1906 fantasy for children. Living in Sussex, Dan and Una run into
Puck, who introduces them to aa variety of historical characters.
I wonder, in retrospect. By the time I learned history at school
(and the teachers made it deadly dull), the transition from the
traditional style of kings and battles and dates to "you are a peasant
dying of the Black Death, how do you feel" had been in progress for
some time. But I can't help thinking now that this may have been one
of the pebbles that began it: the people out of history who tell their
stories here are not princes or bishops but rather a single knight of
the Norman Conquest, or a single centurion on the Wall, while the
traditional teaching style gives very little impression of historical
people as human.
In some respects it's conventional children's fiction of its day; Dan
and Una have little distinctive personality since they're there
primarily to hear the stories, and Kipling makes the error that most
writers made (and continued for decades after this) of having the
children's memories of their meetings wiped before they go home. To
which I say: what is the point? Even if you don't regard that as
murder, and I do, what is the virtue in hearing these fascinating
stories and then immediately being made to forget them? They won't
become better people, more considerate stewards of the land, or
anything else; they'll just vaguely remember an afternoon in which
nothing much happened.
But the historical characters come solidly to life, not just in what
they say but in how they say it. They are good people and one would
be happy to spend more time in their company. There's a sense of being
on the Wall, or in a manor in Sussex, which is worth any number of
maps of troop movements or tinted diagrams of the extent of Roman
control in Britain over time. Even the pure fantasy is more about the
people than about the events.
All right, in his attitude towards the Jews in "The Treasure and the
Law" Kipling steers rather close to the sort of ignorant respect for a
Biblical idea and a stereotype (rather than for the actual people)
that feeds the modern apocalyptic movement, but he was certainly not
the only person of this era to think of "the Jewish race" as a single
unsplittable thing that would be more important than any other
characteristic of an individual.
It's lovely. I was very glad to revisit it after fifty-odd years.
Freely available from Project
Gutenberg.