Back to the Bean Farm:
Rereading the Freddy Books

Reprinted from The Bean Home Newsletter, Vol. 7, No., 4, Summer 1996.

I will contend that this is the true beginning of the Freddy series. Only in here are all the elements established that prove to be a key part of the later books. Bits and pieces come along in the previous books: Freddy gradually moves to center stage, the animals begin talking to the humans in The Story of Freginald, etc., but only here do they all come together. Both Freginald and The Clockwork Twin, while establishing the basic premises that cover the later books, seem more like experiments than part of the mainstream. Freginald focuses on Freginald the bear, and The Clockwork Twin has the human boys in major roles.

Wiggins for President has the boys still around, but only in supporting parts (they help build the bank and do a few other odds and ends). The focus of the story returns, as it rightly should, to the animals themselves. And it documents the beginning of two of the key elements that remain through the rest of the series: the First Animal Bank and, of course, the First Animal Republic.
What struck me first upon reading this book is, once again, how good and how entertaining a writer Brooks is. Take this description of Mr. Bean coming downstairs, as seen by the animals:

the back stairs began to get light as if somebody was coming with a candle. First they saw a large blue and yellow carpet slipper on the top step. And then another slipper jumped past it onto the step below. The slippers kept coming down like this and pretty soon they saw a long white nightshirt, and then a face which was mostly all whiskers with anose sticking out of them and two sharp eyes looking over them, and then a white nightcap with a red tassel. And last of all they saw an arm that ended in a hand holding a lighted candle. And Mr. Bean was in the kitchen.

Tension is introduced almost immediately: the Beans are planning to take a trip to Europe, but they will only be comfortable with doing so if they think they can trust the farm to the animals while theyre gone. The animals, of course, very much want to prove that they can be trusted. But they cant even be trusted to fix a loose blind, something Mr. Bean complains about vocally. (My impression, frankly, is that he would just as soon stay home as go to Europe.)

Quickly, Jinx, the dogs, and the mice (who all get along incredibly well) come up with both the concept of establishing a government and of establishing a bank. With some help from John Quincy, the woodpecker, they start to work on the latter.

John Quincy ends up as president of the bank and is quite justifiably irritated when Jinx and Freddy, the other officers, don’t take their responsibilities as seriously as he does. He brings in some relatives and ends up taking over the bank almost completely, by having the board meeting underground, where Freddy cant go. Then he sets his beak on dominating the First Animal Republic.

He puts several schemes together. The first is to coax a lot of birds to move onto the Bean Farm to skew the vote. When the animals get wind of this, they start bringing in a lot of rodents and other birds. It doesnt seem particularly legitimate on either side, actually.

Then the ambitious woodpecker comes up with an even more clever scheme, that of getting Marcus the rabbit to run. Since the ballots consist of a single letter, G for Grover or W for Wiggins, he can argue that a lot of the Ws are really Ms. The animals retort that the Gs could just as easily stand for something else, too, and start counting the votes accordingly.

Finally, the woodpeckers resort to force majeure, housing Grover inside Bertram, the all-but-invincible clockwork boy, and taking over. They take Freddy hostage and put Mrs. Wiggins, the opposition candidate, under house arrest, and proceed to go on an expansionist spree, taking over neighboring farms. One has to suspect that this is an allegory for what was going on in Europe at the time. The book was published in 1939, after Hitler had been in power for some years, and right when World War II began with his invasion of Poland.

Our heroes and heroines, of course, come up with a pair of masterful schemes to thwart the woodpeckers. Freddy turns the tables on the woodpeckers and regains control of the bank. Then, Freddy comes up with several schemes to get Grover, who is controlling Bertram, to use the automaton’s right arm, which always acts up. The first two fail, but the third, faking a fire and getting Bertram to use the fire extinguisher, succeeds. And the woodpeckers are at last thwarted.

Like the other books that may be considered the best in the series, this is very tightly plotted. The seeds for eventual resolutions are placed early on, as with Bertram's wonky right arm. Its a good read throughout and lays the groundwork for the entire rest of the series.

I have one problem with it: though Mrs. Wiggins is proclaimed president, there is never a truly legitimate election. Worse yet, throughout the entire rest of the series, there is never another election. And they call this a democracy?