Small-Town Ireland & its Gardens & Crime

Common or Garden Crime by Sheila Pim

 published 1946

 

 

“To the seeing eye, a common dandelion is as beautiful as a chrysanthemum.”

“Somehow,” said Lucy Bex, “I don’t think you can be a gardener.”

 

It’s worse: the first speaker is an artist who paints pictures of gardens. The local posh family are relieved to hear she is not badly off, so there is no obligation to commission her – they have bought enough pictures from indigent connections. They ‘may have been dimly aware that there were other reasons for buying pictures, but they did not take them seriously’.

‘Give a good mulch’ says one of the ladies – straight out the (contemporary) Aisling books, where an upmarket lady pronounces ‘mulch’ in such an unusual way that Aisling and her mother have fits laughing. 

I have zero interest in gardening, but this book quite overcame my prejudice. It is a good solid crime story, but also very funny in a gentle way, Sheila Pim caustically observing the residents of a small Irish town outside Dublin, Clonmeen. Common or Garden Crime bears comparison with Angela Thirkell, and the Henrietta books and even –

There is a moment when the incomers to the Big House make a remark (about moving to the village to save money) which outrages the locals:

the Clonmeen people assimilated the idea that Annalee Hall appeared to its new inhabitants in the light of a country cottage.

 

- This is not something I throw around lightly: but that could have come from the pen of The Provincial Lady.

Everyone goes to church on Sunday, of course, and these characters are mostly (but not all) Protestants.

When the churchgoers came out of the Beechfield back avenue on to the gravel sweep, they found Wendy talking to Lord Barna. The young man and girl, both so good-looking, made a charming picture, at any rate by magazine cover standards.

Though, astonishingly, the eligible young Lord Barna turns out to be fascinated by ballet – not something you’d be finding much in this era in Ireland among the young men.

I am seriously pleased with this picture, which shows US ballet dancer Ted Shawn (from NYPL). Surely could easily be Lord Berna doing his dance which was “based on an old street ballad. All about a man who is on his way to be hanged.”

Excellent clothes detail: one of the local women, giving evidence at an inquest, has a disheveled look because of her hat. “It was a wastepaper basket hat, trimmed with raffia, and should have been worn straight, if at all.”

It turns out this was actually a thing, not just a dismissive way of referring to a hat someone (prob a man) didn’t like. On the left here is a modern day version. The other is from around 1960, so they were fashionable for a while. However this one is most certainly not straight  up and down…

 

There is a Hunt Ball, and while it is not described, we do get a couple who literally come home with the milk – they have missed the last bus but get a dawn ride with a dairy farmer. (This is seen as fair play for gossip, but not disgraceful, btw.)

There is a tennis party, and discussion of coupons and the black market. Oh and yes of course there is a murder, and quite an interesting and  complex plot to unravel. But mostly I enjoyed this for its splendid depiction of small-town life.

Top picture by Henry Irvine Wilson: Tea Party with the Artists Daughter Lois

The good-looking couple from the National Library of Ireland.

The book (and the hat drawing) from Chrissie, again. Thank you.