Books
Sugar and spice - Bee Wilson on a childhood favourite that exposes the childishness in aristocratic life
Published 15 December 2003
The Young Visiters
Daisy Ashford, P. Simmonds (Illustrator), Chatto and Windus, £8.99
ISBN 0701127252
''When the great morning came Mr Salteena did not have an egg for his breakfast in case he should be sick on the jorney." This has some claim to being the best line ever written on the excitement and biliousness of travel. That it was written by a nine-year-old girl is by the by.
The girl was Daisy Ashford and the year was 1890. Her masterpiece, The Young Visiters, has never been out of print since it was first published in 1919, with an introduction by J M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. It tells the story of Mr Salteena, "an elderly man of 42" who is determined to become a gentleman; of the bad-tempered, vain, 17-year-old heroine, Ethel Montacue, who is forever putting on rouge; and of Bernard Clark, a long-legged aristocrat who effortlessly wins Ethel's heart and so breaks Mr Salteena's. It has just been republished by Chatto & Windus (£8.99), with rather disappointing illustrations by Posy Simmonds, to coincide with a BBC Christmas adaptation starring Jim Broadbent and Hugh Laurie. Ashford never wrote anything as a grown-up, and there have always been rumours that her "manuscript" was really the creation of Barrie. To those of us who reread The Young Visiters at least once a year, such rumours seem absurd. Ashford's is a distinctive voice, the voice of a novelist at the height of her powers.
The Young Visiters is one of those books I love so fiercely, it annoys me when other, fair-weather devotees admire it for the wrong reasons. There is a misconception among some readers that its chief merit is as a medley of unintended double entendres and childish malapropisms. It is true that Bernard, the dashing hero, is forever "ejaculating", and that Ethel is described at one point as laying an egg for Mr Salteena. But if Ashford had been fully grown when she wrote these lines, literary critics would call them not mistakes, but telling disclosures.
Another misconception is that The Young Visiters is essentially sweet. This is wrong. There are plenty of sweet things in it - the Prince of Wales lapping up strawberry ice cream, Mr Salteena revelling in his early-morning tea in bed, Ethel being given a baby calf as a wedding present. But the heart of the book is as cruel as Balzac: love hurts, money excludes, class divides. The dry-lipped, fat-legged Mr Salteena, the "son of a first rate butcher" and "not quite the right side of the blanket", can never compete with the "presumshious" Bernard Clark, a blue-eyed toff whose bathroom has "a tip up bason and a hose thing for washing your head".
The scenes in which Mr Salteena tries to become "the real thing" in "compartments" at Crystal Palace are at once hysterically funny and very painful. The wonderfully named Earl of Clincham fleeces Salteena for £42 in exchange for lessons in becoming "less mere" and acquiring a title. "Personally I am a bit parshial to mere people said his Lordship but the point is that we charge a goodly sum for our training here." Poor Salteena rolls up his trousers to look like breeches and pins a silver star made from paper to his chest. "Then Mr Salteena survayed himself in the glass. Is it a fancy dress party he asked."
So, far from being childish in itself, The Young Visiters exposes the essential childishness in aristocratic life. Levees, for example, are defined as parties at which earls "strole around and eat ices and champaigne", and occasionally "talk about law and politics . . . if Her Majesty is in that kind of mood". The posh people in the book are always described as doing things "carelessly": waving their hands loftily, basking under spreading trees, staying at "the Gaiety" hotel and "enjoying a little table d'hote followed by a theater". Mr Salteena, who travels second class, can-not afford to be careless. His social position makes him "peevish" and "towsld", constantly licking his dry lips, which only makes him even less hero-like.
We sense all along that Salteena wants to become a gentleman only to win Ethel's heart (just as Gatsby gives parties only to please Daisy). We also know that "sneery" Ethel, who disparages his "stuffy domain", will refuse him, and even enjoy his discomfort.
This is agony cried Mr Salteena clutching hold of a table my life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.
Be a man said Ethel in a gentle whisper and I shall always think of you in a warm manner.
Well half a loaf is better than no bread responded Mr Salteena in a gloomy voice . . .
His "half a loaf" turns out to be a job galloping after the royal carriage, and marriage to a maid at Buckingham Palace "by name Bessie Topp a plesant girl of 18 with a round red face and rarther stary eyes", who gives him ten children but becomes "a bit annoying at times especially when he took to dreaming of Ethel and wishing he could have marrid her".
A lesser writer would have given Mr Salteena the happy-ever-after we desperately want for him, as in Shakespeare's comedies where it all comes good at the end. Ashford knew better. She knew that happy unions can leave lifelong envy and depression in their wake. If that isn't grown-up, I don't know what is.
Bee Wilson is writing a book about bees
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