‘Apple Bough’ by Noel Streatfeild, like all the best Streatfeild stories is centered around a large and closely knit family, who struggle to manage the family dynamic when the flourishing musical career of one of the four children threatens to destroy the sense of stability required for the well-being of the remaining children in the family.

The Forums consists of four children : Myra the eldest, Sebastian, the next eldest, then Wolfgang and the smallest child, Ethel. The children’s father, David, is an accomplished accompanying pianist and their mother Polly, a scatter brained artist who loves her children tremendously, but whose mind is so caught up in her art, that she struggled to manage her household.

At the start of the story, the children come to stay at a rambling cottage in the heart of the English countryside called Apple Bough. The cottage comes with a rather unkempt, sprawling garden.

Raspberries, strawberries, currants and gooseberries which nobody had planted would be discovered suddenly, buried under some other plant but with fruit growing on them. Plants that usually are considered wild come into the Apple Bough garden to flourish – cowslips on the lawn, primrose and a wild kind of daffodil in the weedy drive, dog roses grew where ordinary gardens had proper rose trees …

The children are rather small when they come to Apple Bough, ranging from about 2 years old to 6 years old. Named after world famous musicians by their music mad parents, Myra is named after Dame Myra Hess, Sebastian after Bach, Wolfgang after Mozart and Ethel after Dame Ethel Smyth. The children are watched closely for any traces of musical genius and it is Sebastian, the second eldest, who proves to have a natural flair for playing the violin.

In the next few years, Sebastian trains dilligently at his violin and the children spend idyllic days, growing up at Apple Bough. The children have a governess called Miss Popple, who not only teaches them lessons at home, but also cares for the house, cooking their meals and taking charge of their general well-being. Myra, even has a little dog called Wag, who makes their life complete. But Sebastian’s violin playing progresses at an enormous pace and a public concert places him in the eye of many prominent people in the music world.

An important American concert arranger called Paul Ruttenstein offers to sponsor a concert tour for Sebastian around America and the children’s parents jump at the opportunity. In a matter of a few weeks, Apple Bough is sold, the entire family with Miss Popple start a whirlwind tour of America and unfortunately, Wag the dog is left in the care of Miss Popple’s brother. The immense popularity of the US Tour leads to other tours and Sebastian enjoys worldwide celebrity and acclaim. The children’s parents are determined not to break up the family- so they stay together and their Mother always reminds them that they are lucky not to have to learn geography from their world atlases but instead from their personal experience.

Soon, however, the other children grow tired of their whirlwind life, never stopping at a place for more than a few days, never seeing their grandparents, not being able to pursue their individual passions, not having a permanent home and moreover, always being seen as appendages to Sebastian’s name and fame. After four years of touring the world, Myra, Wolfie and Ettie spend the summer with their grandparents in Devonshire and confide their woes to them. Ettinger wants to train as a Ballet dancer, Wolfie wants to write popular music and Myra, having no particular talent of her own, just wants to have a home again and longs for Apple Bough. They know that Sebastian must continue his concerts and their Mother will never agree to splitting up the family but Grandfather tells them to keep up their courage,focus on setting up ‘Operation Home’, feeling sure a means and a way will, be shown to them in due course.

What follows is a period of learning and self-discovery and the children gradually learn that with vision and determination, dreams can come true.

‘Apple Bough’ on one level is a family story. It is about family togetherness and the dynamics between siblings. It also deals with finding one’s own path in life – be it a path of prodigious talent or perhaps a path that is more shaded from the limelight. One of children feels quite upset that she doesn’t have a natural talent towards music or dance but instead just dreams of having a home. Her grandfather assures her that her greatest gift is that having a kind and loving heart and being a solid rock that her siblings can rely on. Streatfeild shows us that wherever and in whichever direction one’s path in life leads us, each path has its own value and being happy and healthy is important too. The child with fame and fortune wanted nothing more than to return home at the end of the day, to a house where belongings had their rightful place. Streatfeild shows us fame and fortune are desirable, talent has to be nurtured with effort and discipline but home is where the heart lies.

I reviewed ‘Apple Bough’ for Simon (stuckinabook.com) and Karen’s (kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com) #1962club where bloggers pick a book published in a particular year and review them in a concerted effort to see what the landscape of literature looked like in a particular year.

