Buch lesen: «What Katy Did Next»

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

History of Collins

Life & Times

Chapter 1 An Unexpected Guest

Chapter 2 An Invitation

Chapter 3 Rose and Rosebud

Chapter 4 On the “Spartacus”

Chapter 5 Storybook England

Chapter 6 Across the Channel

Chapter 7 The Pension Suisse

Chapter 8 On the Track of Ulysses

Chapter 9 A Roman Holiday

Chapter 10 Clear Shining After Rain

Chapter 11 Next

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

Copyright

About the Publisher

History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times

What Katy Did

The title of this novel is intended as a subtle joke around a play on words. In the US, bush-crickets are known as katydids, because the males elicit a mating call that sounds like the trisyllabic mantra ‘ka-ty-did’. On the original front cover of What Katy Did, there was a drawing of five anthropomorphic katydids. The joke is that the katydid insects see and tell ‘what Katy did’ as she goes about her tomboyish mischief in the story. The author imagines they are saying, ‘Katy did this, Katy did that’ as ever-present tattletales, in much the same way that young children are driven to tell the truth about the wrongdoings of their siblings and friends.

The Author and her Female Contemporaries

Susan Coolidge was the oddly modern-sounding pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, the daughter of wealthy American parents from Cleveland, Ohio. She worked as a nurse during the American Civil War. Woolsey was 30 years old when the war ended and she decided to devote her life to writing children’s books. Curiously, she never had children or married, despite her interest in children’s literature.

Woolsey published What Katy Did in 1872, at the age of 37, and established herself on the literary stage. She continued authoring books until her death in 1905, at the age of 70. Parallels can be drawn between What Katy Did, The Secret Garden (1911), by Francis Hodgson Burnett, and Pollyanna (1913), by Eleanor H. Porter. All three books tackle the subject of paraplegic paralysis in one way or another.

In What Katy Did, the eponymous Katy admires the robustness and goodness of her invalid cousin Helen. She then suffers temporary paralysis herself, due to a fall from a swing, and Helen teaches her how to cope with her affliction until she recovers. In The Secret Garden, there is a reversal, in which Mary teaches her sickly cousin Colin to fight his affliction and learn to walk again. In Pollyanna, the eponymous Pollyanna is paralyzed when struck by a motorcar and finds the will to recover thanks to the love returned to her by the townsfolk.

Clearly, Hodgson Burnett and Porter were both influenced by the work of Woolsey and saw potential in reworking the general theme of mind over matter. The message that things will improve by encouraging the body to heal with the application of thought is an interesting one to consider. There is more than a hint of Christian faith underpinning these stories, suggesting that minor miracles can be generated simply by thinking positively with determination and perseverance.

If we consider the era in which these books were written, it becomes apparent why these books were successful. The fields of medicine that dealt with the causes and treatment of paralysis were not yet developed, so the idea of using the mind to overcome such disabilities seemed as good as any. Moreover, those who did show improvement and recovery were deemed to have done so for positive reasons, while those who remained unchanged were thought to have lapsed faith. In short, it was a self-fulfilling belief system, so it was assumed to be true.

There was also the prevailing notion that unabashed children, and girls in particular, were somehow in possession of a magic charm that overrode the jaded cynicism of adults. Of course, all three authors happen to be female themselves, but one would be hard pushed to find a boy in literature imbued with similar charm. This is the veneration of female virtue that prevailed at that time. It is the ‘marianismo’ of the female, as contrasted with the machismo of the male. In What Katy Did, this is especially so, as the implication is that Katy suffers her accident precisely because she is a tomboy. When she eventually recovers, her cousin teaches her how to be more feminine and appreciative in her outlook. Thus, femininity is good for the girl and good for those who are touched by it.

An American Childhood

Of course, What Katy Did is also a tale of American childhood. In this respect, it shares a good deal with Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was published just four years later, in 1876. Twain – real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens – was born in the same year and had been a journalist during the American Civil War. Both stories are good yarns, in the sense that they have effective characterization and plots that keep the reader amused and entertained. As such, Woolsey and Twain jointly set the precedent for what the modern children’s novel should be. There was certainly a ready market in the post-war climate, in which parents were beginning to forget the horrors of war and their children had either been too young to remember or had been born in the aftermath.

