Readers of yesterday’s blog will know that I’m currently making my way through the Swallows and Amazons series of books, alternating them with the Strike-Ellacott series. Readers here and listeners to the Rowling Studies podcast will know that I have long had a particular interest in the biography of J. K. Rowling. Little as we know about Rowling, what we do know add a lot of depth and richness to the story telling. Reading about Robin’s experiences working as a temp. holds a great deal more authority, knowing that Rowling also worked as a temp. in London.
I knew precisely nothing about Arthur Ransome prior to reading the first two books, but the vivid make believe world that the children make (particularly Roger and Titty) had me pretty convinced that these were reminiscences of the author’s childhood games, perhaps from a man who never grew up. It was a conversation with Beatrice Groves (who with John Granger has frequently steered me well for my next read) that there exists a house in the Lake District that the ‘real’ Roger used to live in.
Wonderfully, the children were based on an Anglo-Syrian family, that Ransome met in the Lake District, and later visited in Aleppo. The first book was dedicated to them, and the eldest sister later recalled that “Titty and Roger were very true to life”.
During his childhood, the Altounyans visited their British grandparents (his grandfather was W. G. Collingwood) in the Lake District where they met the writer Arthur Ransome. Ransome named some of the primary characters in his famous book, Swallows and Amazons, after Altounyan and three of his four sisters; Roger became Roger Walker the ship’s boy. Ransome later stayed with the family in Aleppo, bringing them a small dinghy to sail, and writing most of Peter Duck there.
Roger Altounyan – Wikipedia
If I had relied on the text, my image would have been off. Ransome was a very talented communicator and observer of children, not a man-child with a vivid recollection. A Captain Flint in the childhood games of others. Now when I read the stories I can imagine little Roger Altounyan, in England for the first time, with bossy, but fun-loving older sisters.
It recently dawned on me a sentiment Charlotte Brontë gives to Lucy Snowe is exactly how I feel about the depth and richness a biographical lens can add to a reading JoRo’s works:
“I had great pleasure in reading a few books…preferring always those on whose style or sentiment the writer’s individual nature was plainly stamped…”
Cheers to more posts here on the subject, Nick!