Society and the Individual

In every place and every time throughout history, the long term success of society has depended upon the family (variously defined); that intense crucible where new citizens are born, formed, raised and forged. As much attention as has been paid over the years, at least since Caesar Augustus, to the importance of the family and of family values, there actually is relatively little information about how the socialization process occurs or how it can be best achieved. It is the last frontier of the gifted amateur in which we are all qualified.

What are the many steps in the course of eighteen years that carry you from a start with a proto-Neanderthal bundle of inarticulate emotion to a sentient, reasonable, polite individual focused on improving his lot and that of his friends, neighbors and countrymen, and able to express respect for all the unknown strangers that come into his life? No-one has that well mapped out but there is a lot of speculation and free advice along the way. Given what you start with and the challenges from a not-always-sympathetic and, indeed, sometimes hostile external environment, I think the effectiveness of parents raising their children is one of the hugely un-acknowledged miracles of our times.

It seems almost irreverent to think of the family as a socialization process; it is way too personal and fun for that, and yet, for better or worse, that is the outcome. We know when it doesn't work, and often have a pretty good idea as to why it doesn't work. It is a little harder to know when the process has worked or to say what makes it work better.

I once read somewhere that everyone in the US has the power to never be in poverty. All that you have to do is 1) graduate high school, 2) marry, and 3) get and keep a job, any job. There are virtually no high school graduates that are married and employed that are in poverty. Sounds like a straightforward formula. How hard can that be?

Well, pretty hard it would appear.

Clay Shirky made an observation a number of years ago which I think encapsulates the dilemma reasonably well. He said that "Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality." Accepting this clarifies then the mission of the family in raising a child - helping them to understand and make choices.

The beauty of it is that this process is mostly unconscious and often terrifically fun. The benefits are not one way either, from parent to child. With the freshness of their eyes and the blank slate of their minds ("before the dark of reason grows" Betjeman) it is usually quite frequent that as you are explaining something to them, they are asking the questions that you never got around to asking yourself as a child. Children force you also to look at the world with new eyes.

First you teach them to communicate. Then you begin to fill them with knowledge and facts. Then you begin to work with them to understand how to interpret those facts. Then to predict based on that interpretation. Then, finally, to begin to understand the fallibility of facts, reason and, most especially, of prediction. Because the world is not a mechanical place where A always leads to B, we fill in the gaps with our faith, our morals, and our sense of civic responsibility, our ethics. And this is where it gets wonderfully and intriguingly complicated.

It is fun playing around with facts and getting kids to understand them. We once asked our three kids (at that time probably three, five and seven) to explain why it was that, if one in five people on earth is Chinese, none of the five of us was Chinese. It is a real pleasure to see them working through the exact meaning of words and the light beginning to go on.

As they slip more and more out of our sheltering and direct influence, (beginning school, playing with neighbourhood kids, off to camp, etc.), they are of course exposed to an ever greater diversity of values and opinions. I reckon that you have six to ten years to establish the foundation of values and beliefs that will shape their interpretation of the external world and how they choose to interact with it. What are their obligations to family, friends, countrymen, fellow man? What should, or more importantly can, they expect from their fellow man? What are their rights, their obligations?

The check lists are easy - the Ten Commandments, the Boy Scout oath, the Golden Rule, the rules of sports, etc. That is just a matter of exposure and memorization. The challenge is in the interpretation and application. It is the ability to make appropriate choices in every-day life that represents real growing up.

In the midst of all this learning from parent, from experience and from stories, it has struck me over the years just how fruitful our language is with what, fundamentally, are little bits of ethical code masquerading as idioms and adages. Some of these adages are just useful rules of thumb; some are important ethical decisions. I don't know whether you experience it in your household, but we certainly do in ours: a number of adages that get repeated ad nauseum.

• First things first (homework before games, dinner before desert, etc.)

• Focus

• Look before you leap (watch out, plan ahead)

• The early bird gets the worm (hurry up)

• Cleanliness is next to godliness (clean your room)

• Andre volk, andre art (a Swedish phrase from my childhood, "other people, other ways" to explain why someone else has made a decision that seems both self-defeating as well as contrary to the rules we live by)

• Share and share alike

• Slow and steady wins the race

• Do unto others . . .

• Etc.

