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My castaway this week is Virginia Dickinson. Over a career spanning nearly fifty years, she has established herself as one of Britain’s most eccentric artists and illustrators. Best known for her brightly-coloured and exuberant style, she has won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal twice, and her autobiographical story of childhood freedom and escape, Painting A Cabin, was a Caldecott Honor Book in 1987. Published under both her given name Virginia, and her more familiar nickname Rusty, Ms. Dickinson has distinguished herself in the United Kingdom and America as a uniquely humorous illustrator, delighting generations of young readers with her flair for comedy and warmth. She attributes her success to persistence and determination. “I have always been a stubborn little girl,” she said, “and I would never have got anywhere in life had I been any other way.”
Do you prefer Rusty or Virginia, by the way?
Oh, Rusty, absolutely. I liked to go by Virginia on the labels and titles of things, because it meant a lot to my mother, but after she passed away I just wanted to be universally Rusty again. And I had enough of a career established that by that time, I didn’t have to worry so much about formality.
Were there concerns about formality?
Oh, always, yes. I was a forthright little hussy in practically everything I did, but I learnt to put the patina of respectability around about myself enough to pass muster when it mattered. Once the ink dried on the contracts I could relax, but not before, and being Virginia certainly took me a long way early on, in England at least.
You are known for being a bold, independent character—as you say, quite forthright—and many critics have observed that your work reflects that. Is your music taste similarly individual? Do you listen to music a lot?
I guess so! I can’t draw if I’m not listening to something. I can paint wherever and whenever come hell and high water, but if I don’t have the radio or a record on, I just straight can’t draw good work to save my life. So I spend a lot of time with music playing in the background, and for all that I’m an artist and I know about the hard work that has to go into a picture or a story to make it really good, the creation of good music still seems totally miraculous to me. So I love it for that, and for dancing.
And do you listen widely?
I try to, but I daren’t say I really do. I try new things whenever people offer them to me, but left to myself I tend to stick to my favourites, and things similar to my favourites.
Well, we’re going to cast you away to your desert island, with only your eight chosen pieces of music for company, so it’s all up to you. What is your first selection?
This is Helen Shapiro, Walkin’ Back To Happiness. This is one of my favourite songs, and I think I could rely on it to lift my spirits while I try to… find food, I suppose!
[Walkin’ Back To Happiness, by Helen Shapiro.]
Did you read a lot, as a child? Is that where your eye for children’s books began—at home?
I didn’t read plenty when I was young, but I did read a lot when I was in America. I could read pretty well then, and I liked any story with animals in it. Make Way for Ducklings, The Runaway Bunny, The Story of Ferdinand, and so on, they were all books I loved the second I saw them, and when I started to feel too old for those sorts of books I moved on to non-fiction books about wildlife. It wasn’t until I came back home after the war that I started to really see the value of children’s books, though—I think sometimes we need to be a little bit adult before we notice how our childhood books were built to please us, and can fully appreciate it.
You were evacuated to America at the start of the war, weren’t you?
Yes, I was sent to live with a family near Connecticut, and I was blissfully happy there. I was seven at the time I left—young enough that I don’t remember much of England or my family from before the war. When we all sailed back after the war ended, most of us weren’t sure how we’d recognise our mothers at the quayside.
Did you?
Not at first, no, and that was a very disheartening start. She’d changed a lot over the course of the war, naturally, but as soon as she hugged me I knew she was mine. That was a very lovely moment between us, although after that things became very tense almost immediately, as we both stumbled around trying to work out who we were in that new situation.
That whole experience must have been very difficult, for a young child?
Almost impossible. For all of us, I think. My younger brother Charlie was born while I was away, so he was only four in 1945, and we’d never met until then. He didn’t understand who I was, for a while, and I didn’t understand anything about England—or about what I must have missed during the war. Everybody had been struggling, and along waltz I to criticise the décor! I was pretty ignorant, and it took a long spell of dirty looks for me to cotton on to that and start to adjust.
And how did your mother feel? Did you talk with her about that time?
Not while we were living it, but we talked about it a fair amount when I was older, and so I know I hurt her pretty horribly back then. Not on purpose, of course, but with the questions I asked, and just with the fact that I’d forgotten so much, and come back to her like a brand new stranger of an American child, with all my own funny ideas about how things should be, and who I was. I’d started going by Rusty, for a start, and she found that totally bizarre.
