University of Strathclyde

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English Studies
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CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Coram Boy (2000)

1. Jamila Gavin: b. India 1941; Indian father, English mother; childhood divided between India and England – see Out of India (1997).
1.1 Several books for younger readers about encounters between English and Indian cultures/people, including Kamla and Kate (1983), Grandpa Chatterji (1994) and Grandpa's Indian Summer (1996).
1.2 Books for older readers: The Surya Trilogy: The Wheel of Surya (1992), The Eye of the Horse (1994), and The Track of the Wind (1997) - historical novels set in India and England in 1947-51 (independence; division into India and Pakistan; civil war).
1.3 Also see The Blood Stone (2003): historical novel in which young boy's quest begins in 17th-century Venice and ends in Kabul.

2. Coram Boy (Mammoth, 2000; Egmont, 2004) (Whitbread Children's Book of the Year).
2.1 Historical novel set in 18th-century England:

A historical novel is not merely a story set in the past but a story which attempts, with the aid of scholarly research, to reconstruct and bring to life the events, culture and Zeitgeist of the period. Generally, historical novelists for children are less concerned with depicting major historical events and figures than those who write for adults; more frequently, they emphasise what it was like to live and grow up in another era, the cultural differences between past and present, and the living continuity between them. Sometimes well-known historical figures will make an appearance, but they are rarely the central characters. ... Many of the classics of children's literature, from Kidnapped to the Little House books, have been historical novels, and the genre has continued to attract ... distinguished writers ... Sir Walter Scott invented the historical novel in the process of writing Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814). His Ivanhoe (1819) and The Talisman (1825) were read enthusiastically by young people throughout the 19th century ... In Britain in the middle of the 20th century, the innovations of Geoffrey Trease introduced a fresh, modern style and a democratic point of view to [the] genre. In his Thunder of Valmy ... (1960), for example, the French Revolution is viewed from the perspective of a peasant boy rather than the usual gallant aristocrat. ... many historical novels have been actively and explicitly concerned with the injustices of history, drawing attention to inhumane customs and unfair practices. ... The evils of slavery have been written about by many writers, both British and American. ... In Marjorie Darke's The First of Midnight (1977) parallels are drawn between the life of a slave in England after legislation abolishing slavery, and that of a servant girl who is bought and sold like a chattel. (Children's Books in English, pp.335-36)

2.2 Coram Boy includes historical figures, well known and not so well known.
2.3 Captain Thomas Coram (1668-1751): see Ruth K. McClure, Coram's Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (Yale, 1981); Hospital = charitable institution for maintenance/education of young people (here, foundlings); opened 1741; moved in C20; now Thomas Coram Foundation for Children (40 Brunswick Square, London).
2.4 George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): German-born composer (he and J.S. Bach supreme masters of Baroque era); settled in England in 1712; son of barber-surgeon who hated music; in 1693, when he was 8, the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels

heard the boy play the organ at one of the Sunday services, filled his pocket with gold coins and insisted that he was allowed to study music. Handel was put in the care of Friedrich Zachow, the organist of the Lutheran church in Halle, who soon realized he had a genius on his hands. After three years Zachow confessed there was nothing more he could teach the boy. ... [In England, received royal pension from George I and] was able to embark on a series of [Italian-style] operas underwritten by the nobility and cast with the finest European singers. ... He was, unassailably, the most powerful musician in the land. ... [Later, after the Italian opera fell out of fashion and he suffered bankruptcy, a stroke, and a breakdown,] he changed course. He wrote himself back into financial success and public favour by resurrecting a genre that was relatively unknown in England – the oratorio. These were dramatized Bible stories set to music of the same verve as the operas but with massive choruses and grand orchestral writing ... [In 1741] he wrote Messiah, completed in a feverish twenty-five days, one of man's grandest musical achievements and most remarkable bursts of creativity. (Jeremy Nicholas, The Classic FM Guide to Classical Music (Pavilion, 1997), pp.152-54)

