Geoffrey Parker has taught English in schools and in colleges of education. He is currently Principal Lecturer in English at the City of Manchester College of Higher Education.

Geoffrey Parker

"The Wonder-Dog": the collected children's stories of Richard Hughes

This article reviews the collected children's stories of Richard Hughes pub- lished under the title The Wonder-Dog in the UK in July 1977 by Chatto and h;indus and in the USA in the autumn of 1977 by Greenwillow Books.

"I hope you are put in a graveyard when you are a hundred years old then we will not see you again and Be Sad," wrote my five-year-old to his grand- mother recently. Gregory would, I fancy, have found a kindred spirit in Richard Arthur Warren Hughes, whose writing often displayed the same kind of piercing and wide-eyed directness. His published output in fifty years of writing life was small but varied: plays (including the first play in the world written specially for radio), poems (early in his career), filmscripts (in a ten-year association with Ealing Studios), novels (four only) and stories for children. As Hughes was put in a graveyard last year, the promise of his fictional account of our time-The Human Predicament-unfulfilled, we have cause to Be Sad.

So the publication in London by Chatto & Windus and in New York by Greenwillow Books of the collected stories for children is a timely tribute. The title-story, "The Wonder-Dog," is new. It is preceded in the collection by eighteen of the twenty stories in The Spider's Palace (1931), which is also available in Puffin paperback. It is followed by ten of the thirteen stories from Don't Blame Met. (1940), which has not been reprinted since publication; one story, "The Doll and the Mermaid" was reissued as Ger- trude and the Mermaid (1972), following the publication of its sequel, Gertrude's Child (1967). The volume is introduced by the author himself in a new Foreword.

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From the Foreword we learn that the stories written down were only a few of many told and that they survived because a listener told them back. In- deed, the evidence of oral composition shows through all over this collec- tion. The storyteller improvises from tradition: compare "The Invitation" with "Cinderella" or "The Spider's Palace" with "The Frog Prince" or the Queen Ant in ' 'The Ants" and the donkey shuffle in "Don't Blame Me!" with Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts and Lobster-Quadrille respectively. The arbitrary fashion in which magic works can arbitrarily resolve the difficulties of making an ending, witness the convenient disappearance of the enormous button in "The Hasty Cook" or the return of the prisoners in "The Ants." The lesson may dominate the narrative, so that while "The Motherly Pig" and "Evacuation" may have provided reassurance about home to "six alien mites" during the clark clays of 1939, the moral seems rather too obvious now. (Incidentally, whatever happened to the seventh alien mite, named in the preface to the first edition of Don't Blame Me!?) Finally, there are those fascinating details about slug traps made out of orange peel, and about the way ants run, as well as comparisons with the little hairs on the back of your hand, all means by which the teller of a story establishes its authenticity beyond any shadow of doubt.

The collected children's stories of Richard Hughes 165

Geoffrey Parker "Richard Hughes' The Spider's Palace and Other Stories"

What, then, fuses together the elements of these improvised tales? Few would disagree fundamentally with Hughes' wise conclusion that "Differ- ences of social experience are superficial, affecting at most the stage- properties of a story: its power to hold the child lies deeper, in its empathy with those deep emotional disturbances all childhood is heir to: an empathy only communicable at the fantasy level." Nonetheless, many would think that an empathy with deep emotional disturbances and an interest in fantasy in themselves are insufficient to guarantee success as a teller of stories to children. If we rummage through our children's bookshelves we can find fantasies illustrating emotional disturbances so starkly that we hope they die the death. Hughes has modestly left out of account the artist's power of selecting and arranging his material with such grace as to make his stories compelling and memorable. The spellbinding qualities of Hughes' art have been amply evident and available in "The Spider's Palace and Other Stories." The question now is whether the riches of that collection, "The Glass-Ball

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R i c h a r d H u g h e s

"The Jungle School"

Country" and the rest, have been substantially added to by publication of The Wonder-Dog.

Introducing the original edition of Don't Blame Met., Richard Hughes de- scribed the first experience of evacuation as "a gigantic, prolonged, nation- wide children's party." No doubt it felt like that when his own family were joined by the evacuees from Birkenhead in 1939, and no doubt "The Palace on the Rock," about the king and queen living trapped in a one-room palace with nine unruly children, was sportively conceived out of that feeling. For several of the tales in Don't Blame Me! are clearly party stories. Fun predominates in the adventures of "A Sea Story," the playful fantasy

"of "Early Closing," the zany humour of "The Elephant's Picnic" (Apart from the anecdotal Irishman or the March Hare, who but an elephant would try to boil a kettle until it was tender?) and the folk-tale wisdom of"The jungle School." In this last:

�9 . . all the animals in the jungle met together and decided to have a school for their cubs. It was the parrot's idea:

"You see how clever and big going to school makes men and women grow," she said; "perhaps it would do the same for us."

