How Jack Began to View the World

By Arthur Rackam via Wikimedia Commons

We’ve been seeing plenty of re-tellings lately, also books that explore the stories of what happens to characters from stories after we’ve “left” them–Alice some years later, for instance (like the new Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass movies or Ever Alice by H.J. Ramsay, which I have waiting on my NetGalley pile). This post is about one of the later category that is, what happens to a character from a story when he/she has returned from his/her adventure and settled down to a “normal” life. But it isn’t a book, but a poem–‘Stalky Jack’ by William Brighty Rands.

William Brighty Rands (1823-1882) was a writer and a major author of nursery rhymes of the Victorian era, who also worked as a reporter in the House of Commons. Labelled the “Laurete of the Nursery”, he wrote under the pseudonyms Henry Holbeach and Mathew Browne. Find a bio here.

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The author: Images from the Victorian Web (here) and AllPoetry.com (here).

Anyway, back to the actual poem now. The poem is about Jack, the boy, “who took long walks; Who lived on beans and ate the stalks“. When we hear of Jack here, he has been a year and a day in the Giants’ Country, where he was lost, but has now returned. But ever since that incident, Jack has no longer been the same but is a much altered boy, and has undergone “A change in notions of extent!“

Jack no longer understands things “normal” sized but views them as a giant would. He wants to enter at the second floor, wants a bowl of soup “as large as a hoop”, and thinks a sirloin no more than “a couple of bites”. Not only that, humans themselves to him are “minikin mites”.

As a result he has been bought magnifying glasses, and only since he put them on, has the world for him “come to its proper size”. All the boys. however, point to him, calling him Stalky Jack, and no girl would ever marry him, since she wouldn’t want to be thought three times her proper height. (Didn’t he marry a princess, though?)

That as the author points out to us, is the consequence of “taking extravagant walks; And living on beans and eating the stalks“.

This is such a cute and fun poem–it certainly brought a smile to my face. I honestly don’t think I would have thought of how perceptions (of size) would change if one were exposed to a world of such different proportions. I don’t remember my Gulliver all that well, though I know there were chapters between his different voyages. Did his own world, the “normal” world seem too big or too small (not as things should be) when he returned from Lilliput or Brobdingnag?

Gulliver and the King of Brobdingnag, James Gillray [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

I do remember that when he returns from the land of the horse-people, the Houyhnhnms, he is unable to adjust to life with his own kind, and lives as much away from them as he can.

Gulliver with the Houthnhnms, Grandville [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Exposure to different people, cultures, places does open up new ideas, bring out in us new perceptions of what might be good or right, or make us see our own world with new eyes. Whether we can readjust, or like Gulliver shun those of our kind since we’ve seen better, or need goggles like Jack to make the world seem normal again, adventures, an understanding of different places/cultures do change us in one way or other which Stalky Jack shows us in a fun and enjoyable way.

And while I may have taken off on a tangent in this post, this is a light-hearted poem to read for a laugh or at least a smile. Find the full poem on the Victorian Web here.