‘The Home’ by Penelope Mortimer is about the internal struggles of a woman to build a home for her family in the aftermath of the breakup of a 25 year old marriage. Under the scrutiny of her grown up children, elderly mother and mother in law, Eleanor desperately grapples to come to terms with her new life – a life strangely bereft of any kind of emotional support. This novel is reflective of the early 1970’s, when separation sometimes left a dependant woman, unable to earn a living or fend for herself and in this particular instance, unable to reconcile herself to a life without a husband, even if he was unfaithful.

The novel starts with Eleanor and her youngest son moving out of their current home to live in a house, provided by her husband in the London neighbourhood of St John’s Wood. Leaving nothing but a few bits of furniture – Eleanor tries to create a home in the empty newness of a large house. Her husband Graham, is a successful doctor, treating his innumerable rich patients and attending to their varied levels of neuroses with different drugs. Graham, a serial adulterer leaves his marriage of 25 years, five children and wife Eleanor, for a much more youthful version of Eleanor – a young girl called Nell (they even have the same name) Partwhistle. Most of the children are adults and have flown away from the parental nest, there is only one teenage son, Phillip who spends most of his time at boarding school. 

Unable to reconcile herself to her single fate, Eleanor meets old flames in hopes of rekindling relationships and even harbours wild romantic dreams of dating men who have paid her attention in the past. None of these men are right for her, in fact in an embarrassing turn of events, an old lover starts sleeping with one of her daughters. The romantic heroes of her dreams fail to keep their dates. Even when Eleanor goes on a date with the father of one of her son’s classmates, she feels a strange emotional disconnect with her sexual self and can only think of Graham, her husband. 

Eleanor’s helplessness, her adult children’s level of self-absorption and her youngest son’s decision to run away and join a group of revolutionaries in a far off land feels like the ultimate betrayal. Eleanor is forced to rethink the meaning of home and what it means to her. 

‘Home’ is a beautifully written, absorbing and often heart wrenching portrayal of a defeated woman. A woman who nobody cares about. A woman for whom independence, self-worth and ‘home’ seem like empty words – when all she wants at the end of the day is her husband, even if he has never been true to her. One does question Eleanor’s behavior and attitude during the course of the novel. Does she choose to ignore her husband’s serial infidelities in order to live a comfortable life at home? But we find that Eleanor doesn’t find money a major motivator in life. When Graham fails to send her money when her funds run short, she’s not angry or up in arms. She’s merely very bewildered because she has no clue how to manage financial needs and wants. At the heart of the matter, she wants to fill the emptiness of a single life, and for her Graham is still the person who can do that for her.

Achingly sad and beautifully written, ‘The Home’ examines the meaning of home in a context from the past, but which I am sure will resonate with women, even today.

Thank you to the British Library for the press copy for review and for always providing fresh food for thought.

The following is a guest review from my 11 year old daughter, Meli. As part of the #1940club (from Simon at stuckinabook.com and Karen at kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com), readers are selecting books published in the year as part of a group reading and reviewing collective. This rare children’s book by author Kitty Barnes, is the second in the Farrar Family, after ‘Family Footlights’, series, and won the prestigious Carnegie award.
We hope you enjoy Meli’s review. Please leave her a comment below about your favourite children’s book. She will be so thrilled.

Meli’s Book Review for Visitors From London

The story of the ‘Visitors from London’ is about four children who live in London and have come to stay in the country with their Aunt Myra for the holidays.

Aunt Myra is a very easy-going person, so the children, Gerda, David, Jimmy and Sally think they will have a wonderful time in the country, just relaxing and spending time with her. Little do they know – they are in for a surprise!
The children and Aunt Myra also have a friend, Roly Martingale, who happens to be an author, and lives in the country. But, due to the war, Roly is not staying in his large, beautiful, country home – Steadings.
Hoping to do his bit to help with the war, Roly has leant Steadings to the Women’s Voluntary Services for evacuated children.

However this means he has to rely on his young friends the Farrars, to help him with cleaning the old house from top to bottom.

The children and Aunt Myra leap bravely to the front with dusters and buckets, and Aunt Myra makes all the arrangements for the evacuated children. All preparations are made for the young evacuees, because Roly absentmindedly told them that children were coming to stay at Steadings.

Instead, when the children clattered into Steadings, the Farrars were amazed! There were different families with children and grown ups mixed!!

However the Farrars accept this challenge and work to make life pleasant for the new people. But there is a slight problem. The new people are not willing to give up their town ways.

