Jill Barklem’s marvelous series of Brambly Hedge books, the first of which was published in 1980, are a feast of whimsical details. The stories, including four seasonal tales and four additional adventures, portray a world of anthropomorphized mice and voles living in a self-sufficient community of intricate forest homes.
The stories feature a cast of characters who work together to live a life of civility amid the changing seasons and bounty of the forest. Characters like Poppy Eyebright, Dusty Dogwood, Wilfred Toadflax, Lord and Lady Woodmouse, and Mr. and Mrs. Apple make appearances throughout the stories revealing genial family relationships, budding romance, and intergenerational traditions.
The backdrop for these charming characters is a feast for the eyes. Barklem invested countless hours in designing a complete world for her characters, right down to the smallest berry, blossom, and twig.
Born in 1951 as Gillian Gaze, Barklem developed an early interest in botanical illustration. When at the age of 13 she suffered a detached retina, Barklem could not participate in school gym class or sports. She made the most of her misfortune by expanding her interest in drawing flowers and twigs, prevalent in the forests around Epping in Essex, England, where she grew up.
The daughter of John and Ivy Gaze, Barklem grew up with her family running Pynes Stores, a department store in Essex, which one can’t help but wonder served as inspiration for the mice Store Stump in Brambly Hedge. Continually inspired by the forest around her childhood home, Barklem continued illustrating and attended St. Martin’s School of Art in London upon graduation. Describing what she expected after art school, Barklem said, “ I did not have a very clear idea of my future but assumed I would earn my living by illustrating other people’s books. I certainly never imagined that one day I would write my own.”
However, the commute to art school provided an unexpected genesis for Barklem’s beloved forest universe. To attend St. Martin’s, Barklem rode the London Underground, an experience that assuredly did not provide affirmative inspiration. Rather, Barklem so despised the experience that she was inspired to daydream about the forest and a cast of characters kinder and more interdependent than the bustling urbanity that surrounded her.
Barklem said of the commute on the Underground, “I came to hate this journey, the carriages were crammed full of people, everything seemed so filthy. It was like a glimpse of hell.” Brambly Hedge is everything absent in those carriages: cozy, personal, slow-paced, meaningful.
It would be years before Barklem set about creating her imaginary world on paper. She spent those years indefatiguably researching the minutia of vegetation, foraging, culinary arts, and farming mechanization of tree trunk-dwelling mice. A posthumous tribute state, “A good cook, she made sure that every recipe for the wonderful food enjoyed by the mice at picnics and feasts could actually be made from foraged ingredients. She adopted the same approach to the mechanical implements she created within Brambly Hedge; all the machinery in the mouse mill and dairy had been trialled by Jill in miniature working models.”
From the dairy to the flour mill, the mouse world portrays real agricultural methods from the English tradition and presents, to use a buzzword, sustainable vision of family and community life. This masterful vision is now described blandly as “an embedded environmental message,” but far from a demand to “save the Earth,” the vision of community is a celebration of vibrant life. The mice are not adapting themselves to stringent climate demands but living as fully as possible with the materials available to them.
The details captured in the illustrations led the Sunday Times Magazine to call the books “the most research-crammed fantasy ever set before small children.”
Barklem’s work was not, however, immediately perceived as publishable. In her early years as an illustrator, Barklem worked on religious books for children. Although she began Brambly Hedge, it was solely visual at first. Barklem sent her work to publishers, who did not seriously consider the work. Only after Barklem called Jane Fior at what would become HarperCollins did serious discussions begin.
Fior later said, “Jill had a portfolio of lots and lots of pictures of mice and the structure of a mouse world. Her craftsmanship was extraordinary. You only had to open the portfolio to know she was something special. But there wasn’t a story. Instead there was the idea of the community of mice” Fior recognized the potential and confidently signed Barklem for a four-book contract. Fior explained, “The intensity of Jill’s vision was clear from the beginning. She wanted the world to be a wonderful place and she wanted to create a community where that would happen – even if it was only a fictional one.”
Fior elaborated on the community Barklem had envisioned, “Although Brambly Hedge is a hierarchical society complete with a squire and his wife and imbued with a great sense of noblesse oblige, it is a place where the young and the elderly are looked after by everyone, and there is something very reassuring about that.” From this rich context, Barklem had much with which to create personal stories for the mice.
The first four books, Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story, and Winter Story, tell simples stories of a birthday picnic, a wedding, a little mouse who goes missing while foraging, and a rare English snow day. In this journey through the year, the reader gets a glimpse of the depth and breadth of Barklem’s world in which it seems every detail has been considered.
