I Go By Sea, I Go By Land by P.L. Travers

Then Father said quietly, “Meg, they must go””.

After that there was a terrible silence and I knew that Father and Mother were looking at each other in the darkness and I felt myself getting small and tight inside. The pair have been invited to travel to the safety of America to stay with their aunt, Harriet, for the war’s duration: ‘Just when we were so sure nothing would happen, the German plane came over one night at one o’clock in the morning… Suddenly there were five loud explosions. With the Second World War raging, she leaves her cosy parental home in Sussex with her younger brother, James their father tells them that their house, in the village of Thornfield, ‘had stood for over nine hundred years and was old enough to take care of itself and would probably go on standing no matter what happened. The novel presents the fictional diary of eleven-year-old Sabrina Lind. Travers writes in her preface that the characters and ‘the experiences recorded are authentic’. Virago have just reissued it as part of their Modern Classics list, including Gertrude Hermes’ lovely black and white drawings. Travers’ I Go By Sea, I Go By Land, first published in 1941, is a children’s novel, which seems to have been largely – and sadly – forgotten. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.P.L. This is the fictional diary of Sabrina Lind, an eleven-year-old English girl who, with her little brother James, is sent on the long voyage across the sea to her aunt in America. Oh, please let us come back soon, please.' I will write down everything about it because we shall be so much older when we come back that I will never remember it if I do not. Now I am going to write a Diary because we are going to America because of the War. Then Father said quietly, 'Meg, they must go!''

Then suddenly there were five loud explosions. You could hear it drumming and drumming like a big bee in a flower, buroom, buroom, buroom, round and round in the air above the house. It came over one night at one o'clock in the morning and the sound was quite different from an English plane and we all woke up. Just when we were so sure nothing would happen, the German plane came over. 'James and I stayed on at home and everything was quiet and sunny and we got to thinking the war would never come after all.

I Go By Sea, I Go By Land by P.L. Travers