Talk:The Golden Scarecrow

Information about this edition
Edition:	New York: George H. Doran Company, 1915
Source:	https://archive.org/details/goldenscarecrow00walpiala & Project Gutenberg
Contributor(s):
Level of progress:
Notes:	[Thanks to ] Sara Peattie, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net
Proofreaders:

Reviews

• The Bookman UK, 1915 November

Children, as even the least observant among “the Olympians ” must be aware, live partly in this world and partly in another. There are some unlovely persons who maintain that the other world in which they seem to pass so many of their hours is a region of primaeval savagery; but there are others of us who like to think that the small people come, trailing clouds of glory, from God Who is their home, and that it is heaven itself which lies about them in their infancy. Well, those who hold by the former theory will find Mr. Hugh Walpole’s new novel distasteful enough ; but those who accept the poet’s view will take the book straight into their hearts, and give it a place beside “Peter Pan” and “The Golden Age.”

All upon whom the “shades of the prison house” have not entirely closed, will find many strange, deep memories stir within them as they turn these fresh and fragrant pages. For there was a time, though it may be many years ago now, when all of us knew St. Christopher and were conscious of his gracious ministrations. Me, too, like young Hugh Seymour, felt some unseen Power guiding our childish footsteps, sharing in our childish joys, comforting us in our childish sorrows, companioning with us in our childish loneliness, and (most especially) throwing His protecting arms around us when the bedroom lights were extinguished and the footsteps of mother or nurse faded down the stairs. Of course, we did not know Him by name ; nor even could we have pronounced His name had we known it. Nevertheless, we shall recall very vividly, as we read “The Golden Scarecrow,” how very real to us was this Unseen Friend of the children.

Hugh Seymour was the type of little boy to whom St. Christopher was particularly real, because he had so much need of Him. For Hugh, whose parents were in Ceylon, was of a dreamy nature, and it was his misfortune to live with a country vicar who perpetually thanked his stars that he had been born a practical Realist and not a slave to “nerves.” Since, therefore, St. Christopher meant so much to Hugh in his early years of solitude, Hugh remembered Him longer than do most of us, who grow up and go out into the great world and forget the tender influences that hovered around the nursery. Hugh, indeed, always lived in close communion with St. Christopher ; and when, as a man, he came to live in one of those cool, shadowy squares that hide themselves away in the heart of London, he delighted to gather around him all the children that came to play there in the gardens. The children took him into their confidence as they could not take even their parents—for parents so often forget St. Christopher ; and so it was that Hugh heard many strange and beautiful stories of the part that the Unseen Friend had played in the little comedies and tragedies that made up the lives of his young associates ; and so it is that Mr. Walpole has written one of the most charming books of its kind that has been published within recent years. For into this series of child-studies—which, incidentally, offers him much scope for genial satire at the expense of parents, uncles, aunts and country clergymen—the author has packed a great wealth of intensely sympathetic observation and picturesque description, together with an abundance of humour and pathos which play as naturally about the springs of the heart as the sunlight and the shadows play alternately around the fountain in the Square. And, with the figure and the spirit of St. Christopher always in the background, the story is suffused with a warm glow of imagination which illuminates the whole picture as a landscape is illumined by the sky. Indeed, one cannot better describe “The Golden Scarecrow” than as a book with a horizon and a sky ; and it is, therefore, the type of book for which one should be especially grateful at a time when the eye tends to travel no further than the headlines in the halfpenny Press.

Gilbert Thomas.

