5 (p. 265) “The melancholy Mabel will await the tryst without success, as far as this one is concerned. ‘Fish, fish, other fish—other fish I fry!’ ” he warbled to the tune of “Cherry Ripe”: Gerald is parodying a love poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674); its first line is “Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry.”The rest of Gerald’s song echoes the finale: “Where my Julia’s lips do smile; / There’s the land, or cherry-isle, / Whose plantations fully show / All the year where cherries grow.”
6 (pp. 313, 315) They met no one, except one man, who murmured, “Guy Fawkes, swelp me!” and crossed the road hurriedly: Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) was the best-known member of a group of Catholic conspirators who attempted to blow up England’s Houses of Parliament and kill the king in 1605. The plot was uncovered, and Fawkes and the others were tried and executed. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated annually on November 5 with fireworks and the burning of Fawkes in effigy.
7 (p. 319) We must excuse her. She had been very brave, and I have no doubt that all heroines, from Joan of Arc to Grace Darling, have had their sobbing moments: Grace Darling (1815-1842) was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper in Northumberland, England, who became a national heroine after September 1838, when she and her father rescued survivors of a ship, the Forfarshire, that had run aground on a nearby island.
8 (p. 330) “Anyway,” said Gerald, “we’ll try to get him back, and shut the door. That’s the most we can hope for. And then apples, and Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family, or any book you like that’s got no magic in it”: The popular adventure novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), inspired similar castaway narratives, perhaps the most famous of which is The Swiss Family Robinson (1814), by Johann David Wyss (1743-1818). As Gerald indicates, these tales of shipwrecked individuals and families, known for their realistic adventures, are devoid of magic and enchantment.
9 (p. 348) she looked like a little girl reflected in one of those long bent mirrors at Rosherville Gardens that make stout people look so happily slender, and slender people so sadly scraggy: Rosherville Gardens, a riverside resort in Northfleet, England, opened in the early 1840s. For a time a popular destination for Londoners, who reached it by steamboat, the resort featured a bear pit, zoo, aviary, botanical gardens, maze, open-air theaters, and tea rooms.
10 (p. 369) “Come, we must get the feast ready. Eros—Psyche—Hebe—Ganymede—all you young people can arrange the fruit”: In classical mythology, Psyche (which means “soul” in Greek) is the princess who married Cupid, the god of love. As a result of her failure of trust, she is compelled to leave her husband’s castle, but after enduring many trials and a long separation, she is reunited with the god and made immortal. The myth of Psyche and Cupid can be seen as an allegory of the soul transfigured by love. In chapter 6, the children act out a fairy-tale version of this myth in the story of Beauty and the Beast. See the introduction for an account of the increasingly significant, if never explicitly stated, role of the myth and the fairy tale in the second half of The Enchanted Castle.
11 (p. 379) perhaps Mr. Millar will draw the different kinds of arches for you: H. R. Millar (1869-1942) worked as an illustrator for The Strand Magazine as well as other publications. His collaboration with Nesbit began in 1899 with the illustrations for The Book of Dragons, which originally appeared in The Strand, and they continued to work together until her relationship with the magazine ended in 1913.
INSPIRED BY THE ENCHANTED CASTLE AND FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
British author J. K. Rowling frequently identifies Edith Nesbit as a major inspiration for her immensely popular Harry Potter novels. Therefore, it may be no coincidence that in the wave of excitement surrounding the Harry Potter phenomenon, a major film adaptation of Nesbit’s Five Children and It has also appeared. Surprisingly, John Stephenson’s Five Children and It (2004) is only the third Nesbit novel to appear on the large screen, following The Railway Children (1970) and The Phoenix and the Magic Carpet (1995). The film stars Kenneth Branagh as Uncle Albert, Zoe Wannamaker as Martha the housekeeper (Wannamaker also appeared in the second Harry Potter film) , Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Psammead, Freddie Highmore as Robert, the narrator, and four other child actors. Produced in conjunction with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the film uses a combination of computer-generated special effects, animatronics, and live action to bring Nesbit’s story to life.
Works by Nesbit have appeared more often on television, at least in the United Kingdom. In addition to TV movies and serial adaptations of The Story of the Treasure Seekers (released as Treasure Seekers in 1996), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976 and 1997), and The Railway Children (1951, 1957, and 2000), a six-episode miniseries of The Enchanted Castle aired on British television in 1979, and a similar serialization of Five Children and It (retitled The Sand Fairy for U.S. distribution) was broadcast in 1991. Nesbit herself was the subject of a television play that was shown on BBC television in 1972 as part of the series The Edwardians.
For a discussion of authors inspired by Nesbit, see part VI of the introduction to this volume.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Edith Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of these enduring works.
Comments
THE NATION
E. Nesbit and W. W. Jacobs are the two contributors who have given a certain cheap magazine some circulation among a constituency at whom, to judge by the rest of its matter, it was not aimed. E. Nesbit is, one may almost say, the only person now telling fairy stories in public for love of the game. “The Enchanted Castle” is a very good example of her craft. Its humor consists in the continual jumbling of the realities of English child life, and the unrealities (or deeper realities) of the land of fancy. The wits of these young Britons are, when they choose, mazed with fairy-lore, and they have the dialect of romance at their tongue’s end. Probably no such deep philosophy could be read into their adventures as ingenuity has connected with the exploits of their great progenitor Alice; but the absurdity of the things they do is made delightful by the whimsical air of the writer. In short, the book illustrates once more the English faculty of amusing children without boring one’s self.