library market was key to the success of teen fiction.
14 “Cer tificate of Death – Josephine Chase,” City of Philadelphia, File no. 20142, Registered no. 3768, 1931 and “Youths’ Author Dies at 46,” New York Times, 11 February 1931, 22. The date of birth provided here comes from the age indicated on the death certificate (48 years old), in contrast to the age (46 years) indicated in the obituary.
15 “Who Wrote These Books,” Aunt Claire Presents, http://auntclairepresents.com/, accessed 13 July 2018. See also the new edition of Grace Harlowe’s Plebe Year at High School
Alice Ross Colver (1892–1988)
Alice Ross Colver wrote more than 60 books for a variety of audiences. Her earliest books were for children, including editions of fairy tales; she then moved on to writing for the juvenile (young adult) and adult markets. The books aimed at teenagers included career novels, such as Janet Moore, Physical Therapist (1965), as well as series featuring title characters Joan Foster and Babs. Her adult novels fell into the romance genre, including such titles as Passionate Puritan (1933). Colver went to Wellesley College, graduated in 1913, married, and had three children, including a daughter named Joan. She began publishing her work after the death of her husband in 1915. The entry in Contemporary Authors indicated that ‘Alice Colver told CA that she feels writers have a responsibility for what they write. Her own writing is based on experiences and she uses authentic backgrounds.’16
Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1885–1970)
Dorita Fairlie Bruce was born in Spain of Scottish parents and lived in Scotland until moving to London in 1895. She attended Clarence House boarding school in Roehampton. As she dedicated the first in the Dimsie series to ‘Miss Bennington with love from one of her old girls’ and included a poem beginning ‘O Schoolmates of the long-ago!’ to the Old Girls of Clarence House in Dimsie Moves Up Again, it appears that she found her single-sex education enjoyable and is likely to have based her stories on her own experience. Fairlie Bruce began her writing career with stories for very young children, before moving on to historical romance, career novels, and school stories. Hilary Clare suggests that Bruce ‘was the first major writer to produce a school series.’17 She was a keen advocate of the Girls’ Guildry, a religious youth organisation for girls in Scotland founded (published as Grace Harlowe’s Freshman Year at High School), ed. ‘Aunt Claire,’ (Astoria, NY: Laboratory Books, 2017), followed by Grace Harlowe’s Second Year at High School (Astoria, NY: Laboratory Books, 2018).
16 “Colver, Alice Mary (Ross),” Contemporary Authors, volumes 69–72 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978), 142 and “Colver, Alice Mary (Ross) Obituary,” Contemporary Authors, volume 161 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978), 82.
17 Hilar y Clare, “Bruce, Dorothy Morris Fairlie [Dorita Fairlie] (1885–1970).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/55196
by William Francis Somerville. This was established in 1900, supported by the Boys’ Brigade, whose Presbyterian roots went back to 1883 when it was founded by Alexander Smith.18 Esther Breitenbach and Valerie Wright list the Guildry as one of the girls’ and women’s organisations that promoted active women’s citizenship in areas that have come to be recognised as ‘welfare feminism,’ although they distanced themselves from specifically identifying with ‘feminism’ as a term.19 Fairlie Bruce introduces the Guildry into Dimsie Intervenes. She also wrote frequently for their publications, becoming president of the West London Centre in the 1930s.20 Dimsie Among the Prefects was dedicated to ‘The Girls of the Ealing Guardians’ Training Corps Girls’ Guildry from their Guardian.’ In addition to the Dimsie series, she also wrote the Nancy and Springdale series and, toward the end of the 1950s, published the Sally series. Sometimes, as in Dimsie Carries On, Fairlie Bruce brought in characters from different series into her plots, suggesting that she had a loyal readership with a good knowledge of the different series.21
Elinor Brent-Dyer (1894 –1969)
Elinor Brent-Dyer was born in South Shields to a family much lower in the social hierarchy than the pupils of her fictional Chalet School. She attended a small private school and the City of Leeds Teacher Training College from 1915 to 1917. The details of life in the staff room and the sympathetic portraits of her teachers may well have drawn on her time as a teacher in a range of state and private schools. She also worked as a governess before founding her own school, The Margaret Roper School
18 W. Bruce Leslie, “Creating a Socialist Scout Movement: The Woodcraft Folk, 1924–42,” History of Education 13, no. 4 (1984): 299, https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760840130404
19 Esther Breitenbach and Valerie Wright, “Women as Active Citizens: Glasgow and Edinburgh c.1918–1939,” Women’s History Review 23, no. 3 (January 2014): 401–420, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2013.820602
20 Eva Lofgren, School Mates of the Long-Ago: Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Boarding School Stories (Stockholm: Symposium Graduale, 1993), 94–100.
21 Elinor Brent-Dyer also employed the same device; see Ruth Jolly, “A Change for the Better” for a more detailed description in the introduction to the Girls Gone By edition of The Chalet School and Barbara.
Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School and Barbara (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1954; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2014).
(1938–1948) in Hereford.22 Her biographer suggests that Brent-Dyer’s own experience of old-fashioned teaching methods led her to bring her dislike of such methods into her books when she describes the previous educational experience of new girls at the Chalet.23 As a professional author, she published over 100 books, short stories, poems, a cookery book, and four educational readers. Religion plays a more overt part in Brent-Dyer’s Chalet series than the underlying role that it plays in the Dimsie books. Brent-Dyer was brought up an Anglican but converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930; this may explain the detailed explanation of the arrangements for the Protestant and Roman Catholic pupils of the Chalet School. Again, like Fairlie Bruce, Brent-Dyer set her books in areas with which she was familiar. The original setting of the school in the Austrian Tyrol was inspired by a holiday that she took in Pertisau am Achensee. With the outbreak of war, the setting moved to Guernsey and then to Herefordshire, where Brent-Dyer herself had moved in 1931.24 The creation of the series books encouraged readers to imagine themselves part of the school community, for some growing up with their heroines, if they read the books as they were published. Helen McClelland also attributes this to the author; ‘It does seem clear that Elinor drew some deep satisfaction from bringing real-life places and landscapes into her stories. Perhaps it gave her a feeling of “belonging” in her fantasy world. Whatever the reasons, she was also – and increasingly as time went on – to share personal experiences with her characters.’25
ThemeS: FicTion, FemininiTy, and FriendShip
This book is situated within a broad disciplinary base that might be described as a feminist history of education that draws on aspects of cultural studies in order to interrogate the value of a genre that has been either dismissed by literary critics or reclaimed by women’s studies.26 Research in cultural studies has confirmed the value of exploring evidence
22 Helen McClelland, “Dyer, Elinor Mary Brent (1894–1969).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/48278
23 Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School (Bognor Regis: Anchor, 1986).