I once gave Sally a delightful little book by Carol Bolt, Mom's Book of Answers (which is out of print but you can find something similar with The Book of Answers. There are probably three or four hundred pages, each with a single phrase which you will instantly recognize - it is as if every mom on earth is programmed to say these words. Some are adages, many are just familiar phrases. Sally keeps the book in the kitchen and often, when a child comes in with a request or question, she pulls it down and randomly opens it and to read the answer:

Q: Mom, can I have some chips?
Random Mom's Book of Answers: Is there anything you've forgotten?

Q: I can't find my shoes.
Random Mom's Book of Answers: Don't complain; in the old days, we walked five miles in the snow just to get the mail, and that was before breakfast.

Q: Has anyone seen my homework?
Random Mom's Book of Answers: It may come back to haunt you.

It's kind of surprising just how often these phrases/adages work interchangeably. They are always the answer regardless of the question. They take on an almost cryptic haiku-like quality.

I think there might be an interesting study in there somewhere, documenting the frequency of adages used as well as comparing the nature of adages between cultures. In a pre-literate society adages are an efficient way to pass on critical information and wisdom from generation to generation and I wonder if adage-rich families/cultures aren't characterised by better adjusted and more successful children?

As if moving up the building blocks, from basic language to adages, you then have folk stories, myths and legends all of which are usually vessels for communicating information and rules of behaviour, but more often are built around the application and outcomes of such knowledge and wisdom. I mentioned in this essay about James Baldwin, the incredible richness of our heritage of folktales, not only from all over Europe but all over the world. Robert Bruce and the Spider, King Alfred and the Cakes, King Canute and the Tide, Aesop's Fables, the 1001 Arabian Nights, Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby - it is a rich well from which we can draw.

The books we have compiled here are a mixture of tales that you can use to plant ideas in the mind of your child or to serve as the catalyst to discuss a topic to help them explore how to behave, as well as stories that serve as models of how to behave and how to consider making decisions in a social context. Most of these stories allow the child to make the connection for herself about the values being demonstrated and the ways of interacting with one another and the benefit that accrues from those values.

There is also an incredibly dense population of books that deal with the individual in conflict with society and how those conflicts can be resolved. We have included just a smattering of those. The first step is to understand value and obligations with regard to society. Once those basic rules are understood, it then becomes a little easier to navigate the more difficult exceptions and the issues of societal right and wrong which we will address in a future Pigeon Post and book list.

Picture Books

Thomas the Tank Engine by Rev. W. Awdry Highly Recommended

Goops and How to Be Them by Gelett Burgess Suggested

Maybelle the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton Recommended

The Yellow Star by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Henri Sorensen Highly Recommended

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and illustrated by Michael McCurdy Recommended

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and illustrated by Christopher Bing Recommended

What Do You Do, Dear? by Sesyle Joslin and illustrated by Maurice Sendak Highly Recommended

What Do You Say, Dear by Sesyle Joslin and illustrated by Maurice Sendak Highly Recommended

Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss Recommended

Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss Recommended

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss Highly Recommended

Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss Recommended

Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss Recommended

Independent Readers

Fifty Famous People by James Baldwin (Not available from Through the Maigc Door. Click the link to go to Yesterday's Classics)

Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin (Not available from Through the Maigc Door. Click the link to go to Yesterday's Classics)

Thirty More Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin (Not available from Through the Maigc Door. Click the link to go to Yesterday's Classics)

The Children's Book of Heroes by William J. Bennett and illustrated by Michael Hague Recommended

The Children's Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett and illustrated by Michael Hague Recommended

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and illustrated by P.J. Lynch Highly Recommended

The Christmas Candle by Richard Paul Evans and illustrated by Jacob Collins Recommended

Cheaper By The Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey Highly Recommended

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen Recommended

Beowulf the Warrior by Ian Serraillier and illustrated by Severin & Ian Serraillier Recommended

Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff and illustrated by Alan Lee Recommended

Stop The Train! by Geraldine McCaughrean Suggested

Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by C. E. Brock Highly Recommended

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Recommended

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene Du Bois Highly Recommended

Holes by Louis Sachar Recommended

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended

Young Adult

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Highly Recommended

Lord of the Flies by William Golding and illustrated by Ben Gibson Recommended

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Isaac Kramnick & James Madison Recommended

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Recommended

Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley Recommended

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Highly Recommended

1984 by George Orwell Recommended

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Recommended

Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose Recommended

Edith Nesbit

Born August 15, 1854 in London, England
Died May 4, 1924 in Kent, England

If you like your children's authors to be moral paragons, vignettes of virtue and models of rectitude, you are going to need to give Edith Nesbit a pass. In doing so, though, you will be cutting your kids off from some of the best gems in children's literature. The politest gloss to put on it is that Edith Nesbit lived an unconventional life. Closer to the truth would be to say that her life was something of a mess.