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The collected children's stories o f Richard Hughes 167

So they all made up their minds to have a school; and next they had to decide who was to be mistress.

"I will be mistress," said the elephant's daughter, "because I can smack them with my long trunk."

But when the other animals thought of their poor little cubs being smacked by so enormous a mistress, they thought, No, she wouldn't do.

"I will be mistress," said the monkey, "because I'm so clever at stealing, and I will teach them all to steal as well as me."

At that all the other animals were terribly shocked and angry, and chased the monkey away as far as they could.

"I will be mistress," said the crocodile's daughter.

"Why?" said the other animals.

"Because I have nothing better to do," said the crocodile, and shut her jaws with a snap.

So that was s e t t l e d . . .

In the same manner, Miss Crocodile settles the venue of the school-in the middle of her swamp:

When the morning came, all the big animals brought their cubs down to the edge of the swamp. There they had to leave them, for the swamp was too quaky for the big, hea W animals to walk on: it was bad enough for the cubs, who were lighter. And even then they floundered and splashed about in the oozy mud, and actually had to swim in places; and some of them, especially the ones who hated getting wet, were rather frightened. But they were brave little cubs, and at last they all got to the crocodile's own pool right in the middle. Miss Crocodile had an old cracked bell in her wrinkled claw, and she was ringing it as hard as she could.

So all that morning she taught them lessons. But all she taught them was things about the swamp: muddy and oozy things, about rushes, and swamp-plants, and the sorts of slippery and creepy things that live in the swamp, and how to tell one kind of smelly slime from another.

Then dinner-time came, so the cubs all said: "Please, Miss, may we go home now for our dinners?"

"No, my dears," said Miss Crocodile, grinning with all her teeth, "you will stay here, for my dinner!"

Even so, in the end "all the cubs grew up to be wise and clever . . . much too wise and clever, by the time they were grown up, ever to let a crocodile be schoolmistress to their children!" There is another crocodile, this time disguising itself as a motor-bike, in Don't Blame Met. itself, which shows what a mad world we live in although it hints lightly at the deceptiveness of appearances too. Underlying themes of this kind, about time, for

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example, or the things we value, are less sharply driven home in Don't Blame Me! than they are in The spider's Palace.

Not surprisingly, we can see from these stories how fervently the guests at the wartime party were seeking reassurance along with their fun. There was more than enough excitement and danger threatening in the darkening and

: disturbed world outside, so that in response to the needs of the audience and the time, these stories seem to be more conventional in outlook, the range of fantasy more restricted, and the sense of purpose more obtrusive. There are fewer authoritarian villains and more support for living together, i t taking all sorts to make a world. There is less probing of the relationships between children and adults and more of an emphasis on home-any kind of home-as a place of refuge.

Richard Hughes "Evacuation"

In "Evacuation," the doll collects all the mites from the railway station and takes them to stay in her tin-kettle house because "The Billeting Officer says so." Unfortunately, after three beetles and a newt have made an easy entrance, a fat puppy gets her head fast in the kettle and runs away with it:

"That's my lovely home gone," said the tin doll sadly, "You evacuees really are a bit rough and careless."

"I think you had all better come into me," said a curious, thundery voice. The animals looked round, but they could not see where it came from.

"Who is that speaking?" said the bear.

"It 's me, the mountain," said the voice. "Look behind you."

So they looked behind them; and, sure enough, a cave had opened in the side of the mounta in-a pretty cave, with ferns all round the edge. The bear put his head in and sniffed.

"This is lovely," he said; "it couldn't be better! A nice dry cave with room for the lot of us!"

So all the animals trooped into the cave and ran out again to collect a pile of sticks. The glow-worm lit the sticks and made a fire, and the tin doll made tea for them all, and they all began to feel happier and soon forgot to be shy. The dormouse kept pushing the mole and giggling; and the cheeky little hedgehog (who knew he couldn't be smacked) called the tin doll "Auntie Tinkle."

"I wish I knew what had happened to my best friend, the newt," said the mouse when he had finished eating an enormous tea.