• The Publisher's Weekly, 18 September 1915:

Unless the publisher is trying to deceive us, this book is by Hugh Walpole. But it little like “Fortitude” as it is like “The Gods and Mr. Perrin”—in plot, that is. It has Mr. Walpole’s dignity, his unhurried commas, his blessed lucidity. But if his style is lucid, his idea, in his volume, is a matter for some speculation. If I dared, I would say I didn’t quite know what it is all about—but as I don’t dare I must just emphasize the fact that its fancy is too delicate to be dealt with by cold and stiff explanations—it must be read to be appreciated. Hugh Seymour was a little boy alone—a “paying guest” living with the Rev. William Lasher, a man with shining finger-tips. Until Mr. Pidgen paid his visit he was “most remarkably lonely.” After that visit he was never lonely again. Mr. Pidgen wrote stories. He was given to dreaming, like Hugh. One memorable walk they had together, at the end of which a man with a golden helmet appeared in the distance. But as they looked, the sun sank, the helmet was transformed into an old tin can and the man became nothing but a scarecrow. Yet the scarecrow seemed to say “I may be a knight in shining armour after all. It only depends upon the point of view.”

Mr. Pidgen appears no more in the story. He died that night. At once, and equally unexpectedly, Hugh drops out of the story, only to return, fully grown, at the last chapter. The story concerns March Square and the children who lived there. To some of these children a Friend came in the night—to some he came often, to others but seldom, He came to Bim when he ventured out alone; he came often to Barbara until she denied him, and when she ceased her denials he came back, and he came at last even to Sarah Trefusis.

When Hugh Seymour enters the story again on his way back to his childhood dwelling-place, these children and others seemed to be with him. They followed him to Mrs. Trenchard’s house, to the nursery, kept just as it was before the children died. And when the nursery door was opened again there were evidences that children had been playing in the room, not only the shadowy children from March Square but the children who had lived in the nursery. “Only Frances ever built the bricks like that ” said his mother.

Later Hugh Seymour hears whisperings it his ear. “What, after all,” said his Friend’s voice, “does it mean but that if you love enough we are with you everywhere—for ever?”

And then the children’s voices again:

“She thought they’d come back, but they’d never gone away—really, you know.”

Doris Webb

• The Dial, 3 February 1916:

“The Golden Scarecrow” may be something of a disappointment to those who have read “The Duchess of Wrexe,” not to say others of Mr. Walpole's books, so it should be said at once that it is a book of a different kind. For one thing, it is not a novel; it is a series of sketches bound together only by the idea which informs them all. And though we may say that the interest in a story is not the highest literary interest, yet it is certainly the case that when the story is lacking we find it more difficult, at first at least, to fix our attention on what there is. Mr. Walpole is good at a story: from “The Gods and Mr. Perrin,” where you go right along with the people in a very dramatic narration, to “The Duchess of Wrexe,” a much fuller book with more analysis, his books have a story. “The Golden Scarecrow” does not. Nor does it at first sight deal with the same things that Mr. Walpole has generally dealt with; it does not have the interest of a bit of the world, representative or not, in which microcosm we follow with interest some of the writer's feelings and thoughts on life in general. Mr. Walpole's previous books, especially the latest of them, seemed to be a study of some of the things in the world of our time or perhaps only of the England of the twentieth century, that Mr. Walpole thought interesting. It is not remarkable that, in a time of such social turmoil and upheaval, Mr. Walpole should not have seen his way clear to going on with his analysis of that social order which is now being so terribly shaken. He might easily have turned aside to some quite different idea that stood by itself, instead of continuing the work already announced. That he should do so was very natural, perhaps inevitable; but so also is it natural, perhaps inevitable, that people who have thought of Mr. Walpole in one way find him what they have found him.

Mr. Walpole, of course, feels that his latest book has its definite place in his work,—indeed, in a way it certainly has; it is put among his other things as one of the “studies of place.” But the book will hardly make its impression as a study of place. The people who read it will think it a series of sketches of children (who, it is true, all lived in March Square) based on what may well enough seem more of a fancy than anything else.

All that sounds a bit discouraging. But really, “The Golden Scarecrow” is a very interesting book, and has a perfectly definite relation to the rest of Mr. Walpole's work, so that all his readers ought to read it thoroughly. It is hardly (to my mind) a study of place, any more than some of Mr. Walpole's other books so called. It is really a development of the theme that

“Heaven lies about us in our infancy;
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.”