24 Ibid., 128.
25 Ibid., 131–2.
26 For example, Isabel Quigley describes girls’ school story writers as ‘silly, childish and insubstantial’; see Isabel Quigly, The Heirs of Tom Brown: The English School Story (London:
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that is not from a traditionally acknowledged canon and can incorporate, in this case, a serious approach to a genre that may not be literary but was widely read.27 Toby Watkins’ review of the interplay between history and culture points out the two different approaches to the already wide field of cultural studies that are apparent in American and British traditions.28 Working together as British and American authors working with British and American texts has made us more aware of the theoretical assumptions that we bring to our analysis. This ultimately led to our use of a transnational framework that brings together evidence from diverse social, political, and cultural backgrounds to explore the significance of female friendship and the formation of femininity. In advocating a transnational reading of the stories that transcends rather than flows between national identities, we seek to historicise the construction of female friendship, not as a universal and unproblematic concept but as one that has not yet been fully explored for the potential in understanding the similarities of expectations for middle class women in the United States and Britain.
FicTion
The long publication span of the Chalet School series from 1925 to 1970 offers the reader a view of a comparatively unchanging world of girlhood against a backdrop of enormous cultural social and political change. Even if Brent-Dyer’s early books could be argued to contain some relation to her experience of teaching, it is tenuous in the extreme to make the same claim nearly half a century later.29 In this book, we identify constructions of femininity that go beyond temporal and spatial boundaries and recognise that links between fiction and reality in the scenarios presented to the reader are fluid. As with any historical source, they must be considered Chatto & Windus, 1982), 218. For the feminist perspective, see Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Women: Growing up in the Girls’ Story (London: Women’s Press, 1999).
27 By the late 1990s, nearly 100,000 Chalet paperbacks were still being bought annually. Helen McClelland, “Dyer, Elinor Mary Brent (1894–1969).”
28 Toby Watkins, “History and Culture,” in International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt, volume 1 (London: Routledge, 2004), 85.
29 Claire Lidbury, “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School Series: Literature as an Historical Source,” Children’s Literature in Education 44, no. 4 (December 2013): 345–358. Lidbury makes this argument with reference to the presentation of dance and physical education in the Chalet books.
INTRODUCTION
with care and alongside additional evidence to give any insights into the experience of schooling. As noted above, Brent-Dyer included a great deal of minute detail in her storytelling and some of those details provide insights that might have escaped more official records. Brent-Dyer drew on her experience running a school to bring a sense of verisimilitude to the stories.30 Clare Lidbury examined the way that physical and dance education is presented in the series and suggested that Brent-Dyer quite selfconsciously used her real-life experiences.31 Lidbury also usefully pointed out that authors of fiction can be selective in their use of evidence from real life; ‘there seems no way of telling when Brent-Dyer is choosing not to represent something…and when she is simply unaware of it.’32
The role that fiction plays as an educative tool has been well documented by writers of children’s literature. W E Johns, author of the Biggles and for us, more importantly, the Worrals stories about a female pilot, was quite clear that fiction enabled him to teach ‘under camouflage.’33 In children’s literature, the tension between assumptions of an essential child who becomes the focus for fictions targeted at specific age groups and the child as a product of its environment has been highlighted by David Rudd.34 The wide appeal of the school story suggests that there is an underlying appeal in stories of girls of a similar age and their construction of identity. This ‘hybrid’ or border area identified by Rudd has informed our analysis of school and college fictions. As Rudd concluded, it is impossible to ‘relegate the child to a discursive effect.’35 This becomes particularly important when reading some of the rather disparaging critical commentaries on the girls’ school story explored in Chap. 2. Rudd used a Foucauldian genealogy to make his point that ‘there is no question of the
30 Helen McClelland’s Behind the Chalet School discusses the similarities between the Margaret Roper School and the Chalet School, 137–40 and 143–146.
31 Claire Lidbury, “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School Series: Literature as an Historical Source,” Children’s Literature in Education 44, no. 4 (December 2013): 345–358.
32 Claire Lidbury, 354.
33 “Johns to Geoffrey Trease,” in Geoffrey Trease, Tales out of School: A Survey of Children’s Fiction (London: Heinemann, 1964), 80–81.
34 David Rudd, “Theorising and Theories: The Conditions and Possibility of Children’s Literature,” in International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt, volume 1 (London: Routledge, 2004), 29–43.
35 Ibid., 33.
N. G. ROSOFF AND S. SPENCER
social and economic reality’ of children’s literature and its place in our understanding of the history of childhood and, in this case, girlhood.36
The young reader does not become either voiceless or powerless as a reader of these stories. In the school stories, authors usually explain the apparent illogical decisions made by their young characters to their readers, taking them into their confidence as fellow observers to the development of the plot. The reader, allowed insight into both the teachers’ and pupils’ perspectives, is then able to come to her own evaluation of a story. This may or may not collude with the stated intention or didactic inference by the author and will be dependent upon the readers’ own life experience.37 The American stories announced on their title pages that their target readership was between 12 and 18 years old. Readers within such a wide age range were likely to interpret the relevance of the stories to their own lives in very different ways. Rudd emphasised that the process of fiction is not top down and that the reader, with their own subject position constructed from ‘peers, books playground folklore, the media,’ will decide for themselves how to read a text and what they learn from it.38 Readers were quite capable of skipping the bits of texts that they saw as irrelevant to their own needs; simply because Brent-Dyer included details of religious practice does not mean that these sections were read with the same attention as accounts of skating and skiing.
