The Railway Children
Remembering children’s books is a serendipitous exercise. In my case, some are established favourites, and so Pooh, Rat and Mole and Alice will always be close to me. The same is true of the Rev. W (Wilbert Vere) Awdry books about Thomas the Tank Engine and the others in his railway series. Other characters and stories float in and out of my attention without any clear or obvious reason. So it is with The Railway Children. In fact, I should be honest, because what I remembered first, and just recently, was the movie, which came out in 1970. It was a family film, with just the right mixture of fun, sad moments, and excitement – and it had trains! The two actors who played the daughters were especially memorable.
I recently learnt that Sally Thomsett, then aged 20, was cast as Phyllis, the youngest of the three children, despite the fact that when it was being filmed Jenny Agutter, who played her older sister, Roberta, was actually two years younger than she was (I should add that it worked visually, as Jenny Agutter was tall for her age, and Sally Thomsett short). Sally Thomsett was forbidden to reveal her age during production, not allowed to smoke, drink, drive a car, or be seen in public with her boyfriend. The bizarre result was that the crew treated her as they would a child (giving her sweets), while addressing the younger Jenny Agutter as they would an adult!
I’ll return to the film later, but I recently reread the book, which was first published in 1905. If I could remember the film and its characters, the book was less easy to recall, and to settle down with it again was a revelation. Like so many very good books for younger readers, it is easy to forget how well it was written.
The opening was deceptively simple:
“They were not railway children to begin with. I don’t suppose they had ever thought about railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne and Cook’s, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud’s. They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bathroom with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and ‘every modern convenience’, as the house-agents say.
There were three of them. Roberta was the eldest. Of course, Mothers never have favourites, but if their Mother HAD had a favourite, it might have been Roberta. Next came Peter, who wished to be an Engineer when he grew up; and the youngest was Phyllis, who meant extremely well.”
Did I say ‘simple’. Two paragraphs in, and we are already on alert: ‘just ordinary suburban children’ and ‘Phyllis, who meant extremely well’. Young ears listening, or slightly older eyes reading would be on alert. Ordinary children? Meant extremely well? As for an adult reader, you could already sense that some of this text was going to be directed at you!
Part of what makes a really successful children’s book is that it also appeals to adults – whether a parent or just an older reader. There are two techniques. It can deliberately include adult materials or sections, almost as a book within a book. Alternatively it can be far more subtle, allowing an older reader to see more. Done this way, the book exists at more than one level. The Railway Children is definitely in this second group.
At the first level this is a heart-warming adventure, with moments of excitement, moments of sadness, even scenes where an older reader will allow some tears (several in my case). It is undoubtedly the kind of story that will grip a younger audience, even today despite the older style, set in the early 20th century rather than 21st. Indeed, it was appreciating this timeless character that offered the basis for an excellent film version in 1970. Unsurprisingly, though it was an excellent adaptation, it did lose just a little in translation from book to movie.
At another level, this apparently simple adventure story achieves a great deal more than drama and excitement. In part it is because of the book’s style, old-fashioned certainly, but also engaging. Here’s a moment from later in the book:
“I hope you don’t mind my telling you a good deal about Roberta. The fact is I am growing very fond of her. The more I observe her the more I love her. And I notice all sorts of things about her that I like.
For instance, she was quite oddly anxious to make other people happy. And she could keep a secret, a tolerably rare accomplishment. Also she had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it’s not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you. That was what Bobbie was like. She knew that Mother was unhappy—and that Mother had not told her the reason. So she just loved Mother more and never said a single word that could let Mother know how earnestly her little girl wondered what Mother was unhappy about. This needs practice. It is not so easy as you might think.
Whatever happened—and all sorts of nice, pleasant ordinary things happened—such as picnics, games, and buns for tea, Bobbie always had these thoughts at the back of her mind. ‘Mother’s unhappy. Why? I don’t know. She doesn’t want me to know. I won’t try to find out. But she IS unhappy. Why? I don’t know.’ She doesn’t say, and so on, repeating and repeating like a tune that you don’t know the stopping part of.”
Nesbit was clever, weaving the story with ‘author’s reflections’. Today we are more likely to expect a story to stay ‘on track’, but there were writers who did like to communicate directly with you (and some still do). As in the example, it is like a privileged moment, where you are able to stand back from events and share in this brief interlude of reflection. Nesbit realised that rather from detracting from the story, it enhanced it. This was before cinema and television, and she was giving us the alternative to a story appearing on a screen: time and events were moving forward in the text in front of you, but you could pause for a moment, and reflect with the writer on what had been happening, on the characters in the story, and on the hidden thoughts of the children. It was the use of this technique that conspired to make Roberta ‘real’ in a way that fed your desire to have a special insight into her.
To be clear, The Railway Children is an adventure story. After their unexpected move from a house in London and middle-class wealth to poverty and a house in the country, the children have escapades. Some are dramatic, and some are simply the result of living in a new world of expereinces, where village life, gardens, trains and local commerce become engaging. There are dramatic moments, ranging from discovering a refugee to a boy having an accident, from sickness and a canal boat fire to a landslide on the railway line. Yet all the excitement is balanced with sharp insights about children growing up, all combined with the teasing, snappy responses and moments of guilt that are central to being around your siblings.
Nesbit also addresses the relationship between children and adults well, especially when Roberta, Phyllis and Peter find themselves involved with other people in the village. Some interactions are uncomfortable, some clouded by misunderstandings and false assumptions, and some by wariness. However, one curious aspect of the story is that it is mainly concerned with the three children and several adults: for the most part, other children are largely ignored, at least until they rescue the injured Jim. Even then, spiky moments between his rescuers and a man in the signal box close to the station take up an important part of the events. If Jim hadn’t required nursing, he would have disappeared from the story quickly (and with it, any potential emotional interest for Roberta!).
