No longer born free
A childhood nightmare: Violet Elizabeth Bott, the girl with ringlets and a frock who threatened to scream and scream until she was sick
When I was around nine years old, I found in the bookcase at my grandparents’ country house in San Pawl tat-Targa, then a place of spreading fields and overarching silence, some old books with red covers.
They looked rather less boring than the rest of the contents of those shelves, so, tired of kicking my heels around and having exhausted all possibilities for the investigation of insects in the garden, I tugged one out at random and began to read.
Immediately, I was riveted. It turned out to be about children and street-gangs (in the old-fashioned meaning of the word), the petty rivalries and great wars between them, and the personal dynamics of leaders and followers.
I wouldn’t have put it that way at the age of nine. All I knew was that it was a familiar world and one which I understood. Almost every house in the Sliema neighbourhood where I grew up contained children, and most of those children played on the streets, ran between each other’s houses, formed amorphous gangs, threw stones at each other in winter and crossed the road to the beach in summer.
There were some old-fashioned parents, fraught with anxiety about their social standing, who in the 1970s – incredibly, it now seems – thought it unfitting for their children to play on the streets. This had nothing to do with their safety. There was no traffic. Everyone knew who the dirty old men were and avoided them. And the inevitable cuts and bruises were hastily patched up with raw iodine that turned our skin yellow and a piece of Elastoplast. It was because, in their angst-ridden view, the street was for urchins. The curious thing is that those children, now all in their 40s, remain perceptibly different to the rest of us. The skills they failed to learn by negotiating with other children on the streets have continued to elude them.
Those books were the Just William series, and I slipped with ease into the fictional streets and lanes of a quiet 1920s English village because though the physical landscape would have been very different to that of the 1920s terraced streets of a Maltese seaside town, the children conjured up by Richmal Crompton were not.
Though I didn’t know it then (and wouldn’t have cared even if I did, because a book’s significance to a child lies only in its entertainment value), I realise now that the William books I devoured on those long Sunday afternoons were the original editions published by George Newnes, now amongst the most collectable and valuable of all children’s fiction. They had long since lost their dust-jackets, doubtless at the hands of those family members whose names were scribbled inside and whose doodles of boredom defaced the title pages.
The series is commonly called ‘Just William’, after the name of the very first one, published in 1922. But these timeless stories actually span five decades, which is why they are familiar to different generations and why William Brown, the eponymous hero of the series, is one of the great icons of English children’s literature.
The fictional boy William Brown first appeared as a character in a story called Rice Mould, in Home Magazine, published in England in 1919 for readers still dealing with the traumatic aftermath of a long and horrible war which had culled hundreds of thousands of the country’s real boys. He proved to be so popular that Home Magazine carried 41 stories about him over the next three years.
Twelve of these stories were gathered together and published in 1922 as a book called Just William. It was wildly successful. Richmal Crompton’s William and other characters like the truly obnoxious Violet Elizabeth Bott were so acutely observed (Richmal Crompton was a woman) that children recognised them, and their social interaction, instantly.
Over the next 48 years, 38 William books were published. There was even, I discovered to my fascination, one for my own generation, published just four years earlier in 1970 and called William the Lawless. It was the last William book ever, because Richmal Crompton had died in 1969.
The titles of the books give some idea of the nature of their contents, and of why children who grew up in a very different world in which they were free, for great lengths of time, from adult supervision identified so readily with them. There was William the Conqueror, William the Outlaw, William in Trouble, William the Bad, William the Pirate, William the Rebel, William the Gangster, William the Detective, William the Bold, William the Explorer, and William’s Treasure Trove.
Some of the books reflected the times in which they were published, like William and the Evacuees in 1940, William and the Moon Rocket, William and the Space Animal and William’s Television Show in the 1950s, when the twin wonders of space exploration and television captured the public imagination, and William and the Pop Singers in the 1960s. The stories and their characters remain otherwise timeless; William Brown gets into trouble for 51 years while Violet Elizabeth Bott – the sort of awful little girl familiar to us all, carries on screaming, throwing tantrums and issuing threats while wearing frocks highly unsuitable for climbing over walls.
