75. Noel Streatfeild — Ballet Shoes and The Whicharts with Wendy-Marie Chabot

AMY: Welcome back to another episode of Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Amy Helmes here with my friend and co-host, Kim Askew. 

KIM: Hey, everyone.

AMY: Kim, did you ever take ballet lessons when you were a little girl?

KIM: Yes, uh, for like a minute. I did tap, jazz, and ballet. I loved the idea of it. The reality of me doing it wasn't great. In high school, I did take modern dance also for one semester. My sister used to sneak and peek at me while I was practicing, and she can probably have you rolling with laughter describing me dancing to Joshua Tree.

AMY: Oh my gosh. Well, I took dance, too, and the joke in my family was that I always would have my tongue sticking out. So there are lots of pictures of me with my cute little outfit and my tongue is just hanging out like a dog.

KIM: That's hilarious.

AMY: But as you know, Julia, that's my 12 year old, she's very into ballet. 

KIM: Oh yeah. She looks like a professional, compared to me, especially. She looks like the vision of a ballerina, and I loved getting to see her in "The Nutcracker" this year. That was so cool.

AMY: Yeah, it was fun. And actually a neighbor of ours gifted her with a small statue of that famous Degas sculpture. It's called Little Dancer, Aged 14. 

KIM: Yep. 

AMY: Only fairly recently, did I discover that there's an ugly undertone to Degas's depictions at the ballet.

KIM: Yes, and I have known about that for a while. The ballet in France and elsewhere was a brothel culture, basically. He was a realist painter who took for his subject matter people in the lowest sphere of society: laundresses and prostitutes, for example. And ballerinas fell in that classification too.

AMY: You can, even in his paintings, occasionally see gentlemen lurking lecherously and, uh, you know, what we once naively viewed as charming is now just kind of sad. And in fact, the young woman who was the model for that sculpture (the one, Julia was gifted), her name was Marie van Goethem. She was one of three sisters trained in the ballet, but it's also known that their mother was basically pimping them out at the same time. 

KIM: Hmm, whoa. And actually, it's really interesting how this sort of ties into the books we'll be discussing today. These books offer up a dichotomy between our idealized notions of ballerinas and the darker and more disturbing reality.

AMY: Yes. And we're pretty excited that today's guest suggested we examine these novels in tandem. I can't wait to introduce her so let's rate the stacks and get started. 

[intro music]

 KIM: So our guests today, bibliophile and bookstagrammer Wendy-Marie Chabot, holds a special place in our heart as she is one of the first people to reach out to us after we started the podcast to let us know she was a fan of the show. Amy and I were like, "Wow, a real person out there is actually listening to us. And she likes us!" 

AMY: Wendy-Marie was kind of new to Instagram at the time, and we started following her, only to discover that she has amazing taste in books and really smart and interesting insights into them. I'm always writing down titles that Wendy or her tiny companion recommend. And if you want to know who her tiny companion is, go follow her @whiskeytangowendymarie. Honestly, she reads more books in the time it takes to sneeze than I manage to read in a month. I think I'd even trust her with my credit card to go into a book store and buy a few titles for me. Wendy Marie, incidentally, is also the author of the non-fiction book, Wannabe: Confessions of a Failed Bibliofile, which she wrote under her former online pseudonym, Badgwendel. You are definitely a kindred spirit, I think, although I kind of hesitate to use that phrase, knowing that you're not really an Anne of Green Gables fan. Maybe that's one place where our tastes diverge a little bit, but that said, welcome to the show, Wendy-Marie!

WENDY-MARIE: It’s so amazing to talk to you guys, and about Anne of Green Gables, I have a theory that there are certain classic books you have to be the right age to be introduced to, otherwise you may not appreciate them properly. At the age when most little girls were reading Anne of Green Gables, I was deep down in the Little House on the Prairie, Noel Streatfeild, and Louisa May Alcott phase. Anne of Green Gables never crossed my radar. Forgive me? 

AMY: I get that. I feel the same way about certain books. Now that I have that explanation, I get it. So listeners, prior to this recording, Wendy-Marie, Kim, and I actually kind of debated the correct pronunciation of today's lost lady. I had always been saying it “Noelle Streetfield.” What do you think, Wendy-Marie?

WENDY-MARIE: If you have Spotify or any other podcast app, you might want to look up "Desert Island Discs Archive.” Their January 17th, 1976 episode, I believe it's Roy Plomley who is the presenter.The Castaway was Noel Streattfeild and that's exactly how Roy pronounces her name. And she did not object to or correct his pronunciation.

AMY: Okay. That's helpful! 