It was a nickname given to you in America, I believe?
Yeah, on account of my hair. But I went back to being Virginia as much as I could for the sake of my parents, until I could persuade ‘em that my liking Rusty better wasn’t a slight against the name they’d chosen for me.
Is that why you published as Virginia Dickinson, initially?
Partly, yeah, that’s the sweeter, sentimental reason. The more important one at the time, though, was making myself seem extra respectable to people, since I was trying to get artistic work without having been to a proper art school, or any proper school full stop, since my boarding school had been non-traditional, too, and I hadn’t gone to university.
Your next record?
This is Frank Sinatra, ‘White Christmas’, which I’ve loved ever since I was a child. He was set to perform near my home in Connecticut just a week after I sailed back to England, and I’m gonna be bitter about that ‘til the end of my days, I’m pretty sure. But this record was sent to me by my American family for my first Christmas back over here, which meant a huge amount to me at the time. I took tremendous care of that old record for years, until it was trashed in a flood. But yes, this would remind me of my American family, and the wonderful years—and wonderful Christmases—I got to spend with them.
[White Christmas, by Frank Sinatra]
You were talking briefly before that record about your education, and you mentioned your lack of higher education. Were there expectations placed on you, about what you would do post-education?
My mother wanted me to go to university, for sure, and my father wanted me to take a cookery course and make a good marriage… and of course I wanted to do neither.
You didn’t want to go to university?
No, not at all! It sounds a little silly now, when university is so very much the done thing, but I couldn’t think of anything worse when I was that age.
You attended The River School, which operates without any compulsory lessons. It’s a very controversial school, but you found it a good fit for yourself? Did that feeling of freedom from expectation help you, and make university seem like something you could forego?
Yes. I still attended almost all my classes, mind you, and there was an expectation that we choose to take part a healthy amount, but I did use that freedom to have more time for me to spend in the art room, and that let me develop my artistic abilities so much that by the time I was leaving school… I just really didn’t see any need to go to college and make myself ‘traditional’, I guess? I’d had a horrible experience of traditional British schooling, at another boarding school until I was able to escape, and after that I’d had a very generous, liberal education at The River School. We weren’t able to take all the standard exams there, though, because they didn’t have enough teachers. I chose not to take any at all, so I wasn’t eligible for university at all when I left school.
To be fair to her memory I must say that, by the time I was making those final decisions, my mom was absolutely willing to support me in whatever I wanted to do, she was so great. So I relied on her support, and I made a little money doing home decorating for friends of friends, at first, and took some casual art classes in the evenings. But that was fine for me! Because I’d spent all that time in the art room, developing a portfolio, and I had a fantastic art teacher, Mrs Jones, who took an interest in my work and showed it to her friends. One of them was also an artist, and she offered to tutor me when I left school. I jumped at that offer, and her help ended up being the thing that set off my whole career.
And from there, presumably, you were able to branch out into illustration.
Eventually, yes. I took a post with the local newspaper, doing occasional little cartoons. Nothing political, but little bits and pieces, for adverts mostly, or seasonal decoration. It was fun, but frustrating, so I took a leap and started sending my work out to other publishers, and landed totally on my feet at the Radio Times.
Which was an impressive achievement, at the time!
Yeah! It was really something. Quite an honour. And then I packed it in after a year! [laughs] I think they were all mightily scandalised, you know, to have a girl leave when she wasn’t even marrying or having a baby. It was a big fuss!
So, you left the Radio Times under a cloud, damaging your reputation as a newspaper and print illustrator before you could really get started. How did you then make the leap from that situation, to children’s literature?
I’d been so uninspired by print illustration, I knew I wanted more freedom to make my own work, according to my ideas, and from that idea it was just a matter of working out how to make a living. I’d thought the Radio Times would provide that, but it was obviously a bad fit, so I cast my mind back to try and work out what career could use those elements of drawing and illustration that I did relish and thrive at.
At The River School, I’d been involved with the school’s theatre productions, first as a set builder and then as a set designer, too. At first I just liked the big work—painting scenery on wooden walls, and so on—but after a year or so, I’d gotten much more interested in the theatre design side of things, and started drawing out my own ideas.
