Anybody familiar with "Uncle"?

[Guy Berger]

Whatever happened to Uncle?

Dec 20th 2005

From The Economist print edition

The story of a neglected classic

THE British are not noted for their warmth towards children. Britain is the country that invented the boarding school for seven-year-olds and the maxim that “children should be seen and not heard”. How odd then, that it should also have been the source of so many of the classics of children's literature. From “Winnie the Pooh” to “Alice in Wonderland” and from J.R.Tolkien to J.K.Rowling, British authors and storytellers have stuffed the children's sections of the western world's bookstores and provided Hollywood with a stream of material.

Yet not all the gems of Britain's children's literature have enjoyed endless reprints and the Hollywood treatment. The “Uncle” stories of J.P. Martin, which focus on the doings of the eponymous hero, an elephant and benevolent dictator, were first published in the 1960s, and still enjoy a cult following. But they are now out of print. Indeed much of the “Uncle” canon is virtually unobtainable. Second-hand copies are snapped up by fanatical devotees and first editions go for hundreds of pounds.

The slide of Uncle books into obscurity would have surprised some of the original reviewers. The Times Literary Supplement called the books “spellbinding”, the Observer predicted that they could become “a classic in the great English nonsense tradition”, while the Times Educational Supplement likened the books to Alice in Wonderland, a comparison that has been made many times since.

The Uncle books certainly share some of the surrealism of Lewis Carroll. The hero is a millionaire who exercises one-elephant rule over a gigantic, moated castle called Homeward. His domain is so enormous that large parts of the castle—which is linked together by a fantastic array of lifts, railways and secret passages—are unknown even to its owner. Much of the books is taken up with accounts of expeditions to different parts of Homeward, which is populated by hundreds of animals, dwarves, ghosts and other eccentrics. Uncle, who strides around in a purple dressing gown, also has his own devoted (indeed sycophantic) entourage.

But across the moat from Homeward—and sadly within plain sight of Uncle—lies Badfort, an unpleasant shanty town of run-down huts, inhabited by Uncle's enemies, “the Badfort crowd”. While all is elegance and magnificence over at Homeward, the Badfort crowd, led by Beaver Hateman and his relatives Nailrod, Filljug and Sigismund, live a sordid existence. They wander around barefoot and unshaven, dressed in suits of sacking, and living off “skob fish” extracted from a dank stretch of nearby water called Gaby's Marsh, while quaffing an oily drink called Black Tom. The Hatemans also have followers—a ghost called Hootman, Jellytussle (a quivering mass of greyish-blue jelly) and Hitmouse, a tiny skewer-carrying journalist who is forever scribbling disagreeable thoughts into his “hating book”. Together the Badfort crowd plot endlessly against the inhabitants of Homeward, hurl insults at Uncle and stage drunken feasts.

Given the debauchery and peculiarity of much of the Uncle stories, it is faintly surprising to discover that their author, J. P. Martin, was a Methodist minister. His stories were not originally intended to be written down. Like many children's classics, including the stories of Beatrix Potter, they were made up to entertain children known to the author. Martin's grandchildren later recalled that when he told them his stories, he sometimes laughed so much at his own jokes that he was unable to go on. Martin himself claimed that many of the episodes came to him in his dreams. It was only when his children were grown up that Martin was persuaded to write down some of his stories. Stella, his daughter, tried to find a publisher for over 20 years—and the first book was published only in 1964, when Martin was already 84 years old.

Uncle's disappearance continues to mystify his devotees. The books contain many of the elements of the best English children's literature. There is the blurring of the line between the human and the animal kingdom, made familiar by Beatrix Potter and A.A. Milne. There is the quirky humour of “Toad of Toad Hall” or “Alice”. And the books are illustrated by the wonderful drawings of Quentin Blake, whose illustrations helped make the stories of Roald Dahl come alive. Indeed the difficulty of obtaining first editions of “Uncle” may owe as much to the popularity of Mr Blake's drawings as to the writing. The Uncle books were one of Mr Blake's first commissions; although at first he found the character of Uncle overbearing and pompous, he swiftly came to appreciate the books, and the huge scope they offered for imaginative illustration.

Like all followers of a cult, “Uncle” fans find it hard to understand why the world does not share their devotion. Deprived of reprints of their favourite works, “Uncle” devotees have to make do with discussion groups on the internet, where they discuss the best bits and swap conspiracy theories about why publishers unaccountably ignore their favourite title.