KIM: Well, I'm terrible with pronunciation anyway, as anyone who listens to this podcast already knows. So I'm sure I'll be saying it wrong no matter what. I'll be sure to switch back and forth to confuse everyone. But anyway, now that we've got that straight, um, Wendy Marie, when we reached out to you about guesting, you'd suggested Streatfeild, and I'd remembered reading her 1936 children's book Ballet Shoes when I was a kid, but I was unfamiliar with her other novel she'd published five years earlier, The Whicharts. You described it as the "shadow twin" to Ballet Shoes.

AMY: Right. And we're excited to get into all that and what that means. But unlike Kim, I had never even heard of Noel Streatfeild, let alone read anything by her. I kind of suspect that this book is still pretty well-known in the UK, and British listeners, you can feel free to weigh in on that, but I think it's much less known here in the States. That's despite the fact that Ballet Shoes is a book that comes up in the 1997 film You've Got Mail and it was also made into a film starring Emma Watson in 2007. 

KIM: So Wendy-Marie, what do we know about Streatfeild's life, especially as it pertains to the books we're discussing today?

WENDY-MARIE: Well, she was one of five children. She was the second in line. Her father was a vicar. And whenever there was any entertainment that needed to be done for the parish at the vicarage, the children were responsible for organizing it and performing it from soup to nuts. So Noel would be the one who would write the sketches. She would help create amazing costumes. She knew how to do the violin. She was very talented with different things. This was her introduction to the theater and to being different. In her family, she actually stood out. Her sister was a wonderful artist; very beautiful. Her younger sister was incredibly beautiful. Her younger brother had an amazing life. But she didn't really click with the family, and she didn't really connect or click with her mother. There wasn't really a solid bond between the two. And she did have a better bond with her father, but of course, he's a vicar. He's paying attention to the whole parish, versus just the needs of one of his five children.

KIM: That's really interesting. I love thinking of them all entertaining everyone who comes over and like being in charge of that. 

AMY: "Partridge Family," vicarage-style!

KIM: Yeah, yeah. 

AMY: So even though The Whicharts came out prior to Ballet Shoes, let's start off discussing Ballet Shoes, because it's probably the book she's most famous for. And I think it’s kind of good, in a way, to read this book before you dive into The Whicharts.

KIM: Yeah. I think that makes sense. So we'll get into the book's plot in a moment, but can you first talk a little bit about what kind of reception the book received when it came out in 1936, Wendy-Marie? It was basically an instant hit, right?

WENDY-MARIE: Correct. This was her first published juvenile fiction. She had written adult fiction, some of it under a pseudonym, since the early thirties, but this book came out and it just hit a chord. It's in the middle of the Depression. You've got these three sisters, the characters in the book, who are struggling against the odds. There's this wonderful family bond. And it's very hopeful, so it just sold beautifully. This made her career, truly, as an author. She still continued to write adult fiction throughout the rest of her life, but she's best known for her juvenile work.

AMY: And then her subsequent children's books sort of had the similar title to Ballet Shoes, right?

WENDY-MARIE: Correct. In the UK, her books have different names. For example, there's an amazing book which I'm very fond of by Noel Streatfeild called Dancing Shoes here in America. It came out under the title Wintle's Wonders in the UK. There's another book that was written during World War II for children which is known as Party Frock in the UK. Here in America it's known as Party Shoes. Curtain Up, which is also a wartime book, is known as Theater Shoes. So they did capitalize in the US to brand it out, because if you just put these books out without the "shoe" name, it would not have translated very well to the audience. So I can understand the branding with the publisher saying, "We've established yourself with shoes; let's keep going."

KIM: Yep. That totally makes sense.

AMY: So in terms of Ballet Shoes, can you explain the premise a little bit more for our listeners?

WENDY-MARIE: Of course. This is in the late Twenties into the Thirties, London. We have a young lady called Sylvia and her eccentric -- and when I say eccentric, I'm talking about, "Let's go explore and not tell people where you're going to be for a couple of years," -- Great Uncle Matthew. And he brings her back presents. The first present he brings her back is an orphan little baby girl named Pauline that he found after a shipwreck. He goes away again and brings her another present, which is a beautiful little Russian girl whose name is Petrova. And then the third present, he brings her an adorable little red-headed baby, whose name is Posy. And the children, they're very creative. Pauline is a natural actress. Petrova is a mechanical genius. And Posy is like the next Pavlova; I hope that's how you pronounce that dancer's name. (Also, I cannot pronounce words either.) And they go into theater to earn a living because they're very poor. So Sylvia now has to turn into taking borders in order to keep the girls fed and clothed. And the girls also need to learn a trade because they're orphans; they don't really have any family to rely on, except for Sylvia and possibly Great Uncle Matthew.

AMY: Wherever he is, right?

WENDY-MARIE: Correct.

AMY: Um, okay, so you can't really go wrong kicking off a children's book with foundling children, right? It's kind of a time-tested literary trope.