So your artistic profession was borne of a love of theatre?
Oh, no! I like the theatre just fine, but it was the design itself that I loved. My American grandma had introduced me to stencilling and I liked decorating rooms that way, so it was a natural place for me to slot into the life of the school. And I liked the control I had over the scene, you know, like how if it was a design I did just for myself, I didn’t have to take the script into consideration, and I could draw whatever I wanted. If I drew a door, I got to choose who walked through it. If I drew a bike, I could choose who rode it. I had control. That dynamic followed me into illustration—when I was doing the work for other authors’ books, it’s like working to a generous script, and I relish that exercise, but my own books are for me to really let loose and play around with my own inventions.
And your next record?
Reet Petite. Pure and simple reason being there’s nothing quite like Jackie Wilson’s voice, and nothing quite like this song for dancing, and I love to move.
[Reet Petite, by Jackie Wilson]
You were talking earlier about the relationship you had with your mother after you returned from evacuation in America. I know that your parents divorced soon after your father returned from his wartime posting. How did that feel, coming so hot on the heels of your return to what was supposed to be your normal family life?
Well, we never really did settle back into a typical pre-war family life. My father, like so many men of his generation, came home from the war expecting everything to return to normal once he got back, and unluckily for him it didn’t. It just couldn’t, I don’t think. I’d been to America, my brother was a small child already, and my mother had learned a trade and been working while he was away. He was evidently rather gobsmacked by all that, and at the time it made me very, very angry that he was so unpleasant to us. I try to be gentler in retelling the story now, because it must all have been a nasty shock for him, but he really did react to the situation very badly, and it couldn’t have gone on the way it was without the rest of us being made crushingly miserable for the rest of our lives. I was already feeling pretty foul at school, since I was so out of step with everything, and that all came to a head with some trouble I got into, which led in turn to their divorce, because it was pretty clear they were never going to agree with each other again about how to raise kids.
My mother moved back to Devon with me and Charlie, and my father stayed with his mother in Guildford. We saw him occasionally after that, but it was never something I was very enthusiastic about.
And your mother was working to support you?
Yes, my mother was a mechanic. She had been a volunteer with the Women's Voluntary Service during the war, where she learned all the skills and built the good reputation she needed to be a mechanic after she divorced my father, and that was important for me to be seeing as I grew up. It was something to look up to, and an example of how I could survive in this country when I became an adult. She always worked very hard, and made sure she maintained her place in the workforce as more and more men came back from the war. We were lucky there, because she found a job at The River School as soon as Charlie and I started to go there, and from that she was able to build a big network of people who knew her, and who knew her work was good. I never took as much notice of that lesson as I should have—I’ve always been a little sloppy at professional relationships—but I didn’t forget it, either. Most of my big successes have been built on the back of working hard and being nice to people, and I learnt both those things from watching my mother.
And your next record?
This is ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, from the film of the same name—of course. I went to see it at the pictures with my mother when it came out, and as we left the theatre it just started raining cats and dogs right down on us, and I got all worried about my good hair, but my mother started laughing! This pure, ecstatic noise. That’s the picture of her I see in my brain now, when I miss her, so I’d like to take that with me to this hopeless island. Plus I don’t reckon there’ll be much in the way of rain out there, and I expect I’ll miss it a little, for England’s sake.
[Singin’ in the Rain, by Gene Kelly]
Your first book, Charlie’s Bear, was written for your brother, I believe?
Not exactly. It was based on bedtime stories I used to tell my little brother when he was small, yes, because he did have that little teddy. He carried it everywhere, but sometimes it would fall out of his bed while he was asleep, and Charlie used to get a bit upset and anxious about that. So I came up with this version of events where the teddy bear hadn’t fallen at all, but had instead climbed down the bed sheets and gone off to have all these brilliant adventures under the bed. There must have been hundreds of adventure stories I came up with for Charlie’s bear, but I never thought of making a real book out of any of them until an artist friend suggested to me that I try children’s illustration, and at that point, of course, I needed an idea to illustrate as an experiment. My mind just jumped back to Charlie at that age, and how much he’d loved that bear… by the time I actually wrote the book, though, Charlie was a fully grown young man, about to have children of his own. I did make sure to give the first copy to him, as a thank you for the idea.
