Last time I wrote an entire post about how awful Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry are. But now on to happier things!

Deciding to run away

As is often the case in real life a careless, throwaway remark turns into a serious decision (for example joking about naming your child after Chief Brody from Jaws).

On page 4 (actually page 14, but the story starts on page 11) Jack says If only we could all run away together but Mike remarks that they would surely be caught and returned in the same way other children had been. If there was a place that they wouldn’t be found, though, that would be a different matter.

To their surprise – and probably the reader’s (if it’s their first reading and not their tenth or twentieth, of course) – Jack says he knows somewhere.

“Now listen to me. If I tell you a very great secret will you promise never to say a word about it to anyone?… I know a place where nobody could find us—if we ran away!

This is slightly curious as Jack, being the great friend to the children that he is, has never told them of this place, nor of his boat. Clearly they have never talked of running away before, either, else surely it would have come up? But of course this is all necessary for the story, and means we are not bogged down with explanations of how he has only recently got a boat and so on.

Anyway, Jack doesn’t tell them anything other than to meet him at the lakeside that evening, leaving everyone wondering what the secret will be, for at least a few pages.

The children are so excited about Jack’s secret that they are careless at their chores that afternoon. But come eight o’clock they are at the lakeside (being sent to bed hasn’t stopped them as they just snuck out anyway) eager to know where they might run away to.

Jack tells them it is an island, and leads them around the lake until they find a place where they can see it. In some of her most poetic writing Blyton paints the view for us.

The little island seemed to float on the dark lake-waters. Trees grew on it, and a little hill rose in the middle of it. It was a mysterious island, lonely and beautiful. All the children
stood and gazed at it, loving it and longing to go to it. It looked so secret—almost magic.

And just like that, by the end of chapter one they have decided they’ll run away.

The planning

The decision to run away is made so quickly that you’d be forgiven for expecting the children to be off the next morning. But, being really rather sensible, they take a few days to make their plans and gather everything they think that they will need.

I always enjoy a good planning-to-run-away chapter, be it the Five raiding Aunt Fanny’s tin cupboard or Peter Frost making sure he takes his little clock. Somehow it’s more fun than just packing for a holiday, as it’s all done in secret.

First they do sit down and have a talk, to make sure they are all certain they want to live on the island. Irritatingly Mike takes on the role of the most responsible – despite being a year younger than Peggy.

Mike scratched his curly black head. He felt old and worried. He wanted to go very badly—but would the two girls really be able to stand a wild life like that? No proper beds to sleep in—perhaps no proper food to eat—and suppose one of them was ill?

I hardly feel that he is any more qualified for rough-sleeping and forging than his sisters!

Anyway, they decide to visit the island on Sunday – their only time off – to check it out. It’s a very quick visit, but we get a glimpse of all the places which will become important later in the story. The little beach, the spring, the caves, the hill, and so on. The children love it, and settle with their meal to make a list of all the things that they will need.

I never tried to run away as a child so I have no stories of having packed a strange assortment of items into a bag. We did sometimes play at running away, however (when we weren’t acting out Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with our very limited cast of two). The bottom bunk would be a train carriage, the top a boat. I remember playing at fleeing Russia, a princess and her nanny/maid probably inspired by the 90s movie Anastasia. I don’t remember what we packed but it was quite difficult to pack a realistic case with what you could find in a bedroom – I don’t think my mum would have let us take the pots and pans from the kitchen!

Their initial list is quite short. Jack suggests that they won’t need all that much as they can make beds out of heather and bracken. Blyton’s runaways/campers often make beds out of heather and I can’t see it being very comfortable! Certainly not as a long-term arrangement.

Enamel mugs, plates and knives
An axe and a sharp woodman’s knife
Matches
Fishing-line
Frying-pan, saucepan and a kettle

Definitely all essential but definitely not enough to sustain them – there’s no food for one!