It is perturbing to think that the commonalities of childhood over many generations are now a thing of the past and that today’s children lead lives not dissimilar to those of the tragic boys and girls in children’s fiction of the late 19th and most of the 20th century. The tragic nature of these characters’ lives lay in the fact that they were never free from controlling grown-ups, policed and monitored every minute of their waking lives by mothers, nannies, governesses and teachers, or had their movement restricted by crutches or wheelchairs, which was just another metaphor for the loss of that independence and privacy from adult eyes which is a crucial part of childhood.
By those standards, the great majority of today’s children are tragic, prevented from running about and losing themselves in that arcane world, full of mystery and imagination, in which grown-ups play no part except as the bit-players who call you in to supper or dispatch you to get showered and changed.
It is a truism that the self-confidence, sense of self, security, independence and individuality that come from roaming free for significant parts of one’s childhood cannot be developed any other way. In contemporary life, the only children who have freedom are those who are neglected and whose homes are unstable. And so their adventures are not rooted in imagination, discovery and innocence (though it has always seemed to me that childhood innocence is a bit of a misnomer) but in law-breaking, self-harm and harm to others. The meaning of William the Gangster today is entirely different to what it was when the book was published in 1935, even though the title was inspired by the very real world of gangsters in 1930s British and American cities.
Now the BBC has commissioned a new version of the William stories, which are being adapted for consumption by a generation of children who cannot understand a way of life in which time is not always spent in the hovering presence of one overbearing grown-up or another, the air punctuated with rejoinders about the risk and danger of hurting oneself, of not being rude, dirtying one’s clothes or using sharp scissors.
To many children, freedom and space now represent risk and insecurity rather than adventure, discovery and opportunity. I am curious as to what sort of adults they will grow into, how they will cope with life.
The Times (London, not Malta) devoted part of its leading article to the subject of William Brown reinterpreted for the present day: “William’s friend Ginger will have to go as his name discriminates on the grounds of hair colour. Once he’s out, the BBC should set up an inquiry to establish why it’s so difficult for girls to get into William’s gang, the Outlaws. Violet Elizabeth Bott, an associate member, was allowed in only because she threatened to scream and scream and scream until she was sick. There’ll be no climbing trees without the correct safety harness. There’ll be no playing with Jumble the dog without a proper lead. And there will certainly be no feuding with the Hubert Road gang. With those simple changes in mind, let’s all look forward to episode one: William Plays On His Computer for a Bit, Does His Climate Change Homework and Then Goes to Bed.”
But not, in the Maltese context, before he’s been to duttrina, denied more juice on the grounds that it will rot his teeth, and made to clean his bedroom because his mother had banned clutter so that she can run the surfaces over with pine-scented disinfectant every day.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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More wisdom of The People. In a letter to The Malta Independent on Sunday about Piano’s plans, Maurice Falzon of Zebbug informs us that
“Valletta still has a wealth of medieval palaces and Auberges . . . ”
and he then takes Piano to task, and enquires
“Does Mr. Piano have any feeling for medieval architecture . . ?”
It’s actually “I’ll thweam amd thweam and thweam till I’m thick”……….Violet Elizabeth Bott. Classic. Truly classic.
This is amazing. Like you, Daphne, I found a stack of red-jacketed, well-thumbed, old books in my grandmother’s library, in Zurrieq (to further disabuse you of your notion that we were Philistines down here). They belonged to my uncles and my mother. I devoured them, starting from the age of seven, and they are now a valuable part of my collection. They were fascinating, and I used to get lost in them and the world they portrayed. Whenever I drive through a sleepy English village nowadays, I’m transported right back to those books.
Most were printed in the 1920s and 1930a, 1940s and 1950s and I added to the collection too, because my mum, also a very avid reader, used to let us purchase stacks of books from the old NAAFI secondhand bookstore when the British were still here before 1979. I still read them sometimes. But what my children will make of them, I really don’t know.
I didn’t quite get the message behind your article. I suppose you meant it’s a pity that our kids can’t roam the countryside in summer, as I did, when we were young. They don’t have the opportunity to climb trees, play in the streets, go swimming, pick berries and farkizzan, get dirty, and basically make up their own entertainment. Our parents used to allow us to do so because the world was much safer and the streets less crowded with cars, plus there were not many weird characters around.
There were no summer schools either. We left home n the morning in summer, but were expected to be back for lunch at noon, and have a siesta, then do it all over again.
