Primrose Cumming 1915-2004
”I found it difficult at first to reconcile the mental picture I had formed of her through her books with her appearance in actuality; she was tiny physically, quite unassuming about her own achievement and much more interested in other people than in talking about herself. She lived practically all her life in her old family home in Sandhurst on the Kent/Sussex border, which provided the background for nearly all her books. She stopped writing in the 1960s, when she felt she was growing out of touch with modern youth. She was a writer, however, who deserved - and achieved - lasting recognition and I know a number of readers who would claim, as I do, that Silver Snaffles is one of the most imaginative and appealing pony stories ever written. Primrose herself was highly amused, one day in her later life, when her neighbour at a dinner party remarked, “I used to have a story called Silver Snaffles as a child, but I’m afraid I can’t remember who wrote it.” “Well, actually, I did,” confessed Primrose, whereupon her neighbour, she told me, almost fell off her chair.”
Sources
Many thanks to Kay Whalley, who very kindly gave me an early Judy Annual from which comes much of this biographical information. (Judy (1963?): The Fascinating Story of a Writer. .... Primrose Cumming - Growing Up)
and to Vanessa Robertson of Fidra Books.
During World War II, Primrose Cumming worked for a year on a farm: one day a bomber crashed in the same field as the sheep she was looking after, but she survived, and her experience on the farm led directly to her next book: Owl’s Castle Farm. Later she joined the A.T.S. and served for the remainder of the war in an anti-aircraft battery. Between air-raids, she wrote The Great Horses. This is the only one of her books of that period which is not set firmly in her own experience: perhaps a reaction against the relentlessness of war, it is an historical book, tracing the experiences of a line of heavy horses.
After the war, she had a temporary job as under-matron in a boys’ school. This was not a success, as she saw the boys’ side rather more easily than the masters’! She returned to her family home in East Sussex, and decided to stick to writing and gardening. Horses were by no means her only interest: she was an expert flower arranger, and exhibited at the local flower shows and Chelsea. The books she published after that started to be based less on her own experiences, although she did say that a book about her next horse, Black Domino, helped to start the interest in pony trekking. (This book I think is Four Rode Home). Another horse, Bridget, a brown mare from Ireland, provided her share of material for books. Primrose Cumming wrote the third, and last part of the Silver Eagle story in 1954: Rivals To Silver Eagle. Her books after this were published by Dent, and moved away somewhat from her previous books, although they did perhaps reflect her love of travel. She trekked: not only on horseback, but on camel and elephant. Penny and Pegasus (1969), her last novel, is set mostly in Greece: possibly the only English pony book with such a setting, and Foal of the Fjords in Norway.
Primrose Cumming died in 2004. She had stopped writing in the 1960s, feeling that she was becoming out of touch with modern youth, in which she did herself a dis-service: most of her books are read just as avidly as they were, and Silver Snaffles still weaves its spell today. It is due to be re-published later this year (2007) by Fidra Books.
Below is an obituary of Primrose Cumming:
Concise Bibliography
Doney - a Borderland Tale of Ponies and Young People (Country Life, 1934, illustrated by Allen W Seaby)
Spider Dog (Country Life, 1936, illustrated by Barbara Turner)
Silver Snaffles (Blackie, 1937, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
The Silver Eagle Riding School (A & C Black, 1938, illustrated by Cecil Trew)
Rachel of Romney (Country Life, 1939, illustrated by Nina Scott-Langley)
The Wednesday Pony (Blackie, 1939, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
Ben: The Story of A Cart-Horse (Dent, 1939, illustrated with photographs by Harold Burdekin)
The Chestnut Filly (Blackie, 1940, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd)
Silver Eagle Carries On (A & C Black, 1940, illustrated by Cecil Trew)
Owls Castle Farm (A & C Black, 1942, illustrated by Veronica Baker)
The Great Horses (Dent, 1946, illustrated by Lionel Edwards)
Trouble At Trimbles (Country Life, 1949, illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam)
Four Rode Home (Dent, 1951, illustrated by Maurice Tulloch)
Rivals To Silver Eagle (A & C Black, 1954, illustrated by Eve Gossett)
No Place For Ponies (Dent, 1954, illustrated by Maurice Tulloch)
The Deep-Sea Horse (Dent, 1956, illustrated by Mary Shillabeer)
Flying Horseman (Dent, 1959, illustrated by Sheila Rose)
The Mystery Trek (Dent, 1964, illustrated by Sheila Rose)