The preparations

With their running-away-date set as the following Sunday the children begin secreting things in the handy hollow tree near the lake.

They are so excited about their plan that they cannot be upset, not even by the slappings and scoldings that would normally bring them to tears.

By the day they are to leave the tree contains:

All the clothes they possessed
Enamel mugs, plates and dishes
Saucepan, an axe, sharp knife
Small knives and forks and spoons
Empty tins to store things in
Matches
Magnifying glass
Peggy’s work-basket
A box of mixed nails and an old hammer
Snap cards, ludo and our dominoes
Some books
Plank of wood
Half a sack of potatoes
Old and ragged rug
Long iron cooking spoon
Packet of candles
Old lantern

This is probably not an exhaustive list as you’ll note that there is no food! Jack does say that he plans to buy some things like sugar, which is to go in the empty tins.

On their final morning they take:

Basket of peas
As many ripe broad beans as they could find
Bunch of young carrots
Some radishes
Six new-laid eggs
Some tea
Tin of cocoa
Packet of currants
Tin of rice
New loaf
A few cakes from the cake tin

It looks like they won’t starve, at least, though it doesn’t seem as if there’s enough food to last long. Jack’s plan to buy things must include food.

Having been told they must stay home as punishment – Aunt Harriet has noticed the missing cakes (but nothing else apparently!) – there is a tense few paragraphs as the children arrange to sneak off instead of going off for their usual picnic. They manage to grab some last-minute things, however, in a manner that reminds me of myself as I leave for a holiday and grab anything I spot that I suddenly think I might need.

For the girls those last-minute grabs are

Bar of soap
Slab of margarine

While Jack has also grabbed

Rope
An old mackintosh
Two books
Some newspapers
And some other things

Once on the island cheese is part of their first meal, so there must have been other food packed that isn’t mentioned. I am not a light packer by any means, so to me, that list seems rather short – but they probably didn’t have much else to bring! I’d definitely want more toiletries but the children probably only had soap! If I could I’d have been taking as much bedlinen, blankets and towels as I could manage, and some cleaning supplies. Very grown-up of me.

We will see how well the children did in their preparations once they settle into island life next time.

As I have noted before, for an Enid Blyton blogger I don’t actually read as many Enid Blyton books as you might expect. In turn that means that I haven’t review as many as I could. Last week as I was looking for inspiration for things to add to my 126 Years of Blyton post I became more aware of the various gaps in the reviews. And I have decided to start remedying that with immediate effect!

I actually read The Secret Island recently way back in 2014(!) when I compared the text to a newer edition. That’s not a fun way to read, though, reading every sentence twice and constantly putting the books down to make note of (and mutter complaints about) the changes. I also didn’t review it at the time, though I had compared it to Hollow Tree House in 2013. That means that the list of Secret Series reviews comprises a brief post when it was Poppy’s book of the month, and a more in-depth review of Moon Castle by Chris. (I’m not counting the reviews of the TV series of course.)

The most hated of all Blyton’s characters?

Everyone’s going to have characters they like and dislike, and not everyone will agree on them. Generally the baddies are written to be disliked – though you can also still like them in a love to hate sort of way. For example Goon is awful and infuriating but I still love to read about him. Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry are probably two of the worst characters Blyton wrote about. They hardy feature in the book – they are only around in the first three chapters and have relatively little page-time at that – and yet they are so, so awful that I absolutely despise them.

When we meet Peggy, Mike and Nora for the first time Nora is crying as she has been slapped six times by her aunt, for not washing the curtains well enough. This alone isn’t that shocking for 1938 as children were regularly smacked by parents (and teachers) for misbehaviour. From that alone you could perhaps imagine that life is mostly OK for them, except for the odd bit of punishment. By page two, however, we have had a very succinct description of the children’s lives. Their father built an aeroplane and then he and their mother never returned from a flight to Australia.