KIM: Yeah. And I kind of liked that the book doesn't really dwell too much on what happened to the girls' parents. Ostensibly, they came to tragic ends, but it really doesn't dwell on that. It's just like, "Oh, something happened to their parents and he found them on his adventures, or whatever, and he's bringing them home and it's lovely." 

AMY: Yeah, and in that first chapter Great Uncle Matthew, nicknamed GUM, he's collecting these babies the same collects his fossils which is why they end up taking the last name of Fossil. It’s all very quirky, and it reminded me very much of the premise for the Netflix series Umbrella Academy, if anybody there has seen that. There's this wise old man bringing together all these orphan babies ... in this case, they don't have superpowers; they have power of the dance. Um, as we said, unfortunately, Great Uncle Matthew doesn’t stick around long enough to the girls' talents. Sylvia is left with these children. There's another adult in the house, Sylvia's long-time nanny, who's referred to as Nana in the book. She's kind of that loving, but stern, nanny that we always see in literature. Her temperament kind of reminded me of Ol' Golly from Harriet the Spy, that kind of "tough love" thing.

WENDY-MARIE: Tough love and very resourceful. A mother figure that's usually a servant of a lower class, who's very resourceful is a definite trope throughout all of Noel Streatfeild's books. It's like she's trying to work out the problem she had with her mother, where the few people in the family who really truly loved and treated her properly were the servants.

AMY: Yeah. Interesting. So if I had any major qualm from this book, it's the fact that none of the characters are really that broken up about the fact that GUM has gone completely AWOL and might be dead somewhere. And their only real worries are that they are flat broke because they've run through the funds that he left them. I would have liked to have seen a little more hand-wringing about, you know, his whereabouts, but I guess the girls were babies when he left. So I can see how maybe he's just almost a mythical entity to them, but you'd think at least Sylvia and Nana would be a little more like, “Hmm I wonder okay?"

KIM: Yeah. but there's something so British about that. 

WENDY-MARIE: Exactly. It's like the British explorers that would go off into the jungle and their wives would be, like, twiddling their thumbs, like, "Okay, are you coming back? Yes or no? I don't know."

KIM: Yeah. And then one day, Sylvia basically realizes that GUM's return is long past due and they haven't any money left, but they come up with solutions and they move forward. It's that stiff upper lip, like, "We're not going to let it get us down." Right? "We're going to keep going."

WENDY-MARIE: Exactly. She looks at the options, even though it might move her down a little bit on the social class, she's willing to do what it takes. She's not technically their mother; other people might just shuffle them off to the local foundling society, but she keeps them and takes care of them and does cherish them in her own way.

AMY: So as you mentioned earlier, because they're strapped for cash, Sylvia winds up taking in boarders. They're living in this huge house; they might as well put It to use. I think the addition of these extra people in the house makes the story that much more interesting all of a sudden.

KIM: Yes. For sure.

WENDY-MARIE: It certainly does. And that's one of the beauties of Streatfeild is she had such an eye for all of the people around her that when you read about the doctors (and they're not medical doctors; they're doctors of literature of mathematics) you can almost picture them in your head. And then one of the boarders is Theo, a dance teacher at a prestigious, and when I say prestigious, the proprietor of the school used to dance for the Imperial Russian Ballet, you can just picture Theo perfectly. And then of course, there's some other boarders that come through. There is a gentleman, John Simpson, and he loves cars. He's very mechanically-inclined, and I can picture him very, very clearly in my head. 

AMY: So suddenly we have a whole house filled with super interesting people who are sort of lending their expertise and their talents to teaching these children. But even with the renters, money is still tight, which is why Theo, the dance teacher, suggests that the girls maybe ought to get into performing. This is one way where they can make money. Um, I will say that the amount of budgeting that this family does and the detail with which Streatfeild gets into the dollars and cents or the pounds and shillings of it all, is super specific to a crazy degree. There's so much math in the book that I felt like I was doing, you know, every time they needed a new dress. It was like, "Okay, we've got to add this all up in our head. Is there enough to go around?"

KIM: Yeah, they were literally counting every single penny.

WENDY-MARIE: As the daughter of a vicar, she did have what was known as a dress allowance that her father would give her every year. And it was very, very small. In her semi-autobiographical adult books, The Vicarage series, she does talk about how she had to keep everything so very narrow because even though she came from a good background, there wasn't money in her family. And she had to live on a very, very narrow budget. And she herself trained in the drama school. The drama school that she trained in is now The Royal Academy of Drama and Arts, I believe. RADA. And even those fees for her father was a huge drain on the family even after her siblings had already left home. So she grew up with money being very, very, very tight. That's why it's such a relatable book. Even though you might not be going on the stage or a mathematical and mechanical genius like Petrova, or, you know, you might not be Posy who is a light, fairy butterfly of a dancer who's going to make the history books, you can still know what it's like to go, "Golly, I need to budget. I need a new pair of shoes, or I need to upgrade my computer," Or, "Oh my God, my car... I took it for an oil change and I need repairs." It’s that part of doing what you need to do to try to cover what you need in life is so relatable.

