The Intricate World of Literary Jumble Sales

Bring Out Your Jumble, and your Literary Jumble Sales 

Now here’s a post that’s been long-promised and a long-time-coming. Given that we do a lot of mid-20th century fiction here on the blog, jumble sales do pop up, and every time there is interest below the line. See particularly the comments here – the main book is a slick sophisticated NY-based crime story, but that didn’t stop us getting into jumble sales. (The connection – obviously – was harlequin eyeglasses)

I’ve been throwing mentions and ideas into a file, but when I took a look (‘is it time yet?’) there are already too many items. Have they been multiplying themselves in the Word file? Why are there so many great pictures? I just don’t know. And I’ve got so much to say before we even get to the books…

Does everyone know what it is: a fund-raiser (and re-use opportunity) whereby everyone gives in items they don’t need any more, and everything is sold for some charitable purpose. Sometimes it is one stall as part of a bazaar or fete offering many other things (bazaars and fetes are much more upmarket then a jumble sale), sometimes it’s an event that takes over the whole village hall, with the items very carefully sorted and priced, with different tables for menswear, womens’, and the terrifying bric-a-brac. Sometimes it was known as a rummage sale, sounding even more low-rent.

I think they pretty much don’t exist any more – what with charity shops and Vinted – certainly not the big ones, though church fetes will still have a stall. I can identify one moment in the late 1980s where a cause dear to my heart held a jumble sale. Five people worked very hard, collected, arranged it, ran it. They took in (all profit!) £25 and agreed that they’d all rather have sat at home and done nothing and donated £5 each. I would say that bookmarks a turning point in the economics.

But they have a place in our hearts and minds and books. TV comedian Victoria Wood did a wonderful WI jumble sale sketch, but otherwise I don’t think they made it onscreen much.

One of the best descriptions of a charity fete, in wartime, comes from – of all people – Graham Greene, in his 1943 book Ministry of Fear. Blogfriend Roger Allen – and who else would it have been? – pointed this out, and it is actually going to have its own entry, so we’ll move on to more predictable sources.

The books that kicked all this off, see above, were Miss Read’s Fairacre Chronicles - village life in Oxfordshire in the 1950s and 1960s - the natural home of jumble sales. Summer at Fairacre has a chapter called ‘Public Duties’ with a blissful, detailed description of a WI jumble sale, and a lovely line drawing.

 

Then there’s Barbara Pym books: wherever there’s a vicar there’s a jumble sale, said one of my readers. I will stick to the posthumous work, An Academic Question, and this wonderful quote:

 I was sure that I had seen the black velvet bridge coat she wore  among some of her ‘good’ jumble. It may even have come from the dead wife of one of Dolly’s old lovers.

--linking up as it does with last year’s blog obsession, the bridge coat, and being about the most Pym line possible. More in this post. 

The Provincial Lady, of course, helps with the jumble stall at the fete – here she is doing pricing:

Find that my views are not always similar to those of other members of Committee. Why, for instance, only three-and-sixpence for grey georgette only sacrificed reluctantly at eleventh hour from my wardrobe? Arrival of Cissie Crabbe (wearing curious wool hat which I at once feel would look better on Jumble Stall).

There is mention of ‘going round asking’, whereby village worthies knock on doors to ask for suitable jumble. I feel sure that Miss Marple did this as part of an investigation – excuse for nosiness - but can’t track down the reference.

Of course Agatha Christie had many local fetes in her works, all surely with white elephant stalls - Dead Man’s Folly &The Mirror Crack’d, with murders at the fetes, Postern of Fate (Tuppence organizes the curio stall and provides a brass lamp), The Pale Horse – accusations of cheating, and a pig to be won. (All Christie books have posts – find the list here).

[I was intrigued to find there is an edition called Agatha Christie’s 1960s Omnibus – the rogue thought from the darkside is ‘what a good way to avoid her worst ones by throwing it in the bin’, though it does contain Endless Night, an outlier.]

more decorative than this one, you can picture it on the staill

The weapon in Mrs McGinty’s Dead – a sugar cutter or sugar hammer – gets passed around the village by means of the Vicarage Bring and Buy Sale.

Important blogfriend Sovay had this excellent contribution (not her only one):

"Mapp and Lucia". The prominent citizens of Tilling are all holidaying in each other's houses (like an early version of Air BnB) while Lucia rents Mallards from Miss Mapp, and Lucia decides to give a charitable garden fete at Mallards, much to Miss Mapp's resentment. So she in turn plans a jumble sale in Diva's house and gets back at Lucia via Georgie by including a painting he gave her among the jumble - she puts it in the sixpenny odds-and-ends box, and he spots it there and buys it back, and the repercussions go on for months.

And another regular, callmemadam, offered this niche appearance:

The first example that came to mind is in Monica Edwards' Wish for a Pony (1947), a children's book. The heroine, Tamzin, takes some items to a jumble sale for her mother and sees a pair of jodhpurs in her size. They are 5/-, quite a lot then for a jumble sale. Her mother says, absolutely not, until she finds that they've come from 'a good home' and they must be dry cleaned before Tam wears them.

I have not exhausted my list of mentions and I’m quite sure that readers will be able to add more, even (especially?) those who have already contributed. And - these are all British examples. Can we hear from overseas readers what the story is in other countries? Bring them on.

The Clothes in Books comments do not disappoint….

Top picture is Norman Blamey, Parish Bazaar.

File:Brooklyn Museum 1998.12.4 Sugar Hammer.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

File:Pontesbury Church jumble sale (1497978).jpg - Wikimedia Commons