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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He took out the shilling compass, still, fortunately, in working order, that he had bought off another boy at school for fivepence, a piece of indiarubber, a strip of whalebone, and half a stick of red sealing-wax.
And he showed Pheles how it worked. And Pheles wondered at the compass’s magic truth.
“I will give it to you,” Robert said, “in return for that charm about your neck.”
Pheles made no answer. He first laughed, snatched the compass from Robert’s hand, and turned away still laughing.
“Be comforted,” the Priest whispered, “our time will come.”
The dusk deepened, and Pheles, crouched beside a dim lantern, steered by the shilling compass from the Crystal Palace.
No one ever knew how the other ship sailed, but suddenly, in the deep night, the lookout man at the stern cried out in a terrible voice—
“She is close upon us!”
“And we,” said Pheles, “are close to the harbour.” He was silent a moment, then suddenly he altered the ship’s course, and then he stood up and spoke.
“Good friends and gentlemen,” he said, “who are bound with me in this brave venture by our King’s command, the false, foreign ship is close on our heels. If we land, they land, and only the gods know whether they might not beat us in fight, and themselves survive to carry back the tale of Tyre’s secret island to enrich their own miserable land. Shall this be?”
“Never!” cried the half-dozen men near him. The slaves were rowing hard below and could not hear his words.
The Egyptian leaped upon him; suddenly, fiercely, as a wild beast leaps. “Give me back my Amulet,” he cried, and caught at the charm. The chain that held it snapped, and it lay in the Priest’s hand.
Pheles laughed, standing balanced to the leap of the ship that answered the oarstroke.
“This is no time for charms and mummeries,” he said. “We’ve lived like men, and we’ll die like gentlemen for the honour and glory of Tyre, our splendid city. ‘Tyre, Tyre forever! It’s Tyre that rules the waves.’ I steer her straight for the Dragon rocks, and we go down for our city, as brave men should. The creeping cowards who follow shall go down as slaves—and slaves they shall be to us—when we live again. Tyre, Tyre forever!”
A great shout went up, and the slaves below joined in it.
“Quick, the Amulet,” cried Anthea, and held it up. Rekh-marā held up the one he had snatched from Pheles. The word was spoken, and the two great arches grew on the plunging ship in the shrieking wind under the dark sky. From each Amulet a great and beautiful green light streamed and shone far out over the waves. It illuminated, too, the black faces and jagged teeth of the great rocks that lay not two ships’ lengths from the boat’s peaked nose.
“Tyre, Tyre forever! It’s Tyre that rules the waves!” the voices of the doomed rose in a triumphant shout. The children scrambled through the arch, and stood trembling and blinking in the Fitzroy Street parlour, and in their ears still sounded the whistle of the wind, and the rattle of the oars, the crash of the ships bow on the rocks, and the last shout of the brave gentlemen-adventurers who went to their deaths singing, for the sake of the city they loved.
“And so we’ve lost the other half of the Amulet again,” said Anthea, when they had told the Psammead all about it.
“Nonsense, pooh!” said the Psammead. “That wasn’t the other half. It was the same half that you’ve got—the one that wasn’t crushed and lost.”
“But how could it be the same?” said Anthea gently.
“Well, not exactly, of course. The one you’ve got is a good many years older, but at any rate it’s not the other one. What did you say when you wished?”
“I forget,” said Jane.
“I don’t,” said the Psammead. “You said, ‘Take us where you are’—and it did, so you see it was the same half.”
“I see,” said Anthea.
“But you mark my words,” the Psammead went on, “you’ll have trouble with that Priest yet.”
“Why, he was quite friendly,” said Anthea.
“All the same you’d better beware of the Reverend Rekh-marā.”
“Oh, I’m sick of the Amulet,” said Cyril, “we shall never get it.”
“Oh yes we shall,” said Robert. “Don’t you remember December 3rd?”
“Jinks!” said Cyril, “I’d forgotten that.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Jane, “and I don’t feel at all well.”
“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should not go out into the Past again till that date. You’ll find it safer not to go where you’re likely to meet that Egyptian any more just at present.”
“Of course we’ll do as you say,” said Anthea soothingly, “though there’s something about his face that I really do like.”
“Still, you don’t want to run after him, I suppose,” snapped the Psammead. “You wait till the 3rd, and then see what happens.”
Cyril and Jane were feeling far from well, Anthea was always obliging, so Robert was overruled. And they promised. And none of them, not even the Psammead, at all foresaw, as you no doubt do quite plainly, exactly what it was that would happen on that memorable date.
XIV The Heart’s DesireIf I only had time I could tell you lots of things. For instance, how, in spite of the advice of the Psammead, the four children did, one very wet day, go through their Amulet Arch into the golden desert, and there find the great Temple of Baalbec and meet with the Phoenix whom they never thought to see again. And how the Phoenix did not remember them at all until it went into a sort of prophetic trance—if that can be called remembering. But, alas! I haven’t time, so I must leave all that out though it was a wonderfully thrilling adventure. I must leave out, too, all about the visit of the children to the Hippodrome with the Psammead in its travelling bag, and about
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