Thursday's Child

Thursday's Child
Noel Streatfeild, il. Peggy Fortnum
1970, Random House

When young Margaret is sent to an orphanage in 1900 England, the cruel Matron instantly divines that here is a child whose spirit must be broken.

"One of those independent children," she agreed. "It will take some time before she is molded to our shape. Send her to me when she comes in from school tomorrow. She shall have ten strokes on each hand. That will teach her who is the ruler in this establishment."

Good luck, cruel Matron. Margaret is a sturdy, outspoken child whose remorseless imagination and strong sense of her own story - she was left on a doorstep as a baby, with fine baby clothes and a secret benefactor who sent gold to her caretakers every year for ten years - makes her impervious. She also has an ally in Lavinia Beresford, a fellow orphan who has gained employment in a big house as a scullery maid, and her two little brothers, Peter and Horatio, who are fellow inmates at St. Luke's.

Matron is a standard big, evil woman. Lavinia and her brothers are the standard upper-class children fallen upon hard times and Margaret is a standard chutzpah-laden upstart. Yet despite the cliches, it's a good, satisfying read. Perhaps because of kid-lit gems like this:

In the kitchen there was a cupboard called "The Housemaid's Cupboard." This was always bulging with snacks: game, cold chicken, cold meats, as well as fruit puddings and cakes. Any of the staff could help themselves from that cupboard whenever they felt hungry. Lavinia took a plate and piled on it a rich assortment of food. Then, fetching a knife and fork, she sat down at the table and ate the lot.

The book pays subtle honor to the classic orphan stories; there's more than a hint of Mary, of Anne, of Sarah Crewe. But Margaret is a 20th century heroine, albeit early; at the end, when she's offered the standard dream outcome for an orphan - a rich ready-made family - she reacts:

Her chin shot into the air. "Thank you very much but I don't want to be anyone's daughter. I was not found like an ordinary baby. I had three of everything all marked with crowns and each year lots of money was paid to keep me. I have friends, Hannah and the rector, and I've got a stamp so I am writing to ask them to come and see me act Little Lord Fauntleroy."

Other Information
This book has a sequel, Far To Go, and was made into a television miniseries by the BBC in 1973. This is available on TV.com

Websites
The White Gauntlet

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The Witches' Bridge (aka The Mystery Of The Witches' Bridge)
Barbee Oliver Carleton
1967, Holt, Rinehart And Winston

Out of the night, and the fog, and the marsh, these three, Doom shall come for thee.

Dan Pride is a 13-year-old orphan who's spent the three years since his parents' deaths as a lonely, largely unwanted resident of English boarding schools. Finally, his reclusive Uncle Julian has agreed to take him into the family house near Boston, a property set in salt marshes which has been in the family for generations. Dan is looking forward to being part of a real family again, but his hopes are crushed by Billy Ben, the jolly handyman who tells him of the family curse. Long ago, the town accused Samuel Pride and his wife of witchcraft; they were executed, but not before Samuel laid a curse on the town that even today lingers in the locals' minds. Now, Pride's Point is as isolated mentally as physically, subject to superstitions and suspicions that have embittered his uncle and explain why Dan's own father fled the place for Europe.

Dan, struggling with the loneliness and local hostility, learning who he can trust and what he will believe, finds that family history is both a burden and a link. Desperate to make his distant uncle like him, he determines he'll solve a long-festering mystery at Pride. Years earlier, the curse had struck again when Julian's father had died on a foggy night in the marshes, supposedly on his way back from making peace with their arch-enemies, the Bishop family. The Bishops said he'd never come; the money he'd been carrying was never found. The death had reinvigorated the legend, and turned Julian into an oddity.

He peered through the rain, eager for his first glimpse of the great salt marshes. "What's Pride's Point like?" he asked curiously.

"It's self-sufficient, like the old places, with its own orchard and gardens and such. And it stays the same while the world keeps changing.

The house and holdings of Pride's Point, usually simply called Pride, exert a powerful pull on the story, a sense of place reminiscent of Moorethwaite Manor or Green Knowe. Ancestral homes, the magic of long-standing occupation, the sense of a history shared through the roots of plants and set of stones. It's not a matter of who has the big ancestral house, though; Lamie, the hermit, expresses it most plainly:

My mother made such ointment as this, and her mother before her... They have not gone, you know, theose good people. You see them in the ditches dug in the marsh, and in the cellar holes below... and you see them in the white roses that grow wild now, on all our islands. They brought the roses with them when they came, three hundred years ago and half a world away... They are still here, our first people.

A very well-written book with interesting, believable characters and an engrossing plot.

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Searching For Shona
Margaret J. Anderson
1978, Alfred A. Knopf

Orphaned heiress Marjorie Malcolm-Scott is on her way to Canada to live with relatives when she spots sometime playmate and orphanage resident Shona McInnes awaiting evacuation to the countryside. Dreading the long ocean voyage, she suggests they swap identities. The bold Shona, who has a limited sense of consequences, jumps at the chance to swap clothing. So the real Shona goes off to Canda while the pretender goes to a quiet Scottish village to stay with the Campbell sisters. Marjorie is quite happy with the results, but one thing nags at her - the village where she was sent turned out to be the same place Shona's long-lost mother came from, and Marjorie feels terrible that her friend lost out on the chance to discover her family background.

This is a cozy family book, beneath the appearance of a mystery/adventure story. It has many of the classic ingredients of a thrilling mystery/adventure story - an identity swap, a poor little rich girl, orphans, wartime privitation and an abandoned house with a tower and a tragic background - but the real well it draws from is that of a neglected child who finds happiness with unlikely parents in a chaotic time.

When they reached home, they hung up their wet coats. Miss Agnes had socks and slippers warming by the fire for them because she was sure their feet would be cold and wet after walking all the way from the picture house in that awful rain.

Searching For Shona is unusual in several ways. It's set in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the heroine is atypical, a unadventurous sort who never changes much - she's more confident at the end, but no more bold. I like that - enough with the introverted heroines who must magically transform into extroverted ones. Marjorie is old for her years, a practical and worried child for whom the magical house and the haunting mystery of its former owners are mildly diverting but not nearly as important as the reality of her life. Her adopted sister, Anna Ray, is more of a typical heroine, dreamy and childish and prone to running off on adventures. Anna drives the plot by forcing Marjorie to do things like break into the deserted house.