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callmemadamSorry, I still find it too much faff to put a lot of pics up on Dreamwidth, so if you like looking at book covers, you’ll have to check out LJ.
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 Seagull edition is dated 1958 and I’ve had it since then. I read it over and over again. I could tell that just from seeing how familiar every single picture is. I coloured them in (very neatly), thus making the book valueless but it matters not because it’s one I would never, ever part with. It has a colour frontis., which as far as I know, no other edition does. A little printing curiosity: there’s a chapter in this book called ‘The Fifth Stair’. Chapter headings appear at the top of the pages and in the first edition, half way though the chapter, the heading becomes ‘The Fifth Chair’. This error was repeated in the Seagull edition.
Unlike Malcolm Saville, Monica Edwards made her characters older with each book, so Tamzin is now eleven and a half and Rissa, twelve. There are several storylines in this book but the ‘great secret’ is one which Tamzin and Rissa keep from the coastguards and the press, becoming ‘the girls who shielded smugglers’. Quite by accident, they discover boxes of booze and perfume in Jim Decks’ old fishing smack. Rissa thinks they should tell the coastguards but Tamzin is horrified by the idea and they tell Jim instead. When the girls learn that there will be another landing soon, they decide to see it for themselves and creep out at night, although told not to come. When the cart of contraband goods is on its way, with the pony’s feet and the wheels of the cart muffled with sacking, they are surprised by the coastguards and everyone runs for it. The girls have been recognised and one of the coastguards turns up at the vicarage next morning. Tamzin refuses to say who the men were and her father says it’s up to her and he won’t make her tell. When a reporter later says that surely, she’s on the side of her King and country (changed to Queen in later editions), Tamzin replies that you can’t help being fonder of your friends than of your King and country. E M Forster said something very similar.
The smuggling row rumbles on throughout the book but there’s more fun. Cooking sausages over a fire for a picnic. Practical Rissa solving the mystery of the ‘fifth stair’. Being taught by shepherd Tewmell (known on the marsh as a ‘looker’ of sheep), the method of counting sheep in foreign parts, by which he means the Lake District. It starts, ‘Yan, tan tethera’ and is described on Wikipedia. The unpleasant encounter with ‘the Greasy Man’. Diccon’s new passion for his father’s cod-liver oil capsules. A new ginger kitten. A much greater thrill is that a film is to be made about a visit by Queen Elizabeth to Dunsford. The girls are to have bit parts and Tamzin’s lovely pony, Cascade, will carry the Queen. Better still, they will get paid. There’s a wonderful chapter in which Tamzin tries to persuade Jim Decks to cut her hair for the film: ‘the sight er them yeller plaits a-lyin’ on the floor’ll hurt somethin’ crool’ Will he or won’t he? As if this weren’t enough, Cascade’s original owner, Lesley, comes to stay at the vicarage, still unable to walk but …There’s even a wonderful surprise for Rissa and you can guess what it is.
When filming is over, Rissa says how wonderful it will be to have riding every day until school starts again. Tamzin answers in a way that sets the tone for the rest of the series.
‘Well, you can, but I shan’t. Speaking as someone who has had a pony for nearly a year, I think a person should have other interests in her life than just ponies and riding. No one could love their pony more than I love Cascade, but I don’t want to grow up a long-faced horsy woman with no other string to her bow. I want time for swimming and boats and tennis and all sorts of things like those, as well as riding.’ She will get plenty of opportunity to try other things in the later books and have adventures which are far less believable than those described in these two books.
Part two will be a long time coming.
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 Seagull edition is dated 1958 and I’ve had it since then. I read it over and over again. I could tell that just from seeing how familiar every single picture is. I coloured them in (very neatly), thus making the book valueless but it matters not because it’s one I would never, ever part with. It has a colour frontis., which as far as I know, no other edition does. A little printing curiosity: there’s a chapter in this book called ‘The Fifth Stair’. Chapter headings appear at the top of the pages and in the first edition, half way though the chapter, the heading becomes ‘The Fifth Chair’. This error was repeated in the Seagull edition.
Unlike Malcolm Saville, Monica Edwards made her characters older with each book, so Tamzin is now eleven and a half and Rissa, twelve. There are several storylines in this book but the ‘great secret’ is one which Tamzin and Rissa keep from the coastguards and the press, becoming ‘the girls who shielded smugglers’. Quite by accident, they discover boxes of booze and perfume in Jim Decks’ old fishing smack. Rissa thinks they should tell the coastguards but Tamzin is horrified by the idea and they tell Jim instead. When the girls learn that there will be another landing soon, they decide to see it for themselves and creep out at night, although told not to come. When the cart of contraband goods is on its way, with the pony’s feet and the wheels of the cart muffled with sacking, they are surprised by the coastguards and everyone runs for it. The girls have been recognised and one of the coastguards turns up at the vicarage next morning. Tamzin refuses to say who the men were and her father says it’s up to her and he won’t make her tell. When a reporter later says that surely, she’s on the side of her King and country (changed to Queen in later editions), Tamzin replies that you can’t help being fonder of your friends than of your King and country. E M Forster said something very similar.
The smuggling row rumbles on throughout the book but there’s more fun. Cooking sausages over a fire for a picnic. Practical Rissa solving the mystery of the ‘fifth stair’. Being taught by shepherd Tewmell (known on the marsh as a ‘looker’ of sheep), the method of counting sheep in foreign parts, by which he means the Lake District. It starts, ‘Yan, tan tethera’ and is described on Wikipedia. The unpleasant encounter with ‘the Greasy Man’. Diccon’s new passion for his father’s cod-liver oil capsules. A new ginger kitten. A much greater thrill is that a film is to be made about a visit by Queen Elizabeth to Dunsford. The girls are to have bit parts and Tamzin’s lovely pony, Cascade, will carry the Queen. Better still, they will get paid. There’s a wonderful chapter in which Tamzin tries to persuade Jim Decks to cut her hair for the film: ‘the sight er them yeller plaits a-lyin’ on the floor’ll hurt somethin’ crool’ Will he or won’t he? As if this weren’t enough, Cascade’s original owner, Lesley, comes to stay at the vicarage, still unable to walk but …There’s even a wonderful surprise for Rissa and you can guess what it is.
When filming is over, Rissa says how wonderful it will be to have riding every day until school starts again. Tamzin answers in a way that sets the tone for the rest of the series.
‘Well, you can, but I shan’t. Speaking as someone who has had a pony for nearly a year, I think a person should have other interests in her life than just ponies and riding. No one could love their pony more than I love Cascade, but I don’t want to grow up a long-faced horsy woman with no other string to her bow. I want time for swimming and boats and tennis and all sorts of things like those, as well as riding.’ She will get plenty of opportunity to try other things in the later books and have adventures which are far less believable than those described in these two books.
Part two will be a long time coming.
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Date: 2023-03-05 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 06:19 pm (UTC)