All that has gone. What a pity. The world has truly regressed. Nowadays, children think in terms of TV, and computer games, and Play Station. Plus we fill up their spare time with duttrina, studying, masses of homework. Truly, we have become much poorer where it counts whilst becoming richer in pocket. Is that what you meant?
[Daphne – No. I meant that parents have become incredibly controlling of every minute of their children’s lives, largely because they have just one or two children in their 30s and regard them as a project. It’s true that children who live in towns can’t do much roaming, but children who live in quiet areas certainly can. Mine did. And children who live in towns and flats can still be given some freedom. Strange how parents have forgotten what they once knew from their own experience: that what children want most is to be left in peace without hovering grown-ups, especially when they have companions their own age. It doesn’t seem to occur to these parents (and when I say parents I really mean mothers) that if their children enjoy mummy’s company more than they enjoy the company of other children, alarm bells should go off somewhere in their heads.]
Good one – It’s been 30-odd years since I read a William book – wasn’t it ‘thkweam and thkweam until I’m thick” or am I confusing the TV series with the books?
Talking of PC going completely bananas in the UK – someone (I imagine some social worker git armed with a degree in Youth Studies and many chips on his shoulders) is actually trying to remove the ‘win/lose’ system in school sports since, the argument goes, losing a game or a race can psychologically scar kids who don’t win.
Thanks for bringing a smile, Daphne. My father had (has?) some of the books in the William series; he actually encouraged me to read them when I was around 10. Not that I was ever short of reading stuff or time – TV in our house was outlawed and computers were too big to fit in any of the rooms – but this was like putting a plate of Italian pasta in front of someone who hadn’t seen food for a couple of days.
I don’t think the lack of what I’d call “quality time” for children is limited to Malta. Where I’ve been spending a lot of my non-working hours there’s a long stretch of beach and other open spaces that are easily accessible to residents in the area. They should be a youngster’s paradise. But as soon as the schools reopen after the summer break, all the children disappear. It’s basically people walking their dog, the die-hard joggers and sweet elderly ladies sitting on a bench enjoying their final lap. And in our younger days, drugs were referred to as “medicine”; that horrible tasting stuff you had to swallow whenever you fell sick (which was rare).
I like leaning/eating/playing/working, on a surface that is disinfected daily, but I prefer lavender to pine.
Daph,why are the comments not sorted in a chronological order? Even if they are numbered, I think it will be more easy for a villager like me to cope.
[Daphne – They are in chronological order. The indented comments are replies to the one above, so they might have been made at an earlier time/day than the subsequent comment to which they are not a reply.]
she screamed and screamed until she was thick:)
Air Malta is offering EUR39.45 (incl all charges) return tickets to Catania valid from 10 Sep to 28 Oct. The offer hasn’t been advertised yet, but you can buy them at http://www.airmalta.com already.
You know my name…I can’t publish it because I have a conflict of interest.
I couldn’t agree more with your article. A William book was the first book that I can remember reading. Under similar circumstances, I just picked it out of a book case and was hooked. Those carefree days of our childhood seem a long way from the over bearing protective culture of today.
I’m sure those early activities that children had of creating adventures for themselves, involving other children, playing together, learning how to resolve disputes without adult intervention, count for a lot in later life.
If you enjoyed the William books, you may enjoy this homage to Crompton’s Outlaws: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Omens-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0552137030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251662197&sr=8-1
Superbly written too.
Daphne, what a right-on-the-spot, thought-provoking article. Growing up in the sixties, in Canada, exploring all things without supervision, uninhibited by loving, but ‘hands off’ parents, your words have brought back many memories. Leaving the house early in the morning, clearing the snow from a piece of the river to make an ice rink, playing hockey all day and arriving home as darkness fell – no supervision, no fear and a hearty welcome home. As you implied, something is now missing, I fear it is lost. Have you read the ‘Hardy Boys’ series? Those were the days.
What a great article – and, sadly, how true the comments on modern childhood. My own daughters go to a school where juice is forbidden; the gates are locked and parents have a school issued ID card (with photo) for access; and the sharing of packed lunches is forbidden in case a child be poisoned or struck down with a nut allergy. At a recent Parents Association meeting I voiced the view that the sharing of food was fundamental in building relationships, friendships and trust. Instead an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion was being fostered. The school agreed but said if they didn’t do as they were doing they’d be sued – so end of discussion.
