Abstract
Grandmamma’s Pockets (1848), by Mrs. Samuel Carter Hall, was written after the worst year of the Famine, and concerns the process by which its protagonist, a semi-autobiographical ‘Annie Fielder’, learns to bring order and duty into her wayward childhood through the lessons taught to her, through the medium of her grandmother’s extraordinarily expansive pockets. The novel provided Hall with an opportunity to castigate the Irish Protestant community for its apparent lack of charity and sympathy for the Irish Catholics that surrounded it and in particular its failure to feed its poor neighbours in times of scarcity. The essay argues that Grandmamma’s Pockets should be understood as a serious attempt to counter the ‘Famine fatigue’ that was evident after three years of Irish difficulty.
I have been appealed to, several times…to write a story that might still more enlist the blessed and active sympathy of England for my starving country. My answer is, I can devise no fiction equal to the facts – the fearful realities of death and starvation which are conveyed to me by every post.
Mrs S.C. Hall, ‘The Cry from Ireland’, Art-Union: Monthly Journal of the Fine Arts and the Arts, Decorative, Ornamental (London, 1847), 141.
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Notes
- 1.
Chris Morash, Writing the Irish famine (Oxford, 1995), p. 2; Chris Morash, ‘Literature, memory, atrocity’ in Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds), ‘Fearful realities’: new perspectives on the Famine (Dublin, 1996), p. 117.
- 2.
Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the great hunger: studies in Irish culture (London, 1995), pp. 12–13. There is, of course, a considerable ‘minor’ literature of the Famine.
- 3.
Eagleton has provided a rather slippery answer to that particular question, Heathcliff, pp. 1–12, suggesting that Heathcliff could be read as a kind of ‘fragment’ of the Irish Famine, while acknowledging that the ‘chronology is awry as far as the Famine goes’ (p. 11, n. 27).
- 4.
Quoted in Morash, Writing, p. 5.
- 5.
Mrs S.C. Hall, Grandmamma’s pockets (Edinburgh, 1849). All references are to this edition, unless otherwise stated.
- 6.
David Lloyd, Irish times: temporalities of modernity (Dublin, 2008), p. 44.
- 7.
Hall, ‘Cry from Ireland’, p. 141.
- 8.
Christine Kinealy, A death-dealing famine: the great hunger in Ireland (London, 1997), p. 131.
- 9.
Charles Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis (London, 1848), p. 1.
- 10.
Hall, ‘Cry from Ireland’, p. 141.
- 11.
Hall was a prolific writer of stories for children, including The juvenile budget (1840), Midsummer Eve, a fairy tale of love (1848), The boy’s birthday book (1859) and Daddy Dacre’s school (1859).
- 12.
Morash, ‘Literature, memory, atrocity’, p. 113.
- 13.
All editions were published by Chambers apart from two editions produced for the American market. Reprinted edition: Philadelphia: Lippincott and Grambo, 1854; and ‘another edition’: New York: T. Whittaker, n.d. The Halls were personal friends of Robert Chambers, had toured Scotland together and stayed with his family in Musselburgh.
- 14.
Edward G. Lengel, The Irish through British eyes: perceptions of Ireland in the Famine era (Westport, CT, 2002), p. 35.
- 15.
Barbara Burman, ‘Pocketing the difference: gender and pockets in nineteenth-century Britain’, Gender & History, 14:3 (2002): 456.
- 16.
Helen O’Connell, Ireland and the fiction of improvement (Oxford, 2006), p. 6.
- 17.
Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness: value and meaning in children’s fiction (Cambridge, 1981), p. 4.
- 18.
Jacqueline Rose, The case of Peter Pan, or the impossibility of children’s fiction, 2nd edn (Philadelphia, 1993).
- 19.
Hall, ‘Cry from Ireland’ p. 141.
- 20.
Mrs S.C. Hall, The playfellow and other stories (London, 1866), p. 88.
- 21.
Both the frontispiece and the boards have been lithographed by G. Millar, whose premises from 1848 to 1850 were at 68 Prince’s Street, Edinburgh. Robert Temple Bookseller’s online bibliographical file refers to information obtained from Millar’s business directory card. The colours on the edition held in the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books have faded to some extent.
- 22.
Marion Durnin also owns a copy of this edition in her own collection, which contains a handwritten inscription, ‘Bertha Moore Feby 1889’ from which we have hazarded the date. [‘MD’ will be used throughout the essay to indicate further editions in this collection.]
- 23.
Hall was particularly fond of ivy as a symbol of Ireland, bringing it from Killarney to St Paul’s Church, Addlestone in 1855, where it grew to cover the church.
- 24.
This illustration appears in three early twentieth-century editions [MD] published by W. & R. Chambers, London and Edinburgh.
- 25.
Grandmamma’s Pockets (London, c.1927). No publication date is given. However, the date is approximated from the evidence of the clothing style depicted on the cover, the date of the bookplate, the paper-covered boards and the coarse quality of the paper used.
