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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All the same the crowd made way a little. The Queen met Robert on the pavement, and Cyril joined them, the Psammead bag still on his arm.
“Here,” he whispered; “here’s the Psammead; you can get wishes.”
“I wish you’d come in a different dress, if you had to come,” said Robert; “but it’s no use my wishing anything.”
“No,” said the Queen. “I wish I was dressed—no, I don’t—I wish they were dressed properly, then they wouldn’t be so silly.”
The Psammead blew itself out till the bag was a very tight fit for it; and suddenly every man, woman, and child in that crowd felt that it had not enough clothes on. For, of course, the Queen’s idea of proper dress was the dress that had been proper for the working-classes 3,000 years ago in Babylon—and there was not much of it.
“Lawky me!” said the marrow-selling woman, “whatever could a-took me to come out this figure?” and she wheeled her cart away very quickly indeed.
“Someone’s made a pretty guy of you—talk of guys,” said a man who sold bootlaces.
“Well, don’t you talk,” said the man next to him. “Look at your own silly legs; and where’s your boots?”
“I never come out like this, I’ll take my sacred,” said the bootlace-seller. “I wasn’t quite myself last night, I’ll own, but not to dress up like a circus.”
The crowd was all talking at once, and getting rather angry. But no one seemed to think of blaming the Queen.
Anthea bounded down the steps and pulled her up; the others followed, and the door was shut.
“Blowed if I can make it out!” they heard. “I’m off home, I am.”
And the crowd, coming slowly to the same mind, dispersed, followed by another crowd of persons who were not dressed in what the Queen thought was the proper way.
“We shall have the police here directly,” said Anthea in the tones of despair. “Oh, why did you come dressed like that?”
The Queen leaned against the arm of the horsehair sofa.
“How else can a queen dress I should like to know?” she questioned.
“Our Queen wears things like other people,” said Cyril.
“Well, I don’t. And I must say,” she remarked in an injured tone, “that you don’t seem very glad to see me now I have come. But perhaps it’s the surprise that makes you behave like this. Yet you ought to be used to surprises. The way you vanished! I shall never forget it. The best magic I’ve ever seen. How did you do it?”
“Oh, never mind about that now,” said Robert. “You see you’ve gone and upset all those people, and I expect they’ll fetch the police. And we don’t want to see you collared and put in prison.”
“You can’t put queens in prison,” she said loftily.
“Oh, can’t you?” said Cyril. “We cut off a king’s head here once.”
“In this miserable room? How frightfully interesting.”
“No, no, not in this room; in history.”
“Oh, in that,” said the Queen disparagingly. “I thought you’d done it with your own hands.”
The girls shuddered.
“What a hideous city yours is,” the Queen went on pleasantly, “and what horrid, ignorant people. Do you know they actually can’t understand a single word I say.”
“Can you understand them?” asked Jane.
“Of course not; they speak some vulgar, Northern dialect. I can understand you quite well.”
I really am not going to explain again how it was that the children could understand other languages than their own so thoroughly, and talk them, too, so that it felt and sounded (to them) just as though they were talking English.
“Well,” said Cyril bluntly, “now you’ve seen just how horrid it is, don’t you think you might as well go home again?”
“Why, I’ve seen simply nothing yet,” said the Queen, arranging her starry veil. “I wished to be at your door, and I was. Now I must go and see your King and Queen.”
“Nobody’s allowed to,” said Anthea in haste; “but look here, we’ll take you and show you anything you’d like to see—anything you can see,” she added kindly, because she remembered how nice the Queen had been to them in Babylon, even if she had been a little deceitful in the matter of Jane and Psammead.
“There’s the Museum,” said Cyril hopefully; “there are lots of things from your country there. If only we could disguise you a little.”
“I know,” said Anthea suddenly. “Mother’s old theatre cloak, and there are a lot of her old hats in the big box.”
The blue silk, lace-trimmed cloak did indeed hide some of the Queen’s startling splendours, but the hat fitted very badly. It had pink roses in it; and there was something about the coat or the hat or the Queen, that made her look somehow not very respectable.
“Oh, never mind,” said Anthea, when Cyril whispered this. “The thing is to get her out before Nurse has finished her forty winks. I should think she’s about got to the thirty-ninth wink by now.”
“Come on then,” said Robert. “You know how dangerous it is. Let’s make haste into the Museum. If any of those people you made guys of do fetch the police, they won’t think of looking for you there.”
The blue silk coat and the pink-rosed hat attracted almost as much attention as the royal costume had done; and the children were uncommonly glad to get out of the noisy streets into the grey quiet of the Museum.
“Parcels and umbrellas to be left here,” said a man at the counter. The party had no umbrellas, and the only parcel was the bag containing the Psammead, which the Queen had insisted should be brought.
“I’m not going to be left,” said the Psammead softly, “so don’t you think it.”
“I’ll wait outside with you,” said Anthea hastily, and went to sit on the seat near the drinking fountain.
“Don’t sit so near that nasty fountain,” said the creature crossly; “I might get splashed.”
Anthea obediently moved to another seat and waited. Indeed she waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. The Psammead dropped into an uneasy slumber. Anthea had
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