The Magic of The Box of Delights

Quilting the Box of Delights

In the run up to Christmas, many people all around the UK watch a BBC Children’s television series first broadcast in 1984: The Box of Delights directed by Renny Rye and starring Devin Stanfield as Master Kay Harker, Robert Stephens as the villainous Abner Brown, and Patrick Troughton as Cole Hawlings, the Punch and Judy Man who “dates from pagan times.” Some time their viewing so that they watch an episode a week to finish on Christmas Eve with Leave Us Not Little, Nor Yet Dark – just as the 1984 series was transmitted.

The outpouring of love for this series seems to start annually in November, as aficionados declare that Christmas won’t be Christmas without the Box of Delights, or that hearing the theme music (The First Nowell from Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony) heralds the beginning of the festive season.

The Box of Delights by John Masefield

The original book was written by John Masefield (1878-1967). He is now perhaps best remembered for The Box of Delights and another adventure featuring Kay Harker and Abner Brown, The Midnight Folk. The language of these books is so evocative – with possets, pirate tea, Oliver’s time, pudding time and pagan times, and the provisioning of toy boats to sail on the floods – and who can fail to be stirred when they hear that the Wolves are Running?

For me, one of the pleasures of reading Masefield is his knowledge of the sea, ships and sea lore – developed while he served on HMS Conway as a youth. His sea songs and shanties run through the Kay Harker stories and include the raucous pirate song from The Box of Delights, sung by the Wolves of the Gulf after much rum punch: We fly a banner all of black, With scarlet Skull and Boneses, And every merchantman we take, We send to Davey Jones’s. Masefield, who was Poet Laureate between 1930 and 1967, also wrote the much loved Sea Fever (I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by).

Sea Fever by John Masefield, celebrated at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

The Box of Delights has been delighting children of all ages since its publication in 1935. Forty years before the much-loved television series, The Box of Delights was adapted for radio. As part of Children’s Hour, the BBC Home Service broadcast three six-part adaptations “for older listeners.” The book was adapted by Robert Holland and John Keir Cross in 1943 (with John Gilpin as Kay Harker and Hay Petrie as Cole Hawlings), in 1948 (with David Page as Kay and Harcourt Williams as Hawlings), and in 1955 (with Patricia Hayes as Kay and Deering Wells as Hawlings). Charles Hawtrey played Mouse in all three productions.

Over the years there have been multiple radio broadcasts of The Box of Delights, most of which were adapted by John Keir Cross (1914-1967) – a prolific writer, radio adaptor and broadcaster. He presented a radio book club in 1951, which suggested books for family reading, and Connoisseurs of Crime, which explored crime novels and real life cases with detective authors. He also wrote the first radio adaptations of Pamela Brown’s theatrical novels for children, The Swish of the Curtain and Maddy Alone in 1944. *

The Wolves are Running

In 1966, John Keir Cross told the Radio Times that “Some twenty years ago I wrote a serial version of The Box of Delights, and still, to this day, I am asked when it might be repeated. Recently, writing a script for The Archers, I made a passing reference to this unusual tale; and from all over the world came letters from its secret addicts who wanted to know if it was still in print – as in fact it is.”

It seems that The Box of Delights secret addicts club is still alive and thriving. Every year, the cry that The Wolves are Running goes up – and people join in the adventures of Kay Harker once again.

Quilting a favourite section from the book: “First there were pagan times, then there were in-between times … then there was Oliver’s time; and then there was pudding time.”

* I found out about radio adaptations thanks to the wonderful BBC Genome Project which gives BBC listings information from the Radio Times between 1923-2009.

Glimpses of a lost silent film: Far from the Madding Crowd (1915)

Advertising for Far From the Madding Crowd, Moving Picture World, July 15 1916. Many thanks to the Townly Cooke Collection for the picture.

For me, there are few things more tantalising than stumbling across an old theatre programme for a play that closed many years back, or reading about a film that was made a century ago but has not survived. You might know who the players were, the parts they took, even what they wore, but the chance to see what was performed is long gone.

For people who love silent film – and, in particular, British silent film – glimpses of performances past both frustrate and enthuse. It is estimated that 80% of British silents are lost – you come across a reference in a book or magazine, perhaps see still photographs or find musical cue sheets, read a contemporary review or see an advertisement – but you can’t watch the film itself. The missing reels are constantly out of reach.