If What Katy Did is about the process of childhood, then What Katy Did at School is about the transition from childhood to adolescence, and What Katy Did Next is a coming-of-age story. It is also a travelogue aimed at the aspiring classes of American society, who were likely to have the finances and the adventurous spirit to take a trip around Europe at the close of the 19th century. Heritage is seemingly far more important to citizens of the US than those of Britain, possibly because the country is historically young. It’s a bit like an adopted child wanting to trace its birth parents, or providing provenance for an antique – the hope is to find meaningful connections and more depth and value through genealogy and history.

Katy is invited to travel to Europe as a reward for taking care of Amy, the daughter of Mrs Ashe, while Mrs Ashe herself was nursing her nephew through illness. They travel by steamer across the Atlantic to Ireland, then to England, and on to continental Europe. Coolidge describes Katy’s surprises and disappointments at the things she experiences along the way. Essentially, it is a vicarious read, for the amusement and escapism of the reader.

With the passage of time, the What Katy Did books have acquired a new significance as documents of a bygone era. In an age when crossing the Atlantic is typically achieved in passenger airliners in a matter of hours, it is fascinating to consider the pace of travel by sea in those days. The same goes for journeying overland before the age of motor vehicles. This upper-class European adventure from one point of cultural and historical interest to another was known as The Grand Tour.

Due to the limitations of transportation technology, the itinerary for such a tour could span the course of months, sometimes years. The leisurely rate of progress meant that people had time to enjoy fine cuisine and exotic entertainments. They also had the time to write journals and diaries, which they often embellished with drawings and watercolour paintings. Some even experimented with photography, which was a new wonder of the age. This was the beginning of ‘tourism’ (hence the word we use today), although it would be another hundred years before the layperson could afford to globetrot by jet. The eponymous Katy is very much the product of her age and her class, as was her author.

Woolsey wrote many other books, including two titles that followed the antics of Katy’s siblings – Clover (1888) and In the High Valley (1890) – but none was ever as popular as the What Katy Did books. In the US, these books had helped to restore the idea of what being American was all about. In Britain, they were a breath of fresh air in a staid Victorian and then Edwardian milieu.

Publication

One of the reasons that Woolsey managed to find a publisher in the first place was her clever approach of the Roberts brothers. They had published Little Women (1868–9) by Louisa May Alcott and had established a niche for realistic girls’ literature. When Woolsey came along, they were more than happy to add her work to their portfolio, realizing that it had the same commercial appeal.

In the character of Katy, Woolsey tapped into the awkwardness and self-consciousness felt by many girls and that resulted in a vast readership that identified with Katy. In turn, the author based Katy on herself, which was why she was able to make her personality so well observed and believable. Key to this was Katy’s height and lankiness, which made her conspicuous when she would rather have passed unnoticed. Generally, children do not like to have traits that distinguish them as different from the norm, as it only serves to amplify their self-awareness and anxiety. This desire to attenuate is what Woolsey understood so well in Katy and it is what brought her to life in the minds of her keen readership.

The Roberts brothers chose Addie Ledyard as the illustrator of What Katy Did. She illustrated many other books at that time and became the illustrator of choice, because of her rounded style. Her attractive line drawings can be found in children’s novels by Woolsey (Coolidge), Louisa May Alcott, Helen Hunt Jackson, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards and Louise Chandler Moulton. Ledyard was able to lend all of these women a collective identity as a stable of authors who fit into a similar mould. Her images gave the books a familiarity that created a shared readership of young girls who wished to collect the range of different titles. From a historical point of view, Ledyard’s illustrations provide information about the informal dress code of that era, which is useful, as most photographs and paintings have a more formal ‘Sunday best’ feel to them. Ledyard also contributed drawings to St. Nicholas Magazine, which was a very popular children’s magazine first published in 1873.

CHAPTER 1
An Unexpected Guest

The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg beaten stiff enough to stand alone.

These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover’s first evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which some of you have read in “Nine Little Goslings”; and more than three since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at Hillsover.

Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby’s, seemed cut out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and the eyes, always Clover’s chief beauty, had still that pathetic look which made them irresistible to tender-hearted people.

Elsie, who adored Clover, considered her as beautiful as girls in books, and was proud to be permitted to hem ruffles for the dress in which she was to burst upon the world. Though, as for that, not much “bursting” was possible in Burnet, where tea-parties of a middle-aged description, and now and then a mild little dance, represented “gaiety” and “society”. Girls “came out” very much, as the sun comes out in the morning–by slow degrees and gradual approaches, with no particular one moment which could be fixed upon as having been the crisis of the joyful event.

“There,” said Elsie, adding another ruffle to the pile on the bed,” there’s the fifth done. It’s going to be ever so pretty, I think. I’m glad you had it all white; it’s a great deal nicer.”