Nesbit lived and worked in that late Victorian and Edwardian period of intellectual and social effervescence in England, when, what today would be called the chattering classes, began to experiment with new social mores and patterns of living that at first seemed refreshingly liberating from the seemingly unremitting and unglamorous pursuit of gradual personal -improvement-through-deeds so prevalent in the Victorian era. There was a desire to fix the world and make it a better place by blazing new trails. Sort of Woodstock comes to Literary England.

Nesbit was born the youngest of a family of six children in 1854 in London. Her father, an agricultural chemist who ran what now might be termed a technical school, died when she was three years old. She was sent away to boarding school and then joined her mother and sister shuttling around Europe for the next several years, seeking some respite for her sister's illness. She lived and was educated in France, Germany, and Spain before they returned to Britain in 1872, settling initially in Kent and then moving to London.

There she met a philandering but apparently very attractive, Hubert Bland, whom she married in 1880. Nesbit was many months pregnant when they wed. She then discovered that Bland had an ongoing relationship (which would last a further ten years) with another woman, also pregnant. Shortly after they wed, Bland's business partner embezzled most of the funds from his business and ran off. Bland meanwhile came down with smallpox and in one way or another was commercially incapacitated for a number of years.

This left Nesbit in the position of suddenly being, like the mother figures in a number of her later children's stories, the sole provider for the family. She filled this financial void by becoming a writer of verse, short stories and articles for the many magazines prevalent in those times. For the better part of twenty years she turned out a massive volume of stories, publishing her first book in 1885. While some of this work was for children, much of it was for adults or was verse. It was not unusual for her to write half a dozen or more books in a year. With few exceptions, this torrent was not particularly distinguished and is only remembered now in the context of her later work in children's literature.

Meanwhile, her home life remained distinctive. A close friend came to stay with Nesbit following a miscarriage. This friend, in turn, became pregnant by Nesbit's husband, not once but twice. By agreement on the part of all parties, Nesbit raised all five children (her own three with Bland as well as their two siblings) as her own and it was only much later that this complex arrangement was revealed, despite the fact that the close friend lived with them as an "Aunt". Oh what a tangled web we weave . . .

And yet from this morass of personal chaos, Nesbit snatched two rabbits from the hat. Unprecedented in her pedestrian literary track record, and as if from nowhere, in 1899, Nesbit published the first of a series of books that over the next decade were to cement her position as one of a handful of pivotal children's authors. The Story of the Treasure Seekers is the tale of the Bastable children. It was a popular, commercial and literary success.

With her Bastable stories (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, and The New Treasure Seekers) Nesbit did something not really done before. She put the children in the center of the stage, not acted upon but as the actors, the real protagonists with their own story to tell. On the one hand these stories very much reflect a Victorian past with an emphasis on behaving well, being responsible, etc. You can also see a Victorian flavor in the stories in the fact that there is a distinctly sentimental element. That being said, in our much more jaded century, that fillip of sentimentality actually has a nice ring to it, especially as it only shows up in moderation.

Nesbit's twist to her stories was that she decanted these moral expectations through the mind and behavior of children. The stories are narrated by the children (though it is not immediately obvious that that is the case) with a knowing, and sometimes jaundiced, perspective of the adults around them. This style of narration was a huge innovation compared to what had gone before. Suddenly, child readers had peers within the text; children with similar pleasures, frustrations, incomprehensions of what was expected of them, and with similar - often flawed - reasoning. What is a transparently knot-headed course of action by the children in the story seems perfectly sensible when you are shown their reasoning.

Beyond representing the puzzlement with which children often view the world of the adult, and showing the child's reasoning that so often leads them into a course of action completely bewildering to an adult, Nesbit also introduced her children as flawed characters and not little models of perfection that just need a little buffing and polishing here and there. They make bad decisions, they make mistakes, they break things, they quarrel with one another, repeatedly, etc. This mold-breaking innovation, seeing and representing the world through the eyes of children, was much emulated by future writers and you can see Nesbit's influence in Enid Blyton, Edward Eager, C.S. Lewis, Noel Streatfeild, Noel Coward, E.M. Forster and others. Though not one of the Bastable series, and in fact probably better known in the USA than that series, Nesbit's The Railway Children, was very much in the same vein as the other three.

