The Unlucky Family by Mrs. Henry de la Pasture (1907)

The author's earlier two children's books, right back at the beginning of her career, don't quite prepare you for this. The determinedness of the comedy and the lightness of touch are marked. It's the story of a fairly typical middle class family, the Chubbs, of late Victorian or Edwardian values, with bumbling but dear parents, a nervous aunt, and eleven children. They inherit the fortune of Mrs Chubb's barely-known cousin unexpectedly, and find themselves in a country house, Finch Hall, with all the resources they could want, and a growing list of obligations. They must entertain the local notables, they feel they ought to provide garden parties (for the well-to-do) sandwiched with fetes (for the hoi-polloi), and so on. A tutor is engaged for their eldest sons, who is revealed as a camply nervous type, who 'takes a liking' to James, one of the footmen - surely a very early outing for such almost-directness. All of these enhanced horizons seem attended with minor disasters, and in a brilliantly slapstick way quite often. People get drenched, rolled, dirtied, injured, offended; a mixup means the poor people at the fete get the teeny sandwiches intended for the nice, whilst the nice are astonished and somewhat miffed by the enormous meal of rustic fare which confronts them. The children are all named by a personality characteristic, in addition to their Christian name - Greedy George, Clumsy Caroline, Sharp Little Emily, Dreamy Dorothea, and so forth. The nature of their mishaps tends to follow these epithets, and invariably they are sent to bed for their troubles, having stolen food not meant for them, broken something priceless, answered back, or whatever. Essentially it's a delightful comedy of haplessness, where if anything can go wrong, it does. It would make a truly brilliant Christmas special for the BBC, especially as it's now out of copyright, and filming wouldn't be conspicuously expensive, I feel. The through-thread of the second half is the search for the Finch family treasure, which search intensifies in the last chapter. They don't find it, but Pasture hints in the last sentence that the search is likely to go on, in a way that suggests she had planned a sequel. Sadly it never came, in print at least. Perhaps it (or its start, or notes for it) is among her papers, but where are they?