Bevis The Story of a Boy - Richard Jefferies

[pete9012S]

Bevis The Story of a Boy - Richard Jefferies first published in 3 vols, 1882.

“I’m tired of lakes,” said Mark. “They have found out such a lot of lakes, and the canoes are always upset, and there is such a lot of mud. Let’s have a new sea altogether.”

“So we will,” said Bevis. “That’s capital—we will find a new sea where no one has ever been before. Look!”—for they had now advanced to where the gleam of the sunshine on the mere was visible through the hedge—“look! there it is; is it not wonderful?”

“Yes,” said Mark, “write it down in the diary; here’s my pencil. Be quick; put ‘Found a new sea’—be quick—there, come on—let’s run—hurrah!”

Bevis, the Story of a Boy, first published in 1882.

The book is available for free download from amazon and Project Gutenberg

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bevis-Story-Bo ... 8&qid=&sr=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35930" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can visit The Richard Jefferies Museum:

http://richardjefferiessociety.co.uk/RJmuseum.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Looks like the sort of place Barney & Miranda would enjoy a quick overnighter...

Our Cave Says:

Sheila Ray has quite correctly attested to the possible influence on Enid here of Richard Jefferies' novel Bevis published in 1882. Within The Secret Island Enid gives no real clue as to the island's whereabouts, but in The Secret of Spiggy Holes it's stated that the Cornwall setting of that book is in fact only 40 miles from the location of the 'Secret Island'. Similarly the island and lake featured in Adventure of the Strange Ruby are unusually for Enid given a distinct Dorset location with reference to Corfe Castle and Swanage.

Whilst the mileage may not be quite correct the lake featured in Bevis is Coate Water near Swindon in Wiltshire. Prior to the publication of Bevis, Richard Jefferies wrote (in 1876) to Oswald Crawford, "There is at Coate a reservoir — it is sixty years old and looks quite as a lake — of some eighty acres of water. I think I could write a whole book on that great pond." He goes on to tell how he has mapped out the whole area and learnt how to manage a sailing boat there.

Jefferies has also been said to have influenced Arthur Ransome. I have not been able to discover if Jonathan Cape was the original publisher of Bevis, but they did re-issue the book in 1932. Quite how long the process was leading to this I don't know, but Jonathan Cape also published Ransome's first great success Swallows and Amazons in 1930. This was originally published with illustrations by Helene Carter, but in 1938 (the year of the publication of The Secret Island) Swallows and Amazons was re-published with new illustrations by Ransome himself. As Hugh Pollock was working in publishing during this period, all these circumstances could have been an influence on Enid.

Indeed, Jefferies and Bevis undoubtedly had an influence on a third great children's writer as Malcolm Saville refers to Bevis in his first 'Lone Pine' stories published in the early 40s. However it wasn't until 1954 that Saville included an inland lake and island in one of his stories when he wrote Spring Comes to Nettleford.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/boo ... ret+Island" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[John Pickup]

For those familiar with the Lone Pine books by Malcolm Saville, Bevis is Petronella Sterlings favourite book.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting stuff, Pete and John. I read Bevis: The Story of a Boy at least fifteen years ago after reading in the Journal that it may have influenced Enid Blyton's The Secret Island (Gillian Baverstock confirmed that Enid had owned a copy). I enjoyed the book, which transported me to a bygone era, and when I first visited Salisbury Cathedral in 2008 I was pleased to discover that it contains a memorial for Richard Jefferies:

http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/funerary/229.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[timv]

Interesting to hear that Enid had a copy of 'Bevis'. When I read it in my mid-teens I noted the similarity between the book's location (with an island in a lake in wild countryside) and the storyline (of the boys camping out there) and 'Secret Island', but it was only when I was researching for the probable inspirations of Enid's sites that I reckoned there could be a direct influence. The modern situation of Coate Water near the M$ outside Swindon is a world away from Jefferies' rural Wiltshire. I had never heard of Jefferies until I came across a reference to 'Bevis' in Christopher Robin Milne's autobiography 'The Enchanted Places' (1974) and read that it had been a major inspiration for his father, A A Milne, as a boy in the 1890s. Possibly the 'talking wildlife interacting with a small boy' of RJ's prequel to 'Bevis', the slightly odd and awkwardly written 'Wood Magic' , inspired A A Milne's world of Winnie the Pooh? The influence on Arthur Ransome (b 1884, contemporary with MIlne, older than Enid) is visible in the 'Swallows and Amazons' books - the camping on an island, sailing adventures, re-enacting books, and practical descriptions of how to do things. Bevis and his brother's 'let them get on with it but help out when needed' father is rather like Ransome's Jim Blackett/ 'Captain Flint'.

Given that Malcolm Saville was slightly younger than Enid and Milne a decade older, the books were no doubt most popular for children in the Late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and when I first tracked down the less well known Jefferies books as a student I could only find old Edwardian copies in my university library. He seems to have sunk out of popular memory in the 1920s, probably as old-fashioned in his tone of writing.

Jefferies' intense love of and descriptions of nature fitted into the 'back to pre-Industrial Revolution life ' enthusiasm of the likes of William Morris. He was a pioneering descriptive Nature writer, and his semi-fantasy descriptions of small children learning moral lessons from interacting with talking animals and birds could well have influenced Enid's books for younger readers . On a different level, his apocalyptic musings about an ecological catastrophe causing civilization to collapse and reverting London to a deserted woody swamp in 'After London' in the 1880s were way ahead of his time and probably influenced later disaster narratives. The 'catastrophe and reversion to medieval life caused by dangerous modern scientific fiddling with the world' and 'Nature gets its revenge' themes RJ developed can be seen in John Wyndham 's 'Day of the Triffids' and the popular 1970s BBC post-disaster series 'Survivors', which I watched.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting comments, Tim. I like the sound of After London.