“Cecy wanted me to have a blue bodice and sash,” said Clover, “but I wouldn’t. Then she tried to persuade me to get a long spray of pink roses for the skirt.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t! Cecy was always crazy about pink roses. I only wonder she didn’t wear them when she was married!”

Yes; the excellent Cecy, who at thirteen had announced her intention to devote her whole life to teaching Sunday School, visiting the poor, and setting a good example to her more worldly contemporaries, had actually forgotten these fine resolutions, and before she was twenty had become the wife of Sylvester Slack, a young lawyer in a neighboring town! Cecy’s wedding and wedding-clothes, and Cecy’s house-furnishing had been the great excitement of the preceding year in Burnet; and a fresh excitement had come since in the shape of Cecy’s baby, now about two months old, and named “Katherine Clover”, after her two friends. This made it natural that Cecy and her affairs should still be of interest in the Carr household; and Johnnie, at the time we write of, was making her a week’s visit.

“She was rather wedded to them,” went on Clover, pursuing the subject of the pink roses. “She was almost vexed when I wouldn’t buy the spray. But it cost lots, and I didn’t want it in the least, so I stood firm. Besides, I always said that my first party dress should be plain white. Girls in novels always wear white to their first balls; and fresh flowers are a great deal prettier, any way, than artificial. Katy says she’ll give me some violets to wear.”

“Oh, will she? That will be lovely!” cried the adoring Elsie. “Violets look just like you, somehow. Oh, Clover, what sort of a dress do you think I shall have when I grow up and go to parties and things? Won’t it be awfully interesting when you and I go out to choose it?”

Just then the noise of some one running upstairs quickly made the sisters look up from their work. Footsteps are very significant at times, and these footsteps suggested haste and excitement.

Another moment, the door opened, and Katy dashed in, calling out, “Papa! Elsie, Clover, where’s Papa?”

“He went over the river to see that son of Mr. White’s who broke his leg. Why, what’s the matter?” asked Clover.

“Is somebody hurt?” inquired Elsie, startled at Katy’s agitated looks.

“No, not hurt, but poor Mrs. Ashe is in such trouble.”

Mrs. Ashe, it should be explained, was a widow who had come to Burnet some months previously, and had taken a pleasant house not far from the Carrs’. She was a pretty, lady-like woman, with a particularly graceful, appealing manner, and very fond of her one child, a little girl. Katy and Papa both took a fancy to her at once; and the families had grown neighborly and intimate in a short time, as people occasionally do when circumstances are favorable.

“I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” went on Katy. “But first I must find Alexander, and send him off to meet Papa and beg him to hurry home.” She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called “Debby! Debby!” Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came back again to the room where the other two were sitting.

“Now,” she said, speaking more collectedly, “I must explain as fast as I can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe’s little nephew is here for a visit, don’t you?”

“Yes, he came on Saturday.”

“Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and today he is worse, and she is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, and hasn’t let her come indoors since, so she can’t have been exposed to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a delicate child, you know.”

“Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!” cried Clover; “I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, what did you do?”

“I hope I didn’t do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won’t object, I am almost sure.”

“Why, of course he won’t. Well?”

“I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn’t been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You can’t think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn’t help crying when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in Papa.”

“Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?”

“What do you think would be best? In Dorry’s room?”

“I think she’d better come in here with you, and I’ll go into Dorry’s room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would be lonely if she were left to herself.”

“Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, Clovy dear.”

“I don’t mind,” responded Clover, cheerfully. “I rather like to change about and try a new room once in a while. It’s as good as going on a journey—almost.”

She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to Dorry’s room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe.

Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of “Alice in Wonderland”; but just at that moment it was a very woeful little Alice indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and her eyes swollen with recent crying.

“Why, what is the matter?” cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her arms, and giving her a great hug. “Aren’t you glad that you are coming to make us a visit? We are.”

“Mamma didn’t kiss me for good-bye,” sobbed the little girl. “She didn’t come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and said, ‘Good-bye; Amy, be very good, and don’t make Miss Carr any trouble,’ and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without kissing Mamma for good-bye.”

“Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever,” explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. “It wasn’t because she forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn’t. Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won’t it? We will play that you are my little girl, and that you have a real Mamma and a make-believe Mamma.”

“Shall I sleep with you?” demanded Amy.

“Yes, in that bed over there.”

“It’s a pretty bed,” pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a moment. “Will you tell me a story every morning?”

