Back to the Bean Farm: Rereading the Freddy Books
The Story of Freginald
by Kevin W. Parker
WARNING: These articles are written with the assumption that the reader has already read the story in question. Don’t read this article if you want any surprises to be preserved for you.
Freginald is next on my list primarily because I paid $105 for a first edition at our recent convention. (Please do not take this as a standard price—I wouldn’t have paid that much except that it was one of the last few books in the series I don’t have, and I knew that the funds would all go into the club’s coffers.) But on to the text.
It’s the fourth book in the series, and it’s clearly intended as a departure, perhaps at the time not even supposed to be considered part of the series at all. The book is sized larger than the standard Freddy book, it’s the only one (I believe) to have color added to the normally black-and-white interior illustations, and, most importantly, the Bean Farm animals play a minor role for the first and only time in the series.
Instead, the story focuses—believe it or not—on Freginald, a bear who get ostracized from his fellows rather like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Freginald’s curse, though, is not a physical condition but his name, starting out as Louise. This of course leads to much teasing from the other bears, and Louise becomes quite a loner, going off on his own and writing poetry. This gets turned into an opportunity when he meets Leo the Lion, from the Boomschmidt Circus, who is quite taken with the concept of a bear named Louise. Leo takes Louise to meet Mr. Boomschmidt, who is also quite taken with the concept, and Louise ends up joining the circus.
He first demonstrates his ability to hop like a rabbit, but when Mr. Boomschmidt finds that he writes poetry, the sky is the limit. He reads his poetry as part of the circus, he writes it for the other animals, he writes it for the circus handbills, and so on. Louise finally has it made, and in fact ends up changing his name to Freginald. (His father wanted to call him Fred, and his mother wanted to call him Reginald, and the combination suited better than the alternative.)
Two conflicts drive the latter part of this story. The first occurs when Freginald and Leo are captured by the animals of the Yancey Farm, the self-proclaimed last outpost of the Confederate States of America. This leads to a battle between the circus animals and the farm animals and ultimately to a duel between the bull leading the farm animals and Jerry the circus rhinoceros. Things go badly at first because of Jerry’s bad eyesight (he can’t see the bull well enough to aim for him), but when Eustace the circus mouse suggests tying Mr. Boom’s red handkerchief to Jerry’s nose, all turns out well: The bull charges the handkerchief and stuns himself in the head-on collision. Victory goes to the good guys, and Mr. Boomschmidt readmits the farm to the Union and takes possession of it, to boot, fixing it up and moving his mother in.
The real conflict, though, comes with the Hackenmeyer Circus, which begins visiting the same towns as “our” circus and making it hard to attract business. A complication is that once upon a time a Mr. Hackenmeyer was Mr. Boomschmidt’s partner, but they went their separate ways in a dispute over Mr. Hack’s alleged practical jokes. But is this the same Hackenmeyer? It soon becomes evident that the new Mr. Hackenmeyer is only pretending to be the old one. Why? And what are his plans?
Yes, it’s a job for Freddy the detective, and this is where (in Chapter 15 on page 184) the familiar Bean Farm animals finally appear. Freddy is solicited by Freginald to help out. He’s initially reluctant but is more willing once he realizes it’s Mr. Boomschmidt himself who needs help.
Freddy quickly confirms that Mr. Hackenmeyer is an imposter, then persuades his animals to go on strike and frees them. (They end up helping with the harvest on the area farm, which leads to some interesting images: yaks pulling while alligators guard the perimeter to keep nosy sightseers away.) Eventually they confront both the real Mr. Hack and the imposter, and there’s an extended bit where they have to figure out which is which. But that’s quickly sorted.
There is one minor conflict at the end, where Freginald’s family home, in the woods, is to be turned into a field by a farmer. Mr. Boom tries to help out, but fails, and the family ends up moving to the former southern enclave. And they all live happily ever after.
The story seems to hearken back a bit to the more episodic earlier ones, like Florida and North Pole. C. S. Forester talked about one of his Hornblower books being like a shish kebab, with the H.M.S. Sutherland holding it all together. Here the skewer is, appropriately, Freginald himself. He is an interesting enough character, to be sure, and the circus motif provides some entertaining elements.
In particular, the various acts are delightfully imaginative: the mouse that does swan dives, the snake that ties itself in knots, the pig that does arithmetic (who turns out to be an imposter and who gets the circus in trouble with the Rotary Club and the Interstate Commerce Commission), etc.
And we can’t forget the characters that come with the circus, most notably Leo, the cheerful but incredibly vain lion is a real hoot, and who else would have conceived of a lion that gets its mane permed? Somehow, though the image I always remembered was of Jerry the rhinoceros producing rhinoceros-shaped holes in the Confederates’ house.
Still, it’s not quite the same being away from the Bean Farm and the animals. It’s just as well that Brooks, after one more experiment (The Clockwork Twin), would finally settle down with Wiggins for President and begin in earnest the series of books we all so enjoy.