What Book to Read?

Still on the theme of children’s books, here is another one I loved. It appears on the surface to be completely different to the gentle English country stories of Monica Edwards, but I think I was attracted to it by some of the same values I found in Edwards’s work.

Violet Needham was born in 1876. She was the daughter of an army officer who belonged to the fringes of the British nobility – he was the illegitimate son of an Irish peer, who married a rich wife and lived comfortably, (except when his gambling habit got the better of him) at his country house and in London. The family also lived abroad for a time when he was a military attaché in Rome. Violet never married, and spent her time in upper class country and family pursuits, doing the social rounds both in England and Europe. In about 1918 she started to write down the stories that she had over the years told her four nephews, but couldn’t interest a publisher in them. In the late 1930’s – when she was already over sixty – a publisher who was a family friend showed The Black Riders to his children. They loved it, and it was published in 1939. A further 18 books followed until she stopped writing in 1957. 

The Black Riders is set in an imaginary European country- or rather Empire – in a period that sounds like the years before WWI. I always imagine it to be somewhere in central Europe. The story is about a boy, Dick, who gets caught up in the shadowy activities of a group called the Confederates that is trying to challenge the autocratic power of the Emperor. It follows Dick’s adventures as a messenger for the group, and his interaction with its scholarly but charismatic leader, Far Away Moses. The Black Riders are the quasi military police who oppose the Confederates and who are objects of both fear and fascination for the boy. The story is well written and exciting. Some of the characters are only cardboard cut outs, but others, including the boy Dick, are very well drawn for a children’s story. Ms Needham has also created an interesting society and landscape, no doubt based on her European experiences, but with an element of imagination that makes it a special place for her readers.

When I was young, it was Dick’s bravery and loyalty that impressed me, along with the challenge of the Confederates to autocratic rule. Now I can see that Ms Needham’s writing reflects her privileged social position and conservative political views. Dick and Far Away both turn out to be members of the Empire’s nobility, and Far Away – or Count St Silvain – is not really interested in challenging the existing social order; he just wants a few changes at the top. Dick’s dead father was an officer of the Black Riders and friend of their feared leader. But realizing all this doesn’t make any difference to the enjoyment I remember having in the book when I was a child, and it does not sour the values of honour, loyalty and fortitude I find in it still. These are not so different from the values of Tamzin and her friends in the work of Monica Edwards. And is there not still a place for these values today?

The Black Riders is the first of a series of stories about Dick’s adventures and the affairs of the Empire. Some of the later ones are good too, but others I found virtually unreadable.

The Violet Needham Society website is here.