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I decided to deal separately with the first two books in the series: Wish for a Pony (1947) and The Summer of the Great Secret (1948). These are about Tamzin Grey and her best friend, Clarissa (Rissa) Birnie. They are the most ‘pony’ books of the set and in the next book, The Midnight Horse, the girls meet Meryon and Roger, so that two friends become four and the books are very different. Monica Edwards was writing about the Romney Marsh of her childhood, just as in the Punchbowl series she was describing the real farm she and her husband ran in Surrey.
Tamzin is the daughter of the Vicar of Westling, has her hair in plaits and usually wears shorts. In the first book, she is ten, knows everyone in the village (and they know all about her), and has a lot of freedom to swim in the sea, row Jim Decks’ ferry boat and run around with Rissa. Her parents are just about perfect (or so I thought as a child). She’s a dreamy girl, good at English but not much else. Rissa lives in Dunsford (Rye). Her family is better off than Tamzin’s (her father owns a timber yard) and her mother is fussy. Tamzin has an attic bedroom where she’s allowed to stick pictures of horses all over the walls; Rissa has to put up with a pretty pink and grey room which is her mother’s taste, not hers. She’s cleverer than Tamzin and good at maths.
Both girls are mad about horses and think of little else, so there’s great excitement when they learn that the Hillocks Riding School is to spend the summer locally and exercise the horses on Dunsford sands. After they bravely stop a valuable runaway horse, they are heroines and given the freedom of the stables. They get plenty of riding and even acquit themselves well in a gymkhana. This is the last time a gymkhana is ever mentioned; Tamzin and Rissa love riding for the sake of it, not for winning rosettes and it’s such a pity that for years Monica Edwards was categorised as a writer of pony books, when she really wasn’t. By the end of the book, Tamzin has her own pony (no spoilers as to how), so on the face of it, this is a conventional story: girl wants pony, can’t afford one but gets her heart’s desire anyway. What sets the book apart is the quality of the writing and the very believable characters. My favourite parts are the depictions of family life at the Vicarage; Tam’s baby brother Diccon and his strange taste for salt, her father busy with his chickens and bees in the garden or writing a sermon, her mother busy with the house, Diccon and parish work. I like the way Monica Edwards always gives the detail I like in a novel; Mrs Grey putting bread and butter on ‘a blue and white plate’, for instance.
The vicarage building is real and still standing, although obviously altered now. Since 1979, it’s been run as a B&B and you can see it here. Tamzin’s attic bedroom can be seen at the top of the house. Wish for a Pony was reprinted twice (?) in Collins’ Children’s Press imprint. The earlier, undated one, with the familiar blue spine, has a jacket by Anne Bullen; Geoffrey Whittam designed the cover for the 1966 edition. I see that dealers are asking £10.00 even for these cheap editions (they originally cost 2/6). There are many other editions.
Although I enjoy this book, my favourite (not the best) of the whole series is
( The Summer of the Great Secret )
I decided to deal separately with the first two books in the series: Wish for a Pony (1947) and The Summer of the Great Secret (1948). These are about Tamzin Grey and her best friend, Clarissa (Rissa) Birnie. They are the most ‘pony’ books of the set and in the next book, The Midnight Horse, the girls meet Meryon and Roger, so that two friends become four and the books are very different. Monica Edwards was writing about the Romney Marsh of her childhood, just as in the Punchbowl series she was describing the real farm she and her husband ran in Surrey.
Tamzin is the daughter of the Vicar of Westling, has her hair in plaits and usually wears shorts. In the first book, she is ten, knows everyone in the village (and they know all about her), and has a lot of freedom to swim in the sea, row Jim Decks’ ferry boat and run around with Rissa. Her parents are just about perfect (or so I thought as a child). She’s a dreamy girl, good at English but not much else. Rissa lives in Dunsford (Rye). Her family is better off than Tamzin’s (her father owns a timber yard) and her mother is fussy. Tamzin has an attic bedroom where she’s allowed to stick pictures of horses all over the walls; Rissa has to put up with a pretty pink and grey room which is her mother’s taste, not hers. She’s cleverer than Tamzin and good at maths.
Both girls are mad about horses and think of little else, so there’s great excitement when they learn that the Hillocks Riding School is to spend the summer locally and exercise the horses on Dunsford sands. After they bravely stop a valuable runaway horse, they are heroines and given the freedom of the stables. They get plenty of riding and even acquit themselves well in a gymkhana. This is the last time a gymkhana is ever mentioned; Tamzin and Rissa love riding for the sake of it, not for winning rosettes and it’s such a pity that for years Monica Edwards was categorised as a writer of pony books, when she really wasn’t. By the end of the book, Tamzin has her own pony (no spoilers as to how), so on the face of it, this is a conventional story: girl wants pony, can’t afford one but gets her heart’s desire anyway. What sets the book apart is the quality of the writing and the very believable characters. My favourite parts are the depictions of family life at the Vicarage; Tam’s baby brother Diccon and his strange taste for salt, her father busy with his chickens and bees in the garden or writing a sermon, her mother busy with the house, Diccon and parish work. I like the way Monica Edwards always gives the detail I like in a novel; Mrs Grey putting bread and butter on ‘a blue and white plate’, for instance.
The vicarage building is real and still standing, although obviously altered now. Since 1979, it’s been run as a B&B and you can see it here. Tamzin’s attic bedroom can be seen at the top of the house. Wish for a Pony was reprinted twice (?) in Collins’ Children’s Press imprint. The earlier, undated one, with the familiar blue spine, has a jacket by Anne Bullen; Geoffrey Whittam designed the cover for the 1966 edition. I see that dealers are asking £10.00 even for these cheap editions (they originally cost 2/6). There are many other editions.
Although I enjoy this book, my favourite (not the best) of the whole series is
( The Summer of the Great Secret )