By the early 1970s—even as the sixth and last book in the series (“Uncle and the Battle of Badgertown”) was being published—it was already clear that the books had failed to gather a mass audience. Richard Ingrams, a well-known English satirist and devotee of Uncle, speculated then that “Uncle's neglect may be partly due to the fact that in the supposedly egalitarian age in which we live he is an unfashionable figure—a millionaire elephant in a purple dressing gown, exercising one-man rule over Homeward.” There is some evidence that Uncle did indeed fall victim to what would now be called “political correctness”. Valerie Kettley, who worked as the editor of the last two books at Jonathan Cape, recalls that although the hardback editions came out to “considerable acclaim”, plans for a Puffin paperback fell foul of an influential children's publisher who regarded the books as “fascistic” This assertion seems particularly silly, since “Uncle” is clearly meant to be in many ways a figure of fun. It would certainly have surprised the reviewer in The Listener magazine, who came to the equally bizarre conclusion that the books were “a denunciation of capitalism”.

But there may also be more prosaic reasons for the neglect of the Uncle books: they simply do not sell well enough. The latest publisher to discover this sad truth was Red Fox, a children's imprint of Random House. Charlie Sheppard, an editor at Random House, was intrigued by the stream of letters she was getting from Uncle devotees, demanding that Jonathan Cape (the original publishers, and now part of the Random House empire) reprint the books. Her curiosity piqued, she dug them out of the archives and reprinted “Uncle” in 2000 and again in 2002. But sales were poor. With so many books, television series and computer games competing for the attention of children, there is an element of luck needed for a book to take off. Yet even the real Uncle diehards might reluctantly acknowledge that perhaps there is something in the books themselves that limits their appeal. A comparison with Babar, the great French classic by Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff, is enlightening.

Both Babar and Uncle are wise leaders, adored and revered by their followers. But while the dividing lines between goodies and baddies is clear in Babar—Babar is meant to be unambiguously respected and adored—things are a bit more subtle in “Uncle”. In fact, the Uncle stories could almost be read as a parody of Babar. On the one hand, the elephant leader is undeniably a goodie and his rivals from the “Badfort crowd” are undeniably bad—gaining their living from a variety of petty swindles. On the other hand, Uncle is humourless and pompous, and many of the barbs slung at him by the Badfort crowd have an uncomfortable element of truth. In one scene in the second book, “Uncle” is attempting to hold a dignified garden party in the grounds of his castle (clearly modelled on a British royal garden party), while across the moat, the Badfort crowd stage a cruel parody of Uncle's event:

They had large hams, loaves of bread and buckets of tea, and soon began to eat these things in a hideous imitation of the polite party so near to them.

Beaver Hateman took a well-cooked ham between his fingers and thumb, and said in a high-pitched voice as he passed it to Nailrod:

“Have another sandwich, Count!”

“No, thank you, but won't you take one of these little cakes?” replied Nailrod, balancing a whole loaf on a very small egg-cup. “They're so light!”

Hitmouse brought Filljug a plum-cake on an imitation lace mat torn out of a newspaper.

“I'm such a small eater”, said Filljug in a high squeaky voice. “It always takes about twenty bites for me to eat a macaroon.”

Uncle was getting very hot. There was no doubt that the Hateman gang were deliberately insulting him.

Then Beaver Hateman took a whole bucket of tea, and in some mysterious way held it in the crook of his little finger.

“I'm so glad I've got this little attachment on the end of my trunk. It's so handy for holding egg-shell china!” he said in a loud offensive voice.

Still Uncle controlled himself, and went on eating, though with a faint heart, the cress sandwiches that were set before him.

Much of the humour in “Uncle” is so quirky and understated that it is more likely to appeal to an adult than a child. For example, in most successful children's literature, a haunted tower would be genuinely spooky. In Uncle's castle, however, it is a great disappointment. One room is said to be inhabited by a ghost known as the White Terror. But the phantom turns out to be only a foot high, and stands on a bedside table, muttering monotonously, “I did it! I took the strawberry jam!” Quentin Blake, the book's illustrator, muses that “The books have always had terrific fans, but they have never attracted a mass following because they are so eccentric.” Charlie Sheppard at Random House agrees that “there just may not be enough truly eccentric children out there.” Even the most ardent Uncle fans would probably also concede that the stories suffer from a certain lack of narrative structure.

Are the “Uncle” books, therefore, doomed to disappear—surviving only in antiquarian bookshops and on internet discussion groups? Not necessarily. Developments in modern publishing mean that many publishers can in theory now keep huge back-lists of books, and print out single editions on demand—a service that is already offered by some big publishers, such as Time Warner Books. Ms Sheppard at Random House says that a “bespoke book” of this sort need only cost a few pounds more than one published as part of a normal print run. She points out that the “Uncle” books—with a tiny but fanatical following—would be perfect candidates for such “printing-on-demand”. J.P.Martin, who invented such wonders as the “fish-frying academy” and the “dwarfs' drinking fountains”, would probably have appreciated the idea of the single-book publisher.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I never came across these books

[David Williams]

Great stories. Unsung and out of print for years, but at least some of the stories have been back in print over the last 3 or 4 years, and even more seem to be available at the moment - see Amazon UK, listed under J Percival Martin. Very British, very odd, and genuinely enjoyable for adults.