1937 children's fantasy. Six stories of wonder, three of them dealing
with the modern magician Mr Leakey.
Nesbit got there earlier, but it was still unusual to posit a
magician, and indeed fantastical creatures, in the modern world rather
than in some remote fantasyland. Haldane writes like the most
interesting sort of grown-up, who always has strange and fascinating
things to tell, whether it's about the man who piloted his troopship
up the river Tigris in the War, or why you shouldn't conjure fish to
eat (you can never be sure it's fresh), or who is the patron saint of
plumbers.
Mr Leakey is a magician who lives in a first-floor flat near the
Haymarket, and inside the door is wonder: tapestries that develop the
story depicted on them while one isn't looking, light-giving plants,
and a pet dragon called Pompey who grills the turbot. Not to mention
the octopus, Oliver:
"When he was a man he had his legs cut off by a railway train. I
couldn't stick them on again because my magic doesn't work against
machinery. Poor Oliver was bleeding to death, so I thought the only
way to save his life was to turn him into some animal with no legs.
Then he wouldn't have any legs to have been cut off.
"I turned him into a snail, and took him home in my pocket. But
whenever I tried to turn him back into something more interesting,
like a dog, it had no hind legs. But an octopus has really got no
legs. Those eight tentacles grow out of its head. So when I turned
him into an octopus, he was all right.
"And he had been a waiter when he was a man, so he soon learnt his
job. I think he's much better than a maid because he can lift the
plates from above, and doesn't stand behind one and breathe down
one's neck."
It's that sort of logic which I love about this book. Jinns don't
get on with radio waves, which is why they don't come near Europe. Bad
ones can be put off by reciting the last two chapters of the Koran,
but if one doesn't know that then the names and dates of the Kings and
Queens of England will do. Christening a volcano doesn't stop it
erupting, but it does make it useless for doing magic.
The first three stories (in most editions; in the original they were
in a different order) have the narrator recounting a dinner with Mr
Leakey, a day spent with him as he fixes a variety of minor problems
and then flies round the world to see friends, and a fancy-dress party
that he throws (with a variety of guests, children and grown-ups). The
next two contain no magic: Rats tells of how the cunning and vicious
rats of the London Docks were killed with iron filings, and The Snake
with the Golden Teeth recounts the follies of a very rich man. The
book ends in most editions with My Magic Collar Stud, describing a
magical shop and the narrator's adventures with a collar-stud bought
there.
Yes, it was published in 1937, which means Mr Leakey is allowed to be
sure he's right about things rather than agonising over it all. And
it's quite short, even with the illustrations. But it is a lovely and
charming book, one of my favourites as a small child and one which I'm
glad to find I still love now.
Still, I hope you think my friend Mr. Leakey is a nice man. Because
I do.
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