Rudd also reminded us of a Freudian approach that highlights how the adult never really leaves their childhood behind and the writer for children sees their audience ‘as younger, or idealised versions of themselves.’39 School and college therefore become the school or college they would have liked to have attended. This point was made by Angela Brazil in her autobiography and may explain why we can find no record of any college attended by Josephine Chase, one of our American writers.40
36 Ibid., 34.
37 Roland Bar thes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text. Roland Barthes: Essays Selected and Translated by Stephen Heath, 142–147 (London: Hill & Wang, 1977; London: Flamingo, 1984). Citations are to the 1984 edition.
38 David Rudd, “Theorising and Theories,” 37.
39 Ibid., 38.
40 Angela Brazil, My Own Schooldays (London: Blackie & Sons, 1925), 149. Brazil explains to her readers that her own experience of school did not include the games, clubs, and acting that were a part of her stories.
The advantage of fiction is that everyone knows that it is not a true depiction of school life. However, the emotions and the scenarios that play out may be close enough to readers’ experience for them to engage with the ideas and learn from the actions of the heroines. The girls who were the focus of Gill Frith’s research into the popularity of the school genre managed the contradictions in enjoying the stories about school that were ‘realistic’ but also nothing like the schools that they attended.41 Frith argued that school stories are (and were) read at a time when girls are moving from the nurturing primary school to the larger world of the secondary school and managing the contradictory messages around growing up. ‘In its re-assemblage of lived experience, the school story also reassembles the ideologies which inform those experiences, offering the possibility of a positive female identity not bound by the material or “the possible”.’42 Frith’s research into female readership of school stories is explored in more detail in the following chapter.
The emergence of a literature that demarcated children and young readers by gender, ‘each with its own internal laws and its own territory,’ has been situated at the mid to end of the nineteenth century.43 Judy Simons suggested that this enabled authors to show girls as having ‘a greater respect for authority and conformity’ in contrast to the adventuring spirit of boy that emerged at the same time. She noted, however, that this convention, specific to fiction, also allowed authors to include characters who defied these conventions to ‘drive their novels.’44 In turn, this allowed the reader to imagine alternative possibilities for themselves. In the novels we discuss, these possibilities might be membership of a close female friendship group, attendance at a school remote from their own environment and free from parental interference, or even remaining at school and attendance at college beyond their early teens.
41 Gill Frith. “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the School Story,” in Language, Gender and Childhood, ed. Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 132.
42 Ibid., 133.
43 Judy Simons, “Gender Roles in Children’s Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, ed. M. O. Grenby & Andrea Immel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 143–158.
44 Ibid.,151. INTRODUCTION
N. G. ROSOFF AND S. SPENCER
FemininiTy
If fiction provides the reader with a range of possibilities with which they might safely engage in their imagination, the construction of femininity within those stories offers the historian of girlhood an insight into the changing performance of being female over the course of 50 years in Britain and the United States. The complex layering of authors’ hopes and expectations, contemporary demands, and the constant demand for new storylines resulted in a myriad of possibilities for performing femininity being presented by the series books. The definition of femininity as being the way that the female body is expected to present itself to the outside world has been contested since Simone de Beauvoir asserted that one is not made but becomes woman.45 Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity continued the debate that sought to explore the borderlines between what individuals do through some innate essence based on the physical body and how they are programmed to behave by the society in which they mature.46 For the authors of teen fiction, their presentation of femininity both teaches the reader how they should behave and reflects their contemporary society’s expectations of what is ‘natural’ female behaviour. By analysing the stories as informal educative literature, we inevitably become embroiled in the somewhat sterile or circular debate that polarises essentialist and constructed definitions of femininity. Diana Fuss offered a way out of this quagmire and has informed our understanding and analysis of the way that femininity was presented to readers over the 50-year period.
Fuss argued that notions of essentialism as ‘a female essence outside the boundaries of the social’ underpins some of the protestations of those who see femininity as constructed by society, whether through formal or informal educational channels.47 Constructionism is, she explained, in effect a more sophisticated form of essentialism; the two are deeply entangled. It is in the ‘productive tension’ where these two approaches meet that allows both for the recognition of the physicality of being female that defines
45 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1949).
46 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993).
47 Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, Difference (New York & London: Routledge, 1989).
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Eräs vieras mies — kongolainen — hiipi yöllä hänen majaansa teroitettu partaveitsi mukanaan.
Se oli sellainen pieni nelikulmainen partaveitsi, jollaista kongolaiset kantavat hiuksissaan, ja hänen aiheenaan oli leikata Tambelin kurkku. Tätä kongolaista ei nähty enää milloinkaan — joki oli hyvin lähellä, ja Tambeli oli hyvin voimakas — mutta partaveitsi löydettiin joen rannalta, ja se oli veressä.
Tambeli oli rikas mies, sillä hänellä oli vuohia ja putkia ja suolaa säkeittäin. Hänellä oli kuusi vaimoa, jotka hoitivat hänen puutarhaansa ja keittivät hänen ruokansa, ja he olivat ylpeitä herrastaan ja upeilivat hänen hämäräperäisten keinottelujensa avulla. Sillä Tambeli oli kauppias, vaikka harvat tiesivät sitä, ja hänen tapanaan oli olla poissa kolme kuukautta vuodesta omilla asioillaan.
Eräänä päivänä kylän päällikkö kuoli, ja vihreillä lehvillä ruumiinsa verhonneet naiset tanssivat kuolontanssia käsi kädessä.
Tambeli näki surusaaton kulkevan hitaasti katua myöten ja sai siitä aatteen, ja kun he asettivat ruumiin kanoottiin ja soutivat sen saareen joen keskelle, jonne hänet haudattiin, niin virta kuljetti Tambelia hänen neljän vaimonsa meloin avustaessa Isisin kaupunkiin, jossa kuningas asui. Tämän miehen luo hän meni. Kuningas, joka oli juovuksissa, ei ollut hänen tulostaan millänsäkään.
— Herra kuningas, sanoi hän. — Olen Tambeli Pikku joen Isaukasusta, ja olen monesti palvellut sinua, niin kuin tiedät.
Kuningas katsoi häntä hämärin silmin eikä puhunut mitään.
— Olemme kansa vailla päällikköä, sanoi Tambeli, — ja kyläni miehet haluavat, että minä hallitsen heitä Kfarin jälkeen, joka on kuollut.