Brambly Hedge was an immediate success. Four more books followed, taking the mice beyond the confines of the hedgerow and incorporating even more complex worlds in the mountains and by the sea. The books inspired a stop-motion television series and a line of Royal Doulton china, still popular, among other whimsical offshoots.
Creating the later books took years, as Barklem spent about two years to complete a book, working on a large illustration for as long as three months. Following the intense creative outpouring of those eight books, Barklem began to lose her vision. By the end of illustrating the last book, Poppy’s Babies, Barklem could only see half of what she was drawing. The story that unfolds in the tale of Poppy’s small children is a balm to mothers’ souls everywhere: a harried Poppy is given the immeasurable gift of having her entire house moved and set up in a more suitable place to raise three toddlers. Barklem, who had two children with her husband David Barklem, likely felt the strain of raising children while producing illustrations of such detail. However, the physical strain of losing her eyesight is what really took a toll.
Some sources indicate that Barklem had a brain tumor, which required surgery to relieve pressure on her optic nerve. Whatever the details, at this juncture, Barklem took a break from illustrating. Her health continued to decline until her death in 2017 at the age of 66. Barklem’s ill health led some to suggest that these challenges “effectively brought her charming world to a premature end.” But this is to miss the final chapters of the story!
In her final years, Barklem resided at the Woodland Grove Care Home in her native Epping. In an interview, Barklem said, “It’s wonderful here.” Of particular joy was the proximity to the forest and the lengths to which the caregivers went to ensure Barklem could continue to enjoy the outdoors. Barklem added, “I’ve loved nature since I was a little girl and although I can’t paint it in quite the same detail anymore, it means everything to be so close to it and to be able connect with it every day.”
“Our care and support here is focused on the individual, how they want to live and what they like to do,” general manager, Jo Coughlan, told the Care Industry News. “The Forest is hugely important to Jill, it’s her home, so we identified a wheelchair-friendly route and took her on a walk at High Beach. It was fantastic to see how much she enjoyed it.”
Her daughter, Elizabeth, explained, “Mum is very happy here because she can still enjoy what she loves. From the day she moved in they have done everything they can to make her feel at home. They put up Brambly Hedge plates and pottery in her room, and a Brambly Hedge sign for her door.” Elizabeth continued, “Nature has always been important to her and they took the time to understand that, to find the right room for her and give her these experiences. She can even do gardening because there are beds raised to wheelchair height.”
Although failing eyesight made the meticulous detail of Barklem’s earlier work impossible, she continued to create. Her daughter said, “She has her art materials with her and the staff are fantastic at encouraging her to paint and draw.”
From this, we can well imagine that Brambly Hedge continued long past what is supposed to be the “premature end.” Brambly Hedge did not rely on being shared; it was imagined in a filthy carriage on the Underground. The books are the gift Barklem shared with the world but which she did not need to enjoy a vision of a harmonious community with cozy homes, loving families, and delicious meals.
The legacy of Barklem’s books continue with another generation of illustrators. Catherine Rayner, a British illustrator, describes the Brambly Hedge book The Secret Staircase as a defining book in her life. Given the book by a family friend at age four, Rayner says, “My imagination went wild when I read that book and I took it everywhere. There was so much detail in every inch of every page – you couldn’t get bored of an illustration as it felt like there was always something new to see. I didn’t notice exactly how the characters were drawn at the time. I just knew there was something about every aspect of the new book that I loved – particularly the illustrations.”
Rayner added, “The Secret Staircase is still one of the books I mention when I’m asked by people what inspires me. I can still pore over those pages in the same way, and I still get a little bubble of excitement.” Rayner aptly described the books, saying, “The characters, who are mice, are so busy I feel like they don’t even notice the reader is there. They bustle about in their huge tree trunk, where they have carved out dozens of tiny little rooms, and secret staircases(!), some of which have locked doors and their own secrets.”
Reflecting on how Barklem influenced her career choice, Rayner said, “While I don’t think that my work is visually comparable to Jill Barklem’s, her weight of line, love for nature and passion for making a good book have infected me.” She mused, “I wonder if my career would have taken a different turn if it hadn’t been for the The Secret Staircase… needless to say, I’m very grateful to that book.”
While Brambly Hedge may not inspire every child or adult reader to a career as an illustrator, the stories are likely to inspire civility, warmth, and a moment of joyful rest in a weary world.
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