Harlequin House by Margery Sharp

Harlequin House  by Margery Sharp

published 1939

 

 

The unmistakeable hand of Eric Ravilious provided this glorious and perfectly fitting cover

I’m a great admirer of Margery Sharp: so witty, so clever, so clear-sighted. This one had been out of print for 50 years, I believe, when the wonderful Dean St Press republished it. As I say on a regular basis:

And, shoutout as ever to the Dean St Press who have made it available to us and earn my gratitude every week, it seems.

-       I keep the sentence ready to insert in my posts.

Harlequin House is a joy and a comfort read, as all of them are, even if there’s something slightly strange about the structure. The opening and closing revolve round Arthur Partridge, an older chap, a widower, short and round, rather downmarket, and a touch reckless. (He’s a bit like Anthony Gilbert’s Arthur Crook, but not as clever or educated). He is living and working in a seaside town in the south of England. He meets up by chance with an aunt and niece who are staying in the smartest hotel. The niece, Lisbeth, wins the heart of every man she meets (and, surprisingly, not in an annoying way). In a complicated and wholly unconvincing set of circumstances, Lisbeth and Mr Partridge end up in London together: she is meeting up with her brother, who has just come out of prison, and the three of them end up sharing a flat in a grimy part of Paddington. Lisbeth cheers up their rooms:

Lisbeth had also laid out seven shillings on a dozen yards of checked cotton, for tablecloths, curtains and bed-covers; it was red-and-white, blue-and-white, white-and-orange, for she didn’t want, she explained, a colour-scheme, she just wanted colour. The curtains were as yet merely tacked over the windows, the covers as yet unhemmed; but it was abundantly clear that the completed effect would be very colourful indeed.

hence, Harlequin House.

[Boarding houses a very popular subject round here: this is more of a flat, but still counts😊]

You just have to let the opening few chapters go by. Lisbeth has a fiancé, an upright military man who has to go abroad. He needs to be out of the way because he strongly disapproves of the brother Ronnie and would be horrified by the setup in the flat.

The story then dives into the continuing lives of the three of them – who of course have no money. Lisbeth gets a job in an organization of the Universal Aunts style – doing random temporary jobs for the upper classes. She might be babysitting or arranging flowers or meeting a child off a train. (You could just imagine Diana Spencer doing this job before she became the Princess of Wales). The lady who runs the agency has a note on Lisbeth on her books: “Good in emergencies, no male employers.” Mr Partridge reps for a Scottish café on Oxford St, standing outside in a kilt waving a banner.

It was an anxious moment for Mr. Partridge when he first issued from the door of number 7 Marsham Street clad in his Highland regalia. The kilt (or so Lisbeth assured him) was by no means unbecoming; but it felt uncommonly draughty.

Ronnie does nothing, he seems quite irredeemable.

So there are all kinds of adventures, and meeting other people. they all make friends with the people downstairs, a young man turns up.  None of it is exactly surprising, but Sharp was well-named: she tells it very entertainingly, she makes you laugh all the time. The key questions are: What will happen when the fiancé comes home? And Can Ronnie be saved?

It makes for great reading to find out.

Lisbeth stands in as a fortune teller at a ball, wearing a pale dress and a velvet tippet. There are fairground rides in the grounds of the posh house, part of the entertainment, and she has an ecstatic ride on it (picture from the North East Museums)

It was a fantastic and an enchanting sight; for as the horses leapt by in an endless cavalcade the skirts of their lady-riders made waves of silk, of thin muslin, of shining brocade; and the riders themselves, sweeping high through the air, were translated by light and motion into the bright, inhuman creatures of a dream.

 

Not of importance to anyone else much: I have recently been noting whether or not people talk of others’ weight.

Here we have this:

He fixed Mr. Partridge with a stern eye. “Have you any idea,” he demanded fiercely, “how much she weighs?”

“Seven and a half stone,” replied Mr. Partridge.

“What’s that in pounds?”

“How should I know?” demanded Mr. Partridge, with irritation. “She’s not a salmon.”

The original questioner is, of course, American….

Other points of interest: there is a rudimentary Knock Knock joke (“Obadiah’d love to”– apparently they became popular in the 1930s.)

And when first introduced, Lisbeth is dressed for tennis in rather daring pleated shorts. I was going to ignore this, as tennis clothes covered a lot lately, but then I found this picture from a French fashion mag of the right date, with not only pleated shorts, but also a tennis coat, so had to go with it.

“Those shorts!” thought Miss Pickering. They were really quite modest, closely pleated like a fustanella, but they were—well, short.

Fustanella is the very-much-pleated kilt, worn by men in the Balkans, and Greece, so the picture doesn’t really give the full effect.

And, when several people travel up to London by car – this is around midnight, but still – there is this report:

they made good time: at twelve-fifteen they were approaching Hammersmith, a quarter of an hour later they were in Trafalgar Square; and there, for the first time, they stopped.

Hard to imagine nowadays.

And there is a whole side-hustle where all the main character work at drawing ladies’ legs in stockings, and other items of lingerie, to make money: painting them with ‘a good bold line down the calf’.

It is never less than a joy to read a Margery Sharp book.

The man in the kilt is the Scottish entertainer Harry Lauder from the Library of Congress.

The dress – from 1930s Vogue – comes from the Clover Vintage Tumblr.