CHILDREN'S BOOKS Gorey hallelujah
CANDIDA LYCETT GREEN
hat a relief, oh what a relief to have orious Edward Gorey creeping from dark rners of the page into our children's bed- me story reading, instead of the boring,
n of the mill vulgarity which usually amps us and, for lack of anything better, vamps our children as well. It is, after all, parents who have to endure most of the oks most of the time, and it is difficult
o express any enthusiasm or animation hen one is not fairly engrossed oneself.
On first looking into his illustrations to ese three books, I had a faint apprehen- on that my children might cast them aside, s being too weird and whimsical, after ir 'Noddy' conditionit:g. Happily the pposite was true—I should have known
it children have an insatiable appetite r the strange and the mysterious, which far too often unfulfilled.
Muriel Spark's The Very Fine Clock acmillan, 18s) is the story of a plain, ordi- ry clock called 'Ticky' who lives on a vet- -covered table in the house of Professor orace John Morris. She is much revered,
her constant reliability, by her owner d his four professorial friends, who, fter long discussions on the marvels of r character, decide to offer a proles- rship to Ticky. She is flattered but Is bound to decline for fear of losing the iendship she enjoys with the other clocks the house. I suppose the moral of the ory is that humility is the surest road to ppiness, but I doubt whether many ildren (unless particularly self-righteous) ill be satisfied with this conclusion.
Though clocks may be perfect objects for imation (they have, after all, got ready- ade faces and characters), and though rs Spark's clocks are treated with the tmost delicacy (Pepita the Spanish mother- -pearl clock in the spare room whose trt keeps missing a beat), the text on its n is not much more than a nice obscure cdote for adults—inferring that you will your common or garden friends if you cept a knighthood or a CBE (which isn't
always true anyway). Ah, but wait, Edward Gorey's illustrations have made it some- thing else. Most of them seem to have very little to do with the story, some are fantastic and irrelevant extensions thereof: tall willowy figures with supercilious airs float- ing about on richly patterned floors —aspidistras in shadowy corners—strange ladies gliding past elegant french windows— exotic wallpapers and tapestries. All con- veying a very haunting atmosphere. I doubt whether this extravagant elaboration on Mrs Spark's pleasantly obscure theme could fail to impress children, or could fail to leave strange images with them which will take a long time to forget.
Rhoda Levine's He Was There from the Day We Moved In (Quist, 15s) is a very different cup of tea. It is about a dog, a large Old English Sheepdog who is just there, with no explanation, sitting at the bottom of the garden when an all-American family move into their new house. The two children try every conceivable way of dis- covering what the dog is waiting for and, after plying it with food, toys, even a cat, finally decide that all it wants is a name. Since I was waiting expectantly (like the dog) for the children to hit on the right name, I was amazed and disappointed to discover that in fact a name is never found, and the dog is still sitting there sadly on the last page. Again, many children will be dissatisfied with this inconclusiveness, though the text is clear, clipped, very American (none of Mrs Spark's gentle obscurity here), and also very funny.
Gorey's illustrations are no longer mysterious and intricately woven in his usual style, but instead uncomplicated, endearing and definitely friendly. His por- trayal of the dog is irresistible—he has managed to make it look lost and lovable despite the fact that its face is completely obscured by fur; indeed, without this picture I don't think I would have been half so concerned about the welfare of the luckless dog.
From Muriel Spark's 'The Very Fine Clock' The Jumblies (Chatto and Windus, 12s) goes without reviewing. Edward Lear made only one drawing for it and, in this well- produced (good safe present) book. Edward Gorey has made one illustration for each stanza. Strangely enough, his style is very comparable with Lear's and he has captured perfectly the magical mystery of the poem. Though I like to think that I have no need for illustrations to such a poem, children can never have enough. The Jumblies them- selves are portrayed as a sufficiently mad collection of people with extraordinary hats, pursed lips and thin arms; they look vaguely contented in the sieve, and have no air of expectancy during their travels. The only time the thin lines of their lips widen is when they return to their fatherland looking justifiably complacent, for they've proved to those they left behind that to go to sea in a sieve is neither mad nor unsafe. There is a pleasing note at the end of the book from Edward Gorey: 'In stanza five, presumably Mr Lear forgot to write a line to rhyme with "And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Bee". which is why in the picture one of the Jumblies is carrying Nothing-At-All.' This adds to my feeling that Gorey has an affinity with Lear, and it looks just as though the poem and the illustrations had been produced in complete conjunction.
Though it is impossible to improve on The Jumblies or anything that happens to the Jumblies. there is everything to be said for having an added bonus of illustra- tions which do not detract from the glory of Edward Lear's imagination. God bless the sieve and all who sail in her, Edward Gorey included. On the other hand, The Very Fine Clock and Ile Was There from the Day We Moved In left large gaps in their texts which children could not have bridged had not Edward Gorey stepped forward, in his long overcoat and his plim- solls, and covered the pages with his very fine pen indeed.
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