William the Conqueror by Richmal Crompton
"William returned to the contemplation of his pile of soot."
William the Conqueror by Richmal Crompton (Newnes, 1926)
Went away for the weekend. Forgot to pack a book. And there I found this, just begging to be investigated.
I can’t recall if I read any of the William books as a child. As an adult, I’m pretty sure the closest I’d come before this was the affectionate parody in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (working title: William the Antichrist). In the absence of actually knowing anything, then, I’d assumed that William slotted neatly into the Who Remembers Proper Binmen? moodboard of reactionary nostalgia. Who remembers when children were children? Mischievous, grubby, outside.
This isn’t quite right. For a start, the timing is broader than that. The majority of binmenist nostalgia focuses on life post-WW2 - well, focuses is the wrong word. Gestures airily and vaguely towards, perhaps. But while the last of the William books was published in 1970, and the most notable TV adaptations were first shown in the mid-70s, this one was published in 1926, and so takes place against a backdrop of flappers and early motorcars and the between the wars optimism of a country that didn’t know it was between the wars.
In any case, what really struck me about the play here was the universality of it. Broadly speaking, the ur-form of a William story is something like: William or one of the Outlaws hears or reads about something that sounds fun, be it pirates or chimney-sweeping or robbing from the rich to feed the poor; they attempt to reenact it as best they can, using whatever and whoever they find in the village; there is a big misunderstanding; hilarity ensues.
And this still happens! My daughter is three, so a fair bit younger than William, and this is 2023, so she’s had a fair bit more screen time. But when she plays, she enacts, she reenacts, she remixes, she recreates. Making stories from stories. Daddy, make Tedward talk. Tedward is Little Red Riding Hood. And you are Daddy Bear. And I am Rapunzel. And Bunny is Elsa. Freeze! Unfreeze!
Another thing I hadn’t quite appreciated: Richmal Crompton was both very funny and very clever. Children, presumably, came to the William books for the hijinks, but for the adults there’s a delicate satirical thread woven through the antics. It’s a bit like The Simpsons, when The Simpsons was good: ten-year-olds laughing at Bart, and forty-year-olds laughing at Homer. Only with more cream buns.
This includes, most wonderfully, the following.
“Terrible,” sighed Mr. Monks, the Vicar. “The modern child is utterly devoid of those qualities of sensitiveness and humility and reverence that one used to associate with childhood. There is a boy in this very village—a boy of the name of William Brown——” he shuddered as at many painful memories.
Even in Arcadia, the reactionary nostalgists! Years before the proper binmen, and even more years before the Proper Binmenists, Crompton had all of their numbers. Children were always proper children then, children are never proper children now. Only the details change.