As if one innovation were not enough, Nesbit then added a further development with a new series of stories starting with Five Children and It published in 1902. In this series, (Five Children and It , The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet), Nesbit took her earlier model of the Bastables (independent children operating outside the direct supervision of adults (and much perplexed by the adult world and its peculiar expectations and customs) and added an element of magic and fantasy to it. It was not a wild deus ex machina type of fantasy, just a narrow little one - in fact almost small enough to be believable in the imagination of a child.

Meet the Psammead, an ancient and irascible sand-fairy whom the children unearth in a gravel pit. The wonderful feature of the Psammead is that it has to grant the children with a wish each day with the caveat that the wish and its immediate effects expire at sundown. This wish is the engine that drives all their adventures as the children learn to be careful of that for which they wish.

Nesbit was something of a bridge between past and future. With her emphasis on good behavior and doing the right thing, coupled with the strong but selective use of sentimentality in her stories, she was very much a product of the Victorian era. However, through her portrayal of children as real and central to her stories and her use of magic and fantasy, she presaged much of the wonderful children's stories yet to come.

Two other Nesbit books continue to engage children today, The Enchanted Castle and The House of Arden published in 1907 and 1908 respectively. In both these tales, in some ways similar to the others, there is an increasing awareness of darkness and of the complexity of magic. Not horror stories by any means nor depressing, but they have a tension and strain in them that sets them apart from the earlier tales and appeal because they are more complex.

Part of the beauty of Nesbit's work is that it does have broad appeal. In all the books mentioned there are children ranging from very young up to fifteen or so. They therefore have the attraction that, if you are reading to an audience of children not of the same age, everyone will usually find someone in the story with whom to associate. Her writing also deepened and became more complex over the decade of 1900-1910, so you can find stories that range from light and direct to more complex all depending on the tastes of the child reading.

To a degree, Nesbit was a cipher onto which later literary critics are able to project a very wide range of divergent images and interpretations. She was unconventional in the extreme in her personal deportment, but very much a patriot and moralist. She eschewed the intrusion of strong messages and religion into her stories and, yet, she was an enthusiastic political activist (and early co-founder of the Fabian Society). She traveled amongst the leading literary lights of her time such as H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw. She wrote a mass of unmemorable verse and adult books and regarded herself as primarily a poet, but she is remembered really only for her innovative children's stories.

After the passing of her husband, Bland, in 1914, Nesbit married Thomas Tucker, a retired marine engineer in 1917. With this marriage, Nesbit found a far greater level of stability and affection than she had experienced in her earlier life. Nesbit passed away May 4, 1924 following complications from an extended bout of bronchitis.

While relatively little-known in the US she remains notably popular in the UK and her books are a delight to share with children.

Picture Books

Jack And the Beanstalk by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by Matt Tavares Suggested

Independent Readers

Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by H.R. Millar Highly Recommended

Lionel And The Book Of Beasts by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by Michael Hague Suggested

Melisenda by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by P. J. Lynch Suggested

The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by C.E. Brock Highly Recommended

Shakespeare's Stories for Young Readers by Edith Nesbit Suggested

The Best of Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit Suggested

The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by H. R. Millar & Herbert Granville Fell Suggested

The Children's Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit and William Shakespeare and illustrated by Rolf Klep Suggested

The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky Recommended

The House of Arden by Edith Nesbit Recommended

The Magic World by Edith Nesbit Suggested

The Phoenix and the Carpet by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by H. R. Millar Highly Recommended

The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by H. R. Millar Recommended

The Story of the Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by Gordon Browne & Lewis Christopher Edward Baumer Highly Recommended

William Shakespeare, Stories from Twenty Plays - by Edith Nesbit and Shakespeare Suggested

