Collin Brooks' 'Account Paid' 1930

 

Crime-Book Society paperback edition - 1936?

One of the pleasures of reading these crime books, is that I look up information about authors I have never heard of. Collin Brooks is a typical example.

Collin Brooks as a young man

Brooks (1893-1959), often known as "CB", was a broadcaster and journalist as well as a writer, with over fifty books to his name. In 1915 he joined the Army, served in the Machine Gun Corps and was awarded the Military Cross as a 2nd Lieutenant. From 1921 to 1953, he worked for many newspapers, such as The Yorkshire Post, eventually becoming editor of the Sunday Dispatch. He then moved into broadcasting and took part in Any Questions and The Brains Trust on the BBC Radio. He was a member of the Savage Club, The Carlton, the Royal Thames Yacht Club, the Reform and the Press. His detective stories - he called them his "shockers" (very Buchan-like!) - introduced readers to such memorable characters such as the eccentric amateur sleuth Lord Tweed, who plays an important role in Account Paid. He died on 6th April 1959 and his friend, T.S. Eliot, gave an address at his memorial service at St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street.

Account Paid is quite a clever novel, perhaps a little too convoluted. The last two chapters, totalling fifteen pages, are essentially a long explanation of the hows and whys of the preceding murder-detection story. A suicide, or murder?, takes place by the second page. This story begins, where so many of the best stories have begun, at an English fireside. Friends Drayton and Peter Galliard had just popped out for a brief stroll, before returning to Drayton's wife Helen. She was seemingly sound asleep in one of the two great arm-chairs in front of a coal fire.  The three had dined well at the nearby Capuchin Restaurant, returned for a chat in front of the fire and left Helen with a volume of verses to amuse her. Now she was dead, aged only twenty-three, a woman who had combined all the rare freshness of girlishness with the wise sophistication and appealing comradeship of maturity. (Sounds like my wife at that age.) Drayton goes speedily for a local doctor. He returns with Dr. Stephen Blackstone, a man somewhere in the late thirties of life...tall, and spare of frame, with an indescribable air of assurance and command in his carriage...[with] a head that seemed small and a little serpentine...an aquiline nose jutted from beneath two hard eyes of the blueness and strength of cold steel. The mouth was thin and wide, a grim line...Hmm. Needs watching, surely?

Blackstone confirms Helen's death - by poison, from a little glass phial which he had prised from her clenched hand. The doctor returns to his home and tells his nurse-attendant (whose face in repose was a little hard. Again, hmm.) to go with a Mrs. Noblet, a laying-out woman, to deal with the corpse.  The doctor also pops upstairs to see another man - whose face was impish in an empty way; the sharp-pointed nose, the prominent rabbit-teeth and the light-coloured eyes, under very fair brows and lashes, combining with the flaxen hair, scrupulously parted down the exact mathematical centre of his egg-shaped head, to give him an aspect of idiotic and supercilious vacuity. A potentially fascinating character, but I never saw the point of him throughout the story.  Did the author tire of him half-way through? Blackstone, the nurse and Mrs. Noblet arrive at Drayton's house to lay-out the body.  During a discussion, the finger is pointed at a possible murderer (Drayton is convinced his wife has been murdered), one Black Ben Weir - one of the most loathly men in the whole history of modern crime. Wow!

On to the scene comes Detective-Inspector Debenham and his high-ranking chum Hon. Arthur Arkwright, third Earl of Tweed, and the latter's factotum, Stimpson. The ensuing tale is how these three very different men - the heavy-featured, clumsy-bodied Debenham, nicknamed 'Doleful' by one and all, the parchment-faced Stimpson and the willowy graceful Tweed - track down the real villains of the piece. It's not until the end - played out in a dank, narrow underground passage linking The Three Jolly Stevedores public house with a Thames-side wharf - that the reader realises he has been pointed in the wrong direction. It's almost a Gothic ending, which is just within the bounds of the possible. Whatever. The true baddies - Ben Weir is unmasked - are not only caught but killed, buried under the debris after an explosion leads to a ramshackle building collapsing on them. Unfortunately, the two innocent men are also killed along with five of Debenham's police colleagues. The final chat between Debenham and Tweed may have unravelled the truth but they seemed very cavalier about the loss of life of seven individuals who were not scoundrels! It makes you wonder who are the 'shockers'.

Andrew Soutar's 'Kharduni' 1934

 

Crime-Book Society paperback edition - 1936?

Having bought another ten Crime-Book Society paperbacks over the last couple of months, I have decided to read some of them during January, starting with No. 19 - Andrew Soutar's Kharduni.

This is the second Soutar novel I have read, the first being Night of Horror, No. 8 in The Crime-Book Society's stories (Blog 22 July 2025). A reminder that Andrew Soutar (1879-1941) was born Edward Andrew Stagg in Swindon. He married Elspeth Soutar Swinton in 1907, adopting her second Christian name as his authorial surname.  He wrote pulp adventure stories for magazines and at least 24 of his novels were used as bases for movies - nearly all in the silent era.  His novel writing spanned from 1910 until his death in St. Austell, Cornwall in November 1941. Also a reminder that a Reviewer of his The Hanging Sword quoted Soutar as saying that he wrote mystery novels as a relaxation from the strain of writing long and serious novels. He regarded this mystery work as a tonic! 

