For the #1962Club: Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn by Eve Garnett

It may be 1962 in the rest of the world, but in Otwell-On-The-Ouse it's still 1929.  Kate Ruggles, junior resident of One End Street, is on her way back to Upper Cassington, where waits for her,

The dear little white-walled room, with its deep-set window framed in thick thatch and through which the sprays of roses and honeysuckle were now almost climbing into the room itself. And outside the row of orangy-coloured cottages, and behind them the fields, the little wood, and the faraway hills. Everything - just as she had remembered it.

Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn is the third and last of Eve Garnett's Family From One End Street trilogy. The first book was written in 1937; Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn did not appear until 1962, but its narrative follows directly on from Further Adventures of the Family From One End Street (published in 1956 but written in, at the latest, 1941.)

Kate is returning to The Dew Drop Inn ('Do Drop In!' proclaims the sign.) She was previously there to supervise two of her young siblings as they recovered from measles; as soon as they got home she developed it herself and now, after weeks in the isolation hospital (for this is what happened in those days, especially if you were poor and lived in overcrowded housing), she has been invited to stay with Mr and Mrs Wildgoose for two whole months on her own - a particularly wonderful treat for a child who is used to sharing everything, including her bed, and being expected to lend a hand with childcare and just about everything else. (There's a reason, I think, why so many older children in large families have none of their own. They've already been there.)

Kate - 'a thin freckled child with spindly legs and wispy hair' - is the dreamy, bookish, second daughter of the family. She aspires to be a farmer, an ambition not likely to be realised in the backstreets of a thinly disguised Lewes. She is therefore especially delighted to be back in the countryside, catching up with her old friends (who range from Mrs Midgely the kindly postmistress, to Miss Alison, daughter of the local gentry, her friend Lord Glenheather, and old Mr Milton and Mr Shakespeare, who live next door to one another) - and a few enemies - and throwing herself into village activities, particularly the flower show, the concert and the annual visit from the funfair, 

And if all this sounds a bit twee and nostalgia ridden, it isn't; Garnett has a unique ability to communicate a child's thoughts and fears, and although Kate is delighted to be at the Inn, she's still not above vying with the ghastly Angela Smallpiece and disdaining the cocky Johnny Sears. She is, after all, a girl who's had to fight her corner in her own family, and while dreamer she may be, she's no shrinking violet. 

One of the best things about these books - all of which have remained in print to this day - is the way in which Garnett depicts working class life. The Ruggles are poor but they survive and indeed thrive; Mum takes in laundry (as did my own grandmother), Dad works on the bins, and they are, on the whole, a happy family.

 

In some ways they remind me of Derry Girls, in which, over half a century later, another family muddles its way through life. Again we see the scary matriarch (Rosie Ruggles/Mary Quinn), the long suffering father (Jo Ruggles/Gerry Quinn) and a collection of offspring navigating the rocky waters of life as best they can. But these are the 1920s, money is scarce and possessions are few. Kate wears her school hat to every event, so proud is she to own one. When Mrs Beasley, a customer of the The Ideal Laundry ('careful hand work'), gives her a macintosh and gumboots outgrown by her niece, Kate is in heaven;

Kate had never had a macintosh of any kind before - old or new, nor a pair of gumboots - the other half of Mrs Beasley's present, that had not been passed on to her by her elder sister, Lily Rose, usually in a condition as far removed as possible from 'as good as new.'

 

In a particularly enjoyable chapter of the book, Mr Ruggles comes to visit Kate, bringing the twins, John and Jim, with him. They travel down on a sofa in the open back of his friend Mr Watkins's removal lorry - he's 'taking a Load to Ailsford (presumably Aylesford in Kent)'. And they arrive just in time for the fair. Although some decades would pass before I, as a child, went to the annual August Bank Holiday fair on Blackheath in London, so many of the details Garnett describes are familiar to me - the hoopla, the goldfish prizes, the helter skelter, the shooting range, the roundabout, the coconut shy. Of course some things had changed;

'Three and six (17.5p) each! We ought to be able to go on everything in The Fair for that!'

Another aspect of the books that I love is Garnett's descriptions of food. Mrs Wildgoose is keen to fatten Kate up, so there are dinners of boiled beef and carrots, Irish stew, jam tarts and blackberry and apple pies, breakfasts of sizzling sausages and bacon and toast with honey, teas with 'triple yolker!' boiled eggs, and baking in abundance, and picnics with fresh bread, clotted cream, home made preserves and lardy cake. When Kate is invited to visit The Priory, Miss Alison serves up tea, hot buttered scones and Extra Special Apricot Jam, a Dundee cake 'covered in almonds' and chocolate biscuits. 

And Garnett's very good at setting a scene with few words. From the cottage gardens full of flowers and bees to Mrs Edwards, newly arrived to help Auntie (the formidable Mrs Megson) in the shop;

golden hair piled high on her head; long golden earrings swung from her ears; her cheeks were a beautiful rose-pink, and her nails even pinker - and highly polished. Kate looked at her with awe and admiration. 

The story never drags, we are never bored with pages of description, instead the action keeps moving, from one adventure to the next, with a chapter also devoted to Lily Rose's latest escapade back in Otwell.

When Eve Garnett (who originally trained as an artist) was commissioned to illustrate Evelyn Sharp's 1927 book The London Child she was 'appalled by conditions prevailing in the poorer quarters of the world's richest city' and became determined to publicise the evils of poverty and class division, She worked on a 40 foot mural at The Children's House in Bow, and published a book of drawings Is It Well With the Child?

The Family From One End Street was intended to be a children's book, and does not dwell on the worst aspects of 1920s working class life. Nevertheless it was rejected by several publishers as 'not suitable for the young' before being accepted by Frederick Muller. The book went on to win the Carnegie Medal (beating The Hobbit along the way.) Garnett doesn't shy away from the realities of the Ruggles' lives - the constant budgeting, the worry about any extra expenses, the need to keep customers happy at all costs - but she does this in a way that children can understand. 

Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn is a wonderful finale to the Ruggles' family story, although I'm sure that many readers (myself included) often wonder what happened to Kate, Lily Rose and the rest of the Ruggles children. I imagine Lily Rose, married young and with a large brood herself, following in her mother's hard working footsteps, but Kate? I'd like to think she did become a farmer, but I see her more as a writer - perhaps almost a Jo March figure - living a Bohemian life in a rural commune. 

The book doesn't. I suppose, have much of a locus in 1962, but I'm so glad it happened to be published in that year, as it's given me a much appreciated opportunity to reread it.

The Family From One End Street, Further Adventures of the Family From One End Street, and Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn, all by Eve Garnett, are published by Puffin.