Elizabeth Florence Stucley (1906-
on, where her ancestors
lived for centuries: they included Elizabethan pirates and Sir Richard Grenville
of the
Elizabeth Stucley packed a considerable amount into her life. She taught, drove for the French Army during the Second World War (and apparently did a lot of escaping); nursed a consituency for the Conservative Party and wrote. Many of her books were informed by her own experiences: she ran a boys’ club, and wrote about her experiences in Teddy Boys’ Picnic, Anthony Blond, 1958. She also made a journey to the Hebrides, following the route of Johnson and Boswell (A Hebridean Journey with Boswell and Johnson, Christopher Johnson, 1956).
While she lived in Clapham in London, she would keep open house for the children
who lived near her. They formed The Adventurers’ Club, and her book Magnolia Buildings
was written for them. Her one pony book was written about a very different set of
social circumstances. The Ranelaghs lives in a grand house called Clomb, although
their lives are rocked by wild Irish Kit. It’s an absorbing read: the Ranelagh
family have been paralysed by a combination of grief and the tyrannical reign of
an old governess in the school room. Kit at first is shocked almost into submission
by the intense atmosphere of fear and gloom, but she fights it off, aided by her
discovery of a pony living with an elderly farmer nearby. The Irish brogue is thankfully
fairly limited; the pony if the book were to be published today would probably have
to undergo a name change (he’s called Piccaninny) but the book is an good read: with
Kit, you long for the family to break free and start living life again.
Finding the book: not hugely common, so pricing can be erratic.
Sources and links:
Puffin printing of Magnolia Buildings
A review of Elizabeth Stucley’s Magnolia Buildings
Sir Richard Grenville
Thanks to Hannah Fleetwood for the photograph and summary.
E F Stucley
The Secret Pony
Faber & Faber, London, 1950, illus Richard Kennedy, 214 pp.
Kit, used to a free life in Ireland, finds her three Devon cousins repressed and
kept down. Their old family
governess dominates the school room, and their grandparents
are still mourning the death of the cousins’
father out hunting. Kit introduces
her cousins to the joys of a normal childnood.
Bibliography -
