No Boats on Bannermere by Geoffrey Trease, for the 1949 Club

The Melburys – Bill, Susan, and their mother – have been living in a crowded London flat until Mrs. Melbury’s Cousin Fay dies and unexpectedly leaves her a cottage in Cumberland, in the Lake District. There’s a catch: they must live there for five years running or it will be sold and Fay’s son would get the proceeds. Bill has just made his school’s second team (Rugby? Cricket?) but swallows his disappointment, and he and Susan encourage their mother to make the move, which happens quickly. 

The cottage is modest and far from town but well situated next to a lake, and when they discover Cousin Fay’s boat, Bill and Susan immediately go exploring and visit a small island. To their annoyance, however, Sir Alfred Askew, a retired businessman who lives at the manor and is their closest neighbor, sees them rowing and forbids them to use the lake. His hostility makes Bill and Susan curious and although they are busy settling into a new home and schools, they make friends who help them investigate what Sir Alfred is up to, leading to an exciting denouement on the island.

Trease (1909-98) wrote 113 books, primarily for children, between 1934 and 1997, starting with Bows Against the Barons and ending with Cloak for a Spy in 1997. He is best known for his historical fiction, including Cue for Danger, set in Elizabethan times, but in my family the favorite is Trumpets in the West. No Boats on Bannermere launched a five book series that broke new ground because it focused on children attending day schools. As narrator Bill, an aspiring writer, says, “People don’t often put day-schools into stories. I don’t know why. Life there is just as interesting as it is at boarding-schools.” In fact, only Bill and his friend Tim attend a grammar school with a delightfully curmudgeonly headmaster while his sister and their friend Penny attend an all-girl comprehensive nearby, led by the outspoken Miss Florey.

Another unusual aspect of the book is that Mrs. Melbury is divorced, which is mentioned in a matter of fact way. Her husband disappeared to Canada, never sending child support, which is why they are so hard up. In fact, I don’t know what they are living on! The Melburys meet Miss Florey before Susan starts school because she is hiking nearby and assumes from the oversized umbrella in their garden that they do teas. Bill and Susan play along, charging her one shilling and sixpence, later suggesting that the family really offer teas, both to make some extra money and to give Mrs. Melbury people to talk to while they are at school (I can’t help thinking it is very dangerous for her to provides teas while home alone in an isolated place but it was a safer era).

I am very fond of books where impromptu tea shops are created. Thank you to Simon who introduced me to Tea Is So Intoxicating, a very entertaining book in which a disagreeable couple decide to run a tea shop out of their cottage in Kent, with disastrous results. In The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley, a visiting American suggests her childhood friends offer a garden tour and Cornish teas to help save their home. Not a tea shop but I am reminded of Emmy Keeps a Promise, in which Emmy and her sister are lodging with a family that feeds them clams for tea and, in fact, at every meal until she is afraid she will turn into a clam!

This book was illustrated by Richard Kennedy, who is known for having worked with many prominent authors, from Rosemary Sutcliff to Astrid Lindgren. At just 16, he began working for Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Hogarth Press and eventually wrote a memoir about his experience there as an inept teen, A Boy at the Hogarth Press.

I chose this for the #1949Club, hosted by Simon at StuckinaBook and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year.  Any Trease fans here?  Academic and writer  Farah Mendlesohn is writing a book about him, which I believe is nearly done - I am looking forward to it.

Title: No Boats on Bannermere
Author: Geoffrey Trease
Illustrator: Richard Kennedy
Publication: William Heinemann Ltd., hardcover, originally published in 1949
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Source: Personal Copy