Kharduni is certainly a 'mystery work' - very strange and highly improbable! Its very first sentence - The drama began in the lonely house of the mysterious Kharduni - is typical of thriller/mystery writers, but is but a traditional curtain call to a most unusual play. Mrs Sophia Brent, a very beautiful  brunette of about thirty-five, had been widowed two years' earlier, when her husband had been shot by - apparently - a young officer, Harold Stratford, who had been acquainted with the Brents for some considerable time. Found guilty of manslaughter, he was sentenced to fifteen years and was presently in Dartmoor. He had been defended by one of the most promising barristers of the day, Mr. Sydney Setch.  Both Sophia and Setch had been invited down to Kharduni's house on the south Devon coast. They were accompanied by two 'bodyguards',  Mellersh and Bradman.  Arriving at the house, they find sixteen other guests there.

They settle in and are summoned for the first meal. The dining room is at the end of a very long corridor: the oblong dining-room was not large, and the ceiling was rather low-pitched (take note readers)...there was only one door - that by which the guests had entered. Mellersh and Bradman are sent to the car to get a crate of drink.  On their return, they find the corridor in pitch darkness; moreover, instead of a door at the end of it there is a blank wall. Accosting the butler, the latter states that there is no-one in the dining-room, which has been closed for a fortnight and that he has never heard of or seen a Mrs. Brent of Mr. Setch. A great start to a mystery story! Mellersh and Bradman, unable to solve the mystery, return to London - to be shown into the private room of one of the most brilliant servants of the Government. 

He is Mr. Ambrose Cruxton, seemingly just a very clever, astute financier as well as being of more importance to the War Office than all the Members of Parliament put together. So, he is a top notch in the Secret Service; moreover, Mrs. Brent has worked for him as a spy for several years. He makes neither head nor tail of the two men's story but, as [improbable] luck would have it, Kharduni himself is about to pay him a visit. Kharduni was indeed a handsome man...it was easy to see that he was possessed of phenomenal physical strength...his hair was as black as the back of a crow; the complexion was that of the Italian; the large eyes held the lustre one finds in those of a Malay woman, than whom there is no more beautiful woman in the world, despite the darkness of her skin (hang on Soutar, old bean, is that a touch of racism there?) As as aside, as the story unfolded, I kept thinking there was a element of John Buchan's Dominic Medina (The Three Hostages) about him.

The two clever men spar cleverly; the upshot is that Cruxton agrees to go with Kharduni for a little ride and finds himself being driven to the South West, passing Dartmoor, to the latter's eerie home. Here he is kept almost under-house arrest. The pages fly past as the reader is drawn into an increasingly unlikely plot but with an unexpected denouement. It becomes clear that not only is Kharduni determined to get Stratford released from Dartmoor, legally or otherwise, but that he is intent on unmasking the real killer of Sophia Brent's husband. We find out the mystery of how Sophia and Setch 'disappeared', how Cruxton finds himself in their position too, and how tables are turned on the usual who is the hero and who is the villain.

Kharduni's character just strays on the side of believability; Cruxton rarely appears to justify the title of being top-notch; and the finale - at sea in the English Channel - needs to be read with a large Scotch or G & T. to hand. We have sympathy with old Cruxton when, near the end, he says to Kharduni: I shall always regard you as an amazing man... It's a wonder he didn't try to recruit him for the Secret Service.

Joseph O'Connor's 'My Father's House' 2023

 

Vintage first paperback edition - 2024

Hugh Monsignor O'Flaherty (28.2.1898-30.10.1963) may not be a well-known name, even in his native Ireland - although he was the subject of a film starring Gregory Peck called The Scarlet and the Black; a book by the same name by J.P. Gallagher (2013); and another book, The Vatican Pimpernel: The Wartime Exploits of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (2014) by Brian Fleming. He is also commemorated by a grove of Italian trees planted in Killarney National Park in 1994 and a statue there unveiled in 2013 on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. O'Flaherty was rather like an Irish Oskar Schindler, saving over 6,500 lives during the Nazi occupation of Rome in the Second World War. With a group of equally brave friends, he led an escape organisation not just for Jews but Allied PoWs and other civilians, whether they were communists, atheists or religious. Having read about Pope Pius XII's vacillations (to put it mildly) during the war, it came as a pleasing relief to read about this Roman Catholic priest's never wavering dedication.