And the dedication is to him.
Yes, that as well! He was very impressed by that when it came out, I remember. He used to brag about it. Then whenever I had lacklustre presents for him at Christmas I’d remind him I gave him Charlie’s Bear, and all would be forgiven.
We’ll talk more about Charlie in a moment, but before that—your next record?
I’ve chosen Shirley Bassey’s signature song, This Is My Life. It’s a bit of an anthem of mine, so it would fire me up, and remind me how much I’ve managed to achieve—not just with my work, but my family, my personal achievements—despite the barriers that were put up between me and what I wanted to do, or be. And of course, away on the island I can sing along to it without worrying about how lousy I sound! That’d be some grand fun.
[This Is My Life (La Vita), by Shirley Bassey]
Charlie’s Bear, was, of course, an enormous success, and is still a very much-loved book amongst young children. And from there, you wrote a series of further adventures between Charlie and his bear, all of which were well-received. But you wrote another book for your brother, Charlie’s Car, after he and his wife, Joanne, were killed in a road accident, leaving their two young children in your care. That book, it seemed to me, was an incredibly brave, tragic piece of work. Did you worry about how it would be received?
Yes, very much. I had a huge amount of faith in the book while I was working on it—I knew it was some of my best work, and it felt very important to finish it, and get it published—but I did expect there to be a negative reaction from some readers. Some people are very attached to the idea that children should be sheltered from having to know about the sad, awful things that can happen to people, so of course a book about what happened to Charlie and Joanne was bound to be called ‘inappropriate’, or whatever. I wasn’t surprised at all about that.
But you remain proud of the book?
Absolutely, because what those people are forgetting is that while all parents wish they could shield their children from knowing about death, or loss, or grief… not all children are lucky enough to get that. Certainly, Charlie’s children weren’t, and at the time it happened they had so, so many questions I didn’t know how to answer. And they wanted to talk about where their kind, wonderful parents had gone, and for the first few days of that process I felt hopelessly lost. I muddled through as best I could, and we got through that time as a family, becoming closer and getting used to what was now a very, very different world for all of us. I wrote Charlie’s Car as my way of documenting that time, and of offering to other families, or to anyone dealing with an even vaguely similar situation, all the support that an understanding book can give to a person. I didn’t—still don’t—have any grand advice to give anyone that I can know is good, but at least the book offers a little semblance of solidarity, and sympathy.
Your next record.
A song for Charlie. This is The Andrews Sisters, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. He just thought it was the absolute business.
[Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, by The Andrews Sisters.]
You returned to America in your thirties, to collaborate with Evaline Ness. After your time there during the war—you said earlier that it was blissful—did it feel like a homecoming?
I don’t know if I’d go so far as calling it a homecoming, but yes, it felt fantastic to go back. I’d wanted to go back ever since I left, but hadn’t been able to afford the passage on my own, so the opportunity to go to New York to work with Evaline Ness was irresistible. We met up to discuss how we wanted to work together; the proportion of her illustrations to mine, the same for the text, the details to emphasise, that sort of thing. And after that was all settled, I was able to travel up to Connecticut and spend a week with my American family, and that was… oh, that was heaven. Kinda sad, too, like it always is when you go back to a place that used to be home, but it was a blast to see everyone again. And to see them all in the flesh, for real, after so long. It was a definite sort of homecoming, in that way. I’m very glad I got to go when I did, as it was only a short while after that trip that my Uncle got sick, and… it was just lucky, that I went that year.
And you met your wife on the journey home. How did that come about?
Oh, yes! She just sat down beside me! We got onto the plane, and then there she was in the seat next to mine. She introduced herself, we got chatting, and that was that! We talked the whole way home, and after that we were all set. Inseparable, pretty much, from then on. We got married in January 2006, which was as soon as we could.
Record number seven.
This is one of my wife Sally’s favourites, John Martyn. She’s English, and loves British folk music, but to her endless frustration I mostly find it all way too depressing for me. I liked this album, though, and I have a significant soft spot for this song, which was among the music played at our wedding reception.
[May You Never, by John Martyn]
Painting A Cabin was your first foray into books aimed at older, more mature readers, while still staying within children’s literature. Did you consciously target an older child?
Not in so many words, but I wanted to write a book and aim it at myself, at the age I had been when I had those experiences—
—Of running away from your strict boarding school, soon after you had returned to England.
