The Spring of the Year by Elfrida Vipont

Title:  The Spring of the Year (Haverard Family #3)
Author:  Elfrida Vipont
Illustrator: T.R. Freeman
Publication: Oxford University Press, hardcover, 1957
Genre: Children’s/series

Plot: The Spring of the Year continues the story of the Haverard family featured in The Lark in the Morn and The Lark on the Wing but focuses on Kit Haverard’s niece, Laura.  Laura is the fourth and sometimes difficult child of Kit’s older brother Richard and his wife Sylvia (aka Flip), the prefect who was kind to Kit when she was being bullied at Heryot.  Richard is an academic like his father and has just got a department chair at a university in Fairleigh, so the family is reluctantly leaving Oxford. Heading to Fairleigh to house-hunt, they detour to St. Merlyon, a big village with a small but inviting Quaker Meeting House and a beautiful Priory Church.  Laura and her brother Christopher are enchanted by the area and attracted to the house for sale next to Ye Olde Priory Cake and Bunne Shoppe.  Soon, the Haverards have moved in.   While the twins, Richenda and Philippa (born in The Lark on the Wing), are at boarding school at Heryot and brainy Mary at the local grammar school, Laura and her younger brother Christopher attend the village school with Kate Whittacker, whose mother runs the tea shop.   The move takes place in late summer and spring is eventful, with the grammar school examination for Laura and Kate, a local drama production in which Laura gets a significant part, and a growing friendship with Peter Bellamy, haunted by the death of his parents in an auto accident. 


My Impressions: The two books Vipont wrote about Laura Haverard, following her Carnegie-medal winning The Lark on the Wing, were never published in the United States, which is a pity as I am sure I would have enjoyed them as a child and reread them nearly as frequently as the two about Kit and her quest to become a singer.  I think Gill Bilski found me this copy and I thank her.   Laura has more flaws than Kit: she procrastinates and does not have a strong work ethic (bad from the Quaker and heroine point of view) and struggles with being a good friend.   However, these are pretty common childhood flaws and she grows out of them over time.  More than anything, she yearns for recognition and as part of a big family where the twins are recognized for their musical talent and being vivacious, Mary is assumed to have inherited her parents’ intelligence, and Christopher is the only boy.

I am reminded of Elizabeth Janet Gray’s (another noted Quaker author) The Fair Adventure where the heroine, Page, also the daughter of a professor, is inadvertently upstaged by her large family every time anything happens to her.  Page’s father is warmer and more knowledgeable about his offspring than Richard, who doesn’t understand his children at all and does not see his role as supporting their goals, only his vision of what they should do or be.   This may be the difference between an upper-middle-class British parent of this era vs the American version.  Richard’s brother Tom is a lot kinder and more sympathetic, as he was in the earlier books too. 

Vipont provides a much closer look at village life in this book than in the two about Kit.  St. Merlyon is a very friendly place with musical groups for Sylvia, a best friend next door for Laura, and boys for Christopher to engine-spot with.  It is also nice that the Quaker community coexists well with the C of E Protestants: they go to Friends’ Meeting on Sunday mornings and to the Priory for Evensong at night.  Sylvia is impressed by the music and Laura gains two important friends, the Rector, Mr. Bellamy, and his grandson Peter.  Laura goes to the village school where students her age are preparing for the 11-plus, a test that had evolved after WWII that determined whether students would go to a grammar school like Mary in preparation for university or a comprehensive school.  Laura assumes she will do well on the exam, and magnanimously encourages Kate to study hard for the exam.

As it was, it seemed important that she should turn out to be something, only what that something should be she had not the slightest idea.  Perhaps she would find out when she went to grammar school; she was very impatient to make the change and would have liked to have taken the examination at the minimum age as Mary had done, but the Headmistress of her old school would not hear of it.  In fact, the Headmistress was very unpleasant to Laura when she suggested it, and had even hinted that she would have to work very hard to gain admission to a grammar school at all.  Laura said nothing to her parents about the interview; it was not her fault if Miss Ralston did not understand her.  It was only because Miss Ralston kept comparing her with Mary, which wasn’t fair and she would surprise her and everyone else some day.

As in most British stories (unlike real life), pride goes before fall but to some extent that is the beginning of Laura’s path to maturity, helped by playing Ariel in the village production of The Tempest and realizing she wants to act.  Fans of Kit will enjoy her cameo appearances in which she provides much-needed understanding and motivation to Laura.  Even Cousin Milly makes a few appearances in this book, as does Laura’s uncle Tom, his wife Sheila, and everyone’s favorite, Sir Geoffrey Chauntesinger, who comes to St. Merlyon to help save the Priory Church.  The title is inspired by Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes and Laura is named after the opinionated cousin who helped bring up Richard, Tom, Miles and Kit when their mother died.

Snobbish: My family would also have made fun of the cutesy spelling of Ye Olde Priory Cake and Bunne Shoppe but it is very rude that the senior members of the Haverard family joke about it (a) once the Whitakers become friends, and b) in front of Kate Whitaker.  This continues to be an issue in the next book, The Flowering Spring.

Photo credit: Kate Brady McKenna

About the Author:  What a pity I never sent a fan letter to Elfrida Vipont (1902-1992)!*  She had a long and illustrious career.  Oddly, many know her best for a picture book, The Elephant and the Bad Baby.  According to Wikipedia, in addition to her own singing and subsequent writing, during World War II she was headmistress of an Evacuation School set up by Quakers in Yealand Conyers, a small village in Lancashire, where children from those cities and from further afield were sent for safety, away from the wartime bombing.  I was fascinated to learn recently from Kate Brady McKenna, a kindred spirit (to mix favorite author metaphors) on a GirlsOwn discussion group, that her father had attended the school and knew Vipont well.   She shared this photo of Vipont's grave and I was glad to hear she visits when in the area is buried.  Here is a picture of the Old Quaker School, which Kate also kindly provided:

Old Quaker School, Yealand Manor

Family Tree: The American editions of the first two books included a helpful family tree but this book does not.   I am working on one for the next generation but it would be better with proper genealogical software.

Previous Books in the Series:  The Lark in the Morn, The Lark on the Wing

Source: Personal copy

* I wrote many letters in my head but the only author I recall actually mailing a letter to is Margaret Storey and the US publisher sent it back to me, unwilling to forward it to England!