Hugh Monsignor O'Flaherty

Nicknamed The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, O'Flaherty had toured PoW camps in Italy in the early years of the war to find out about prisoners who had been reported missing in action. If he tracked them down, he tried to reassure their families via Radio Vatican. When Mussolini was dethroned by King Victor Emmanuel in 1943, thousands of these PoWs were released or escaped, some reaching Rome. The subsequent German occupation of Italy meant their lives were again in danger. Some went to the Irish Embassy, the only English-speaking embassy to remain open during the war (I wonder why?!) Here they met Delia Murphy Kiernan (1902-1971). A well-known Irish singer, she was married to Dr. Thomas Kiernan who had been appointed Irish Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See in 1941. 

Delia Murphy

When German troops arrive, Delia smuggled ex PoWs and others out of Rome by hiding them beneath rugs in the back of the legation's car. She was one of the tightly-knit group, going by the name of The Choir, who worked with O'Flaherty. Other important members included a British Major Sam Derry and the British Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See (1936-1947) Francis D'Arcy Godolphin Osborne (1884-1964), later Duke of Leeds (1963-4). The latter's butler, John May, whom O'Flaherty described as a genius...the most magnificent scrounger, was also a major figure in the group.

                 

                                     D'Arcy Osborne                                              John May

The escapees were hidden in convents, flats and houses, farms and in the Vatican City itself. Apparently the secretly anti-Nazi German Ambassador to the Holy See, Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, illegally informed O'Flaherty that he could not be arrested inside the Vatican, so the latter began to meet his contacts outside St. Peter's Basilica. Try as they might, the Gestapo failed on numerous occasions to capture or assassinate O'Flaherty.

Joseph O'Connor melds this naturally thrilling factual story with an equally exciting tale of derring-do. In addition to O'Flaherty, whom he labels as the Conductor of 'The Choir', Delia (Soprano), D'Arcy and Derry (Tenors), and May (Bass), he brings in Marianna de Vries (Soprano), The Countess Giovanna Landini (Alto) and Enzo Angelucci (Tenor). He concentrates on the period September to Christmas Eve 1943, the latter date being the Rendimento ('Performance' - i.e. of the Choir), when there was to be three major drops of cash around Rome. The author skilfully builds up the tension and the characters of each choir member. In addition, he introduces (a fictitious?) the Nazi Paul Hauptmann, who is determined not only to 'deal with' O'Flaherty but destroy the choir's operations. The section entitled The Huntsman successfully explores Hauptmann's character. by studying his relationship with his family, his interests - night fishing was a particular pleasure...the fish would be watching through the water. Light made them scatter. You needed to learn how to listen. A fairly obvious metaphor for the Choir.

O'Connor uses a slightly strange structure for relating the events of those few months. Side by side with actual descriptions of the choir meetings and the planning and the superbly created atmosphere of the Rendimento night itself, are a series of chapters which are the transcripts of BBC research interviews between November 1962 and September 1963 for a This Is Your Life programme, hosted by Eamon Andrews (remember him?!) for Sam Derry (changed from O'Flaherty as they thought his health would not stand the shock). I haven't found out whether it is just a novelist's device or it actually happened. Anyway, The Voice of Enzo Angelucci [7th/8th November 1962]; Written Statement in Lieu of an Interview by Marianna de Vries [November 1962];  The Voice of Sir D'Arcy Osborne [14th December 1962]; The Voice of Delia Kiernan [7th January 1963]; The Voice of John May [20th September 1963]; The Voice of Sam Derry [27th September 1963]. In addition, there are sections from An unpublished, undated memoir written after the war  by The Contessa Giovanna Landini. Does this structure work? Its strength is that it allows the events to be viewed from all the participants; it also informs the reader what they thought of each other! It is a well-rounded approach. Of course, what it also does is to tell the reader they had all survived the war! So, no unfortunate deaths in the Choir! O'Connor's strength of narrative, of scene setting and character portrayal makes this a fine piece of 'faction'. Well worth reading.

I now find that O'Connor has written a second novel (part of a trilogy it seems)  - The Ghosts of Rome, which concentrates on the Contessa Giovanna Landini and carries the story on from February 1944. It was proclaimed Irish Book of the Year in 2025. I wonder whether my daughter will buy me this one as well?!

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's 'The Old School Tie' 1978

The Viking Press first edition - 1978

 It's been over a fortnight since my last Blog. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the small matter of Christmas and New Year festivities took precedence; secondly, Gathorne-Hardy's fascinating account of the 'phenomenon' of the English Public School could not be read at pace. It was so packed with information, and analysis of that information, that a slow and intermittent reading was inevitable.  

The Chapter headings set out clearly the author's approach: e.g. Early History to 1820: The Brutal and Permissive Ages; Public School Reform and the Victorian Moral Climate: The New Sexual Traditions; Games and Sex; The Progressive School Movement; and 1945-1977: The Academic Revolution and the Influence of the Public Schools Today. The latter chapter proved of great interest to me, as it was during that period that I attended what appears to be a very typical institution for its time.