“If you don’t wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy till seven o’clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, and then I’ll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the things away.”

The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it.

“It is Maria Matilda,” she said, “I’m glad of that. I thought Ellen would forget her, and the poor child wouldn’t know what to do with me and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would have heard her if she had cried ever so loud.”

“What a pretty face she has!” said Katy, taking the doll out of Amy’s hands.

“Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover,” lifting the other doll from the table where she had laid it; “hasn’t she got sweet eyes? She’s older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She’s begun on French verbs!”

“Not really! Which ones?”

“Oh, only ‘J’aime, tu aimes, il aime,’ you know–the same that our class is learning at school. She hasn’t tried any but that. Sometimes she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she’s very stupid, and I have to scold her.” Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time.

“Are these the only dolls you have?”

“Oh, please don’t call them that!” urged Amy. “It hurts their feelings dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the word for a punishment. I’ve got several other children. There’s old Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she’s made of rag, but she has such bad rheumatism that I don’t play with her any longer; I just give her medicine. Then there’s Effie Deans, she’s only got one leg; and Mopsa the Fairy, she’s a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of Linkinvaddy–but she don’t count, for she’s all come to pieces.”

“What very queer names your children have!” said Elsie, who had come in during the enumeration.

“Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He’s a very funny uncle, but he’s nice. He’s always so much interested in my children.”

“There’s Papa now!” cried Katy; and she ran downstairs to meet him.

“Did I do right?” she asked anxiously after she had told her story.

“Yes, my dear, perfectly right,” replied Dr. Carr. “I only hope Amy was taken away in time. I will go round at once to see Mrs. Ashe and the boy; and, Katy, keep away from me when I come back, and keep the others away, till I have changed my coat.”

It is odd how soon and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been trodden upon, after running wildly about for a little while, begin all together to reconstruct the tiny cone of sand which is so important in their eyes. In a very short time the changes which at first seem so sad and strange become accustomed and matter-of-course things which no longer surprise us.

It seemed to the Carrs after a few days as if they had always had Amy in the house with them. Papa’s daily visit to the sick room, their avoidance of him till after he had “changed his coat”, Amy’s lessons and games of play, her dressing and undressing, the walks with the make-believe Mamma, the dropping of notes into the little basket, seemed part of a system of things which had been going on for a long, long time, and which everybody would miss should they suddenly stop.

But they by no means suddenly stopped. Little Walter Ashe’s case proved to be rather a severe one; and after he had begun to mend, he caught cold somehow and was taken worse again. There were some serious symptoms, and for a few days Dr. Carr did not feel sure how things would turn. He did not speak of his anxiety at home, but kept silence and a cheerful face, as doctors know how to do. Only Katy, who was more intimate with her father than the rest, guessed that things were going gravely at the other house, and she was too well trained to ask questions. The threatening symptoms passed off, however, and little Walter slowly got better; but it was a long convalescence, and Mrs. Ashe grew thin and pale before he began to look rosy. There was no one on whom she could devolve the charge of the child. His mother was dead; his father, an overworked business man, had barely time to run up once a week to see about him; there was no one at his home but a housekeeper, in whom Mrs. Ashe had not full confidence. So the good aunt denied herself the sight of her own child, and devoted her strength and time to Walter; and nearly two months passed, and still little Amy remained at Dr. Carr’s.

She was entirely happy there. She had grown very fond of Katy, and was perfectly at home with the others. Phil and Johnnie, who had returned from her visit to Cecy, were by no means too old or too proud to be playfellows to a child of eight; and with all the older members of the family Amy was a chosen pet. Debby baked turnovers, and twisted cinnamon cakes into all sorts of fantastic shapes to please her; Alexander would let her drive if she happened to sit on the front seat of the carryall; Dr. Carr was seldom so tired that he could not tell her a story–and nobody told such nice stories as Dr. Carr, Amy thought; Elsie invented all manner of charming games for the hour before bedtime; Clover made wonderful capes and bonnets for Mabel and Maria Matilda; and Katy—Katy did all sorts of things.

Katy had a peculiar gift with children which is not easy to define. Some people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite so good with any one as with Katy. She followed her about like a little lover; she lavished upon her certain special words and caresses which she gave to no one else; and would kneel on her lap, patting Katy’s shoulders with her soft hand, and cooing up into her face like a happy dove, for a half-hour together. Katy laughed at these demonstrations, but they pleased her very much. She loved to be loved, as all affectionate people do, but most of all to be loved by a child.