There’s a touch of exposition in these early pages as Mike tells Jack about their parents’ disappearance, with a level detail unlikely to be required by a boy who has known them since it happened. But it gets the information out there quickly so that we can move on with more important details, and child readers won’t mind this.

So from the lost parents we can move on to the effect this has had. As Nora says,

I know Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry think they will never come back again, or they would never treat us as they do.

What she means by that is the three children have been taken out of school and now have to work in the fields and house. Again, this is not particularly shocking for 1938. Schooling was compulsory between 5 and 14, but despite the authorities’ attempts to deal with truancy many children fell through the gaps and were kept home to cook, clean, care for younger siblings, or go out to work. It’s perhaps less easy to believe that three well-to-do children were removed from school and never sent back, but if they had been in school in one area, then the authorities might well assume that they were attending a new school near their aunt and uncle. Things weren’t as joined-up then as they are today – and things still get missed today.

Anyway, having to help at home instead of getting an education is not great. But then, to look on the aunt and uncle’s side for a moment, they haven’t had a very fair deal, either. They’ve agreed to look after the children for a few months and have then found themselves as permanent carers, with the additional costs that that entails. So, perhaps the only way they can manage is with having them help out.  If the aunt and uncle were kind and cheerful, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. But they are not. They take three children whose parents are missing, and, as soon as it looks like the parents are dead, they turn those grieving children into servants.

Mike works dawn to dusk in the fields, Nora does all the washing, and Peggy does all the cooking. It sounds as if Uncle Henry still works, but Aunt Harriet has given all the household duties to the girls.  And then there’s the slappings, scoldings and shakings. The children seem very hard-working and conscientious, yet are punished severely for small mistakes and things that are out of their control – like Peggy here,

Yesterday I burnt a cake because the oven got too hot, and Aunt Harriet sent me to bed for the rest of the day without anything to eat at all.

And Mike, for his attempt at kindness in bringing her some bread and cheese, was caught and shaken

so hard that I couldn’t stand up afterwards. I had to go without my supper, and my breakfast this morning was only a small piece of bread.

In addition to these – which are presented as not out of the ordinary for the children – they are certainly underfed. The meals mentioned are mostly bread and cheese, which they sneakily supplement with things from the garden. As with all good Blytonian children they are scrupulously fair, and only take what they feel is owed to them as they are not given enough food for all their hard work. They are also lacking in clothes for the coming winter and are certain that they won’t be bought anything new.

So, over a few pages (though mentions of the cruelty are also made in later pages and chapters) we’ve got pretty strong reasons to hate Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry. Aunt Harriet the most, I suppose, as she seems to sit back and do nothing whilst the girls slave, and are then slapped for the slightest mistake.

They have lost their parents and not only are they then not given any care or love, but in fact the opposite. They are shouted at and made to feel stupid and worthless, as well as being slapped and shaken. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a parent now but I definitely feel a lot of rage about how Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry act.

It probably isn’t a good idea to think too much about the workings of it all, but I have to wonder at the aunt and uncle’s motivations. Did they take in the children with the promise of payment, as they certainly wouldn’t have done it out of the goodness of their hearts? Did the parents have a good relationship with the aunt and uncle? Were the aunt and uncle decent people until their outrage at being left with three children (and they lost the money coming in) turned them cruel? Are they hoping that once Mr and Mrs Arnold are declared dead they can profit from the estate? Did they consider handing the children off to a children’s home but decided they’d rather keep them as unpaid servants?

I can’t imagine that Mr and Mrs Arnold would have left the children with anyone they thought could behave in such a way, so either they were good actors beforehand on they changed significantly along the way.

So many questions!

They are, though, essential to the story. Despite only appearing sporadically in the first thirty or so pages, they are the catalyst for the remainder of the novel. If it weren’t for their cruelty the children would not have run away and there would have been no story. If they hadn’t been so awful the children wouldn’t have been so desperate not to be found when the searchers are out looking for them. So Blyton had to write them as awful as they are, in order to make the story work.