1952 historical fiction for young people. Hugh Copplestone is orphaned
and living with his aunt and uncle; one of his few joys is his dog
Argos. When his nasty aunt plans to have the dog killed, he sees no
option but to get on the road, heading for Oxford, where his father
studied as a servant to a richer boy.
To me the weakest part of this is the beginning, and specifically
Aunt Alison: she is simply nasty, and while I accept that some
people just are nasty (especially from a child's viewpoint), I find
her portrayal simplistic compared with… well, everyone else in the
book. Her job in the story is to get Hugh on the road, and she does
it, but it's rare in my experience of Sutcliff to see someone so
blatantly there only in service of plot.
Also, like The Armourer's House from the previous year, this is
clearly a book for children written the style of books for children
that prevailed at the time, with occasional explanatory or didactic
asides from the narrator. (And, less obviously, the majority of the
names are ones that would have been familiar to an English child of
the 1950s, though they're appropriate to the period too.) I didn't
find them as distracting as in that book, though, perhaps because
we're not getting even a hint of Great Events here: Hugh falls in with
a band of travelling players, and the majority of the book is spent
exploring their life by showing it.
It's not just the setting up at inns, bringing in an audience, putting
on the play and passing the hat; it's the people they meet on the
road, and the awkwardnesses of local constables and such in an era
when most people still simply do not travel, and the rootless stranger
is regarded with grave suspicion because they're a stranger more than
because they're rootless.
It's a fine picaresque, trudging across the landscape of southern
England; not much action, perhaps, but a great deal of loving
description. And while this may be an era of rationality, there's
still room for something outside the normal way of things, especially
on a road as darkness falls.