But first, the pre-Victorian schools. The author highlights the fact that their major purpose was to provide recruits for the Anglican church and the main subject was Latin. (As an aside, I had great empathy with Peter Cook's regret that he could've been a judge, but I never had the Latin. I had six years studying Latin, but still made a mess of it in my interview for Oxford). Even if it was dog Latin, the language was the single avenue by which ambitious men could enter the two careers open to them - the law and the Church. Gathorne-Hardy rightly (I think) states that for the majority of boys studying Latin - grammar, parsing, construing, learning by heart was sheer drudgery. It was not made legal for grammar schools to teach other subjects until 1840! Moreover, it was a brutal age. The power of masters to beat their charges was absolute. Gill of St. Paul's (1608-35) seemed to believe in a sort of divine right of beating. Once, when a stone came through a window, he rushed in a fury out into the street, seized the nearest passer-by, a Sir John D., and beat him so severely he never dared go near the school again without an armed guard. There is a whole section on Dr. Keate, Headmaster of Eton  ((1809-1834), five-foot tall, strong as a bull, and equipped, under a high cocked hat like Napoleon, with enormous shaggy red eyebrows, great angry tufts...his temper was terrifying...quacking, foaming, snarling, he tried to thrash Eton into submission. Gathorne-Hardy points out that in a school where there is a lot of beating there is also a lot of bullying. "The bigs hit me, so I hit the smalls; that's fair." Lack of privacy, bad food and games played purely for pleasure, not to instill "virtues" like team spirit, sum up the period. Sadly, the one reference to my own school, John Wesley's Kingswood, does not come out of it well: total control, no games, getting up at 4.00 in the morning, winter and summer, living almost entirely on a diet of porridge and water gruel... - no wonder there were mass outbreaks of weeping, howling and shrieking! There were changes by my day!!

The reaction to the brutality, inefficiency, corruption and immorality was a long time coming. Thomas Arnold may not have been the great innovator of legend, but he typified the movement towards prefects, organised games and the importance of religion and 'character'. Religion and the Church would unify (and pacify against mob violence) the country. All of Arnold's successors were devout clergymen (two, Tait and Temple, became Archbishops of Canterbury). School as a place to train character - a totally new concept so far - was what came to distinguish the English public school from all other Western school systems.

This is a Blog, not a thesis, on Gathorne-Hardy's excellent book, so one must skip over the vast majority of its content. He deals with the new foundations in the mid to late 19th century - Marlborough in 1843, Lancing in 1848, Epsom in 1855 and, later, Bloxham, Denstone, for example. He focuses on the great Marlborough Rebellion of 1851, where - after 'revolutionary' committees were set up - a rocket shooting up from the central court started a week-long chaotic revolt: the college reeked of gunpowder and smoke drifted through the smashed windows and broken doors. All privileges lost in the last four years were returned to the boys and the rebellion petered out. However, it was no wonder that the headmaster, the Reverend Mr. Wilkinson, quiet, scholarly, gentle, resigned a few months later. Prefects, beatings, poor food continued but there was an increasing concentration on games. I have skimmed over two aspects of the book - the ever-present importance of class and the ever-present problem of sex, and what to do about the latter. Chapter 7 is simply headed Games and Sex. You can always purchase the book! Later chapters turn their attention to Girls' public schools and the importance of figures such as Penelope Lawrence a co-founder of Roedean; the rule of Miss Dorothea Beale (1831-1906) at Cheltenham from 1858; and Miss Buss (1827-94), who founded the North London Collegiate School for Ladies.  

Chapter 12, on The Progressive School Movement, is good at placing into context the importance of Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham and Pestalozzi writings in establishing schools such as William Gilpin's Cheam in 1752; the Hills' Hazelwood from 1819; Cecil Reddie's Abbotsholme, established in Derbyshire in 1889. The curriculum was English based, not classical, and wide - science, art, music, French, German - there were no prizes and lessons were only in the mornings. Games madness was condemned. J.H. Badley taught at Abbotsholme, but left after Reddie said he couldn't get married! In 1893 he started Bedales. A wide curriculum maybe, but cold baths were the rule, even though we had to break  the ice on the goose cans. There were runs before breakfast, the last two being swished in by a prefect with a cane. Stoicism and bullying ruled.

The 1900-1940/50 period sees boys' schools often resisting change. It is always easier and more reassuring to establish and maintain an authoritative regime than to relax it. The bravery (and deaths) shown in the Great War suggested why change when the system had produced such heroes? The OTC and ATC were strengthened, Armistice Day was religiously celebrated. The Games mystique returned to most schools. The whole edifice of privileges, colours, and hierarchies remained almost unchanged Of course, there were forces for change. At Gresham's, Rugby and Rendcomb and, particularly, at Oundle, change including a more individual approach to students, a lessening of the fixation with games. Corporal punishment was often done away with. Sanderson at Oundle (appointed in 1892) introduced engineering into the school; then agricultural chemistry, horse-shoeing, biochemistry; he built an observatory, a meteorological station, botanical gardens, metal and woodshops. The curriculum became more 'pupil-centred'. No wonder the author's chapter 15 is headed The Monolith Starts to Crumble. A.S. Neill's  Summerhill and W.B. Curry's Dartington may have been outliers, but what had been seen as 'progressive' fifty years earlier, was now increasingly embedded in the 'mainstream'. The author also studied Kurt Hahn's Gordonstoun and J.F. Roxburgh's Stowe. He rightly says that the period from around 1914 to 1940 is in some ways the most difficult so far because it is the most diverse.

