Harding’s Luck by E.Nesbit
E.Nesbit is one of the giants. She lifted Victorian children’s books out of a stodgy mire of safety and didacticism and wrote about real children. She created a wonderful authorial voice: as a reader you feel spoken to by someone who understands you and is not trying make you a better person, because she knows you are just fine as you are. At the same time she explores deeply what it is to be human and how to make the world a better place. Her children are often idealistic but not ideal; we can aspire to their best moments and recognise with fellow-feeling all their flaws.
More than all this, her imagination opened up wonderful possibilities: time travel, magic that works (but be careful, it kicks), alternative realities, utopias. She writes without needing villains, only people whose unkindness comes from worry or preoccupation or not understanding.
She often wrote under pressure, needing to earn money for family. Apparently she would sometimes appear at lunchtime, saying, “I’m stuck, what am I going to make them do next?” Maybe this contributed to the freshness of her writing; she didn’t have time to overthink. And yet she was, I believe, a light bearer, a Prometheus bringing the gift of fire to many thousands of children from the 1890s to now.
Harding’s Luck follows lame Dickie Harding on his journey to discover he is after all Richard Arden, heir to titles, estates and wealth. So far, this is no more than Cinderella dressed up as a London urchin of 1900. But while that path unfolds, so much else is happening. Our hero changes people’s lives because he is in a sense a true pilgrim, not irritatingly good, but doing his best to figure out life as he goes along with a nobility of spirit that turns out to be far more significant than the treasure chests on the cover.
My own copy of Harding’s Luck was awarded as a prize to Gertrude Goodall of Form IIIA in 1913. I hope she enjoyed it. It is still in print.
