JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
Osbert Sitwell

[07 feb 2002—scanned, proofed and released for #bookz]

Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969) published a book of fairy tales, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, in 1959, collecting his contemporary versions of classic tales, such as Cinderella, Bluebeard and the present selection. A scion of the famous English literary family of Sitwell, with forty books to his credit, Sir Osbert commented upon fairy tales in his charming prefatory essay. Speaking of the appeal of the fairy story to modern authors, he said, "it should constitute for them a kind of abstract art, stylized and meticulous, and also a sort of technical exercise, while at the same time it should enable them to throw out lateral beams of light to illuminate parallels in contemporary life. " Of the present selection, he explained, "Jack himself represents Man, who can make use of the gifts of nature to become rich. " Sir Osbert's tale indeed fulfills his prescription.

Whereas Jack the Giant-Killer—though it is true that not so long ago his story was summarily dismissed in the current psychoanalytic cant of the day by a writer in a weekly paper as a "simple case of Adlerian Inferiority Complex"—may by some be regarded in a different light, as a knight-errant searching for ladies to rescue, yet it appears certain that the other celebrated Jack, whose name is fabulously associated with the Beanstalk, and with whom we are first concerned, was no idealist, but the prototype of many capitalists in Europe and America during the era of unrestricted free enterprise. His career can be seen to resemble nearly that of any man who started life as an errand-boy and ended—as was always said of such people—"entirely through their own efforts," as a millionaire, a sort of magical Sir Thomas Lipton.
When he was a boy, Jack and his widowed mother lived in Hampshire, some twelve miles from Winchester. She was a typical widow, but of the French variety rather than of the English, glorying in her black, neatly and tightly clad in it, sad but voluble, with a practical outlook: while Jack for his part was equally typical of an English boy, apple-checked, as a rule reliable beyond his years, and given to slouching and sly remarks. A stranger would have guessed him to be a fanner's son, but his father had been a butcher, dead some three years before this story begins. After her husband's death at forty from rheumatic fever, the widow had been obliged to sell the business in order to pay his debts; nevertheless in later years it was often said of young Jack that in the manner of many great men ( great was then a term reserved specifically for those who became of a sudden inordinately rich) he owed much to his mother's early training of him, because it had been her habit to din continually into his ears, even when he was a small child, such concise odds and ends of proverbial wisdom as "Never miss an opportunity, " "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves, " and, most often of all, that "God helps those who help themselves. " And, indeed, the last and so frequently recurring adage may really have influenced him, for, as will be seen in the course of the next few pages, he helped himself to a good deal at a comparatively early age. The only assets of mother and son to start with were their mutual affection, a thatched cottage, the front of which was thickly covered during the summer with honeysuckle and small red roses, a garden, a meadow, and a cow called Buttercup, which supplied the rich golden butter and creamy milk they sold in the nearest market every morning: sold profitably, because both products looked appetising and abounded in vitamins—albeit these were then called something else.
One day, however, the cow yielded no milk, and in consequence the widow became worried to desperation. Jack tried to find work, but the Trade Union rules forbade it because he was only eleven years of age. Moreover they lived too far away from a town for him to be able to attend a school, and his mother had not been able to give him anything but practical lessons, for she had no letters herself. In consequence, when not employed by her on errands of one sort or another, he spent all of his considerable spare time climbing trees, until he attained an extraordinary proficiency in this an of the youthful, and showed an altogether astonishing agility. This way of spending the hours used, however, to irritate his mother, who frequently would leave her cottage, trace him to a tree-top, and call up to him, "Why aren't you working? Climbing like that will never get you anywhere!" (Little did she foresee the future.) ... Soon, his mother was obliged to sell their furniture piece by piece, and even to get what she could for their spare clothing—though of this there was little enough. Finally the day came when with a solemn air she called Jack from the garden and told him to drive Buttercup to market the next morning, and sell her for the best price he could obtain.
On the way there he met an old man with a flowing white beard, who looked, Jack thought, rather like a hermit. He was clad in a long black robe, and wore on his head a high conical black hat decorated with golden suns and stars ... Directly the boy was near enough, the stranger spoke to him, saying:
"Good morning, Jack, that's a nice cow you've got. I'd like to buy her."
"Well, what do you offer, sir?" asked Jack.
