The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston (illustrated by Peter Boston).
Title: The Children of Green Knowe.
Author: Lucy M. Boston (illustrated by Peter Boston).
Genre: Fiction, children's lit, YA.
Country: England, U.K..
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1954.
Summary: Green Knowe is a haunted manor deep in an overgrown garden in the English countryside, dating from the Norman Conquest, and continually inhabited by many generations of the d'Aulneaux family. The novel concerns the visit of a young boy, Toseland, who explores the rich history of his family, which pervades the house like magic. He begins to encounter what appear to be the spirits of three of his forebears, who teach him about the history and magic of the past.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ "I wish it was the Flood," thought the boy, "and that I was going to the Ark. That would be fun! Like the circus. Perhaps Noah had a whip and made all the animals go round and round for exercise. What a noise there would be, with the lions roaring, elephants trumpeting, pigs squealing, donkeys braying, horses whinnying, bulls bellowing, and cocks and hens always thinking they were going to be trodden on but unable to fly up on to the roof where all the other birds were singing, screaming, twittering, squawking and cooing. What must it have sounded like, coming along on the tide? And did Mrs Noah just knit, knit and take no notice?"
♥ He had been at a boarding-school, and for the last holidays he had been left behind to stay with the head mistress, Miss Spudd, and her old father. They meant to be kind to him, but they never spoke to him without saying "dear". It was "Finish up your porridge, dear, we don’t want you to get thin," or "Put on your coat, dear, we don’t want you to catch cold," or "Get ready for church, dear, we don’t want you to grow up a heathen."
♥
Toseland waved the lantern about and saw trees and bushes standing in the water, and presently the boat was rocked by quite a strong current and the reflection of the lantern streamed away in elastic jigsaw shapes and made gold rings round the tree trunks. At last they came to a still pool reaching to the steps of the house, and the keel of the boat grated on gravel. The windows were all lit up, but it was too dark to see what kind of a house it was, only that it was high and narrow like a tower.
♥ The entrance hall was a strange place. As they stepped in, a similar door opened at the far end of the house and another man and boy entered there. Then Toseland saw that it was only themselves in a big mirror. The walls round him were partly rough stone and partly plaster, but hung all over with mirrors and pictures and china. There were three big old mirrors all reflecting each other so that at first Toseland was puzzled to find what was real, and which door one could go through straight, the way one wanted to, not sideways somewhere else. He almost wondered which was really himself.
♥ He forgot about her being frighteningly old. She had short silver curls and her face had so many wrinkles it looked as if someone had been trying to draw her for a very long time and every line put in had made the face more like her.
♥
♥ "So you’ve come back!" she said, smiling, as he came forward, and he found himself leaning against her shoulder as if he knew her quite well.
"Why do you say 'come back'?" he asked, not at all shy.
"I wondered whose face it would be of all the faces I knew," she said. "They always come back. You are like another Toseland, your grandfather. What a good thing you have the right name, because I should always be calling you Tolly anyway. I used to call him Tolly."
♥ "Do you want to read the newspapers now?"
"Good gracious no, child. What should I do that for? The world doesn’t alter every day. As far as I can see, it’s always the same."
♥ "The Linnet?" said Toseland, turning to his great-grandmother.
"Yes," she said. "There’s always a boat called Linnet on the river."
"That’s right," said Boggis. "There’s always a Linnet. This one’s new - leastways not more than twenty years old - but I used to go out in the old Linnet when I was a boy, and my grandfather used to talk about fishing at night with torches from the Linnet when he was young."
♥
♥ "I feel as though I had lived here always," said Toseland. "Why is it called Green Noah?"
Mrs Oldknow’s face suddenly creased into rings of unhappy wrinkles.
"For someone who’s lived here always, you ask a lot of questions," she said.
"I know, Granny. But tell me, please."
"It’s not the real name," she said. "It used to be called Green Knowe, but it - got changed. A long time ago." That was all she would say.
♥ "Toby and he loved each other more than anything on earth."
"But the deer was Toby’s too," said Tolly, gazing at the picture. "Isn’t it beautiful! A deer seems more magic than a horse."
"Very beautiful fairy-tale magic, but a horse that thinks the same thoughts that you do is like strong magic wine, a love philtre for boys."
♥ The garden had looked very desolate when the water was over it, but now even the trees looked different and every path seemed to lead just where it was most exciting to go.
♥
♥ Boggis had gone out on a message for Mrs Oldknow, and she herself was writing letters, so Tolly was alone again, but he had almost forgotten that it was sometimes dull.
