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
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
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.
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_for_the_widows_and_orphans_of_German,_Austrian,_Hungarian_and_their_allied_soldiers_LCCN2002722436.jpg#/media/File:Charity_bazar_(i.e.,_bazaar)_for_the_widows_and_orphans_of_German,_Austrian,_Hungarian_and_their_allied_soldiers_LCCN2002722436.jpg){kind=link}
Are those ticket-sellers wearing masks, or is it just my eyes?
ReplyDeleteTwo of them are, part of the party atmosphere....
DeleteYou've been amazing finding all of these references and mentions of jumble sales and sales of art, Moira! I had no idea they were so much a part of literature. And there was even etiquette to go with jumble sales! I didn't know that (although it doesn't really surprise me, to be honest). And it's interesting how those double entendres would sneak their way into books...
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed finding all the references, and exploring the world of jumble sales
DeleteLydia and her cock - I’m sure Angela Thirkell knew exactly what she was doing!
ReplyDeleteGiven the amount of time Wilmet has on her hands, it’s surprising that she’s not more involved in church activities, though admittedly it’s hard to imagine her getting involved with the jumble sale or even with a more genteel Sale of Work or Christmas Bazaar. I think she does at one point have a vague idea that it might be nice to help with the church flowers some time, but there’s no indication that she does anything about it.
The nursing fête sounds like an unexpectedly big deal, with the special buses and all. It seems unlikely that hair tidies had a large sale in 1931 - was Hermione getting her ideas from pre-WW1 copies of the Girls’ Own Paper or the like?
The Provincial Lady’s son excitedly informs her that he’s won a goat in the raffle at the garden fête - “Goat has fearful local reputation, and is of immense age and savageness. Have no time to do more than say how nice this is, and he had better run and tell Daddy.” No record of Robert’s reaction …
Sovay
I think Wilmet knows exactly which church activities she likes - doesn't she want to have discussions about South Indian Christians? A calm meeting with various distinguished men - not getting on your hands and knees to scrub the floor.
DeleteI heard a lovely story of a young woman who won 'a breakfast' in a village event. She had these visions that it would be a voucher for a lovely muffins-orange-juice-and-coffee event at a nice local cafe. Instead she was sent to the butchers' shop, where they produced a giant tray of raw meat - sausages, bacon, black pudding. She was a vegetarian.
Study groups to go into the question of the Church of South India are mentioned from time to time, but Wilmet doesn’t take much interest - one suspects they’d be full of earnest bespectacled theology students, not her type at all.
DeleteWhat an disaapointment about the breakfast - there should at least have been a supplementary greengrocer’s voucher for the mushrooms and tomatoes.
Sovay
Oh I think she'd go along to the study group if they'd actually happened, and I think there'd be a range of participants.
DeleteSomehow a voucher for the makings of a vegetarian breakfast wouldn't honestly be that tempting.
I once did a MIss Marple Treats basket as a prize for a muder mystery evening - teabags, a DVD and some violet cremes. I'd be delighted to win that.
A Miss Silver basket could contain a hideous mourning brooch, some tired-looking crocheted lace, and cough sweets.
I feel there could be a post in this...
I don’t think serious study is Wilmet’s cup of tea - I doubt she’d have bothered signing up for the Portuguese lessons if she hadn’t already been interested in Piers.
DeleteThe Miss Silver basket should include three pairs of grey ribbed knee socks sized for a boy of around eight; or for a basket one would actually want to win, a cardigan in deep bright cherry red or a twin-set in deep smoky violet. I’m working on an inventory of her jewellery - I think so far the only items that would be unironically wearable now are the bar brooches that attach her watch and pince-nez.
Poirot basket: an assortment of sirops and tisanes; moustache wax; and two small angular ornaments to be disposed in strict symmetry on one’s mantelpiece.
Sovay
Yes that deep smoky violet - we'd all love that.
DeleteDalgliesh basket could include a pretentious book of poetry.
Don't forget a bog-oak brooch (or maybe the mysterious "row" of bog-oak) in Maud's basket.
DeleteI’m not sure what the difference is between a “row” and a string of beads, though did wonder whether the row might be shorter, more like a choker.