The Wouldbegoods - by Edith Nesbit Recommended

Bibliography

The Prophet's Mantle by Edith Nesbit 1885
Lays and Legends by Edith Nesbit 1886
Spring [ Summer, Autumn, Winter] Songs and Sketches by Edith Nesbit 1886
The Lily and the Cross by Edith Nesbit 1887
The Star of Bethlehem by Edith Nesbit 1887
Eventide Songs and Sketches by Edith Nesbit 1887
Morning Songs and Sketches by Edith Nesbit 1887
Leaves of Life by Edith Nesbit 1888
The Better Part and Other Poems by Edith Nesbit 1888
Easter-Tide: Poems by Edith Nesbit 1888
The Time of Roses by Edith Nesbit 1888
By Land and Sea by Edith Nesbit 1888
Landscape and Song by Edith Nesbit 1888
The Message of the Dove: An Easter Poem by Edith Nesbit 1888
Lilies and Heartsease: Songs and Sketches by Edith Nesbit 1888
The Lilies 'round the Cross: An Easter Memorial by Edith Nesbit 1889
Corals and Sea Songs by Edith Nesbit 1889
Life's Sunny Side by Edith Nesbit 1889
Songs of Two Seasons by Edith Nesbit 1890
The Voyage of Columbus, 1492: The Discovery of America by Edith Nesbit 1892
Sweet Lavender by Edith Nesbit 1892
Listen Long and Listen Well by Edith Nesbit 1893
Sunny Tales for Snowy Days by Edith Nesbit 1893
Told by Sunbeams and Me by Edith Nesbit 1893
Our Friends and All about Them by Edith Nesbit 1893
Something Wrong by Edith Nesbit 1893
Grim Tales by Edith Nesbit 1893
Flowers I Bring and Songs I Sing by Edith Nesbit 1893
Fur and Feathers: Tales for All Weathers by Edith Nesbit 1894
Hollow Tree House and Other Stories by Edith Nesbit 1894
Lads and Lassies by Edith Nesbit 1894
Tales That Are True, for Brown Eyes and Blue by Edith Nesbit 1894
Tales to Delight from Morning till Night by Edith Nesbit 1894
Hours in Many Lands: Stories and Poems by Edith Nesbit 1894
The Butler in Bohemia by Edith Nesbit 1894
A Family's Novelette by Edith Nesbit 1894
The Girl's Own Birthday Book by Edith Nesbit 1894
Doggy Tales by Edith Nesbit 1895
Pussy Tales by Edith Nesbit 1895
Tales of the Clock by Edith Nesbit 1895
Dulcie's Lantern and Other Stories by Edith Nesbit 1895
Treasures from Storyland by Edith Nesbit 1895
The King's Highway by Edith Nesbit 1895
Holly and Mistletoe: A Book of Christmas Verse by Edith Nesbit 1895
A Pomander of Verse by Edith Nesbit 1895
Rose Leaves by Edith Nesbit 1895
The Poet's Whispers: A Birthday Book by Edith Nesbit 1895
As Happy as a King by Edith Nesbit 1896
In Homespun by Edith Nesbit 1896
Tales Told in Twilight: A Volume of Very Short Stories by Edith Nesbit 1897
Diana Forget by Edith Nesbit 1897
The Children's Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit 1897
Royal Children of English History by Edith Nesbit 1897
Dog Tales, and Other Tales by Edith Nesbit 1898
Songs of Love and Empire by Edith Nesbit 1898
A Book of Dogs, Being a Discourse on Them, with Many Tales and Wonders by Edith Nesbit 1898
Winter-Snow by Edith Nesbit 1898
Pussy and Doggy Tales by Edith Nesbit 1899
The Secret of the Kriels by Edith Nesbit 1899
The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune by Edith Nesbit 1900
The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit 1900
Nine Unlikely Tales for Children by Edith Nesbit 1901
The Wouldbegoods, Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit 1901
The Town in the Library by Edith Nesbit 1901
To Wish You Every Joy by Edith Nesbit 1901
Thirteen Ways Home by Edith Nesbit 1901
The Revolt of the Toys and What Comes of Quarrelling by Edith Nesbit 1902
Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit 1902
The Red House by Edith Nesbit 1902
Playtime Stories by Edith Nesbit 1903
The Rainbow Queen and Other Stories by Edith Nesbit 1903
The Literary Sense by Edith Nesbit 1903
The Story of the Five Rebellious Dolls by Edith Nesbit 1904
The New Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit 1904
Cat Tales by Edith Nesbit 1904
The Phoenix and the Carpet by Edith Nesbit 1904
Pug Peter: King of Mouseland, Marquis of Barkshire, D.O.G. P.C. by Edith Nesbit 1905
Oswald Bastable and Others by Edith Nesbit 1905
The Philandrist; or, The Lady Fortune-Teller by Edith Nesbit 1905
The Rainbow and the Rose by Edith Nesbit 1905
The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit 1906
The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit 1906
The Incomplete Amorist by Edith Nesbit 1906
Man and Maid by Edith Nesbit 1906
The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit 1907
The Magician's Heart by Edith Nesbit 1907
Twenty Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare: A Home Study Course by Edith Nesbit 1907
The House of Arden by Edith Nesbit 1908
Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, 1883-1908 by Edith Nesbit 1908
Jesus in London: A Poem by Edith Nesbit 1908
The Old Nursery Stories by Edith Nesbit 1908
Harding's Luck by Edith Nesbit 1909
Cinderella (produced in London, 1892) by Edith Nesbit 1909
Daphne in Fitzroy Street by Edith Nesbit 1909
Salome and the Head: A Modern Melodrama by Edith Nesbit 1909
These Little Ones by Edith Nesbit 1909
The Magic City by Edith Nesbit 1910
Fear by Edith Nesbit 1910
The Wonderful Garden; or, The Three C's by Edith Nesbit 1911
Dormant by Edith Nesbit 1911
Ballads and Verses of the Spiritual Life by Edith Nesbit 1911
My Sea-Side Book by Edith Nesbit 1911
The Magic World by Edith Nesbit 1912
Unexceptional References by Edith Nesbit 1912
Garden Poems by Edith Nesbit 1912
Wet Magic by Edith Nesbit 1913
Our New Story Book by Edith Nesbit 1913
Wings and the Child; or, The Building of Magic Cities by Edith Nesbit 1913
Children's Stories from English History by Edith Nesbit 1914
Battle Songs by Edith Nesbit 1914
The Incredible Honeymoon by Edith Nesbit 1916
The New World Literary Series, Book Two by Edith Nesbit 1921
The Lark by Edith Nesbit 1922
Many Voices by Edith Nesbit 1922
Hubert Bland, Essays by Edith Nesbit 1922
To the Adventurous by Edith Nesbit 1923
Five of Us--and Madeline by Edith Nesbit 1925
Long Ago When I Was Young by Edith Nesbit 1966
The Conscience Pudding by Edith Nesbit 1970
The Last of the Dragons, and Some Others by Edith Nesbit 1972
The Princess and the Hedgehog by Edith Nesbit 1974
The Old Nursery Stories by Edith Nesbit 1975
Septimus Septimusson by Edith Nesbit 1976
Fairy Stories by Edith Nesbit 1977
The Princess and the Cat by Edith Nesbit 1977
The Ice Dragon by Edith Nesbit 1977
Belinda and Bellament by Edith Nesbit 1982
E. Nesbit's Tales of Terror by Edith Nesbit 1983
The Cockatoucan by Edith Nesbit 1987
The Book of Beasts by Edith Nesbit 1988
In the Dark: Tales of Terror by Edith Nesbit 1988
Melisenda by Edith Nesbit 1989
Man-size in Marble by Edith Nesbit 1997
The Best of Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit 1997
Contributor to A Feast of Good Stories by Edith Nesbit 1997
Jack and the Beanstalk by Edith Nesbit 2006
Lionel and the Book of Beasts by Edith Nesbit 2006
Shakespeare's Stories for Young Readers by Edith Nesbit 2006
The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit

Peacocks and Pagodas

Barry Rubin in an article dated February 13, 2008, in PajamasMedia, captures several strands of thinking with which I agree; the importance of historical perspective, dealing with the facts as they are rather than the theories as you wish them to be, the serendipity surrounding the life of a used book, and a skepticism of faddish intellectual indulgences.

Sometimes to understand one's own era you have to immerse yourself in another. I pick up my copy of Paul Edmonds' Peacocks and Pagodas as an example. This — though you've probably never heard of it — seems the best-regarded book ever written on the people and society of Burma. You may know it as Myanmar. What could be more esoteric, and yet profoundly revealing, about much broader issues?

My copy is a first edition from 1924 and in its long life and travels it once belonged to T.N. Jayavelu, Antiquarian Bookseller of Choolai, Madras, India. But now it resides on a low rickety table in Tel Aviv, at the top of the pile of books I am reading. My text for today's sermon comes from the first three pages only. We are nowadays used to the notion — or at least used to having it pounded into us — that Westerners were historically racist and imperialist, only recently having become enlightened in the age of "political correctness."

And, to paraphrase the Rudyard Kipling poem (and well-known song) about the road to Mandalay, it suddenly dawns on you like thunder that the contemporary conventional wisdom about how people in the West thought about the rest of the world just isn't true.