KIM: Right. 

AMY: And so Sylvia is a little bit skeptical about this plan to have the girls money by performing. But she reluctantly goes ahead with it. The ballet school is a kind of classy place. You know, it's not going to ruin their reputation or anything like that to be involved in it. Um, I think it is really interesting to follow them behind the scenes and get to see what it's like to be backstage at a theater. What's it like to audition for these shows? It seems like it would innately appeal to little girls. I mean, I was the kid who was always in my basement listening to the Broadway recording of Annie and pretending I was in the show, right? So it's just like a fantasy world that I think young girls would really get into.

KIM: Right. And then on the flip side of that, we have this middle sister, Petrova. The fact that she wants something so much different out of life is a key point of this novel, right Wendy-Marie?.

WENDY-MARIE: Yes, it is. Petrova is an interesting case. Out of all of the characters in Ballet Shoes, Petrova is pretty much Noel. She has this beautiful older sister, just like Noel had. She had a beautiful younger sister, very talented. And then you have Petrova, who doesn't quite fit in with the family, even though she's very loved and cherished. And technically, because of the way her mind works, Petrova can just learn those dance routines and get them drilled right down into her. But she doesn't have that passion that will translate on the stage. So she doesn't quite fit in because as you're looking through her, she's the sister that really stands out. She's doing mechanical things. She's talking about airplanes. When Mr. Simpson comes to live with them in the boarding house, the two of them bond over cars and mechanics, to the point where he even gets her a little tiny coverall so she can work on the cars without getting dirty. She always wants something more. And throughout the novel, she kind of cherishes the thought that, “If I'm old enough, maybe I can retrain for something.” She wants to fly planes. She wants motor cars. She just wants something different, which is a very relatable thing to small children. And even adults, you know? You might not fit in in your chosen or found family. So she's very appealing and very relatable.

KIM: Yeah. Um, without her character, it would be, I think, a much flatter story.

AMY: I think that's kind of the appeal of these novels, is that there's a personality for everyone. You know, you have three very different sisters, and as a reader, you're going to identify with the one that, you know, speaks to your own heart a little bit. What I like, also, is that none of these sisters is too precious. I feel like it could have almost tipped over into that, where they're just such good girls. No, they can be a little bratty! All three of them.

WENDY-MARIE: They do learn some very human lessons. When Pauline has her first big theatrical contract, I mean, well, she's only making four pounds a week doing a pantomime, which is a very popular British thing to do, entertainment-wise, around Christmas time. Very, very popular -- many stars get their start in that. But she acts up and you know what? Life slaps her down. And she does kind of learn a little lesson that she does carry with her throughout the book. But it's not pushed down your throat in a twee fashion. I wish there had been a sequel that would have been probing deeper into what happens to the sisters. In other Streatfeild books, you get little glimpses, but I think I'd like to see more of Pauline's journey. Posy, we already know, is going to be an amazing ballerina. We already know she's going to be awesome and amazing. Petrova, I'd love to see Petrova's path more as an adult, but we don't get that, unfortunately. Just glimpses. Just little nibbles.

AMY: Well, if you want to dive deeper into a version of these characters, sort of maybe the dark underside of these characters, we can pivot now to The Whicharts.

KIM: The moment we've all been waiting for!

AMY: Yes, exactly. So Ballet Shoes was a massive success for Streatfeild, but its genesis actually springs from this earlier book of hers that we mentioned, The Whicharts. Wendy-Marie, talk us through this and how it kind of evolved into Ballet Shoes.

WENDY-MARIE: Noel Streatfeild's first career was actually as an actress. She trained at what ultimately became RADA, which is still well known and still going today. And she would go on tour. And while she was on one of the tours, she realized that she was not going to be the success that she wanted to be. Her father died, and when she was coming back home, she realized that what she wanted to do was something else. So why not try writing? And I definitely suggest you listen to the "Desert Island Discs" episode with her from the archives, because her reaction about having a writing career as being more stable than an acting career is perfection. So she decides to write a book. She had already dabbled in writing a little bit, but she decides to write this book about three sisters... who ended up in the theatrical world... 

AMY: It's sounding very familiar, huh? To the degree where I finished reading Ballet Shoes, I downloaded The Whicharts to read next. I was still on the very first page when I had to stop myself and double check because I thought I had accidentally opened Ballet Shoes again on my Kindle. It’s that similar. I was like, “Wait, what? Huh?” I had no idea it was practically the same story, albeit a much less sanitized version.

