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Helen Brodie Cowan Watson (Helen Bannerman) was a granddaughter of Alexander Cowan the Penicuik papermaker and was born on 25 February 1862 at 35 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. She was the eldest daughter and fourth child of seven children of Robert Boog Watson (1823-1910), a Free Church minister, and his wife Janet (1831-1912), daughter of Alexander Cowan and Helen Brodie. Between the ages of two and twelve. Helen grew up in Madeira. Her father had charge of the Scots Kirk there. Not only a presbyterian, he was to make his name as an eminent zoologist and Fellow of the Linnean Society. Appropriately in view of the Cowan family trademark, his keen interest was shells.
Holloway's Hotel, Madeira 1864 Helen was educated by her father until she was ten. In Madeira she and her mother were not completely cut off from Cowan relatives -her close uncle George, the most enthusiastic Scot of the family, visited them in March 1870. Robert Boog Watson records that "William Benjamin Archibald Scott residing in Madeira, son of Geddes Mackenzie Scott. M.D. of Hampstead London and Mary Anne Tafsie Hutchison daughter of John Hutchison Merchant of Funchal Madeira were married by me at the Scotch Church here in the presence of George Cowan of Valleyfield Penicuick Scotland and Dr. Charles Albright Leas. U.S. Consul whose signatures are appended to the Registry of the Civil Marriage previously contracted at the British Consulate." Robert Boog Watson wrote extensively on the shells of Madeira and contributed to the scientific work the Challenger expedition of 1873-76, supervising the work on burrowing marine molluscs, slugs and snails.
HMS Challenger and a page from Boog Watson's part of the report of the study findings. The family had meanwhile returned to Edinburgh where Helen completed her schooling at Miss Oliphant's academy. She later studied French and German. At this time when women were not admitted to Scottish universities she sat external examinations and was made an LLA (Lady Literate in Arts) by St Andrews University in 1887. Thousands of women took part in the St Andrews LLA scheme, which was so popular that it survived for 50 years into the 1930s - long after women were admitted as full-time students. Helen Watson's married on 26 June 1889. Her husband William Burney Bannerman (1858-1924), was a Scots physician who became an officer in the Indian Medical Service (IMS). After her marriage, Helen went with her husband to India and lived there until he retired as Madras surgeon-general in 1918. They had four children in India: Janet (1893-1976), Day (1896-1976) , Pat (1900-1955) , and Robert (1902-1988).
Now known as Chennai, Madras was a low-lying city on the south eastern seaboard of the subcontinent. It was one of the three so-called Presidencies of British India (the others were Bombay and Calcutta) The city was subject to plague and other tropical diseases, and not thought ideal for the Bannerman girls and boys, who spent much of the year with their nanny in the faraway hill town of Kodaikanal. Unwilling to leave her husband for a whole season at a time each year, Helen Bannerman lived in Madras but would make the two-day rail journey to Kodaikanal whenever she could. The book for which Helen Bannerman is almost exclusively known, The Story of Little Black Sambo, was written in 1898 to amuse her daughters on the long journey between Kodaikanal and Madras. This involved being carried on a chair down the steep hillside, then travelling in a bullock cart, and finally going by train, with stops at rest houses and for meals along the way. It took two days and two nights-time to refine the story of the adventures of a little black boy who outwits several tigers until it became a classic of economy and drama. She illustrated the book herself in watercolour and bound it into a small volume, with pictures facing every page:
The girls were delighted with the little book. Alice Bond, a friend of Helen Bannerman, was also impressed and suggested that the book be published. Although she had had no thought of publication in writing it, Helen agreed to let Alice take the book to publishers in London, asking only that she be allowed to keep the copyright. When Alice Bond showed the picture book to young publisher Grant Richards, he instantly offered to buy the copyright for five pounds. Alice Bond thought there was no option but to agree. There was no time to write to Helen Bannerman for approval, if she were not to lose this chance to publish.
So in 1899 -just two years after opening his publishing house and a year after publishing George Bernard Shaw's Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Grant Richards brought out Little Black Sambo. It was a runaway best-seller. Helen Bannerman's bright and simple illustrations, edgy page-turning narrative, and rhythmic, repetitive sentences were unique. The small book format was also a new feature, easy for young children to deal with. Helen was fulfilling her own Madeira childhood wish for a book she could hold with her little fingers. After Grant Richards success with it, more small books would soon follow, like Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories for Ward, Lock & Co. American publishers rushed out copies of the book with, in later years, illustrations by a variety of artists, many of whom set their pictures in the deep south of the USA, associating the book with the American experience of slavery, and sowing the first seeds for its rejection in the years ahead. Having effectively lost the copyright-though she had never agreed to its sale-Helen Bannerman made nothing more than the original ?5 from the book which was to be a best-seller for the next half-century. She did, however, follow it with more illustrated stories.
Pat and the Spider (1905) Little Black Sambo achieved a popularity not matched by Bannerman's later work. Critics praised the book as entertaining and humorous; as instinctively in just the right style for children; as presenting a black hero in children's literature. And at first Little Black Sambo was seen as a book that positively portrayed black characters, especially in comparison to some other books of the time. But as the years passed, awarenesses changed. Little Black Sambo came to attract harsh criticism and heated debate. There were successful calls to remove the book from library shelves. At the end of her life Helen Bannerman knew that her Little Black Sambo was seen by some as racist and found this hard to understand -the child is the hero of the story and in her pictures he and his parents are lovingly drawn. Since neither Bannerman nor Grant Richards had kept the copyright, various American versions of Little Black Sambo published in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s appeared with illustrations other than the author's own, often stereotypical images in jungle or plantation settings. Helen Bannerman's own drawings came under fire too, and some thought that the names of Sambo's parents, Mumbo and Jumbo, made them objects of ridicule. Yet these are just an echo of affectionate names for parents and grandparents in Helen's own childhood. As her son Robert put it in a letter to The Times on 1 May 1972 when the book was under attack: 'My mother would not have published the book had she dreamt for a moment that even one small boy would have been made unhappy thereby'. Helen Bannerman was a small, neat figure, with her fair hair in a bun, and blue eyes. She had a quick intelligence and liked puns and verbal wit. A kindly enlightened lady, with deeply Christian attitudes. Helen and William Bannerman had retired to Edinburgh in 1918; he died there in 1924. She suffered a stroke in 1939, after that she was bedridden, living with her daughter Day in her home at 11 Strathearn Place, Edinburgh. She died on 13 October 1946 and was later cremated. For more on Helen Bannerman see the DNB entry by Elizabeth Hay and material presented by Australia's Pancake Parlour restaurants. | |||||
