The Pleasure Garden

by Marguerite Florence Laura Jarvis

Eastward in Clerkenwell lies the Mulberry Pleasure Garden: 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.

Genres: Fiction, Childrens, Fantasy, Classics

284 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1976

About the author

aka: Marguerite Florence Jervis Barclay Evans

Marguerite Florence Laura Jarvis also known under the pseudonym of Oliver Sandys (7 October 1886 – 10 March 1964) was a British writer, screenwriter, and actress. She used several other names and aliases, such as Countess Barcynska, Hélène Barcynska, Marguerite Florence Barclay, Mrs. Armiger Barczinsky, Caradoc Evans Marguerite, Marguerite Evans, Armiger Barclay, and Marguerite Barclay.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Gretchen Rubin]

I heard about this book in Philip Pullman's book of essays, Daemon Voices. Very unusual, engaging, odd.

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Anne Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Andrew Winkel · Rating 3 out of 5]

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."

[Mark Steinhardt · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Marc Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Natalie]

Philip Pullman rec