Storytime by Jane Sullivan

Author:Jane Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ventura Press

I’M GOING TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC AS HARD AS I CAN

The Enchanted Castle

by E. Nesbit

One evening when I was very young, my father called me into his studio. ‘Look, Jane,’ he said, pointing out the window, ‘there’s a fairy palace.’ So there was. It floated in the darkness, a building like an ancient Greek temple, square and columned with a triangular roof, very solid, but with transparent walls that blazed with golden light. I gasped. Every night for a long time, I would creep into the studio to see the fairy palace, for by day it was invisible, and I was afraid it had gone: but by nightfall it was always there, blazing away. And because there was no perspective, I had no idea how big it was. It might have been a great mansion, or it might have been very, very small.

I never wondered what sort of fairies they were, or why they would build a palace in St John’s Wood, or what they did inside it: it was enough just to behold. At some point, I must have realised that what I was seeing was a greenhouse in a neighbouring garden, indistinct and camouflaged in shadows by day but visible by night, when it was lit up from inside. Did that shatter my illusion? Not a bit of it. I could quite comfortably live with a double vision: the fairy palace was still there and I still believed in it because I wanted to believe, right up until the moment when I was ready and willing to let it drift away and replace it with a place to grow plants. And another reason I wanted to prolong the vision was because my father had revealed it to me.

That in-between time, when I believed in both the fairy palace and the greenhouse, demonstrates the ambiguity of magic for a child. E. Nesbit was the mistress of ambiguous magic, and she has influenced many writers for children who came after her. I entered into a contract with her: I would believe in the magic for as long as I was reading the book. It is a delicious state to be in, at once safe and enthralled. But it can’t last.

“I entered into a contract with her: I would believe in the magic for as long as I was reading the book. It is a delicious state to be in, at once safe and enthralled.”

The best-known of Nesbit’s books is probably The Railway Children, about a family living in a railway cottage where the children band together to prove the innocence of their wrongly imprisoned father. Thanks to a 1970 film adaptation, it gave many boys of my generation a crush on Jenny Agutter. I enjoyed this book, but for me it always took second place to the Nesbit fantasy books, which all involved an element of magic. I have them a little confused with one another, but they glow brightly like a jar of multicoloured lollies, in the days when lollies were a huge treat and not just sticky and unhealthy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.