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The Confidence Man
The Confidence Man follows 14-year-old Hans Ruppert and a band of Protestants as they leave their home town and seek peace and freedom from Persecution in the New World. They are led by a mysterious hussar, who has offered to lead then to safety. To Hans he is a fascinating figure, but to the others he is a swindler, likely to abandon them at any moment.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
412 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 1979
About the author
Leon Garfield
122 books50 followersLeon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 11, 2020
This is a good one. It announces this quality from the first paragraph when the book introduces us to a grimy part of town where the sun doesn’t shine and “the air seemed tired of being breathed in, and loafed about, thinking of cabbages and pickled herrings”. Leon Garfield can always spin a decent tale and pull off a striking and interesting description in even his most rote work, but there was a real feeling of investment in this book that permeated it throughout.
This book is set in the eighteenth century and the main character is a young man making his way in the world. As well as that, there’s a mentor figure of dubious morals and even the new Garfield-usual I’ve picked up on - the pseudo-ghost. Despite the presence of these usual Garfield tropes, they are dealt with an a fresh and re-energised way. For a start, the book starts off in Germany and our young man is a protestant in a Catholic town, where he and his family are persecuted. Following an accident with a soldier, a storm and a missing head, the family and their whole community decide to go to America. They get this idea from Von Strumpfel, a hussar and the confidence man of the title.
He is the morally dubious mentor figure for the while, but his moral dubiousness it fairly dubious. Indeed, what sort of confidence man he actually is, whether he is trying to con people, whether he gives others confidence, whether his only con is his self confidence, are all interesting facets of this character as we travel with the outcasts.
Garfield has great fun with this exodus, exploring how the uprooting of people from their street and setting them on the march both changes and doesn’t change them. For most of the journey they camp down in the exact order they left, meaning that wherever they go, they recreate the street they left. However, the relationships and expectations have changed as well. The previous hierarchy of the street is questioned, as they are all levelled as poor as each other, it’s character that shows more than wealth. By the time the refugees reach their final settlement, they create a new town reflective of where they are from but also of the things that have changed along the way.
There’s also a spirituality about the book. The group are protestants fleeing Catholic persecution, though they have a detour to England where it is assumed they are Catholic and allowed to starve in a wasteland. Hans, the main character starts of as an atheist, pretends to be religious to impress Von Strumpfel, grows some faith, loses whatever faith he had and then regains it for a reason he realises is pretty arbitrary. It’s interesting to track this element as the book progresses.
It’s also a book where a man is decapitated by flying debris, lightning strikes a gibbet cage, a thief uses a hand of glory and various people see ghosts. It declares that a puppy has become a man now when it cocks it’s leg, includes people who play their hats as musical instruments and asks the big question about a nice walk, “Why is there so much more hill than dale?”
Even as far as Leon Garfield goes, The Confidence Man is not a particularly well remembered book but it’s one of his best.
This book is set in the eighteenth century and the main character is a young man making his way in the world. As well as that, there’s a mentor figure of dubious morals and even the new Garfield-usual I’ve picked up on - the pseudo-ghost. Despite the presence of these usual Garfield tropes, they are dealt with an a fresh and re-energised way. For a start, the book starts off in Germany and our young man is a protestant in a Catholic town, where he and his family are persecuted. Following an accident with a soldier, a storm and a missing head, the family and their whole community decide to go to America. They get this idea from Von Strumpfel, a hussar and the confidence man of the title.
He is the morally dubious mentor figure for the while, but his moral dubiousness it fairly dubious. Indeed, what sort of confidence man he actually is, whether he is trying to con people, whether he gives others confidence, whether his only con is his self confidence, are all interesting facets of this character as we travel with the outcasts.
Garfield has great fun with this exodus, exploring how the uprooting of people from their street and setting them on the march both changes and doesn’t change them. For most of the journey they camp down in the exact order they left, meaning that wherever they go, they recreate the street they left. However, the relationships and expectations have changed as well. The previous hierarchy of the street is questioned, as they are all levelled as poor as each other, it’s character that shows more than wealth. By the time the refugees reach their final settlement, they create a new town reflective of where they are from but also of the things that have changed along the way.
There’s also a spirituality about the book. The group are protestants fleeing Catholic persecution, though they have a detour to England where it is assumed they are Catholic and allowed to starve in a wasteland. Hans, the main character starts of as an atheist, pretends to be religious to impress Von Strumpfel, grows some faith, loses whatever faith he had and then regains it for a reason he realises is pretty arbitrary. It’s interesting to track this element as the book progresses.
It’s also a book where a man is decapitated by flying debris, lightning strikes a gibbet cage, a thief uses a hand of glory and various people see ghosts. It declares that a puppy has become a man now when it cocks it’s leg, includes people who play their hats as musical instruments and asks the big question about a nice walk, “Why is there so much more hill than dale?”
Even as far as Leon Garfield goes, The Confidence Man is not a particularly well remembered book but it’s one of his best.
Displaying 1 of 1 review