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The Pleasure Garden
Eastward in Clerkenwell lies the Mulberry Pleasure six acres of leafy walks, colonnades and pavillions. In this bosky setting parade a variety of characters of awesome granduer, innocence and evil - and all are subject to a ring of blackmail terror.
208 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1976
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264 people want to read
About the author
Leon Garfield
120 books49 followersLeon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 11, 2019
Who is Leon Garfield? A brilliant mid-century writer, whose pen spins the most silken sentences, who writes the most enchanting stories. Describing a London guttersnipe:"Martin gazed on the distillation of evil in the shape of a child and saw that he was plainly searching for some hole in the ground into which he might conveniently make a retreat. Briskitt's horns were a threadbare cap of dirty hair, pulled out in tufts; Briskitt's tail was a bedraggled garment that hung in a long tatter behind him; and Briskitt's smell was not of sulphur but of loneliness, bewilderment and fear." Sigh.
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March 18, 2019I heard about this book in Philip Pullman's book of essays, Daemon Voices. Very unusual, engaging, odd.
June 7, 2025
I found this book online at http://archive.org, as an ebook with an audio component.
I was also able to borrow from the library the silent film, Hitchcock"s first work based on the book. I enjoyed both.
I was also able to borrow from the library the silent film, Hitchcock"s first work based on the book. I enjoyed both.
December 22, 2017
I actually liked this book a lot and would have rated it a lot higher. But I don't think it's a YA book. It's quite adult, despite the children who are important characters in the book. (Showing my age here - because I suspect in the educational system of our modern age, the themes might not just have descended to YA but to children.)
The Mulberry Garden opens its arbours of a Friday night to an assortment of humanity with all the foibles and frailties that come with that. There's a retired major from India, a widower, who is really a shopkeeper with a wife and daughters - but he's won the pity of Leila Robinson who extends her favours to him. There's Sir David Brown, wealthy as can be, who pretends to be an impoverished decrepit old man to excite the pity of Fanny Bush. And there's Martin Young, reverend and magistrate, who has a healing gift and is rumoured to be little short of an angel.
The regular visitors to the garden are being blackmailed by the devilish Dr Dormann who serves Mrs Bray, the proprietress. Above each arbour, nestled in the trees, are spying children who are recruited from the nearby prison where their parents are incarcerated.
A murder occurs - Isaac Fisk, a staymaker's apprentice, dances through the garden and falls dead with a knife in him.
And Martin Young, pitying the murderess - who he thinks is Fanny Bush - conceals a crucial piece of evidence. A fragment of muslin.
And Dr Dormann knows he's done it. As for the murderer, the child Briskitt is the one who observed that. And he sees a way to get what he most wants in life: money to buy himself a mother.
Warmth. That's all that matters in the end. So Sir David Brown tells Martin Young. It comes back and back as a recurring theme.
The Mulberry Garden opens its arbours of a Friday night to an assortment of humanity with all the foibles and frailties that come with that. There's a retired major from India, a widower, who is really a shopkeeper with a wife and daughters - but he's won the pity of Leila Robinson who extends her favours to him. There's Sir David Brown, wealthy as can be, who pretends to be an impoverished decrepit old man to excite the pity of Fanny Bush. And there's Martin Young, reverend and magistrate, who has a healing gift and is rumoured to be little short of an angel.
The regular visitors to the garden are being blackmailed by the devilish Dr Dormann who serves Mrs Bray, the proprietress. Above each arbour, nestled in the trees, are spying children who are recruited from the nearby prison where their parents are incarcerated.
A murder occurs - Isaac Fisk, a staymaker's apprentice, dances through the garden and falls dead with a knife in him.
And Martin Young, pitying the murderess - who he thinks is Fanny Bush - conceals a crucial piece of evidence. A fragment of muslin.
And Dr Dormann knows he's done it. As for the murderer, the child Briskitt is the one who observed that. And he sees a way to get what he most wants in life: money to buy himself a mother.
Warmth. That's all that matters in the end. So Sir David Brown tells Martin Young. It comes back and back as a recurring theme.
October 23, 2020
Though intended for an older audience than his usual work, those familiar with Garfield's work will notice similar themes and motifs in this novel: grubby pickpockets, prisons, insanity, loss, ambiguous morals. Though no dates are given, it appears to be set in a Dickensian London, in which Martin Young, an angelic vicar, witnesses the aftermath of a murder. Young believes the perpetrator of the crime to be one Fanny Bush (a name even more unfortunate than Mansfield Park's Fanny Price), a kind-hearted seamstress he wishes to protect. Young is one of many visitors to the beautiful pleasure garden in which the murder occurs: here men meet their mistresses, Welsh tenors sing, and cake and alcohol are abundant. Meanwhile, young pickpockets spy on the visitors, and learn all their secrets, including the motives for murder.
