Thimble Summer (16 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Enright

BOOK: Thimble Summer

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“Well, if it's a magic thimble, I'm much obliged to it for bringing me here,” said Eric.

Garnet was very happy. She was so happy, for no especial reason, that she felt as if she must move carefully so she wouldn't jar or shake the feeling of happiness. She descended from the roof cautiously, and walked with even steps down through the vegetable garden and across the pasture to the slough. A green light, tranquil and diffused, glowed among the willow saplings. The water was clear and motionless.

Garnet leaned against a tree. She was so quiet that a great blue heron, fancying itself alone, flew down between the branches and paused at the water's edge. She watched the handsome creature, with his blue crest and slender long legs, wading and darting his bill into the water. She was so near that she could see the jewel color of his little eye. He stood for a contemplative moment on one foot, still as a bird of carven stone; and in that moment it seemed to Garnet that he had become her companion; a creature who understood and shared her mood of happiness. For a second or two they stood like that in perfect stillness: and then the heron spread his heavy wings and flew away.

But now the happiness was growing out of all bounds. Garnet felt that pretty soon she might burst with it, or begin to fly, or that her two pigtails would stand straight up on end and sing like nightingales! She could hold it in no longer. The time had come to make a noise, and whooping at the top of her lungs, she leapt out of the shadowy willow grove.

Griselda, the finest of the Jersey cows, raised mild, reproachful eyes and stared for a long time at Garnet turning handspring after handspring down the pasture.

NEWBERY MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
*

by
E
LIZABETH
E
NRIGHT

First of all, may I say that I feel both more proud, and more humble, than I have ever felt before. That you should have liked Garnet so much is as gratifying to me as if you had liked my own children.

Writing is still very new to me, and very exciting. My parents are both artists: my mother is Maginel Wright Barney, the illustrator, and my father is W. J. Enright, the cartoonist. One of my earliest memories is of being forcibly removed from my mother's studio, and afterward staring through the glass door at my mother, bent over her drawing board, ignoring me like grim death.

From the time that I was three years old and first began imitating my parents, I have always drawn pictures. I drew all over my schoolbooks, the telephone book, the blackboard, the sidewalk, my mother's best writing paper; and when I wore socks, I even drew faces on my bare knees. In fact, whenever I had a pencil in my hand, I was irresponsible and a menace.

It was not until I grew up and had illustrated several books that I began to think about writing. I don't suppose that I would have thought about it then, except that one day I found myself faced with a large, clean sheet of paper, and there happened to be a pen in my hand, so, as usual, I started scribbling pictures of people. This time I made a lot of little boys; some were climbing palm trees like apes, some were throwing spears, and beating drums, and doing ceremonial dances. As I drew, a story began in my mind. I made a picture of a witch doctor in a derby hat, and then I tried a leopard or two. They were very bad. But by this time, I was intoxicated with a new idea. I thought how wonderful it would be to write my own book, and illustrate it exactly as I pleased.

So I elaborated on the theme of the little boy. First, I made all the pictures (like building a house beginning with the shingles). And then I bought a ruled pad and started to write the story. I tiptoed self-consciously through the first chapter, and I tore it up, and began again. After the first few crippling efforts, I was surprised to find that writing seemed to me an even more satisfactory means of expression than drawing. The finished result was a little book called
Kintu,
which was published by Farrar and Rinehart in 1935. I felt as though I had inherited the earth.

After this, I rested for two years, on laurels that were practically invisible, and wondered what to write about next.

One summer, I was in Wisconsin during a drought. I suppose that most of you have experienced a drought at some time or other, but this was the first one I had ever known. Each day we watched the grass grow drier and the oats turn yellow too soon. The air was full of a dry, sneezy dust, and the wind was like the breath of a blast furnace. It was a terrifying and infuriating thing to live with; nothing is so infuriating as weather behaving viciously, and you can't help feeling as though it had a grudge against mankind. You find yourself impotently hating it, and feeling offended.

