I am Noel Streatfeild’s nephew, and in 1951, when White Boots was first published, I would have been in my teens. I have a photograph of Noel at about that time, looking very striking and vigorous, wearing a splendid black hat decorated with two large feathers. Noel always wore striking clothes. I remember that ten years later, at my sister’s wedding, she wore a hat with even LARGER feathers, but this time they were arranged to stick out sideways, sweeping an arc around her in the rather crowded pews of our local church!
At the time that White Boots was written, most things were still in short supply after the war. Rationing was only just ending, everyone still had two ration books, one for food and one for clothes. Clothes like Lalla’s and the wonderful pink sugared cakes at her tea parties were rare treats to be drooled over. I personally can associate better with the food that Uncle William sent. We ourselves lived in the country, and relied heavily on rabbits to eat which my father and I used to shoot.
The first time I read White Boots was many years ago, but after all these years, the same excitement is still there. Wondering what is going to happen next, indignation at injustice, a warm feeling when things go right, and yes, still a lump in my throat when someone does something out of the ordinary in kindness or bravery that changes events. Noel liked forthright characters, and there are plenty of them in White Boots. Aunt Claudia of course, and Lalla – indeed all the children in their different ways. There are Nana and Miss Goldthorpe, working away to achieve their ends by using what means they had at their disposal. And I must say I love the influence of Mr Pulton – I’m not ashamed to say that he brings a lump to my throat when he tells young Alec to “stick to your dreams”.
What is the secret of creating such emotions in the reader? Noel would have said that the characters in the book have to be ones for whom the reader cares. She used to say that the most difficult part of writing a book was planning the characters and the plot. She liked to get under the skins of her characters, and live with them in her mind for some months before she started writing. Who were the characters going to be? How were they going to behave and react to different circumstances? And what were going to be the twists to the story along the way?
Noel once told me that she developed her own way of working as an author early on. When she started writing, she found that she was constantly being interrupted by her many friends who thought her “fair game” to call on as she was at home rather than working in an office. So she devised the strategy of working while sitting up in bed in the morning, making notes or dictating. That put paid to unwanted visitors.
I still have in my possession the original notes that Noel made when she was planning White Boots. It is a bit of a rarity to have the original workings of an author before they write a book, so we are lucky. The notes are in Noel’s handwriting, which was quite tidy, but there are lots of crossings out, which you would expect. After all, this was the stage at which Noel was jotting down her ideas, and improving on them as she went along.
I have known several people who find it easier to dictate rather than write, as it helps the words to come out more naturally as they would be spoken. In Noel’s case, there would probably have been an added bonus, in that spelling was never her strong point! So Noel would have dictated from these rough outline notes to her secretary, June, who was sometimes in Noel’s flat when I went to visit.
The first page of notes is a family tree for Harriet, going back to Grandfather Johnson and showing the ages of the children. It is followed next by the family tree for Lalla. On the next page is a synopsis of the Johnson family, their house, the rotten vegetables, the shop. Then follows a pen portrait of all the characters, starting with George: “Hopeless at business and puts accounts on dirty scraps of paper”. All the characters are thought out in advance: Dr Phillipson, the rink manager Mr Matthews and his duodenal ulcer, Mr Pulton, Nana, Miss Goldthorpe, Sam the skate-hire man with only one leg. It was typical of Noel to leave none of her characters to chance.
Accuracy was very important to Noel, as you can see from her note: “Query. Price of skates and boots second hand for child of 9, also entrance to rink”. Not being a skater herself, she did once tell me that she spent hours and hours on her knees poring over tracings to understand clearly what it was all about. “Bitterly cold it was too,” she said.
Noel also learnt all the skating moves through endless watching at ice rinks. As a result, she knew exactly what was involved in the skating tests – the brackets, the dreaded loops, the edges and jumps.
Interestingly, Noel in her original notes calls Harriet “Joanna”. Why she changed the name, goodness knows. Joanna is the name of my younger sister, so perhaps her name came to mind at the start. Joanna had very fair hair, so maybe as the plot developed Noel felt that the hair certainly wouldn’t have been right and the character was a more Harrietish sort of person.
Happy reading – and skating!
William Streatfeild