In the past, I've found Garfield's novels very diverting, and full of vivid action, but The Pleasure Garden, perhaps because it's intended for an older audience, doesn't hold together. The underdeveloped characters and Garfield's lack of emotional insight stand out more clearly in a work that intends to be psychologically convincing to an adult audience, and the moments of high melodrama are less fun, becoming simply overwrought. There's a lot of potential in this book, but it doesn't come together.
In the past, I've found Garfield's novels very diverting, and full of vivid action, but The Pleasure Garden, perhaps because it's intended for an older audience, doesn't hold together. The underdeveloped characters and Garfield's lack of emotional insight stand out more clearly in a work that intends to be psychologically convincing to an adult audience, and the moments of high melodrama are less fun, becoming simply overwrought. There's a lot of potential in this book, but it doesn't come together.
March 3, 2016
Leon Garfield was always an adult novelist who was sidelined into writing for children. This book, though marketed as one of his children’s books, this is one of the most adult he has ever written.
Garfield makes a number of unusual moves. The hero is Rev Martin, he is said to be possessed by an angel. He buts horns with Dr D, a man possessed by a devil. When someone is killed in the Mulberry pleasure gardens, this all comes to the fore.
Again, Garfield writes beautifully, he so often makes me laugh and can often find ways to describe things in startling detail.
Essentially this book is about loneliness. The garden is the spot where lonely people go to meet or to forget their loneliness. Dr D is the spirit of loneliness, sneaking up on people and offering them the pewter medallion of Mulberry gardens - a ticket out of loneliness. Rev Martin is the spirit of generosity and warmth, of course he triumphs.
One of his best.
Garfield makes a number of unusual moves. The hero is Rev Martin, he is said to be possessed by an angel. He buts horns with Dr D, a man possessed by a devil. When someone is killed in the Mulberry pleasure gardens, this all comes to the fore.
Again, Garfield writes beautifully, he so often makes me laugh and can often find ways to describe things in startling detail.
Essentially this book is about loneliness. The garden is the spot where lonely people go to meet or to forget their loneliness. Dr D is the spirit of loneliness, sneaking up on people and offering them the pewter medallion of Mulberry gardens - a ticket out of loneliness. Rev Martin is the spirit of generosity and warmth, of course he triumphs.
One of his best.
October 22, 2019
I read this in the middle of Philip Pullman's Daemon Voices which mentioned it...
Some quick thoughts... I am reminded of Rushdie's Satanic Verses and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I can't explain more than that since both are books I read twenty years ago. Nonetheless, in my mind all these years later, Rushdie and Bulgakov came to mind.
I read this quickly, and I don't think that I savored Garfield's writing to the extent that it deserved to be read and enjoyed. Take this example:
"Although a widow for seven years, she still wore black, which lent her bulk a certain mystery; sometimes it was hard to see where she ended and the night began. Dr. Dormann, standing beside her, looker thinner than ever; really no more than a mere slice of a man who might have come off Mrs Bray in a carelessly slammed door."
Some quick thoughts... I am reminded of Rushdie's Satanic Verses and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I can't explain more than that since both are books I read twenty years ago. Nonetheless, in my mind all these years later, Rushdie and Bulgakov came to mind.
I read this quickly, and I don't think that I savored Garfield's writing to the extent that it deserved to be read and enjoyed. Take this example:
"Although a widow for seven years, she still wore black, which lent her bulk a certain mystery; sometimes it was hard to see where she ended and the night began. Dr. Dormann, standing beside her, looker thinner than ever; really no more than a mere slice of a man who might have come off Mrs Bray in a carelessly slammed door."
January 14, 2024
I'm a big Garfield fan, but this is one to avoid, unless you're a completist. He himself in later years described it as 'a very odd book'. Frankly, it's a mess. The set-up is wonderful - a Fagin-like gang running a blackmail racket in a London pleasure garden (so we're in Garfield's usual 18C). Then there's a murder. Unfortunately, the murder is only indirectly connected to the garden, and from then on, one character, one thread after another is started and dropped and the pleasure garden fades into the background. At the very end Garfield tries and fails to draw us back to the garden, but fails. Such a pity. The writing become increasingly overwrought as if Garfield knew it was going wrong, but had to keep going. Two stars rather than one, because of the outstanding opening, and because, throughout, there are patches of writing that remind you just who you are reading.
December 7, 2017
Elegant yet simple storytelling – if storytelling is ever simple! – in an unusual omniscient voice. There are characters to love and some to dislike; just enough to tell what needs to be told.
I've not read anything quite like it. It didn't knock my socks off; but I'm glad to have read it.
I've not read anything quite like it. It didn't knock my socks off; but I'm glad to have read it.
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January 2, 2024Philip Pullman rec
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews