Fortnight Publications Ltd.

A Child in the HouseAuthor(s): Isabel OrrSource: Fortnight, No. 306, Supplement: Lost Fields (May, 1992), pp. 7-8Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25553459 .

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A child in the

house

ISABEL ORR examines Janet McNeill's unconventional children's fiction

THOUGH JANET MCNEILL wrote a total of 12 adult novels and was a key exponent ofthe

protestant middle-class novel in Ulster fiction, her largest audience to date has surely been

children; she has written some 24 books for

them, and there is no mistaking the skill or the

vision with which these works are written.

She was in fact at the forefront of a whole

new movement in writing for children, a move

ment away from the idea that children's stories

require 'adventures' and that children have to

be segregated from adults before they can have

these adventures?because adults are always there to stop them from having exciting times.

Her heroes and heroines certainly do have

exciting times, but these are never separated from the adult/social world around them: they

may start off that way but things very soon get

uncomfortably realistic. McNeill's 'children'

react to the uncertainties of the adult world

around them because it is never as reassuring as

it might appear to the reader of the more con

ventional type of children's story, as typified

by Enid Blyton. Indeed, McNeill's work delves

deeply into hitherto 'taboo' areas, such as chil

dren's problems with society, with class, with

parents, with peers?often touching on scenes

of violence and bullying. This is not to say that her stories are depress

ing?the 'Specs McCann' series is particularly

funny, with a central function to be humorous.

The first book of the series, My Friend Specs McCann, appeared in 1955, and was followed

by Specs Fortissimo (1958) and Various Specs (1961);'Specs' also featured in a long-running

strip cartoon?drawn by Rowel Friers?in the

Belfast Telegraph. The 'Specs' stories centre

around boarding-school life and the exploits of

the two main characters, Specs and his friend

Curly. In fact, these are just two ordinary school

boys, but the scrapes they get into are far from

ordinary. These riotous stories are racily told

by Curly, and were originally broadcast on

BBC Northern Ireland's Children s Hour.

In Specs Fortissimo, we find the school

boys spending a summer vacation with

Matron's aunt, in the village of Drumgless. McNeill effectively sets the scene of a sleepy

little village, and the boys begin to wonder just how they are going to spend over three weeks

there. A similar atmosphere is echoed by a

more recent Ulster writer, Catherine Sefton

(Martin Waddell), in the story In A Blue Vel vet Dress (1972). Here, the heroine, Jane Reid,

has gone to stay with a childless couple, Mr and

Mrs Hildreth, in the obscure seaside town of

Rathard, while her parents are away in Scot

land. The protagonists of both stories feel al

ienated from their new surroundings, and the

appearance ofthe ghost in Sefton's novel fully relieves the boredom of Rathard, just as the

magical 'Buck-U-Up-Oh' ointment provides a

diversion for Specs and Curly. In Specs Fortis

simo, the ointment?given to Specs by a

stranger on the train?allows the boys to achieve

the impossible: from shifting a steam-roller to

removing and replacing the stone lions on Mr

Wutherspindle's gate-posts. Janet McNeill's school stories show the

author at her most creative, when many other

writers in the field were merely copying. She

achieves the exact balance between real and

unreal, between fact and imagination, which is

the key to good fantasy. We can accept the

improbable just so far as we can believe in the

realistic beginnings from which the fantasy

springs. The element of magic is always there,

forthe author of Tom's Tower (1965) is partial to fantasy which 'works', which has a relation

to real life and which can make as pertinent and

satirical a comment on current affairs as any kind of modern writing. McNeill once pro fessed that fantasy is "much sterner stuff than

"whimsy"; she didn't just ask her readers for a

willing suspension of disbelief, she demanded

"a positive thirst for it". The writing moves

freely from one mood to the next, and the more

we allow ourselves to accept the magic, the

greater insight we get into her psychological realism, for this is an accurate picture of small

boys at school.

Apart from school stories, Janet McNeill

wrote a variety of other books for children,

including animal stories which appear fre

quently in her four collections of short stories.

Just as T W Burgess used morals derived from

Aesop to expose vices such as pride, selfish

ness and greed, so a similar moral significance attaches itself to Janet McNeill's animal sto

ries. The sea-serpent and the unicorn both rep resent vanity, the magpie avarice, the robin

orderliness, the mouse loyalty and the peacock

pride. In 'James Come Home', from the collection

Try These For Size (1963), we have the story of the birds' devotion to the gardener, James, who is "Lord of the garden", before the arrival

of the ominous cars and bulldozers, lorries, vans and concrete mixers of the "invaders".

After James's departure, the swallows come

late, only to find "emptiness where the

hospitibale eaves of the old house had been", and they are forced to fly off again to make their

home at the far end of the town. Gone are the

usual refuges and the birds only manage to find

shelter in the shedding branches of the bushes

which have become overgrown for lack of care.

Yet, however firm and strong her stories are

in their implications, they are a long way from

the derisive and shattering propaganda of

George Orwell's Animal Farm (1948), in which animals stand for so much of human

error that they have ^_^^___^^_ ceased to be animals H^^HP"V^^| at all. Janet McNeill's ̂ K^H ?^^H stories are aimed at

BBh^f^H a younger reader- ̂ R^^^wV,Jj^l ship than George ^ ^He^PI^^I Orwell's: like ̂ ^^^HP^J^^H Kenneth Grahame? ̂ ^^^U^^^^^H author of The Wind

^^^r^W ^^^M In The Willows HT ^^^L (1908)?she does not H_^flHl

push philosophy or satire at children. Her stories will arouse in

them pity, anger, enjoyment or laughter; they also give to animals their rightful dignity, while

at the same time nurturing in the child a careful

and accurate observation of the animal world.

McNeill also wrote fiction for the older

child, through the adventure story genre. The

best known example of her writing here is The

Battle Of St George Without (1966), to which a sequel, Goodbye Dove Square, was pub lished in 1969. The 1960s saw the televised

production of The Battle, which appeared in

serialised form for childrens' viewing. Older

children consistently prefer stories with a back

ground like their own or, at least, one which is

topical in some way or another, and this is

where the difficulty arises for the writer of

adventure stories: children are at their most

critical when reading about children running into danger in a contemporary setting. Every

author has his or her own way of approaching this business of probability. Eilis Dillon, for

example, relies on an authentic background to

carry off her mysteries: The House On The

Shore, The Island Of Horses, and The Sing

ing Cave are all set on the west coast of Ireland.

Janet McNeill relies not so much on back

ground?The Battle could take place in the

suburbs of any large city?but on the fact that

her book is a gang story where hazard is shared,

wits and resources pooled and the chances of

success multiplied. The hero of the story, Matt, lives with his

mother in one of the decaying old houses of

Dove Square. The storyline hinges on his dis

covery of the dilapidated Church of St George Without and, on realising the vulnerability of

the church, Matt and his pals determine to

protect it at all costs. As in her adult novels,

Janet McNeill conveys a sense of a dying race

(such as the grand Misses Tomlinson) and of a

church which lives only in the memory. The suspense ofthe story is compounded by

the very real danger faced by the youngsters when they come upon the thieves whose mis

sion it is to steal the lead from the church roof.

Ironically, it is Eddie?the reformed shop lifter?who comes to Matt's rescue. Eddie can

be seen as a victim of circumstance, but the real

criminals?the lead thieves?are shown to be

ruthless, making no attempt to undo their

actions.

There is never the suggestion that the boys

simply took on and defeated the thieves, and

the book ends on a note of conjecture: we do not

see the criminals brought to justice. Indeed, in

the penultimate chapter, we are told that on St

George's Day?of all days?the roof of the

church was lying naked to the sky?"The Bat

tle Of St George Without had been lost". The author avoids a Utopian ending, for this book

has moved away from 'adventure story' as a

stylised form towards a new kind of children's

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Hbook which is simply about the adventure of

living:

They envied the statues above their heads, who

had no problems and of whom nothing was

expected. Life had become much too difficult.

There weren't any answers.

Besides the stories already mentioned, Janet

McNeill wrote widely for children in ways that emphasised her concern for their psycho

logical welfare and emotional development. This, of course, echoes her commitments in life as a Justice of the Peace

for the juvenile court, as an advisor in broadcasting and educational

matters, and as a mother. In 1959, she wrote a nativity story, entitled

'This Happy Morning', which is told from the viewpoint of the innkeep er's daughter; this story was first broadcast as a play on the BBC

Scotland's Children's Hour. In the early 60s, she collaborated with

Raymond Warren, of the Music department of Queen's University, to

produce a children's opera, Finn And The Black Hog, based on a short

story by Eileen O'Faol&n. McNeill wrote the libretto for this little opera, and she subsequently dramatised a short story called 'The Line On The

Rose Tree' (season 1964-65). The stream of literature for children

continued until the late 70s, when ill-health curtailed her writing career.

Janet McNeill has, indeed, come to be better known as an author of

children's, rather than adult, fiction?which is ironic, in view of her

publication experience. In a letter written nearly 30 years ago to fellow

writer, Elizabeth May, she says:

I was lucky with the novels which were accepted right away. I think the

children's stories went round three or four publishers before settling down, but oddly enought they have now established themselves better than my adult

writing and have done a good many rather unexpected things.

Sadly, though, one is faced with the reality that someone who writes so

beautifully is not better known; there is a sense of injustice that such

talent should be forgotten in the space of 20 years. Some suggest that her

choice of themes and style lie behind her obscurity: in her portrayals of

real-life characters, she speaks honestly of the world as she sees it,

disconcerting as that may be. Others maintain that her children's fiction

throws a shadow on the adult fiction; while some point expressly to the

fact that she was not a regional writer in the sense that Patricia Lynch or

Eilis Dillon were Irish writers. Whatever the reason, there is no denying the sheer skill of this honest Ulsterwoman, who could communicate

with adults and children alike: her disappearance from the literary scene

in no way diminishes her stature amongst those who are her 'friends'.

