While Away Some Hours in Brambly Hedge

N ew York City offers visitors and residents alike an overwhelming number of adventures. History surrounds you, the noise is endless, and the sights are dazzling. When these delights became too much for this Midwest transplant, however, I’d go to the Strand and spend a few blissful hours on the floor in the children’s literature section. Surrounded by countless worlds just waiting to be stepped into, I’d find old friends and make new ones. One of these worlds was Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge series, and its simple stories and charming illustrations captivated me immediately.

Barklem and I share a strong dislike of public transportation, and we both sought to escape it through our imaginations. I’d rattle down from Harlem each day, arm looped around a pole, lost (well, the part of my brain that wasn’t looking out for trouble and for my next stop) in My Ántonia, the pastoral novels of Jan Karon, or A Nice Little Place on the North Side. Barklem, as the Brambly Hedge website says, also amused herself during long trips, but in a world of her own creation:

The London Underground would form a key role in the unintended development of Brambly Hedge in Jill’s mind. She travelled to art college on the Central Line from Epping[:] “I came to hate this journey, the carriages were crammed full of people, everything seemed so filthy. It was like a glimpse of hell.”

Jill would shut herself off and escape into an inner world, a hedge bank of mice. These moments of escapism from the subterranean bustle gradually became what we now know as Brambly Hedge.

Originally, Barklem set out to write a quartet of stories based on the seasons, and Spring Story, Summer Story, Autumn Story, and Winter Story came out as a set in 1980. Though they can be purchased as a collection in a larger book, the first editions were just the perfect size for little hands and featured exquisitely detailed artwork. These books were such a success that Barklem went on to write four more, creating stories based off characters in her initial works. The Secret Staircase, The High Hills, Sea Story, and Poppy’s Babies came out over a period of about eleven years.

While the first set of tales featured scenes inspired by her home near Epping Forest, the later set went “further afield,” bringing readers into “the rocky crags of the central Lake District” and “the north Norfolk coast and the Suffolk estuaries.” But it isn’t sweeping vistas that draw us to these books. It is the precise detail and thoughtful world creation that spill over each page. According to her website, Barklem would spend copious amounts of time studying each season as it came around, taking notes and sketching out ideas so she knew what flora and fauna needed to be where.

Our Brambly Hedge mice are a wonderfully independent lot, and never have I wanted so much to live in a hollowed-out tree as when I first encountered these stories. Damp wood and bugs don’t plague you in the cozy cottages of the Hedge, and everything you see in each house is made or procured by the mice. We learn how they churn their own butter and mill their own wheat. They dye and weave blankets, fire pottery, and brew their own drinks. Is the Store Stump (the mice’s main food-storage location) out of salt? Have no fear: Simply take a boat down to the sea and visit the coastal mice to pick up your yearly portion. Many of the pages portray kitchens, picnic blankets, or festive tables filled with scrumptious spreads of food, and apparently, “all the food used in Brambly Hedge was created beforehand in Jill’s kitchen to make sure the ingredients worked.” Even now, you can visit the official Brambly Hedge website for recipes of various seasonal dishes.

If you’re a fan of cozy pictures full of interesting nooks and crannies, these tales are stuffed with them. Barklem’s pictures are the epitome of organized chaos, though, and never come across as cluttered. And if you ever dreamed as a child of discovering a secret room that was your very own, indulge in happy reminiscing by reading The Secret Staircase. Two young mice need to rehearse their poem for the evening’s festivities, but every space is crowded with cooks and decorators. Climbing up to the attic, they discover a hidden door and behind it, a majestic spiral staircase leading to long-forgotten rooms and enchanting surprises. Barklem inserts cut-away images of the whole trees in which her mice live, giving us a complete picture of the inner workings of their homes and bringing her world to life in our minds. We can easily see how the secret staircase fits into the tree, and marvel that it has only just been discovered by our two small heroes.

It was also just discovered that the tree that Barklem used as her model for the Toadflax family home in Spring Story had been recently found by her children. Barklem, who struggled with health problems for many years, died of pneumonia in 2017, so her family used her books, photographs, and their own childhood memories to track down the spot. Located in Epping Forest, the tree was thought to have been destroyed in a storm. Thankfully for the literary world (and any resident mice), the 400-year-old tree is still standing and was given a clean bill of health.

Sweet and sincere, the stories that provided Jill Barklem with an escape also became mine on that chilly New York day. So thank you, London Underground. Without you, I never would’ve known the wonderful world of Brambly Hedge.