What was your favourite Noel Streatfeild book?

[Deminism]

Have been reading some to DD and we’re loving them. I realise however she wrote loads and I had only read a few as a kid. Ballet shoes, White Boots and Thursday’s Child.

Of the others which did you love the most?

@Classica

Wouldn't it be great if your GP gave your prescription that just said 'Courchevel'!

Ailie, yes that was the wild Welsh child's name. Thinking about it, it's just as well Enid didn't stray beyond English characters too often. Her characterisations of English people she felt weren't quite top drawer could be offensive enough.

There’s a Blyton book called Six Bad Boys where one of the boys, Bob I think, goes to the bad and becomes a petty criminal because his mother goes out to work. The horror!

I was just thinking of The Six Bad Boys!

Enid’s take on the kitchen sink genre. The dreadful goings on a lower middle class street. One widowed mother has a job, wears lipstick and has a social life. Another mother nagged her husband so much the poor man ended up leaving. Obviously the sons of these two women end up in borstal.

I seem to remember there was another family who were exactly as they ought to be, with a wholesome mother who didn’t debase herself by working outside the home.

@Classica

I was just thinking of The Six Bad Boys!

Enid’s take on the kitchen sink genre. The dreadful goings on a lower middle class street. One widowed mother has a job, wears lipstick and has a social life. Another mother nagged her husband so much the poor man ended up leaving. Obviously the sons of these two women end up in borstal.

I seem to remember there was another family who were exactly as they ought to be, with a wholesome mother who didn’t debase herself by working outside the home.

I’ve never been able to bring myself to reread Six Bad Boys. The horror!

Does anyone remember Those Dreadful Children, where there’s a prim, ultra-clean, very Christian family with a ‘crybaby’ youngest and a ‘sissy’ eldest boy who doesn’t like getting dirty, and a grubby, lively, dishonest-but-rugged Irish family move in next door and need to be taught to wash, pray, be nice to their sick mother and not tell lies, while they teach the prim family to get dirty, play rough games and not cry, and how to be a sufficiently boyish boy?

And we know both have reformed because the grubby family’s mother doesn’t die, and the clean family gets a puppy and the boy learns masculinity and going for muddy walks?

I've never heard of Those Dreadful Children but just read a synopsis. The Irish family are called The Taggertys. That's the kind of name you'd have seen in one of those Victorian depictions of the Irish in Punch magazine. The raggerty Taggertys!

Oh Enid. But you gave me a lifelong love of picnics, so I can overlook your extreme snobbery.

If you think 'Those Dreadful Children' is bad, try 'The Put 'em Rights'.

Bunch of upper-middle-class children take it upon themselves to put various forelock-tugging villagers 'right' - except one of the children is working class and doesn't know his place - but it's OK, by the end of the book, he learns to stay obediently within the realm of his fellow paupers.

@ClariceQuiff

If you think 'Those Dreadful Children' is bad, try 'The Put 'em Rights'.

Bunch of upper-middle-class children take it upon themselves to put various forelock-tugging villagers 'right' - except one of the children is working class and doesn't know his place - but it's OK, by the end of the book, he learns to stay obediently within the realm of his fellow paupers.

That's another one I've never been able to bring myself to reread since childhood, and in fairness, I think I was horrified by it as a nine year old, too.

EB, as far as I was concerned, should stick to writing enticingly about picnics (has anyone ever written so enticingly about sandwiches?), encounters with farmers' high tea tables groaning with hams and apple tarts, and forays into little village shops and dairies for ices and macaroons.

@Classica, that's right, the Taggertys! Fortunately for my temper, she hardly ever wrote Irish characters. The O'Sullivan twins in the St Clare's books are described as 'having a pleasant Irish lilt', but other than that, and their name, appear to be standard-issue English schoolgirls. Maybe she just forgot. Probably just as well, or they would have had some bizarre national characteristic like lack of honour and a horror of freckles and swimming (French), fieriness and a tendency to turn cartwheels (Spanish) or an obsession with hairdos and filmstars (American)...

At least Streatfeild, in The Painted Garden, is mildly satirical at the children's expense when they realise they are the ones considered to have 'an accent' by New Yorkers, and that they are actually foreigners.

@Stookeen Ah yes, it is quite probably Shakespeare's fault. That had slipped my mind -even though I studied that play as a teenager - whoops!

I had a three in one edition which combined The Put-em-rights with Those Dreadful Children and another - was there one called The Family at Red Roofs or something like that?

[quote 110APiccadilly]@Stookeen Ah yes, it is quite probably Shakespeare's fault. That had slipped my mind -even though I studied that play as a teenager - whoops!

I had a three in one edition which combined The Put-em-rights with Those Dreadful Children and another - was there one called The Family at Red Roofs or something like that?[/quote]
Yes, there was a book called The Family at Red Roofs.

That one had a gardener who could only say 'arrr' and a 'characterful' elderly household help, who refused to take wages

Did I miss a ‘Name Change to your Favourite Literary Address’ @110APiccadilly and @onemouseplace ?

Thursdays Child. I had it on tape growing up. Gutted when my mum went and threw it out without telling me!! If anyone has the MP3 version of the old cassette tape recording please let me know!!

@Doubleraspberry Doesn't Darrel's little sister, Felicity, start school 2 TERMS after she was supposed to? She's already 13 where Darrel was only just 12 when she started.

@KingscoteStaff well spotted!

I have a DD named after Miss Poste!

Has anyone read NS’s Grand-Nannie? It was a memoir of the life of her father’s nanny, who also looked after NS and her siblings. I think it must have been mis-shelved in the children’s library as I read it at about 9. Brilliant Gosford Park type detail.

