Beginning Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” with little to no context, one might wonder where it takes place. The names are not immediately indicative of a particular place, but a clue comes with the daily taking of tea. That’s right! Once again, we are in Merry Old England, vicariously living a very British childhood.
The story takes place in the Lake District in England. The Walker children—John, Susan, Titty, and Roger—arrive to stay on a farm with their mother and baby sister, referred to frequently for her girth. Their father, a naval officer, is away. The children’s great aspiration for the summer is to camp on an island, using a small sailboat, the Swallow, as their means of passage.
From this desire comes a summer of adventure. While their daily activity is no more exciting than rowing to get milk from a farm and doing the dishes, taking a swim and meeting the charcoal burners (an interesting historical aside), they are on a grand adventure. Their activity is overlayed with play. John is the captain, Susan the mate, Titty an able seaman, and Roger “the ship’s boy.” The man on a houseboat becomes a retired pirate. Every place has a second, imagined name and every food is referred to as something else—terminology agreed upon and adhered to in all their activities.
Amid all the play, there is a lot of work that goes on. From making meals and hauling supplies, the children are kept quite busy. The Walkers are not puritanical in their work ethic. While the characters in “The Boxcar Children” seem to delight in nothing other than constant productivity, the children in Ransome’s world are motivated by novelty and independence. They are not starving orphans who enjoy a hard day’s work, but healthy children who enjoy fun.
The story highlights a principle of parenting that is difficult to replicate. The children are continually motivated by the felt consequences of their actions. If they forget some needed supply or fail to clean up, no one will do it for them. If they want to get back to the same place on the shore, they have to devise a means of marking where they left the trail. And for this reason, they are immensely pleased with their work, especially when it comes to sailing. Imagine the satisfaction of a young man successfully bringing a sailboat into a bay using lamplight as marks to avoid the rocks? What a feat! What a thrill!
That kind of immediacy cannot be faked. They are experiencing natural consequences that flow from their activity without adult manipulation. In other words, they are engaged in real life. That does not sound revolutionary, but it is not readily accessible to mothers and fathers today. A school-aged child wandering a mere block ahead of the family will be stopped and interrogated by concerned passersby. Parents sending a group of children under the age of 12 to row alone to a small island and camp would likely find themselves reported by several neighbors and in hot water with the authorities. Granted, the Walkers’ mother checks on them and is aware of their goings-on, still the unsupervised hours would be unconscionable in our current age.
In the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, no one bats an eye. The philosophy of child-rearing is given some explanation in the telegram that launches the whole adventure. The children send a letter to their father proposing the island camping idea, and the father replies by telegram.
As one British professor explains, “The response [the father’s telegram] is Delphic: Better drowned than duffers if not duffers wont drown. This is deciphered as a statement that it is better to be dead than a duffer – an incompetent and cowardly person – but if his children prove themselves not to be duffers, then they will not drown.”
This is a line some deem so harsh that they refuse even to read the book to their children. Is it really so unkind to entrust our children with freedom? Sure, it could be stated less harshly, but the parenting philosophy is sound. Children will only learn from real consequences, and we send a powerful message in the attitude we take toward their freedom. A father’s confidence can inspire great success.
Freedom is also a necessary component of maturation. It’s not just a nice option but an essential feature of growth and development. Without it, children suffer. Were there more drowning deaths a hundred years ago? Possibly. Did fewer children seek to end their own lives out of despair? It’s quite likely.
These days, finding “natural consequences” for children is anything but natural. When children, in their impish children’s way, leave their belongings strewn about or fail to complete their chores, a parent is left puzzling how to dole out consequences. In time, our children will likely learn that people don’t take kindly to slovenliness and lack of consideration, but we kick the can down the road. Now, more of us learn in adulthood the lessons that could have been taught by real freedom in childhood.
I’m not alone in finding such reflections in the father’s terse telegram. Writing about social science, Professor Robert Dingwall wonders if the attempts to inoculate students against every possible danger has irrevocably curtailed their ability to do research and constrained the questions they can ask. His example is a bit silly and raises more fundamental questions about the nature of research, but Dingwall, nevertheless, makes a sound observation. He writes, “[S]tudents surely have a right not to have their spirit of adventure stifled by institutional prissiness. If they are banned from taking everyday risks, how will they ever venture beyond what is safe and known? If universities cease to be places where unexpected, and possibly dangerous, things can happen, what is the point of universities? Are we just creating duffers?”
Are we, in our zeal to protect children, raising duffers? It’s a thorny question that deserves some pondering. In the meantime, with summer on the horizon, “Swallows and Amazons” offers a splendid story about children, what they want, how they live, and what they can do. Musing on the philosophical underpinnings of modern parenting is optional!
