Leslie Barringer's Lost Book

A "Late Review" from Wormwood, no. 23 (Autumn 2014), newly illustrated:

The 1946 dust-wrapper

Cartmell, Esmé. Rescue in Ravensdale (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, [February 1946]). Illustrated by Drake Brookshaw.

This is a children’s book, telling of a fortnight-long family holiday in Yorkshire in August 1939, just before the start of World War II. (One suspects that the book might have been written around that time, with paper shortages delaying publication until after the war.) The plot is minimal. It centers on the Levington family, father and mother, their four daughters (the youngest are twins), and cousin Roger who joins them. The father, Brand, is an author and publisher’s reader of books for older children, and the whole family is rather bookish, making their conversation one of the more enjoyable aspects of the book. Brand brings home some manuscripts for the opinions of his children, and even their evaluative banter is amusing. When one child complains of the “very dull beginning of very dull Ivanhoe,” the father responds: “Scott wrote Ivanhoe for grown-ups . . . He had to describe everything so carefully because no one had tackled the Middle Ages like that before.” His daughter sensibly replies: “M’m. I see. But I wish he wouldn’t make his people say Hark ye, villain, I’ll give ye a bonk on thy nose, and things like that” (p. 106).

The 1955 dust-wrapper

            The family holiday includes a good amount of hiking and sight-seeing, attractively described, but a tone of seriousness comes in when they find a supposed German spy—actually a sculptor and artist who had come to England via Denmark to flee Hitler—who is hunted by a local figure the Levingtons have christened Oswald Poop. Oswald Poop ends up having a sinister agenda (assisting the Nazis), and the Levingtons are able to save the artist and thwart his adversary. 

            The book has an added interest because Esmé Cartmell was a one-time pseudonym of Leslie Barringer (1895-1968), author of Gerfalcon (1927) and its two sequels, Joris of the Rock (1928) and Shy Leopardess (1948). Besides being an author, Barringer was, like Brand Levington, a publisher’s reader of books for older children, and the father of four daughters (the two youngest being twins). One suspects that the physical description of Brand may also apply to Barringer (of whom I know of no published photographs): “He is tall, thin, mild, with bushy grey hair, grey eyes, horn-rimmed spectacles (the whitish kind), and tweed clothes” (p. 12). Rescue in Ravensdale was reprinted once, in February 1955, in the “Triumph Series” by published Thomas Nelson and Sons. 

The title and frontispiece to both editions

           

WORMWOOD 23 - Charles Williams, Dulcie Deamer, Phyllis Paul, Michael Dirda and more

Wormwood 23 is now available:

Reggie Oliver devotes his Under Review column to S.T. Joshi’s Unutterable Horror, A History of Supernatural Fiction, and considers the tale of terror as “a liberation of the mind”

John Howard discusses Charles Williams’s final two novels, Descent Into Hell and All Hallows’ Eve and his vision of “the ideal City” of the dead and the living

James Doig offers an overview of the life and writing of Dulcie Deamer, who found the ‘beauty and raw force of nature produced a spiritual awakening’

Doug Anderson reveals a possible unexpected dimension in the career of Phyllis Paul, investigates the mysterious Nineties fantasist Chas L’Epine, and looks at a previously unknown work, under a pen-name, by Leslie Barringer

Mike Barrett provides an overview of the novels and stories of Thomas Tessier, quietly producing impressive horror fiction for over thirty years

Henry Wessells shows why Pierre Benoit’s mystical adventure story of a lost world in the sands, Atlantida, should still call to us

Michael Dirda explores New York bookshops (in between such trivial activities as sleeping and eating) during what he aptly describes as a ‘bookman’s holiday’

The Lost Chronicler - Leslie Barringer

The literary idler's life has its frustrations as well as its pleasures. One of my frustrations has been the life and work of Leslie Barringer (1895-1968). He was the author of three juvenile historical novels: but also, more to the point, a fine, loosely-linked trilogy of adult historical romances, set in Neustria, an imagined medieval kingdom of Northern France. These consist of Gerfalcon (1927); Joris of the Rock (1928); and Shy Leopardess (1948). I recommend them: they are compelling reading, far removed from the "godwottery" school, often bleak as well as vivid, and with many elements of the strange and sinister. They typically tell the story of an heir's ascent through adversity to a sort of triumph, in which there is also tragedy. But they are not simplistic nor moralistic; events and characters are complex and unpredictable.

Leslie Barringer has had little attention. L. Sprague de Camp mentions him, I think; Robert Reginald wrote a fine essay on him ('Merovingian Dreams: The Neustrian Fantasies of Leslie Barringer', 1983); and there were paperback reprints of his trilogy in the USA in the Seventies.

Barringer came from near to that part of Yorkshire where I now live. He retired to, and died in, the spa town of Ilkley, with its famous moor: and when I lived in or near there, I tried to find out more about him. The library and local history society had nothing; and two appeals in local newspapers yielded only a single contact. A caller left a message to say Barringer was a distant relative; she believed there was an unpublished novel in manuscript; but she thought there was no real interest in him. No contact details were left, and I never heard anything further.

The internet, however, can sometimes spark new contacts or connexions. I hope so, for Leslie Barringer's books deserve better recognition.