He went back to the Green Deer full of expectation, but all the birds seemed asleep and there was not a sound anywhere. The Green Deer did not seem magic now. It was not listening, its eyelessness was just stupid, not an added sense. The squirrel also was only a bush cut to shape. Tolly had come with an excited imagination. He collected beech nuts and put them before the squirrel, and handfuls of dry hay for the deer, but it turned out only a dull make-believe. Nothing moved, nothing happened. All his interest faded away. He could think of nothing to do alone and as the afternoon wore on he felt lonely and neglected. He went back to the stables, but they were only empty buildings. There was no echo, there was nothing, there was nobody. When it began to get dark he went indoors. Mrs Oldknow was getting the tea ready.
"Can I come in now?" he asked. She looked at him quickly and saw at once what was the matter.
"Yes, come in, darling. You’ve been alone quite long enough, and so have I. It’s been one of those afternoons when nothing will come alive. I know them. Sit down there opposite your friends, and after tea we’ll see what we can do together."
♥ Tolly woke the next morning, still excited with the knowledge that the world into which he was born had once produced a Feste.
♥ He felt the wall where they had been; he looked all round. He ran out to the Green Deer, but the clearing was empty and quiet. Certainly the Green Deer looked magic enough, ready to spring away. The light was queer too, the sky was dark green, the wind dead. Tolly was half frightened. Something was going to happen.
As he looked up at St Christopher’s face a snowflake drifted past it, then another, and suddenly it was snowing thickly. Like millions of tiny white birds circling home to roost, the flakes danced in the air. They filled the sky as far up as he could imagine. At the same time all the sounds in the world ceased. The snow was piling up on the branches, on the walls, on the ground, on St Christopher’s face and shoulders, without any sound at all, softer than the thin spray of fountains, or falling leaves, or butterflies against a window, or wood ash dropping, or hair when the barber cuts it. Yet when a flake landed on his cheek it was heavy. He felt the splosh but could not hear it.
He went in plastered with snow, and here tea was ready, with Mrs Oldknow sitting by the fire waiting for him. In the fire the snow drifting down the chimney was making the only noise it ever can - a sound like the striking of fairy matches; though sometimes when the wind blows you can hear the snow like a gloved hand laid against the window.
♥
♥
The chaffinch was tugging at a piece of string that went down between two floor-boards where the crack was rather large. His claws were spread to give him a better hold on the floor, but when he arched his back to pull and jerked his head, his claws slipped again, so that he was clearly cross.
♥ "Why doesn’t he want it now?" Mrs Oldknow looked at him with an uneasy wrinkled face. Then she sighed.
"Because he’s dead," she said at last.
Tolly sat dumbfounded, with his big black eyes fixed on her. He must have known of course that the children could not have lived so many centuries without growing old, but he had never thought about it. To him they were so real, so near, they were his own family that he needed more than anything on earth. He felt the world had come to an end.
"Are they all dead?" he said at last.
"They all died together in the Great Plague. The farm bailiff, Boggis, had been to London on business and he brought the infection back with him. Toby and Alexander and Linnet and their mother all died in one day, in a few hours. And little Boggis too. Only poor old grandmother was left, too unhappy to cry."
Tolly sat cross-legged with his head hanging, trying not to show his face.
Mrs Oldknow got up and walked to the door where she could look down the staircase into what Tolly called the Knight’s Hall, as if she were looking for someone.
"After all," she said, "it sounds very sad to say they all died, but it didn’t really make so much difference. I expect the old grandmother soon found out they were still here."
♥
Tolly was watching something travelling across the floor towards him. It was a marble, a glass one with coloured spirals in the middle. It stopped by his listless fingers. He picked it up. It was warm.
He glanced round the room but saw nothing, except that the dust of which the old box and its contents were full was hanging in the air as if newly disturbed. Then under his eyes the dominoes began of their own accord to stand themselves on end one by one, till they made a long regular curving line, each an inch behind the other. When they were all standing, an unseen finger pushed the last one, which fell over and knocked down the one in front of it. With a soft purr which startled the inquisitive chaffinch up into the air, each domino in turn fell forward till all were lying flat on their white faces, showing a long ribbon of black backs.
♥
When the room was comfortably full of shadow doubles of things he liked, and his own shadow had sat up in bed and stretched a long arm to touch the outstretched nose of the shadow rockinghorse, he blew out the candle by his bed and curled up to sleep.
♥ He was glad when he reached the house. Mrs Oldknow was waiting for him by the door. When she saw his eyes shining like big lamps she was very gentle.
