The Child is Wise: Stories of Childhood

By Janet Blagg Ed, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005, 345 pages, paperback, $24.95. Reviewed by Sylvia Alston in the July 2005 issue.

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In the foreword Veronica Brady says that the writers share with us the 'pleasures of memory', adding that their stories are mostly 'memories of struggle, of failures and disappointments overcome'. The 'pleasures of memory' is a delightful phrase and it is a delight to share this selection of childhood memories. I think Dorothy Hewett sums up the theme of the book nicely when she writes: 'The first house sits in the hollow of the heart, it will never go away. It is the house of childhood become myth, inhabited by characters larger than life whose murmured conversations whisper and tug at the mind'.

The backdrop to these reminiscences range from the remote regions of Australia to the mountains of Italy, to London's East End and to Perth's prestigious Peppermint Grove. Some of the stories reminded me of my own childhood, spent in the north of England. Other stories provide a snapshot of a more exotic period in history and some told of a harsher almost Dickensian past.

These stories are more than a reflection of childhood; they serve as a link between the then and the now. As Lesley Poles Hartley said: 'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there'.

Josephine Cabassi's story starts in the early twenties in Baruffini in northern Italy. With an absent father and a mother bringing up three small children while working the land, it wasn't an easy life but one rich in tradition and shared with a warm and supportive extended family. 'Family and friends would gather together in Nonna Maria's stable. On one side were the animals and on the other side men played cards and the women spun wool and made clothes. If it was smelly we didn't notice.

When Josephine was fourteen the family migrated to Fremantle where she was reunited with her father. The piece ends with a description of Josephine's hasty marriage when she was eighteen in a 'little church at Manjimup'. She wore a 'beautiful hat with pink flowers on it' and a pink dress because she believed she didn't deserve a white one.

One of the longer pieces was written by Tally Hobbs, who described his childhood in Perth in the years leading up the second world war. Tally was the archetypical poor little rich boy. His mother suicided when he was only six weeks old and, since his father was otherwise engaged, Tally was brought up by his grandparents, General Sir Talbot Hobbs and Lady Edith Hobbs, assisted by a nanny and a chauffeur who ferried Tally and his friends around. The family also employed a gardener and 'a cook, a parlour maid, pantry maid and a housemaid, all of whom lived in'.

One of Tally's friends was David Campion, grandson of Sir William Campion, the then Governor of Western Australia, and he divided his time between his grandparent's mansion in Peppermint Grove and Government House, usually accompanied by John Hunn, Tally's cousin. As the boys 'wandered in the vast grounds there were always two liveried footmen close behind us which was a good thing, as on one occasion John Hunn and I fell in one of the ponds and immediately the footmen on hand fished us out.'

Reading Tally's story reminded me of my arrival in this great wide land. I migrated to Australia in the early eighties and spent a week with friends in Perth before heading east. My friends took me for a drive around the suburbs and I can still remember my first glimpse of Australian fauna, a flock of black swans gliding on Perth's aptly named river. Black swans? It suddenly hit me that my world had indeed been turned upside down!

But it wasn't all nannies and nursery teas. When Tally was 12 years old he was shipped off to Guildford Grammar School, established along the lines of an English Public School, where he was subjected to what we would now call bastardisation. Tally's grandmother, however, sounds like every child's dream. When Tally was in his teens she regularly laid on the entertainment for him and his friends: 'Gran organised a beautiful afternoon tea on the lawns above the tennis court, with a maid in attendance'. She also organised a grand ball for Tally and co: 'All the carpets had been taken up in the drawing room, the grand hall and the dining room' and the floor 'was in the process of being polished and sprayed with wax powder.'

Although the account of Tally's life provides a fascinating account of a life few of us can imagine, I found the detailed accounts of his sailing exploits rather tedious.

In contrast to Tally's story is that of Alice Bilari Smith who grew up in the Pilbara region.

Alice faced something of Hamlet's dilemma when she discovered that 'my stepfather get murdered, and that's that murder man that marrying my mum, then I just didn't wanted to go with them all the time'. Unlike Hamlet, she didn't waste time feigning insanity but quietly decides to 'grow up just with the whitefellas in the station'.

Dorothy Hewett's piece is a joyous and lyrical account of what sounds like an idyllic childhood spent on a sheep farm in the southern end of Western Australia, despite the heat. 'The hall is the best place to be when the temperature hits 114 in the shade. We lie on our bellies on the jarrah boards listening to In a Monastery Garden, Cavelleria Rusticana, Humoresque, and The Laughing Policeman on the wind-up His Master's Voice gramophone. Sometimes we play lady wrestlers, or impersonate Two-Ton Tony Gelento on the strip of Persian-pattered carpet'.

Essy Ross's A Letter to My Grandchildren is more than that; it's a vision of another world, a record of growing up Jewish in the shabby streets of London's East End. On her twelfth birthday, on 1 October 1938, Essy received a special present, a gas mask, one of those being handed out in anticipation of a war.

Natalie Andrews's fictional character Clara is a clever device the author uses to tell a dark and deeply personal story. This poignant piece includes episodes of sexual abuse which are sensitively, and even humorously, illustrated but which still manage to resonate with the pain and betrayal that such events inflict.

These stories are a timely reminder about the fleeting nature of childhood, and how precious are our own children and grandchildren. It also illustrates how strong children are and how they can survive and thrive, and how wise they are.

Citation

• Sylvia Alston. 'Review: The Child is Wise: Stories of Childhood by Janet Blagg ed' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), July 2005. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 20 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• There are some familiar names among the contributors to this anthology of childhood memories - but the writing of every one of them is vivid, authoritative and immediate, bringing us the privileged view of family life and relationships through the voices we hear from the least: the children. And they remind us of what we have forgotten from our own experience of childhood - how wise and knowing children are. We see how it was to be a child from the 1920s to the 1960s. Not that there is any single story. Each writer has a different voice, and a different way of remembering. Between them, we see glimpses of suburban, bush, mountain and city life; large families and small ones; sibling competition and friendship; 'bad' children and 'good' ones; safety and terror.
  
  This book is a cheerful salute to the child, to the wisdom of the child, and to those revisiting childhood, however old you are.

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