Old Bestseller Review: Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk, by Eleanor Farjeon

Review: Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk, by Eleanor Farjeon

a review by Rich Horton

This is the latest in the Furrowed Middlebrow series of reprints of worthwhile books by British women authors of roughly the the first half of the 20th Century, curated by Scott Thompson (of the excellent Furrowed Middlebrow blog) and published by Dean Street Press. The series was interrupted by the unexpected death of Dean Street's publisher, Rupert Heath, in 2023; but Rupert's sister Victoria Eade has taken over, and a new Furrowed Middlebrow book has at last appeared.

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) was a very popular children's author with a career stretching from the turn of the century to about 1959, and including children's stories, biographies, poetry, at least one libretto for an opera by her composer brother Harry Farjeon, memoirs, and a few novels for adults. Scott Thompason chose for reprint the novel at hand, Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk. Though it was reasonably well-received on its release in 1940, it seemed to have been all but forgotten and had been out of print for years. (Scott suggests that her other adult novels are less successful.) Her best known children's novels seem to be a pair about a troubadour: Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1921) and Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937). She is also remembered for writing the lyrics to the hymn "Morning Has Broken", and there is a children's book award named for her. For all that, I had only a vague memory of encountering her name, and I'd never read any of her books.

This novel is curiously structured, as, essentially, a novel within a novel. Pamela Lang, the narrator of the frame, is the great-niece of Adelaide Granby, who had been a very popular writer of salacious romances over the latter half of the 19th Century. Aunt Addie, as Pamela calls her, is dying, in 1912, at the age of 79. She has written 49 novels and confesses that she wanted to write a 50th, but didn't get to finish it. Pamela is bequeathed her papers (and some money -- Miss Granby's novels have made her very wealthy and, as a spinster, she is very generous with bequests to a variety of people.) With the help of some letters and Miss Granby's diary, she learns that at the age of 16, Adelaide had fallen in love with a boy of about her age who was helping her with penmanship and her father with his book catalogue. Her father intends her to marry someone of a more appropriate class -- but Addie rebels, and continues dallying with the boy, Stanislaw, until her father catches them in flagrante delicto, as it were. Stanislaw is banished, but Addie refuses to marry anyone, and stays faithful to Stanislaw her entire life; turning her romantic energies to her novels.

Another thing found in Aunt Addie's papers is her first novel -- written when she was 16, not long after her love affair. Naturally, Pamela reads it, and this novel is reproduced in full in this book. It's the story of three beautiful daughters of a wicked great uncle, triplets, who have been raised in seclusion. At the age of 16 they notice a handsome young man riding by their great uncle's estate on a magnificent horse, and they attract his attention. As such things go, one day he falls from his horse and they must bring him in to their house and nurse him. Naturally, they all three fall in love with him, and he with each of them. But things are complicated by their dragonish governess, whose back story we learn -- a career as a courtesan to many men, beginning with the triplets' wicked great uncle. And of course their handsome visitor -- named Stanislaw -- turns out to have a mysterious past, and a beautiful sister who has herself been compromised, leaving her with a young child. And then enter the three boorish men their uncle has decided will be their husbands -- in order to get him out of debt ... 

It's rather intricately plotted, involving hints of incest, polyamory, hidden marriages, bastards, sinister servants, and more. It's also preceded by a set of definitions, revealing that the author, Adelaide Granby, didn't really know the meaning of terms like bastard and lecher, nor did she have any hint of the facts of life.

All this is funny for a while, but I confess it drags a bit over time. The novel does resolve, in an absurd but satisfying enough fashion. Pamela Lang, in 1912, decides it is too silly for publication -- Aunt Addie's desired Golden Jubilee novel will, after all, never see print. Fast forward a couple of decades -- Pamela, a young Fabian in 1912, has taken advantage of the new opportunities open to women and become a dentist. Some chance encounters remind her of Aunt Addie's past -- especially the revelation of the real identity of her lover Stanislaw, and the discovery of a lost part of her Aunt's diary. And in the end we learn just a bit more of her Aunt's romantic past, and of what really happened between her and Stanislaw. All this ties in with Pamela's life choices, and with those of some of the women she encounters -- her own maid, and a nurse (one of Addie's bequestees) who cares for Addie's old lover as he is dying -- and the story, rather movingly, becomes a sort of meditation on the changing fortunes of women over the previous several decades.

It's not a wholly successful novel, to my mind. The conceit is wonderful, and the eventual working out is effective, but the novel within a novel wears out its welcome and some of the jokes become a bit over-labored. Still, it's a fine book, and it's pleasant to see it back in print.