Chapter 17, 1945-1977: The Academic Revolution... covers a period I am personally familiar with - well, the later part! After the immediate post-war years of gloom (the Labour Government etc.), the 50s and 60s marked the change. Gradually, an unprecedented prosperity rolled over the country, benefiting mainly the middle and upper classes, and therefore the public schools. Laboratories were built, science masters engaged, workshops and lathes and model furnaces became common. The needs of the middle classes and industry, the enthusiasm engendered by exciting curricular developments, generated an immense academic thrust. The standard of teachers rose - as did their salaries. Examination successes also rose. 

It is interesting that Gathorne-Hardy also posits a question: Will the public schools survive? Remember, he is writing in 1977, nearly 50 years' ago. But what he writes rings true in 2026. Inflation has attacked them even more viciously than it has attacked everything else...as the costs continue soaring their fees become astronomical...the policy of the present Labour Government has been to allow the public schools to wither away...a further twist will come when they are deprived of charitable status... Taking on more and more day pupils; going co-educational; have both helped, but the author talks about the public schools operating in a hostile world, keeping, as the darkness closes around them...a few glimmers of the sacred fire alight until the barbarian age has passed. That was written in 1977. Well, in 2025-6, the barbarian age has returned with a vengeance. Perhaps only the wealthiest schools will survive, as we watch more and more close down.                

Sharon Bennett Connolly's 'Women of the Anarchy' 2024

Amberley Publishing first edition - 2024

I am afraid I have the same criticism as I had with Kathryn Warner's John of Gaunt, another Amberley production (see my Blog of 18 June 2022). Whilst there is certainly evidence of considerable 'secondary' research, there is also evidence of an inability to sort out the 'wheat from the chaff' - i.e to focus on the book's specific subject matter. All too often the narrative is drenched in yet another (often irrelevant) date or off piste account of who married who, who their ancestors were and, then, their offspring. A better title for the book, perhaps, would be The Anarchy: including a look at some of the Women involved. Perhaps I am being too critical, but there really wasn't enough information (or the author hasn't found/used it)) to sustain an account of nearly 250 pages. There is too much repetition (especially in the first, 'background' chapters); one gets the feeling that the author throughout forgets what she has written in previous chapters, as the same point or fact is regurgitated, often in almost the same words. It is entirely constructed from Secondary sources, or translations of Primary sources by other Historians. A clue lies in the Notes at the end, where the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, oxforddnb.com appears to be the most favoured source.

Perhaps the most useful chapter is the Epilogue, where Connolly compares and contrasts the two most important women - the Empress Matilda and Queen Matilda, King Stephen's wife.

The disparity in the statuses of these two women is evidenced throughout the Anarchy. The empress is judged for fighting for her own inheritance, whereas the queen is praised for fighting for the inheritance of her son...on closer inspection, however, the similarities between the two women are more noticeable than their differences. Both empress and queen demonstrated a level of piety which can only have come from their family connection, namely their mutual descent from Margate of Wessex, Queen of Scots and later saint. Each Matilda was willing to do whatever it took to protect the interests of her children.

Both empress and queen were adept at negotiating to achieve their aims, demonstrating impressive diplomatic skills in the most difficult of circumstances.

What really differentiated them was the way they went about achieving their aims. The queen's deferential attitude, acting on behalf of her husband rather than in her own right, was more acceptable to the people of the time than the empress's more direct assertion of her own claim.

There were, of course, other positives to be taken from the book. Connolly rightly puts forward, and explains, the importance of other women - such as Aleliza of Louvain, Henry I's second wife; and the feisty Gundreda de Warenne, Countess of Warwick, Ada de Warenne and Matilda of Gloucester. The appraisals of King Stephen, his brother Bishop  Henry of Winchester, Empress Matilda's second husband,  Geoffrey of Anjou, and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, are all standard fare. The de Beaumont and de Warenne families are flagged up, as are Brian FitzCount, Baldwin de Redvers and Miles of Gloucester. The [in]famous Geoffrey de Mandeville makes a fleeting appearance.

I learned material I hadn't known about. 

• The Queen's Ferry crossing on the Firth of Forth, for which Margaret of Wessex (later Saint Margaret) had persuaded her husband. King Malcolm III Canmore to remit the charges for genuine pilgrims going further north to St. Andrews, was named for the queen. 
• Queen Matilda (there are too many Matildas!), Henry I's wife, commissioned William of Malmesbury to write the Gesta Regum Anglorum.
• I hadn't previously twigged that Prince Henry of Scotland had married Ada de Warenne who, at one stage, was the first lady of the Scottish court. Two of their three sons became kings of the Scots: Malcolm IV and William I.

