Two Little Girls in Blue: my writing of it is a tale in itself, for one thing led to another.
I’d always known that lovely, sad song of 1893 . . . An uncle tells his nephew of his own past: how he and his brother loved two sisters. Both boys preferred the same sister; his brother married her; he himself married the other, ‘and now we’ve drifted apart’, as the song puts it.
Great story for a song – and for a novel, but only as a starting-point. For it leaves unanswered questions.
Why that particular pairing off? Because the elder boy and elder girl were beautiful, their parents’ favourites, and supremely self-confident. The younger two were ‘only the other ones’.
But it must be shown! So I had to describe the children growing up favoured or sidelined. That meant describing their time at school and, for the girls, a Finishing School – showing how both their homes and their schooling omitted much that they needed for life.
Brought to Life through Song
The song Two Little Girls in Blue having brought them to adult life and married, how do we account for this close uncle-nephew relationship? What about the hint of a failed relationship? And where are the boy’s parents? Decision time: the elder couple’s marriage would have to fail because they are spoilt, egotistical and selfish. Since the song has them fade out, I had the beautiful husband die and the beautiful wife yield to drink and become unfit to care for her son. He was adopted by the younger two, and duty turned to love.
So stop there as though at a happy ending after a ‘weepie’? No – too many loose ends. How do the aunt and uncle continue? More important, what happens to the little boy? Developing a story can feel, like life as defined by Frank Ward O’Malley, ‘Just one damned thing after another’! But subject-matter dictates to us.
So I had the little boy grow up and become a successful author. That made him suitable as my narrator, and able to ferret out what happened in the family saga. He uncovers the terrible truth that both his birth-mother and his aunt (whom he has long regarded as his mother) were abused as children by their mother’s brother. This explains to him and to the reader much of the marital unhappiness of their birth-parents and adoptive parents.
HG Wells
His investigations are aided by a friend of his, the real-life author HG Wells, who appears as a character. (I have admired Wells all my life.)
Early on I realised that my development of the song-story needed more than just family relationships. I therefore set a number of scenes in the two family businesses: piano manufacture, and bookselling and bookbinding. I know a little of those activities, so I was following the principle of ‘write what you know about’.
On the same principle I set some scenes of Two Little Girls in Blue in an East End pub, The Horn of Plenty in Whitechapel. It is no longer there, unfortunately, but figures in my family history: my grandparents were the licensees, and my mother and aunts lived there as girls. Memories of Jack the Ripper were still current locally. His last victim drank in that pub the night of her murder, so it is conceivable that Jack was a customer. I have in my possession a set of ivory and ebony dominoes lent out to customers in the pub – so is it also conceivable that Jack handled them? Shudder!
Two Little Girls in Blue: my novel
To revert to my novel, Two Little Girls in Blue: I steer clear of moralising, because a moral, if any, ought to be embodied in the novel, not shoved at the reader. I do show how parental bias can be harmful, not only for the rejected child but also for the favoured one – but surely that is, sadly, too common a finding to parade as the moral of a story. The same may be said of my description of a partial survival of childhood trauma. And in addition — this, too, is not a moral, but surely most satisfactory – something very unpleasant and long-lasting happens to the piece of filth who abused the little girls.
So it is – a story. A poignant road to a Happy Ending of sorts. A family story from Victorian times to the Second World War. A background of pianos, books, and bookbinding. The song is moving, and I hope that readers will like what I built upon it.
(c) Victor E. Knight
About Two Little Girls in Blue by Victor E. Knight:
In this captivating family saga set in London from the late Victorian era to the early twentieth century, two sisters and two brothers navigate the complexities of love, family, and fortune. The elder siblings, favoured and spoiled since childhood, find themselves grappling with unhappiness and a secret misfortune that haunts the sisters’ lives, while the overlooked younger pair demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity.
Woven throughout the narrative is the poignant melody of the popular 1897 song, Two Little Girls in Blue, whose tragic love story mirrors the events of the novel, with the song’s composer making an appearance. From the bustling family businesses to the atmospheric Horn of Plenty pub in London’s East End, still haunted by the spectre of Jack the Ripper, the novel’s vivid settings come alive, with the pub managed by the author’s own grandparents.
Narrated by the son-nephew of the two couples, the story takes an unexpected turn when, guided by his friend, the renowned H.G. Wells, he unravels the tragedy that has shaped his family members’ lives.
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