“Shades of the prison house” have generally been present in Mr. Walpole's books. Mr. Perrin in that dreadful school-world of Moffatt's, Maradick in the daily life which at forty has often become so definitely set, Olva Dune dissolving the bond of secrecy before the football match, Rachel Beaminster in the world of hard and fast determination of which her grandmother the Duchess was the dominant mistress— in fact, it is to be seen in all of Mr. Walpole's books as far as I remember. His people find themselves limited, bound down, almost bricked up in a wall (as who does not now and then?) by whatever set of circumstances makes up their life, and to each there comes at one time or another the chance to break away. This is the great moment in each life, and each acts in the same way. They do not break away; each sees that the thing to do is not to break away but to keep on,—not to succumb to the imperious surrounding but to master it and live differently. Each finds out that “the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is.” Each becomes, not reconciled to that which was before unbearable, but able in some way or other to see how it can be made not a restraint but an opportunity. Each gets a new strength, a new power in life. This would seem to be Mr. Walpole's philosophy of life, his idea of how one may live finely,—never expressed as a consistent scheme, but never absent in his work.

The latest book of his shows us the beginning of such things. Children (if we follow the thought of the great poet, which Mr. Walpole seems to have adopted) live at first finely; as time goes on they are broken in to life. But in those early years they are still aware of that great Friend (especially, it has been often thought, of children) who as life goes on they see and hear less and less often. He will doubtless be with them later in life when they need him, but he fades out of daily existence.

In such a way does this latest book of Mr. Walpole's take its place with the rest of his work. Of course it is not an explanation of the great mystery: Mr. Walpole is stating no creed; and very wisely, for people would not understand it. It is a fanciful story, it does not pretend even to take itself seriously; but then, Mr. Walpole explains all that at the beginning, as when he compares Mr. Pidgen, the man who had let his fancy run away with him, with Mr. Lasher, who was a much more practical person, and goes on: “Of course, the ideal thing is somewhere between the two; recognize St. Christopher and see the real world as well.” Or else a page or two later, when Mr. Pidgen tells the boy: “The more you live in your head, dreaming and seeing things that aren't there, the less you'll see the things that are there. You'll always be tumbling over things. You'll never get on. You'll never be a success.' 'Never mind,' said Hugh, 'it doesn't matter much what you say now, you're only talking “for my good” like Mr. Lasher.'”

Mr. Walpole has usually shown us the real world, or rather the world as it appears to be—so he may well enough do the other thing now. Perhaps some time he will get “the ideal thing . . . somewhere between the two.”

These books offer food for thought to those earnest inquirers who are asking (in the literary papers) how the war will influence literature. It is evident that it will not create a “war-literature” resonant with the sound of drums and tramplings. One of the most sympathetic souls of our time has asked, “Who is there among us who would have the heart,—while his country is in agony and his brothers are dying,—to write a drama or a romance?” Both Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr. Hugh Walpole take the situation seriously: both are doing practical work, one in the hospital service, and the other with the Russian Red Cross. Neither fiddles while the city is in flames. And the war leads them to produce, the one an exquisite idyl, and the other a fanciful tale about children. Yet few readers will fancy that these are works unworthy a time of so great a tension of spirit.

Edward E. Hale.

• The New Statesman, 9 October 1915:

The Golden Scarecrow is a work of really beautiful feeling. It is a series of short stories about children, held together, externally, by the bounds of the London square in which they live; internally, by the recurrence in each of their mystic Friend. I shall not explain about this Friend: I would not if I could: he is to be sought in Mr. Walpole's pages, and should be sought there by anyone willing to get a new insight into the minds of children. The stories are about children, but for grown-ups. That mystical region of the child mind, full of beliefs, fears, hopes, despairs and exaltations—even of cruelties and wrongs—as vivid and real as anything that older people know—it is not a place that many of us remember with clearness or without sentimentality. Mr. Walpole's knowledge is first-hand, his touch sure. It would be impossible by any brief quotation to give a suggestion of the atmosphere he creates—or, rather, renders. He is never in the least sentimental.

Gerald Gould.