Why or and not and?
The title of Mary Mapes Dodge's 1858 novel, Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates has always been a bit problematic to me. The story of Hans Brinker is inextricably intertwined with the race for the silver skates, so why the or?
If you wanted to reflect the very real division of the book, I would opt for something along the lines of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, and, A Brief History and Travelogue of Holland. A little cumbersome, true, but an accurate reflection of what you get when you open the cover. Also, an accurate description of Dodge's intended achievement in writing the book.
So, first the story, then a bit about the remarkable woman who wrote it.
Hans Brinker tells the tale of Hans Brinker, a fifteen-year-old boy who lives in Broek, Holland, in a poor cottage facing a canal with his younger sister, Gretel, his mother, Meitje, and his father, Raff. Ten years earlier, Raff Brinker suffered a horrible accident on the dikes, that left him badly brain damaged. As a result, the family has struggled to survive, getting by on Meitje's knitting and piecework and whatever work Hans can procure. Their hardship is worsened by Raff's erratic behavior, which can at times pose physical danger, and the disdain of many of the townspeople who refer to their home as "the Idiot's cottage".
Social class plays a major role for the characters in the story.
Despite all this, the Brinkers are a close-knit family, who continue to nurse the hope that Raff will someday be well. The Brinkers also live with a mystery, two actually. Before Raff left on that fateful night to work on the dikes, he gave his wife a silver watch with the engraved initials of LJB to hold and told her to take care of it. He also told her that, due to some suspicious behavior on the part of one of his co-workers, that he had hid their savings of 1000 guilders. He intended to explain both when he returned, but that was not to be.
Though they searched, Hans and his mother could not find the money, and had come to the conclusion that the father's suspicious co-worker must have stolen it. As far as the watch, Dame Brinker held fast to her promise to her husband and never sold it, despite at times of extreme hardship being sorely tempted.
The background now set, Dodge introduces the rest of the characters. A group of boys and girls, their ages about the same as Hans and Gretel, are skating on the canal in view of the Brinker's cottage. Economically, they fall into middle-class to wealthy. The boys are Peter van Holp and his brother, Ludwig, Lambert van Mounen, Carl Schummel, Jacob Poot and his English cousin Benjamin Dobbs, and a little fellow with the big name of Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck. The girls are Hilda van Gleck, Annie Bouman (Gretel's friend), Richie Korbes, and Katrinka Flack. They run the gamut from kind-hearted and honorable (Peter and Hilda), to smug and spoiled (Carl and Katrinka), and come to in what is essentially a the moral tale of Hans Brinker all the expected fates.
*You might notice that some of the names above (as well as others in the book) are not purely Dutch and leaving towards the German. The names appear differently in different editions of the book, but I am using the names as they appear in the 1985 paperback edition from Dell Publishing Co.
All of the children are excited at the prospect of the upcoming skating race on the canal, where the winners - one boy, one girl - will be awarded a pair of silver skates. Both Hans and Gretel are excellent skaters, but any dreams of winning the race are just that. Neither own a pair of real skates, just wooden versions that Hans - very skilled at woodcarving - has fashioned for them.
This changes when the kind-hearted Hilda notices the pair on the canal and asks them if they, too, will be joining the race. When she discovers the reason - no skates - she has Hans crave her a wooden necklace like the one Gretel is wearing, and with that money, he will be able to buy at least one pair of skates.Hans uses the money to buy skates for his sister. When Hilda's friend and admirer Peter hears of it, he commissions Hans for a second necklace, the money then paying for a pair of skates for himself.
It is while Hans is on his way to Amsterdam, using his wooden skates on the canal, to buy his skates that he comes upon the Dr. Boekman, the famous physician and surgeon. Mustering up all his courage, he approaches the doctor - a dour sort with a reputation to match - about his father's case. The doctor, though gruff, agrees to visit the Brinker household in a weeks time.
Hans and his mother are elated, but their joy is cut short when Raff experiences a violent episode and falls into a deep fever. Hans once again goes for the doctor, but on his way he encounters Peter van Kolp and his group of friends on the canal. The boys are on a skating holiday of several days duration, to see the sights and visit Peter's married sister during the Feast of St. Nicholas celebration. Seeing how concerned Hans is over being away from his family, Peter tells Hans that he will find Dr. Boekman and give him the message to please come at once. Hans gratefully accepts, then heads back home.
This is where the second book, the one I dub A Brief History and Travelogue of Holland, appears. Over the next several chapters, we will see nothing of Hans or the Brinker household, but a great deal of the boys, the English cousin, and an enormous amount of detail on Dutch history, prominent Dutchmen in politics, the military, and the arts, and detailed descriptions of Dutch architecture, engineering, and cityscapes. Dodge does flesh out the characters of the individual boys, but it can be some dense reading.
We do learn, during this time, that Dr. Boekman has received the message Peter left for him regarding Raff Brinker, and has departed for Broek.
Once the boys return home, the story refocuses on the Brinkers.
Dr. Boekman is there with his assistant. The doctor believes that he can operate successfully on Raff, and is given permission to do so by Dame Brinker. The doctor needs Hans to assist, so no one notices when a terrified Gretel rushes from the house. Outside, over a period of some hours, Gretel feels herself falling asleep to beautiful visions and it roughly awoke by Hilda, shaking her and forcing her to move. Hilda had noticed was appeared to be a pile of rags along the canal, but upon closer inspection had discovered that it was Gretel.
