The children’s novel, `Stig of the Dump’ has had a secure hold on the affections of its younger, and older, readers ever since it was published in 1963. Dramatised for television twice, in the early 1980s and then in the 2000s, the name of its caveman protagonist Stig was to inspire the television personality Jeremy Clarkson to call the test driver in his popular `Top Gear’ show by the same name. To this day, the book, with its evocative drawings by the illustrator Edward Ardizzone remains a favourite, taught at school, and, more remarkably, read willingly by those just starting out on their reading career.
Its author, Clive King (1924-2018), though born in Richmond, Surrey, moved as an infant to Oliver’s Farmhouse, on Pease Hill, Ash, in West Kent, and attended the nearby King’s School at Rochester. His subsequent career was to see him serve in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, attend Downing College, Cambridge, and then work in places as far afield as Syria and India for the British Council. `Stig’ was his second work for children, and rejected by twelve publishers before Puffin books accepted it. In 1973, King became a full time author, though none of his subsequent books was to prove as successful.
In an interview for the `Guardian’ in December 2013, King reflected on the inspiration for the story – a quarry next to his garden in Ash which he played by when small. “My experience of the chalk pit was doubly enforced – I saw it through my own eyes and I saw it through the eyes of my children,” he stated. “Of course there wasn’t actually a stone-age man living in a cave at the bottom of it, but Ash was a very boring place to live and I thought what it needs is something to wake it up, so I invented Stig.” (Patrick Barkham, `Ash was a Boring Place. It Needed Something to Wake Up To. So I Invented Stig,’ December 13th 2013, Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/21/clive-king-stig-of-the-dump-interview).
The book itself is a gentle one. It is striking, on rereading it, for the way in which while Barney, the young boy who discovers Stig and his home, tells the adults around him of his new friend, they neither undermine nor invalidate his claims, but simply gently tolerate them. The caveman is also portrayed admiringly. This is no `savage versus civilisation’ saga. Despite their lack of a common language, they are able to communicate well and find things to admire in each other. And throughout the story a subtly subversive tone in maintained, particularly when the two participate, clandestinely, in a fox hunt. Somehow without using language, Stig conveys the utterly rational question of why bother hunting for something one didn’t end up eating, then proceeds to sink an arrow in the haunches of one of the horses making it bolt – presumably indicating that this was far more edible fare. The hunt ends in calamity, though with no one quite understanding apart from the observer Barney, that this had been caused by the hidden caveman’s intervention.
The chalky ground around Ash in fact does still turn up signs of ancient workings. In Swanscombe nearby bone fragments from the Neolithic era 400,000 years ago were excavated during King’s childhood, in 1934-5. These were named Swanscombe man, though subsequent testing showed they were of a woman. At Oldbury Fort, a few miles to the East in Ightam, the Harrison’s in the 19th century had uncovered caves with similarly ancient signs of inhabitation. Ash itself is surrounded by woods – and in some of these, hidden pot holes and workings are easy to find. It can be a surprisingly isolated place, despite being so close to London and its suburban reach, and one which is richly suggestive because of its human and natural history.
King catches that well in the elegant simplicity of his story. On being offered the choice between a day trip to the nearby town of Sevenoaks, or staying at home in his grandmother’s large house, he comes up with the very wise reaction: His `heart sank. Go in to Sevenoaks? Well it was all right if you had nothing else to do. But he had to go and see Stig.’ (`Stig of the Dump’, Puffin, 1963, 2014 reissue, 17). For those familiar with this part of rural Kent, the descriptions of the weather are highly accurate and realistic. On a winter visit, Barney’s wakes up to freezing cold in the farmhouse:
`He got out of bed and looked out of the window. There was white frost on the grass. A few hopeful birds hung around the bird table, fluffed up like woolly balls, waiting for some food to be put out for them….After breakfast Barney slipped out of the house and went off to the pit. In the copse the frozen leaves crunched like cornflakes under his feet’ (ibid 55-56).
Cold is one thing. But with an inevitably verging on the scientifically predictable, in the next chapter, it is not snow that is the issue, but rain. This is a sign that King was writing about a real place, and a place he really knew and understood.