The plot of The Hidden House simplicity itself: a lonely old man carves three dolls for company, sitting them in the window of his cottage as he does the gardening. Then one day the text obliquely refers to his death ("he left and never came back") and the dolls remain on the sill as nature gradually reclaims the house. The illustrations tell most of the story: the tree that grows in the kitchen, the ivy that covers the walls, the lives of the frogs, beetles and other wildlife that take over the place, with the dolls as watchful guardians.
Finally a new family comes and restores the home and dolls to their former splendour, and although the expressions on the dolls’ faces remain unchanged throughout, Barrett somehow manages to capture their sadness and happiness with each change of fortune. The book is not without hope, but still infused with poignancy and melancholy given that it’s all about the inexorable march of time.
The full page-spread of the restored house, with a vase of flowers front-and-centre, makes it an obvious symbol of life and rejuvenation. There’s satisfaction to be had in its symmetry: the two chairs either side of the flowers and the stairwell opposite the entry hall and front door – through which we can see the house’s new inhabitants: a mother and daughter.
Though they’re faceless and therefore a little mysterious, one holds a cat and the other reaches for a tree branch, making them feel alive and present. Speaking of cats, there are six in the picture: Barnett clearly takes to heart the saying that it’s a cat which makes a house a home, and I love the detail of the thread and spool tangled around the chair legs. Even without seeing the cats in the picture, this would be evidence of their presence.
And of course the vibrant yellow: unlike the grey of the hidden house, or even the faded olive green that papered the walls of the original owner – that’s the colour that speaks of life and vitality.
The author of this book, Martin Waddell, has had an extremely varied career; he is best known for writing around a hundred picture books for small children (many of which never use the same illustrator twice, for whatever reason), but has also written mysteries for older readers under the pen name Catherine Sefton, and even wrote a series of adventure gamebooks in the 1980s which I wrote about here: https://cwickham.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-mystery-squad-and-mysteries-of.html
ReplyDeleteThis appears to have been one of his works which has fallen into obscurity though; it's no longer in print, at least in the UK, although many of his other works from about the same time are. Many of his works are inspired by his life in Northern Ireland, and I suspect this one is directly inspired by the house he lives in near County Down.
Wow, it's a small world. And yes, this is definitely an obscure book: I had to order it out of storage via the library network.
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