The Belgian Twins — Themes and Context

Two Skies and a Riverboat

One of the most striking passages in the excerpts involves Granny, the eel-woman, who teaches Jan and Marie to see the 'down-below sky' reflected in the river. She tells them that the palace of the King of the Eels lies where the water is reddest, and that the Queen ties red bows on the tails of little eels. This whimsical folklore contrasts sharply with the war rumors that follow. Immediately after this scene, the De Smets arrive on their green riverboat, the Old Woman, with white curtains, red geraniums, and a clothesline of little shirts. The boat family—father at the tiller, mother with two babies, and a boy driving the mule—represents a mobile, self-contained community. Mother De Smet cheerfully says she likes to 'shake my legs a bit' on dry land, while Granny jokes that she shakes hers for ten miles daily. The juxtaposition of Granny's fanciful eel kingdom and the De Smets' practical river life creates a tension between imagination and reality, a pattern that recurs as war encroaches.

Rumors and the Tidal Wave

The excerpts show a deliberate structural pattern: peaceful domestic scenes are repeatedly interrupted by news of war. Chapter II is titled 'The Rumors,' and Mother De Smet tells Granny that the Germans 'are taking everything they can lay their hands on' and that she doubts they will get their cargo safe to Antwerp. The language of the preface also frames the story as one of 'broken up' homes and 'heavy sorrows,' yet it emphasizes 'unfailing courage and cheerfulness.' This duality is embodied in the characters: Granny continues her daily eel-selling despite seeing 'sights that would chill your blood,' and Mother De Smet jokes while carrying a baby under each arm. The author does not depict battle scenes in these excerpts; instead, war arrives as a 'tidal wave of Germans' (Chapter VII), a phrase that suggests an overwhelming, natural force. The twins' perspective filters the invasion through their limited understanding, focusing on what they see and hear rather than on strategic or political context.

Objects That Carry the Story

Perkins uses specific objects to anchor the narrative and convey emotion without explicit statement. The locket mentioned in the preface—'the incident of the locket is quite true'—is a real artifact that presumably plays a role in the twins' journey. The farm cart, the blue cart, the riverboat with its geraniums, and the eel-woman's wheelbarrow are all tangible items that define the characters' lives. The twins themselves are associated with small, purposeful actions: carrying grass to Pier, hunting eggs, pulling weeds. When Granny rises from her wheelbarrow to greet the De Smets, the wheelbarrow becomes a marker of her trade and her rootedness in the landscape. These objects are not mere props; they are the means by which the characters maintain normalcy. The author's note that the story is 'based upon the actual experience of two Belgian children' lends weight to these details, grounding the fiction in documented refugee accounts. Readers should attend to how each object—a locket, a boat, a wheelbarrow—carries both practical function and symbolic weight as the twins' world is upended.

The Belgian Twins is best approached as a document of its time—a 1915 children's novel that seeks to make the Great War comprehensible through the eyes of two eight-year-olds. Perkins balances pastoral nostalgia with the grim reality of displacement, using folklore, family labor, and river travel as counterpoints to invasion. The excerpts do not reveal the twins' fate, but the preface promises a 'happy reunion' after 'long and unspeakable anxieties.' Readers may find the most value in observing how the author constructs a child's geography: the harvest field, the riverbank, the towpath, and the road to Antwerp become stages for both ordinary chores and extraordinary events.

There’s something about the eel lore and the riverboat in The Belgian Twins that stays with you—how children hold onto small certainties when everything else shifts. It reminded me of the quieter sense of place in Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island — Inside the Classic, where an island becomes its own little world. Both feel like looking through an old window at a vanished afternoon.