WWI: Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce
Mar. 6th, 2025 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraFrom Billabong to London
Jim & Wally
Captain Jim
The Billabong series is largely set in an Australian cattle station run by the Linton family - David, the widowed father, and his two exemplary children, Jim and Norah. I tried these as a child but didn’t like them, and I don’t like them any more as an adult - pretty much the only “small towns and farming are so much better than cities” canon I actually enjoy is Stardew Valley :D Also, the main characters are relentlessly smug and hideously racist. But for my talk they were extremely useful, as three of the books directly address WWI and two of them came out during it.
From Billabong to London, published 1915. We’re in the early days of WWI and Jim desperately wants to enlist, but his father has asked him to stay and work on the station; his school friend Wally is also keen but too young. Fortunately David Linton needs to go to England to sort out an inheritance issue and so takes everyone with him, relenting in his advice to Jim and also meaning that Jim can enlist in England and head to the Front rather than “be shelved in some out-of-the-way corner of the earth” like Egypt or Malta, and Wally will be able to join up as well as England is less particular about ages. And Norah, of course, comes too.
Most of the book is the boat trip, which really does get across how massive these trips were, complicated still further by wartime. They embark at Melbourne, sail to Adelaide, then across to Durban (on the way Norah wakes up in the night with toothache and spots a German spy signalling from the ship, whom the boys then catch), then Cape Town with a rather nicely described bit with a terrible thick fog and a near collision, then get captured by Germans on their way over to Las Palmas (and saved by a British cruiser), and finally berth at Falmouth. In Durban Jim and Wally also get mugged by a dodgy Zulu, and I have no sympathy for them because Jim has just said any number of atrocious things about indigenous Australians and black Africans. If anything the man should have hit him harder. There is a bit of “ripped from the headlines” with the Emden German cruiser being sunk by the Sydney, the Royal Australian Navy’s first victory, and then we’re in London (which Bruce obviously doesn’t like but can’t really say anything too nasty about) and the boys sign up.
Jim and Wally, published 1916, has a fantastic start - probably the first published fictional description of a gas attack on Australian troops, and it's terrifying and effective. Jim and Wally are both affected and medically evacuated to London. Once again I would care more about them if they were totally different characters. Prior to the gas, Jim is (briefly) moping that he hadn’t been in Gallipoli (“the fight of his boyish dreams -wild charging, hand to hand work, a fleeing enemy, not like this hole-and-corner trench existence”) and Wally’s being chastised for sneaking out to collect Boche helmets and other touching souvenirs. The gas attack itself is described as “that most malignant device with which Science had blackened War”, because obviously slaughtering each other with bullets and bayonets is positively a shining beacon of manliness, but at no point do we actually see the boys kill anyone. Anyway, Norah and her dad quickly get them out of unhealthy London and over to County Cork, where Bruce herself spent the war (her husband was a Major but due to a “strained heart” was training recruits rather than fighting.
On the way over the Billapeople meet an Irish priest, come home from New York to die, and as soon as someone mentions the Lusitania a German submarine sufaces to send a torpedo at the ship, and after all the excitement the priest dies heroically with his eyes on his homeland. Much of the Irish stuff is obviously drawn from life (Norah’s quest for pins, extended fishing sequences) and Bruce’s brogue is less irritating than some, but she swiftly introduces Sir John O’Neill, a crippled scion of the nobility who has consoled himself for his condition by travelling around the world shooting animals but now feels terrible because he can’t fight. Wally and Jim obligingly stumble across a cache of petrol for enemy submarines in a sea cave, and Norah overhears two unpleasant men in rough clothes speaking German, and they kindly present the whole thing to Sir John so he can lead the attack and capture, and die heroically at the end to make up for being so useless, and it’s all very touching as long as you don’t think that possibly people with disabilities might not want to die even if they are apparently totally useless.
In Captain Jim, Norah inherits a large property from Sir John (obviously not entailed) and uses it to set up a Home for Tired People, to pep them up before they head back to the Front. There are issues with servants and deserving families, but eventually Jim and Wally themselves have to go back to the Front - and then Jim goes missing, presumed killed. Bruce is not bad at action scenes but her characters are so determined to take things on the chin with a carefree quip that it makes it hard to empathise with them - the escape tunnel sequence in In Memoriam, which I had issues with, is still much better at actually having characters with qualms and doubts than the one here. It finishes before the Armistice but (as it was published after) ends with everyone together and sure that they will win and return home.