Fred, a difficult young boy, who likes disrupting people and plans, finds peace and comfort in being with the shepherd.

Queenie is at the height of her youth, and dislikes manual labour, and is horrified to find that she is expected to pitch in and do her share of the dirty work.

These are just two of the problems. What with hot tempered Lily and sly Mrs Fell, the children must juggle a lot of problems.

Will they be able to cope with the challenge – or will they have to face ignominious defeat?

‘Visitors from London’ is about how four children and their friends accepted a challenge, to make a home in the country for evacuated people from London. This book is written and set in 1940 and portrays what life must have been like for people during that time, when many suffered due to the war.

This delightful family story is the second book in this series of fun-filled books. I got to read the first book in the series, Family Footlights, when I was 9 years old.
Kitty Barne’s books are always a favourite with me, because I appreciate family stories with a hint of adventure. The illustrations in this wonderful book are all done by Ruth Gervis.

‘Beneath the Visiting Moon’ is the story of the fatherless Fontayne family, who live in a sleepy English town, in a sprawling family home that has seen better days. Marcus Fontayne’s widow Elisabeth, is very poor and long gone are the glorious heydays of cultural life at the family home Fontayne, when Fontayne was described as the ‘Mount Olympus’ of culture, and the gifted Marcus Fontayne very much at the helm of things, encouraging the development of new ideas and artistic endeavours. After Marcus’ death, the family home is in decline, the family live in genteel poverty and the bills that arrive in the post every day, induce Elisabeth to escape into her garden for temporary reprieve. Selling the family home seems an inevitability.
Quite unexpectedly, she falls in love with a musician, Julian Jones, a widower himself with two older children, Bronwyn and Peter. The two unlikely families are forced to cohabit at Fontayne, and learn to adapt themselves to becoming a conjoined family.

This is the story of a spring and summer in their lives, a summer tinged with the highs and lows of first love for Sarah. A summer full of listlessness and inaction for others, whilst everyday the newspapers yielded frightening and threatening prophecies of upcoming war.
Moreover, it is the story of the disappearance of a way of life, that dissolved when the Second World War started. It is the story of the dissolution of the grand old English aristocracy, with their sprawling houses, green gardens and glorious, carefree, champagne filled life.

‘Beneath the Visiting Moon’ introduces us to a large and unusual family – the Fontaynes. They consist of Elisabeth Fontayne, Marcus Fontayne’s widow, Sarah their eldest daughter, on the cusp of adulthood; Christopher, perennially away at boarding school and soon to be sent to Oxford, Philly his twin sister and young Tom, who lives a carefree existence, eating nursery lunches and suppers with Mrs Moody, the family seamstress, who has a lively tongue and gives unsolicited advice about the love affairs of the young girls. There are a few other people who oblige the Fontayne family with their services – a housekeeper, Mrs Rudge – the occasional charwoman, the inscrutable, loyal figure of the butler, who reportedly hasn’t been paid for years – all the old retainers powering together to keep up the appearance, traditions and daily rituals of the English country house. Alas, the family home is hopelessly dilapidated and money is dwindling. Elisabeth Fontayne is endlessly worried about the multitude of unpaid bills coming in and seeks refuge in the beauty of her garden and arrangement of flowers about the ancestral home.

“Elisabeth had a faint misgiving that there was something in the air as well as the insistent flower perfume. It wasn’t the world news, because she hadn’t looked at the papers this morning, and yesterday’s horrors had been quelled by sleep. Yesterday’s dismay were screened by the white lilies in white bud below the terrace.”

The eldest daughter Sarah is a hopeless romantic and spends her days day dreaming but even she realises that the family home needs to be sold. She falls hopelessly in love with a very charismatic much older man, Sir Giles Merrick, a member of the House of Commons, who gives beautiful young Sarah, a little bit of attention. His interest in Sarah, her father, the beautiful old house of Fontayne and her unusual family, is romanticised by Sarah to a great extent. Her days pass in anticipation of a letter from him and when later Sarah takes up a job in London it is with him, that Sarah yearns to spend time.