DeleteMrs Bradley’s basket could include an ill-knitted scarf in one of her characteristic colour schemes - magenta, orange and blue, or ‘natural’ with purple and puce stripes - and a copy of one of her distinguished publications, such as Psychoneurosis in the History of the Sixteenth Century.
Sovay
Where did the bog-oak row come up? I remember the beads wrapped twice round her neck, as well as the brooch with the pearl in the middle. The jewellery prospects of her basket are stunning!
DeleteI recall noticing the term but can’t remember which book it’s in - I haven’t yet reached it in my current read-through. I think Miss S may have two bog-oak brooches - the rose with the single pearl, which is her favourite, and another, set with three pearls, which has a pair of matching bracelets.
DeleteCampion basket - in Look to the Lady he lets people know he’s still around by leaving a white campion flower, so perhaps an enamel campion brooch; also a silk scarf with a very, VERY subtle woven pattern of crowns.
Sovay
Tell us when you find it.
DeleteI think Campion basket should have a little yellow button like the one that came off Linda Sutane's dress.
The row of bog oak came up in your post on Pilgrim's Rest. There was also a question about it in the comments too, somewhat like Sovay's comment above.
DeleteOh yes, I've just read those comments. And I checked again, it doesn't seem a usual phrase, but also it appears like that in various editions. Best guess - as I suggested then - is that it should say 'a row of beads'?
DeleteThe row of bog-oak in Pilgrim’s Rest is “ingeniously carved”; and inDanger Point she wears “a string of bog-oak beads ingeniously carved” which seem likely to be the same ones. If so they go twice round her neck and then fall to her waist, knocking my choker theory on the head.
DeleteSovay
Yes, I found the 'twice round her neck' reference, which seems surprising, I'd expect a restrained choker as you suggest. I think it must have been a slip no-one caught.
DeleteI did wonder about those bar-brooches you sometimes see, with a repeated element in a straight line... but she is already wearing a different brooch.
The bar brooches seem to be primarily practical – Miss Silver’s watch is evidently a fob watch, not a wristwatch, as she uses a gold bar brooch to pin it to her blouse in Danger Point, and in several of the books another bar brooch (gold set with pearls) appears, pinning her pince-nez to her dress when she’s not using it for fine print. So I think they are probably small and relatively plain, not taking away from the splendour of her more ornamental brooches.
DeleteSovay
Yes that's exactly as I imagine them....
DeleteWhat a fun post! I just found your blog. I think Joanna Trollope's The Vicar's Wife [or was it The Choir??] Mentions jumble sale.
ReplyDeleteThank you! That sounds very likely doesn't it? I must investigate...
DeleteDoesn't a fete of some kind feature in The Making of A Marchioness? The heroine is run off her feet doing almost all the work for her titled patroness, and it is then that she catches Lord Walderhurst's eye.
ReplyDeleteOh well done Shay, that is an excellent memory! Pity it didn't work for some of the Pym heroines - would have loved a scene where a titled gent wanders in to the church hall and sees the intrinsic superiority of Mildred over Allegra.
DeleteWould any man in a Pym novel recognize intrinsic worth in a woman? If so, he'd be in the minority, I think.
DeleteBut the women, including I think Pym, always lived in hope...
DeleteThere is a church bazaar in Night at the Mocking Widow by Carter Dickson. One woman does dress to be attractive, and that is very popular among the men, except possibly among the priest and visiting bishop who may find her outfit a bit daring. Merrivale also promises to liven things up by coming in costume as an American Indian.
ReplyDeleteIt is more than 10 years since I read that, and I had no memory of the bazaar. But then the Red Indian reference did ring a bell - terrible slapstick stuff? Time for a reread: you interest me strangely with the reference to the woman's clothes. I note that in my previous post on the book I featured a very respectable young lady. Also poison pen letters - that reading led me to do a whole series of posts on anonymous letters in books.
DeleteThe Red Indian mention startled me a little, it's not an approved term--maybe too much like "redskin"? A lot of people say Native American, but I like the term First Nations which I think is used in Canada.
DeleteI did not re-read the book, only glanced in it to confirm the bazaar. But yes, I fear the Indian costume gives rise to some of Carr's unfunny slapstick. On the other hand, I do think the woman named Virtue had some funny lines, and she is the one with the costume where parts of her are overflowing.
DeleteDefinitely going to have to pick this one up again. How could I have forgotten a woman named Virtue?!
Delete