Your article has really dug deep into my happy youthful days in Sliema and St. Julian’s, when life was so simple and uncomplicated compared to today’s hectic rat race. My friends and I, then aged 10 to 12, used to play football in Blanche Street, Sliema and, if the occasional car came along, we would suspend play for a few seconds and then continue.
The ball would invariably end up in Dingli Street, and we would chase it or somebody would return it – no problem. Could you even imagine that today? It is not just the freedom, as you put it, and the outdoor living; it was about socialising and interacting with children we didn’t even know – and there were no hang-ups about nasty old men lurking in the corner. This tranquil upbringing and growing up is unfortunately the one thing that we cannot give our children, and such memories will die with us.
[Daphne – Yes, and one of Sliema’s most notorious perverts (he used to hang around the playground) lived just there, roughly where Blanche Street meets Dingli Street, but the grown-ups knew about him and kept an eye on him, or told us to stay away from him.]
Insightful.
I would go for hitting a balance between guidance and freedom. Having said that, I would not be too surprised if most mums who are stifling their kids are seriously convinced that they are hitting the right balance.
And does it not all go beyond a paternal/maternal instinct (to protect kids against harm) run riot, onto a single-minded passion to ‘guide’ their princes onto the ‘big time’ (as opposed to say the ambition of Corsican or Italian parents for their kids to enjoy la dolce vita)?
[Daphne – No, it has little or nothing to do with maternal instinct, but with a cultural shift. The big change that has happened over the last 15 years is that women are having just one or two children in their mid-30s, planning them as they would the purchasing and furnishing of their house, and because of their age, struggling to conceive them (a process that sometimes involves physically, emotionally and financially debilitating IVF) and then giving birth with a whole palaver that ends in a C-section. The inevitable result is that children so carefully planned and acquired with such great difficulty, with no prospect of more where they came from, become projects and a maternal obsession. This is just my observation; I’ve read nothing about it – but I have noticed that maternal obsession/fixation comes into play only where there are one or two children (and where there are two, the mother may fixate on just one of them). As soon as the number of children goes beyond two, the mother seems to relax and the relationship becomes normal and easy-going – but then again, this might be because three children and upwards effectively form a gang and their primary relationship is then with each other and not with their mother.]
I think you’re right on this Daphne. My mother used to say that with the first child you watch their every move for any sign of a sniffle or a scratch – but by the time you’ve had your third child they could juggle knives and you’d barely bat an eye.
Returning to Malta in the early 1930s, I found William books in the library of the Dockyard School above Cospicua. I read them avidly until I discovered the Saint books in the library at Rinella radio station where my father was a naval telegraphist and we lived in the married quarters of nearby Fort Ricasoli.
Whatever it may have been like in Sliema, life was very different around Cottonera. William’s gang would have loved the fortifications and tunnels of the east coast of Malta, however.
In 1935 came what was called the Abyssinian War, and the perceived threat of Italian bombers caused the British fleet to move to Alexandria and the families followed them whilst we remaining Children of Empire on the shore stations practised air raid precautions.
With few British children around we associated with Maltese kids though parents on both sides did not encourage this for various reasons.
There was no talk of William books for they represented little to us and much less to the Maltese but in Kalkara there was a Maltese lady who gathered together English and Maltese youngsters to sit on the floor of a large room whilst she told us folk stories of Malta and especially ghost stories and somehow she surmounted the language barrier. Maltese lads taught me how to swear in their language which stood me in good stead when in later life I was stationed at Ta’ Qali.
The article caused me to reflect on the differences between Cottonera and Sliema but my heart will always be with the southern shores of the Grand Harbour.
I could tell you were talking about the William books before you mentioned the name. What memories! I still have them from my childhood and I just had to go and find them. I found myself reading some of them and still enjoying it. I am 57 years old and loved your article. What about one about the Famous Five? Oh to be young and adventurous. How I wish!
Well then, how about good old Dennis the Menace
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/aug/13/bbc-television
No picking on Walter the Softie?
Connolly will explain it for me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWMEAURoAXs
More wisdom of the people… unbelievable stuff!
Check out Joseph Meli’s anti-divorcist comments http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090831/local/pm-presented-with-anti-divorce-report
“But then I just said the those of the Christian faith are in a majority and when it comes to voting, that makes the difference.