Philly (short for Philadelphia – Marcus Fontayne having embarked on a tour of America in his time), the younger sister, has a secret dread for men and inwardly hopes never to get married. She is hence horrified when she becomes the young muse of an avant garde artist in the village. Mr Lupin bullies her into sitting for her portrait drawing. Her encounters with Mr Lupin and her dread of his interest in her, are extremely funny and emphasize the fact that Cavan has a strong sense of humour. In fact, her strange and macabre characters and quirky humour were something that reminded me of ‘I Capture the Castle’ and ‘Guard Your Daughters’ and certainly explores in the same vein, large dysfunctional families.

Philly’s twin brother Christopher, spends much of his time away at boarding school and becomes fascinated by an outgoing and fashionable young woman called Virginia Welwyn who promises to take him flying one day. He meets her at the same time his sister Sarah meets Sir Giles at an Easter Ball. And last of all is young Tom with his attachment to Mrs Moody and his love for riding his bicycle.

One of the earliest, most dramatic events in the book comes with the discovery that Elisabeth Fontayne has fallen in love with Mr Jones and is expected to marry him shortly. Sarah expects that Mr Jones will bolster their flagging income in future (something that doesn’t happen) and the reader does derive the impression that Mr Jones provides Elisabeth with a sense of mental security (if not financial security) from the threats of impendingwar and instability. The Jones’ – merge into the fabric of everyday life in Fontayne but there are lots of adjustments and adaptations made by family members. Mr Jones brings his two children Bronwyn and Peter into the fold of the family at Fontayne. Bronwyn is a young opinionated writer, and Peter is a suave youth, very much trying to cast himself in the mould of a man about town.

Sarah, the eldest child is overcome with a desire to escape to London and earn her own living, in order to prove herself to the rest of her family. Part of the motivation is also to meet Sir Giles Merrick, whom she is hopelessly infatuated with. The anguish and torment of first love, Sarah’s obsession with Merrick and the rather one-sided correspondence between them, form a major plot point of the novel.

The descriptions of the unusual and slightly dysfunctional family members are an interesting part of ‘Beneath the Visiting Moon’. However, the grand old country house of Fontayne is a formidable character in itself. Descriptions of the many rooms, the beautiful and carefully tended garden, the dusty attics with unknown treasures and the once opulent but now decaying gilt ballroom are wonderful to read about.

I really loved the first few chapters that were set during Spring and Easter, especially because I quite serendipitously picked up the book at Easter time myself.

” Good Friday was the smell of hot-cross-buns and the aura of an almost pious tranquillity over the gardens and the contrast of the girls still busy with their sewing. Tom had an enormous chocolate Easter egg. The others said he was broody over it; he fondled it but wouldn’t dream of eating it.”

When the book slipped into the summer, the abundance of fruit and flowers in the garden, the planning of a grand ball to celebrate Sarah’s eighteenth birthday, especially during the last summer before the dreaded war, seemed like a glorious last hurrah for the beauty of the old English country house. In places one couldn’t help but marvel in the beauty of Cavan’ descriptive writing.

“The summer had its second wind. The roses, temporarily dispirited by the July rain, were now born again; and in rebirth were fuller, finer, more confident than before. From the upper windows of the house, the distant blotch of colour seemed freely mixed with Chinese white. Elisabeth loved these pale chalky tints that could be so opulent as well as delicate… Upfront the rose garden, this side of the posturing yes, tall shaggy hollyhocks made a bright little wilderness, with shadows lying in long lines like pilings overthrown. The wisteria bloomed again, hanging in great bunched drops in the formation of clustered grapes; opening in a minute intricacy of lapping petals, expanding and deepening in colour, and then slowly retracting, turning pale,meeting death halfway.”

The book title ‘Beneath the Visiting Moon’ is a nod the Shakespeare’s ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’. After Anthony has died, all the joy from Cleopatra’s life has disappeared. She finds life extremely dull and ordinary and hence comments:

“The soldier’s pole is fallen: young boys and girls

Are level now with men: the odds is gone,

And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon.”

A marvellous tribute to bygone days, whilst ‘Beneath the Visiting Moon’ commemorates the old aristocratic way of life, it also enables us to acknowledge and appreciate that this time was one of most earth shifting change, when class structures where destroyed, cities were ruined, lives were lost, rules changed and an evening out of society was enabled.

This book review is written for the #1940club where readers choose titles published in 1940 and post reviews on social media. Many thanks to Simon and Karen for picking such an interesting year. A year where most writings had to acknowledge in some form or other, the outbreak of war, but when the outcome of war was unknown and therefore, unquestionably disturbing.