Some Old Books on Travelling Fairs; with an Allingham Aside

At a village hall book fair there was a table of old books leaning against each other, with a handwritten sign asking for £2 each. Even that modest sum struck me as a bit optimistic, because they were very shabby, with worn covers, the webbing showing through the spine joints, bumped corners, dog-eared pages and brittle browned paper. They also had several former library labels and rubber stamp marks, and ballpoint numbers on their spines.

But I like books with character, scarred old veterans, and was interested by three of them with a shared theme, so I rescued them. They were about English travelling fairs and had passed through various hands, which had vigorously applied their insignia. They belonged at one point to the British Fairs Society library, then to the Leeds & District Steam Traction Society (or Club) which we can tell from one of the rubber stampings must have taken over the former organisation, for it is shown as “incorporating B.F.S.”. Fairs often had steam-powered engines and attractions. 

 

One of the books, R.W. Muncey’s Old English Fairs (1936), is a factual survey covering the history and topography of the subject, drawing on original sources. These festivities, as he makes clear, were once major trading events, with their own customs and privileges, and even local laws, zealously guarded. They were a strong part of the seasonal round, and the occasion too of riot and revelry, quackery and chicanery. Some became so large and uproarious that they were a serious risk to public order and indeed public health, but attempts to suppress or control them had only indifferent success. Their decline was more due to the effect of war and economic changes. This book is mostly about fairs as events, but the others are about fairs meaning a rolling company of show-people and attractions.

Another of the trio, One Breath (1934) by Patrick Carleton, is the fictional saga of a travelling fair family, a vivid and well-realised account. Carleton was the author of a noted Jamesian ghost story, ‘Dr Horder’s Experiment’, rediscovered by Richard Dalby, and of Desirable Young Men (1932), a novel about college aesthetes which takes an unexpected dark turn involving rumours of paganism and witchcraft in the Peak District, Derbyshire. 

A yellow label of the B.F.S. gives the name of the presenter of this book to the library and the address of the Hon. Librarian, W.J. Barlow Esq., of Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire, a pleasant, quite remote town which once had a bookshop specialising in espionage and the secret service.

But the third book had an unusual extra interest. Cheapjack (1934) by Philip Allingham relates his wanderings with travelling fairs as a footloose young man. It is sub-titled Being the True History of a Young Man’s Adventures as a Fortune-Teller, Grafter, Knocker-Worker, and Mounted Pitcher on the Market-Places and Fair-Grounds of a Modern But Still Romantic England. Each of these terms of art are explained in the book, which is told with some verve, letting the reader in on some of the secrets of the fairground people, not shying away from the toughness and sometimes hand-to-mouth aspects of the life, but also celebrating its comradeship, mystique and romance.

Describing his performances in a fairground booth as a fortune-teller called Orlando, he is perfectly clear that he had no psychic skills as such but developed a plausible patter and also fancied that he became quite a shrewd judge of what people would like to hear. The craft was still technically illegal, and he was wary when two obvious policemen in plain clothes came for a consultation, in case it was a trap: in fact, they were merely whiling away the time while waiting for their wives.

Philip Allingham was the brother of the noted crime writer Margery Allingham, creator of Albert Campion, who features in some spirited adventures such as Look to the Lady (1931), Sweet Danger (1933) and The Tiger in the Smoke (1952), some of my favourite romantic thrillers. She edited and polished Cheapjack: and it seems to have been a great success. It might almost be said she was the ghost writer of it, and she counselled him against saying too much about her role. Certainly, admirers of her work will find many of her qualities in descriptive writing, imaginative flair and piquant characters. She dedicated one of her own books to him as ‘Orlando’. There has been a recent reprint of Cheapjack from the Golden Duck imprint, but I will still enjoy my own copy, a hardy, if rather world-weary, survivor.

(Mark Valentine)