I’m seeking information about the lost British silent Far from the Madding Crowd (1915). I came across it by chance when researching a fine (extant) film, East Is East (1916), directed by Henry Edwards, who also played in the film. Edwards went on to become one of the big stars of British cinema, and can be seen looking back over his career in this delightful British Pathé film.

A signed postcard of Henry Edwards in his 1926 hit, The Flag Lieutenant

East is East featured the very talented actor, director, writer and producer Florence Turner. I was intrigued to learn that this was not the first pairing of Edwards and Turner; the previous year they had both appeared in a version of Far from the Madding Crowd, directed by Turner’s friend and business partner Larry Trimble.

Florence Turner on the cover of Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 6 1914

Edwards played Gabriel Oak and Turner was Bathsheba Everdene. Malcolm Cherry played Farmer Boldwood and Campbell Gullan was Sargeant Troy. So what did this Far from the Madding Crowd look like? Where was it filmed? How did the actors play their parts?

Well, if their pairing in East is East is any indication, Turner and Edwards would have played well together as Bathsheba and Oak in a well-received “quality” picture based on a respected novel (and if you don’t know the plot, please note that the following contemporary reviews contain spoilers).

The Hull Daily Mail on 28 February 1916 said: “The mere fact that so great a novel as Far from the Madding Crowd by so skilled an author as Thomas Hardy should be produced as a picture play is of sufficient importance to warrant the keenest interest of the public. Far from the Madding Crowd is the life story of an impulsive, capricious, but fascinating woman upon whom tragedy and suffering is brought by her own actions. Her innate inability to refrain from misleading and torturing those whom she captivated by her alluring ways was the cause of the heartbreaking of Gabriel, of the death of Troy, and of the final doom of the morbid Boldwood. But, at the end of it all, the happiness of rest and peace must have been intensified by the turmoil that had gone before. The part of Bathsheba is taken by that favourite and appealing cinema actress, Florence Turner. It is refreshing to have brought to the memory the scenes of Wessex country life; and some of the pictures of farm life are if intense interest because they are so realistic.”

That favourite and appealing cinema actress Florence Turner in 1914

On 29 February 1916, the Manchester Evening News reported: “Film versions of popular novels will always be welcome if they are so well done as Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. The picture has many gripping moments as well as scenic and sylvan beauties, and Florence Turner acts the leading part with distinction.” The Rochdale Observer, on 30 August 1916, reported that the film was a “particularly fine production. The setting was admirable and the natural beauty of the scenes depicted added much to the attractiveness of the film. The career of a wandering shepherd and his mistress was followed with much interest.”

I also know a little about which elements of the source novel were filmed. On 3 March 1916 the Hull Daily Mail reported on the strongest scenes: “Great flocks of sheep on the Downs, the catastrophe to Gabriel’s herd, his fall in the world, the saving of the hayrick in the lightning storm while Troy and the others are in drunken sleep, and the unhappy two loves of Bathsheba Everdene.”

Again, courtesy of the Hull Daily Mail (17 November 1915), I learned that “there are several moments of real dramatic intensity in this film. One incident stands out, however, from all the rest – that of the moment when Bathsheba, gazing into the coffin of Fanny Robin, discovers the overwhelming proof of her husband’s misconduct – an episode powerfully acted by Mr Gullan and Miss Turner.”

What I don’t know is whether my favourite scene – Hiving the Bees – was included. But just in case it wasn’t, I’ve been sewing some of the text of that beekeeping scene for my next quilt project.

Hiving the Bees – quilt work in progress

And I’ve got a pile of Pictures and the Picturegoer magazines from 1916 to hunt through for more clues about this intriguing lost Far from the Madding Crowd.

The Fabric of Wolf Hall

I grew up reading a lot of historical fiction. From the age of about ten, I devoured novels by Jean Plaidy, Margaret Irwin and Margaret Campbell Barnes, and particularly enjoyed their books about Henry VIII. I had an especial fondness for Jean Plaidy’s Murder Most Royal and Brief Gaudy Hour by Margaret Campbell Barnes. Both books were about the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn and both featured a villain – Thomas Cromwell – who tortured musicians and brought down queens. My early ventures into reading Tudor fiction meant that I always thought of Cromwell as a Very Bad Man.