Well divorce does makes a difference as it is against our religion, and if you want to do other things such as live with another person, that is on you, not on my shoulders…if our Christian law says that it’s sinful to divorce, how do one expect to go for it.”
This guy doesn’t realise that it’s the PM who is in government and that Parliament makes our laws – apparently he thinks the Bishop’s our PM and that the Vatican the legislator!
He should really go live in the Philippines!
I (would like to) think that Meli’s just taking the piss.
I was brought up in London during the 1960s. What fond memories I have. During the summer holidays we used to spend our days at Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, without a care in the world. Funnily enough, Paddington station was a magnet for us children. What adventures we had there; we used to let our imagination run wild and invent all kinds of games. No wonder I love London so much. It must be because of the happy childhood I spent there. I have a 19-year-old daughter whose childhood was so very different to mine, because she never experienced playing out on the streets.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimdandy/specials/remember/remember.html
Michael, that reminds me of Topper, Beezer, Schoolgirl for the girls, Bunty, Dandy, Beano, Desperate Dan, Beryl the Peril, the Bash Street kids, and many more.
Playing in the streets was the norm, because there was hardly any traffic. Our legs were bloodied from the many falls and we slept we stuck to the sheets.
We had a bath once a week, the four of us in two inches of cold water and a kettle of boiling water to warm it up for economy and to get us ready in a jiffy. A see-through towel used to dry us all. Our lips used to be purple with cold while we shivered and our mother hugged the four of us together with love and called us her chicks.
Only a couple of families had TV so whenever there were films we children loved, such as Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, we were allowed to gather at a kind neighbour’s. And there were no sitting-rooms untouched by humans. Our house was a true home.
This is not to say that there was no jealousy. A neighbour broke the poles of a Badminton game which I owned and which was a rarity at the time, giving no reason except that at our age we shouldn’t be playing with such ‘games’, because they were too expensive and therefore a sin.
Daphne what memories your article evoked. Like Mario I come from Zurrieq. All the kids in the neighbourhood used to play on the streets – and what fun we had. We often went for walks in Wied Babu right down to the sea or to Hagar QIM and Mnajdra – they were our parks. On Sundays after lunch, somtimes we walked all the way to is-Salib tal-gholja and back. No lack of exercise. As for reading I used to love J. A. Henty (if I remember the name correctly). Such swashbuckling adventures. In my time there used to be small A5-sized books which we bought for a shilling. And the comics – Girl for us and The Eagle for boys.
I could go on and on. Today’s children have more material goods but a poorer life style. Even summer holidays are regimented. But what can one do?
Jo, what memories! What about jumping off il-Kamra tal-Wied, or from above the Ghar, into the Skall? What about the times in the early 1970s when all summer residents at Wied, like we were, used to bring out their ‘spiritieri’ togeher and wait for the men to come up from the sea with catches of makku, gambli zghir and vopi, and everyone used to eat together pulpetti tal-makku and vopi with bread?
Wied Babu, Hagar Qim, il-Munqar, Wied il-Fulija, which was one of the most beautiful valleys in Malta until the MLP made it into a rubbish dump, Hal-Far airfield, glorious and abandoned with derelict planes, we had it all. We used to roam far and wide with bicycles.
Many a time we compared ourselves to William. We ere lucky, and we are all the better for it. Our children can’t dream of it let alone experience it.
The consummate pleasure of Henty, dear God! Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books, graduating to Biggles. Is anyone familiar with Joseph E. Chipperfield -another source of reading pleasure ? Id-Dinja ta’ Wenzu U Rożi accidentally discovered in an uncle’s desk in Zabbar…..
My childhood menories are mostly of passionate, avid, insatiable reading, and of football matches in the street, sometimes with a ball made of rags sewn together by a blind old great-aunt. Frustratingly we would have to stop the game to stop every 20 minutes or so, because of a passing car. Kite-flying on the roof-top, too, was a popular pastime down our way. One balmy early evening I counted 38 kites hovering overhead……..
I’ve been to Wied Babu and Hagar Qim, I’ve jumped off the Ghar in Wied iz Zurrieq, I’ve been camping and hiking, and I remember walking along the coast at Marsaskala, exploring caves and ‘islands’. I’ve also played with my Amiga, and remember getting my first playstation game..I’m 19 so I honestly think it depends on one’s upbringing, but it’s quite clear that times have changed, my childhood being just a decade ago.