There are
a large number of characters in the manuscript I’m working on and I tend to
differentiate them by giving each a certain quality, a shorthand for me while
I’m working on the novel and eventually, and
by then more subtly, for the eleven year old reader. One character is,
to me, rather squirrel-like: gingery hair, energetic, always alert for the one
thing that matters to him, easily distracted by the new – and so on and so on –
and all of which set today’s topic jangling in my mind: squirrels or, more
particularly, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. And his new book cover.
This
July, 150 years after Beatrix Potter's birth, Puffin Books are publishing five of the most
popular books with re-designed covers, although I think that Puffin have retained the original illustrations inside. What? Immediately I was huffing and puffing
because I usually dislike tampering with original illustrations. (Surely the delicacy of Sheppard’s
work compared with that dreadful Disney Eeyore will prove my case?)
Born in London, Potter’s drawings celebrate the rural - the
people, the animals and places she saw on holidays in Scotland and in
the Lakes - and I feel the pictures are so much a part of the whole experience of those
books.
There is
something Victorian in the quality of her observation, such a controlled passion
for natural history. Her careful water-colours seem the female art form of the time, requiring no expansive canvasses,
taking up not too much space, the skill entirely suitable for well-bred young
ladies.
Yet there
is something quietly subversive about her work too. While one admires Potter’s
art, knowledge and humour, there is no doubt that her delightfully
marketable creatures live in a world that turns cruel in a trice. Death is ever
present, whether from Mr McGregor to a cat sleeping casually in the background.
Besides,
those various garments – from Peter Rabbit’s famous blue coat to Mrs
Tiggy-Winkle bustling around in her full finery – always carry a hint of those popular if dreadful glass-cased
stuffed-kitten tableaux that can still found in “museums” such as Blackgang
Chine on the Isle of Wight. Curious images, indeed.
“I bought two but
they weren’t a pair and fought so frightfully that I had to get rid of the
handsome and most savage one. The other squirrel is rather a nice little animal
but half of one ear has been bitten off, which spoils his appearance.”
“The Tale
of Squirrel Nutkin” has a real setting too. “Owl
Island,” where Nutkin so
naughtily tempts fate, is St Hubert’s Island
on Derwentwater, which leads me on to one very memorable image. Potter’s
picture of the flotilla of squirrels, going across the water to gather nuts.
Potter’s perspective
seems to be take you across the gently bobbing water all the way to the
forbidden wood but I’ve never seen that image without, for a moment, wondering
about the truth of that journey.
Where did this “flotilla of squirrels ” idea come from?
Then one
night, quite recently, and agitated about matters much more important than those uppity
art-work covers – and who isn’t at the
moment, to be frank? – I began reading
two books by Tove Jansson, best known her Moomin books.
My three
a.m. titles were both for adults, one is more of a memoir and one a collection of short
stories. The first, A Summer Book, is all about a grandmother and granddaughter,
spending summers on a small island off the Finnish coast. Their relationship changes as one summer follows another.
The second set, A
Winter Book, is about an old woman living alone and independently on that tiny island.
Together, these two short books give a simple but thoughtful glimpse into the
life of a proudly independent artist.
However, as I began the short story called The Squirrel, Jansson’s words sprang out at me:
“One winter day in November, near sunrise, she saw a squirrel at the landing place. It was sitting motionless near the water, scarcely visible in the half-light, and she knew it was a real squirrel and she hadn’t seem a living thing for a long time. You can’t count gulls: they’re always leaving, they’re like the wind over waves and grass.
She tried to
remember everything she knew about squirrels. The wind carries them on pieces
of wood from island to island. And then the wind drops, she thought with a
touch of cruelty. . .
Why do squirrels go
sailing? Are they curious or just hungry? Are they brave? No. Just ordinary and
stupid. . . .It was possible the
squirrel might stay overnight. It was possible the squirrel might stay the
whole winter.”
The squirrel cannot do nothing but stay, making its home in
her woodpile. The whole story revolves around the relationship between the wild
squirrel and the elderly islander, revealing how physically demanding her solitary
island life is becoming. Then, towards the end of the story, she goes down to the jetty and
finds:
“The squirrel had
gone – there was no doubt there had been seven pieces of board, not six, all
the exactly the same distance from the water: sixty five centimetres.”
The story concludes with a further twist that I won’t
reveal.
However,
with my head already busy with young Nutkin’s flotilla, I felt that Jansson’s sailing
squirrel seemed a remarkably serendipitous coincidence. I went searching and came back with other instances.
Back in 1774, in his “History of Animated Nature”, Oliver
Goldsmith reported
“Nothing can be more
true than that Lapland squirrels, when they
meet lakes or rivers, cross them in an extraordinary fashion.
Perceiving the
breadth of the water, they return, as if by common consent, into the
neighbouring forest, each in quest of a piece of bark, which answers all the
purposes of boats for wafting them over. When the whole company are fitted in
this manner, they boldly commit their little fleet to the waves ; every
squirrel sitting on its own piece of bark, and fanning the air with its tail,
to drive the vessel to its desired port. In this orderly manner they set
forward, and often cross lakes several miles broad.
But that is not all.
It may be rough in the middle of the lake, and the result then is lamentable. There
the slightest additional gust of wind oversets the little sailor and his vessel
together. The whole navy, that, but a few minutes before, rode proudly and
securely along, is now overturned, and a shipwreck of two or three thousand sail
ensues. This, which is so unfortunate for the little animal, is generally the
most lucky accident in the world for the Laplander on the shore; who gathers up
the dead bodies as they are thrown in by the waves, eats the flesh, and sells
the skins for about a shilling the dozen."
All of
which is an even sadder squirrel fate than escaping from Old Brown without your
fine, feathery tail.
However,
I couldn’t help noticing that all these squirrel tales seem to come from
Northern lands. Had these clever red squirrels inherited their legendary journeying
skills from the busy squirrel Rataskor who, according to Norse Legend, runs up
and down Yggdrasil the world tree, carrying messages between the Eagle at the
top and the Niddhogg below, while gnawing cunningly and everlastingly as he
goes?
That’s
the problem. Once a writing idea, like my squirrellish character, gets into your head, there are stories about and around them everywhere.
I’ll end
with this moralistic piece, taken from the ”Emblems” of the poet Francis Quarles, written in
1634.
"The squirrel
when she must goe seeke her food
By making passage through the angry flood
And feares to be
devoured by the streame
Thus helpes her
weakness by a stratagem.
On blocks, or chips,
which on the waves doe flote
She nimbly leaps : and
making them her boats,
By helpe of winds, of
current, and of tide
Is wafted over to the
other side.
Thus, that which for the body proves unfit
Must often be acquired by the wit."
Happy
sailing, Squirrel Nutkin!
Postscript: While
writing this post, I came across a new CBBC cartoon series about Peter Rabbit and his
friends. I can offer no comment as I haven't seen it yet. Oh,
well.
Perhaps
my irritated crossness comes because, in this modern world, when children live lives far
more removed from the natural world, I resent the smoothing and softening of
these once-realistic anthropomorphic images?
Penny Dolan
