Mistress Masham's Repose
Mistress Masham's Repose (1946) is a novel by T. H. White that describes the adventures of a girl who discovers a group of Lilliputians, a race of tiny people from Jonathan Swift's satirical classic Gulliver's Travels. The story is set in Northamptonshire, England, just after the Second World War (someone wants to talk to Churchill, but it is revealed Clement Attlee is the PM); in one chapter Maria plays at being General Eisenhower greeting grateful subject peoples. Yet there is also a strong flavour of the 18th century, both the fictional land of Lilliput and the British Empire of Swift, Gibbon, and Pope. Imperialism, and the need for self-governance, is a major theme in the novel.
Plot
Maria, a ten-year-old orphaned girl, lives on a derelict family estate, her only companions being a loving family Cook and a retired Professor of Ancient Latin. These two try to protect Maria from her tall, fat, strict Governess, Miss Brown. The Governess makes the child's life miserable, taking her cue from Maria's guardian, a Vicar named Mr. Hater. Miss Brown and Mr Hater are conspiring to keep Maria poor and abandoned. The little girl does not go to school. In church, she has to walk all the way to her seat in over-sized football boots which make a great deal of noise. She is shy, lonely and starved of affection. Meeting the Lilliputians and being tempted to love, to fear and to bully, she must save her friends and herself.
Setting
As the end-paper illustrations in the book show, the ruinous estate of Malplaquet is clearly based on Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where White taught at Stowe School during the 1930s. However, its name is an allusion to that of Blenheim Palace, the residence of the Dukes of Marlborough. The name is an historical in-joke by White; it depends upon knowing that Blenheim was the first of the first duke's great battles, and Malplaquet was his fourth and last. The titular Repose is a tiny forgotten island in the middle of an ornamental lake in the vast grounds of Malplaquet. It is occupied by descendants of the Lilliputians, brought to England two centuries earlier following their discovery by Lemuel Gulliver. The island provides the perfect setting for their timid and secretive civilisation, only accessible by boat and protected by a wall of brambles which is carefully cultivated by the island's occupants. Many of the monuments in the grounds of Malplaquet recall notable figures of the early 18th century; Mistress Masham's Repose itself commemorates Abigail Masham, a close confidante of Queen Anne. Although she has no other bearing on the story, she was a cousin of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, thus providing another link between the fictional Palace of Malplaquet and the real Blenheim Palace. Blenheim Palace and Stowe House are in turn linked in that Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, who developed the house and gardens at Stowe in the early eighteenth century, was a notable officer serving under the Duke of Marlborough.
Reissue
The book was out of print for many years but was re-issued by The New York Review Children's Collection.
In the UK, it was printed in, at least, the years 1947, 1963, 1972, 1979 and 2000. It went out of print in 2009 but was republished by Red Fox Books (part of Random House) in 2011.
Terry Pratchett says "It has always been a favourite of mine." He continues: "This book is one for the hall of fame".[1]