Posted on by TracyC

The Sherwood Ring

The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope, 1958.

When Peggy Grahame’s father dies, she goes to live with her Uncle Enos in upstate New York, at their ancestral home, which goes by the whimsical name Rest-and-Be-Thankful. The family has lived there since the family arrived in America, fleeing their old home in Scotland after their support for Bonnie Prince Charlie failed. Uncle Enos loves history and tends to live in the past of their old home. Peggy’s father has sarcastically
said that Uncle Enos keeps “a pack of ghosts” at the old home and dedicates his life to making them feel comfortable by never changing anything there. Although, before he dies, he admits that the place is actually haunted, after a fashion, although neither he nor Enos has ever seen the ghosts themselves. Knowing that he is about to die, he sends word to Enos that Peggy is coming, and he says that Peggy will understand what
he means about the ghosts when she gets there. He also says that Peggy will largely be looking after herself at the house because Enos is too preoccupied with studying history to take much notice of her.

After the reaches New York, Peggy has to ask for additional directions to her uncle’s house. She meets a young man from England, Pat Thorne, who’s in the United States on a scholarship, doing some historical research. Strangely, when he came in pursuit of the papers he had hoped to find, his cousin Mildred denies their existence, although he’s sure that they actually do exist. He suspects that Mildred is covering it up for some reason because a picture that he remembers his cousin had is mysteriously missing. He has now come to the region where Uncle Enos lives in search of additional historical material, and he is hoping to see Uncle Enos himself because he’s the local authority on the region’s history. He has heard that Uncle Enos welcomes young scholars, but he’s been having trouble getting in touch with him. He gives Peggy a ride to Rest-and-Be-
Thankful, although they have car trouble on the way.

However, when they arrive at Rest-and-Be-Thankful, Uncle Enos is strangely angry that Pat Thorne is there. He says that he has nothing to say to Pat and that he doesn’t want Peggy associating with him. Both Peggy and Pat insist that Uncle Enos explain why he’s so angry, but he refuses to explain anything. He only wants Pat to leave the house. Pat replies to Uncle Enos that he will leave but that he will also be seeing Peggy again,
no matter what Enos says. Peggy can tell that Enos is distressed at the idea of Pat hanging around, but there’s a second shock for Peggy as she begins settling into the house. She sees a picture of one of her ancestors, a girl called Barbara, and she realizes that this girl looks exactly like a girl on a horse who she met before she met Pat and who directed her to talk to him. Peggy wonders if she’s seen her first ghost.

It’s some time before Peggy hears from Pat again, and she meets her second ghost one day when she’s fuming about Pat not coming to speak to her or get in touch with her and saying that she’ll “show him.” A young man in a continental army uniform is suddenly sitting in an armchair near her, and Peggy recognizes him from his portrait as Richard, the brother of Barbara. Richard tells Peggy about his life during the American Revolution and how personal pride got him into an embarrassing and dangerous situation.

He had been given a special mission by George Washington to apprehend a man called Peaceable Sherwood, who was leading a gang of people who were sabotaging the Revolutionaries’ war efforts. To his surprise, Richard received a letter from Peaceable Sherwood himself while he was staying with some neighbors. The letter was sealed with a seal from Sherwood’s signet ring, and it told Richard that he was aware that Richard was looking for him, promising that Sherwood and his men would make things interesting for him. Sherwood proved an elusive person to find. Eventually, Richard discovered evidence that pointed to a place where Sherwood would be waiting to meet some of his gang. He admits that he should have gone for reinforcements, but he was so eager to prove himself by capturing Sherwood as quickly as possible, so he confronted Sherwood alone. There was a fight in which he was almost killed, and he had to admit his humiliating mistake to the young woman he loved.

Ghostly Richard says that he’s telling this story to Peggy as a warning to her about hot-headed pride. He doesn’t know the young man Peggy was talking about, but he says that hot-headed pride also kept him and the girl he loved, Eleanor Shipley, from admitting their real feelings for each other for some time, until his humiliation at the hands of Sherwood caused them both to drop their pride. Peggy is touched by the story,
and she asks Richard what eventually happened with Sherwood, if he ever caught him. Richard refuses to answer and disappears. Later, when Peggy begins delving more into her family’s past and her uncle’s collection of heirlooms, Eleanor Shipley appears to her and continues the story of Richard and
Sherwood.

As Peggy tries to settle in to life at Rest-and-Be-Thankful with Uncle Enos and to learn what it is he has against Pat Thorne, ghosts of the past continue to appear to her, all connected to the events of the American Revolution. Eleanor explains her budding relationship with Richard, and Barbara appears again to tell her how she and Richard were both captured by Sherwood and his men at Rest-and-Be-Thankful but managed to escape and Sherwood. Sherwood was going to be executed, but while Peggy is given the dull task of serving punch at her uncle’s Fourth of July ball, the ghost of Peaceable Sherwood himself shows up to tell the story of his escape and how he decided that the only woman he could marry was Barbara. Even though they were on opposite sides of the war, he’d never known a girl as clever and resourceful as she was. Even though Barbara initially says that she has no intention of marrying Sherwood, she also appreciates his cleverness, and she had tried to intervene to prevent him from being executed when he was in prison and can’t bring herself to turn him in when he escapes. Sherwood tells Barbara that the men in his family are known for their stubbornness and that it’s actually the motto on their family crest that they always get what they want, so he’s already making plans for their future wedding.

Not long after the Fourth of July ball, Uncle Enos falls seriously ill. The doctor says that it’s a virus, but he can tell that there’s something wrong with him because the treatments he’s giving Uncle Enos aren’t working as well as they should. Uncle Enos has made himself ill before by bottling up his emotions, and everyone who knows him can tell that there’s something on his mind that’s seriously troubling him, something he doesn’t want to say. However, Uncle Enos cannot get better until he finally admits what’s troubling him and deals with it. It’s his stubborn personal pride that’s getting in the way. Peggy is sure that the problem is about the conflict between him and Pat Thorne. It also possibly has to do with the story of Sherwood and the events that took place at Rest-and-Be-Thankful during the Revolutionary War.

When Barbara appears to Peggy one more time to finish the story of Sherwood and Peggy calls Pat to come to Rest-and-Be-Thankful, many things are cleared up. Sometimes, ghosts call on the living to right the wrongs of the past, but sometimes, ghosts of the past are concerned about loved ones who are still alive and help them to right the wrongs of the present.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I was curious about this book for some time because it has ghosts and visions of the past. It has similar themes to other books I’ve read, and I enjoyed The Perilous Gard, which is by the same author.

Partway through, I was a little hesitant to finish the book because I liked the characters of the past, and I didn’t want to see anything horrible happen to them. Because they are all dead and because of Uncle Enos’s animosity over something that happened in the past, I was bracing myself for something tragic to happen to one or more of the characters in the story. I thought, at first, that maybe Sherwood actually killed Richard at some point, maybe before he could marry Eleanor. Then, I thought maybe Barbara and Sherwood turned into a kind of Romeo and Juliet romantic tragedy because they’re on opposite sides. Fortunately, none of that happened in the story.

The best part of this, for me, is that the people from past (spoilers) all survived the Revolutionary War, and they apparently lived normal lives after that. Richard and Eleanor are married during the course of the story of past events, and Barbara tells Peggy that she did marry Sherwood after the war, when there was no more conflict of interest between them. Unlike many other ghost stories, the ghosts of the past in this story aren’t there to ask their living relatives to make things right for them. They don’t have any unresolved problems themselves; they are there to provide comfort and support to Peggy. They know that Peggy hasn’t had much attention or affection from her relatives. Her father didn’t pay much attention to her, and her uncle is too wrapped up in his historical research to pay much attention to her. Peggy needs some attention and information from her family to figure out what’s going on with Uncle Enos and how to help him as well as herself. The ghosts say that they cannot give her all the answers, but what the ghosts tell her gives her the clues she needs to work out the rest herself. Peggy also comes to see that some of her ancestors can relate to things that have happened to her, from the deaths of parents to dealing with disagreeable relatives to falling for someone that her family might not approve of. It helps her to see that she’s not alone, and her experiences help her to understand some of theirs.

I didn’t expect to hear any part of the Revolutionary War story from Peaceable Sherwood’s perspective, but when he showed up as a ghost to tell his part of the story, it helped me see that the story might have a happy ending after all, with no tragedies left for the historical characters. Although Sherwood is an antagonist to the other characters for much of the story, he reveals that what he’s doing isn’t entirely of his will. In some ways, he is a “poor little rich boy” – someone who comes from wealth but hasn’t had much affection or close relationships in his life and is stuck in some unfortunate circumstances. He comes from a wealthy family in England, but he was orphaned at a young age and put under the guardianship of an uncle who didn’t like him. It was his uncle who got him a commission in the army, and he did that mainly to get rid of him rather than for Sherwood’s personal advancement in life. Sherwood’s been doing the best he can with the position he’s given, and he and Richard both understand and accept that their respective roles put themselves at opposition to each other. They have to alternately fight each other and defend themselves from each other, but they also respect each other because they are somewhat similar to each other and pretty equal in their skills and intelligence. There are times when either of them could have killed the other, but they don’t because they are gentlemen and behave honorably, and they also have some fondness for each other. When Barbara starts to get to know Sherwood and his history more, she also begins to feel some fondness for Sherwood and finds him charming. Personally, I would have been put off by a grown man saying that he always gets what he wants because that sounds so bratty, but Barbara later explains that Sherwood usually gets what he wants because of his cleverness and determination in pursuing what means the most to him, not just pure entitlement.

When I first started reading the book, I had some suspicions about how Pat Thorne is connected to the Grahames and to Peaceable Sherwood, but the answer and type of problem that he represents to Uncle Enos were a little unexpected. The connection was somewhat what I expected, but it goes deeper than that, and the problem between them is very much a modern one, made by the living members of the family, not one left over from a past tragedy. It’s not an insurmountable problem, either. It’s not a family feud but a kind of misunderstanding that got out of hand, leaving Enos torn about how to handle it. He did something he probably shouldn’t have because someone else did something that she really shouldn’t have. Enos apparently was acting in good faith, but admitting the facts of the matter would mean giving up something that has meaning for him and historical significance. Now, he’s torn between wanting to deny what he did and what he’s got and wanting to make things right. Once Peggy and Pat compare notes, the matter becomes clear. Things work out very well between Pat and Peggy at the end, and they seem to understand each other very well, partly because of Peggy’s knowledge of the past and partly because Pat himself is very perceptive about what Peggy’s life has been like. He knows that things have been hard for Peggy because of how her father and uncle have been. She hasn’t had much attention or affection, but he’s determined to provide that for her. Pat completes the story of Peaceable Sherwood and brings it full circle. Pat doesn’t hold back about his own circumstances and the kind of life he expects to live with his future wife, but both he and Peggy are sure thinks will work out for them. Even though his family doesn’t have the money they once did, they still have a tendency to get what they set their hearts on.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Missing Treasure

The Mystery of the Missing Treasure by Janet Lorimer, 1987.

Pete’s family has moved from the city to a small town because his father has taken a new job, and the move hasn’t been easy for him. Besides leaving his friends and his school, he’s had to give up roller skating because there’s no roller rink and judo because there’s nowhere to take lessons. So far, there are really only two things that Pete likes about his new town: his new friend Danny and the local legend of Captain Scalawag and his treasure.

When Pete asks Danny for details about Captain Scalawag and his treasure, Danny explains that Captain Scalawag (real name Seth Delaney) had been a captain the Confederate army during the Civil War. He was injured and invalided out of the service, so he became a traveling peddler, although he didn’t have much luck with that. Eventually, he came to their small town in California and took a handyman job with the woman who once owned the house where Pete’s family now lives. Many of the people who had settled the town had come from the South, and Captain Scalawag (as he came to be known later) told them stories about the suffering in the South because of the war. Sympathetic townspeople gave Captain Scalawag their jewelry and raised money for him to take back to the South to set up relief efforts. However, Captain Scalawag was a conman and had no intention of using any of that money for its intended purpose. When the townspeople confronted him about it, he refused to return the money and refused to tell anybody where he hid it. The angry townspeople hanged Captain Scalawag for his theft and deception, but they never figured out what he did with their money and jewelry.

Pete is intrigued by the story and says that he wants to find the treasure, but Danny doesn’t think he has much of a chance. Over the years, many people have searched for the treasure, and they’ve never found anything.

Danny takes Pete swimming in the nearby river with some other boys from the town. Pete gets irritated because one boy, Duffy, teases him about being from the city, and the two of them have a diving contest near some dangerous rocks to prove which of them is the best. They both succeed in making their dives, but although the are declared equals, Pete has the feeling that their problems with each other aren’t over.

After the swim, Danny suggests that they go into town and watch people setting up for the play that they have every Fourth of July, which is a reenactment of the story of Captain Scalawag. Pete is interested, but he feels strange and passes out.

When he wakes up, people are fussing over him, and he seems to be in some kind of old-fashioned general store. A woman in old-fashioned clothing, who calls herself his mother is worried about him, and for some reason she calls him Zeb. Then, Pete wakes up again and finds himself in the local doctor’s office. The doctor said that he had heat exhaustion from being out in the sun too long while swimming. Pete’s father is there, and Pete tries to tell him about his vision of being in the general store in the past. Pete’s father thinks he just had a strange dream, although the doctor says that his office is on the site of the town’s old general store, which burned down years ago.