Kuningas kynsi niskaansa miettiväisenä, mutta ei sanonut hetkiseen mitään. Sitten hän kysyi:
— Mitä sinä annat?
Tambeli esitti mahtavan luettelon, jossa oli vuohia, suolaa ja putkia hyvin huomattava määrä. Hän lisäsi lahjan, joka ei kuulunut hintaan.
— Mene takaisin kansasi luo — päällikkö, virkahti kuningas, ja Tambeli syleili kuninkaan polvia ja sanoi häntä isäkseen ja äidikseen.
Tällä tavoin Tambeli nousi päällikön istuimelle, kun Sanders saapui odottamatta etelästä pienellä höyryveneellään.
* * * * *
Isaukasu oli aivan Ochorin rajalla ja oli jokseenkin huomattava kylä, koska sen takamaista saatiin kumia. Se oli sellainen kylä, joka kasvoi kaupungiksi silmänräpäyksessä.
Höyrylaiva oli kiinnitetty rantaan ja lauta oli heitetty sen ja rannan väliin, kun Sanders tuli reippaasti rannalle häikäisevän valkeassa puvussaan.
Tambeli, komea mies, oli häntä odottamassa.
— Herra, sanoi hän, — Kfari on kuohut, ja minä olen tämän kylän päällikkö isäni kuninkaan määräyksestä.
Sanders käänsi päätään kuin omituinen lintu ja silmäili miestä harrastuneena.
— Sinun isäsi kuningas ei enää ole kuningas, sanoi hän lempeästi, — tällä hetkellä hän on minun laivallani hyvin sairaana. Ja vaikka hän olisi terve ja valtaistuimellaankin, niin ei kukaan voi sanoa, kuka on kylän tai kaupungin päällikkö, paitsi minä. Ja sinä, Tambeli, et ole minun päälliköitäni.
Tambeli ojensi leukaansa hieman, sillä hän oli päättäväinen mies.
— Olen maksanut päällikkyydestäni suolaa ja putkia, sanoi hän.
— Ja viinaa, sanoi Sanders lempeästi. — Kerrohan nyt, miten viina tulee tähän maahan, vaikka minä olen sen kieltänyt.
Tambeli silmäsi valkeata miestä suoraan kasvoihin.
— Herra, sanoi hän hypistellen keihäänsä messinkirenkaista vartta, olen ollut monessa maassa ja tiedän monenlaisia tapoja; ja minulle on kerrottu — Rannikon mustaihoiset kertoivat ettei ole mitään lakia, mustaa tai valkeaa, joka kieltää miehen ostamasta tai myymästä parrunpäitä, jos hän niin haluaa.
— Minä olen laki, sanoi Sanders, ja hänen äänensä oli entistä pehmeämpi. — Jos minä sanon niin, niin se on niin. Ja viinaa sinä et saa ostaa etkä myydä etkä lahjoittaa, vaikka Rannikon mustat lakimiehet olisivat viisaita kuin jumalat.
— Tämä päällikkyys…, aloitti Tambeli.
— Sinä et ole minun päälliköitäni, sanoi Sanders, — et nyt etkä ikinä, sillä olet ilkeä mies ja ryöstät sen, mitä toiset pitävät kalliina.
Olen puhunut, palaver on päättynyt.
Tambeli epäröi.
Sandersin takana seisoi kersantti ja kaksi hausaa, ja Tambelin seisoessa kahden vaiheilla kersantti astui esiin ja tarttui lujasti häntä olkapäähän.
— Aleki, sanoi hän, ja se on kehoitus liikkumaan nopeasti.
Kun kersantin ote tiukkeni, niin vahva Tambeli tarttui häntä puvun liepukoihin ja heitti hänet menemään; sitten hän seisoi jäykkänä, sillä Sandersin revolverin lämmin suu oli painettu hänen vatsaansa, ja
Tambeli, joka oli oman väitteensä mukaan kulkenut paljon ja nähnyt monta, tiesi Sandersin mieheksi, joka kunnioitti ihmishenkeä vähän, tuskin ensinkään.
He panivat Tambelin rautoihin ja kytkivät hänet »Zairen» kannella olevaan paaluun, sillä hän oli häväissyt kruunun palvelijaa heittäessään muitta mutkitta hausakersantin alas joen rinnettä, eivätkä sellaiset teot ole soveliaita kansan nähdä.
Höyrylaiva kulki täyttä vauhtia päämajaa kohti, ja Sanders antautui pohtimaan Tambelin asiaa.
Ei ollut, niin kuin mies oli sanonutkin, mitään lakia, joka kieltäisi väkevien juomien myynnin hänen alaisellaan alueella, mutta Sanders ei välittänyt perustuslaista. Hän oli pitänyt maansa vapaana viinan kirouksesta, eikä hänellä ollut aikomusta lisätä vastuutaan.
Maassa oli väkijuomia, sen hän syystä tiesi. Isisin Polambi, Akasavan Sakalana, Ngombin Nindino ja kaikki alueen päälliköt olivat poikenneet suoralta tieltä. Oli tapahtunut rikkomuksia, jotka
olivat panneet Sandersin kiirehtimään »kaikin käytettävissä olevin keinoin». Oli myöskin voimaperäisesti uusittu päälliköitä.
Viinaprobleemi oli ratkaistu Tambelin vangitsemisella; jäljellä oli vain kysymys Tambelista. Tämän Tambeli selvitti itse.
»Zaire» seisoi puunottopaikassa, ja Sanders oli vetäytynyt hyttiinsä ja nukkui, kun kannelta kuuluva melu herätti hänet ja hän tuli kannelle havaitakseen Tambelin, vahvan miehen, menneen ja vieneen mukanaan ketjut ja paalun, johon hänet oli kytketty. Hänen jälkeensä jäi hausasotilas, jonka pää oli murskattu.
Sanders vihelteli koko ajan matkalla päämajaan. Hän istui telttatuolissa aurinkokatoksen alla viheltäen nuottiaan hiljaa kaksi päivää, ja hänen miehensä, jotka tunsivat hänet hyvin ja ymmärsivät hänen mielenlaatunsa, pysyttäytyivät huolellisesti poissa hänen tieltään.
