It might be irresponsible to recommend Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy (1964) to youngsters today, with its sulky, unrepentant heroine who snoops on neighbours and whose notebook entries result in her losing friends. They might like it as much as I did. My copy, kept safe through house sales and moves and decades, is the only childhood book I still have, my best and most important. I’ve written inside the front cover: ‘Amy M. Liptrot, Private Spy. This book is totally brilliant!’
Growing up on a farm on the Scottish island of Orkney, I had no idea what a luncheonette and egg cream were, or cocktails and a dumb waiter, but rereading the mysterious words now brings a rush of affection for their familiar patterns. At the age of 8 or 9, back in the late ’80s, it was simply a book about a cool, brave American girl who spies on her neighbours and who wants to be an author one day. Harriet writes (usually in block capitals): ‘WHEN I GROW UP I'M GOING TO FIND OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYBODY AND PUT IT ALL IN A BOO. THE BOOK IS GOING TO BE CALLED SECRETS BY HARRIET. M. WELSCH. I WILL ALSO HAVE PHOTOGRAPHS IN IT AND MAYBE SOME MEDICAL CHARTS IF I CAN GET THEM.'
Living in a 1960s New York townhouse with both a cook and a nanny, 11-year-old Harriet is the only child of often absent parents. Her mother lunches and plays bridge (which Harriet thinks is boring) and her father ‘works in television’. Each day, after school, Harriet takes a ‘spy route’ around her neighbourhood in Eastside Manhattan, writing in her green notebook about the people she watches through windows and skylights, from fire escapes and – audaciously – by climbing into a dumb waiter.
These risky adventures are accompanied by Fitzhugh’s own illustrations of the people Harriet spies on: Agatha K. Plumber, a rich divorcée who l
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Subscribe now or Sign inIt might be irresponsible to recommend Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy (1964) to youngsters today, with its sulky, unrepentant heroine who snoops on neighbours and whose notebook entries result in her losing friends. They might like it as much as I did. My copy, kept safe through house sales and moves and decades, is the only childhood book I still have, my best and most important. I’ve written inside the front cover: ‘Amy M. Liptrot, Private Spy. This book is totally brilliant!’
Growing up on a farm on the Scottish island of Orkney, I had no idea what a luncheonette and egg cream were, or cocktails and a dumb waiter, but rereading the mysterious words now brings a rush of affection for their familiar patterns. At the age of 8 or 9, back in the late ’80s, it was simply a book about a cool, brave American girl who spies on her neighbours and who wants to be an author one day. Harriet writes (usually in block capitals): ‘WHEN I GROW UP I'M GOING TO FIND OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYBODY AND PUT IT ALL IN A BOO. THE BOOK IS GOING TO BE CALLED SECRETS BY HARRIET. M. WELSCH. I WILL ALSO HAVE PHOTOGRAPHS IN IT AND MAYBE SOME MEDICAL CHARTS IF I CAN GET THEM.' Living in a 1960s New York townhouse with both a cook and a nanny, 11-year-old Harriet is the only child of often absent parents. Her mother lunches and plays bridge (which Harriet thinks is boring) and her father ‘works in television’. Each day, after school, Harriet takes a ‘spy route’ around her neighbourhood in Eastside Manhattan, writing in her green notebook about the people she watches through windows and skylights, from fire escapes and – audaciously – by climbing into a dumb waiter. These risky adventures are accompanied by Fitzhugh’s own illustrations of the people Harriet spies on: Agatha K. Plumber, a rich divorcée who lies in bed and talks on the phone all day; a grocery shop and the Italian family who run it; the Robinsons, a couple who ‘think they’re perfect’ and buy a monstrous modern art statue of a baby; and Harrison Withers, who makes birdcages and has twenty five cats with names like Rasputin, Puck and Cassandra. Fitzhugh’s own prejudices and frustrations with society play out through the eyes of a child. Of Agatha K. Plumber, Harriet writes: ‘HOW DOES SHE PAY FOR ANYTHING JUST LYING THERE? I GUESS SHE JUST LIVES OFF HER HUSBAND'S MONEY’; and of Harrison Withers, ‘I WOULDN'T MIND LIVING LIKE HARRISON WITHERS BECAUSE HE ALWAYS LOOKS HAPPY.’ Harriet wears a belt hung with her ‘spy tools’ (a flashlight, a pouch for a notebook, a case for pens, a water canteen and a Boy Scout knife), eats only tomato sandwiches, uses American slang (‘oh boy’) and wears black-rimmed spectacles with no glass in them. At school she passes notes to members of her weird gang: serious Sport, who looks after his writer father (I now realize he’s an alcoholic – ‘“Why do you eat so late?” “He has cocktails first.”’), and Janie, an aspiring scientist. The details combine to create an attractive picture of a child writer, a tomboy in practical clothes who says things like, ‘I’ll be finked if I go to dancing school.’ Nanny ‘Ole Golly’ – terrific, strange, literature-loving, decisive – has been with Harriet since she was born, and is a stable counterpoint to her distracted parents. She tells Harriet, ‘If you are ever going to be a writer it is time you got cracking. You are eleven years old . . .’ There’s a joyous sequence when Ole Golly and her fiancé take Harriet to the cinema. With the three of them on one bike, Harriet inside the delivery basket with Ole Golly sitting on top, ‘they whirled down the hill and zoomed over into Eighty-Sixth Street’. Harriet has been writing since she was 8, and is now on her fifteenth notebook. She is brave and inquisitive but she’s also arrogant (‘I will be a spy and know everything’), throws tantrums and is often cruel. The notebook contains candid observations of classmates – some show she is beginning to understand the world and how she fits in, some are just nasty. ‘THE REASON SPORT DRESSES SO FUNNY IS THAT HIS FATHER WON'T BUY HIM ANYTHING TO WEAR BECAUSE HIS MOTHER HAS ALL THE MONEY’; ‘MISS ELLISON HAS A WART BEHIND HER ELBOW.’ The mood of the book turns after the delivery-bike episode. Harriet’s parents accuse Ole Golly of putting Harriet in danger and dismiss her, though in fact no one cares about Harriet as much as Ole Golly does. Then, during a game of catch, Harriet’s notebook is read by classmates who, hurt and appalled, turn on Harriet and form a ‘Spy Catcher Club’, playing tricks on her and stealing her sandwiches. We know that Harriet doesn’t dislike them and has just been honest in her notebook, but her frustration at being misunderstood and turned on by friends is painfully compelling and says much about the complex allegiances of schoolchildren. When the diary is confiscated, Harriet is despondent: ‘She found that when she didn’t have a notebook, it was hard to think.’ She is sent to a psychiatrist whom she charms with her precocity. ‘I will never give up this notebook but it is clear that they are going to be as mean as they can until I do. They just don’t know Harriet M. Welsch,’ she writes. She is not only determined to be a writer, but also perhaps is unable to be anything else. The ending is tough. Although Harriet’s parents apologize, her much-loved Ole Golly does not return. Instead she writes Harriet a final letter. ‘I never miss anyone or anything because it becomes a lovely memory,’ she says, and then she gives some uncomfortable advice: ‘Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.’ Harriet is learning to balance honesty with her need for friendship, but despite her experiences, she refuses to change and continues her gossip and observations in the school newspaper. She wants to write about what she thinks really happens and what really matters, and in that she has chosen to take a difficult path. It was with Harriet that I discovered the possibility of another, inner, life. Her secret notebook (‘I never go anywhere without it’) got me started on writing my own. My notebooks became diaries, which later became blogs and journalism. Now, writing in my notebook with a duvet tented over my back, I’ve reconnected with the little girl I was: the 9-year-old spy, who identified with an American girl with a green composition notebook and a profession.Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 47 © Amy Liptrot 2015
About the contributor
Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm. Since returning to Orkney three years ago, she has spent summers working for the RSPB and winters living on the tiny island of Papa Westray where she has been writing her first book, The Outrun.