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.
THE CLOCKWORK TWIN: THE BEST CHOICE FOR INTRODUCING BOYS TO FREDDY?
This article is an adaptation of a presentation Alice Tracy gave at the Freddy Convention in Flemington, New Jersey, in September 2009. Originally published in The Bean Home News Winter 2010 (Vol. 18, No. 2).
A frequent topic of conversation at our conventions has been, “Which book is the best one to suggest to a first-time reader of Freddy?” After some reflection, my answer is, The Clockwork Twin, especially if the proposed novitiate is a young boy. I know full well that Clockwork Twin is not among the most favorite of Freddy books. Other shave put forth sound arguments for Freddy Goes to Florida (it is the first in the series, after all) or Freddy Plays Football on the assumption, wrong in my opinion, that sports, especially football, are universally popular. I, myself, might even argue that Freddy and the Perilous Adventure, as by far the funniest Freddy book, deserves a slot as a contender, especially if the reader is a young girl since the courageous and intrepid nature of Alice and Emma make them such fine role models. But I am convinced that, at least for boys, you will be most successful in converting them into Freddy fans if you hand them The Clockwork Twin.
Fifth in the series, Walter had not yet realized the formula that will make the Freddy books of the midyears of his career such a complete delight. Freddy’s character, in particular, has not jelled, and the easy camaraderie between the animals, the Beans and the other humans in Centerboro has not been established.
While Clockwork Twin lacks these elements, Walter draws on many of the standard tropes of boy’s literature that will provide a ready familiarity and enjoyment for young male readers – plus the Freddy spirit of adventure and fun that has kept us reading Freddy for these many years. Clockwork Twin clearly borrows from Huckleberry Finn, early science-fiction, and that erstwhile staple – comic books. In short, boys will find themselves comfortable with this book. And Brooks takes pains to make certain boys can identify with its main character – not Freddy at all, but Adoniram R. Smith.
The book begins thusly: “Once there was a boy about your age …” and in two short paragraphs, Walter has sketched a young boy that many can identify with.
He is unappreciated, even mistreated, by his family (and not even his real family to boot); he is saddled with a ridiculous name; he has to work too hard and does not have enough time to play and enjoy life. And yet, throughout all of this, he remains good-natured and stalwart. Of course we like Adoniram! And he comes complete with a mystery: what does the R stand for anyway?
Adoniram, as we know, gets swept away in a flood when he wades out to a summerhouse to rescue Georgie, a small brown dog who turns out to be able to talk. He and Georgie ride along in the summerhouse, picking up Ronald, the English rooster along the way. And rather like Huck learning about life as he drifts down the Mississippi on the raft, Adoniram learns some important lessons too.
For you see, he needs to learn how to be a boy. His aunt and uncle have kept him on such a strict regimen that he doesn’t really know what a boy’s life should be like: in fact, he is something of a clockwork boy.
Not surprisingly for someone in his position, he finds himself worrying: will his aunt and uncle be mad? Will he and the two animals starve to death on the summerhouse? All kinds of dark and gloomy thoughts are whirling through his mind.
When Georgie asks, “Isn’t this fun?”, Adoniram replies, “Why – yes, only I can’t help thinking about -“
“About all the awful things that may happen – is that it?” asked the dog. “Well, why don’t you think about nice things that may happen? It doesn’t cost any more. Maybe we will be carried out to sea. But then, maybe we’ll be rescued by a warship or an ocean liner, and live on it, and maybe you’ll learn how to run it, and maybe when you grow up you’ll be captain.”
“Oh, could I?” asked Adoniram. “How do I know?” said Georgie. “But one thing’s certain: there are hundreds of boys your age that are going to be sea captains some day and don’t know it. Maybe you’re one of them.”
Adoniram’s education continues the next morning when he, Georgie and Ronald find themselves next to the second story of Waterman, Dinkelstein & Company. They break a window – just what every enterprising young man would do – and enter a wonderland: a major department store, filled with food, toys, games and furniture, all at their disposal.
This type of happening – the sudden appearance of a magical place filled with wonders – is, of course, a staple of children’s fiction. It might have been a castle, Aladdin’s Cave or – as in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. E. Basil Frankweiler – the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, it is a building of a more prosaic quality – a department store.