Pete continues to have trouble fitting in with the local kids. One evening, Duffy and Danny take him on a “snipe hunt“, abandoning him in the woods. (This is an old prank, often played at summer camps, but I think this book was actually the first place I heard of it as a kid.) When Pete realizes that he’s been the victim of a joke, he tries to walk home, but gets lost and falls in the mud. Finally, dirty and disheveled, he makes his way to the road and hitches a ride from Bob, the local deputy his older sister is dating.

When Pete explains to Bob what happened, Bob offends him by laughing. Bob explains that it’s an old prank, and he’s amused that anybody is still doing that. Seeing how angry Pete is, he tries to tell him not to be too angry over the prank and to reassure him that the local boys aren’t so bad, in spite of the prank. He says that the boys are just trying to have fun. It’s almost like a kind of hazing or initiation, and although Bob doesn’t quite explain it this way, he seems to think that if Pete accepts it with good grace, it will put him on a better footing with the other boys. Bob thinks that, given time, Pete will start to see the humor in it, and the next time some other new kid moves to town, Pete might well be the first to suggest taking the newbie on a snipe hunt himself, having become one of the initiated.

In spite of Bob’s apparent indulgence for youthful pranks, he does seriously ask Pete who was involved because, as a responsible adult, he can see that there are more serious issues involved in the prank. It was bad enough that Pete ended up dirty and humiliated, but if he had gotten more seriously lost or had fallen in the river, trying to find his way home after dark, none of it would be funny at all. Bob thinks that he should have a word with the other boys about the the consequences of their actions and give them a warning against pulling pranks where people could get hurt. Pete refuses to say who exactly was involved because he thinks that would just make him a snitch and make everything worse for him socially than it already is. Bob decides to let it go for now, just taking Pete home.

That night, Pete has another dream, where he seems to be seeing things through the eyes of Zeb. He sees the house where he’s living now as it used to be in the past, and he sees the man called Captain Scalawag, persuading the people who live there to contribute to relief efforts in the South due to the war. Then, Pete feels ill and seems to pass out in the dream, waking up in modern times in his own bed. He could just shrug it off as a dream, brought on by the stories he’s been hearing about Captain Scalawag and the old things his parents have discovered around the house and the barn that hind at events in the past. However, when his mother shows him more old photographs she’s found, Pete realizes that the details in his dream were far too accurate for him to have simply imagined them, from the details of the house in the past to the faces of the people he saw talking to Captain Scalawag.

More and more, Pete comes to realize that his dreams are no ordinary dreams. For some reason, he is able to see the past through the eyes of Zeb, a boy who died young around the time that Captain Scalawag conned the local people out of their money and treasures and hid the loot somewhere. Is Zeb himself trying to tell him something or show him something that everyone else has missed?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I remember reading this book as a kid, although I had forgotten many of the details. I remembered Captain Scalawag stealing/scamming people out of valuables and then hiding them, but I had forgotten that the basis of his scheme was convincing people to donate to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. That was surprising because the story is set in California, and the concept of supporting the Confederacy is never appealing to me. I think I forgot that part because, as a kid, the important idea is that Captain Scalawag was a conman with a hidden treasure, and that’s all I cared to remember.

I remember finding it spooky that Pete was seeing things through the eyes of a dying/dead boy. Pete in the story does worry about getting stuck in Zeb’s body in the past, knowing that Zeb doesn’t have much time left to live. However, Zeb is trying to tell Pete something that he realized that indicates what Captain Scalawag did with the treasures he took from the townspeople. Zeb tried to tell people before he died, but because he was severely ill and delirious, nobody understood what he was really trying to say. It turns out that the treasures have been in the barn the entire time, but Captain Scalawag changed their appearance, so the townspeople have overlooked them the entire time. It’s a case of hiding in plain sight.

Pete’s confrontations with the local bully add a subplot to the story. Danny apologizes to Pete about joining in Duffy’s prank against him, and Danny admits that Duffy scares him, too. Eventually, Pete has to fight Duffy physically, but Duffy doesn’t know that Pete took judo lessons in the city, so he’s not as defenseless as Duffy thinks. During the course of their fight, Pete also saves Duffy from being bitten by a snake, so Duffy has to admit that he has some gratitude toward Pete. He’s also impressed by Pete’s fighting techniques. The two of them end up working out a compromise with each other, with Pete agreeing to teach Duffy some judo and Duffy agreeing to teach him some of the knowledge he has from living in the country, like how to kill a snake. (Pete warned Duffy about the snake, but Duffy is the one who killed it.) Because they were fighting out behind the barn, Duffy is also on hand when Pete has his final revelation from Zeb, so he gets to be part of the discovery of the treasure, along with Pete and Danny.

