Water Babies De-Mystified

 The story, Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley, has pulled at me with slender, almost invisible strands of nostalgia. I must have been exposed to a copy when I was a young child.  I connect with the fanciful illustrations.  They are slightly, hauntingly familiar.

So it was understandable that I pursued Water Babies illustrations for our new Art Prints For Kidz website.  This pursuit has helped me to learn a lot about these books (there are many versions).  First, they are expensive.  Second, the art can be alluring and intriguing.  Finally, the story is rather different than you might expect.  Well, at least different that I might have expected.  I finally read the thing and found out.

Water Babies is a tedious, long-winded, frequently harsh, frequently intolerant of abuse toward the innocent, and infrequently clever morality tale.  Some of it impressed me.  Much of it confounded me.  It comes across as pompous and self-congratulatory.  I cannot imagine children a hundred years ago, when it was written, let alone today's electronic-driven kids, enjoying or understanding it. 

Here is a very short outline:  Tom, a young, abused, godless and ignorant chimney sweep, accidentally enters the bedroom of a wealthy young girl when he drops down the wrong chimney.  She screams bloody murder, and sooty Tom runs away with the estate's workforce in pursuit.  He eludes them by going over rough territory with a mysterious Irish woman shadowing him.  Tom develops a terrible thirst and a terrible desire to be clean, so he lays down in a stream and becomes a "water baby", which is a euphemism for a youth who has died tragically.  He is reborn as a small baby with an Elizabethan collar of gills.  He eventually makes it out to the sea with unseen fairies protecting him, and eventually joins with thousands of other water babies.  He is a prankish tad, and encounters situations and forces that show him he must do what he doesn't like and behave properly if he is going to progress to being a man.  The young girl he frightened, Ellie, coincidentally falls by the seaside, hits her head and becomes a water baby.  The Irish woman turns out to be one of two fairy queen sisters who are guiding him toward a proper adulthood.  One fairy queen is responsible for punishing those who do ill, and the other is responsible for encouraging correct behavior through loving mothering.  Oh, and we are encouraged to wash with plenty of cold water, as it is the English way.  Oh, yes, and there are many entreaties to be gentle and just to the innocent and the defenseless.

I give Kingsley credit for a long and complicated story.  I also credit him with causing a great deal of fascinating art. 

Here's to you Charles...you followed your own advice and worked hard to accomplish a difficult task.  I may not understand much of it, although I see the points (be upstanding, kind and a proper Englishman), and I admire the effort.

But the little boy in me isn't sure he likes having his eyes opened to what this story is actually about;  growing up and being a responsible adult.  I preferred ignorant innocence.  And now I am getting a little whiff of self-irony.  How about you?