The three children in The Railway Children aren’t perfect, nor would any reader expect them to be. What makes Nesbit’s approach clever is that she manages to show the good and the bad, but at the same time offer a commentary, as if she wants you to do more than follow a story. Here’s is Peter deciding to upset his sisters with an explanation – as he saw it – of setting a broken bone:
“I’ll tell you what they do,” said Peter. I can’t think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all.
“I’ll tell you what they do,” said Peter; “they strap the broken man down so that he can’t resist or interfere with their doctorish designs, and then someone holds his head, and someone holds his leg—the broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit in—with a crunch, mind you! Then they strap it up and—let’s play at bone-setting!”
I’ve put the part of the paragraph which is ‘out’ of the story in an italic font. It’s an explanation for the children listening to the story, and it’s a commentary aimed at parents too.
Incidentally, within a couple of pages, the three children are playing at setting bones, with Peter the recipient of their efforts. It comes to an end when the doctor, who has been setting a real broken bone elsewhere in the house, enters the room and sees what they are doing. He points they’re being a bit insensitive when the boy upstairs is in real pain. It’s an unexpected scene. Sadly, the chapter ends in a place where modern views confront the ‘dated’ text – as the doctor explains to Peter that women are ‘softer’ than men, and that men should be careful, adding “a man has to be very careful, not only of his fists, but of his words”.
Should sections like that be edited today? The version I was reading was the version currently available in Books, the Apple online library. Perhaps modern print editions are different. I find it hard to answer my own question about editing. Before I respond to my query, a slight detour takes me over to commenting on The Railway Children on film, although I should admit I have only seen one version. I know there was a new adaptation for television in 2000, and a sequel, The Railway Children Return, appeared in 2022.
That 1970 film version of the story was an absolute delight. In addition to the actors playing the children, Bernard Cribbins was just perfect for the Station Porter, Mr Perks (perfect as Perks!). The setting, the acting and the style of the movie caught Nesbit’s story well. Of course, it was a movie, and so we lost some of the subtle style when it appeared on screen, and certainly we no longer had that extra voice, offering insights and asides that made the book so successful, at least as I saw it. The other effect of the film was the usual one: now Phyllis and Roberta are fixed images in my mind, they are Phyllis as portrayed by Sally Thomsett and Roberta by Jenny Agutter. As far as I’m concerned, the old rule still works: read the book first, and then allow a later movie or television series to be an alternative version, it can be equally enjoyable (as it was in this case), but it’s not the same.
Written 120 years ago, there are plenty of commentaries that have been written on Nesbit and on The Railway Children, some of them concerns about past values and behaviours. Born in 1858, Edith Nesbit was a prolific writer. She wrote more than sixty books for children, and more than 30 for adults. Perhaps less well known, she was a co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation that was later to link up with Britain’s Labour Party.
Her personal life was complex. In 1877, aged just 18, she met Hubert Bland, a bank clerk. They married when she was seven months pregnant in 1880, but they didn’t live together immediately after their wedding, as he remained with his mother. Their marriage was tumultuous. Nesbit was to meet another woman who believed she was Hubert’s fiancée and had also had a child of his. If that wasn’t enough, she then discovered that her friend, Alice Hoatson, was pregnant by him. She’d already agreed to adopt Hoatson’s child and allow her to live with her as their housekeeper. Despite discovering the truth and quarrelling violently with her husband, she allowed Alice Hoatson to continue residing with them in the dual roles of housekeeper and secretary. Hoatson became pregnant by Bland a second time, 13 years later. Once again, Edith was supportive, adopting Hoatson’s other child, John.
Despite her unconventional private life, in more recent decades criticism has been directed at her ‘Victorian’ values. In a New Yorker article published in September 2022, the comment was made that Nesbit’s books were at times “blighted by racist and colonialist language and anti-Semitic tropes” (by author Jessica Winter). I don’t know how to respond to this. She was the family breadwinner, and, famously, as the father in The Railway Children observes “Girls are just as clever as boys, and don’t you forget it!”. However, she wasn’t a champion for women’s rights, although Winter concedes that that this was because “She opposed the cause of women’s suffrage—mainly, she claimed, because women could swing Tory, thus harming the Socialist cause.” Then Winter goes on to add, “And, most crucially her … books are constructed from a blueprint that is also a kind of reënactment of the author’s own childhood: an idyll torn up at its roots by the exigencies of illness, loss, and grief.”
After reading the book twice more, and watching the movie, I’m sure those are all valid observations. Perhaps I shouldn’t wander into this dangerous territory, but my weakness is that I accept books like these as they are, stories that reflect a past that we view today with a jaundiced eye: I still love The Railway Children, just as I love the works of other writers whose lives and books reflect values that are uncomfortable echoes of the past.
If I was to become too unrelenting, I’d have to give up a lot more than The Railway Children. Pride and Prejudice depicts a world and values long gone, and far from one we would want to entertain today. I suppose what this reveals is that I am willing to abandon what I know is the way things should be, and enjoy alternative worlds and times. It’s a willing suspension of belief I adopt when reading fantasy and science fiction, and no less important when I read novels from a century ago or more. Through novels I can live in other worlds for a while, without compromising my values and concerns about society today. They make my life richer, in part by allowing me to imagine how things could be and have been different; and in part by helping me appreciate how much we have achieved by the beginning of the 21st Century. Sadly, I guess I have to end by adding, “how much we seem to have achieved”.
