review of
Leon Garfield's Black Jack
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 8, 2018

One thing leads to another & the next thing ya know I'm reading a YA novel from 1968. Many adults seem to read YA novels almost exclusively, I'm not one of them, maybe they're YA librarians. My particular trajectory was this: I was at the central public library looking thru the DVDs. I saw the movie version of Black Jack & saw that it's by Ken Loach. I'd previously witnessed his Bread and Roses (2000) about the Spanish Civil War, wch I remembered liking very much. What I didn't remember is that I'd also witnessed his Riff Raff (1991) about exploited construction workers, wch I also liked very much. Unfortunately, I got drunk while I was watching that one & was so riled up afterwards that I almost started a fight w/ an innocent guy out on the street b/c he was 'rich' enuf to have a car, a shitty car. Not one of my finer moments. Thank goodness he didn't get out of his car, maybe he was on parole or probation or something. Maybe the woman he was w/ kept him calm. The woman I was w/ didn't keep me calm but no doubt we went back to her place for a rigorous fuck.

ANYWAY, I checked out the movie & loved it. The (non?)actors spoke w/ accents I cdn't always understand but that added to the authenticity. I'd never heard og Garfield before but I was so convinced by its mid-18th-century setting that I thought he was probably a mid-19th-century writer instead of the mid-20th-century writer he turned out to be. I just had to read the bk, donchaknow?! The language is wonderful:

"There are many queer ways of earning a living; but none so quaint as Mrs. Gorgandy's. She's a Tyburn widow. Early and black on a Monday morning, she was up at the Tree, all in a tragic flutter, waiting to be bereaved." - p 3

"In 1571, the Tyburn Tree was erected at the junction of today's Edgware Road, Bayswater Road and Oxford Street, near where Marble Arch is currently situated. The "Tree" or "Triple Tree" was a novel form of gallows, consisting of a horizontal wooden triangle supported by three legs (an arrangement known as a "three-legged mare" or "three-legged stool"). Several felons could thus be hanged at once, and so the gallows were used for mass executions, such as on 23 June 1649 when 24 prisoners—23 men and one woman—were hanged simultaneously, having been conveyed there in eight carts.

"The Tree stood in the middle of the roadway, providing a major landmark in west London and presenting a very obvious symbol of the law to travellers. After executions, the bodies would be buried nearby or in later times removed for dissection by anatomists. The crowd would sometimes fight over a body with surgeons, by fear that dismemberment could prevent the resurrection of the body on Judgement Day (see Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin or William Spiggot).

"The first victim of the "Tyburn Tree" was John Story, a Roman Catholic who was convicted and tried for treason. A plaque to the Catholic martyrs executed at Tyburn in the period 1535–1681 is located at 8 Hyde Park Place, the site of Tyburn convent. Among the more notable individuals suspended from the "Tree" in the following centuries were John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Oliver Cromwell, who were already dead but were disinterred and hanged at Tyburn in January 1661 on the orders of the Cavalier Parliament in an act of posthumous revenge for their part in the beheading of King Charles I.

"The gallows seem to have been replaced several times, probably because of wear, but in general the entire structure stood all the time in Tyburn. After some acts of vandalism, in October 1759 it was decided to replace the permanent structure with new moving gallows until the last execution in Tyburn, probably carried out in November 1783.

"The executions were public spectacles and proved extremely popular, attracting crowds of thousands. The enterprising villagers of Tyburn erected large spectator stands so that as many as possible could see the hangings (for a fee). On one occasion, the stands collapsed, reportedly killing and injuring hundreds of people. This did not prove a deterrent, however, and the executions continued to be treated as public holidays, with London apprentices being given the day off for them. One such event was depicted by William Hogarth in his satirical print, The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn (1747).

"Tyburn was commonly invoked in euphemisms for capital punishment—for instance, to "take a ride to Tyburn" (or simply "go west") was to go to one's hanging, "Lord of the Manor of Tyburn" was the public hangman, "dancing the Tyburn jig" was the act of being hanged, and so on. Convicts would be transported to the site in an open ox-cart from Newgate Prison. They were expected to put on a good show, wearing their finest clothes and going to their deaths with insouciance. The crowd would cheer a "good dying", but would jeer any displays of weakness on the part of the condemned."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn

Hence, a "Tyburn widow" was a woman widowed by the execution of her husband. In this case, however, Mrs. Gorgandy was a woman who only pretended to be the widow so that she cd claim the body & then sell it to anatomists. One might say an opportunist of a particularly nasty sort who sets the mood of this bk very well. This is a bk for Young Adults?! Ok, there's no sex in it, only murder & exploitation so it's 'ok'. Sheesh. But, HEY!, the writing's great:

"He went to the fireplace, in which there was a pile of ashes—as if a large family had burned their secrets there before going upstairs to hang themselves in a group. He looked up, and discovered the chimney partially blocked by a fall of bricks, two of which so resembled the soles of boots that Dorking wondered if some previous apprentice had tried to escape that way and failed."

[..]

