Brendon Chase

[Mr. Cornflower is en route to a conference in Monaco, but before leaving he drafted this long-promised post on one of his favourite books.] 

     Brendon Chase is the story of three young brothers who, instead of going back to boarding school at the end of the summer holiday, run off to the woods where they hole up - literally - in a hollow oak tree and live by hunting, trapping and fishing. The book has stirred the imaginations of generations of readers since its publication in 1944, and continues to exercise a powerful, almost emotional grip.

     It was written by Denys Watkins-Pitchford who chose to write under the pseudonym "BB" ( a grade of shotgun pellet used in shooting wild geese) while illustrating his works under his own name. The subject-matter may suggest a bluff, red-faced squire; in fact he was a diffident, introspective man who called his own brief autobiography "A Child Alone". Not robust enough to fight in the war, he was teaching art at Rugby school when "Brendon Chase" was published.

     We all have "a land of lost content", patched together from fleeting memories of past happiness and fragments of an idealised world. On one hand we know this world never existed as we remember it and we acknowledge that the reality of life is change; on another, less rational but more powerful level, we cling to illusions which we know to be illusions. Many of us find comfort in the idea of a world where deep in the English countryside a village policeman bicycles through the dusty lanes to the sanctuary of a whitewashed cellar and a tankard of beer drawn from a wooden barrel; where three boys, their parents thousands of miles away administering a now lost Empire, live like Robin Hood's outlaws in eleven thousand acres of deep forest amid the deer and the butterflies; where winter brings knee-deep snow and the boys huddle down under rabbit skin blankets inside their oak.

     I could write much more - in particular I wonder if anyone agrees that, just as Brendon Chase could only have been written by an Englishman, Calvino's Il barone rampante (young aristocrat quarrels with family and climbs into the oak groves of Liguria, never to descend) is quintessentially Italian - but I will stand out of the way and let those of you who have not read "Brendon Chase" enter this magical world.

Comments

[Rosemary]

That sounds a wonderful book, and although the title and storyline sound familiar I'm sure I have not read it. Must search out a copy and visit that idyllic vision of childhood.

[carol]

Thank you for this tip of a childhood treasure. My son I am sure would love reading this, in fact it sounds a great read along for us together. Must try and search out a copy.

[karen]

this must be a multi-cultural theme - Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain is the American version!

[Barbara]

It occurs to me that 'BB' must have been teaching at Rugby at the time Elinor Lyon's father was headmaster. Just one of those literary coincidences. If you don't know who Elinor Lyon is, see the Fidra Books site.