"Here I am," said a weak voice at the door of the cave; and the newt staggered in, looking much the worse for wear. He had got a black eye, and one of his paws was in a sling made of a blade of grass.

The collected children's stories of Richard Hughes i69

"Never in all my life," said he, "have I had such a shaking; but at last I managed to find my way out of the spout, and here I am."

"Hooray!" said all the animals. "We're glad to see you back."

Just then the puppy came in, looking very ashamed of himself. He had got his head out of the kettle at last. The tin doll, naturally, was very angry with him.

"I should like to know what you have done with my house!" she said. "It is all very well to turn it upside-clown," she said-"one expects that when evacuees come-bu t to rush off down the hill with my house on your head, and finally to lose it altogether, that is a bit too much!" However, she could not remain angry with him long, and there was plenty of tea left for him too.

"Now," said the bear, "only the beetles are missing."

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"They will be all right," said the zebra; "beetles can look after them- selves anywhere."

He had hardly said that when, with a buzz and a whirr, the three beetles flew in through the cave door and flopped down by the fire.

"Quick!" they said. "Some aspirin! We've got such splitting headaches."

The tin dolt seemed to have everything, even aspirin, and she quickly gave the beetles a dose. Then she made beds for the animals on the floor of the cave, each according to his size and shape, and they all settled down for the night.

"Well," said the bear to the monkey, "it's not so bad after all. I think it may be going to be fun."

But the monkey said nothing. For the tin doll had taken off her red tin petticoat for the night, and he was far too busy licking the red paint off it to be able to speak.

Ironically, "Home," the simple title of which characterises it as the most arehetypal presentation of the theme and the story least tied to the local wartime circumstances, has been omitted from The Wonder-Dog. (Since the story is virtually unobtainable except in the British Museum and in the files of the publishers, it is reproduced by the kind permission of Chatto 8: Windus at the end of this article.) It embodies qualities which remind us that the teller of these tales is none other than the author of A High Wind in Jamaica: he is relentlessly unsentimental about people, child and adult, refusing to accept conventional views of their relationships and compelling his reader to revalue his own experience and reassess his own nature; above all, he is an imaginative artist who gives shape, colour and focus to his narrative. The intense fusion of these qualities is generally what is missing from Don't Blame Me t . Although the stories are pleasant enough and al- though children will be glad to have them, there just isn't as much surprise and excitement to be had from them as from The Spider's Palace. The greater the pity, then, that "The Three Sheep," from The Spider's Palace, has also been omitted from The Wonder-Dog. Like "Home," it is a magical mystery tour representative of the most daringly imaginative aspect of Hughes' work.

There is some consolation in having "The Doll and Mermaid" united with its companion piece, "Gertrude's Child." In the first, Gertrude the doll is the plaything of others' affections but strikes out with surprising indepen- dence at the end, leading to a change of role in the second story, in which she becomes the owner of a little girl, Annie, purchased from a toy/pet shop. In turn, this leads to an amusingly topsy tur W scene when Gertrude throws a birthday party for Annie and when the teddy bear, the puppy, the dumpy doll and the rocking-horse all bring along their children:

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Richard Hughes "Gertrude's Child"

Richard Hughes "The Wonder-Dog"

Next came a puppy, dragging a small boy behind him on a rope. The puppy marched straight in without even a "How-d'you-do" to Gertrude and jumped up into a chair at the table where the food was spread out. The little boy tried to climb up beside him, but "Lie down!" barked the puppy to the little boy, "Or you'll be tied up outside and not have any cakes at all!"

So the little boy crept under the table, and curled up by his master's chair.

Then all the dolls and toys climbed into chairs. But their children were not allowed at table at all! The children had to sit in a row on a bench in the corner: only the puppy's little boy was allowed to stay curled up on the floor, chewing his rope.

"You be good!" shouted all the dolls and toys to the children together. "Then perhaps we'll let you have some bread-and-butter, if by the time we've finished the cakes we can't eat any more ourselves."

"I hear you have a child too, haven't you?" the teddy-bear asked Gertrude with his mouth full of chocolate biscuit: "Where is she?"

Goodness gracious! Once again Gertrude had altogether forgotten Annie, after sending her up to the bathroom to wash her hands!

Throughout this scene, and this pair of Gothic stories peopled by Struwwel- peterish figures, the kwapping about of roles poses questions to both adults and children about how they normally behave, a recurrent and inexhaustible theme which received its first magnificent statement by Hughes in his account of the dealings between the children and the pirates-the mending of the drawers and all- in A High Wind in Jamaica.