The first of many concerts for the benefit of the [Coram] Hospital was given on 27 May 1749, when Handel 'Generously & Charitably offered a Performance of Vocal and Instrumental Musick', the proceeds to be used for finishing the chapel. ... the 'pieces composed for the occasion' included the 'Foundling Hospital Anthem'. This was the beginning of Handel's long association with the Foundling Hospital. ... [On 1 May 1750] Handel ... conducted the first of many performances of the Messiah that he was to give for the Hospital's benefit. ... the Messiah became an annual tradition at the Hospital, and over the years it produced substantial sums for the charity's benefit. (Coram's Children, pp.69-70)

2.5 Charles Burney (1726-1814): historian, musician and composer; father of Fanny Burney (1752-1840); in 1774, his proposal to establish national music school at the Hospital turned down by Board of Governors (Coram's Children, pp.230-31) – teaching of music not encouraged in Hospital until 1770s, although exceptions made for some blind children, including Mercy Draper (in 1773).
2.6 Alexander Ashbrook and Thomas Ledbury are fictional characters, but perhaps partly based on real people who taught singing in the Hospital:

sometime in the 1760s William Harrison, one of the most active Governors, began teaching 'such children as were capable of instruction to sing Psalms, Hymns and Anthems in a manner suitable to their capacities and situations'. The Governors took no official notice of his activities until 1771 ... Then the Committee gave him its official thanks and asked him to continue his 'same kind Office' in collaboration with a newly appointed organist whose duties included teaching some of the children music. ... But the Governors still did not see fit to make such instruction general and resolved that no more than twenty children be taught music and singing. ... In making its decisions, especially in respect to the instruction of Mercy Draper in singing, the Committee had the benefit of the advice of John Stanley [1713-86], one of the Governors, who was a musician and composer of considerable ability and who was himself blind. Stanley generously offered to teach the girl without charge ... In addition to promoting the career of Mercy Draper, ... Stanley also played the organ in the chapel on special occasions, wrote three hymns or anthems especially for the Hospital's use, and directed the performances of the Messiah from 1769-1777. (Coram's Children, p.229)

2.7 For Mercy Draper's sad story, see Coram's Children, pp.238-39.
2.8 Sarah Wood [who deals with Otis Gardiner in novel): chief nurse of Foundling Hospital, accused of 'dishonesty, immodest behaviour and drunkenness'; dismissed in 1741 for improperly managing Hospital (Coram's Children, p.52).

3. Eighteenth-century childhood, inside and outside Coram's Hospital.
3.1 See 'The Treatment of Foundlings at Home and Abroad' – general mistreatment of foundlings in parish orphanages; 'Disposing of the Children, 1760-1771' – stories of apprenticed children suffering physical/sexual abuse from their masters; 'Conclusion: A Child of this Hospital' - information on what happened to Coram children (Coram's Children, pp.3-15, 124-36, 236-48).
3.2 For children's education in Hospital, see 'A Christian and Useful Education' (pp.219-35): should children of lower classes be kept ignorant or educated? boys and girls taught to read and write in Hospital - for religious instruction and to be useful; Governors 'allotted time for play, not play for the fun of it but play for a purpose: to build strong, healthy bodies' (p.225); religious instruction included Catechism and singing; Hospital's hymnbook included version of fifty-first Psalm that contains following lines:

Wash off my foul offence,
And cleanse me from my Sin;
For I confess my crime, and see
How great my sin has been.

In Guilt each part was form'd
Of all this sinful frame;
In Guilt I was conceiv'd and born
The Heir of Sin and Shame. (quoted in Coram's Children, p.232)

3.3 Regime and environment of Hospital relatively benign; McClure stresses

the influence exerted upon the children by the total environment of the Hospital, with its cleanliness and order and a daily exposure to beauty such as most poor children never experienced. Day after day the children saw specimens of the Hospital's great art collection hanging in their dining rooms, as well as those displayed in other rooms through which they passed from time to time. Week after week they heard and sang the music of the church, much of it of high quality. And in spring and summer, as they walked about the Hospital's grounds, they beheld colourful masses of flowers (Coram's Children, p.235).

4. Coram Boy reworks lot of information from Coram's Children; set c.1741-1750: Part Two includes Handel's first performance of Messiah at Hospital (1750), hence first part must begin about 1741 (with flashbacks to c.1737, when Thomas first arrives at Cathedral school).

