Bazaars, Jumble, Sale of work - again

 

 

This might be my final post on jumble sales and related activities – so far there has been:

The Intricate World of Literary Jumble Sales

Graham Greene: The Man for a White Elephant Stall

Jumble sales 2: Fantastical

More jumble: In A Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor

… and if you are bored with them, you’ve only yourselves to blame: the reader input on this topichas been fantastic…

 

Firstly, I did track Miss Marple down – I was convinced she went out asking for jumble once, as an excuse for nosiness, and it turned out I wasn’t entirely correct, but close. In The Body in The Library, she visits Basil Blake’s cottage, giving herself a reason to talk to Dinah Lee:

“I called to see if I could enlist your help with a Sale of Work next week.”

“Sale of work?” said Dinah Lee, as one who repeats a phrase in a foreign language.

“At the vicarage” said Miss Marple. “Next Wednesday.”

Definitely up a notch from jumble.

The picture shows no less a person than Dame Edith Evans, the distinguished actress, at a Sale of Work.

Portrait: Evans, Edith | Description Photograph, printed, pa… | Flickr

Body has featured on the blog twice: The Body in the Library   + Radio show on The Body in the Library (and every Agatha Christie book has a post – list here: Agatha). I mentioned other Christie fetes and sales in the earlier post The Intricate World of Literary Jumble Sales

 

I found an ancient etiquette book for girls – 1930s, aimed at being amusing and cynical -  with advice about a charity bazaar. This will give you an idea:

If you are selling at a charity bazaar, it is your principal duty to look as nice and attractive as you can… However much you may want to help with the preparations beforehand, you must remember that two days’ hard physical labour are not likely to leave you looking your best, and you must leave all these technical details to those whose appearance does not matter.

these young well-dressed ladies selling tickets at a bazaar are very much in the spirit of the book

It’s a far cry from Miss Read and Pym’s Mildred, those worthy hard-working women.

However, Wilmet in a Glass of Blessings might secretly think like that. There is a mention….

..she was wearing a lavender-coloured cardigan which I had sent to St Luke’s last jumble sale. I remembered that it had been nearly new – really too good for a jumble sale – but that I had taken a dislike to the colour. Vogue or Harper’s had urged us to ‘make it a lavender spring this year’ and I had responded with too much haste and enthusiasm. I could only suppose that one of the organizers of the sale had allowed Miss Prideaux a kind of preview of some of the best things, for I hated to think of her fragile old body being buffeted by the rough jumble sale crowd. Besides, she would have found the whole thing so distasteful – I could not imagine her even entertaining the idea of going there herself.

Well no, and not Wilmet either.

In Angela Thirkell’s The Brandons there is a lavish, leisurely, detailed description of the Vicarage Fete - but sadly there is no jumble or white elephants or bric a brac mentioned. (Though they surely were there.) This is the event that raises the question of the set of – presumably innocent and accidental – double entendres of epic proportions concerning Lydia and a large farmyard bird on a merry-go-round. [OK, just one: ‘Once Lydia is on her cock nothing will get her off.’] there was some disagreement in the comments on my original post as to just how innocent these remarks were...

 Picture from the North East Museums

W. Baxter, Proprietor, Sydney | This image comes from a coll… | Flickr

I recently read and blogged on:

Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen

During a hot difficult summer a village fete is there in the background, an obsession with the children in the big house - they are all around 8 or 9:

Hermione was setting in early to be the daughter at home. She made pen-wipers, hair-tidies and lavender bags she forgot to fill. She came alive socially twice a year, at the Nursing Fete and the Church Bazaar, where she sold little wilting bouquets, helped with raffles and relieved the stallholders.

When it turns out her cousin Anna has to leave, Hermione is horrified:

‘Poor Anna won’t be here for the Nursing Fete. She had bagged the bran dip… I suppose I’ll have to look after the bran dip now. But I shall be raffling the goat and selling buttonholes… Unless I do the goat with the dip and give up the buttonholes…’

There is much more at stake here, but Hermione, as befits her age, has no idea and has her own priorities. 

Later her mother soothes her to sleep by describing features of the Nursing Fete:

‘Well there’ll be the band, And you know, they’ll be running those blue motor-buses from Market Keaton. There will be hundreds of people there, Hermione… There will be flags enough to go twice round the tea tent. You must be sure to go down with flowers that morning and help Mrs Robertson arrange the vases for the tea-tables.’

‘I hope there’ll be wind enough for the flags. I hope there’ll be Japanese flags with heaps of suns, and American flags too. I do think the Union Jack is boring, don’t you Mother. – Oh and my goat! – Oh I wish I could sleep till Friday week.’

‘it’ll soon be Friday.’

And Anna falls asleep.

Wouldn't we all be simultaneously very excited, but calmed into restfulness, by the thought...

Rounds us off nicely.

Top picture is a gorgeous poster for a 1916 bazaar.

Charity bazar (i.e., bazaar) for the widows and orphans of German, Austrian, Hungarian and their allied soldiers LCCN2002722436 - File:Charity bazar (i.e., bazaar) for the widows and orphans of German, Austrian, Hungarian and their allied soldiers LCCN2002722436.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Manikns (?) selling tickets for Allied Bazaar LCCN2005685097 - File:Manikns (?) selling tickets for Allied Bazaar LCCN2005685097.tif - Wikimedia Commons