I wasn’t happy when Bob laughed off the kids’ snipe hunt prank against Pete at first. I don’t like pranks, and I think it should be more understandable that some people just don’t want to be part of them, especially when Bob has directly seen the aftermath of the prank. He did redeem himself a little for me when he realizes that the prank could have had much more serious consequences and that, as a responsible adult, he really should point that out to the boys involved. The potentially serious consequences of pranks is part of the reason why I don’t like them. There’s just too much potential with many of them to go horribly wrong. The way Bob seems to be looking at the snipe hunt is like it’s some kind of local initiation stunt for newcomers, although he doesn’t exactly use those words to describe it. However, the idea of it being a kind of initiation doesn’t really redeem it for me. Fraternity initiations and hazing often go wrong, and that’s why universities often crack down on them.

As I recall, this book was the first place I heard about the concept of a snipe hunt. Years later, I was on a church retreat in college, and someone joked about taking someone else on a snipe hunt. I’ll admit that I was briefly gleeful about knowing what that was when the other person didn’t. I almost did go along with it, but I just didn’t have the heart to let someone else in for a prank like that. I would have felt bad if something happened to that person in the woods at night, and I figured they would at least be upset. Since the person did seem worried and asked directly what a snipe hunt is, I told them, so I spoiled the joke before it really happened. I think I made the right decision, though.

Posted on by TracyC

A Pattern of Roses

A Pattern of Roses by K. M. Peyton, 1972, 1973.

Tim Ingram has been feeling depressed since his parents decided to move from London to an old house in the country that they’re fixing up. It’s hard for him being separated from his friends and living in this overly-quiet place, where it seems like nothing ever happens, but the truth is that he was depressed even before his family moved. A large part of Tim’s problem is not knowing what he wants out of life. He works hard in school to get good grades, and his school has a reputation for getting its students into good universities, but it all seems so futile because Tim doesn’t know what he really wants to study or what he’ll do when he gets out of school. His father quit school early and went to work, working his way up the ladder in an advertising firm and becoming monetarily successful. However, Tim doesn’t feel like he has either the wit or self-confidence for starting off from practically nothing and working his way up in a direction he’s not even sure he wants to go. His father’s plans and suggestions for the future don’t excite him or make him happy. They actually make him feel more stressed and depressed when he thinks about them. His father is in a position to just give him a job with his company, so Tim does have a guaranteed job if he can’t think of anything else, but advertising doesn’t appeal to Tim. He’s not sure what does appeal to him. He fears and dreads the future, specifically his own future. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, and in this new place, it seems like there isn’t a lot he can do.

Tim has also been arguing with his parents, discovering that he has different interests and priorities in life than they do. While they’re enthusiastic about expanding onto this country house with a new and stylish modern wing, Tim prefers the older part of the house and its simpler style. He thinks the modern additions his parents made look ugly and out-of-place, ruining the natural beauty of the countryside. His parents feel like he’s unappreciative of their standards and the sort of lifestyle they’ve worked hard to build, and his mother even goes so far as to call him “perverse and awkward.” He kind of feels that way, too. Tim often feels like he’s a nobody, not very outstanding at anything. His ambitious parents are disappointed in him because they’ve invested so much in his education to show him off as another one of their achievements in life, and he doesn’t think he’s much to show off. He’s even a little disappointed with himself because, not only does he not seem to live up to his parents’ expectations, he doesn’t even have it in him to stand out as a rebel or a troublemaker, like some of his friends. He’s not an aggressive person, and it’s just not his nature to fight or get into trouble, and that makes him feel like even more of a nobody. If he neither excels at meeting people’s expectations or at deliberately flouting them, what is he? Who is he? Where does he fit in? With all of this, Tim hasn’t been feeling well, and he fakes being sicker than he is so he doesn’t have to get out of bed and deal with any of it. Since he’s been unwell, he’s also excused from school until after Christmas, leaving him with nothing to do in this countryside house but lie in bed and think about all the things that are worrying him.

Then, one day, the builder who’s been working on their house finds an old tin box hidden in the chimney of the room that Tim has chosen for his bedroom. The box catches Tim’s attention. It looks like a very old biscuit (meaning cookie, this book is British) tin decorated with a faded pattern of flowers. The builder opens the box and is disappointed to see that it just contains papers, not anything that looks really valuable. However, Tim is curious and insists that he wants to see the papers.

The papers are drawings, quite old and done in black crayon. Most of them are landscapes and buildings, but there is also a girl, who is labeled “Netty.” Netty’s name is written in a heart, so the artist must have loved her. The date on one of the drawings is February 17, 1910 (the story seems to be contemporary with the time when it was written in the early 1970s because Tim thinks that was 60 years ago), and to Tim’s surprise, the author signed with his initials: T.R.I. Tim’s full name is Timothy Reed Ingram. Tim is intrigued that the artist who lived so long ago had the same initials and apparently lived in his room.

