It is a matter of record that many people have been influenced by their reading. Where would the world be if Lenin hadn't read a book of Marx,or if Don McLean hadn't sung about it? Well, there would be fewer Russians in Long Island and whatever would have happened to Leon Trotsky would never have figured in the Stranglers' lyrics. Fact: reading can guide your principles, interests and values and coming back to a book nearly fifty years later can come as quite a shock when it becomes apparent just how influential it was on my own choices.
I first read Arthur Ransome's book when I was eight or nine years old. The whole atmosphere of the novel reflects a writer who has a clear insight into the interests and motivations of children who were much the same age as I at the time of first reading. That in itself is strange as I have it on good authority - my mother - that as a neighbour of Mr. Ransome's in 1950's Putney her most frequent contact with him was facing his complaints about just how noisy my brothers were. For those of you who never read his books, a precis:
The Walker family, John, Susan, Letitia and Roger are spending the summer holidays in the Lake District. Yes, I did write Letitia, but let's be honest, in the books she's called Titty. It didn't make me laugh fifty years ago and I'm pleased to find that she hasn't been edited in the copy that my own daughter brought home for me to read last week. They can and do take to the water and sail a small dingy called 'Swallow' making friends with and creating a whole imaginary world with sisters sailing their own boat 'Amazon', hence the title. The whole message of the book is that left to themselves children can go and camp on a island in the lake, as long as they organize themselves as a ship's company. It helps if you are the children of a Royal Naval officer, as are the Walkers.
I, however was not the child of a Royal Naval officer, but well before I got in a sailing boat I had already learned about sailing by and large on the wind and knew that steam would have to give way to sail; fine in theory, but not much use in the Solent when faced with a bulk carrier. Unlike Roger Walker I didn't run up the field tacking against the wind, but I knew what it meant to tack. What I did have was an imagination as active as his sister's, as active as Ransome's.
So, eight years later at the age of 16 I found myself in possession of enough experience in a small boat to think I had a chance at commanding something bigger and applied to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. Why? In retrospect I think the book was the catalyst; independence, confidence and belonging. It seems likely that this was an affliction I shared with a number of my school contemporaries who went from the ordered structure of a boarding school to the nearest equivalent in the adult world - the British Armed Services. It was, however, not to be.
What hadn't entered my reckoning was the fact that the basic requirement of an Officer's commission is that they can see where they are going; I can, but only by using one eye at a time, which wasn't what the Navy had in mind for its navigators. I had an inkling of course. I'd even overheard my parents arguing about whether I should be told there wasn't a chance, but I managed, Titty-like, to imagine my way into a whole different world where the fact that I could see perfectly well, one eye at a time, would be enough. But like the book, and the holiday, my imaginary uniformed world came to an end.
No doubt my life would have been entirely different if it hadn't been for my vision. Perhaps it was my failure of vision that undermined my vision. In any case it delivered me a whole chunk of reality instead. I still love the book, but sometimes I wonder about my life.