KIM: Yes. The beginnings start off nearly verbatim, but then you quickly realize this isn't a kid's book, right?

AMY: No. It's like a book meeting its evil twin. As I kept reading, I just was like, “Holy crap. I cannot believe the detour that this book is taking from the other one.” 

KIM: Completely completely. I mean, it is tawdry! It would be really fun to showcase the contrast by reading a sample from each book. So you can actually see this in action. Um, so Amy and Wendy-Marie, do you want to take it away?

AMY: Sure. I think it would be fun to read from the section where the third and youngest baby girl turns up in each book. So Wendy-Marie, why don't you read the passage from Ballet Shoes first? Um, we'll do just after GUM, which stands for Great Uncle Matthew, has sent baby Posy to the house. 

WENDY-MARIE: I'm going to try. My voice is a little rough today, but I'm going to give it a try: 

"The sudden arrival of little Posy caused an upset in the nursery. Nana, it was who took in the basket, and when Sylvia got in and went up to see the baby, she found her crumpled and rather pink, lying face downwards on Nana's flannel-aproned knee. Nana was holding an enormous powder puff, and she looked up as Sylvia came in. 

“This is too much, this is,” she said severely. 

She shook a spray, a fuller's earth over the baby. 

Sylvia looked humble. 

“I quite agree, Nana. But what are we to do? Here she is.” 

Nana looked angrily at Posy. 

“It isn't right. Here we are with Pauline rising four, and Petrova sixteen months, and down you pop this little fly-by-night. Two’s enough, I’ve always said. I told the Professor so perfectly plain. Who is she? That’s another thing I’d like to know.”

“Well, her name’s Posy, and her mother is a dancer.”

“Posy! With the other two called as nice as can be after the Holy Apostles, that's a foolish sort of name.” Nana gave a snort of disgust, and then, in case the baby should feel hurt, added, “Blessed lamb.”

“Right.” Sylvia turned to the door. “Now I know how you feel, I shall make other arrangements for her, perhaps an orphanage…” 

“Orphanage!” Nana's eyes positively blazed. She pulled a tiny vest over Posy’s unprotesting little head. “Who’s thinking of orphanages? The Professor’s taken her, and here she stays. But no more, and that’s my last word.”

KIM: That was great. 

AMY: Yeah, I think somebody has a future in audio book recording.

KIM: I know seriously, 

WENDY-MARIE: If I only wasn’t dyslexic and stuttered!

AMY: Now I'm going to read a similar section from The Whicharts, and just to set this up, once again, in Ballet Shoes, we have the young woman, Sylvia, with three babies left by the globetrotting Great Uncle. In The Witcharts, the Sylvia character is now named Rose, and she is actually a young woman who fell into a love affair with a married brigadier who summarily dumped her, but then started saddling her with his subsequent mistresses' unwanted babies.

KIM: Yeah. Not quite the professor of Ballet Shoes.

AMY: And by page five of The Whicharts, the word "fornication" is used. So Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Totally different book, but you will see similarities in what I'm about to read. Now, the third baby in this book is named Daisy, so I'll just start with Daisy's arrival. 

"On the evening of her arrival, after the Brigadier had left, Rose had gone up to examine the baby. She found its little crumpled red body lying face downwards on Nannie’s flannel-apron knee. Nannie, holding an enormous powder puff, looked up as Rose came in.

“I was ’opin’ you'd come up, Miss. This is too much, this is.” 

She angrily shook a shower of “Fuller's Earth” on daisies underneath. 

“I know, Nannie, but what can I do? Here she is.” Rose looked helplessly at Daisy.

“Tisn’t right. ’Ere are we, Mamie four-and-a-’half. Tania nearly three. Old enough as you might say to know what’s what. And suddenly down you pops this little fly-by-night, come by God knows ’how. ’Tain’t right.”

“Oh, but Nannie, they’re half-sisters.”

“And ’oo’s the Mother? That’s what I likes to know in my nursery. Miss Anybody for all we knows.”

“I believe she was a dancer.”

“So I should say.” Nannie snorted in disgust. “Just the sort of Mother I should expect. Blessed lamb!” she added to the baby.

Rose was worried.

“After all,” she said; “the other mothers were —”

Nannie interrupted.

“As nice a pair of young ladies as you could wish. If unfortunate. If I lives to be a hundred I’ll always speak well of Miss Mamie. Speak as you find I say. As for Miss Tania: well, she was quite the little lady. As I often says to Cook, it was ’hard to believe she ’hadn’t got no wedding-ring. And now this! A dancer indeed!”