"I'm a wizard, not a merchant or farmer," replied the old man, "so I do not buy with money, but I offer you, in exchange for her, five beans. They're not by any means ordinary vegetables, neither broad beans nor scarlet runners; they are magic beans, and if when you reach home you plant them, by morning they'll have grown to the kingdom of the sky."
Jack, being still young, forgot his mother's careful instructions: the thought of these beans fascinated him, and at once, without any attempt to raise the price, he accepted the offer of the sorcerer; who then drew out from a deep pocket five small kidney-shaped objects with a hard skin corrugated as a contour map of the world, and counted them into the boy's hand.
Jack started off for home in high spirits, but as he approached the cottage he began to feel a little nervous about his bargain. , .. The widow was waiting for him at the door.
"Well, what have you brought me, son?" she called.
"I've brought you five magic beans, mother," he answered.
The poor woman, flabbergasted by her son's unexpected act of disobedience and folly, shouted at him, "Magic, my foot! I'll give you beans!" (which is said to be the origin of that well-known slang phrase). She then—for by this time Jack had entered the house—seized the beans from his hand, flung them out of the window, and sent her son straight up to bed without supper.
As Jack lay in the dark room, hungry and cold, and unable for a long time to sleep, he thought of the beans, and determined never to fall into such an error again. It was then that he for the first time comprehended fully the importance of knowing the exact value of all animals and objects, and of money itself ... A full moon soon shone into the room, plating the walls with its precious if intangible metal, but this began before long to fall into patches, instead of sheeting a whole surface. He wondered what the reason could be, and for a long time stared at the window, for something appeared in the past hour to be obstructing the entrance of the light, and he also vaguely wondered what could be the curious rustling that he seemed to hear, soft and rhythmic. Though he was not sleepy, he was far too tired physically to get out of bed. If, however, he had been more inquisitive, and had persevered, he would have discovered that the sound was one that no man had ever heard before, or would probably ever hear again; the sound that trees and plants and all green things make in the process of their growing; a music usually spread over so long a period, and so slowly, that the human ear cannot catch the pattern of it. He lay there, wondering whether the soft sounds were due to his imagination, until after another half an hour or so he fell asleep.
In the morning he woke up in his familiar room: but the moment his eyes opened, he realised there was a difference; it was strangely dark. He got out of bed and ran to the window ... A beanstalk as thick as the bole of a well-grown oak, only more flimsy in substance, and with leaves as large as those of a great-leaved magnolia, filled the space, casting a green shadow on the white walls. Craning his neck out through the various barriers, he looked upward, and saw there too the curious plant, stretching, apparently for ever, up to the very sky itself. He dressed quickly and, curiosity overcoming his hunger, slipped out before, as he thought, his mother was down, and began with ease to climb the beanstalk. He soon reached the clouds. But he had not passed beyond ear-shot when he heard his mother rush from the cottage, and shout up to him, "Jack, you come down this instant! And don't you get it into your head that, after all, it's a magic bean. It's just those hormones you read of." He was determined not to turn back for anybody, because he wanted to reach the kingdom of the sky, of which the old man had spoken. The top of the beanstalk was level with the clouds, which today were pushed up in fleecy hillocks, and a road led from it to a tall house, grey as the pastures of the angels, and its huge windows shone with reflected light, as though they were the eyes of Gods.
In the doorway, which was as large, the other way round, as the whole front of his home, stood an enormous woman. Owing to her size, her skin seemed very coarse, and the pores showed like pock-marks, but she had a kind expression, so that Jack, whose exertions had made his appetite all the keener, plucked up his courage to ask her, "Please, ma'am, could you give me some breakfast?"
"You're more likely to find yourself part of somebody else's breakfast, if you stay here," the woman replied, "for my husband is the celebrated ogre Crunchingbones, and there's nothing he likes so much of a morning as an English boy on toast."
"Well, I may as well risk being eaten myself, as die of hunger," Jack answered.
The good-natured woman smiled at this, took him into the tall house, and placed before him bread and cheese and a bowl of milk which Jack soon consumed. Scarcely had he finished when the ground began to tremble with a peculiar rhythm.