Hän saapui päämajaan vielä viheltäen.
Hän oli aseman ainoa valkoihoinen mies ja oli kiitollinen. Hän oli pannut yhden vieraistaan, Isisin jonkin verran pelästyneen kuninkaan, vartioinnin alaiseksi, mutta se ei häntä tyydyttänyt, sillä Tambeli oli rikkonut lakia ja karannut viidakkoon.
Nusadombista kuului uutisia ani harvoin, koska sikäläisillä oli syytä olla lähettämättä sanansaattajia; vielä parempi syy oli sen asukkailla olla liiaksi matkustelematta. Sanders vihasi nusadombilaisia niin väkevästi kuin vain lainsäätäjä voi vihata laitonta yhteiskuntaa. Hän vihasi heitä sitä suuremmalla syyllä, kun hän oli vastuussa heidän hallitsemisestaan.
Tämän vastuun hän oli kieltänyt useammin kuin kerran, mutta siitä huolimatta hänen sisimmässään puhui hiljainen ääni joskus hänen hiljaisina hetkinään: »Nusadombi kuuluu Englannille, jos sinussa vain on miestä.»
Omantuntonsa tyydytykseksi hän vakoili miehiä jotka-eivät-kaikkiolleet-samanlaisia. Hänen vakoojansa tulivat ja menivät. Hän menetti siinä muutamia miehiä, mutta ylipäänsä oli onni myötä. Hän sai kuulla murhista, perheriidoista ja sensellaisesta, mutta ei koskaan hetken kysymyksistä.
Eräänä maaliskuun hiostavana iltapäivänä Sanders istui Joen suussa olevalla kalliolla onkimassa Kapin lohta ja ajatteli, ihmeellistä kyllä, nusadombilaisia. Hänen sitä tehdessään Abibu, hänen hausapalvelijansa ja arvoltaan kersantti, juoksi hänen luokseen yli terävien kivien pitkä pistin keikkuen vyöllä hänen ottaessaan pitkiä hyppyjä.
Sanders katsoi häneen kysyvästi.
— Herra, selitti Abibu käsi jäykästi kunniaa tehden, — yksi tiedustelija on saapunut Nusadombista, ja hänellä on paljon kerrottavaa sinulle.
— Anna hänen tulla tänne, sanoi Sanders.
— Herra, sanoi Abibu yksinkertaisesti, — hän ei voi kävellä, sillä miehet jotka-eivät-ole-kaikki-samanlaisia ovat haavoittaneet häntä ja hän kuolee tänä iltana.
Sanders heitti siimansa ja seurasi hausaa päämajaan.
Hän tapasi vakoojan makaamassa kömpelöllä paarilla hänen kuistinsa portaitten edessä.
Mies katseli ympärilleen suu kivun irvistyksessä, kun Sanders astui kuistille johtavia portaita.
— Ho, Bogora! sanoi Sanders hiljaa, — mitä pahaa ne puhuvat sinusta?
— Ei ole mitään puhuttavaa tämän illan jälkeen, sanoi mies tuskissaan. — Minä puolestani ilmoitan tietoni ja nukun; ja herra, ellen olisi rakastanut sinua, olisin kuollut jo kolme päivää sitten.
Sanders tutki pikaisesti miehen haavat. Hän ei tullut pahoinvoivaksi, se ei ollut hänen tapansa — hän kääri miehen ruhjotut raajat jälleen peitteeseen.
— Muudan Tambeli, isisiläinen, istuu nyt nusadombilaisten keskuudessa, kuiskasi vakooja, — ja häntä pelätään, kun hän on päällikkö; myöskin sanotaan, että hän on suuren ju-jun jäsen, ja hänellä on voimallisia ystäviä päälliköiden keskuudessa. Hän tunsi minut, kun muut olisivat antaneet minun olla, ja hänen käskystään he tekivät minkä tekivät. Myöskin he aikovat, herra, hyökätä eräiden heimojen, niin kuin Isisin, Ochorin ja Ngombin kimppuun.
— Miten pian? kysyi Sanders.
— Kun toinen kuu tulee sateiden jälkeen.
— Se nähdään, sanoi Sanders. — Mitä tulee Tambeliin, niin hänen kanssaan selvitän tilit, Bogoro, minun veljeni, sillä kannan sinun veresi käsissäni, ja minun käsiini hän kuolee; kaikki jumalat todistavat minun sanani.
Paareilla makaava olento hymyili.
— Sandi, hän sanoi hitaasti, — on arvokasta, että kaikki kuulevat sinun sanovan minua veljeksi.
Ja hän ummisti silmänsä kuin uneen ja kuoli Sandersin katsellessa häntä.
Bosambo astui majastaan eräänä aamuna juuri ennen päivänkoittoa. Ochorin kaupunki oli hiljainen. Edellisenä iltana oli ollut tanssi, ja kaupungin keskellä hiipuva hiillos osoitti paikkaa, missä suuri tuli oli palanut.
Bosambolla oli yllään marakatinnahkaviitta, sillä aamu oli vielä viileä. Hän kulki kylän kadun päähän, ohi puutarhojen ja pitkin viidakkopolkua, joka johti hänen omalle kasvimaalleen. Siinä hän pysähtyi kuulostamaan.
Ei kuulunut muuta kuin kaukaisen puron kohina, kun se kulki tietään Joentakaiselle Joelle.
Hän istuutui kumipuun varjoon ja odotti kärsivällisesti. Tunnin kuluessa aurinko nousisi; sitä ennen hän odotti jotakin tapahtuvan.
Hän ei ollut istunut viittä minuuttia kauempaa, kun hän näki olennon hiipien tulevan vastapäiseltä puolelta. Se liikkui varovasti ja pysähtyen silloin tällöin tunnustelemaan maaperää.
Bosambo nousi ääneti.
— Ystävä, sanoi hän, — liikut ääneti.
— Se on kuninkaiden tapa, sanoi olento.
— Elämä on täynnä äänettömyyttä, sanoi Bosambo.
— Ei kukaan ole niin äänetön kuin kuolema, oli vastaus.