"The Wonder-Dog" itself, the one new story, does not maintain the same quality in its dual narrative lines of the dog's dealings with the spoilt princess on the one hand and the proud cat on the other. Brilliant improvisation makes it diverting along the way:

But the clog turned round to be off, and at that the birds all started talking at once-like this:

"Wait a minute!" sang the linnet, "What's the rush?" asked the thrush "Please don't go!" croaked the crow,

All together "Be a darling," begged the starling, "Stop a bit," chirped the tit, "Wait while we look," cawed the rook, "She's coming-hark!" sang the lark.

"But I can't wait!" cried the dog, putting his paws over his ears to keep out the noise of them all: "The soldiers will be here any minute!"

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"Then we'll have to hide you," said the robin. "Just you climb up into the tree."

So the wonder-dog climbed into the tree, and the birds all worked hard building a big nest round him to hide him. Rooks brought large twigs, blackbirds brought straws, little birds brought feathers and wool, and swallows brought sticky mud, and they all worked together without any quarrelling till in no time they had built such a huge nest round him that he couldn't be seen at all.

"Sh!" said the linnet. "Quiet, everybody! I think I can hear the soldiers."

So the soldiers came and searched all over the garden but they couldn't find the wonder-dog anywhere.

"He certainly isn't here," said the sergeant. "Come on, we must look somewhere else."

"What's that funny great bird's-nest up there?" said one of the soldiers. "It's big enough for an eagle or something. May I climb up and see?"

"No you don't!" said the sergeant. "What will the King say if we waste our time bird's-nesting instead of looking for the dog?"

So the soldiers all went away, and just then the cat came back.

When she saw that huge nest in her tree she was furious. "Those beastly disobedient birds!" she said. "I told them they mustn't and now they've built the most horrible untidy nest there I've ever seen! I must tear it down at once." So up she went. "If I find someone in it I'll eat him all up," she said.

"Grrr!" growled the dog, "You'll eat me up, will you?" And he stuck out his head with bared teeth.

Uncharacteristically for Hughes, however, the tale ends in weak poetic justice with the cat half-credibly trapped and the birds enjoying an incred- ibly catless universe.

For his collected stories, Richard Hughes has maintained his personal tradi- tion of bringing in a different illustrator for each new children's work. Exeunt George Charlton, Fritz Eichenberg, Rich Schreiter and Nicole Claveloux. Enter Antony Maitland, best known for his illustration of Leon Garfield's work. He is not Hughes' definitive illustrator, it being hard to imagine that sea-dragons with a mere six teeth in their jaws and the appear- ance of contented cows could champ a witch to bits ("A Sea Story"). His drawings lack drama, as compared, say, with George Charlton's for "The Dark Child" and "The Man with a Green Face" in The Spider's Palace. Maitland's drawing for "The Ants" must be excepted from this criticism, but usually his best illustrations are static-for example those for "The Glass-Bali Country" and "The Spider's Palace," and the still from "Evacuation."

The collected children's stories of Richard Hughes 173

Richard Hughes "Home" �9 Chatto & Windus

Whatever imperfections may be revealed by close scrutiny, The Wonder-Dog will stand in the open market asone hundred and eighty pages of enthralling stories for children between the ages of five and ten. For this, we-and they- can Be Glad.

HOME

The King and the Queen were out riding by themselves when they came to a stream. It was too wide for their horses to jump, so the King said to the Queen: "Let us follow this path on the bank until either we find a place narrow enough to jump, or shallow enough for our horses to wade through."

So they followed the path through the tangled woods along the bank. The woods were very thick and very dark; but the King and Queen were used to that, for all theircountry was dark forests and steep rocks. But the path did not seem to be leading them anywhere at all. It soon left the bank of the stream, and twisted and turned through the thickets until, after a while, they were properly lost.

"What shall we do now?" said the King.

"Ride on," said the Queen, "until we find somebody to tell us the way."

"We may ride all of a night and a day, and another night and another day, before we find that," said the King, "for there is hardly anybody living in this wood except squirrels; and it is no use asking a squirrel the way."

But they had not ridden very much farther when they came to a very smooth, bare rock, standing up in a small clearing, with bluebells growing round it; and sitting among the bluebells was a very old Chinaman. He sat so still that at first they wondered if he was alive, and the King got off his horse to look. When he peered at the Chinaman close-to, however, he saw that the Chinaman really was alive, and was watching them out of his very narrow eyes.

