It’s over two decades since I last read Joan Aiken’s classic novel for older children, ‘The Wolves of Willoughby Chase’. But I was in a second-hand book shop with my grandchildren, and saw a good quality paperback edition of this book for just a couple of pounds. I ascertained that they did not already have it, and bought it for them.
Not long afterwards, sitting in a tea shop waiting for them to return with their parents after more perusing of books, I picked it up to skim through the first chapters. I realised that I had entirely forgotten how it started, and found myself reading avidly. I enjoyed it so much that I picked it up at every odd moment and then finished it in the evening when the grandchildren were in bed.
What an excellent story this is! It’s set in 1832, supposedly in a period when wolves had returned to the UK, although in fact that did not happen. There are two young heroines of the book, Sylvia and Bonnie, who - I suppose - are about ten or eleven, although their ages are not mentioned.
We meet Sylvia first, in a train on her way to stay with her cousin. The two have never met, and their circumstances are widely varying. Bonnie lives in a mansion (Willoughby Chase) with her wealthy and indulgent parents, and lots of loving servants. Sylvia has been living with her aunt Jane, as she is an orphan, but Jane is becoming frail and has asked her brother to take over Sylvia’s care. Jane is very poor, but proud, and refuses to let her brother know that she struggles to find enough to eat. Sylvia hates to leave her - the two are very close - but it appears that she has no choice,
In the train Sylvia meets a man called Mr Grimshaw who seems quite friendly but very curious about her circumstances… and then he’s knocked unconscious, so her kind cousin says he must stay at Willoughby Chase until he recovers. Bonnie’s life is not entirely happy: her mother has been very ill, and her father is taking her away to warmer climes. A distant cousin, Miss Slighcarp, is coming to be their guardian and governess, and their early impressions of her are not good…
And, indeed, when Bonnie’s parents have departed, Miss Slighcarp proceeds to dismiss the loyal staff, and to subject the girls to severe punishments including missing meals - which are very plain, sometimes little more than dry bread. Bonnie is hot-tempered and furious that Miss Slighcarp starts wearing her mother’s clothes and acting as if she owns the place. But disaster happens… and life gets worse and worse.
A lot of exciting escapades and adventures are packed into a book of fewer than 200 pages, which I read in little more than a couple of hours in all. I recalled the outcome, of course; it’s a children’s book so inevitably things turn out well, but not before extreme danger, dramatic escapes, and some very unpleasant treatment by the book’s wicked characters, of whom there are several.
The writing is excellent, the children’s characters well-developed, and several very likeable secondary characters such as James, Pattern and Simon. Miss Slighcarp and her cronies are caricatured in their wickedness of course, but their dastardly plot is not unbelievable. Bonnie’s situation, being looked after by servants and treated differently by those of the ‘lower’ classes, seems old-fashioned now, but for a book set nearly 200 years ago, written 60 years ago, the conversations and emotions are quite up-to-date.
I hope my grandchildren will enjoy this book at some point, and have no hesitation in recommending it highly for children from the age of about nine or ten upwards; it’s an excellent book to read aloud, as I recall from the past, one that sets the scene well - even if the wolves were not real - and which I enjoyed myself as a child. Recommended also to adults who like reading good quality children's fiction.
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