The two then return to the Brinker cottage, and learn that the operation has been successful. Word spreads that Raff Brinker is now back from the dead - some of those words were quite fanciful indeed - and the town is amazed. Dr.Boekman warns Hans and Dame Brinker that Raff is not be be overexcited, needs plenty of rest, and fine foods that the Brinkers cannot afford. Hans is resolved to sell his skates to raise money, and he does, but it is Annie Bouman, who convinces the boy that she will sell them for him. While Annie goes off to that purpose, Hans searches for work, but is unable to find any. When Annie returns, she delivers money from the sale to Hans, an amount well above what the skates are worth, and insists that Hans take every cent, despite his protest.
Also upon his return, he sees that a fairy godmother has delivered just the type and quantity of food that Raff needs for his recovery.
Raff's memory returns slowly, and piecemeal. The realization that he has lost ten years of his and his family's lives is difficult, but he insists that he will be back to work in a short while. Initially, Raff believes that his family had access to the hidden money and knew the story of the silver watch. There is a false alarm when Hans coaxes the location of the hidden money from him, that it is buried by the south side of the willow tree. Hans and Dame Brinker dig for hours, but the money isn't there. Turns out, it was the wrong tree. The tree Raff remembered had been cut down earlier, and when Hans dug there, the money was found.
There was still the mystery of the watch. As it turns out, the watch belonged to Dr. Boekman's son, who left in a hurry after believing that he had killed one of his father's patients. He gave it to Raff, who he encountered on his way leaving the country, and left with him a message that if his father ever wanted to contact him, he should look for a Thomas Higgs in Birmingham, England. When Dr. Boekman sees the watch, and hears the message, he rushes to find his son. Dr. Boekman had labored under the mistaken belief that his son had abandoned him to live a dissolute life. The doctor had caught his son's mistake - the wrong medicine prescribed that could have killed his patient - but never realized at the time that his son believed himself a murderer.
As Thomas Hicks, the son owned a successful leather goods company in England, which, upon reconciliation with his father, he moved to Amsterdam. Raff Brinker became the manager. Hans is taken under the wing of Dr. Boekman, educated, and goes on to study medicine.
And the race? It took place on a fine, sunny day. Gretel won the girl's skates, and Peter van Holp won the boy's race, with an assist from Hans. Peter's leather strap had broken, and Hans, who had a good chance of winning himself, gave his strap to Peter.
The last chapter takes place years later, and Dodge recounts the fate of the various characters. Hans is the famous surgeon, Dr. Brinker, and married to Annie. There are children, and grandchildren, and a good life, well-deserved, is had by all the Brinkers.
This is not a suitable read-aloud, but it is an excellent book for the advanced reader in intermediate grades and middle school readers who enjoy the classics. Dodge's style is very much 19th century, and will take some getting used to, but the story hooks you in from the beginning and (with some judicious section jumping), keeps you hooked until the end.
I remember reading Hans Brinker as a grade-schooler, and I'm pretty sure that I did a fair amount of skipping over the history and travelogue chapters. When I reread it as an adult, I did read the whole thing, and found it interesting, if just a little bit too fawnish at times.
The only disturbing element I found as a modern reader was Dodge's description of the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam. After the English cousin Ben visited the Marine school, he, "... he peeped into the Jew's Quarter of the city, where the rich diamond cutters and squalid old-clothes men dwell, and wisely resolved to keep away from it;..."
For all of Dodge's expansiveness is describing Dutch history and famous Dutch men (they are all men, no individual woman is mentioned amongst the notables), the negative connotation attached to the sentence and the lack of the history behind the existence and evolution of a Jewish Quarter is disappointing.
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And now about the author.
Mary Mapes Dodge was one of the most important figures in 19th century children's literature as both an author, editor, and proponent for other writers.
Born in 1831 to a prominent NYC family, she was educated at home along with her sisters, studying literature, French, Latin, music and drawing. In 1851, she married a business associate of her father, the NYC lawyer William Dodge. They had two sons, but in 1858 William abandoned his family, and was later found drowned. He had been dealing with financial difficulties and his son's illness. In the norm for the times, the newspaper obituary stated that he died suddenly.
Widowed with two boys to support, Mary moved back in with her family, where they had relocated to New Jersey. It was there that she began to write. In 1861 she was asked by her father to edit a section of his periodical, The Working Farmer. Dodge then branched out into writing short stories, and in 1864 her collection of Civil War themed stories, The Irvington Stories, was published. The book was a moderate success, and her publisher asked for a follow-up. Dodge had recently become fascinated with Holland, and after copious research and multiple interviews with Dutch friends, published Hans Brinker, or, the Silver Skates in 1865.
Before writing the book, Dodge had never visited the Netherlands, but the book was a huge success, translated into many languages, and won a prize from the French Academy.
Dodge went on to become an editor and founder of the magazines Hearth and Home, and later in 1873, of St. Nicholas Magazine (a name she chose), for close to thirty years, where through her efforts nearly all the the notable and upcoming authors, including Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, contributed. She also continued to write, and contributed adult articles to the likes of Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly.
Mary Mapes Dodge died in 1905.
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Mary Mapes Dodge obituary in the New York Times here.
A tribute to Mary Mapes Dodge written by William Fayal Clarke appeared in Volume 32 of St. Nicholas magazine in 1905. You can read it here.
Thomas Nast contributed to the original illustrations of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. See an example here.
Update on audiobooks: I finally finished The Woman in White. It was quite a journey but worth the time. I just started Gaston LeRoux's The Phantom of the Opera, narrated by B.J. Harrison, so I'll let you know how it goes. After TWIW nearly 25 hours, its nine hours should feel like a walk in the park.
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I've recently embarked on the journey of self-publication. It's been an education. If you're interested in the process, check out my other blog On the Trail of Rogue Lits ...
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