Nannie bristling with indignation pulled a tiny vest over Daisy’s unprotesting little head.

“Well, Nannie, if that’s how you feel, she must go.”

“Go! ’Oo said go? She’s come, an’ she must stay. But she starts with a nasty ’andicap, poor little thin’.

So just comparing those two passages that we just read, you can really see how the first book kind of informed the second. It's so similar, right? 

KIM: Yeah. It's like an adaptation, basically.

AMY: Exactly. 

KIM: So while both books follow the same plot and feature most of the same characters, the stories do start to diverge a bit as they go along. And we won't reveal any major spoilers, but let's just say the Whichart girls end up being a lot less sheltered than their Fossil counterparts.

AMY: Yes, and Wendy-Marie, would you like to explain really quick for our listeners why they take the last name the Whicharts?

WENDY-MARIE: Well, the Whichart sisters actually have a slightly different origin than the Fossil sisters. The Fossil sisters are all orphans, adopted at various points in GUM's adventures. The Whichart sisters are actually half sisters. They know that they're half sisters; they can't really hide the fact, but they're never told their father's last name and they have to go to school and they need to have a name to be registered under. And the name the children choose is “Whichart,” based on the Lord's Prayer, where it's "Our father, which art..." So they always refer to their father who's most certainly not named Whichart, as Whichart.

AMY: Very cute. 

WENDY-MARIE: Their origin is kind of, "Okay... okay, Noel...." 

AMY: The irony, yes. Um, so we sexual exploitation in the world of ballet at the top of this episode. And Streatfeild delves into that a bit in this book. Wendy-Marie, would you care to explain? And also, listeners, this isn't an enormous plot point, so we're not giving away anything here.

WENDY-MARIE: Well, here's another part where the Whichart sisters definitely have a much more interesting existence than the Fossil sisters. The Fossil sisters never encounter anything bad in the book, being exploited in that way. They're very safe and protected. The Whichart sisters end up at a ballet school, which is not prestigious. It is very low class. So we have Mamie who's the eldest Whichart sister, who is the first to go onto stage. She ends up in the chorus, and she's very young and she's very tall, and very blonde and very gorgeous. So she is catnip to just about any predatory male. She does end up becoming involved with a choreographer whose name is Dolly, and Dolly is known for preying on young female dancers. There's points where the other dancers are like, "Stay away from him. He is bad. He will ruin your life." Dolly starts creeping up on her and gets her other jobs beyond the first one. And invites her to his apartment late one night and comes up behind and gets her on the couch and starts kissing her. She can't be any more than 15, 16, 17 years old. And this is one of the beauties of Noel Streatfeild's writing. She perfectly encapsulates the terror of doing something for the first time and wondering, "Oh my God, have I made a mistake? Can everybody tell? And am I pregnant?"

AMY: It's super creepy. It's um child abuse, basically, is what it was.

KIM: Oh yeah, for sure. But Mamie gets over it pretty quickly and just kind of moves on and then she ends up making some questionable choices going forward because of this world that she's in, but she's pretty unapologetic about it all. So the book gives this more sobering look at the various options women had for getting by in the world. So different from the more, as you said, "safe" world of Ballet Shoes.

AMY: Yeah. So it's interesting in this book that the mothers of the three orphan babies, we do meet them. We get to know them. That's one facet of this book that I found interesting is that a lot more peripheral characters that are super interesting in The Whicharts, I think. She benches out; she delves into other people's stories. I think these characters are so much more richly drawn than they are in Ballet Shoes. Like the comparison of the Madame Ballet Shoes with the owner of the dance company in The Whicharts is night and day. And it's so much more well-crafted in The Whicharts. 

KIM: Yeah, it's like a Dickens character, actually, a lot of the characters, but especially her,`reminds me of a Dickens character.

WENDY-MARIE: And she also reminds me of the owner of the theatrical school in Penelope Fitzgerald's At Freddy's where it's a decaying, decrepit world where things are literally falling apart. When you walk into this school that this Madame runs, it's dirty, it smells, it's filthy. You kind of want to just entirely coat yourself in hand sanitizer after even walking in there.

AMY: It's sordid. Yeah. 

WENDY-MARIE: Sordid is an excellent word.

AMY: But yeah, so I liked Ballet Shoes a lot when I was reading it, but then reading The Whicharts and comparing it, it just popped off the page. Ballet Shoes suddenly became a little bit more flat to me. 

KIM: Yeah, it's very sanitized. While The Whicharts actually, because it feels more real, it's more poignant. I think it tugs at your heartstrings in a whole other way than Ballet Shoes does. 

