A splendid fellow, well over six inches high

After a long hiatus, I am back today with Mistress Masham's Repose, written by T. H. White and published in 1946.  T. H. White is best known for his cycle of King Arthur adaptations The Once and Future King, but Mistress Masham is receiving a well-deserved resurgence of interest.  The Once and Future King, though a great achievement, suffers from a fatal flaw of being in fact a book for adults masquerading as a book for children. In addition, it paradoxically seems terribly dated despite its fairytale setting.  On the other hand, Mistress Masham, though necessarily lacking the grandeur and tragedy of the Arthur legend, works much better as a simple children's fantasy.

Mistress Masham's Repose tells the story of Maria, a neglected orphan living on a grand but crumbling ducal estate in Yorkshire.  There are no children and only a handful of adults in her isolated life.  Playing the antagonists are her governess and the vicar, her guardians, who (as it is immediately apparent) are scheming to get rid of Maria and steal her inheritance.  Her only friends are the kindly Cook, and the Professor, a doddering old Latin scholar living in a cottage on the estate.  What sets the plot in motion is Maria's discovery, in a forgotten gazebo, of a tiny kingdom of miniature people who have been living in secret on the estate for hundreds of years. 

The plot shows many similarities with Mary Norton's The Borrowers, with the central dramatic stakes of keeping the little people safe from full-size humans who would exploit them for their own ends.  However, I prefer MMR for several reasons.  First, The Borrowers was actually written six years after MMR, so if anyone borrowed the idea (pun intended) it was Mary Norton.  Second, I enjoy the conceit of MMR, which is that Gulliver's Travels really happened, and the little people are in fact Lilliputians who stowed away on Gulliver's boat home and have been living in hiding in England every since.  Third, I enjoy the characterizations better, particularly the impoverished Professor, who lives on free roots and berries and is continually distracted from life-or-death emergencies by his hunt for an obscure Latin manuscript.

I have some small caveats.  Familiarity with Book I of Gulliver's Travels, "A Voyage to Lilliput" is helpful for the understanding of the story, though not strictly necessary.  Also, the stakes escalate to the point that the vicar and the governess actually plot to murder Maria, and discuss various methods of execution.  This sounds rather disturbing when I write it here, but honestly, in the story they come across as Loony Tunes villains, completely outsized not only in their evil, but also in their complete inability to succeed at their dastardly plans.  The only scene that bothered me was when the Vicar tries to exploit his position as a clergyman, and convince Maria that she is breaking God's commandments by not handing the little people over to him.  Though there are certainly clerics like this, I'm not sure this book is the right place to tell children about them. 

This book is a good read-aloud for ages 6+, or ages 8-12 for independent reading.

Rating: A-