"Not that a dead man frightened him much. He came from Shoreham and drowned men washed up on the beach with the sea's general air of "Is this yours? I don't want it," had made him familiar enough with corpses of all sizes and conditions." - p 9

"Anxious, inquisitive faces . . . There was Mrs. Arbuthnot, neatly shawled, never took by surprise—to the aggravation of other ladies whose hair was in as many twisted papers as a lawyer's account." - p 114

"Already the sun was deep and bloody and had a deathbed droop. All the glasses and tankards and walls in the Angel's parlor were touched with its scarlet, and the shadows seemed as deep as gaping rents in the ground." - p 166

Perhaps the detail that's stuck in my memory the most is that of a bent spoon in the throat as protection against suffocation from hanging. Ya never know when such a thing might come in handy someday:

"With infinite caution—and dreading that, if he made an ill-judged move the ruffian would snap his hand off at the wrist—he drew out a bent silver tube some half an inch wide and four inches long.

"This tube had been the cause of Black Jack's outliving Mr. Ketch's rope. He'd wedged it in his throat as a preventative against strangulation." - p 14

Note that I wrote "spoon" but that the story has it as "tube". I reckon it was a spoon in the movie—at least that's the way I remember it. Maybe Loach was being more historically accurate. A tube seems like it wd work better but a spoon might've been more available. Wd a prisoner have metal cutlery for their last meal these days? Or wd it be plastic? Woe be it unto the world when plastic was invented.

When I think of the name "Black Jack" I think of a song performed by The Incredible String Band named "Black Jack Davy" about a hedonistic free outlaw. Then, of course, there's the card game. This Black Jack is one nasty tough character. I don't recall that being stressed much in the movie.

"Black Jack's health and strength seemed to have but a single aim: robbery and murder whenever a living soul crossed his shaking path.

""You're milk, Tolly—skimmed milk!" he sneered at the boy's pleading for the life of a farmer who rode, unsuspecting by." - p 31

Perhaps an aspect of this being a YA novel is that the youth, virtually defenseless against Black Jack's strength & ferocity, successfully acts as an ameliorating factor.

B/c of the authenticity of the accents in the movie, I cdn't understand much of what was sd — esp when it was fast. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to read the bk — so that I cd understand passages like this:

""D'you see it?" she whispered.

""What—where?"

""A tall black tower with a golden top—higher than the sky. There are white angels flying with white wings. And all the world's singing a lullaby—for the sun's gone to bed in a blanket. D'you see it now?"" - p 45

W/o catching all the words in the movie, I understood the gist of it. It was sad to see the girl written off as crazy when she was speaking fancifully & w/ imagination. Some of the detail of the bk was 'inevitably' missing from the movie — yet another reason for reading:

""Polly put the kettle on!" said Mrs. Mitchell. Whereupon the wretched creature nodded, crawled to her feet and hobbled to the black grate, carefully holding a kettle none but she could see." - p 84

"["]Oh, now you spilled it! And on poor Polly!"

"At once, Polly let out a great howl of distress and clutched her leg." - p 85

""And the shawl, sir," said Htach respectfully. "She sets great store by it, y'know. I only fetched it to show me Bony-Fridays, after all!"" - p 107

Now it was obvious to me that "Bony-Fridays" was either rhyming slang for or a mispronunciation of bona fides: in this case proof of knowledge of the missing girl's whereabouts. However, looking for "Bony Fridays" on the great oracle produced nothing of the kind — nor is it in either of my 2 rhyming slang dictionaries — nor was it found in an online Cockney Rhyming Slang dictionary ( http://aldertons.com/home/slang/ ). From wch I conclude that mispronunciation is what's hinted at but it's possible that Garfield had better knowledge of rhyming slang.

The story has a happy ending, despite being generally morbid. The hero prevails & vows to watch over his health out of love for another:

"Or worse still; what would become of her if he should die first? He shivered and determined to keep in health, avoid all quarrels and never approach a horse from behind." - p 143

I probably wd've loved this as a kid — even tho the last thing I needed was more food for melancholy. Instead I got to love it as an adult — including its highly impractical romanticism, easily recogniziable as akin to my own. ( )

Plutôt irréaliste ce livre, où il est question d’un méchant qui échappe à la pendaison et d’une fillette qui n’est finalement pas aussi folle qu’on le croit. Tant pis, la plume de Léon Garfield reste agréable à lire, même si j’avais préféré son livre plus connu, Smith. Les gentils gagnent toujours, et ils trouvent même l’amour. C’est important quand on est un jeune lecteur, et cela met du baume au cœur quand on n’est plus tout à fait jeune !

Bartholomew “Tolly” Dorking falls in love with Belle, a mad girl on her way to the madhouse, after helping Black Jack, a giant criminal, save himself from hanging. A good choice for historical fiction, set in England in the mid-1700s. Garfield has a rich style of writing:
“Not that a dead man frightened him much. He came from Shoreham and drowned men washed up on the beach with the sea’s general air of, “Is this yours? I don’t want it,” had made him familiar enough with corpses of all sizes and conditions.” (p.9)