"Sit down," she said. "I’ll help you to get rid of some of this snow. I expect your Wellingtons are quite full. Pull! And all up inside your sleeves and your trousers - you are packed in snow!"
Tolly said nothing, but leant against her, and it felt nice. She was real, certain, and understanding.
♥ When they had finished making sillies of themselves and Mrs Oldknow had wiped the laughter tears from her eyes, she suggested a lesson on the flute. Tolly was willing. "But," he said, "Alexander has got it. How can there be two of it?"
"The one he has now is part of him. This is the one he used to have. It is like a snake-skin when the snake sloughs it off." Tolly was displeased with this idea.
♥
♥ "Was the Great Plague awful?"
Alexander looked up smiling. "No," he said. "It only lasted a few hours. I’d forgotten all about it."
♥ Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!
He could almost imagine the Archangel must hear, might come.
♥
There was something outlined against the panes. It was the back of a curly head, and two little fists hammering on the glass inside scared the owl away.
♥ He went to the fish platform and broke the ice there, clearing a pool and throwing bread in. Neptune’s ugly snout with whiskers made of flesh like sea-anemones came and sucked it in. But Tolly could not love Neptune. Mrs Oldknow said that when he was young he was almost as pretty as a goldfish. Tolly fed him for Toby’s sake, but thought he was horrid.
♥ "Boggis," he asked presently, "have you got a grandson?"
"I had, but he was killed in the last war."
"Well, have you got a son?"
"I had, two. But they were killed in the first war."
Tolly was upset by this news. How would anything go on if there wasn’t a Boggis? Then he remembered that he was only there himself as if it were sideways, through his mother.
"Well, haven’t you a grand-daughter, then?"
"Yes, I have. And she’s got a son."
"But he won’t be called Boggis."
"Yes, he will that."
"Oh, then that’s all right."
"No, it isn’t all right. It’s all wrong, because she isn’t married."
"But there must be a Boggis, mustn’t there?"
"Well, Master Toseland, I shouldn’t say so, least of all to you, but I do like to think he’ll have the name. The child just missed being called Liquorice, and what sort of a name is that!" Boggis guffawed, rocking on his heels. "Percy Liquorice! That’s what he’d have been. And his mother’s a good girl barring accidents."
♥ After lunch he wandered back to the house. It seemed very empty without Mrs Oldknow, as though not only she had gone, but all the possibilities of the house had gone with her.
♥ There was a red pencil mark under the title ‘Homes the Crusaders Left Behind Them’. It was a long article, too full of historic references for Tolly to read, but it was illustrated with photographs of such houses as still existed from which crusaders were known to have gone. Green Knowe was one of them, and there was a photograph of St Christopher and an imaginary drawing of the Chapel.
The other magazine was called Adam’s Seed. It was all about gardening, and the sender had marked with red pencil ‘Some Unusual Topiary’. There were photographs of different things that had been cut out of yew and holly - yew eagles, a yew ship, yew chessmen, crowns, armchairs, a holly horse, a yew lady in a bath in a willow summerhouse plaited like a basket out of living wands. Turning the page he came upon the green deer, the squirrel, the hare, the cock and hen - and Green Noah, a photograph taken a long time ago, because it showed Noah smaller and closely trimmed. Tolly began to read in earnest.
"Perhaps the most unusual and romantic of these examples is that of the Green Noah which now gives its name to the estate on which it stands, though the original name was Green Knowe. The story about it is widespread. It has been told me in much the same form in different “locals” all over the county, and also still further afield, by old men who remembered hearing it in their childhood. It seems that an old gardener called Boggis first shaped the various animals and later added a figure of Noah. He was much addicted to drink and suffered from delusions, but no one can deny his skill, and his employer appears to have allowed him a free hand. When Noah was a few years old and growing nicely, it happened that a famous horse-thief was caught red-handed in the stables of Green Knowe, as it was still called. He came up before the owner, Judge Oldknow, for trial. He was condemned, and after lying in Newgate prison for some years, he was deported to Botany Bay. His mother, Old Petronella, a gypsy and a notorious witch, is said to have revenged herself by breaking into the gardens during an eclipse of the moon and there with horrible dancing and laughter that was heard in the house (though no one knew what it was that so chilled their blood) she laid a curse on the Green Noah. The traditional version is:
Snippet snappet
Shapen yew
Devil’s image
Take on you.
Evil grow,
Evil be,
Green Noah
Demon Tree.
