"Those? Fairies."

[anteros_lmc]

While waiting for my copy of Hornblower and the Hotspur to arrive from eBay I picked up a copy of the 1929 children's novel A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, which has to be one of the most unsettling and, in places, downright unpleasant books I've read in a long time. I'll write a review later but there is one particular incident that interests me.

The ship the Clorinda has been overrun by pirates from a schooner marquerading as a passenger ship with some of the crew dressed as women to effect the charade. Now this is a well known pirate ruse, however what I found interesting about this episode is that the "women" appear to be professional transvestites from Havana, hired for the purpose, rather than regular seamen in drag. I'm sure there are other examples, but this is the first time I've come across actual cross dressing in an Age of Sail setting, albeit fictional and later in the period.

(Margaret and Emily are two children abandoned on the schooner and Jonsen is the pirate captain.)

There emerged from somewhere aft a collection of the oddest-looking young men. Margaret decided she had ever seen such beautiful young men before. They were slim, yet nicely rounded: and dressed in exquisite clothes (if a trifle threadbare). But their faces! Those beautiful olive-tinted ovals! Those large, black ringed soft brown eyes, those unnaturally carmine lips! They minced across the deck, chattering to each other in high-pitched tones "twittering like a cage of linnets..." and made their way on shore.
"Who are they?" Emily asked the captain.
"Who are they?" he murmured absently, without looking round "Oh, those? Fairies."
"Hey! Yey! Yey!" cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever.
"Fairies?" cried Emily in astonishment.
But Captain Jonsen began to blush.
...

"Where have those young men gone?" Margaret asked the mate. "Are they coming back?"
"They'll just come back to be paid" he answered.
"Then they're not living on the ship?" she pursued.
"No, we hired them from Havana."
"What for?"
He looked at her in surprise: "Why those are the 'ladies' we had on board, to look like passengers - You didn't think they were real ladies did you? "
"I thought they were real ladies" admitted Emily.
"We're a respectable ships crew, we are" said the mate, a trifle stiffly - and without too good logic when you come to think of it.

Fascinating, although it does make for uncomfortable reading.

Huges, R., (1949), A High Wind in Jamaica, Penguin Books.

Comments

[esmerelda-t.livejournal.com]

I still say they may as well stick a 'the author is the product of the English Public School system!' label on that book.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

That's the very least of the warnings they should stick on this book! It may be a "children's" book but I don't think I'll be encouraging my daughter to read it until she'd well versed in post-colonial social and political history.

[sarlania.livejournal.com]

There are just certain books written before all these rules came out that contain certain concepts that might be acceptable then but are just so inappropriate for children.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

We also have a 1967 children's illustrated edition of Oliver Twist which is really quite shocking. Daughter loves it of course but we've decided to "loose" it on the highest out of reach bookshelf. I'm vehemently against censorship but there are some things that are just not appropriate for children until they can understand something of the context. God I sound like the archetypal wooly liberal parent!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_likimeya/]

I sometimes think that children can cope better with disturbing scenes in books and films than adults, because of their very innocence and because they don't understand everything. An evil guy is just evil, and what do evil guys do? They do evil things. But that's alright, because it's just a story and the evil guy isn't going to get you. And there it stops. Whereas if you're older, you know that the horrors you read about in fiction are often terribly realistic, as in the case of Oliver Twist, and not isolated cases. Or you go for psychological penetration of the "evil" character and get a disturbing picture, ... I've always thought that e.g. the Harry Potter books are a good deal more upsetting and spooky for older teens and adults than for small children. But maybe I'm just oversensitive. :)

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

No you're absolutely right. Kids can breeze through things that become increasingly disturbing as you get older. We also have an illustrated version of Treasure Island in the same print as Oliver Twist which daughter similarly adores. She loves Long John Silver and will happily explain that the pirates shot his leg off with a canon. However she is terrified of Captain Hook in a copy of Peter Pan which I find very tame and cutesy.