How odd; I’ve just realized that E. Nesbit got something right after all, though she couldn’t have known.
I’ve never been quite happy with the ending of her Harding’s Luck, the companion story to House of Arden The latter was my favorite of hers when I was a kid because the local library had it; I didn’t know of the exstence of Harding’s Luck until I grew up and found it online. If anything it’s even better than House of Arden. It’s the only one of Nesbit’s books to feature a hero who isn’t a fairly privileged kid (OK, the Bastables aren’t rich to begin with, but even at their poorest they still have a servant and a loving if worried parent, and they remember better times – they’re clearly “gentry”. Same for Edred and Elfrida Arden.) Dickie Harding, in contrast, is the next thing to a street child – he loses even the nasty aunt and her grudging shelter early on. The book has the flaws of its author and its times; Nesbit never can resist preaching a bit of Socialism and, like Freckles from the other side of the Atlantic, Dickie’s noble nature eugenically reveals his noble blood. In true fairy tale fashion, after some magical adventures, Dickie is found and recognized by his noble kin and acknowledged as the true Lord Arden. However, it frets at him, the idea that he’d be taking the title away from those who had always expected to have it and who had been good to him. In the end, he simply leaves; he uses his magic to go back to the sixteenth century, getting the magic to make sure that everyone in his own time thinks he’s just drowned. He gets an extra benefit, too: he leaves his own lamed body for one with two straight legs (the magic somehow disappears both his own body and original inhabitant of the 16th-century one). Despite this, and despite the reiteration of how beautiful the new life is, in a time that has never heard of factories or the internal combustion engine, Nesbit presents it as a noble sacrifice on his part to give up both his own time and his title.
I never liked the ending, because it’s always felt like a coward’s choice to me to take the easy way out, and the whole point of the book is Dickie’s courage. But the other day, I looked at the date of publication: it came out in 1909, and Dickie was supposed to be about 11 or so. Presumably the book was written a year or two earlier. I feel much better about Nesbit’s ending now, because the other possible ending is so obvious: Dickie stays in the 20th century, keeps the title, and with the bravery so typical of him volunteers to go to war the second he’s old enough. Because of the title, he’s given a Lieutenancy right away, and soon afterward he leads a charge ‘over the top’ into No Man’s Land. His cousin Elfrida has always been a bit in love with him, but with matching courage sent him off to war dry-eyed – so there’s her life ruined as well. And Edred, having grown through adolescence with Dickie, spends his own war trying to measure up and as a result gets invalided out with a missing leg and a bad case of shell-shock.
But with Dickie growing up in the reign of Elizabeth, he has plenty of chances for gallantry or even exploration that don’t end quite so shatteringly. Maybe he sails with Drake or Raleigh. Elfrida remembers him fondly as a childhood friend, but eventually falls in love with someone else. And Edred’s fear balances his desire to live up to his ancestors; he acquits himself credibly but never does anything stupid. Perhaps he meets up with Dickie Bastable, and appreciates his common sense much more than Dickie’s brother Oswald’s posturing. Edred doesn’t get much glory, but his men know he’s preserved their lives, and after the war he goes home, determined to make Arden, at least, a place of refuge for all who live there.
On another tangent, I’ve been reading a bunch of D.E. Stephenson, enjoying her enough to want to read a bunch more, and looking up other similar authors. I’m still not convinced I want to read Barbara Pym because he characters seem to come to such futile ends, but another author Amazon recommends is Margaret Oliphant. I bought her book “He That Will Not When He May” almost entirely because Mrs. Honeysett, the housekeeper at Arden, quotes that proverb to Edred and Elfrida: “He that will not when he may, he shall not when he would-a”.