He sanoivat nämä lauseet sulavasti kuin kerraten rituaalia, niin kuin todella olikin laita.
— Istu kanssani, veljeni, virkkoi Bosambo, ja toinen tuli ja istuutui hänen viereensä.
— Sanon sinulle, Bosambo, sanoi vieras, — että valat ovat valoja, ja miehet, jotka vannovat veriveljeyttä, elävät ja kuolevat toistensa puolesta.
— Se on totta, sanoi Bosambo. — Olen tullut tänne, sillä kun eilen vieras metsän mies saapui tuoden minulle hiukan vettä ropeessa ja kirsikan vedessä, tiesin, että Vaiteliaat tarvitsevat minua.
Vieras nyökkäsi.
— Niin, on monta vuotta siitä, kun vannoin valan, mutisi Bosambo, kun olin hyvin nuori, eivätkä Vaiteliaat liiku Ochorin maassa, vaan Nigeriassa, joka on kuukauden matkan päässä.
Hänen vieressään oleva mies maiskautti huultaan.
— Olen täällä, sanoi hän painokkaasti. — Minä, Tambeli, kulkuri, jota myöskin sanotaan miesten-jotka-eivät-ole-kaikki-samanlaisia kuninkaaksi. Lisäksi Vaiteliaitten järjestön korkea-arvoinen mies, pettäjäin leppymätön kostaja ja ju-jun tarkastaja.
— Herra, uskoin niin, sanoi yksinkertainen Bosambo, — sinun korkeutesi vaatimuksen vuoksi. Sano nyt, kuinka voin palvella veljeäni, joka vaeltaa yksin tässä maassa?
Hänen äänessään oli huoleton kysymys, ja vieraasta kauempana oleva käsi sormeili veitsen ohutta, pitkää terää.
— Ei yksin, veli, sanoi vieras merkityksellisesti, — sillä moni seuramme veli katsoo minun tuloani ja menoani.
— Se on yhtä hyvä, sanoi Bosambo luottavasti ja sujutti veitsen ääneti takaisin puiseen tuppeen.
— Voit palvella minua näin, sanoi Tambeli. — Olen Sandia vihaavien kostonhimoisten miesten kuningas, ja katsos, hän on sotilaineen tulossa rankaisemaan minua. Ja hänen matkansa kulkee Ochorin kautta ja hän istuu sinun luonasi päivän.
— Tämä kaikki on totta, sanoi Bosambo ja odotti.
Tambeli pisti kätensä vaippansa alle ja veti sieltä lyhyen bambukepin.
— Bosambo, sanoi hän, — tässä on henki, joka tekee hyvää Sandille. Sillä jos leikkaat pois toista päätä peittävän kumin, niin sieltä tulee sellaista pulveria, jota poppamiehet valmistavat, ja tämä sinun pitää kaataa Sandin hakkelukseen, eikä hän tiedä mitään, ja hän kuolee.
Bosambo otti kepin mitään puhumatta ja pani sen vyötäisillään riippuvaan pieneen pussiin.
— Tämän sinä teet peläten Vaiteliaita, jotka ovat armottomia.
— Tämän minä teen, sanoi Bosambo vakavasti.
Enempää ei puhuttu, ja miehet erosivat sanaakaan sanomatta.
Bosambo palasi majaansa, kun itäinen taivas meni helmenharmaaksi kuin olisi taivaan verho äkkiä poistettu. Hän oli sinä aamuna hiljainen mies, eipä edes Fatima, hänen vaimonsa, saanut hänen kieltään liikkeelle.
Iltapäivällä hän tapasi metsässä kuljeksivan koiran, ja raahattuaan sen paikkaan, jossa ei ollut näkijöitä, hän antoi sille lihaa. Se kuoli hyvin pian, kun Bosambo oli sirotellut lihaan sitä pulveria, jonka Tambeli oli antanut.
Bosambo katseli epämiellyttävää koetta tunteettomana.
Kätkettyään tekosensa jäljet hän palasi kylään.
Iltasella tuli Sanders, ja Bosambo, jolle oli annettu tieto vierailun tärkeydestä lokalisanomalla ja joka aavisti samaa siitä, että Sanders kulki läpi yön, oli sytyttänyt suuren tulen rannalle osoittamaan »Zairen» tietä.
Pieni alus tuli hiljaa valopiiriin, alastomat miehet hyppäsivät veteen ja kahlasivat maihin kiinnitysköydet niskassaan.
Sitten tuli Sanders.
— Istun luonasi yhden päivän, sanoi hän, — sillä olen matkalla jakamaan oikeutta.
— Herra, minun taloni on sinun kämmenilläsi, ja minun elämäni myöskin, sanoi Bosambo mahtavasti. — Tuolla on uusi maja, jonka olen rakennuttanut sinulle majani varjoon.
— Nukun laivalla, virkahti Sanders. — Huomenna päivän koitteessa lähden matkalle miesten-jotka-eivät-ole-kaikkisamanlaisia luokse.
He käyskentelivät pitkin kylän katua, Sanders jaloitellakseen, Bosambo hänen isäntänään täyttäen velvollisuuksiaan. Päällikkö tiesi, että silmät tarkkasivat häntä, koska hän aavisti, että Vaiteliaat odottivat hänen tiedonantoaan läheisessä metsässä.
He tulivat kadun päähän ja lähtivät kävelemään takaisin.
— Herra, sanoi Bosambo vakavalla äänellä, — jos sanon yhden asian, joka on perin tärkeä, pyydän sinun ylhäisyyttäsi, ettet pysähdy etkä hämmästy.
— Puhu, sanoi Sanders.
— Jos, sanoi Bosambo, — laivaltasi tulisi nukkuessasi tänä yönä tietoja, että olet sairas ja kuolemaisillasi, niin säästäisin sinulta pitkän matkan.
Sanders ei voinut nähdä hänen kasvojaan, sillä yö oli pimeä, ja maailmaa valaisivat vain taivaallisten tähtien tuikkeet.
— Tiedän sinut kavalaksi mieheksi, Bosambo, sanoi hän hiljaa, ja tottelen sinua empimättä. Mutta kerro, miksi niin pitää tapahtua, ja sitten teen, niin kuin on paras.