Here our three wanderers meet up with Freddy and Jinx and the adventures focus on eating all the goodies you would like, playing games and having fun. Much attention is paid to teaching Adoniram how to laugh. Now, it turns out that laughing is a more complex matter of social discourse than you may have realized, or perhaps it is chiefly young boys who may feel a bit uncomfortable about knowing how long and how hard to laugh. Freddy provides the following advice to Adoniram: “You’re not a really good laugher until you know when to stop. If you laugh too long, it sounds foolish. Some laughers make it a rule to stop after the fourth or fifth ‘Ha’. That doesn’t work well for me, because sometimes I want to stop sooner, and other times I can’t stop so soon. I think the best rule is to laugh good and loud and then stop as soon as you can.”
Freddy, though, has another, more important concern about Adoniram. He is afraid he is lonely, and being Freddy, he is determined to solve this problem. Fortunately, Uncle Ben makes his first appearance in The Clockwork Twin. He shows up out of nowhere and takes up residence in the barn hayloft where his skills as a mechanical engineer will make him a valuable asset to the Bean farm. He soon has built a mechanical boy – Bertram – to serve as a companion to Adoniram.
We are here in New Jersey, of course, to celebrate Kurt Wiese, the illustrator of the Freddy books, but it strikes me that Walter must have had quite an interest in art. In Florida, you have the animals painting one another to disguise themselves, and in Mr. Camphor you have the memorable scene of Jinx painting on the houseboat. In Bean Home News, Mrs. Underdunk faints at the painting of Jerry in the bottom of a frying pan – there are many examples. Here, Jinx paints the face of the clockwork twin to look exactly like Adoniram.
I am not a science-fiction fan. Do not try to persuade me. I have tried gamely to read any number of proffered science-fiction books and been discouraged by what I perceive as a common science-fiction trait: a dark atmosphere, much foreboding, the ever present threat of being taken over by machinery. Nowadays, of course, many women enjoy science-fiction, and some of the best science-fiction authors are women. Or at least, so I am told. At the time of The Clockwork Twin, however, it was mainly a male realm and young boys, then and now, are likely to appreciate the science-fiction elements in the book.
This painting of the clockwork twin’s face so the mechanical boy looks exactly like the living boy – down to the exact same number of freckles – three – on the nose -has that suggestive, dark foreboding element of science-fiction. What at first seems to be a wonderfully playful idea – a mechanical companion, someone just like yourself who can play all day long – shortly becomes something else. The machinery turning on you, developing its own evil nature almost, and trying to control the quiet, rural idyll you thought would be a welcome refuge from the brutalities of life outside of it.
Err…oops, I’m talking about the wrong book! Fast forward to Freddy the Politician, the very next book in the series, when the world has suddenly grown much darker and Bertram becomes a tool for evil, a mechanical mouthpiece for woodpeckers (which, when you think about the fact that Bertram is made of wood has a sort of postmodern irony about it).
In The Clockwork Twin, the machine is still benevolent. When his aunt and uncle come to the Bean farm to take Adoniram away with them, it is Bertram (operated by Ronald) who saves the day. Ronald has the clockwork boy get into their car and go back to Snare Forks and the joke rapidly turns on Adoniram’s aunt and uncle. They never notice that Bertram is not the flesh-and-blood Adoniram, no matter how badly they hurt their hands whenever they slap or spank him. Ronald is able to get the best of them when he turns up the mike and yells so loudly he can be heard for miles away.
That evening the aunt and uncle bind ropes around Bertram’s arms as he lies on the floor, pretending to sleep. They tie a towel around his mouth so he cannot scream.
“And now,” said Adoniram’s uncle, reaching for the whip, “get up on your feet, Adoniram. I’ve spanked you with hands and hairbrushes and basting spoons and I’ve licked you with shingles and carriage whips and dust mops and I’ve whaled you with straps and broom handles and yardsticks and old pieces of pipe. But after all that, you’re just the same stubborn, good-for-nothing, lazy lummox you always were. So I’m going to give you the most everlasting high-powered father and mother of a lambasting you ever had in your life. And then I guess you’ll do as you’re told. Take off your coat.”
