Many years ago when I was around 11 years old and used to haunt the library so often that Miss Collins, the librarian, let me have two books out on each ticket otherwise 'I will never see the back of you', I discovered the stories about the Melendy Family by Elizabeth Enright. I was recently over on Deluzy checking out her blog and spotted that she was reading them. She later informed me that she read them regularly and loved them very much. To find another person who knows and enjoys the same books as oneself is one of the joys of blogdom.
I recently bought the four books in this series as I discovered they were in print. Pretty naff covers and I feared the worst but looking inside, I was delighted to see that the illustrations are the originals and looking at these brought back waves of nostalgia for the days I curled up in an armchair reading abut this American family who seems so glamorous and vivid to this fifties school girl.
There are five members of the family - Father, who is a widower, and who writes and travels; Mona the eldest daughter, a budding actress dreaming of fame and fortune, Rush the eldest son, a music lover; Randy his sister who loves to dance and paint and Oliver who seems to enjoy insect life and eating. They live in an apartment in New York with their housekeeper cum family treasure, Cuffy, who has been with the family all their lives.
It is odd how a childhood book can shape our ideas of a place and make you long to go there. The description of New York gave me such a yearning to see this city (which I did in due course) and the visit to the Met Opera House by Rush also made me want to visit - which I did. I well remember reading the Ship of Adventure by Enid Blyton around htis time which was set on a ship cruising around the Greek Islands and fired me with a passion to visit them and many years later, as I was sitting on the beach at Paxos I remembered this and sent up a big thank you to Enid.
Anyway, back to the Melendys. As they are tired of doing nothing on a Saturday but being short of money, they decide to pool their allowances and each take a turn at having a memorable Saturday afternoon of their own, hence the title of the first book, The Saturdays.
They all choose their own particular outing but the one that stuck in my mind for over forrty years, and this will come as no surprise to you at all, is the trip Rush took to the Met to see Siegfried.
'Siegfried wasn't exactly the way Rush expected him to be. He sang wonderfully but he looked just like a good natured cook making a cake" Heroic looking as well as sounding Siegfrieds have always been in short supply it seems.
'The second act as even better than the first. The dragon came clanking out of the grotto, eyes gleaming with electric light bulbs and smoke issues from its nostril, singing all the while in a musical bass voice. Rush who was interested in all mechanical devices looked at Fafner through the field glasses. Each time it sang the dragon's jaws opened and shut like a crocodile snapping flies and during a quiet moment a business liked voice deep inside its stomach was heard to say "OK Bill hold it". Yep, I have heard similar too.
In the final act 'Siegfried penetrated the fiery cirlce and awakened Brunnhilde, who as clad in glittering mail and proved to be the general shape and size of a caterpiller tractor. It was funny how you could forget it when she began to sing" I know this feeling well. Rita Hunter at the ENO, she of blessed memory, was exactly this size and shape but oh what a glorious voice.
The Melendys move out to the countryside, sounds to me like Connecticut, but I could be wrong. My US geography is very hazy. The next three books The Four Storey Mistake, Then there were Five and Spiderweb for Two document the next few years as they grow up and adopt a new brother, Mark. These stories were such a large part of my childhood and it has given me enormous pleasure to discover them again.
This is why I am always delighted when I come across a publisher such as Fidra Books and Girls Gone By who publish all these wonderful children's stories that I remember taking off the shelves in my little old fashioned junior library where I seemed to spend most of my time.Long may they flourish.
