"Cut off their heads now and then": F. M. MAYOR (as MARY STRAFFORD), Mrs. Hammond's Children (1901)

"I can't much see the use of Kings and Queens ('Sha-a-ame!'); but if you have Kings and Queens, I think it's a good thing to cut off their heads now and then as a warning. I can't remember about Charles I's father, but I expect he was a bad man, and of course Charles II was a beast; he let the Dutch beat us.

…

Then there was James II. I expect he would have had his head cut off too, only he ran away. I had a lot of other things to say, but as I can't read my paper, I shan't say any more."

…

"Of well, Mr. Speaker, I mean, I do think my honourable friend does talk rubbish."

It's not really playing fair to select my opening quote from "The Hammond Parliament", the penultimate story in Mrs. Hammond's Children, as it will likely make the book (impossible to find outside the British Library, as I can attest) seem more consistently irresistible than it really is. But it is true that this story, in particular, in which the Hammond children enact a parliamentary debate unlike any other, was very nearly worth the trouble I went to to finally be able to read the book.

I have absolutely yearned to read this book for over a decade now, since first discovering F. M. Mayor's three gorgeous novels—The Third Miss Symons (1913) and The Rector's Daughter (1924) in particular, but also to a lesser degree The Squire's Daughter (1929). This was Mayor's first book, written under the pseudonym Mary Strafford in 1901 and never reprinted, and it's vanishingly rare now. (For most of that time, I was also lusting after a novella she wrote in 1914 called Miss Browne's Friend, but happily that was reprinted by the redoubtable Michael Walmer last year and proved as intriguing and satisfying as expected.) It does seem, given the acknowledgement Mayor deserves (though often still doesn't get) as a major author of the early 20th century, that this title too should be widely available. That said, I must also confess that if I had gone to the British Library only to find this book, I might have felt a bit let down.

When Mrs. Hammond's Children first appeared, it seems to have been marketed as a children's book, but when Janet Morgan wrote her introduction to the Virago edition of The Squire's Daughter, she referred to it as a collection of stories about children—“based on the relations among children and the kindnesses and cruelties they practise on one another.” Having read it at last, I'm still not absolutely sure how I would describe it. It's written very much in the sort of arch, moralistic tones of the children's fiction of the turn of the century, which makes some of the stories slightly hard going for an adult reader in 2022, but I also felt that the language itself is not necessarily aimed at children—Mayor's prose was already taking flight here and there—and its themes are rather subtle for a book to be read to young'uns. It's a bit "neither fish nor fowl", but perhaps all the more interesting to scholars for that reason.

"The Hammond Parliament", which is very entertaining and at times hilarious, was for me the best story of the seven here. "The Bosom Friends", about a pretentious friend of Milly's who should have been exposed on a hillside at birth, who makes Milly self-conscious about the family's relative lack of affluence until Milly Learns an Important Lesson (caps are mine, but they're surely implied in the text), has some quite amusing moments as well, though it's a bit weighted down with sentiment. "A Foreign Cousin", in which the Hammond children are rather beastly to their German cousin only to have a crisis at Christmas and peace made at last, has some high points as well despite its syrupy tones and unjustified length. "His Excellency the Sirdar", about the sad fate of the family's guinea pig, is strikingly accurate about children's behaviors and their changeability, but not completely engrossing for me. And "The End of All Things", the concluding story, about children getting older and putting away childish things, and the feelings of their younger siblings about it, is rather poignant, and very intelligently observed (as is all the book), and I like the concluding paragraph especially:

Indeed, I find it difficult to recognise my old friends in these very great and superior persons. I am sure they will no longer find me worthy of their company, so I take this opportunity of bidding them good-bye.

Ultimately, a mixed bag then. But I'm very glad I was finally able to read this missing piece from Mayor's too-sparse oeuvre, and it's of particular interest for those interested in well-observed books about children. It might be just a touch too sweet and pretty for my taste (apart from the advocacy for regicide, that is), but your mileage may well vary. And it's certainly essential that scholars should be able to include this work in their overall assessment of Mayor.

I should add, the illustrations are credited to one Alice Strafford—presumably, given Mayor's author pseudonym, a sister of the author, and one F. H. S. Shepherd.

"Go forth and see the sights": OONA H. BALL (as BARBARA BURKE), Barbara Goes to Oxford (1907)

A merry young woman sat on Mr. Bent's right hand. She owed her exalted position to the fact that she was 'a last Term's Bride.' I heard her tell Mr. Bent that she has chosen her maids for apparently irrelevant reasons—her cook for her sweet smile and her housemaid for her sense of humour.

'And has your plan answered?' he asked.