WENDY-MARIE: Ballet Shoes is a cucumber sandwich at a tea party, whereas The Whicharts is your roast chicken; it's your meat and two veg. You really can dig down in it, and of course, it's because they're meant for different audiences. You don't want to terrify small children with books. You want to be able to escape into them and show parts of the reality, but if you had put half of the things that happened to the Whichart sisters in Ballet Shoes, it would not have been the classic bestseller that we have, because there's so much escapism. With The Whicharts, there's no escapism. It's just unrelenting poverty. It is hard work. It's just grinding. There's so much meat on the bone with The Whicharts. It's that good. 

AMY: Um, yeah, I think one thing that both books really have in common is the sisterly bond. I mean, she does a great job in both of the books of really knitting these girls together, 

KIM: Yes, even though they're so different, underneath it all there is like this really, really tight bond between all three of them. It's really great.

WENDY-MARIE: They're willing to stand up for each other. An example for both books, the very similar circumstance where they do whatever they can to scrape together the cash so that particular sister has an outfit so she can get the job. There's something very similar in The Whicharts where the character, you think wouldn't do this for her sisters, Miss “I like older dudes and I'm a really pretty tall blonde girl…” Mamie has a gentleman friend who she goes to for money to get the money for the sister's outfit. It's just this amazing sisterly bond. Tania is so desperate in The Whicharts to keep her family together, that she goes on stage for one of the worst jobs ever. It's the most horrific job, but she's willing to do it because that will give money so the family can stay together in an apartment and not have to be parted. And that's one of the strengths. Noel, even though she may not have loved all of her siblings, she had very strong ties to her siblings. Her youngest sister, she adored, Richenda, who was born much later than she was. There's almost a 20 year difference. She loved Richenda like a sister, like a daughter. Her eldest sister, Ruth, illustrated the original edition of Ballet Shoes. So just that strong sisterly bond that Noel had with two of her siblings is transformed and continues, not only in Ballet Shoes, but in her other children's books. So that's just another one of those marvelous parallels, just like these little nibbles from Noel’s life that she's able to bring into her books. So that just makes it so relatable and so real.

AMY: So I've never really had the experience of reading two books like this from the same author that are such mirror images of each other. It was just fascinating for me to get to do that. And I wonder what Streatfeild must have thought initially about turning The Whicharts, this sort of seedy, tawdry story into a children's book. I can see her thinking, “You want me to do what? Huh?” 

WENDY-MARIE: And again, that's where I'm like, listen to the Desert Island Discs. In a way, she was like, “Okay?” Because they wanted a book like The Whicharts, but a children's book. And it was very easy to basically just lop off half of it and make things nice and pretty. But as a challenge, as an author, that's one of those things where I don't think I've ever seen a book like that where it's written from two distinctly different points of reference. I mean, you have Stephen King's books. Um, he had two that came out: Desperation and I believe it's The Regulators that came out and were written by his two different author personas, but they were essentially the same story written by a horror author. I've never seen it done by someone doing juvenile and adult, I don't think I've ever seen another example that's quite as compelling. And let me tell you, I've read those two Stephen King books and they're not my favorites. But The Whicharts and Ballet Shoes, um, how fast did I reach for my Kindle and my wallet?

AMY: Obviously Ballet Shoes is pretty popular still. I mean, it's pretty well known. Um, but I wonder if The Whicharts is lesser known because they wanted to sort of, um, keep everything all prim and pretty and just have people know Ballet Shoes. I can see where the publishers might've been like, “Let's just pretend The Whicharts never existed.” And maybe you can answer this Wendy-Marie, like as a little girl, if you read Ballet Shoes, do you then go read The Whicharts and are you sort of crestfallen? Like, “Wait, huh?”

WENDY-MARIE: Well, when I'm reading it in the early Eighties as a little girl living in Michigan with my parents, I had no idea that there were other books that she'd written as an adult. To me, Noel. Streatfeild just wrote these amazing books about amazingly talented kids in really interesting careers. You have the ballet, you have the theater, you have tennis, there's even a book about the circus. There's later books that she wrote in the Sixties and Seventies about children that are TV stars or musical stars or musical geniuses. So I had no clue until I was an adult. that she had written adult novels. But also I think the publishers may have also seen the two Noel Streatfeilds. So it's almost like there's two separate entities the publishers are looking at, you have adult Noel Streatfeild, which I do believe came out under Sylvia [Susan] Scarlett. 

AMY: Oh, okay. She had a pen name?

WENDY-MARIE: And then you have juvenile fiction. It's almost like, because there were two different perceptions of Noel Streatfeild depends on what publisher and what sort of genre that you were looking for. I don't know that your average child is going to stumble across The Whicharts, and The Whicharts, honestly, I have not seen as a reprint until within the last four or five years when it did come out on Kindle.