"As the tree grew, a series of unexplained accidents overtook the men of the family, in every case due to shying or bolting horses. According to the villagers, the horses panicked because of a blind figure that prowled by night. Some say that Old Petronella herself was caught by him in the end. Before long the name Green Knowe was forgotten, the people insisting on calling it Green Noah. The photograph that is reproduced here is at least thirty years old, as for a long time nobody has been willing to trim the Old Gentleman. It is to be hoped that in the end he will lose all resemblance and the curse will lapse."
♥ "How were the birds last night?" she asked.
"They made an awful mess. Don’t they know?"
"It is surprising from such well-mannered little things. They don’t know and they can’t learn! You’ll have to spread newspapers. It thawed this afternoon, but it is freezing again now. How the owls screamed last night!"
Tolly laughed, partly because he had been so frightened, partly with pleasure because the little birds had been safe. "I hope they screamed with rage," he said boldly.
♥ It was late afternoon before they finished the Christmas tree, and it was growing dark. They lit the old red Chinese lantern and many candles so that they could see to work. There were no glaring electric bulbs on this tree. Mrs Oldknow had boxes of coloured glass ornaments, each wrapped separately in tissue paper and put carefully away from year to year. Some were very old and precious indeed. There were glass balls, stars, fir-cones, acorns and bells in all colours and all sizes. There were also silver medallions of angels. Of course the most beautiful star was fixed at the very top, with gold and silver suns and stars beneath and around it. Each glass treasure, as light as an eggshell and as brittle, was hung on a loop of black cotton that had to be coaxed over the prickly fingers of the tree. Tolly took them carefully out of their tissue paper and Mrs Oldknow hung them up. The tiny glass bell-clappers tinkled when a branch was touched. When it was all finished, there were no lights on the tree itself, but the candles in the room were reflected in each glass bauble on it, and seemed in those soft deep colours to be shining from an immense distance away, as if the tree were a cloudy night sky full of stars. They sat down together to look at their work. Tolly thought it so beautiful he could say nothing, he could hardly believe his eyes.
♥ "Who is it?" he whispered.
"It’s the grandmother rocking the cradle," said Mrs Oldknow, and her eyes were full of tears.
"Why are you crying, Granny? It’s lovely."
"It is lovely, only it is such a long time ago. I don’t know why that should be sad, but it sometimes seems so."
The singing began again.
"Granny," whispered Tolly again with his arm through hers, "whose cradle is it? Linnet is as big as I am."
"My darling, this voice is much older than that. I hardly know whose it is. I heard it once before at Christmas."
It was queer to hear the baby’s sleepy whimper only in the next room, now, and so long ago. "Come, we’ll sing it too," said Mrs Oldknow, going to the spinet. She played, but it was Tolly who sang alone, while, four hundred years ago, a baby went to sleep.
♥ Tolly was far too excited to think of going to bed. His head was in a whirl, thinking of the Christmas tree, of the live partridge that should arrive tomorrow, of his present for his great-grandmother, of the probability that there would be some sort of a present for him, of the cradle song in Mrs Oldknow’s room, of the children, of the loveliness of everything.
♥ Tolly opened the door into the garden. It was a dark evening with tattered clouds in front of a slatey sky. He heard no thunder. It was even unnaturally quiet. Perhaps it only seemed unnatural because he himself was brimming with excitement. He heard the weir pounding at the end of the garden. It only made the quietness quieter. It was rather like a heart that is only heard when it beats too loud.
♥ He himself remained rooted to the ground. He did not know which way to run, where there would not be entangling branches or the edge of a path to trip him up. How could one hide from the blind? They would not even know you were hiding. The fumbling fingers were just as likely to hit on you behind a bush as in the open.
♥
Moaning winds were rushing and leaping round the circle of the garden, leaving a silence in the centre where something dreadful was certainly taking place. It felt like the pressure of opposing thunderstorms before they break. The air was prickly and the suspense so great that Tolly could not breathe, could hardly stand, his heart nearly choked him. At last a great forked lightning zig-zagged out of the sky, so bright that Tolly could not see anything else, with instantaneous thunder crashing and rolling, enough for ten lightnings. The air was full of a smell of burning.
"Ah!" said Linnet, Toby and Alexander from the shadows.
"Ah!" said lots of other happy voices. "Green Noah’s gone."
♥ His shadow had long legs that he was rather proud of.
"Granny," he said, "your shadow looks just like a partridge."
"I’ve often thought you don’t always know whose shadow comes out with you."
♥ Tolly’s eyes wandered sleepily over his room, acknowledging all his treasures, and their shadows that he loved perhaps almost more.