'Oh yes, excellently!' she answered. 'I have given cooking lessons to the cook, but I never could have taught her to be sweet-tempered; and I can instruct the housemaid in her duties, but to train her to see a joke would have been impossible.'

A wealthy young woman from Ireland determines that she will spend three weeks in Oxford with her friend (her father's former secretary, who has a break between jobs), but do so as the ordinary, less well-to-do folk would do ("We shall take very little money. Brownie because she has so little, I because I have so much."). She keeps a diary of her excursions for her Aunt Camilla, who is off on a Continental jaunt of her own. It's out of term time during their stay, so they are able to room in the lodgings of one Mr. Enderby, and feel that they can picture him quite well from his books and belongings. They meet the friendliest people imaginable, who are willing to show them all the special spots of their lovely city, and Barbara describes the events in some detail. They encounter a don, Mr. Bent, who had known Brownie in her childhood, and the mythical Mr. Enderby unexpectedly returns, requiring that they change to another student's lodgings instead (among other repercussions).

The novel (written by the wife of an Oxford don, no less) is about 70% travelogue and only 30% plot, but it's really quite extraordinarily addictive and enjoyable. Criminally, I have still never been to Oxford myself (it was a choice between Oxford and Cambridge when we were there last, and I'm afraid I'm beyond the pale for Oxfordians for having chosen the latter), but the sightseeing in the book was nevertheless very like having a holiday there myself. (It did make me wonder how things have changed in a bit more than a century, and I was genuinely worried whether there was still anything like a field and a dramatic view from Childsworth Farm, but I find from Google that in fact there is?)

One might well wish that the proportions were a bit more in favor of plot, or at least character and dialogue, because Ball is really quite good at these, and when she rises to the occasion, her sense of humor can very nearly rival E. M. Delafield's Provincial Lady:

Mr. Bent introduced me to an alarmingly grave and silent man. I attempted to open a conversation by saying that the day was exceedingly fine; he pondered for a long minute, and then said, 'That is a very just remark.' I was too chilled to venture on anything more likely to promote an interesting discussion, and, as he really seemed to think that being at a party was an excellent opportunity for a little quiet meditation, I deemed it better and kinder to let him meditate while I listened to those who talked.

That same difficult dinner companion, however, provides a memorable description of his efforts to entertain visitors to Oxford, and I have to say he's a man after my own heart in this (though I don't usually meditate at parties, not generally attending them at all):

We would go first to the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, whence we might look over Oxford and all the towers thereof.

My silent friend at the luncheon had told me that this was the way to begin to see Oxford.

He uttered so few words, and this made those that he did utter seem particularly worth remembering.

'When I have visitors,' he said, 'I take them up to the top of the theatre and I say, "There is Magdalen and there is Christ Church, there is New College and there the Bodleian Library. Here is half a crown. Go forth and see the sights and trouble me no more until evening." The man who can't amuse himself in Oxford must be a fool.'

When I do finally visit Oxford, I rather hope some of you might trouble yourselves a bit more than this on my behalf. On the other hand, I'm not completely certain how much a half crown would have appreciated in value during the past century, so perhaps the equivalent would be just as well...

Much of what plot there is is concerned with some very pleasant, slow-building romance, which isn't handled quite as obviously (or as sappily) as one might have expected from the time period. But as I said, even the more travel-focused sections seemed quite charming and entertaining to me.

Barbara Goes to Oxford was the first of three novels by Ball. The second, Their Oxford Year (1909), appears to be similar in structure, but from the point of view of a scholar's wife writing to her grandfather in Canada. And A Quiet Holiday (1912) appears perhaps to be more of a full-fledged novel, dealing with an orphan girl's stay on a remote Cotswolds farm and the people she meets there. The first two of these are available from Hathi Trust in the U.S. (and I would think in the U.K. as well, since Ball died in 1941 and is public domain under U.K. copyright law as well). I think Barbara, at least, would prove irresistible to anyone who either has experience of, or fantasizes about, living in Oxford.

Finally, for those of you who do currently work or have in the past worked in bookshops, a passage that will likely ring bells in your memory. I haven't worked in one since 1992, but I distinctly remember meeting this woman then:

We sympathised with a forlorn woman in a most strange quandary: she had come to buy a book, but as she seemed unable to remember either the title or the name of the author, hers was but a bootless errand. She appeared to be most pathetically surprised that the very intelligent shopman was powerless to help her.

'You really don't think that you know the book I mean?' she said.

'Indeed, madam,' said he, 'I'm afraid I do not.'

'My sister-in-law said that it was such an interesting book,' said she. 'I thought that you would have been sure to have known all about it.'

Disappointed and disconsolate she wandered off into the rain.

:-)