Lark in the Morn by Elfrida Vipont
We meet Kit, brought up by a well-meaning but uncomprehending cousin and a professor father, largely absent in all but body, as she discovers ‘if you can’t lead your own life, you’re not you at all.’ She comes to realise that she is a song bird and gradually she finds the courage to follow her dream.
The illustration I have chosen, by T R Freeman, skilfully captures the look and feel of a small country town round about the late 1940s and points up one aspect of the novel: a solid middle class confidence that all is well.
But if it gives the impression that the novel does no more than confirm complacent stereotypes, then you would be misled. For sure, it has some elements of the boarding school yarn, but Kit, the central character, is interesting and the never-overstated Quaker background is thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Kit’s story owes much to her author’s. Elfrida Vipont was a very remarkable woman herself. She too was a singer, but also a head mistress and a prolific writer. And to be a Quaker was of central importance in her life. My first encounters with her were in childhood through a collection of prayers called Bless This Day. I was ambivalent, for I loved the illustrations by Harold Jones, but was mistrustful of piety unless it was my own and private, so those prayers that I loved, I loved privately.
Now reading The Lark in the Morn I am fascinated by the picture of a Quaker family and friends, viewed lovingly and clear-sightedly. The Society of Friends are not always easy friends with one another and while some see songs as a gift from and to God, others had found it too frivolous and crushed dreams in consequence. Yet through all the individual foibles there comes a sense of like-minded people who care about each other and the world, neither shut away from it nor afraid to be different if that is what their truth requires.
There is a daring in her writing, as she weaves spiritual themes unobtrusively into the adventure of a young girl growing up. Elfrida Vipont writes to liberate women from bonds that constrained earlier generations. Here is a girl who can and will live the same dream her great aunt had.
A note on the publisher
During the 1950s and 60s Oxford University Press published their own Children’s Library with a high production values. They selected some very good authors, some early in their careers, like Ronald Welch, Rosemary Sutcliff, William Mayne or this author. They often used very good illustrators too, like Charles Keeping, C.Walter Hodge, Shirley Hughes or E H Shepard. This is number 22 in the series, with a typically vibrant cover vignette by William Stobbs.