I finished the book admiring Queen Matilda of Boulogne, Stephen's wife, even more - particularly her steadfast and successful attempt to get Stephen released from captivity after the disastrous Battle of Lincoln; and retaining my liking for her husband, in spite of the serious errors he made. I further understood how important the Empress Matilda's brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester, was to her cause and how vital Bristol was as a base for her campaigns. Context, of course, is vital for the understanding of individual, whether past or present; but the 'context' here overwhelmed the more intimate account of the two Matildas and several other relevant women during what we refer to as the Anarchy. Perhaps their stories are best suited to the shorter accounts in the much-used Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Alberto Moravia's 'Roman Tales' 1954

 

Penguin Books first edition - 1959

It's been some time since I read an Alberto Moravia novel (in the English translation, of course). I see one of my first Blogs - on 4th March 2020 - was to praise his most famous work, The Woman of Rome. I bought this well-preserved Penguin on a day trip to the lovely Leicestershire town of Market Harborough (only my second visit ever and done due to my writing Blogs on 8th June earlier this year, on the excellent two-volume History of the town), where there are two good second-hand bookshops - I bought this in the Oxfam one.

Moravia's novels and short stories are, possibly, an acquired taste (like Camus or Gide). Usually devoid of any humour (even levity?), they deal with undoubtedly realistic, but often rather grim, daily lives and characters. Social alienation figures highly, as does (non romantic) sexuality. I read somewhere that his writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie. Spot on. It comes as no surprise that he was an atheist, with little time for any 'comforts' supposedly provided by religion. Moravia was, in fact, a pseudonym; his real surname being Pincherle. Born in November 1907, to a wealthy middle-class family, he contracted tuberculosis of the bone and had to spend five years more or less bed-ridden. He used the time to read voraciously - Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Gogol, Molière and Mallarmé... Totally out of sympathy with Mussolini's Fascist rule, some of his writings were banned and not until May 1944, after the liberation of Rome, did Moravia return to the city. The 1940s to the 1960s were the years of his greatest successes, with works such as The Woman of Rome (1947), The Conformist (1951), Two Women (1957), and The Empty Canvas (1960).  Between 1984 and 1988, Moravia served in the European Parliament as a member of the Italian Communist Party. In September 1990, he was found dead in the bathroom of his Roman apartment.

There are twenty-seven stories making up Roman Tales (I Racconti Romani in their Italian original), all based in or around Rome and dealing with the lower bourgeoisie - shopkeepers, washerwomen, spivs, thieves and prostitutes. Some I enjoyed more than others and, towards the end, I began to cry out for just one beautiful  woman and genuinely honest man! The first person narrative, employed in all the stories, certainly gave the sense of immediacy and, usually, authenticity that particularly fits the genre. Of the 27 tales, I picked out half a dozen that I elevated above the others. The Lorry-Driver does have a touch of wry - even bitter - humour to it. The narrator - I am lean and nervous, with thin arms and long legs, and my belly is so flat that my trousers keep slipping down: in  fact I am exactly the opposite of what is required to make a good lorry-driver - shares the long-distance driving with Palombi, a real lout...he had the good fortune to be stupid, so that he formed one single piece with his lorry. The two make regular trips from Rome to Naples and back. At Terracina, they are asked by Italia - a provoking girl [who] had a long neck, a small brown head and two large green eyes. In contrast to her very long body, her legs were short and rather crooked, so that she gave the impression of walking with her knees bent to give her a lift. From then on, regularly once or even twice a week, Italia gets the drivers to take her from Rome to Terracina and back. This goes on for over two months. The narrator thinks he is making headway with her, even writing in white letters on the windscreen: 'Viva l'Italia' - other lorry drivers ask why has he turned so patriotic! Unknown to the narrator, Palombi has also been flirting with the girl. Both are aghast and then bitter, when they see her in an Inn at Terracina, clearly working as a waitress and linked to the hunchback owner. They had been hoodwinked into giving her free lifts all that time!

The Baby relates the story of a couple with six children - they explain to the lady from the Infant Welfare Society that 'If we could afford it, we should go to the pictures in the evening...As it is, since we haven't got the money, we go to bed, and so the children get born'. They live in a room has nothing in it but a lot of mattresses spread on the floor, and, when it rains, the water pours down on us... So, on a seventh pregnancy, they decide to leave the new baby in a church.  Several churches later, having failed to deposit the infant in any of them,  they pop it in the back seat of a car and quickly depart. However, the wife has second thoughts - there is something missing here - and they return to recover the baby. Just then, a short middle-aged man, with a look of authority about him goes to his car. The wife grabs her baby, 'You and your wife couldn't ever have a child as fine as this one...' and struts off, leaving the man standing there red in the face and open-mouthed, almost having a fit. 

