Oh, what joy the little wooden horse had brought to the old woman, and to his master, Uncle Peder, who could now make toys to his heart’s content, but only for those children who pleased him, or for those who had none of their own!
“I shall never leave home again,” said the little wooden horse, for the old woman too loved him now, and he was tired of travelling.
But in the long winter evenings, when the fire burned brightly on the hearth and the wind howled outside, while the little old woman bustled round the kitchen busy with pots and pans, and while Uncle Peder carved wooden legs and wooden heads and wooden bodies, and painted red saddles and blue stripes on his new horses, the little wooden horse, content in his own corner, would go over and over his adventures again in imagination, from Farmer Max to Pirate Jacky, from the King’s coach to the last journey with the barge people up the canal.
“For I am a quiet little horse, and for ever after I shall be rather a dull one,” said he. “But I shall always be the luckiest little horse in the world.”
About the Author
When Ursula Moray Williams was a little girl, she and her twin sister Barbara were sent to bed so early that they used to tell each other stories to pass the time before they went to sleep. After their mother had taught them to read and write, they began to make books – writing new stories and illustrating them with coloured pictures – which they gave to each other at Christmas or on their birthday. They made these “anniversary books” every year until they were teenagers. When they grew up, Ursula became a writer and Barbara a painter, and they remained close – although Ursula lived in England and her sister in Iceland.
Their parents, who were at one time both teachers, gave the girls and their younger brother the happiest of childhoods. The house where they lived was a huge old mansion lit by oil lamps, with an entrance hall paved in marble and surrounded by glass cases full of stuffed birds and animals – foxes, owls, weasels, jays and a large golden pheasant. The house was crumbling, and Ursula remembered that for their lessons with a governess “we moved from room to room as the ceilings fell on us.” But it was a wonderful place to play in (there was a church organ that had no keyboard but provided a perfect hiding-place) – and in the big park outside they had a much-loved pony and cart.
In 1928, when the twins were nearly seventeen (they were born on 19 April 1911), they were sent to France for a year to live in a pastor’s house in Annecy in the Alps. There they had to go to school – which they hated – but out of school they enjoyed every moment: swimming, climbing, skiing and picnicking in the beautiful countryside. Ursula describes this time as like living in a fairy tale. When they came home, both sisters enrolled at the Winchester College of Art, but, while Barbara thrived, Ursula dropped out after a year and decided to practise her writing at home. She was encouraged by her uncle, Stanley Unwin (who was the famous publisher of The Hobbit), and her first book, Jean-Pierre, a story set in the mountains of Annecy, was published in 1931 with her own illustrations. She remembers that the book cost just 2s 6d (12½ pence)!
In 1935 Ursula married Conrad Southey John (always called Peter after their marriage), the great-grandson of the poet Robert Southey. To him she dedicated her best-known story, Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938), written when she was expecting their first child, Andrew. Three more sons followed – Hugh, Robin and Jamie. The four boys were taken out in the afternoons, allowing Ursula to concentrate on her writing for two hours a day, and it was during this time that she created Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat (1942).
Ursula went on to write over sixty books for children. “I write compulsively,” she said. “During the war years I was cooking for ten of us but I had to write, just as my twin sister had to paint and design.” Her husband died in 1974, but she still lived in the family farmhouse on Bredon Hill in Gloucestershire where she brought up her children so happily. Ursula had many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She died in October 2006.
Ursula Moray Williams and the Little Wooden Horse
Ursula Moray Williams had already published fifteen books by the age of twenty-six when in 1937 she started to write the one that would make her famous across the world.
Recently married to an ex-pilot, she was expecting a first, desperately wanted child. It was a happy time and as so often in her career she reached back into her own extraordinary Hampshire childhood for inspiration.
Ursula and her identical twin, Barbara, had played on home-made hobby horses. They couldn’t afford the smart four-wheeled toys sold at a nearby shop, so the girls invented a little wooden horse as a character in the stories they wrote for each other.
The book he later inspired, Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, was an immediate success. In America, Time magazine named it one of its books of the year – with John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
Soon the Second World War was to cast shadows over the author’s remarkable life – but a life that remained as inspirational as those of her brave, fictional heroes.
Ursula (1911–2006) also lived in Middlesex, Surrey, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. Her sixty-eight titles included other classics such as Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat.
Colin Davison, author of Through the Magic Door: Ursula Moray Williams, Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse
(Northumbria University Press)
Macmillan Classics: breathing new life into much-loved children’s stories
The Island of Adventure
by Enid Blyton
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll
The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling
The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook
by Joyce Lankester Brisley
Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse
by Ursula Moray Williams
Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat
by Ursula Moray Williams
The Teddy Robinson Storybook
by Joan G. Robinson
First published 1938 by George G. Harrap & Co. Limited
This edition published 2014 as part of the Macmillan Classics series by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-5818-7
Text copyright © Ursula Moray Williams 1938
Illustrations copyright © Joyce Lankester Brisley 1938
Foreword copyright © Vivian French 2001
About the Author copyright © Macmillan Children’s Books 2014
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by KateWarren
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
nline-share-buttons">share
Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse Page 13