Brinton Turkle and Masterly Inactivity

I mentioned before that one of my summer goals is to read more picture books to the littles. They don’t get nearly the reading time that my older two got when they were these ages, and a lot of the reading time they do get is sans pictures. So my goal is a minimum of one reading per child before nap time, but so far I’m actually doing better than that because we’ve been fitting another reading or two in at different times of the day.

The other night at bedtime, I read Brinton Turkle’s Obadiah the Bold two times (because everyone was into it that night) — once in the boys’ room and once in the girls’ room.

Are you familiar with Turkle’s Obadiah books? They are some of my favorites. Obadiah is the youngest son in the Starbuck family, a Quaker family living on Nantucket Island during the colonial period. We here love Obadiah, as well as his younger sister, Rachel.

Obadiah the Bold begins with Obadiah carrying around his new spyglass. He takes it everywhere  — to the wharf, to bed at night. He tries to take it to church (called “Meeting on First Day”) but Father says “no” and so Obadiah runs home to put it away.

Obadiah is obsessed with his spyglass. He decides that when he is grown, he will be a pirate, the terror of the Seven Seas: Obadiah the Bold!

Now, imagine with me for a minute. Obadiah belongs to a Quaker family. They are pacifists. To Quakers, it was a shame to be a solider, not to mention a pirate.

It is easy for us to laugh off pirates because we think of Johnny Depp and Raphael Sabatini, but in colonial times, pirates were a very real danger. This is the equivalent of your sweet little boy looking up at you and declaring that he wants to be a murderer and a rapist! And even though it is highly unlikely a little boy understood all the implications of what it meant to be a pirate, I am sure it tore at his father’s heart.

So what would you do? Let’s say your child declares that he wants to grow up to be something that you consider awful or sinful or heretical or what have you — a Buddhist monk? a beach bum? a hacker? What do you do? What is your response?

Would you lecture him? Would you tell him how sinful and horrible it is to engage in illegal or unchristian activities? Would you guide him in a more gentle manner, saying, “no, you do not really want to do that”? What would you do?

I, sadly, would probably lecture — at least if I did not quickly remember all that Brinton Turkle has taught me.

I think that Obadiah the Bold is good for parents, and not just for children, because it offers a living example of what Charlotte Mason called Masterly Inactivity. Masterly Inactivity is an action (or non-action, as the case may be) on the part of the parents. It is a “wise letting alone.” It is having the power and desire to act, but the insight and wisdom to restrain oneself. Miss Mason suggested this sort of letting alone in so many areas of life. Surely this incident with Obadiah qualifies.

Obadiah’s parents do … nothing.

Obadiah suggests to his older siblings that they play pirates. They capture him, put him in the “brig” and then make him walk a “plank” for his crimes. This unsettles Obadiah much more than a lecture from his parents ever would have.

After this, Obadiah doesn’t play with his spyglass anymore.

Obadiah finally approaches his father, who is writing a letter in his office. “Do pirates really have to walk the plank?” he asks. (“If they get caught” is the answer.) Obadiah decides that maybe he doesn’t want to be a pirate, after all. And then Father finally has a place to speak. Father takes Obadiah on his lap, and tells him about the brave ship’s captain after whom Obadiah had been named — his own grandfather. He tells of his grandfather’s bravery, of his heroism, in sailing around the Cape without losing a man. And then he takes Obadiah up to the roof to practice using his spyglass.

Obadiah leaves with his aspirations complete redirected to something that is good and noble: to be a brave and honorable ship’s captain, like his very own Grandfather Obadiah.

Charlotte Mason once said that we were “too much with our children, ‘late and soon.'” I think of Brinton Turkle, and I smile. I’m pretty sure that he understood the art of wise letting alone, while waiting for that perfect moment when a very few words (and a hug) would go a very long ways.

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