#projectplaces: Black Forest Summer by Mabel Esther Allan

‘When the war was over I was able to travel to foreign countries, as well as write, and travelling has remained one of my greatest pleasures.’ (Mabel Esther Allan, 1972)

‘”Well, we don’t want him!” cried Asta, appalled. “What on earth should we do with a German uncle?  Why Mrs Dane is bad enough without having to cope with a foreigner.”’

Mabel Esther Allan was born in 1915. At the age of eight she decided she would be a writer, and unlike most of us who make such optimistic pronouncements, she did just that. By the time of her death in 1998 she had turned out over 170 children’s novels, many short stories and various autobiographical books.

Allan had terribly bad eyesight; for some reason this was never discussed, and certainly not addressed, at home. As a result she was ridiculed at school and had a miserable time there - yet schools are the settings for many of her books. She was a supporter of AS Neill, the founder of Summerhill School (‘The original alternative ‘free’ school…. the oldest children’s democracy in the world'), a radical educationalist who believed children should be free to govern themselves.

AS Neill

While Black Forest Summer (1957) is a stand-alone story in which school is very much in the background, Allan’s ideas about self-discipline and self-discovery can be clearly seen in the lives of the Hartrich children and their German cousins.

When their mother dies, Max, Asta, Thea and Van are left to fend for themselves. The poverty they face is of course a very middle-class one – how will Asta be able to go to art college?  How will Thea stay at ballet school? – but no adult seems ready to intervene (Max and Asta being virtually adult already) and their only relations are famous artist Aunt Beatrice, whereabouts unknown, and their father’s family in Germany, whom they have never met, their father having died many years previously. (Their mother remarried, but their stepfather is also deceased.)

Asta is just coming round to the horrific idea that she might have to get a job – perhaps even in a factory! – when out of the blue arrives a letter from Gustav Hartrich, their father’s brother. Surprise surprise, Mr Hartrich is a wealthy man, owner of the smartest department store in Freiburg, and he would like nothing better than to invite his brother’s children to stay with him and his family. What’s more, he is already on his way to London and will escort them to Germany himself.

I think if I were an orphan with no obvious means of support, I would be quite thrilled with the idea of a rich and exotic ‘foreign’ uncle coming to whisk me away for a holiday, but Asta and Thea are horrified;

‘He’s a German, and may not even speak very good English.  I’d sooner we coped on our own than –’

‘Yes, you often see it in the papers. “Girl of fourteen mothers nine”’!’

Van, the youngest, is more excited, while Max, who is studying languages at university, is delighted  with the news, but the older girls are sure that they would much rather do without outside help and manage in some unspecified manner.

Meanwhile, In Freiburg, Uncle Gustav’s elder daughter Liesl has been removed from her boarding school in Baden Baden and brought back to the family home to help her (well-staffed) mother, and to learn how to be a good housefrau pending a suitable marriage. The household is a peaceful, happy and cultured one, and Liesl is an obedient and placid child, but she had hoped to have her own career – something that her father refuses to contemplate.

Freiburg market today

We meet Liesel first as she walks through Freiburg on a Saturday morning shopping trip – and it is in Freiburg that Allan’s writing really starts to come alive.  Allan once said that all of her stories began with a ‘flash’ – a sense of possessing a landscape for a story. I am usually quickly bored by description, but Allan has a gift for it, and the pictures she draws of ‘the most lovely old city in Europe’ made me long to visit it myself.

‘The great red Cathedral… a wonderful building with statues and gilt-edged turrets and a long, strangely-shaped, roof…market stalls blazing with colour…old cream buildings…the Kaufhaus..the Wensinger Palace.’

Freiburg Cathedral (image (c) black-forest-travel.com)

The London Hartriches’ journey to Germany is also a romantic read for those of us used to the endurance test that is modern travel;

‘(the) thrill in being in the continental part of Victoria Station…the Kentish fields…the long lines of hops throwing blueish shadows.’

‘The boat was sheer delight…their uncle retired below to the First Class lounge and did not reappear until …Boulogne.’

A further train takes them through France to Switzerland, and a breakfast of ‘fresh rolls, piping hot coffee and black cherry jam’ in Basel, then finally they are travelling through Germany;

‘the mist was lifting from the fields and church spires showed here and there…it was a peaceful country….harvest fields lying in brightening sunshine, men cycling along lonely roads….children pausing in their play to wave to the train.’

Yet this is 1957, just twelve years after the end of the Second World War.  I think Allan makes a concerted effort to emphasise that rural Germany is in many ways just like England. The Hartriches don’t want to go to Germany, partly because they are bereaved but also because Asta and Thea in particular are prejudiced and frightened. Van is younger and remembers nothing of the war, and Max is studying European languages – his is the voice of reconciliation, forgiveness and hope.

The Hartrich home in Freiburg is very comfortable, with a beautiful garden overlooking the rooftops and a shady path leading down into the city itself. In the garden Van meets Rosa, Liesel’s shy younger sister, with whom she soon has a close friendship, and later Asta also meets Gottfried, Liesel’s handsome older cousin. Gradually, and with plenty of sulks and strops from Asta and Thea, all born stoically by the patient Liesel, everyone begins to settle down.

The Black Forest (image: Wikipedia)

The London family’s stay in Freiburg, their walks in the Black Forest (Allan herself travelled widely, and enjoyed many walking holidays), their visits to Hartrich relations in Ulm and Elzach, and to an aunt who lives in a castle on the Bodensee, are all vividly described. Allan is excellent on food, and also on clothes and shopping; the delicious German meals, and the girls’ bright frocks, blouses and scarves, are all lovingly detailed - for after years of war and rationing (the latter only finally ended in  Britain in 1954), people (if they had money) were at last able to indulge themselves again, and no doubt Allan too was enjoying this new-found freedom.

Of course, Asta, the most difficult and critical of the children, eventually thaws and becomes best buddies with Liesel – though not before committing some serious faux pas, and appalling kind but dowdy Frau Hartrich with her disregard for all matters domestic;

‘My dear, it is the privilege of a woman to learn to cook and sew and to make a home – ‘

‘I don’t call it a privilege to scrape pans and wash up endless greasy dishes. It’s got to be done of course, but some women are worth more than that.’

Before the end of the summer, Thea performs a triumphant dance at a smart garden party, Van decides to become a tour leader, Asta’s career plans are resurrected by a most fortuitous meeting and Asta and Thea help Liesel to win her battle with her father, who allows his daughter to start work in his own department store in Freiburg.

Elzach (image (c) black-forest-travel.com)

The family does return to London, with – for this is fiction – a much brighter future ahead of it, and with a much better view of Germany;

‘“Astie, you do really think we’ll come back?”

“I’m sure of it. I think Freiburg’s going to be our second home from now on.”’

Black Forest Summer is a great read, and I particularly liked the empathy Allan shows for the struggles of young adults trying to find their own way in the world. I am so pleased that I found this book in my local British Heart Foundation shop, and I would love to read more of Mabel Esther Allan’s work.

Black Forest Summer by Mabel Esther Allan was published by The Children’s Press in 1957.