5. Vivid representations/glimpses of variety of eighteenth-century childhoods (compare Fielding's Governess (1749)).
5.1 14-year-old Meshak: an 'idiot' who, despite brutalised life and work, has strange, rich inner life and sense of compassion/beauty.
5.2 Numerous illegitimate children and babies of 'fallen' women of both lower and higher classes that Otis Gardiner either kills or sells.
5.3 In Gloucester, Meshak 'picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night' (p.36); walking through London, Meshak and Otis

ignored the drunks and down-and-outs ... completely invisible to them. (pp.138-9)

5.4 Boy choristers of Gloucester Cathedral - both privileged and cheap labour: 'They had been up since five ...' (p.41).
5.5 Thomas, son of ship's carpenter, entered choir aged 8, now 13 (poor but loving family, pp.50-51, 59-60); Alexander, now 14, heir of large estate.
5.6 En route to Ashbrook, Thomas sees men, women and children in village and working on the estate: p.53; pp.58-59; pp.89-90.
5.7 Privileged world of Ashbrook children (pp.60-74): home education, play, fun, toys, stories, music, play cottage, horse-riding, etc; but constrained by father, primogeniture, responsibility to estate, respectability.
5.8 Chapter 6 ('The Orphanage'): debate about best way to treat abandoned children; parish system for caring for poor and foundlings (pp.77-82); 'it was the plight of little children which exercised [Mrs Ashbrook] the most: children who had been abandoned, exploited, maimed, orphaned and abused' (p.77); images of children of parish orphanage before and after Mrs Ashbrook's intervention: her first visit to orphanage on her estate reveals terrible conditions (pp.82-86).
5.9 First encounter with Coram Hospital in chapter 11 - glimpses of positive image of childhood: but Meshak aggressively excluded, and Otis disposes of Coram boys who cannot be apprenticed (p.147).

6. Narrative technique: 3rd person, with use of focalisation (see Montgomery, et al, 'Narrative Point of View', in Ways of Reading, 3rd edition, pp.268-73).
6.1 Coram Boy, pp.146-49.

7. Part two also examines condition of children: in Coram's Hospital; as apprentices in grand houses; on slave ships; as black children treated as toys in fashionable society; as merchandise to be exported virtually as slaves, etc.
7.1 Novel draws all these childhoods together in complex plot; NB narrative technique switches between points of view of the various children.
7.2 Scene of growing intimacy between children in play cottage on estate: Rousseauean childhood in (illusory?) independence from adults - country estate (only apparently) sealed off from horrors of poor and urban childhoods (Melissa and her child would suffer same fate as countless others in Otis Gardiner's trade, except for Meshak's strange delusion).
7.3 Roots of problems in novel = sex-marriage-money-reputation: all main children in first part are 13-14 years old; sexual attraction triggers plot – between Alexander and Melissa, but also Meshak's devotion to Melissa and jealousy towards Alexander.
7.4 Childhood in novel shaped by/interacts with class, race, gender, sex, money, country/city, religion, theories about childhood and problems of poverty, institutional responses to poverty and abandoned children, etc.

8. For two views of way charity treated abandoned children of poor at end of C18, see Blake's contrasting 'Holy Thursday' poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789/1794) – which also involve children singing hymns.

9. Intertextual names: Meshak and Aaron (named after biblical characters) (see Montgomery, et al, 'Intertextuality and Allusion', in Ways of Reading, 3rd edition, pp.156-67) - implications of allusions?
9.1 In Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar (king of Babylon) besieges Jerusalem and carries off some children:

in whom was no blemish, but well-favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. ... among these were ... Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abed-nego ... As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom (1:3-17). [the last three refuse to worship a golden image and survive Nebuchadnezzar's furnace (3:8-30)]

9.2 Aaron = brother of Moses who performs a priestly role; helped Moses lead 'Children of Israel' out of slavery in Egypt.

Seminar

In your preparation for the seminar, concentrate on any one aspect of the novel as a whole and be prepared to discuss it in the seminar. You should be prepared to read out one or two quotations that illustrate your chosen aspect and to analyse the quotations in order to open up general group discussion.

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