ISABEL ORR completed her MA dissertation on the children'sfiction

oflanet McNeill and is currently teaching English.

Following

darkness

BRIAN TAYLOR details the imaginative worlds of Forrest Reid, 'the most important man in Belfast'

FORTY FIVE YEARS after the death of Forrest Reid in 1947 is as good a time as any to attempt a reconsideration of his status as a Belfast

writer and, as he was called in his lifetime, "the

first Ulster writer to achieve European status".

It may also be particularly relevant, as well as

timely, to give some further consideration to

the standing of his reputation, and to that awk

ward label of 'neglected writer' which some

commentators suggest has limited his reader

ship while, perversely, increasing his appeal for a few. There is a sentence towards the end

of Reid's second volume of autobiography Private Road (1940) in which he acknowl

edges the external happenings of his life to have been few and sober enough:

The adventures lay all along in their

interpretation.

The connection between external events and

their private interpretation was one which pro vided him with subject-matter throughout a

long writing life. Perhaps because of this, Reid's

life can seem something of a disappointment to

a biographer and, certainly, the 'external events'

are soon told.

Reid was born at 20 Mount Charles on mid

summer's day, 1875, the youngest of a family of six, to Robert Reid, a Belfast merchant, and

Frances Matilda Parr, a distant descendant of

the last wife of Henry VIII. In the semi-rural

Belfast of the 1880s, recalled in Apostate (1926), Reid's boyhood was by all accounts a

happy one, through nowhere was Victorian

propriety more apparent than in the presbyterian middle class into which he was born. Selected

readings from improving literature on long

dreary Sundays, walks in the Botanic Gardens, a "world of nurses and perambulators"?all of

this ought to have produced a typical non

conformist child. But, in Reid, it brought on a

strong reaction against religious and, in some

ways social, orthodoxy and sent him on a

lifelong quest for a personal vision which owed

more to a Greek than to a Christian vision of

paradise, a vision he sought in all his subse

quent writing to complete or, more accurately, to recapture,

Reid's external life and writing were inex

tricably bound up with Belfast and the sur

rounding countryside. The streets of Belfast, the Lagan valley, the shores of county Down, the Antrim coast and the melancholy of the

Mourne Mountains provided the setting for

many ofthe novels. His landscapes are, for the

most part, recognisably Ulster and his charac

ters undeniably northern Irish. The earliest

novels?At The Door Of The Gate (1915), Following Darkness (1912), which was re

written in 1937 as Peter Waring, and The

Spring Song (1916)?all display a marked reliance upon local models both for their plots and their settings. With Reid's artistic matu

rity, however, his fiction takes on a more uni

versal note: the clear outlines of the Ulster

landscape fade into an amalgam of Ireland and

ancient Greece. It is, consequently, more diffi

cult to place Reid's later novels?particularly those comprising the self-acknowledged crown

of his achievement, the Tom Barber trilogy,

comprising Uncle Stephen (1931), The Re treat (1944) and Young Tom (1944), their hero Tom Barber getting younger as the trilogy

proceeds?aged 15 in Uncle Stephen and 11 in

Young Tom. After Apostate, Reid's prose is

rooted in more fertile imaginative soil than that

provided by a simple dependence on 'local

colour'.

Altogether, Reid produced 15 novels, two

volumes of autobiography, two works of criti

cism (on W B Yeats and Walter de la Mare), a

definitive study of the book illustrators of the

1860s and numerous essays, articles and book

reviews. His interest, in his novel writing, was

with youth and the spirit of youth and it has been said, with some pardonable exaggeration, that he was incapable of presenting a recognis able character beyond the age of adolescence.

It is certainly true that it was with the years of

childhood, and particularly of boyhood, that

his artistic interest matured and developed. Not

surprisingly, it is this concern that has led to

claims that Reid's art was essentially a limited

one and that his obsession with childhood inno

cence and its necessary loss, often observed in

an unreal and qwas/'-Paradisian setting, can be

considered the escapist concerns of an interest

ing if limited novelist. The advocates of Reid as an essentially

'escapist' writer also point to his preferred

'provincialism'. Apart from three years at Cam

bridge, from where he was glad to return, Reid

spent his life in Belfast, living after 1924 at 13 Ormiston Crescent, Dundonald, indulging his

preference for a private life with some surpris

ing hobbies?jigsaws, bonfires, croquet?and where he corresponded with and sometimes

entertained his friends. But it was also where, in the words of E M Forster, a frequent visitor

to Ormiston Crescent, he "cooked and dreamed, read and wrote, and Belfast knew him not".

This, such as it is, is the 'conventional' view

of Forrest Reid's life and work?a private, even solitary, man who spent a lifetime refin

ing his particular art with little regard for his

8

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