Churchill and Free Will

Here is an interesting aside from Churchill. Ever the English pragmatist, he has an interesting analogy for the conundrum of Free Will and Predestination. This arises in part from his reflecting on his third attempt at the entrance exam for Sandhurst when he was tested upon some obscure (at least obscure for Churchill) equation to which he had just coincidentally been exposed to the prior week.

From Winston S. Churchill's My Early Life, page 28 in the Folio Society edition.

Which brings me to my conclusion upon free will and predestination; namely - let the reader mark it - that they are identical.

I have always loved butterflies. In Uganda I saw glorious butteflies the colour of whose wings changed from the deepest russet brown to the most brilliant blue, according to the angle from which you saw them. In Brazil as everyone knows there are butterflies of this kind even larger and more vivid. The contrast is extreme. You could not conceive colour effects more violently opposed; but it is the same butterfly. The butterfly is the fact - gleaming, fluttering, settling for an instant with wings fully spread to the sun, then vanishing in the shades of the forest. Whether you believe in free will or predestination, all depends on the slanting glimpse you had of the colour of his wings - which are in fact at least two colours at the same time. But I have not quitted and renounced the mathematick to fall into the metaphysick. Let us return to the pathway of the narrative.

Churchill and Courteously Rigid Discipline

From Harrow, Churchill managed to gain entrance (after repeated effort) to Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point.

From Winston S. Churchill's My Early Life, page 50 in the Folio Society edition.

I learned several things at Sandhurst which showed me how to behave and how officers of different ranks were expected to treat one another in the life and discipline of a regiment. My company commander, Major Ball, of the Welsh Regiment, was a very strict and peppery martinet. Formal, reserved, frigidly courteous, punctilious, impeccable, severe, he was held in the greatest awe. It had never been his fortune to go on active service, but we were none the less sure that he would have had to be killed to be beaten.

The rule was, that if you went outside the college bounds, you first of all wrote your name in the company leave-book, and might then assume that your request was sanctioned. One day I drove a tandem (hired) over to Aldershot to see a friend in the militia battalion then training there. As I drove down the Marlborough lines, whom should I meet but Major Ball himself driving a spanking dog-cart home to Sandhurst. As I took off my hat to him, I remembered with a flash of anxiety that I had been too lazy or careless to write my name in the leave-book. However, I thought, 'there is still a chance. He may not look at it until mess; and I will write my name down as soon as I get back.' I curtailed my visit to the militia battalion and hastened back to the college as fast as the ponies could trot. It was six o'clock when I got in. I ran along the passage to the desk where the leave-book lay, and the first thing that caught my eyes were the Major's initials, 'O.B.', at the foot of the leaves granted for the day. I was too late. He had seen me in Aldershot and had seen that my name was not in the book. Then I looked again, and there to my astonishment was my own name written in the Major's handwriting and duly approved by his initials.

This opened my eyes to the kind of life that existed in the old British Army and how the very strictest discipline could be maintained among officers without the slightest departure from the standards of a courteous and easy society. Naturally after such a rebuke I never was so neglectful again.

Churchill and Harrow

Harrow is one of the ancient (1572) public (i.e. not run by the state) boarding schools of England. Along with Eton, it is immensely rich in history and tradition. Harrow has produced nine of the UK's prime ministers, including Winston Churchill.

From Winston S. Churchill's My Early Life, page 15 in the Folio Society edition.

I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when I entered the inhospitable regions of examinations, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey. These examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays. The examiners, on the other hand, were partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was unable to suggest a satifactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.

This was especially true of my entrance examination to Harrow. The Headmaster, Mr Welldon, however, took a broad-minded view of my Latin prose: he showed discernment in judging my general ability. This was the more remarkable, because I was found unable to answer a single question in the Latin paper. I wrote my name at the top of the page. I wrote down the number of the question '1'. After much reflection I put a bracket around it thus '(1)'. But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was either relevant or true. Incidentally there arrived from nowhere in paticular a blot and several smudges. I gazed for two whole hours at this sad spectacle: and then merciful ushers collected my piece of foolscap with all the others and carried it up to the Headmaster's table. It was from these slender indications of scholarship that Mr Welldon drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow. It is very much to his credit. It showed that he was a man capable of looking beneath the surface of things: a man not dependent upon paper manifestations. I have always had the greatest regard for him.