The Perfect Crime is attempted by a bartender against his colleague whom he has grown to dislike intensely -  I hated his sturdy, stupid face, with its low forehead, and small eyes, its big, hooked nose, its full lips and slight moustache. Why? because this Rigamonti always lured away any girl the narrator linked up with. He plans to shoot him by a railway, just as a train goes by, thus disguising  the shot. He says a pretty girl will be waiting for him there. Rigamonti, ever eager, goes to the spot. A black figure of a woman nears. ...she frightened me. She must have been at least sixty, and she had strange mad-looking eyes painted with great black circles, a heavily powdered face and a crimson mouth... The narrator had not known it was a place to pick up prostitutes! His perfect crime had evaporated.

I liked The Girl from Ciociaria because it dealt with a Professor, an old man, with a white pointed beard and moustaches who is desperate for a maid from the narrator's native village. The story is a satisfying  one, but I was particularly drawn to the description of the Professor's home where books were piled up as in a bookshop: they began at the front door, where there were quantities of them hidden behind some green curtains, and went right through the house, in every passage and room and recess: they were everywhere except in the bathroom and the kitchen. His books were as precious to him as the smell of a rose, and woe betide anyone who touched them; and there were so many of them that it seemed impossible he could have read them all. Elysium! I am reading of a doppelgänger!

Silly Old Fool appealed to me because of its first paragraph. If you are in the habit of flirting with women, it is difficult to realize when the time for that is past and women begin to look upon you as a father or - even worse - a grandfather. It is especially difficult because every middle-aged man has, inside his head, another head: his outer head has wrinkles, grey hair, decayed teeth, lustreless eyes; his inner head, on the other hand, has remained just the same as when he was young, with thick black hair, a smooth face, white teeth, and bright eyes. It is the inner head that looks longingly at women, imagining itself to be visible to them. But of course women see the outer head, and say: 'What does he want, the old scarecrow? Can't he see he's old enough to be my grandfather?'  Mmm. Ouch! I have great empathy with the narrator, a barber of some thirty years' standing.

The final story, The Nose, has a wonderful description of the narrator's friend, Silvano, one of the most luckless creatures I knew. Adversity was written on his brow...by his nose, especially, you could see that he was doomed to bad luck - a nose like the clapper of a bell, crooked, livid, with a lump at the end surmounted by an ugly brown mole. It was a nose that made you feel depressed, even to look at it; imagine what it must have been like to wear it! And, sure enough, when the two enter a house and attempt to steal a ring off a dead man's finger, they are caught by the police. At the moment all I did was to look at Silvano and shake my head in concentrated rage. With a nose like his there was nothing to be done; the fault was entirely on my side, for not having realised that before.                                     

G.P.R. James' 'Margaret Graham. A Tale Founded on Facts' 1848

Parry and Co. first edition - 1848

This is quite an unusual novel for James. Firstly, he has eschewed his usual, expansive three-decker approach for a much shorter and tighter two volumes. Secondly, it comes across as one of his most deeply felt stories, 'modern' and quite political. In his Advertisement (or Preface/Introduction), he writes that the short tale's general construction and the details are exceedingly simple. Moreover, it can hardly be called a fiction; for though two histories have been blended into one, each is more than founded upon fact (as his sub title proclaims). The author also informs the reader that both the gentleman, Captain F, who related to me the story of my hero, and Mrs. S, to whom I am indebted for that of my heroine, are persons of undoubted veracity, and vouched for the truth of the narrative. The tale initially appeared serially in The New Monthly Magazine during 1847, and was published in book form the following year.  

After the usual authorial paeon to the splendours of nature, James finally tells the reader that the story is set in Cumberland, in a small town which I shall call Brownswick, and in a neighbouring village. The time can be pinpointed to the early 1830s, although a date is never mentioned. The whole of Volume I  is more showers than sunshine and depicts a rural society with deep divisions between the poor and the affluent (wasn't it ever thus?). James divides his account into two Parts: The Days of Prosperity and The Days of Adversity and if I had stopped reading at the end of this Volume, it would have been a very gloomy tale indeed. It is the [usual] James story of love winning out, but this time through several vicissitudes, with, additionally, a background of severe hardships for the rural labourers who form an important part of the plot.

I have looked up again my copy of Captain Swing by Eric Hobsbawn and George Rudé (1969), where they say they have tried to describe and analyse the most impressive episode in the English farm-labourer's long and doomed struggle against poverty and degradation...he became not merely a full proletarian, but an underemployed, pauperised one. His situation was such as to make some sort of rebellion inevitable. The object was not revolutionary but a desire for a return to a stable social order and improved economic means. The most incendiary (although marginal) aspect was the burning of ricks and destruction of farm machinery. This occurred all over the East and South of England in 1830 and again in 1834-5 and 1843-4. 'Captain Swing' was the fictitious name used to sign threatening letters during the riots in 1830. The New Poor Law of 1834 knocked the last nails into the coffin of the ancient belief that social inequality could be combined with a recognition of human rights. For the next two decades the farm labourer waged a silent, embittered, vengeful campaign of poaching, burning and rural terror...which erupted into epidemics of incendiarism and cattle-maiming at moments of acute distress, notably in 1843-4. Such behaviour spread north - to Cumberland, the county in which James' novel is placed.