At this point, any red-blooded young boy is going to be boiling mad! He’s really going to identify with Adoniram now and will cheer Bertram’s reaction. Bertram doesn’t take off his coat, but rather snaps off the clothesline he’s been tied up with and as he does that, the aunt and uncle run out of the barn, slamming and barring the door behind them. When he can’t get out, Bertram punches down the door with his bare fists. By the time he makes it outside, the couple have run into the house and locked the door behind them, but that doesn’t hold Bertram back for a second. The door falls back with one good kick.
Can you imagine the surge of victorious energy a boy might feel upon reading this and recalling his own last spanking? Corporal punishment was much more common back then than it is now. And all of this violence works! Bertram finds the aunt and uncle hiding in the attic, hangs the uncle up by his coat on a hook in the ceiling, whereupon his aunt absolutely caves: she agrees that Adoniram can be adopted by the Beans, and, furthermore, comes out with the astonishing news that they are not really Adoniram’s aunt and uncle at all.
So Bertram/Ronald has the two of them sign the adoption papers and he returns to the farm. There he is given the Benjamin Bean Distinguished Service Medal in a ceremony that ends with Charles, who is upset when he is denied the opportunity to make a speech, climbing into Bertram and giving his speech at full volume. (It may have been this incident that gave Walter the idea for the woodpeckers in Politician.)
Freddy is intent on solving another of Adoniram’s problems – find Byram, the young boy Georgie was living with before the flood. Georgie thinks there is a good chance that Byram R. Jones is the brother of Adoniram R. Smith. Now that we know that Adoniram’s real last name may not be Smith, the mystery has deepened.
This concept – of there being a long-lost family that you truly belong to – of course is a staple of children’s fantasies. And if you had been living with Adoniram’s supposed aunt and uncle, you may very well have had fantasies about finding your “real” family as well. In The Clockwork Twin, this fantasy takes a home spun turn – Adoniram is not wishing to be found out a prince in disguise, he only wants a young boy his own age to play with.
At the time this book was written [1937], there were small circuses that traveled the countryside and running away to the circus was a common plot element in children’s books. No one runs away to the circus here, but Mrs. Wiggins does bring Adoniram to Mr. Boomschmidt to seek his help.
At the circus, when Mrs. Wiggins explains the need to find Byram, Mr. Boomschmidt said: “Well, well, I guess we’ll have to go into conference about this.”
“Where’s that?” said Mrs. Wiggins.
Oh, dear me, it isn’t a place; it’s a state, Like – What is it like, Leo?”
“Like being in love,” said the lion. “Or in difficulties. Or -“
“Now you’re just being confusing,” said Mr. Boomschimdt. “Good grief, being in love and being in difficulties – why they’re entirely different.”
“Not entirely,” said Leo. “But chief, I was just illustrating -“
“Well, you’re not supposed to illustrate – not when you’re in conference. NowIcalltheconferencetoorder. Anybodygotany suggestions? No? Then what game’ll we play?”
“But, Mr. Boomschmidt,” protested Mrs. Wiggins, “we can’t play games – not now. I thought maybe you could help us find this Byram boy.”
“Dear, dear, so you did,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “I’m sorry. It was being in conference that got me mixed up. We always play games in conference. Well, Leo, speak up, what’ll we do about Byram? Offer a reward? Advertise?”
“I should think that would be a good idea”, said Freginald. “We could put up a notice offering a reward for information leading to the discovery of the whereabouts of a boy, such and such an age, such and such a name —“
“Why bring in his whereabouts?” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “We don’t want his whereabouts: we want the boy. And why such and such? Why not give his name? What is his name, by the way?”
“Byram R. Jones.”
“Jones,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, “I’ve heard that name somewhere. And what does the R stand for?” “We don’t know.”
Like the D in John D. Rockefeller,” said Leo. “Nobody knows what that stands for either, I bet.”
Now, it may seem to you that I have wandered a bit from my theme, my exploration of why Clockwork Twin is, quite likely, the best book to use when introducing a young boy to the Freddy series. However, the dialogue between Mr. Boomschmidt, Leo and the others is representative of that whimsical humor that brings us all back to the Freddy books time and time again. And as just about everybody likes to laugh, we can assume that young boys, reading Freddy for the first time will find that passage amusing. I certainly did, and that’s why I put it in my presentation.
In case you’re wondering, yes, Adoniram and Byram are united at the end and Freddy does solve the mystery of their middle initial. If you want to know what the “R” stands for, please read the book and pass it along to the first young boy you meet.