The builder, called Jim, asks Tim if he likes to draw or knows anything about art. Tim gets good grades in art, but he’s not very self-confident about his abilities. Still, he knows enough to tell that the artist wasn’t particularly great at his art. There are places where he got the proportions of his drawings wrong, but Tim is impressed that they convey a lot of feeling. Even though the drawing of Netty isn’t perfect, Tim feels like he can tell what kind of girl she was. She looks like she’s in her early teens and has a kind of proud, somewhat naughty or daring look. Tim asks the builder if he knows anything about the artist or the people who lived in the house back in the 1910s. The builder says that was before his time, but he thinks that he remembers hearing that the family name was Inskip, and he says that he could ask his father if he knows more. Tim wonders why the drawings were hidden in the chimney and begins to imagine what the first T.R.I was like, picturing a boy close to his own age.

Tim is surprised at how real the boy he imagines seems because he’s often found it difficult to imagine old people as once having been young. He’s seen old men and known that they were part of the generation that fought in WWI but is unable to picture them as once having been soldiers. In fact, he knows that his own father flew a Spitfire during WWII, but even though he knows it happened, he has trouble picturing that of the middle-aged advertising manager his father has become. Yet, somehow, T.R.I. seems incredibly real to him, someone he can connect with, even more so than his own father. Details of this past boy’s life flash through Tim’s head without him knowing quite where they came from. However, Netty seems even more real to Tim because of her picture.

When Tim’s mother makes him get out of bed and go visit the local vicar to get a copy of the parish magazine, Tim has a strange vision of the boy artist he imagines as being named Tom Inskip passing him in the lane. It’s so real that Tim feels like Tom is actually there. As he pauses to look around the churchyard, he spots some beautiful purple roses by a gravestone. Taking a closer look, he sees that the grave has the initials T.R.I., a birth date of March 1894, and a death date of February 18, 1910. Tim is shocked to realize that the artist was not only a little less than 16 years old when he died, just a little younger than Tim is now, but that he also died the day after he drew that last picture. It seems like the boy’s death was sudden and unexpected, more like an accident than a long illness.

Tim doesn’t meet the vicar, but the vicar’s daughter, Rebecca, spots him in the churchyard and asks him if he’s all right. Tim just says that he’s there to get a parish magazine. Rebecca isn’t too cheerful or friendly, and she just gives him one and sends him on his way. Tim later learns that Rebecca is the youngest of the vicar’s children and the only one still in school. Her older siblings are all grown up and have jobs working for good causes and charity organizations.

Tim talks to Jim the builder about the grave he saw, and Jim is interested. He suggests that, since T.R.I. is buried in the churchyard, there will be church records about who he was and how he died. Tim has another vision of the boy, and the boy says, “Find out. But be careful it doesn’t happen to you.”

Tim returns to the vicarage and talks to Rebecca about T.R.I. Rebecca says that she doesn’t believe in ghosts and that she thinks the visions he’s had are just his imagination. However, Tim’s guess that the artist’s first name was Tom turns out to be correct. His full name was Thomas Robert Inskip. The records don’t say how he died, but Rebecca suggests that Tim ask an old local man called “Holy Moses.” The old man says that he remembers Tom Inskip but he doesn’t know what happened to him because he left the village to work somewhere else and didn’t come back until after Tom was dead. When Moses shows them an old photograph of all the children at the local school, Tim recognizes Tom instantly as the boy from his visions and strangely even knows the name of Tom’s friend, Arnold, standing next to him in the photograph, without being told.

From this point forward in the story, scenes with Tom alternate with scenes with Tim. Tom’s scenes start with the day the photograph was taken, when Tom was eleven years old. It was also the day that Tom first met the new vicar of the parish, Reverend Bellinger, a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher, very different from the gentle man who was the last vicar. Like Tim, Tom was bright, imaginative, and artistic, but he was not much of a worrier. Tom fails to impress the new vicar because he is not very good with religious knowledge and often doesn’t pay attention. Tom loves to draw, but after he gets out of school and starts working, he finds that he doesn’t have time anymore. The vicar’s daughter, however, is kind and encourages him to draw because it’s a talent from God and must be used. People often underestimate her and don’t appreciate her because she has a disability, so she understands what it’s like not to have the opportunity to use and develop her talents to the fullest. It’s only sad that a tragic accident cuts Tom’s life short before they can see what he might have developed into, although when Tim and Rebecca manage to contact the people who knew and remember Tom best, one of them points out that, if Tom hadn’t died when he did, he might have been sent off to fight and die with the other young men during WWI, and with his gentle soul, he might have suffered more from the war than he did from the accident that took his life, when died young in an act of self-sacrifice.

