"The Lumber Room" - by the Inimitable Saki

The Lumber Room is a lovingly-told tale of a day in the life of a child, Nicholas, who is being punished by his aunt for disobedience. The author takes a perfectly quotidian setting (of children, mischief, and overbearing adults without a sense of humor) and with deft use of wit and wisdom, creates a world of words that entertains and informs all at once. The title seems to caution the reader to lower expectations – little does the reader know that what’s in store is a hilarious, rib-tickling rollercoaster of wit that is intermingled with shrewd observations of the interplay of children and adults.

Nicholas, the child protagonist, is a perpetual bundle of imagination and restlessness – a potent combination when combined. Unfortunately for him, he is the ward of a self-asserted aunt that was never introduced to a sense of humor. A stranger to the bewildering but endearing ways of children, her response to Nicholas’ mischief is to restrict, punish, and withhold – a strategy that may have worked on a lesser child, but Nicholas’ sprit is indomitable and his joie de vivre knows no bounds!

When Nicholas puts a frog in his bowl of bread-and-milk, the aunt (whose name we shall never know) packs off the other children, while withholding Nicholas, to an expedition to the nearby Jagborough Cove with the express intention of punishing him. Nicholas is also forbidden from going into the gooseberry – punished one more time for not looking forlorn enough from being left out of the expedition party. But Nicholas has other ideas – his own personal expedition into the mysterious lumber room in the house. Nicholas manages to do just that – tricks the aunt into thinking he might sneak into the garden, he sets her about on a self-imposed sentry duty of the garden entrances, while he surreptitiously steals the key to the lumber room. While Nicholas enjoys the wondrous sights and ambience of the room, the aunt, suspicious of the prolonged silence from Nicholas, is convinced that he has manage to steal into the gooseberry garden after all. Thus ensues her vigorous stalking of him in the garden, only for it to end with her at the bottom of the rain-water tank. The aunt raises an alarm, and Nicholas promptly makes out of the lumber room, locks it behind him, and goes out to engage the aunt. While outside, he taunts the aunt, refusing to come to her aid by pretending that the voice from the water tank was the Evil One’s and not his aunt’s. The aunt is eventually rescued by the kitchenmaid.

At the end of the day, we find that the only person in the household who has had a fun adventure was Nicholas – the high tide at the cove prevented the other children from playing in the sands while the aunt was detailed against her will at the bottom of the water tank.

The author has taken a seemingly-innocuous storyline and breathed into it a mischief and impishness that is fragrant with the unadulterated innocence of childhood. There’s seldom a dull moment – not when the author has relentlessly infused it with clever word play, repartee, and ripostes.

The author’s sympathies are clearly with Nicholas, and children in general, and he reserves his most withering remarks for the aunt (and by extension, humorless adults, in general) – whom he describes as “a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration”!