— Herra, sanoi Bosambo hiljaa, — olen sinun miehiäsi, ja kaiken kautta, minkä nimessä vain voidaan vannoa, olen valmis kuolemaan puolestasi, ja minusta tuntuu, että kuolen tavalla tai toisella. Vaikka olen sinulle harmiksi ja vaikka olet kironnut minua monta kertaa,
tahdon kuitenkin, että minun joukkoni kuolisi, ennen kuin sinä kärsisit.
— Uskon sen, sanoi Sanders lyhyesti.
— Sen vuoksi, herra, usko minua ilman enempää puhumista.
— Sen teenkin, sanoi Sanders.
* * * * *
Viiden aikaan aamulla — niin kuin me aikaa laskemme — Bosambo meni nopeasti metsään mukanaan pitkävartinen lapio. Hän horjui hieman käydessään, ja mitä kauemmas hän tuli, sitä epävakaisemmiksi kävivät hänen askelensa.
Vajaan mailin päässä oli metsäpolulla pieni aukeama; mainio kohtauspaikka rakastuneille illan hämärässä ja yöllä paholaisten temmellyspaikka.
Tälle paikalle tuli Bosambo, sillä tämä oli se paikka, jossa Vaiteliaat odottivat hänen tietojaan. Hän tuli horjuen aukeamalle, lapio olallaan, ja viisi miestä katseli häntä varjosta tietäen hänen olevan juovuksissa.
Hän pysähtyi kehrääjälinnun puun luo ja istahti raskaasti. Vaippansa laskoksista hän otti pullon ja pani sen huulilleen.
— Bosambo, sanoi Tambeli tullen ääneti hänen eteensä.
— Tämä on hyvä merkki, sillä jokin sanoo minulle, että olet tehnyt tehtäväsi.
— Hän oli minun isäni, vaikersi Bosambo, — ja minun heimoni; hän oli suuri herra, ja kun hän on kuollut, niin valkeat miehet tulevat kivääreineen, jotka sanovat »ha-haha», ja syövät minut.
Hän pyöritti riippuvaa päätään tuskissaan.
— Ei kukaan tiedä, tyynnytti Tambeli, voimakas, — sillä tässä olemme kaikki, hyvän liiton viisi vaiteliasta miestä, eikä kukaan muu tiedä kuin me — emmekä me puhu mitään.
Hän vaikeni ja lisäsi sitten huolellisesti: — Mikäli sinä täytät pyyntömme ja lähetät meille naisia ja viljaa.
Bosambo kuunteli tätä hänen orjuuttamisohjelmaansa antamatta mitään merkkiä.
— Miksi olet tuonut lapion? kysyi Tambeli äkkiä. — Hautaatko Sandin tänne?
— Kuka tietää? sanoi Bosambo.
Hän otti pullon esiin. Se oli pieni nelikulmainen pullo, jollaisissa on laittomasti takamaihin tuotua viinaa.
— Tämän minä otan, sanoi Tambeli. Hän ojensi kätensä ja väänsi pullon toisen hervottomasta kädestä. — Miehet, jotka juovat, puhuvat liiaksi, eikä sinun tule puhua, Bosambo, ennen kuin monta jokea on meidän ja Sandin sotilaiden välillä.
Hän otti puukorkin pois suulta.
— Ja, sanoi hän, — pitkä aika on kulunut siitä, kun sain viinaa.
Hän viittasi varjossa oleville tovereilleen.
— Nämä ovat minun veljiäni, sanoi hän, — ja sinun, sen vuoksi salli
Rannikon valkeiden miesten tapaan meidän juoda sinun onneksesi.
Hän kohotti pullon ja joi, ja ojensi sen lähimmälle miehelle. Mies toisensa jälkeen he ottivat pitkän kulauksen, sitten pullo tuli Bosambolle.
— Sano, kuoliko Sandi tuskiin? kysyi Tambeli.
— Hän kuoli rauhallisesti, sanoi Bosambo.
Tambeli nyökkäsi.
— Se on oikea tapa, sanoi hän, — sillä jos hän olisi kuollut suuresti meluten, olisi tullut sotilaita. Nyt ei kukaan voi sanoa muuta kuin että hän kuoli mongotautiin. Ei ole toista tämän kaltaista lääkettä, ja tämän on valmistanut kuuluisa poppamies.
Bosambo ei puhunut mitään pitkään aikaan; sitten hän puhui.
— Kuka on, joka pettää minut? kysyi hän. — Sillä jos suurten herrain korviin tulee tieto, että minä tapoin Sandin…
— Älä yhtään pelkää, sanoi Tambeli ääni hieman käheänä, — sillä ei ole ketään paitsi nämä… — hän viittasi kädellään epävarmasti eivätkä — he — puhu — koskaan.
Tosiaankin hän puhui totta, sillä miehet makasivat levollisesti kuin uneen vaipumaisillaan.
— Pystyyn — pystyyn! mutisi Tambeli.
Hän meni potkaisemaan lähintä makaajaa, mutta hänen jalkansa pettivät, ja hän horjahti polvilleen.
Bosambo katseli häntä hyvin huvittuneena.
— Koira!
Tambeli kääntyi puolittain Ochorin päällikköä kohti ja sylki sanan suustaan. Hän kokosi kaikki voimansa ja ponnahti jaloilleen heittäytyen suoraan toisen kurkkuun.
Mutta Bosambo oli valmistautunut.
Hänen vasen kätensä ojentui ja tarttui Tambelin olkapäähän painaen miestä, kunnes hän kaatui.
Mies yritti nousta, kaatui jälleen, ja pian hän myöskin vaipui uneen, ensin rauhattomaan, sitten raukeaan kuin väsynyt mies.
Bosambo istui kärsivällisesti.
Pitkän hetken kuluttua hän otti lapion, jonka oli tuonut tullessaan.
— Tambeli, sanoi hän ryhtyessään työhönsä, ankaraan työhön, sillä viiden hengen haudan kaivaminen vaatii paljon lihasvoimaa, olit hullu, sillä muuten olisit kyllä tietänyt, ettei kukaan minun uskooni kuuluva tapa ystäväänsä ja isäntäänsä. Eikä kukaan korkeahenkinen mies istu kuoleman varjossa. Oi Vaiteliaat, olette nyt hyvin vaiteliaita.