Tim’s scenes involve his parents and school discussing his future, asking for little input from him, not caring about how he feels or what he wants. Tim actually does love art, and his art teacher thinks he should go further with it, but his teacher realistically acknowledges that, with Tim’s good grades in his other classes, his family and the school will want to push him into more lucrative and higher-status fields. But, does Tim really care about money and status as much as his parents? Is that really what he wants?

Gradually, Tim begins to consider the idea of the legacies people leave behind. Few living people remember that there was once a boy named Tom Inskip who died young, and after those people are gone, no one will remember. It occurs to Tim that few people would likely remember either him or his father as advertising workers. If all you care about is just getting money to afford the good things in life, any job could do, and there are many well-paying jobs that make little lasting or meaningful impact on the world. On the other hand, if what you want is to leave a lasting and meaningful legacy, you have to think a little deeper and maybe sacrifice some material gain. Money comes, and money goes, and one coin or bill looks like another, but what lasts as long and has as much individual character as a collection of imperfect but evocative drawings hidden away in an old tin box?

The question of what Tim wants to do with his life becomes the question of what Tim wants to leave as his life’s legacy. The quietness of the country, rather than being the torture it initially seemed, gives Tim a chance to think and really consider what he wants. Through his search for Tom’s past and consideration of Tom’s legacy, Tim finds a new vision of his own future that makes him more hopeful instead of more frightened and that may lead him to find what one of Tom’s friends called Tom’s “perfect spiritual grace.”

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). Some US versions of the book are titled So Once Was I.

That alternate title is fitting for the theme of the story. Tom was once a living boy with choices to make in his future, much like Tim is now. That phrase also appears in the story as part of an epitaph from another tombstone, which I’ve also seen elsewhere. That same epitaph has been used in different forms in real life. It refers to the inevitability of human mortality – all those living will someday die, like every other generation before. As one of my old teachers used to say, “Nobody gets out of life alive.” But, I would also like to point out that the sentiment also refers to growing up. Every adult used to be young (although Tim has trouble picturing it), and every child will someday be an adult (if they live to grow up – Tom was unfortunate). Every person in a profession of any kind was once a student and a beginner, struggling to learn and find or make their place in the world, and every student will one day find or make some place for themselves and try to make a mark on the world. Change is inevitable. Time passes, people grow and change, and everyone moves on in one way or another. Tim won’t always be a student with his parents controlling his education. He will eventually grow up, graduate, and become an adult. That part is inevitable. What else he becomes is up to him and whatever opportunities he seeks and finds for himself. His future legacy is still in the making.

There is also a made-for-television movie version that is available to rent cheaply online through Vimeo. The movie version is notable for being Helena Bonham Carter’s first movie role. She played young Netty.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I found this story very sad, particularly Tom’s death, trying in vain to rescue beloved hunting dogs but drowning along with them in an icy lake when they all fell in. The death of the dogs was as traumatic as Tom’s, and it is described in awful detail. I also hated a part earlier in the story, where one of the dogs kills a pet cat. I love animals, and that was hard to take. It’s all a tragedy, but Tim’s story has a more hopeful ending. Besides leaving behind a box full of drawings, Tom’s effect on Tim’s life becomes a part of his legacy. Even though they lived in different periods of time, Tom and his life story helps Tim, who has been going through a personal crisis, to realize what’s really important and what he wants out of life.

Through much of the book, both Tim and Rebecca are in a similar situation when it comes to their future lives and their family’s expectations for them. As Tim gets to know Rebecca, he discovers that she has hidden depths and is inwardly quite sensitive. She often uses a blunt and abrasive manner to keep people at a distance and hide how sensitive she really is. Like Tim, she is also unimpressed by the money and business-oriented priorities of the modern world and Tim’s parents, preferring things with an old-fashioned, natural beauty – things that, sadly, are often cleared away by modern people in the name of money, business, and being modern. Yet, Rebecca also doesn’t feel like she fits with the lives that her family lives. She doesn’t have the patience to deal with the people her family tries to help, many of whom are nasty and ungrateful instead of kind and appreciative of the help they get, and she feels like her parents don’t have time for her because they spend all of their time helping everyone else. Rebecca is considering a career in social work, but it’s mostly because it’s what her parents want and expect of her. As they compare their family lives, Tim and Rebecca both realize that neither of them quite fits their families’ lifestyles and expectations. They both feel pressured. Their families are also extremes: extreme business and high-achievement vs. extreme charity. Tim and Rebecca are looking for a happy medium that neither one of them knows how to achieve. They feel overwhelmed by a world full of choices, their parents’ expectations, and their own uncertainty about what path to choose.