The Cub
Captain Cub
Brigid and the Cub
Turner and Bruce shared a publisher but Turner is much more interested in cities and in poverty (and how to fix it) and, interestingly, in science - when her characters do head off to the country it's because of a new dam and the subsequent Murrumbidgee irrigation area. I like her stuff more than Bruce's but could have done with at least 80% less romance (as for racism it's hard to tell in these books, which I don't think had any nonwhite characters, but the First Nations character in Seven Little Australians gets significantly better treatment than Bruce's, and interestingly a First Nations story was cut from the book for years).
The Cub, published 1915. Starts with everyone on a ship out to Australia and moves rapidly into backstory with a bang as Brigid, an English girl attending a convent school in Belgium, is evacuated as the Germans invade, gives up her seat on a vegetable cart to an elderly lady and takes refuge with a village family (crippled dad, five year old daughter, mum and newborn baby) only for the Germans to break in and kill everyone except Brigid and the daughter, Josie. Brigid and Josie stumble on through the ravaged landscape until rescued; Brigid’s society-oriented mum wants Josie to go to an orphanage, but Brigid uses her own money to buy her passage on the boat, and is now struggling with how to look after her when she (and most of the other passengers) want to spoil the little Belgian orphan (there’s a bit where Josie is taking about six baths a day because they’re all so pleasant on board the ship :D ). They encounter the Calthrops, a wealthy family, and the younger son, John, nicknamed the Cub because of his total lack of social graces, academic or sporting ability; what the Cub wants is social equality (“andend to this rich-and-poor business[..] I’m going to build things up in the world, not destroy them”) , he has no interest in the war, and he has built himself a treehouse at home for a lower class friend of his, Harry Gale (“Galileo”) to use for his inventions. What has Galileo invented? Surprisingly given the publication date Galileo has invented a mobile telephone, which he feels will bring everyone closer together and stop lovers being separated. The older son Alec is keen to sign up, but his mother is appalled at the thought, and there’s a rather nicely done bit where she attempts to get the Cub to sign up instead and the Cub is forced to realise that although he’s always assumed his mum loves all of her children equally she on the other hand obviously considers him expendable.
They reach Australia without capturing a German spy (most unusual for boat trips these days) but there is a chunk of them running without lights to avoid the Germans that is effectively tense. Alec signs up and promptly dies heroically; the Cub changes his mind (citing Belgian atrocities) and, although acknowledging it’s against his principles, attempts to enlist. And is turned down for being unfit, but immediately sets out on a course of physical fitness and is accepted.
Captain Cub is the weakest of the three because the Cub is fighting and Brigid is in Australia and there’s a lot of monologuing (in letter, in person) about love and honour and social justice, which is not to say that I don’t have feelings about these but they do go on a bit. More explicitly romancey than the first book, irritatingly lacking in action, but still readable.
In Brigid and the Cub, Brigid and the Cub’s mum head over to Paris to see the Cub when he’s on leave - and then his mother is injured badly after a pilot crashes into their hotel, so they end up staying longer. Brigid is desperate to do something to help the war effort, but is rejected because a) the Cub’s mum is very needy and wants her at all hours and b) she looks far too wealthy. She ends up being allowed to help at a home for refugees and orphans - but she has to help “with the rough” and in the gardens, rather than the children themselves, until she proves herself. Enthusiastic but misguided, she stuffs up initially (blacking boots with blacklead - for cleaning stoves etc) but eventually wins the grumpy staff member over after digging up the crops a muddy tennis court planted with artichokes in shocking winter weather.
Meanwhile the Cub has a nervous breakdown (Galileo shows up at Brigid’s apartment in Paris and is all, “You must be strong, don’t be upset etc” for agonising moments before actually telling her what’s happened) and is given time off to recover, which he manages physically but mentally he has now lost his belief that he will survive the war and will not go to pieces the second the shooting starts. I found this very interesting but Turner skips through it in favour of everyone ending up at a sort of hotel/resort at which Brigid and the Cub each think the other is now interested in someone else and all Is Almost Lost until Galileo shows up with some wedding gifts and his rejected by the Patent Office mobile telephone prototypes (they point out some flaws and say it needs a couple of decades more work, which he belatedly realises is encouragement), and in the denouement both Brigid and the Cub whisper their concerns to their individual telephones before meeting outside at sunrise and resolving all their issues. And we end with the Armistice, announced by a girl on a white pony, riding through the countryside with a banner :D
The Bruce books are all on Project Gutenberg but although quite a few Turners are there, none of the Cub books are. I'd picked up two over the years but only managed to track down the third about three days before my actual talk. Turner, to me, has a more interesting take on the war - the Cub initially doesn't want to join, and although he fights well he also ends up having a breakdown, something Bruce's characters would disdain (she draws a clear distinction between the Tired People who just need a boost and those who become "jumpy" under fire and fail to harden into men). I am however aware that my own personal biases in favour of cities and science and civilisation may be interfering...