"That's his footstep," said the woman; "I warned you. He'll be here in a minute." ... She seemed terrified at her husband's approach, and lifting Jack up by his collar, threw him into the oven to hide him, and shut the door: but he could peep into the room through a crack invisible on the outside. The sound of gigantic footsteps drew nearer, and in a moment Jack saw the form of a vast man enter the room. He threw down on the table two calves he had been carrying, and said to his wife, "There's my breakfast: get it ready for me at once!" For some minutes he paced up and down the kitchen—then stopped short and sniffed the air in a most frightening way, like a wild animal. Suddenly he howled out in his ferine voice:
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
"You're imagining things, dear," said his wife, "you don't keep your strength up. You should take more care of yourself."
"Well, that may be so." answered the giant, mollified.
In the meantime, while Jack trembled in the oven, Mrs. Crunchingbones had set to, and prepared breakfast for her husband. He ate long and greedily, but the moment he had finished, he dragged from where it stood against the wall opposite him a large chest, unlocked it, lifted the lid, and took out of it two bags. They contained gold coins which he proceeded to count until he fell asleep. Crunchingbones's wife was somewhere at the back of the house, so Jack, creeping out of the oven, seized one of the bags of gold, dropped it into his mother's garden far below, and then swarmed down the beanstalk, home.
At first his mother was angry, for the sack was heavy, and had nearly hit her. "You careless little beggar, you!" she shouted up at him. "One of these days, you'll kill someone!" But she softened when she heard his story and saw what the bag contained.
"You acted correctly, Jack," she commented at the end. "Fair shares for all! He has no right to have more gold coins than we!" So she and Jack lived on the ogre's hoard until the last gold coin was spent. After which they existed for some time as best they could, borrowing and running into debt, for their spell of temporary prosperity had debauched them.
At last want of food drove Jack again to explore. The beanstalk still flourished, and he climbed it once more, and once more arrived safely at the ogre's house. Cautiously he entered the kitchen, and, after having made sure that the ogre was out, greeted the wife, saying, "Hello, Mrs. Crunchingbones, ma'am," in rather an offhand manner, as if he saw her every day.
"Hop it, boy!" she replied. "Wasn't it you that I hid here the very day that my husband missed one of his sacks of gold?"
"Well," he answered, "if I weren't so hungry, I could tell you a few facts about that: they might interest you—but I must eat first."
The ogre's wife again felt sorry for the boy; he seemed too young to have much harm in him, and she could see that he was hungry, so she said, "Sit down over there," indicating a corner near the oven, and brought him a bowl of milk. He had scarcely finished it when they heard—or, rather, in the first place, felt—the ogre's footsteps approaching. Once more the kind woman threw Jack into the oven, and he was able to watch as before. Once more, the ogre angrily sniffed the air. Once more he bellowed out in his angry, ugly voice:
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
His wife, however, calmed him, patting him and saying, "There, there, dear: don't carry on! You're tired, and will feel better after breakfast"; and she soon produced three broiled oxen for him.
After he had finished his meal, he shouted sleepily, "Bring me my hen!"
Accordingly, his wife brought to him a large red hen fluttering and cackling in her arms, put it down and left the room. Crunchingbones commanded "Lay!": whereupon the hen cackled again, and laid an egg of gold—which puzzled Jack, for he had always understood from his mother that it was a goose that laid the golden eggs. Indeed, this discovery first began to undermine his mother's authority. However, there was no time to waste, or in which to think this out at the moment, and as soon as the ogre fell asleep and began to snore, Jack crept out of his hiding-place and grabbed the hen. The frightened cackle it put up woke the ogre, but Jack had a good start and was already on his way down the beanstalk before Crunchingbones was out of the house, so that the boy reached home safely with the gold egg in his pocket and the hen under his arm.
The next time Jack climbed his beanstalk it was not from hunger, for the golden eggs procured him and his mother all, and more than all, that they could wish for: no, now Jack wanted to get rich, and easily won treasure had fanned his greed for money ... The ogre's house seemed empty, and Jack slunk in without meeting the ogre's wife, and on this occasion for a change concealed himself in the copper ... Soon Crunchingbones returned. Directly he entered, he stopped, sniffed the air, as he had done on previous occasions, and hitting the wooden walls with a stick as big as a tree trunk to make sure that there was no hollow space behind them in which someone could hide, at the same time bawled out his theme-song:
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
At the sound of his voice, his wife hurried in, saying, "If you really think you do, dear, it will be that little villain from down below again; the boy who stole our gold and our magic hen. If so, he's sure to be in the oven. That's where he was before, if you remember."