AMY: Got it. Let's talk real quick about the film adaptation of Ballet Shoes. It has Emma Watson and a host of other faces from British cinema that you will recognize. And it sticks with the pretty sanitized version of Ballet Shoes, but they did cherry pick a few more innocent things from The Whicharts to include. Wendy-Marie, what'd you think of this one?

WENDY-MARIE: I have thoughts, but, um, they might not be everyone else's. You guys might not love me anymore. Uh, I really do not care for the 2007 adaptation. I don't really go with Sylvia getting a boyfriend that's Mr. Simpson. (Sorry, spoiler.) I do like the fact that it sticks more with the aesthetic and the vibe. Um, there is a 1975 version that was done by the BBC which is also available to view on YouTube, which is much shorter. It was a serial done in about six episodes of 22 minutes or so, which is a little bit sharper and focuses more on the training and focuses more on the first part of the book. I think I prefer that version because that version really gives you the overall sense of what it was like to be a dancer. What it was like to train. You just get right into it. The Madame in that version, she’s  just got these marvelous villainous eyebrows. She's got this amazing accent. But there are some things I do like about the 2007 version. Sylvia becomes more of an individual. Even though I might not like her romance, you see a friendship that she develops with Theo; you just get to see this wonderful bond of how the borders become a found family, not only for the girls, but for Sylvia, who has no one but her governess, no one but her nanny. Her mother has died. Her great uncle is who knows where.

AMY: I liked the 2007 version a lot, and I actually liked that they gave Sylvia a romance. I thought it made the whole thing a little more cohesive and gave her something more to do. And she was played by the actress who plays, um, Miss Darcy, Darcy's little sister in the original BBC Pride and Prejudice. So I liked seeing her face again, and I thought she was a great actress. But I have not seen the 1970 version, so I will reserve judgment and maybe need to check that one out well.

KIM: I have no skin in the game as far as those adaptations. I haven't seen either, but, um, if you are looking for a still darker side to ballet, you could watch the Natalie Portman film Black Swan, and also, there's a movie called Six Weeks. I think it's from 1982 with Dudley Moore and, um, oh gosh, Mary Tyler Moore. Yeah, Dudley Moore and Mary Tyler Moore. It's a melodrama, and the little girl in it is a ballet student, but it is darker. Then also, when I was in high school, in addition to reading all the library subscriptions of Ballet magazine (I was obsessed with it) I also read Gelsey Kirkland's autobiography. It's called Dancing on My Grave. She was one of America's most famous ballerinas in the seventies and she studied under Balanchine and danced in the Nutcracker with her lover, Mikhail Baryshnikov. She was eventually fired from the New York City Ballet for using drugs. But there's a lot more to that story, of course. So if you do want to get some more insight into that world, those are some places that you can look.

AMY: Ooh. Yeah. That darker world of ballet. But Kim, this is making me think of your one and only thespian moment in elementary school. Would you care to share?

KIM: Uh, yeah. So I wrote an epic poem about a unicorn, and I got up in front of my whole school during the talent show and recited it. Only, you know, I was a bit shy, so I actually cried all the way through it. I recited the entire thing while tears were streaming down my face. So that was a moment that stagefright, uh, came upon me and then it took a while for it to come off. But yeah, that is my one big thespian moment.

AMY: You were just really feeling the emotion!

KIM: I was, yeah. It was there. Yeah.

WENDY-MARIE: As a listener, I demand this to be a bonus episode. I want to see video or hear audio of this, please.

KIM: Luckily, none exists, but it's seared into my brain. Like, literally, I can still remember… We were living in Texas at the time and my grandparents came from California for this performance and, uggh, it was just … it's an excruciating memory. But look how far I've come!

AMY: I just want to give you a hug right now, just feeling this. 

KIM: Thank you.

AMY: Yeah. Um, and Wendy-Marie, I want to give you a hug too! I know that if you were on the West Coast with us, we would be hanging out. 

KIM: Definitely. 

WENDY-MARIE: Thank you so much. It's actually been, ever since I heard your podcast, I was like, “Can you imagine the luxury of being on an episode and talking books with two people that you just connect with?” There's just something about the podcast that was so amazing. I actually was introduced to it with your E.M. Delafield episode. I love Diary of a Provincial Lady and E.M. Delafield so very much, so when I was looking for a podcast to listen to at work, I found your podcast and I just was enchanted and I could not stop listening to it. So actually, talking with you is a dream!

AMY: That's one of the great things about our podcast is we know it's helping us find people who like the same things that we do. So, um, it's really awesome. 

KIM: So that's all for today's podcast. The three of us will now take our final bows. Feel free to throw roses.

AMY: Yes, but Kim and I will be back next week with another mini episode. In the meantime, don't forget to rate and review us over at Apple Podcasts if you like what you've been hearing, or tell a friend.

KIM: Bye everyone. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.