Jim & Wally
Captain Jim
The Billabong series is largely set in an Australian cattle station run by the Linton family - David, the widowed father, and his two exemplary children, Jim and Norah. I tried these as a child but didn’t like them, and I don’t like them any more as an adult - pretty much the only “small towns and farming are so much better than cities” canon I actually enjoy is Stardew Valley :D Also, the main characters are relentlessly smug and hideously racist. But for my talk they were extremely useful, as three of the books directly address WWI and two of them came out during it.
From Billabong to London, published 1915. We’re in the early days of WWI and Jim desperately wants to enlist, but his father has asked him to stay and work on the station; his school friend Wally is also keen but too young. Fortunately David Linton needs to go to England to sort out an inheritance issue and so takes everyone with him, relenting in his advice to Jim and also meaning that Jim can enlist in England and head to the Front rather than “be shelved in some out-of-the-way corner of the earth” like Egypt or Malta, and Wally will be able to join up as well as England is less particular about ages. And Norah, of course, comes too.
Most of the book is the boat trip, which really does get across how massive these trips were, complicated still further by wartime. They embark at Melbourne, sail to Adelaide, then across to Durban (on the way Norah wakes up in the night with toothache and spots a German spy signalling from the ship, whom the boys then catch), then Cape Town with a rather nicely described bit with a terrible thick fog and a near collision, then get captured by Germans on their way over to Las Palmas (and saved by a British cruiser), and finally berth at Falmouth. In Durban Jim and Wally also get mugged by a dodgy Zulu, and I have no sympathy for them because Jim has just said any number of atrocious things about indigenous Australians and black Africans. If anything the man should have hit him harder. There is a bit of “ripped from the headlines” with the Emden German cruiser being sunk by the Sydney, the Royal Australian Navy’s first victory, and then we’re in London (which Bruce obviously doesn’t like but can’t really say anything too nasty about) and the boys sign up.
Jim and Wally, published 1916, has a fantastic start - probably the first published fictional description of a gas attack on Australian troops, and it's terrifying and effective. Jim and Wally are both affected and medically evacuated to London. Once again I would care more about them if they were totally different characters. Prior to the gas, Jim is (briefly) moping that he hadn’t been in Gallipoli (“the fight of his boyish dreams -wild charging, hand to hand work, a fleeing enemy, not like this hole-and-corner trench existence”) and Wally’s being chastised for sneaking out to collect Boche helmets and other touching souvenirs. The gas attack itself is described as “that most malignant device with which Science had blackened War”, because obviously slaughtering each other with bullets and bayonets is positively a shining beacon of manliness, but at no point do we actually see the boys kill anyone. Anyway, Norah and her dad quickly get them out of unhealthy London and over to County Cork, where Bruce herself spent the war (her husband was a Major but due to a “strained heart” was training recruits rather than fighting.
On the way over the Billapeople meet an Irish priest, come home from New York to die, and as soon as someone mentions the Lusitania a German submarine sufaces to send a torpedo at the ship, and after all the excitement the priest dies heroically with his eyes on his homeland. Much of the Irish stuff is obviously drawn from life (Norah’s quest for pins, extended fishing sequences) and Bruce’s brogue is less irritating than some, but she swiftly introduces Sir John O’Neill, a crippled scion of the nobility who has consoled himself for his condition by travelling around the world shooting animals but now feels terrible because he can’t fight. Wally and Jim obligingly stumble across a cache of petrol for enemy submarines in a sea cave, and Norah overhears two unpleasant men in rough clothes speaking German, and they kindly present the whole thing to Sir John so he can lead the attack and capture, and die heroically at the end to make up for being so useless, and it’s all very touching as long as you don’t think that possibly people with disabilities might not want to die even if they are apparently totally useless.
In Captain Jim, Norah inherits a large property from Sir John (obviously not entailed) and uses it to set up a Home for Tired People, to pep them up before they head back to the Front. There are issues with servants and deserving families, but eventually Jim and Wally themselves have to go back to the Front - and then Jim goes missing, presumed killed. Bruce is not bad at action scenes but her characters are so determined to take things on the chin with a carefree quip that it makes it hard to empathise with them - the escape tunnel sequence in In Memoriam, which I had issues with, is still much better at actually having characters with qualms and doubts than the one here. It finishes before the Armistice but (as it was published after) ends with everyone together and sure that they will win and return home.
