There isn’t much to say about the purely
supernatural element, which includes fairies, a magical white horse and a small
dragon.
The ‘real people’ in the book include a
policeman, a grocer who is also Mayor and some ladies from a charity committee.
They are mainly caricatures or stereotypes, and most of them don’t inspire much
in the way of commentary either.
The characters who are of particular interest
are a witch, a wizard and someone who is neither magical nor a completely real person.
This article covers the two practitioners of
magic, Richard the Wizard and Angela the Witch.
Richard the Wizard
We first learn about Richard from what his
mother says about him. She says that he isn’t like other women’s boys. He
cannot read or write; he disappears without explanation. The servants are all
gone because they can’t stand him and his ways.
Living Alone was first published in 1919; one
hundred years later, some of the things that we are told about Richard could be
taken as a description of someone with mild autism or something similar.
Richard’s mother tells Angela the Witch:
“Do you know, I have only once
seen him with other boys, doing the same as other boys, and that was when I saw
him marching with hundreds of real boys ... in 1914.... It was the happiest day
I ever had, I thought after all that I had borne a real boy... He
deserted twice—pure absence of mind—it was always the same from a child—'I
wanted to see further,' he'd say...“
We
are told that Richard seems to have none of the small skill in details that
comes to most people before they grow up. He does everything as if he were
doing it for the first time.