- 26.
Brian North Lee, Premium or prize ex-libris (London, 2001), p. 2.
- 27.
Colourful contemporary detail possibly deemed obsolete has, on occasion, been removed. The sentence ‘and one day in the teeth of a high wind, she mounted’ has been altered from ‘and one day in the teeth of a high wind, her hat tied closely down, and her riding-skirt leaded (a far safer plan than pinning it down), she mounted.’ This alteration completely changes the tenor of the sentence and removes historical detail of current dress and habits. The abbreviated text is found on page 48 in the 1915 edition, whereas the richer historical detail is present on page 55 in the first edition of 1848.
- 28.
See Michelle Elleray, ‘Little builders: coral insects, missionary culture, and the Victorian child’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 39:1 (2011): 223–38; R.M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island, J.S. Bratton (ed.) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 48–49.
- 29.
Interestingly, in later editions of the novel, the natural-science-based word ‘graniverous’ is replaced by the bland but self-explanatory ‘grain-eating’, suggesting a slight movement away from Hall’s ambitious intentions. See Grandmamma’s Pockets (London, c.1904), p. 44 [MD].
- 30.
Hall, ‘Cry from Ireland’, 141.
- 31.
1 Corinthians 13:1, King James Bible.
- 32.
Hall, ‘Cry from Ireland’, p. 141.
- 33.
Carolyn Daniel, Voracious kids: who eats whom in children’s literature (New York, 2006), pp. 62–63.
- 34.
Elizabeth Sheppard, Round the fire: six stories (London, 1856), p. 68.
- 35.
Grandmamma’s pockets (London, c.1904), p. 99—dated from a bookplate that reads ‘London County Council Lillie Road School awarded to Ida Pearson for Good Conduct, Regularity, Punctuality, & Progress. 1904 C.T. Ross. Head Teacher’. Over half a century after it was written, Hall’s novel was still perceived as a suitable conduit for the ‘improvement’ values listed on the bookplate.
- 36.
As Hall was writing Grandmamma’s pockets during 1848, her husband Samuel Carter Hall literally brushed shoulders with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte during the great Chartist march on 10 April 1848 in London. Alice Hutchings, Life and times of Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, unpublished manuscript, c.1986, p. 166.
- 37.
Kinealy, Death-dealing famine, p. 132.
- 38.
For the British reaction to the rebellion, see James S. Donnelly Jnr, The great Irish potato famine (London, 2002), 127.
- 39.
For the threat involved in Irish forms of wassailing, see Stephen Nissenbaum, The battle for Christmas (New York, 1996), pp. 305‒07.
- 40.
Cecil Woodham-Smith, The great hunger: Ireland, 1845‒1849 (London, 1991), p. 89.
- 41.
John Bull, 19:1498 (25 August 1849): 525.
- 42.
Although an excellent study, Maureen Keane’s Mrs Hall: a literary biography (Gerrards Cross, 1997) does place much emphasis on Hall’s patronizing view of the Irish and her (undoubted) support for the continuation of the political union.
- 43.
See M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire’s children: empire and imperialism in classic British children’s books (London, 2002).
Selected Bibliography
Burman, Barbara, ‘Pocketing the difference: gender and pockets in nineteenth-century Britain’, Gender & History, 14:3 (2002): 447‒69.
Daniel, Carolyn, Voracious kids: who eats whom in children’s literature (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Donnelly Jnr, James S., The great Irish potato famine (London: Sutton, 2002).
Eagleton, Terry, Heathcliff and the great hunger: studies in Irish culture (London: Verso, 1995).
Elleray, Michelle, ‘Little builders: coral insects, missionary culture, and the Victorian child’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 39:1 (2011): 223‒38.
Inglis, Fred, The promise of happiness: value and meaning in children’s fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Keane, Maureen, Mrs Hall: a literary biography. Irish Literary Studies 50 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1997).
Kinealy, Christine, A death-dealing famine: the great hunger in Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 1997).
Kutzer, Daphne M., Empire’s children: empire and imperialism in classic British children’s books (London: Routledge, 2002).
Lengel, Edward G., The Irish through British eyes: perceptions of Ireland in the famine era (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).
Lloyd, David, Irish times: temporalities of modernity (Dublin: Field Day, 2008).
Morash, Chris, Writing the Irish famine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
———, ‘Literature, memory, atrocity’ in Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds), Fearful realities: New perspectives on the famine (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996).
Nissenbaum, Stephen, The battle for Christmas (New York: Knopf, 1996).
O’Connell, Helen, Ireland and the fiction of improvement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Rose, Jacqueline, The case of Peter Pan, or the impossibility of children’s fiction, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The great hunger: Ireland, 1845‒1849 (London: Penguin, 1991).
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Killeen, J., Durnin, M. (2017). Picking Grandmamma’s Pockets . In: O'Sullivan, K., Whyte, P. (eds) Children's Literature Collections. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59757-1_7
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