The Cub
Captain Cub
Brigid and the Cub
Turner and Bruce shared a publisher but Turner is much more interested in cities and in poverty (and how to fix it) and, interestingly, in science - when her characters do head off to the country it's because of a new dam and the subsequent Murrumbidgee irrigation area. I like her stuff more than Bruce's but could have done with at least 80% less romance (as for racism it's hard to tell in these books, which I don't think had any nonwhite characters, but the First Nations character in Seven Little Australians gets significantly better treatment than Bruce's, and interestingly a First Nations story was cut from the book for years).
The Cub, published 1915. Starts with everyone on a ship out to Australia and moves rapidly into backstory with a bang as Brigid, an English girl attending a convent school in Belgium, is evacuated as the Germans invade, gives up her seat on a vegetable cart to an elderly lady and takes refuge with a village family (crippled dad, five year old daughter, mum and newborn baby) only for the Germans to break in and kill everyone except Brigid and the daughter, Josie. Brigid and Josie stumble on through the ravaged landscape until rescued; Brigid’s society-oriented mum wants Josie to go to an orphanage, but Brigid uses her own money to buy her passage on the boat, and is now struggling with how to look after her when she (and most of the other passengers) want to spoil the little Belgian orphan (there’s a bit where Josie is taking about six baths a day because they’re all so pleasant on board the ship :D ). They encounter the Calthrops, a wealthy family, and the younger son, John, nicknamed the Cub because of his total lack of social graces, academic or sporting ability; what the Cub wants is social equality (“andend to this rich-and-poor business[..] I’m going to build things up in the world, not destroy them”) , he has no interest in the war, and he has built himself a treehouse at home for a lower class friend of his, Harry Gale (“Galileo”) to use for his inventions. What has Galileo invented? Surprisingly given the publication date Galileo has invented a mobile telephone, which he feels will bring everyone closer together and stop lovers being separated. The older son Alec is keen to sign up, but his mother is appalled at the thought, and there’s a rather nicely done bit where she attempts to get the Cub to sign up instead and the Cub is forced to realise that although he’s always assumed his mum loves all of her children equally she on the other hand obviously considers him expendable.
They reach Australia without capturing a German spy (most unusual for boat trips these days) but there is a chunk of them running without lights to avoid the Germans that is effectively tense. Alec signs up and promptly dies heroically; the Cub changes his mind (citing Belgian atrocities) and, although acknowledging it’s against his principles, attempts to enlist. And is turned down for being unfit, but immediately sets out on a course of physical fitness and is accepted.
Captain Cub is the weakest of the three because the Cub is fighting and Brigid is in Australia and there’s a lot of monologuing (in letter, in person) about love and honour and social justice, which is not to say that I don’t have feelings about these but they do go on a bit. More explicitly romancey than the first book, irritatingly lacking in action, but still readable.
In Brigid and the Cub, Brigid and the Cub’s mum head over to Paris to see the Cub when he’s on leave - and then his mother is injured badly after a pilot crashes into their hotel, so they end up staying longer. Brigid is desperate to do something to help the war effort, but is rejected because a) the Cub’s mum is very needy and wants her at all hours and b) she looks far too wealthy. She ends up being allowed to help at a home for refugees and orphans - but she has to help “with the rough” and in the gardens, rather than the children themselves, until she proves herself. Enthusiastic but misguided, she stuffs up initially (blacking boots with blacklead - for cleaning stoves etc) but eventually wins the grumpy staff member over after digging up the crops a muddy tennis court planted with artichokes in shocking winter weather.
Meanwhile the Cub has a nervous breakdown (Galileo shows up at Brigid’s apartment in Paris and is all, “You must be strong, don’t be upset etc” for agonising moments before actually telling her what’s happened) and is given time off to recover, which he manages physically but mentally he has now lost his belief that he will survive the war and will not go to pieces the second the shooting starts. I found this very interesting but Turner skips through it in favour of everyone ending up at a sort of hotel/resort at which Brigid and the Cub each think the other is now interested in someone else and all Is Almost Lost until Galileo shows up with some wedding gifts and his rejected by the Patent Office mobile telephone prototypes (they point out some flaws and say it needs a couple of decades more work, which he belatedly realises is encouragement), and in the denouement both Brigid and the Cub whisper their concerns to their individual telephones before meeting outside at sunrise and resolving all their issues. And we end with the Armistice, announced by a girl on a white pony, riding through the countryside with a banner :D
The Bruce books are all on Project Gutenberg but although quite a few Turners are there, none of the Cub books are. I'd picked up two over the years but only managed to track down the third about three days before my actual talk. Turner, to me, has a more interesting take on the war - the Cub initially doesn't want to join, and although he fights well he also ends up having a breakdown, something Bruce's characters would disdain (she draws a clear distinction between the Tired People who just need a boost and those who become "jumpy" under fire and fail to harden into men). I am however aware that my own personal biases in favour of cities and science and civilisation may be interfering...
