Books: A Small but Costly Crown

THE YOUNG VISITERS (92 pp.)—Daisy Ashford—Doubleday ($1.75).

Buxom, carefree, serene—to all appearances Daisy Ashford was just like hundreds of other well-bred little English girls growing up at the beginning of the century. After studying a photograph of Daisy at the age of nine, Sir James Barrie remarked on her “air of careless power … a complacency . . . that by the severe might perhaps be called smugness.” Perhaps Barrie was right, for what distinguished Daisy Ashford from her fellow moppets was the fact that she was the most readable child novelist in English literature.

Daisy wrote her novels in twopenny notebooks. She borrowed her plots from other writers (as did Shakespeare), her material from the weird and wonderful conduct and conversation of grownups. Settings gave her no trouble, for when visitors came to her Sussex home (her father was a retired War Office official), they made mention of “The Crystal Palace,” “The Gaiety Theatre,” “Hampton Court”—glamorous place names which Daisy seized and shaped into glittering abodes for the ardent characters to whom her imagination was dedicated.

By adolescence, Daisy Ashford had written herself out. Like any other girl, she turned her attention to growing up, going out into the world, and getting married. When her mother died, during World War I, Daisy found among her papers the manuscript of The Young Visiters, Or, Mr. Salteena’s Plan, a novel Daisy had written at the age of nine. A friend laughed over it so much that Daisy kindly wrote out a fair copy—and forgot all about it. She was doing war work when a telegram arrived “conveying the amazing news that my ‘novel’ was to be published.”

Barrie, who wrote the introduction, described The Voting Visiters as a “sublime work.” British readers not only agreed with Barrie (every copy was sold out in a few days), but suspected that Barrie had written it himself. Since those days, The Young Visiters has sold more than 150,000 copies in Britain, some 50,000 in the U.S. There are still many who cannot be convinced that its hilariously comic effects owe nothing to mature artistry, everything to the vivid imagination of brilliant innocence. New readers may judge for themselves by trying the new edition.

“With a Loud Sniff.” Centerpiece of The Young Visiters is Mr. Alfred Salteena, “an elderly man of 42 … fond of asking peaple to stay with him.” Staying with him, in fact, when the story opens, is “quite a young girl … of 17 named Ethel Monticue,” whose “blue velvit frock had grown rarther short in the sleeves.” Mr. Salteena and Ethel are at breakfast when a letter arrives from Mr. Salteena’s friend, Bernard Clark, inviting him to come and stay and “bring one of your young ladies whichever is the prettiest in the face.” Taking “out his blotter with a loud sniff,” Mr. Salteena promptly replies: “Certinly I shall come … I will bring Ethel Monticue commonly called Miss M. She is very active and pretty … I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice it.”

When the day came for setting out, “Mr. Salteena did not have an egg for his brekfast in case he should be sick on the jorney.” While Ethel dabbed “red ruge” on her cheeks (“I am very pale owing to the drains in this house”), Mr. Salteena ran upstairs and “silently put 2/6 on the dirty toilet cover” for Rosalind, the housemaid.

“Bernard has a big house,” Mr. Salteena told Ethel in the train. “He is inclined to be rich.” Soon they were bowling up a long driveway in a splendid carriage, and Mr. Salteena cried, “Now my dear what do you think of the sceenery.”

“Gazing at the rich fur rug on her knees,” Ethel answered warmly, “Very nice.”

Bernard Clark was “rarther a presumshious man,” but after one glance at Ethel he “turned a dark red.” When Mr. Salteena (“lapping up his turtle soup”) congratulated him on his “sumpshous house,” Bernard proved himself a true aristocrat. “He gave a weary smile and swallowed a few drops of sherry wine. It is fairly decent he replied.”

“Like a Heathen God.” They spent much of the evening looking at portraits of Bernard’s ancestors. One was “a man with a fat smiley face and a red ribbon . . . My great uncle Ambrose Fudge said Bernard carelessly … He was really the Sinister son of Queen Victoria. Not really cried Ethel in excited tones but what does that mean. Well I dont quite know said Bernard Clark … but I mean to find out.”

Next day, Mr. Salteena bluntly told Bernard: “You can help me perhaps to be more like a gentleman . . . Well. . . said Bernard I can give you a letter to my old pal the Earl of Clincham … He might rub you up … Oh ten thousand thanks said Mr. Salteena … If you would be so kind as to keep an eye on Ethel while I am away … I dont think you will find her any trouble.” To which Bernard answered warmly, “No I dont think I shall.”

From this point on, the plot of The Young Visiters fairly races. Amiable Lord Clincham smuggles Mr. Salteena into Buckingham Palace under the alias “Lord Hyssops” and introduces him to the Prince of Wales, who is dressed in “a small but costly crown” and surrounded by “ladies of every hue.”

“I am rubbing him up in socierty ways,” explains Lord Clincham. “If there was a vacency … he might try cantering after the royal barouche.” The Prince agrees, and soon passers-by in “Pickadilly” witness daily the astonishing spectacle of Mr. Salteena “galloping madly after the Royal Carrage” on “a fresh and sultry steed.”

Sensible Bernard Clark, meanwhile, has been making hay. After giving Ethel a gay spree at the “Gaierty Hotel,” he proposes to her outside Windsor Castle. “If you say no,” he warns, “I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river.” But Ethel gladly accepts. “You are to me like a Heathen god,” she tells Bernard. He kisses her and she falls in a swoon.

Bernard and Ethel lived happily ever after, because “he loved Ethel to the bitter end and . . . they had a nice house too.” Mr. Salteena was less fortunate: though he had ten children by a nice girl “at Buckingham palace by name Bessie Topp,” he was sulky about losing Ethel. “Still he was a pius man in his way and found relief in prayer.”

So Long Ago. It is not hard to imagine what a mature author would do with the theme of The Young Visiters (Balzac rigged a great part of his Human Comedy round precisely such characters as Ethel Monticue and Mr. Salteena). But it is certain that no adult, whether a Balzac or a Barrie, could have turned out a work ith the unique perfections of The Young Visiters.

Author Ashford herself is the first to recognize this. She is now a grandmother of 60, the wife of James Devlin, a Norfolk market gardener who deals in fruit and flowers. Though occasionally she has felt he urge to write fiction, housekeeping the rearing of four children have left her “really too busy” to try. She finds the steady royalties of The Young Visiters very welcome,” and even dreams of a rip to the U.S. as a result of the new edition. But with every passing year she becomes more conscious of the gulf that separates her present self from the amazing child she used to be. “I can never feel that all the nice things that have been aid about The Young Visiters are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems almost another person.”