One of the great advantages of acquiring a stepson in my sixties was the excuse it gave me to reread aloud all those children’s books which I had so much enjoyed the first time around – Beatrix Potter (whose Tailor of Gloucester was once ranked by A. J. P. Taylor with ‘the greatest masterpieces of Balzac’), Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and The Wind in the Willows, the last so popular that I think I read it six times in quick succession.
Still, the most popular books of all with this particular boy will be familiar to only a very few devotees, the Uncle series by the Reverend J. P. Martin. They were written by a Methodist minister and the first volume of Uncle was published as long ago as 1964 when the author was in his eighties. As with many great masterpieces it had proved hard to find a publisher, but eventually Cape accepted the book and then had the inspired idea of commissioning Quentin Blake to illustrate it. After J. P. Martin’s death his daughter Stella compiled enough stories for a further five books, the last of which, Uncle and the Battle for Badgertown, was published in 1973 (price £1.75).
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Uncle I should explain that he is an extremely rich elephant, lord of a vast Manhattan-like castle called Homeward, a collection of interconnected towers most of which he has never visited. Put like that it sounds a whimsical idea but because of its vast extent Homeward has proved a magnet for all kinds of charlatans and crooks keen to exp
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Subscribe now or Sign inOne of the great advantages of acquiring a stepson in my sixties was the excuse it gave me to reread aloud all those children’s books which I had so much enjoyed the first time around – Beatrix Potter (whose Tailor of Gloucester was once ranked by A. J. P. Taylor with ‘the greatest masterpieces of Balzac’), Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and The Wind in the Willows, the last so popular that I think I read it six times in quick succession.
Still, the most popular books of all with this particular boy will be familiar to only a very few devotees, the Uncle series by the Reverend J. P. Martin. They were written by a Methodist minister and the first volume of Uncle was published as long ago as 1964 when the author was in his eighties. As with many great masterpieces it had proved hard to find a publisher, but eventually Cape accepted the book and then had the inspired idea of commissioning Quentin Blake to illustrate it. After J. P. Martin’s death his daughter Stella compiled enough stories for a further five books, the last of which, Uncle and the Battle for Badgertown, was published in 1973 (price £1.75). For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Uncle I should explain that he is an extremely rich elephant, lord of a vast Manhattan-like castle called Homeward, a collection of interconnected towers most of which he has never visited. Put like that it sounds a whimsical idea but because of its vast extent Homeward has proved a magnet for all kinds of charlatans and crooks keen to exploit the inhabitants, who include dwarfs and various kinds of animals. There is Professor Gandleweaver who presides over a fish-frying academy charging exorbitant fees, or Steiner Brashbag, a fraudulent antique-dealer whose stock includes ‘a medieval boaster’s’ stool made to plunge a boaster and ‘a shaving brush last used by Mungo Rasp, the Chinese poet’. Uncle has a posse of faithful followers, who include a one-armed badger and a cat called Goodman, and he does his best to help his various subjects, but he is hampered night and day by ‘the Badfort crowd’, a gang of sack-suited hooligans who live in a ramshackle old slum adjacent to the castle known as Badfort. Their leader is Beaver Hateman who mercilessly harangues Uncle, not just physically but verbally as well in the pages of the Badfort News, a scurrilous rag produced by its chief reporter Hitmouse, a savage little dwarf who goes around with a quiver full of skewers. It is easy to see why some publishers and critics have felt uneasy about the books. A humourless Marxist could easily interpret Uncle as a greedy capitalist and the Badfort crowd as the downtrodden proletariat. But boys to whom I have read the stories are often puzzled by Uncle’s apparent leniency towards the Badfort crowd when he could, if he wished, exterminate them with no difficulty. Martin however makes it clear that Uncle’s constant scraps with Beaver Hateman and his gang are what make his life exciting. ‘You know jolly well’, Hateman tells him, ‘that you would be bored stiff if we didn’t have a dust-up occasionally.’And, as happened in the trenches in the First World War, there is actually a truce at Christmas time when the Badfort crowd are invited into Homeward and treated to a huge banquet. Later, as a special treat, Uncle takes them to the Haunted Tower to see the various ghosts who frequent it. Beaver Hateman sleeps soundly in his bed but Hitmouse is not so bold:
Once in the room he could see nothing at first, and finding the bed comfortable he got into it and was just falling asleep when he heard a low groan and saw a very small ghost standing on a bedside table. It stood there muttering, ‘I did it! I took the strawberry jam!’ It began to scream in a small voice. Hitmouse tried to stick a skewer into it, but as it was made of something like thick fog this was no good.
The story goes on with a terrified Hitmouse running ‘blubbering’ to Uncle who has just arrived on the scene: ‘Oh Sir, I’m glad to see you. It’s awful in there. A little ghost, a rotten little ghost . . . oh, I’ve fairly got the wind up.’
Uncle, however, is most unsympathetic. ‘Cowardice’, he tells Hitmouse in a firm voice, ‘is a most detestable vice and I grieve to see you are its victim.’
This little extract gives a flavour of Martin’s comic style which is natural, spontaneous and unique. He was not in the least a literary man and wrote the stories originally just to amuse his children, reading them aloud in a deep Yorkshire accent, often having to stop when he became totally incapacitated by laughter. Many of the ideas, he once said, came to him in dreams, and there is certainly a dreamlike quality to some of the more peaceful episodes and the exotic gardens and lakes which Uncle discovers on his travels.
Martin’s devoted daughter, Stella Curry, who wrote a biography (sadly unpublished) of her father, was convinced that many of Uncle’s expeditions were inspired by various places he visited when exploring new circuits of his Methodist ministry. As a young man he was sent out as a missionary to the primitive diamond-mining community at Pilgrim’s Rest under the Drakenbergs in Natal, and later served as an army chaplain in the First World War. After a busy career on various Methodist circuits he retired to the Exmoor village of Timberscombe where he died in 1966. He had lived just long enough to have his stories acclaimed by discerning critics, who recognized at once the comic originality of his imagination. Fortunately for us, the first two books, Uncle and Uncle Cleans Up, have recently been republished in an American edition, distributed in the UK by Frances Lincoln.
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 22 © Richard Ingrams 2009
About the contributor
Richard Ingrams is the editor of The Oldie and a weekly columnist in the Independent. His most recent book, The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett, was published in 2005.
The illustrations by Quentin Blake in this article are reproduced with the kind permission of the artist.