It occurs to them that a boy like Tom in the 1910s would have limited choices in life and expectations from his family and community. Tom died young, but if he hadn’t, he probably would have been expected to do what other young men in his community did, which was mostly farming or joining the army. In some ways, Rebecca thinks life was probably much easier for those who had no choices than it is for modern people with many more choices and little to no guidance about how to use them. Tim and Rebecca aren’t really bound to their parents expectations because there is less social stigma with being different in their time, but being young, inexperienced, and uncertain of their options in life, they aren’t sure what to do with their relative freedom. They feel trapped, but not in quite the same way as each other and in a different way from people in the past.

Perhaps all people have limits and obstacles no matter when or where they live, and nobody is ever fully in control of their destiny because they are subject to limits in knowledge, ability, and available options. Maybe not everybody is even really suited to where they end up in life. They learn that the man who was the vicar in Tom’s time was more of a bully than a loving and charitable man. Tim’s art teacher comments that he used to work in a job similar to Tim’s father before he found his calling teaching art. Having followed two different professions in his life and seen the people who thrive in each, he thinks that Tim’s personality fits better in the art world than the business world, but he can also see that Tim is going to have to learn to fight and stand up for himself to get where he really needs to be.

But, happiness in life depends on more than fighting or earning money. May, the vicar’s daughter, who is still alive and has lived a happier life than anyone expected after the death of her father, says that one of Tom’s greatest gifts was “perfect spiritual grace.” She explains that Tom never asked a lot out of life and was satisfied with what he had. His life was tragically short, but he enjoyed it to the fullest as long as he lived. Tim thinks that Tom might have gotten less satisfied with his limited prospects in life if he had lived longer, but it’s difficult to say. However, May’s description makes Tim realize that he wants that same sense of “perfect spiritual grace”, making the most of the opportunities open to him and being satisfied that he pursued those opportunities to the best of his ability.

Life has a way of taking many people in directions that they never expected. People often don’t know what they want to do with their lives when they’re young, some of us still question our career choices when we’re older, and many of us end up doing things we didn’t expect or entering fields we didn’t originally study. Tim’s new home and new acquaintances and the inspiration that he receives from Tom’s life story cause him to consider different directions that his life might take. Tim finds a job in the country as the local blacksmith’s assistant. Blacksmithing appeals to Tim’s creative side, and there is enough demand for specially-crafted decorative metal objects that Tim is confident that he can build his own business around it. He’s confident enough about it that he finds the ability to stand up to his parents and insist on the future he really wants. He probably won’t make as much money at it as his father does in his advertising firm, but he’ll be independent and creating real things that will leave the lasting legacy that he now craves. He hopes that, along the way, he’ll also find the “perfect spiritual grace” that Tom had.

Tim also comes to realize that the company that his father built was his father’s act of creation, and that’s why he takes so much pride in it, wanting Tim to continue it as his legacy. However, Tim also realizes that what his father did with his life was his decision, done for his own reasons and his own sense of fulfillment, and he doesn’t need to stifle his own creative urges to validate his father. Tim is adamant that he wants to create something of his own, to know the satisfaction of that kind of creation for himself. His parents are angry with him, seeing his decision as throwing away all that they’ve given him and all they say that they’ve sacrificed for. Still, Tim points out that the lifestyle that his parents chose was their choice, not his. He didn’t ask them to do any of it, they did it because it was what they wanted to do, and he wants the right to make his own choices. It affects their relationship, but Tim already had the feeling that their relationship was strained because of his parents’ expectations for his future, which were making him unhappy. When they argue about it, it becomes apparent that his parents have been emotionally manipulative, and having a say in his own future isn’t an unreasonable thing for Tim to ask for, even though his parents claim that it is. His parents really have been selfish and even neurotic, planning to use Tim as something to show off, ultimately depending on him to make themselves feel successful and fulfilled and validating their life choices. They make it clear to him that their support for him hinges on him doing exactly what they want him to do. Their love is conditional and transactional. In an odd way, it feels like a relief to Tim to have it all out in the open and to take control of his destiny in spite of their opposition. Whether or not his parents will eventually accept Tim’s decision and independence or whether they will remain estranged is unknown.

I don’t think I’d read this book again because of the sad and stressful parts, but it does offer a lot to think about. I’d also like to point out that this story is not for young kids because of the subject matter, and there are also instances of smoking and underage drinking.