The Box of Delights: Or When the Wolves Were Running (Kay Harker)

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Mention is made of a "Boy" who apparently can tell the future. Who is this Boy? Where did he come from? Why is he working for, or in the clutches of, Abner? Is he there against his will? Is he a normal boy with magical abilities, or is he a magical fairy boy, or is he part of a mystical priesthood of fortune tellers? Who is this person? We don't KNOW! We will never know. Because this plot is crap and it doesn't explain anything. In 1894, Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile. He recorded his experiences while sailing through the extreme weather. Upon reaching Chile, Masefield suffered from sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steam ship. Poet John Masefield's 1935 British Empire-era fantasy finds twelve-year-old Kay Harker home from his boarding school just in time to help a magical old Punch and Judy showman. At least, that seems to be what happens. The plot's pretty convoluted. But the images Masefield conjures up are gorgeous. Flynn, Simon: "A Magic Curiously Suited to Radio?": The BBC and The Box of Delights. The Journal of the John Masefield Society, No. 12 (May 2003), pp.21–35. Young Kay Harker, returning from school to his family home Seekings and his festive visitors in the shape of a gang of cousins, is given the Box of the title to care for and protect by a mysterious travelling Punch and Judy man, Cole Hawlings. As is the case in these types of books, the Box is a treasure of such magnitude that by rights it should be entrusted to a private army rather than a small boy, and it isn't long before a gang of crooks with a rather magical bent, led by the dark Abner Brown, are on its trail and menacing Kay and his cousins.

When Masefield was 23, he met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, who was 35. Educated in classics and English Literature, and a mathematics teacher, Constance was a perfect match for Masefield despite the difference in age. The couple had two children (Judith, born in 1904, and Lewis, in 1910). Describing Masefield’s work as “magnificent”, he said: “It warrants a revival. The RSC putting on the play is a great thing … a wonderful Christmas story.” Tis the night before Christmas and the author is having an adventure too, with language and history and legends and dreamscapes and so much more, and all of this done with a certain nonchalance because it's not like he hasn't done this sort of thing before! When Kay comes home for the holidays, he meets a strange man who warns him, "The Wolves are running," and entrusts him with a magical Box to keep safe. The evil Abner Brown is after the box with his gang of kidnappers and cutthroats, and when people begin disappearing in Kay's town, Kay must use the Box to travel into the Past to save his friends.

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I’ve often thought that I’d like to return to the full, original novel someday and see what I think of it now. Looking into editions of the real book, I learned that the story’s protagonist, Kay Harker, also appears in an earlier novel by Masefield, The Midnight Folk. So I started with that one and then went straight on into The Box of Delights (both in the New York Review edition). The dream cliche' makes me feel like I've wasted my time somehow, ESPECIALLY because 'The Midnight Folk' was JUST as magical and hard-to-believe (if you don't use imagination), yet it was all proclaimed true. There was NO reason whatsoever to write this off as a dream. None. I'm disappointed. He told the Guardian: “It is absolutely the case that the first words spoken on the stage of the newly rebuilt Shakespeare Memorial theatre were by Masefield rather than Shakespeare as he was poet laureate. He also had an association with Stratford. He had written a book on Shakespeare in 1911 and was forever going to see productions.” With The Box of Delights we pretty much reached the peak of televised adaptations of classic children’s books. At the time it was the BBC’s most expensive children’s drama ever, with groundbreaking (for TV) special effects and a lot of snow.

That phrase was the best part of this book for me. It stated immediate evil and drew me in, plus it kept me going when nothing else made sense. This John Masefield tale is a Christmas favourite for many and seems to have influenced the Narnia saga. I would also dare to say that it has some elements that may have influenced the Harry Potter stories as well such as the young hero, railway stations, snow-filled villages, hot drinks, and magic. This was a funny read, funny as in there is more kinds of magic in this book than any other I've read - Masefield seems to have done a sort of tossed salad of time travel, talking animals, a box that gives special powers to it's bearer(powers that are unplumbed, it might do a lot more than what is mentioned) - which makes for a colorful jumble of a book. At times it seemed totally haphazard, but not in an unpleasant way. I suspect that it gets better and more beloved after a rereading, both for it's quirks and because one knows what to expect and can appreciate the details. In fact, the whole book is shot through with a folklorish, mythological flavour, and even the "real" world that Kay inhabits is peopled by a cast of often eerie, mysterious, enigmatic and sometimes downright scary figures. Masefield then, at the drop of a hat, switches between his poetic descriptions and episodes that are downright fairytale-ish or Narnia-esque, with talking animals and mice armed with sewing-needle rapiers. Tis the night before Christmas and little Kay shall become as small and as fast as a bird! and he shall encounter wolves & wizards & witches & thieves! and he shall visit strange places and he shall enter the past and he shall protect his precious Box of Delights and he shall visit a friendly mouse! and he will deal with all of this with a certain nonchalance because it's not like he hasn't done this sort of thing before! After a seemingly chance encounter on a train, orphaned schoolboy Kay Harker finds himself the guardian of a small wooden box with powers beyond his wildest dreams.Masefield has a way with a well-turned, memorable sentence: "And now, Master Harker, now that the Wolves are Running, perhaps you could do something to stop their Bite?" Riding the train home for the Christmas holidays, prep school boy Kay Harker meets Punch and Judy man Cole Hawlings. Gnomically warning him that “the wolves are running”, Hawlings entrusts Kay with the eponymous Box of Delights. Kay must guard the Box from the gangster wizard Abner Brown and his gang (who are all disguised as vicars). Fortunately the Box allows him to “go small’ and “go swift” as well as travel in time, enabling Kay to enlist the help of figures from history and folklore, fairies, and a host of talking fauna. John Masefield, poet laureate of the U.K. from 1930 till his death in 1967, is perhaps best known for his poem “Sea Fever” (“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky”). He was also, however, one of the finest and most influential writers of children’s books. I first read The Box of Delights in Kenya, when I was about ten. When I went to the States for college, I was horrified to find that no one had heard of it, and that the only available edition had been butchered by an abridger (who had somehow managed to trim out all the most marvelous and magical parts). Happily, New York Review Books recently came out with unabridged versions of both The Box of Delights and its precursor, The Midnight Folk. It now seems to be finding some sort of readership in the U.S.