Jack was terrified that it would be the turn of the copper next, for he heard Crunchingbones rush towards the oven, open the door with a bang, and explore it with great blows from his stick ... However, that it had proved to be empty must have reassured the ogre, for he did not search the copper, and after his breakfast of four sheep, roasted, called to his wife: "Bring me my harp of gold!" When she had brought it and had left the room, he commanded: "Sing, Harp!" and the harp sang in a golden voice, most touchingly, for more than half an hour, until the ogre fell asleep. Then the harp fell silent for fear its singing should wake him.
As soon as the sound of the giant's snoring replaced its melodious songs, Jack crept noiselessly out of the copper and grasped the harp: but the moment he touched it, it called out "Master! Master!" ... The ogre first stirred in his sleep, and then, feeling that something was amiss, roused himself, and ran to the door just as Jack was disappearing out of sight down the beanstalk. Crunchingbones looked at the plant doubtfully, wondering, no doubt, whether in spite of its size it would support his weight. But from far below the harp cried again, "Master! Master!" and on hearing this, the ogre threw caution to the winds, and, first clutching the beanstalk, began to climb clumsily down it, the whole plant swaying, sagging and drooping under the unexpected burden.
By this time Jack had reached the ground in safety, and realising what was happening, called "Mother, Mother, bring me an axe!" She hurried out, but was so startled that she could not move when she saw the giant's leg protruding out of a cloud as he clumsily felt for his next foothold. Jack, however, snatched the axe from her, and wielded it to some purpose, for at the second blow he cut the stalk clean in two, and the giant like an avalanche of flesh fell to the ground with a tremendous crash, making it shake as though an earthquake were in progress, and carrying the top of the beanstalk with him: his head was broken, and after a minute there sounded a death-rattle from him, like a great hurricane ... Now it was to Jack that the harp sang "Master! Master!"
In London, and in the provinces too, Jack and his mother gave concerts regularly for the harp, which learned to sing Gounod's Ave Maria, and made much money for them. Indeed, the house was invariably sold out. With this exceptional musical instrument, and in addition with the hen, as their capital, they started the Golden Egg Bonus Company, a dairy and grocer's shop, combined with a lending library. As Jack could not read, his chief wish—for he affected to despise books, or book-learning, as he termed it—was to get every new offending volume out of the shop as soon as it arrived in it, and this gave an appearance of keenness. The business started in quite a small way: regular customers—those who had spent enough money, without realising that it was too much—were invited to draw a ticket out of a bag, and if it had printed on it a particular number, announced beforehand, the fortunate client found himself awarded an egg of gold. This novel system of bonus continually brought in new and enthusiastic clients, until the smaller competitive shops became deserted and were bought up by the new company. Soon branches of it opened in every large city and prosperous manufacturing town in England and the United States.
Jack and his mother now found themselves in the world of big business, and before long proceeded to sponsor the famous Golden Egg Television and Radio programmes, in which the Golden Harp was a favourite performer. They owned yachts and rented grousemoors in Scotland. But all this work, all this prosperity and luxury, brought their own drawbacks. He never married, and his mother was too old and set in her ways to make an ideal hostess. Moreover, Jack, unable to read, was bored in his leisure hours. His new friends thought him eccentric, for, conscious that the improvement in his circumstances had all followed on climbing a beanstalk, he persisted every day in climbing trees, though he was now of middle age, and guests could not help being surprised when they heard their host hail them from some leafy fastness at the top of oak or chestnut. His mother would try to break him of this habit, but she failed. In fact, he had developed what is now called a fixation. His move to a large mansion in London served to make his eccentricity only more evident. And one morning Lord Beanstalk, as he was now called, for he had lately been created a viscount, was found by the police at the top of an elm, known to be unsafe, in Kensington Gardens. They ordered him to come down, but he refused, and in the ensuing struggle—for ignorant as they were of his identity, they sent up firemen on ladders to capture him—he fell and was killed. His solitary and grieving mother did not long outlive him, and the nationalisation of the Golden Egg Bonus Company that followed.