Hän päätti työnsä ja pyyhki hikeä otsaltaan seisoen epäröivänä haudan ääressä. Sitten hän kynsäisi leukaansa miettiväisenä. Hänen mieleensä tuli muisto lähetyskoulusta tuhansien mailien päästä ja
ilkeäsilmäisistä katolisista papeista, jotka olivat opettaneet hänelle muutamia juhlamenoja.
Hän pudotti lapion ja polvistui kömpelösti.
— Pyhä Markus ja Luukas ja Johannes, hän rukoili sulkien silmänsä hitaasti, — olen murhannut viisi miestä myrkyllä, vaikka he itse nauttivat sitä minun kehoittamattani. Sen vuoksi he ovat kuolleet, mikä on hyvä asia meille kaikille. Amen.
KAHLEITTEN KYLÄ
Sanders oli tottunut kansansa lapselliseen puhetapaan, ja hän hyväksyi heidän antamansa nimitykset vastaansanomatta. Se oli osa leikistä. Häntä piti sanoa »ahdistettujen suojelijaksi», »viisauden herraksi» tai joksikin sellaiseksi, ja hän tuli pahalle päälle, jos se unohdettiin, koska se kaikki kuului leikkiin eikä merkinnyt enempää kuin »hyvä» sivistyneiden sanomana.
Mikäli imartelu ja liehittely kävi kohtuuden rajoissa, mikäli kohteliaisuus seurasi säännöllistä uraansa, sikäli Sanders oli tyytyväinen; jos kohteliaisuus oli liian vähäistä tai jos sitä oli ylenpalttisesti, niin hänen henkiset harjaksensa nousivat pystyyn ja hän katseli ympärilleen siristetyin silmin ja henki kurkussa nähdäkseen, miltä suunnalta vaara uhkasi.
Hän hallitsi miljoonaa mustaa ihmistä, jotka kieli, murre, tavat, ylpeys ja hengenkyvyt erottivat kahteenkymmeneenkolmeen eri kansaan. Bangelilaisia, jotka asuivat lähinnä päämajaa ja olivat itsekästä hulttiojoukkoa — krulaisten, kongolaisten, angolakansan ja rannikkolaisten sekasukua — hän ei ottanut huomioon, sillä he olivat jossakin määrin sivistyneitä ja viisaita valkoihoisten tapaan. He
pelkäsivät myös rangaistusta, ja kuten Herran pelko on viisauden alku, niin lain pelko on sivistyksen alku.
Mutta heidän takanaan asuivat soturiheimot, joihin kauppamiehet eivät päässeet käsiksi ja joihin lähetyssaarnaajat vain hieman olivat vaikuttaneet. Sotaisia, epäjohdonmukaisia lapsia, joilla oli halu riitaan ja hämärä käsitys oikeudesta. Ja Sandersin tehtävänä ja huvina oli tutkia heitä omissa oloissaan, juuri kuin tutkitaan omaa lasta, ehkä hieman huolellisemmin (sillä kukinhan pitää lapsiaan ja heidän omituisuuksiaan varmoina), ja muuttaa suhdettaan heihin samoin kuin he muuttivat suhdettaan häneen, mikä järjestely tavallisesti suoritettiin kerran kahdessakymmenessäneljässä tunnissa.
Sanders erosi tavallisista valtionluojista siinä suhteessa, että kun nämä pitivät alkuasukkaita yhtenäisenä joukkona, Sanders menetteli heidän kanssaan kuten yksilöiden.
Eräs korkea herra pyysi häntä sihteerinsä sihteerin välityksellä tekemään selvää rikoksesta, joka tapahtui pikku Isisin varrella, ja Sanders vastasi naiivisti (kuten korkeista herroista tuntui), että rikos oli aiheutunut erään Mdali-nimisen miehen näkemästä unesta.
Sanders ei uskonut uniin, ja kun eräs vakooja ilmoitti Tembolinin Mdalin nähneen unen, jossa joki oli noussut niin, että vesi peitti kylää vastapäätä olevan saaren, hän ei kiinnittänyt siihen huomiota.
Hän näet tiesi, että sateet olivat olleet ankaria ja pikku joet tulvivat saattaen pääjoenkin pian tulvimaan, ja edelleen hän tiesi Tembolinin olevan niin korkealla paikalla, ettei sen asukkailla ollut mitään vaaraa.
Kun hän viikkoa myöhemmin kuuli Mdalin uneksineen, että viljan veisi kato, ei hän ollut millänsäkään. Hän ajatteli, että Mdali on hyvä arvaamaan, ja antoi asian olla.
Kun hän myöhemmin kuuli Mdalin nähneen unen, että Etinbolo, hänen toinen vaimonsa, kuolisi sinä yönä — kuten tapahtui — niin hän hieman hämmästyi, kunnes hän muisti, että hänen viimeksi kylässä käydessään nainen oli ollut pitkälle kehittyneessä unitaudissa. Hänen mielestään Mdalin oli helppo arvata, milloin vaimo kuolee.
Uutisia muista unista tuli yläjoelta — muutamat ensi käden tietoja, ja ne olivat yleensä vähäpätöisiä; jotkin ihmeellisemmät kulkivat suusta suuhun — ja ne olivat todennäköisesti liioiteltuja.
Sanders oli näinä aikoina puuhakas mies, eikä hänellä ollut aikaa eikä halua pohtia sellaisia asioita.
Mutta eräänä aamuna päivän koittaessa saapui kanootti, jossa oli Ahmed, Sandersin salaisten vakoojien päämies.
— Herra, sanoi hän asettuen Sandersin vuoteen viereen kyykylleen, — Isisissä on uneksija.
— Olen kuullut, sanoi Sanders arabiaksi ja väsyneesti. — Minä olen myöskin uneksija ja olisin uneksinut vielä kokonainen tunnin, ellet olisi häirinnyt minua.
— Jumala tietää, etten halua häiritä sinun suloista untasi, sanoi Ahmed. — Joka aamu ja ilta rukoilen Jumalaa, että unesi olisi hyvä;