NPG 1727; Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex after Hans Holbein the Younger. © National Portrait Gallery, London. *

But in April 2009, a new book was published and this book changed my viewpoint completely. This book featured Thomas Cromwell as its central character: Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall. As Mantel’s hero (or should that be anti-hero?), Cromwell is witty, charismatic and slippery, loyal to his friends and ruthless to those who cross him. A devoted family man. A patron saint for administrators, archivists and minute writers. And a man who knows about cloth.

The Thomas Cromwell Quilt

Re-reading Wolf Hall recently, I was struck by the number of references to textiles, and how beautifully they are described by Mantel. Velvets, brocades, silks, wool, sables, satins all burst from the page.

As a youth fleeing England, young Thomas Cromwell meets “three elderly Lowlanders”, traders in cloth, who show him their “woollen samples and discuss among themselves the weight and the weave.” Cromwell learns about cloth and concludes that “with wool so long in the fleece these days, and good broadcloth hard to weave, he ought to be getting into kerseys, lighter cloth like that, exporting through Antwerp to Italy.” He understands what clothes of the right fabric can do; on meeting the poor but beautiful Helen, “mentally, he takes her out of cheap shrunken wool and re-dresses her in some figured velvet he saw yesterday, six shillings the yard.”

As Cardinal Wolsey’s man, Cromwell admires a tapestry of “the woollen monarchs,” Solomon and Sheba: a tapestry that depicts a woman he has known and that weaves its way throughout the book. When Wolsey falls, Cromwell watches the cardinal’s finery being packed away: “bolts of fine holland, velvets and grosgrain, sarcenet and taffeta, scarlet by the yard.” Cromwell knows its value. “In public the cardinal wears red, just red, but in various weights, various weaves, various degrees of pigment and dye, but all of them the best of their kind, the best reds to be got for money. There have been days when, swaggering out, he would say, ‘Right, Master Cromwell, price me by the yard!'” And in a spirit of thrift that will be appreciated by patchworkers everywhere, this fabric has a second life after Wolsey’s death: “The cardinal’s scarlet clothes now lie folded and empty. They cannot be wasted. They will be cut up and become other garments. Who knows where they will get to over the years? Your eye will be taken by a crimson cushion or a patch of red on a banner or ensign. You will see a glimpse of them in a man’s inner sleeve or in the flash of a whore’s petticoat.”

Sewing the binding.

Cromwell’s wife, Liz, does “a bit of silk-work” and complains about “the price of thread.” Their sheets are of fine linen and they sleep “under a quilt of yellow turkey satin.” In one of my favourite scenes, Liz embroiders shirts for their son Gregory “with a black-work design; it’s the same one the queen uses, for she makes the king’s shirts herself. ‘If I were Katherine I’d leave the needle in them,’ he says.” In this world, sewing is a weapon. Does Anne Boleyn pull the stitches out of her sister’s embroidery? How can his niece’s “awkward little backstitch” be used to protect Cromwell’s letters? Will a book of needlework patterns wrapped in kingfisher blue silk be taken from Jane Seymour? Who will unpick embroidered pomegranates, representing the badge of Katherine of Aragon?

As readers may have guessed, I know the text of Wolf Hall very well. It’s my favourite book, and as well as reading from the page, I find the excellent unabridged audiobook, read by Simon Slater, the perfect sewing accompaniment. And in 2014, my enjoyment was enhanced even further by the magical stage adaptations of Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, developed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Playful Productions.

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies at the Aldwych Theatre

I was lucky enough to see the plays in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London, and was so swept away by them that I simply had to sew something. Mantel’s Notes on Characters, written for the plays, say of Cromwell: “You don’t say much about your past, but you tell Thomas Cranmer, ‘I was a ruffian in my youth.’ Whatever this statement reveals or conceals, you have a lifelong sympathy with young men who have veered off-course.” I love that sentiment – and it formed the basis for a little quilt tribute to Thomas Cromwell, Hilary Mantel, Mike Poulton, and the cast, musicians, production team and backstage crew of the plays that I enjoyed so much.

Memorial plaque at Tower Green

* The image of Thomas Cromwell from the National Portrait Gallery, London is used under the terms of the Creative Commons license.

is there room for me to sew?

Quilting, Reading, and Keeping the Needles Sharp

quilting

The Magic of The Box of Delights

Glimpses of a lost silent film: Far from the Madding Crowd (1915)

The Fabric of Wolf Hall