@KingscoteStaff Yes, I’ve read Grand Nannie, ages ago. I remember it as being very charming, in a period piece kind of way. Didn’t she start work as a nursery maid at the age of 12, or something? ( Incidentally, I hope you are the pleasant Miss Latimer, or even Miss Cromwell, and not the terrifying capricious Miss Keith).

@KingscoteStaff

Did I miss a ‘Name Change to your Favourite Literary Address’ *@110APiccadilly and @onemouseplace* ?

I do like that idea! Though I might struggle to choose my favourite.

@ClariceQuiff

If you think 'Those Dreadful Children' is bad, try 'The Put 'em Rights'.

Bunch of upper-middle-class children take it upon themselves to put various forelock-tugging villagers 'right' - except one of the children is working class and doesn't know his place - but it's OK, by the end of the book, he learns to stay obediently within the realm of his fellow paupers.

I don't think this is actually meant to be the reading of that character. The point is that the lad (Micky??) wants to be friends with them because his mum thinks he is too good for the other village children. He doesn't like them really, but he feels he should do. At the end of the book he wants to be friends with people he likes not the people he thinks are better. It's actually saying be friends with who you like rather than who you think is outwardly better.

I don't particularly like "The Put 'em Rights" as a story though. It's not her best.

I don't think some of the comments are quite fair on EB. Yes she did write some bad stereotypes-but in that era a lot did.
There are plenty of hero working class children in her books:
Andy (Adventurous Four) is very much set up to be admired, Barney (and Miranda) is again set up to be the leader of the group, Jimmy and Lottie in the circus books are clearly working class too.
If you read a lot of books in the era a common theme is that if they're working class and okay they'll find out they're middle class (or upper) by the end of the book by an unexpected title or lost money etc.

@SorrelForbes

TrashyPanda - that's the version I have too and I'm sure it's not abridged.

It definitely is - I have that copy too, and the hardback I bought as an adult has quite a bit more. I think that one is described as a revised edition. This page gives a good summary.

www.whitegauntlet.com.au/noelstreatfeild/ChildFiction/BooksPaintedGarden.htm

I don't think this is actually meant to be the reading of that character.
The point is that the lad (Micky??) wants to be friends with them because his mum thinks he is too good for the other village children. He doesn't like them really, but he feels he should do
At the end of the book he wants to be friends with people he likes not the people he thinks are better. It's actually saying be friends with who you like rather than who you think is outwardly better.

The wording is:

'He had learned it was better to make friends with his equals and to argue and stick up for himself, than it was to suck up to children just because he thought they were richer or better than himself. That was a silly thing to do. It made the village children angry with him and it made him a stupid little snob, without any character at all, because he was always afraid of airing his opinions in case the others laughed at him.

They had shown real kindliness and friendliness to him, but he didn't really 'belong' in their circle. He wouldn't push himself in any more ...

So Bobby had made up his mind to say goodbye to the Put-Em-Rights and to belong to his own school and companions'

I agree the message is that Bobby will be happier, but it doesn't say that he liked the village children more, just that he could be himself with them because they were his 'equals'.

@Latenightreader

thanks so much for that link-really interesting!!!

I think I have a couple of copies-always want the original-for example Painted Garden versus whichever shoe book this one was so I am going to dig it out and have a look.

I adore the old illustrations as well and have spent ages googling to see what their overalls would look like in Ballet Shoes etc.

I remember having an old copy of one-must be ballet shoes where Nanna says " it will be all Sir Garnet" which obviously does not appear in later American editions.

Gran-Nannie was republished a few years ago as Tea By the Nursery Fire and is much easier to get hold of in that edition. It is lovely!

@ClariceQuiff

*I don't think this is actually meant to be the reading of that character. The point is that the lad (Micky??) wants to be friends with them because his mum thinks he is too good for the other village children. He doesn't like them really, but he feels he should do* At the end of the book he wants to be friends with people he likes not the people he thinks are better. It's actually saying be friends with who you like rather than who you think is outwardly better.

The wording is:

'He had learned it was better to make friends with his equals and to argue and stick up for himself, than it was to suck up to children just because he thought they were richer or better than himself. That was a silly thing to do. It made the village children angry with him and it made him a stupid little snob, without any character at all, because he was always afraid of airing his opinions in case the others laughed at him.

They had shown real kindliness and friendliness to him, but he didn't really 'belong' in their circle. He wouldn't push himself in any more ...

So Bobby had made up his mind to say goodbye to the Put-Em-Rights and to belong to his own school and companions'

I agree the message is that Bobby will be happier, but it doesn't say that he liked the village children more, just that he could be himself with them because they were his 'equals'.

Well, of course that’s not the way EB intended us to read it, but her subtext is definitely ‘Know your place’.

Social climbing and/or nouveau riche characters are almost always punished — Pauline Bingham Jones (fake wealthy background, fake name, ashamed of her poor, elderly mother), Sheila Naylor (doesn’t wash her neck, poor grammar showing through despite her family’s newfound wealth, Jo (the second former with the ‘road hog’ h-dropping father, who keeps money up the legs of her knickers) in the school series, for instance.

By ‘snob’ in that extract, EB means ‘someone who thinks himself above his actual social class’.

By ‘snob’ in that extract, EB means ‘someone who thinks himself above his actual social class’.

Yes - she actually sounds really bitter - 'it made him a stupid little snob'.

Many thanks for that link! I am now engrossed in all the detail.

@TrashyPanda

Many thanks for that link! I am now engrossed in all the detail.

Just be aware it is about ten years old so a few of the rarer stories have been republished, and the list of short stories isn't complete. It is a terrific resource and I'm really glad it is still available.

Latenightreader I stand corrected! Well I never! I've been on that site many times and just spotted that information. Right, off to get a hardback copy (if I can!).