Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild #1970Club

🔶️ Margaret Thursday is an orphan, though, as she always tells people,

"I'm not properly an orphan. I was found on a Thursday on the church steps, with three of everything, all of the very best quality."

🔶️ She's actually a daughter of a respectable lady who had stubbornly eloped with her lover. When Margaret was a baby, the lady left her on someone's doorstep, inside a basket with those three of everything of the very best quality, which we will be reminded over and over again throughout the book. It's not that she's boasting, as I first was inclined to think, but it's the lady's way to plant in her daughter's heart that, despite of her demise, she is a special child who deserves respect from others. And this seemingly foolish way did work out. Margaret grows as a up high spirited girl with strong self confident, always believing she can become anyone she wants, that she can be a famous person, even. And most importantly, it gives her self respect and courage to stand on her own against people who would bully and belittle her throughout her adolescence.

🔶️ Margaret Thursday got her surname from the good people who had found her on a Thursday. It follows a nursery rhyme titled Monday's Child:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

🔶️ At first regular fund kept coming every year for her upkeep, but one day it had stopped. And the good people had no choice except sending her to an orphanage. It was supposed to be a good one - recommended even by the Archdeacon. But of course it's as bad as in Dickens' stories, with evil and greedy mistress, who starved the children, punished them severely, and all. But Margaret also found new best friends at the orphanage in Lavinia, Peter, and Horatio - siblings from a broken family.

🔶️ When things turned from bad to worse, Margaret arranged an escape from the orphanage with Peter and Horatio. Lavinia, meanwhile, had gotten a job as scullery maid at the manor house. But what could these little children do to save themselves? What would happen to them? Plenty of Interesting things, it turns out, from working as leggers in a canal boat, to performing in a theater!

Horse-drawn canal boat [pic: from Wikipedia]

🔶️ Their canal boat career is what interested me most. I didn't know that horse-drawn canal boats are mode of cargo transportation in England from mid 19th century to mid 1960s. The horse walked on the canal bank. A strong rope around its head was connected to the boat. The horse need someone to supervise and lead it along the journey, to walk beside it. This person was called a legger. Margaret and the two brothers shared many shifts to do this. And Streatfeild described the beauty but hard canal boat life with the simple but lovely people so vividly I felt like living there myself.

🔶️ On the whole, it's a beautiful and wholesome book, vividly written by Noel Streatfeild. This is my first children novel from her, but certainly not the last.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Read for:

The 1970 Club

hosted by Simon and Karen