"Please," said the King politely, "will you tell us the way back to the Pal- ace ? We have lost our way."

But the Chinaman did not answer. And no wonder! He had been sitting amongst those bluebells, without moving, for more than a hundred years; and it was so long since he had spoken to anybody that a spider had spun a cobweb over his mouth, right from his nose to his chin.

"I don't think he is very likely to answer us," said the Queen doubtfully.

The spider ran out to the middle of his web, bringing a dried-up fly from his larder and sat there slowly munching it.

But the King was still watching the Chinaman carefully.

"Look!" he said suddenly. "His hand is moving!"

And so it was. Very slowly and stiffly the Chinaman was lifting his hand.

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Just in front of him there was a single plant growing that was not a blue- bell; and on it was one yellow bud. The Chinaman picked the bud and held it up towards the King. The King watched the bud, and presently saw it begin to open. It opened into a large yellow flower; and in the middle of the flower was a face. It was a young, very beautiful face, both flesh and sad; and suddenly it spoke in a clear, faint voice:

"You will never go back to the Palace," it said.

That was all: for while they were still watching, the beautiful little young face in the flower began to grow old, like an old woman's face, and the flower began to fade, and all its petals dropped off on the ground. The face shrivelled up and went brown, and the flower dried up and turned to a seed-box, and then the seed-box burst open and scattered seeds all over the ground.

"It must have taken more than a week for that to happen," said the King.

"It must have taken a lifetime," said the Queen.

"But if we are never to go back to the Palace," said the King, "I wonder where we shall go?"

The Chinaman dropped the withered stalk on the ground, and still moving his hand in a slow and jerky way, he took out of the folds of his robe a piece of chalk and drew a large window on the smooth rock that stood in the middle of the clearing. Through the window you could see a very different country; a country of rich green fields and wide, winding rivers, with blue sky, and white roads, and yellow corn-stacks. Then the China- man fumbled for the catch of the window and opened it.

"He means us to go to that country," said the King.

"We can't go dressed like this," said the Queen, "for we are not Queen and King there."

So the King and Queen took off their royal robes and laid them over the saddles of their horses; and the horses quietly trotted away into the dark wood,

Beside the Chinaman there was a pile of rough clothes such as farmers wear, and these the King and Queen put on. The King cocked his leg over the window-sill.

"Here goes!" he said, and slipped over into the country on the other side, and the Queen followed him.

They found themselves in a smooth, sheep-cropped meadow, which smelt of cowslips and wild thyme. They walked across it hand in hand, till they came to a little lane. The cart-ruts in the mud had dried hard as crusty bread. The lane was deep between banks in places, banks covered with more primroses than you have ever seen; and then farther on it went between green hedges, with gaps through which they saw more green fields.

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"I have never been here before," said the Queen; "of that I am certain," as they walked down the lane.

Presently the lane led into the yard of a little farm, and the farm dog came out, barking furiously. But when he saw the King and Queen he stopped barking and wagged his tail as if he was glad to see them, and jumped round them friskily.

"I think he means we should go in here," said the King as he opened the latch of the little gate that led into the front garden of the farmhouse.

There was a servant-girl at the front door dressed ready to go out.

"Oh, so here you are at last," she said to the King and Queen. "I'11 go now." She went away down the path, and the King and Queen walked into the farmhouse kitchen.

There were three little children sitting on the floor in front of the fire, toasting their bare toes; but as the King and Queen came in they jumped up and ran to them.

"Oh, Daddy!" they said. "Oh, Mummy! How glad we are you are back!"

The Queen sat down in a big armchair and took one of them on to her knee.

"Yes, my dears," she said, "and we are glad to be back too."

But at the same time she knew for certain she had never seen them before; and she had not the slightest idea of their names.

References

Hughes, Richard (1940) Don't Blame Me! London: Chatto & Windus Hughes, Richard (1972) Gertrude and the Mermaid New York and London:

Harlin Quist Hughes, Richard (1967) Gertrude's Child New York and London: Harlin

Quist Hughes, Richard (1960) A High Wind in Jamaica London: Chatto & Windus,

Penguin; New York: Harper & Row Hughes, Richard (1962) The Spider's Palace London: Chatto & Windus, Pen-

guin; New York: Random House Hughes, Richard (1977) The Wonder-Dog London: Chatto & Windus; New

York: Morrow Parker, Geoffrey (1976) "The Spider's Palace and Other Stories" Children's

literature in education No. 20 (Spring)