Yes. It was an absolutely dire place, and I was miserable, so I leapt at an opportunity I saw—a loophole, basically, in the way my parents and the school had been keeping track of me—and I started escaping into the local woods. And I found this little house, there, that I assume had been abandoned during the war, and I made it a home. It was a safe place, I guess, and I invited a friend from the boys' school to take refuge there too, when he could.
And you decorated it, didn’t you?
Yes! With tins of old paint I found in the house, and scraps of wood. And that’s what I wanted to express in the book, you know, the liberating feeling I had, and the way it was made even better by my controlling that environment with art! It felt so incredibly, deep-in-my-bones good, to hide out in that house, and to decorate it myself. I’d been allowed to decorate my own room in America, and I had loved that, so I knew already that this was something I could enjoy, but that opportunity appearing—or me, creating that opportunity—really kindled something in me that made me sure I wanted to do two things with my life: control it for myself, and use my time to paint. I’ve been incredibly lucky, and worked incredibly hard, to keep both of those things available to me.
Is the house still there, do you know? Have you ever been back to see it?
You know, I never have. I have such a crystal-clear picture of that house in my mind, I don’t think I could bear to see it in a worse state now. People do go looking for it—fans. If you know which awful boarding school I went to at that time, then you can work out pretty easily which patch of woodland I was escaping into, and you can go looking for whatever is left of the house there. Fans write to me sometimes and tell me they’ve been out there to look for it, and sometimes they’ve found it, so I believe it is still standing, and recognisable. But I wouldn’t want to see it for myself, no. It’s been a long time.
Your final record, number eight?
This is Ben E. King, singing Stand By Me. This is a song I always liked, but that took on new sentimentality for me when Helen—Charlie’s daughter—had it played at her wedding reception. I’d heard the song so many times before, but now it’s forever attached to that moment, and how relieved I felt to be handing her off to such a nice man, and to have raised her and her brother well enough that I could trust Charlie would be proud. Helen is an artist now, and a much gentler soul than me. Her brother Adam is a lawyer, and quite terrifyingly respectable and proper! I have no idea where he got that from, because it certainly wasn’t from me or my wife. Charlie was very sensible, in his own way, but never ever proper. But yes—I’m very proud of them both, and this song would remind me of their many, many splendours.
Do you think you would do well, then, stranded alone on the island, with only your records for comfort? Would you survive?
I think I’d do okay. I made do just fine with my little house in the woods, but that had a lot of useful things still knocking around the place. A desert island would be much trickier, but I’ve always been a stubborn woman, so I like to think I’d get by okay, at least for a while. I would miss my family something awful, but I’d keep trying to keep my head up.
And you’ll have the Bible, and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. How do you feel about those?
Well, that’s an awful lot of words between them, and I’ve never read either of ‘em from cover to cover before, so I’m sure I’ll have some fun doing that. After that, I guess they’ll have to be kindling.
Do you like Shakespeare?
So much as I feel obliged to, I guess, as an officially English person. But I can’t say I’ve ever felt a passion for him, or Dickens, or Austen… that stuff’s always felt a long way away from who I am.
And your book of choice?
Well, having said that about literature, I’m going to discard the whole notion of fiction and art and literature, and say I’d just like to take a detailed and thorough survival guide. Maybe the SAS Survival Guide? I can tell myself stories, but I can’t keep myself alive for long on this island without a little assistance.
And your one luxury?
I know everybody says pens and paper, but, well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to join that club. My other thought was perhaps a huge, sumptuous four-poster bed, or something like that, but if I take a bed I’ll do nothing but lay about all day, and that’d be a shocking waste of time and energy, so no. I did consider Charlie’s original bear, too, but that old teddy lives with his granddaughter now, and it wouldn’t do to deprive her of it just for my sentimental old sake. So, I am decided! I’d like an endless supply of paper, pencils, and paint. Please!
It’s yours, of course. And, if the waters should rise and come after your stack of eight precious records, which one would you rush to snatch and take to higher ground?
Such a cruel, cruel question! I think, though, that it will have to be the Shirley Bassey. It would represent so many things, and still lift my spirits.
Well, Rusty Dickinson, thank you ever so much for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Thank you very much.