Every evening about twenty of us would go down to the enormous vegetable garden with cans of water on the truck. Until the light failed, we toiled up and down interminable rows of vegetables, pouring water out of coffeepots and double boilers and anything else we could borrow from the kitchen. Afterward, our backs ached, and it hurt to unclose our fingers. But in spite of us, the corn withered, and the leaves shriveled away from the cucumber vines. All the green opulence of the valley turned sere and yellow before our eyes.

It was on one of the hottest days that I began the story about Garnet. It was a relief to describe and insult the outrageous weather, but I especially enjoyed writing about the thunderstorm which arrives just under the wire at the end of the first chapter. Unfortunately for us, though, in reality, the rain came too late and the valley didn't recover that summer.

It was a time I shall never forget. I am sure that anyone who has lived on a farm during a bad drought must carry the scar of it on his consciousness for the rest of his life. Like a vaccination.

From the first chapter about Garnet, I went on slowly building my book,
Thimble Summer
(this time properly from the foundations instead of the shingles). I remembered stories that my grandmother had told me about her childhood when that Wisconsin valley was a wilderness, and stories of my mother's school days in the same valley. I remembered incidents in my own experience, and pillaged the memories of my friends and relatives. The rest of it is my own. And I loved writing it.

There is a peculiar joy in writing about children
for
children. One naturally goes back to one's own childhood to find things. To me, the astonishing thing is in the way one took life during those years. It was as though a thin, but tough, membrane had not yet grown between oneself and the rest of the world. A child sees everything sharp and radiant; each object with its shadow beside it. Happiness is more truly happiness than it will ever be again, and is caused by such little things. The first day of spring, for instance, when it was warm enough to go without a coat; or the time you stayed up till nine o'clock, and someone showed you Scorpio, and the Pleiades, and Cassiopeia's Chair. Happiness came from the smell of a Christmas tree, or roast chicken on Sunday; it came from the first snowfall of the season, or learning to hang by your knees from a trapeze, or going barefoot in summer. I remember very well the glow of magic that illuminated the world for months after my mother had taken me to see Pavlowa dance; I remember the moment when my grandmother opened a book, and began to read me the first chapter of a story called
Treasure Island.

Of course in every childhood there is sorrow, too. Sometimes a lot of it. And it seems more unjust and undeserved than it ever will again. Sorrow in childhood is a monstrous, alien thing, and one has not yet learned any philosophy that can dull the corners of it.

Fortunately, though, for the normal child who is brought up in safety, the grief lasts a far shorter time than the happiness. His grief is hot, and violent, and soon over, like a firecracker, but his unconscious joy and interest in living are steady, and taken for granted, as daylight is. Always, for him, there is the large, uncomplicated fact that he is loved, and protected, fed, disciplined, and dealt with justly by his family. The world, for him, is a secure, eternal place.

Let us all hope, even in such sick and troubled times as these, that someday it will be the privilege of every child to feel like this.

*
Read at the Children's Section meeting of the Sixty-first Annual Conference of the American Library Association in San Francisco, June 20, 1939, on the occasion of the 18th Award of the Newbery Medal.

About the Author

Elizabeth Enright
(1907-1968) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, but spent most of her life in or near New York City. Her mother was a magazine illustrator, while her father was a political cartoonist. Illustration was Enright's original career choice and she studied art in Greenwich, Connecticut; Paris, France; and New York City. After creating her first book in 1935, she developed a taste, and quickly demonstrated a talent, for writing. Throughout her life, she won many awards, including the 1939 John Newbery Medal for Thimble Summer and a 1958 Newbery Honor for Gone-Away Lake. Among her other beloved titles are her books about the Melendy family, including
The Saturdays
, published in 1941. Enright also wrote short stories for adults, and her work was published in
The New Yorker
,
The Ladies Home Journal
,
Cosmopolitan
,
The Yale Review
,
Harper's
, and
The Saturday Evening Post
. She taught creative writing at Barnard College. Translated into many languages throughout the world,
Elizabeth Enright
's stories are for both the young and the young at heart. You can sign up for email updates
here
.