A great advocate of the use of the comma before 'and' was the late and delightful Arthur Marshall. Here are a couple of his sentences as examples:-

'Wishful to stir memories, many of them quaint, and chancing to be passing through the district, I too paid a visit to my old prep school.'

'An air of frivolity was everywhere, and then he discovered that the school had now become a private lunatic asylum.'

(Taken from 'Life's Rich Pageant')