From the outset, it is clear that the author admires the agricultural labourer. In point of plain common sense, and natural strength of intellect, they are generally very far superior to parallel classes in the manufacturing districts...their notions are sounder, firmer, more precise, as their bodies are more vigorous, healthy, and enduring. Two such stout middle-aged fellows, cousins Ben and Jacob Halliday, are homeward bound, in deep discussion about the iniquities of the New Poor Law. The gentlemen pretended, when they got up this new law, that the poor's-rates were eating up all the property of the country. That was a lie, Ben, in the first place; but even if it were true, I wonder whose fault that was if not the magistrates who suffered it? Moreover, the two complain about the cost of building new Workhouses (all the contracts went amongst themselves), while I tell you what, Ben, I have often thought that the old poor-law was a very safe thing in times of famine or want of work...now if one can get only five shillings a week...he must give up his cottage, sell his goods, put himself out of the way of all work, and go a pauper to the Union, where he is separated from his wife and children, and few and treated worse than one of the prisoners in the gaol. This goes on for several more pages - it is more of a tract than a novel at this stage. No wonder the story includes poaching and one instance of rick burning.

 Although still on the Moor, the scene shifts to two more characters - one the village idiot, an increasingly unpleasant and dangerous Tommy Hicks; the other, the book's young hero, Allan Fairfax. Both are to play major parts in the tale. The rascal misdirects the traveller into a miry part of the moor and gets whacked for his pains; then Fairfax finds shelter with Ben Halliday and soon makes friends with the labourer's little family. Fairfax is actually making his way to the local 'big house', having been invited there by its owner Mr. Graham, a wealthy man who ran the only Bank in Brownswick. Graham loved to do good to all around him, to see happy faces, and to know there were happy hearts...his principal object was to give employment to the peasantry of the district, which he does. He spends his money on building a fine house, improving the land around it and entertaining his friends. It is at one such party that Allan Fairfax now finds himself part of. And it is here that he meets Margaret Graham, the banker's daughter. He was remarkably handsome - that was the first thing apparent; he was remarkably well-dressed (he had changed!); he had all the ease, grace and self- possession, of a man of high station; she had her mother's beauty and many of the finer qualities of her father. True to form (at least, James'), they go wandering together and they fall in love. All appears bright and fair: a successful banker, a beautiful house and daughter, happy, well-paid and fed peasants and a very handsome stranger. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. No wonder Part the Second is labelled The Days of Adversity. Both Halliday families have suffered greatly from a downturn in their fortunes. Their homes are lacking in the basic amenities, their food minimal, their children emaciated. Why? Instead of the kind Mr. Graham they now have over them Farmer Stamps, a believer in the New Poor Law, denying Ben a penny of outdoor relief; as cousin Jacob says: they've given the sheep to be taken care of by the wolf... Adversity struck at the same time apoplexy struck Mr. Graham. The latter had lent a great merchant in Liverpool money for an extensive speculation, not knowing the merchant had actually been insolvent at the time. He lost £50,000 and, struck down by his stroke, he never recovered health nor wealth. Bankruptcy occurred; he lost his property and moved to a small house in Brunswick. Further misfortune followed. His dearest contemporary and friend, Doctor Kenmore, who had already loaned Graham a cottage and furniture, now suggests he marries Margaret so that her father won't feel beholden! Unlikely? Yes, but she agrees and they marry. To cap it, Fairfax returns from India, travels to Cumberland, learns of the marriage and despairs. 

The first volume ends on an even lower note. Doctor Kenmore is struck down whilst returning from a call out and is found dead on the moor. Her father, having never really recovered, also dies. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or does he? Fairfax re-establishes contact; widowed Margaret agrees to marry him and a brighter future appears possible. However, on going through his desk for some papers he had requested, she finds the very old-fashioned silver shoe-buckles Doctor Kenmore was wearing when he was killed. Had Fairfax murdered her husband to claim her? I must not give any more of the story away, safe to say the truth eventually comes out. The real murderer is caught and Fairfax purchases the old home of Margaret's father - Allerdale House. The estate is put in good order and the Hallidays' fortunes are also revived.

It is a rather unlikely tale, but it is really a vehicle for an attack on the plight of rural labourers in the first half of the 19th century and, in particular, the venom all the working class (and, it seems, James) felt for the provisions of the New Poor Law and its Workhouses. Farmer Stamps and others represent this cold new approach; Graham, Kenmore and Fairfax, the kinder, older way of treating their social and economic inferiors. Thanks to Fairfax, Ben Halliday thrives and prospers, as does his family. Jacob, of a more unsettled disposition, betook himself to the Land of Liberty and Repudiation, where he is now a wealthy and prosperous man. 

A moving story, all the better for being tautly written and much shorter than a typical James novel.