The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit (important books to read txt) 📕
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In this conclusion to the Psammead Trilogy, Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane are reunited with the cantankerous Sand-fairy. While the old creature can’t grant them wishes anymore, it points them towards an old Egyptian amulet that can grant their hearts’ desire—in this case the return of their parents and baby brother. While their amulet is only half of a whole, it still acts as a time portal which they use to visit locales like Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, and even a utopian future in search of the missing other half.
Perhaps one of E. Nesbit’s most personal works, The Story of the Amulet benefited from her interest in the ancient world, particularly Egypt. With the help of A. E. Wallis Budge, to whom the book is dedicated—then Head of the Assyrian Departments of the British Museum and translator of the Egyptian Book of the Dead—she conducted extensive research on the topic and is thus able to bring an exquisite attention to detail. For example, the titular amulet is shaped after the tyet, an Egyptian symbol also known as the “knot of Isis.” Likewise, the inscription at the back of the amulet is written in authentic Egyptian hieroglyphs.
A staunch supporter of democratic socialism and a founding member of the Fabian Society, E. Nesbit cultivated friendships with other like-minded writers, such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, whose influence on this book is easy to notice. She practiced what she preached, so much so that despite her literary successes, her acts of charity brought her close to bankruptcy.
These political beliefs are prominently displayed in the book. The children encounter memorable characters during their adventures, chief among them the Queen of Babylon, who causes quite a stir when she later pays them a call in their contemporary London. When the visiting Queen witnesses the squalid living conditions of the London working class, she’s amazed at how poorly they’re treated compared to the slaves of her own Babylon. Likewise, the utopian future—which features a wink to her friend H. G. Wells, the “great reformer”—is a striking contrast in terms of the happiness, care, and education of the general populace.
The book’s legacy can be found in the works of other writers. Most notably, C. S. Lewis incorporated several elements in his Chronicles of Narnia: the Calormene civilization of The Horse and His Boy draws heavily from The Amulet’s Babylon, and the episode in The Magician’s Nephew where Jadis, the White Witch, causes chaos during her short stay in London is also a direct homage to the aforementioned visit from the Queen. The format of these stories, where a group of people take their audience on adventures through time and space to learn about distant cultures, is an uncanny precursor to the popular British TV series Doctor Who.
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- Author: E. Nesbit
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“Oh, yes,” said Cyril carelessly. “It was jolly enough, of course, but I thought we’d been there long enough. Mother always says you oughtn’t to wear out your welcome!”
VIII The Queen in London“Now tell us what happened to you,” said Cyril to Jane, when he and the others had told her all about the Queen’s talk and the banquet, and the variety entertainment, carefully stopping short before the beginning of the dungeon part of the story.
“It wasn’t much good going,” said Jane, “if you didn’t even try to get the Amulet.”
“We found out it was no go,” said Cyril; “it’s not to be got in Babylon. It was lost before that. We’ll go to some other jolly friendly place, where everyone is kind and pleasant, and look for it there. Now tell us about your part.”
“Oh,” said Jane, “the Queen’s man with the smooth face—what was his name?”
“Ritti-Marduk,” said Cyril.
“Yes,” said Jane, “Ritti-Marduk, he came for me just after the Psammead had bitten the guard-of-the-gate’s wife’s little boy, and he took me to the Palace. And we had supper with the new little Queen from Egypt. She is a dear—not much older than you. She told me heaps about Egypt. And we played ball after supper. And then the Babylon Queen sent for me. I like her too. And she talked to the Psammead and I went to sleep. And then you woke me up. That’s all.”
The Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.
“But,” it added, “what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most rudimentary imitation of brains.”
The children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a rude, insulting word.
“I don’t see that we did any harm,” said Cyril sulkily.
“Oh, no,” said the Psammead with withering irony, “not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any moment.”
“Then it’s your fault,” said Robert, “because you might just as well have made ‘soon’ mean some moment next year or next century.”
“That’s where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,” rejoined the Sand-fairy. “I couldn’t mean anything but what she meant by ‘soon.’ It wasn’t my wish. And what she meant was the next time the King happens to go out lion hunting. So she’ll have a whole day, and perhaps two, to do as she wishes with. She doesn’t know about time only being a mode of thought.”
“Well,” said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, “we must do what we can to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we were to go to St. James’s Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I feel as if I should like to see something real, and now. You’ll come, Psammead?”
“Where’s my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?” asked the Psammead morosely. “I can’t go out with nothing on. And I won’t, what’s more.”
And then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.
“But it’s not so extra precious,” said Robert hastily. “You can get them given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.”
“Oh,” said the Psammead very crossly indeed, “so you presume on my sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very well, I shall go to sand. Please don’t wake me.”
And it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed. The boys went to St. James’s Park to feed the ducks, but they went alone.
Anthea and Jane sat sewing all the afternoon. They cut off half a yard from each of their best green Liberty sashes. A towel cut in two formed a lining; and they sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. What they were making was a bag for the Psammead. Each worked at a half of the bag. Jane’s half had four-leaved shamrocks embroidered on it. They were the only things she could do (because she had been taught how at school, and, fortunately, some of the silk she had been taught with was left over). And even so, Anthea had to draw the pattern for her. Anthea’s side of the bag had letters on it—worked hastily but affectionately in chain stitch. They were something like this:
She would have put “travelling carriage,” but she made the letters too big, so there was no room. The bag was made into a bag with old Nurse’s sewing machine, and the strings of it were Anthea’s and Jane’s best red hair ribbons.
At teatime, when the boys had come home with a most unfavourable report of the St. James’s Park ducks, Anthea ventured to awaken the Psammead, and to show it its new travelling bag.
“Humph,” it said, sniffing a little contemptuously, yet at the same time affectionately, “it’s not so dusty.”
The Psammead seemed to pick up very easily the kind of things that people said nowadays. For a creature that had in its time associated with Megatheriums and Pterodactyls, its quickness was really wonderful.
“It’s more worthy of me,” it said, “than the kind of bag that’s given away with a pound of plaice. When do you propose to take me out in it?”
“I should like a rest from taking you or us anywhere,” said Cyril. But Jane said—
“I want to go to
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