Celebrating Spring by Richmal Crompton

A light-hearted sketch by the celebrated writer to welcome the start of spring.

This week marks the official start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. To celebrate the return of longer, warmer days, here is a seasonal sketch by Richmal Crompton, which first appeared in The Humorist on 30th March, 1929. This sketch has recently been republished within Oh Clare!, a collection of 133 sketches by Richmal Crompton, painstakingly compiled by the author, publisher and bookseller, David Schutte.

Richmal Crompton is most famous for her hilarious Just William children’s book series, which have garnered legions of fans spanning all ages and genders, and have been read and adored for decades. In more recent years, the brilliant BBC recordings read by Martin Jarvis have introduced the inimitable William and his friends - the Outlaws - to a new generation.

Although best known for her children’s books, Crompton was a prolific writer and wrote many adult novels, as well as a large number of sketches and short stories for magazines.

David Schutte has so far published three collections of Richmal Crompton’s short-form fiction: The House in the Wood; The Apple Blossom Lady and Oh Clare! (the books are available to order through David; click here for his contact details). For more information about David’s work, do read my interview with him published on my blog, Miranda’s Notebook.

The copyright holders have kindly given me permission to share ‘Celebrating Spring’ - one of my favourite pieces from Oh Clare! - for the Seasons of Story community. Enjoy!

Celebrating Spring by Richmal Crompton

{Scroll down to read, or press play to hear Miranda reading this short sketch aloud}

“It’s spring,” I said to Miss Murgatroyd, meeting her in the High Street on March 25th.

“How do you know?” asked Miss Murgatroyd.

“It says so in the calendar.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But it’s in print, so it must be true. Besides, haven’t you noticed bulbs coming up and seed catalogues arriving?”

“Of course. And a Spring Fashion catalogue came this morning. There’s a duck of a hat!”

“Well, then, it must be spring, mustn’t it?”

“I suppose so. What are you going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do about it besides buy a new hat?”

“Aren’t you going to make good resolutions or anything like that?”

“Oh, no. Not after January the first. It’s illegal to make good resolutions after January the first.”

“But we must celebrate it somehow.”

“How does one celebrate spring?”

“I really don’t know. The only thing I remember about spring is that ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to —’”

“Hush!” said Miss Murgatroyd. Then: “I know what one does for spring. One decorates.”

“But you’ve said that — I mean, you’ve said that you were going to buy a new hat.”

“No, silly! I mean, decorate one’s house. Paint it. Paper it.”

“Whose shall we decorate first, then — yours or mine?”

“Mine. It’s more proper. You see, Mother’s living with me makes it proper. But she’s out this afternoon, so it’s all right.”

“This is my own particular sitting room,” said Miss Murgatroyd, when we’d reached it, “so if we can find anything to paper it with, we’ll paper it.”

We rummaged through the house and found some wallpaper in the basement, and while I was cutting off a strip, Miss Murgatroyd found some flour and water ready mixed in the larder.

“I’ve always heard it’s quite easy,” she said. “You just get a brush and wet the back of the paper and hold it against the wall and it sticks.”

We tried several times. Then I said: “Why does it always go in gathers?”

And Miss Murgatroyd said breathlessly, “I don’t know. For that matter, why does it never stick? Let’s try once more.”

So we tried once more and it stuck. It didn’t look like wallpaper, unless there’s a sort of wallpaper that’s meant to be corrugated; but it stuck.

“Let’s rest now,” said Miss Murgatroyd. “It’s more exhausting than you’d think, isn’t it? I’ve always heard that it was so easy. It isn’t depressing you, is it?”

“Not a bit,” I said.

And it wasn’t. Because, even though the wallpaper looked like nothing on earth, still I’d been trying for months to get Miss Mugatroyd alone like this. She’s — but I won’t try to describe her, because probably you’d wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, she’s very nice.

“Let’s sit on the floor and talk,” said Miss Murgatroyd. There weren’t any chairs available, because wallpaper covered all of them. We sat on the floor just under our strip of wallpaper.

“What shall we talk about?” I said.

“Wallpaper,” suggested Miss Murgatroyd.

“No,” I said. “Let’s talk about the spring.”

“What can we say about the spring?”

“‘In the spring’,” I quoted again, “‘a young man’s fancy lightly turns to —”

She let me finish that time.

At the critical moment our strip of wallpaper came down upon us, but neither of us noticed it till several minutes later.

Miss Murgatroyd’s mother was annoyed about it, because it turned out that she’d got the wallpaper for the drawing room, and it was a special sale bargain that couldn’t be repeated. There had been only just enough for the drawing room, and as our strip by this time wouldn’t have been recognised by its own mother, there now wouldn’t be enough.

It also transpired that the flour and water was a batter pudding that she had mixed ready for dinner that night, and though we gave her back what was left of it, it was so full of bits of paper that she said it wouldn’t be any good at all.

In fact, she was rather huffy about the whole thing, but I don’t really mind, because, as I hope she’s going to be my mother-in-law, I think it best for us to get used to each other.

Creative Challenge!

How will you celebrate the start of spring this year?