Leon Garfield (1921–1996)

Having only recently re-read The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (in an ancient, falling-apart paperback), I was more than delighted to discover that there was a sequel I had never heard of, and that they had been published together in this beautiful hardcover edition.

Leon Garfield is a British writer whose books were first published in the 1970s and 1980s. What makes his books unique is their well-realised historical setting. They are mostly set in England in the late 1700s and very early 1800s. It’s delightful to see them reissued in handsome new illustrated editions by the New York Review of Books.

Although all of Garfield’s stories have splendid touches of humour, in the two novels collected here his intent is specifically a humorous one. Both of these stories feature the roguish pair of schoolboy friends Bostock and Harris, who are around 12 to 13 years old. Harris is the leader of the two, unscrupulous, curious and clever; Bostock his slightly dim-witted follower and admirer.

In The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, young Harris becomes fascinated by the stories he learns in his Ancient History class about the Spartans exposing their babies on mountainsides, and the legend of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf. He decides to test this out by exposing his own baby sister Adelaide.

With Bostock’s always-eager help, they smuggle the baby out of Harris’ house and take her up to a nearby hill, where they deposit her on the grass in a declivity surrounded by bramble bushes. Then they conceal themselves to watch and await the arrival of some wild creature—a vixen, perhaps?—who will come and suckle the child.

Alas for their plans, the baby is stumbled upon instead by Tizzy Alexander, on her way to a tryst with Ralph Bunnion, the son of the school’s headmaster. Tizzy herself is the daughter of the school’s Arithmetic master. What follows is a mounting series of very funny consequences, literally a comedy of errors.

Tizzy spurns her young man and rushes back to the school with the baby in her arms. Her hot-blooded father demands to know what she was doing going to the trysting-place with Ralph. He demands a duel and to his horror is accepted. The baby Adelaide is despatched to a foundling home, and Bostock and Harris make increasingly desperate attempts to retrieve her while chaos reigns at Harris’ home once Adelaide’s disappearance is discovered. Needless to say, Harris does not confess to his part in any of these proceedings. We are introduced to the brooding, club-footed inquiry agent, Mr. Raven, who sets out to discover the truth of what has happened, an inquiry which draws in more and more of the people surrounding these events.

All of this is literally laugh-out-loud funny and hugely enjoyable.

The Night of the Comet, the sequel, has a less involved plot, but is still very amusing. Harris’ intrigues this time centre around acquiring Bostock’s father’s telescope, the better to see the upcoming passage of a comet. In return, Harris promises to secure the affections of his sister Mary, with whom Bostock has become hopelessly enamoured. Needless to say that Mary herself has not been consulted about this. Tangled into all of this is a pair of Irish roof-menders, one of whom is himself pursuing a romantic interest of his own, which appears equally hopeless. As usual, many unintended consequences ensue.

If you enjoy a light-hearted read, and if you’re not put off by the label of ‘children’s literature’, as I really don’t think you should be, I can heartily recommend this volume. And you should chase up Garfield’s other novels, all of which repay reading.… (more)