The Golden Age of Children's Literature (5)

Philippa Pearce, Tom's Midnight Garden

This is one children's book that I know I did try to read when I actually was a child. I forget how old I was exactly, but I know that I was already aware that this was a 'classic', and that therefore it was something I ought to read. Alas, I gave up after only a few chapters, finding it rather boring.

As a consequence, I didn't watch what is apparently a much loved and fondly remembered adaptation for the BBC in 1989. I think one of my brothers must have done, because I do have several memories of scenes from it: a sunlit garden verging on something paradisal, and a young friend to enjoy it with.

In fairness to my younger self, I can understand why I might have found it rather boring. There's very little in the way of plot. Sent away to stay with his aunt and uncle because his brother has measles, young Tom finds himself able to slip back in time when he crosses the threshold of the backdoor at midnight when the unreliable grandfather clock strikes thirteen. Their flat is part of what was formerly a country house in the late 19th century, and it is the lost garden to which he returns each night. What follows is more a series of episodes strung together, as Tom explores the garden and in the process befriends a lonely young girl, Hatty, one of only two people who are able to see him. In the 19th century past, Tom appears as a ghost, unable to leave any mark on the world in which he finds himself. With effort, he's even able to push his way through doors.

The transition back to the past is evoked manner a marvellously eerie manner. We do eventually find a sort of explanation for it, but it's one which is satisfactory only in purely emotional terms. It's simply the narrative means by which two lonely individuals are able to meet and play together, alleviating some of their unhappiness. And that play is threatened not only by the end of summer, but by the fact that Hatty grows older throughout their meetings. Tom never returns to the same time, but drops in on Hatty as grows into adolescence. The later times to which he returns are not the paradise of summer, but an icy winter wonderland of the great frost. Hetty is not only older, but Tom is gradually growing less distinct for her. Several images of the 'thinning' of fantasy to evoke her transition into adolescence. Ultimately we're left with a sense of loss, but it's a very appropriate sense of loss for a children's fantasy since it's only the loss of childhood play which we all experience.

Since that narrative of loss is tied to the transition between an 'aristocratic' 19th century garden and post war reality in which Tom lives, in which the garden has been built over, it's not surprising that some critics have complained that the book idealises that world as a 'lost paradise', obscuring the reality of poverty found elsewhere in Victorian society. It's a view which I have some sympathy with, especially nowadays when we have a popular culture which contains more than it's fair share of representations and pastiches of the Victorian past. Neo-Victorianism is an actual thing, an object of academic study.

On the other hand, I'm a little suspicious of critics who criticise fictions for what they don't contain.  Nor am I convinced that a fictional representation of the Victorian period which does acknowledge the horrors of poverty can't also be idealising. And I'm not sure that the 19th century world to which Tom travels is quite as idealised as some appear to think.

Hatty is an orphan, having been taken in by a considerably unsympathetic aunt who clearly resents the presence of a poor relation in her home. She's left out of the games of her three older cousins, only one of whom appears to have any real sympathy for her. Hatty is eventually lucky; she meets a farmer who is successful and prosperous, and who provides her with everything she could want during their married life together. But it's easy to imagine that life might gone very differently for her if she hadn't been fortunate enough to meet her farmer. And the loss of the garden is explained not simply as the fault of modernity, but as a result of the failure in business of Hatty's cousins who gradually have to sell off their land, eventually losing everything. It's not simply an idealised world that we're presented with here, but rather its a world which is contingent, lodged in time.

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Time slip fantasies appear to have been a popular mode in post war children's literature. Perhaps some of the impulse was a desire to escape from what was perceived as a drab post war world. The feeling of just stepping through a door to enter a vanished past literalises the nostalgic motive in a way which is also very moving. I do wonder too if the engagement with the Victorian past is not also down to the fact that in 1958 the Victorian world must have still felt very close. One consequence of two world wars and an intervening economic slump is that the pace of building would have slowed. There would was less desire or ability to replace older buildings. It was the modernist planners of the 60s and their successors who really began that process. So in 1958, many more people than nowadays would have lived in places which were surrounded by fragments of the Victorian past. Not that that has entirely vanished, even now.

It's something which I recognise and feel quite strongly myself, because I grew up in old houses. Ironically, this was because of a grandfather clock which my parents owned, and consequently all the houses we lived in required ceilings which where tall enough to accommodate the clock. Hence they were all houses built in the later 19th / early 20th century. I suppose now I would see that as a privilege, although at the time of course it seemed perfectly normal. And perhaps it was only because I was a child, but the past could feel very close.