Charles Kingsley: The Water Babies

[Colyngbourne]

I have dim recollections of reading this as a child – after all, it is my childhood copy that I’ve been reading from this last fortnight to Junior Col#2, aged 11 – but it takes two or three goes to begin to appreciate some of the underlying ‘stuff’ that Kingsley puts in. Some of the references to contemporary political events/characters are so obscure that it was difficult not to edit them out when reading aloud and scrub them altogether. Instead I would read them at a reasonable gallop and confess in my last breath (after a myriad Victorian sub-clauses) that ‘I had no idea what that was all about’ before continuing on with Tom’s adventures.

The Water Babies was written in 1862 and encapsulates much concern for the welfare of the poor – their education and health prospects – as well as concern for the environmental health of the natural world. Kingsley feels most keenly for children, whether it is those with harsh or over-indulgent parents, or those subjected to vicious schoolmasters and forms of schooling, including the ‘great idol Examination’.
All this is more than pertinent to today’s children. My daughter kept grinning and gasping occasionally when she recognised some diatribe against those who examine children daily, weekly, yearly (she has her own SATS coming up) and the forcing of knowledge into heads for the mere spouting-off later on. There were some negative portrayals of United States’ behaviour/attitudes which similarly struck a very modern apposite chord. And best of all there was a little dog, not sentimentalised as it protects the last breath of life on a doomed vessel in the north Atlantic – an infant in a cradle, whose mother we know has already drowned.

Obviously the story has more than a smidgeon of religious purpose stamped on it. The divine spirit of Nature is manifest in the creator Mother Carey at the End of the World, as well as in the divine justice and mercy of Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. Tom’s unforgiving, ‘naughty’ nature is transformed through his adventures, just as are the many creatures that he sees under the water and above – the Gairfowl, whom evolution has overtaken; the Doasyoulike people who are reduced to extinction; the caddis-flies who creep up out of the stream. Charles Kingsley does not fight against any idea of evolution, but works with it. within a religious context. As Mother Carey says, “Only I can make them make themselves.”

This is a rush review without the book in front of me. But I would encourage people to read it to children still (if only in an abridged version). It presents a strong visual and social picture of the mid-Victorian period from a man who clearly loved the north of England (he was the very last Canon of Middleham Collegiate Church in Wensleydale).

[HP]

Col -

I think it was 1863 The Water Babies was first published. You had me going there for a moment, because I can remember reading this while staying with my grandmother and it was regarded as an 'old' childhood favourite even then - in fact both she and my mother had read it as girls.
A charming book, I must agree.

Add: actually, the moment you mentioned the title, I can still recall the delicious musty, fusty smell of its pages. Funny how instantly evocative of smell some things can be. The Water Babies and The House at Pooh Corner were always housed in a bedside drawer in the little back bedroom of my grandmother's house - can see them now. Memories, eh?

[Colyngbourne]

I was trying to be speedy but a bit too much! Busy day today. Have corrected it to 1862.

It's one of those classics which most people feel they've read or had read to them, but seem too scary to deal out to today's children.

And now I have another minute or two to spare, I think it does feel like a 'children's book' - perhaps one of the first of its kind? I have no idea of the detailed history of books written for children but The Water Babies is not simply morally instructive - it also possesses the charm HP mentions and includes modern children's fantasy staples such as chases, engaging temporary side-kicks, humorous conversations with passers-by who aid or detract from the quest in hand. And of course a little dog to coo over. :D

Very little in children's drama can beat Tom's sweating, feverish run from the House over Harthover Fell and down into Vendale where he begs a glass of water from the old schoolmistress and expires in the stream across the village, casting off his little black shell on the verge of the stream to become a waterbaby.

[Colyngbourne]

And browsing, have noticed an article in today's Guardian re the very same: The Water Babies and Alice in Wonderland being published very closely together and having child protagonists.

[HP]

There's also a rather good on-line version of the whole book here. And I rather wish there wasn't, as it's far too tempting to down tools and indulge in a little nostalgia!

[Jerkass]

I think I've mentioned it before, but I have to recommend wholeheartedly George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin to anyone who wants to check out children's books from (roughly) this period--probably about 20 years more recent than the others mentioned in this thread.

I'll be sure to check out Water Babies, Col--thanks for the review.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, I've just found via HoneyPotts' link that I can at last read Macdonald online here.