Catherine Sinclair's 'Modern Flirtations; or a Month at Harrowgate ' 1841

 

William Whyte first edition - [1841]

This is my first three-decker since 5th July and my first 19th century Scottish three-decker since 1st May. It took a little while to get back into the much slower  pace of the narrative after so many 250+ page detective paperbacks. Catherine Sinclair (1800-1864) is the last in the list of my Some Scottish Novels 1808-1850; it originally only went as far as 1836, but I purchased two of her novels back in the Spring of 2024. Her Lord and Lady Harcourt (1850), still awaits me. Once I have done that (over this Winter), I only have three Allan Cunningham novels and Hannah Mariah Jones' The Scottish Chieftains (1831) to read, and I will have completed the eighty-two novels in my list, all in first editions (bar three) and mostly in three volumes. A herculean but immensely satisfying, marathon.

Catherine Sinclair, born at 9, Charlotte Square in Edinburgh, was her father's secretary from the age of 14 until his death in 1835. She then began writing children's books, the most notable example being Holiday House: A Book for the Young (1839). She was also well-known in Edinburgh for her charitable works, such as securing seats for crowded streets, instituting drinking fountains and maintaining a mission station at the Water of Leith. She is also credited with being the discoverer of Sir Walter Scott's authorship of the Waverley novels. There is a monument to her, in the style of an Eleanor cross, just north of Charlotte Square.

What of this novel? I must admit that, within reading the first few chapters, I did something I rarely do - typed out a dramatis personae of the characters in the story. There were so many, quite major, figures who were important to a rather convoluted tale, most related to each other. It meant I still had to check back to confirm who the author was writing about. A good example is Caroline Smythe, who I didn't at first twig was Lady Caroline Howard Smythson and, on another occasion, Lady Caroline Howard. No matter, it meant I had to concentrate throughout. There is a twelve page Preface, where the author tells the reader what ought, and what ought not, to be the characteristics of a novel of modern life and society; she then spends nine hundred pages doing precisely what she denounces! In writing a story of domestic life, it is singular to reflect how commonly men are remembered by their eccentricities, and loved for their very faults, while the most difficult task in fiction is, to describe amiable persons so as to render them at all interesting and not utterly insipid...were authors obliged hereafter, to live with the characters they create, how few would desire to share with them in such a world!...the only peculiarity to which she makes any pretension is, that avoiding all caricature, all improbability, and all personality, she has introduced a few individuals acting and thinking in the ordinary routine of every-day life. Sinclair ends this paragraph stating that her highest ambition is to represent in natural colours, the conduct and feelings of men elevated and ennobled by the influence of Christianity.

Here we encounter the problem for any early 21st century reader - Sinclair sits firmly in the same genre as Susan Ferrier; both write well, with lovely touches of humour, but as one critic wrote of Ferrier's Destiny (1831), her spontaneity and satiric humour were smothered by her growing seriousness and piety. Sinclair may not have the pounding didacticism of, say, Elizabeth Hamilton in her The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), but as this tale winds on, particularly as regards two of her heroes - Rev. Richard Granville and Marion Dunbar - their pietistic moralising can grate on modern ears/eyes. Chapter III in Volume II is a particular example of this moralising.  Modern Flirtations has its full cast of villains, ranging from the aged roué the Marquis of Doncaster, through the arrogant, self-centred and braggadacious Captain Louis de Crespigny (who hides a damning secret), and his best mate, Sir Patrick Dunbar, who at least finally appears semi-reformed from his egocentric philandering, but his regular flippancy too often degenerates into mocking cruelty..

The rather meandering story includes perhaps the one truly decent, but worldly, figure Sir Arthur Dunbar, G.C.B. (regularly referred to as the Admiral) who, from his retirement cottage, keeps an avuncular eye on his two nieces, Marion (the goody two-shoes, but with some spark about her - she does save her uncle from a burning building in Harrowgate) and the older Agnes, who is uniformly selfish and disparaging of nearly everyone else. He also looks after the mysterious Henry de Lancey; mysterious because of his origins (again, a favourite ploy with these 19th century Scottish authors, e.g Scott in Guy Mannering). He tries, usually unsuccessfully, to dampen down the misbehaviour of Sir Patrick and Captain Louis. There are also the brother and sister, Ernest and Mary Anstruther, once residing with Lord Doncaster but, seemingly ordered from his mansion and never seen again. Aha! Who are Mr. Howard, secretary to Sir Arthur, and a disturbing old crone Dixon, who keeps reappearing throughout the three volumes. We see a tall figure of a woman enveloped in dark draperies...with a countenance so white and rigid, so soul-stricken in sorrow, so utterly without life or motion, that it seemed as if nothing on earth could have looked so supernaturally wretched. I guessed who the two were very early on. We also have a scheming Abbé Mordaunt, whose niece Laura has also disappeared. Has she been murdered? If so, by whom? Did she have any offspring? If so, where is the child? We also have Rev. Richard Granville's so delicate sister, Clara Granville, too sweet for this world; and so it proves. When one adds Kilmarnock Abbey, the Gothic abode of the Marquis - well described by the author - to the piety, the scheming, the disputed inheritance, the deep-felt anti Roman Catholicism (they are not a greater distortion from the truth of nature, than the Popish superstitions which they illustrate are from the truth of revelation...a solemn pantomime. Attracted by rosaries, crucifixes, tinkling bells, and empty symbols...), two murders, then one has to accept the author may not have recalled what she wrote in her Preface. So what - I enjoyed the tale. I append below some extracts which give the flavour of the novel.

Richard Granville:  seldom, indeed, has there been known, in one so young, a character of as much intensity, or which displayed a combination so singular, of superb talents, rare judgement, sound principle, deep piety, and energetic feeling... 

Abbé Mordaunt: he neither preached nor practised the virtues of his vocation, but paraded a whole troop of vices openly in the public eye; and far from seeking to reform mankind, he never attempted even to reform himself.

De Crespigny: considered his own brilliant prospects and personal fascinations to be fair, marketable produce, which there could be no objection that he should use to the utmost advantage, for bringing in the largest possible return of pleasure, profit, and amusement.

Sir Arthur Dunbar: a sturdy, resolute, old-fashioned sense of honour in all his actions, tempered by the kindest and most considerate attention to the feelings, as well as to the interests of all with whom he might be associated...

Henry de Lancey: exhibited that happy, but rare combination of deep thought, and refinement of mind, with extreme liveliness of fancy and enthusiasm of character...his conversation, which sparkled with vivacity...his mind was ardent, courageous, and deeply contemplative, full of generous impulses...there was something irresistible in the fascination of young De Lancey's character, the warmth of which seemed as if it must have been nurtured beneath a brighter sun than that of others, while there was an irresistible  captivation in his joyous youthful aspect, his frank and graceful carriage.

Marion Dunbar: cast in the finest mould of classical beauty, and formed mentally as well as personally in the very poetry of nature, the perfect grace and symmetry of her features became enlivened frequently by an arch and radiant smile. Her splendid eyes sparkled with every passing emotion...the stream of her mind was deep as well as sparkling...being by no means an arrant novel reader, knew nothing of those artificial feelings which too often obliterate the reality. She had a genius for being happy.

...the single-hearted excellence of Marion's disposition, her utter disregardlessness of self, her anxious desire to please, her gay spirits, brilliant without effort, her heart generous without guile...no one could look at Marion, and not wish to be her friend.

Clara Granville: nurtured, like her brother, in holiness, and in every domestic excellence, while she lived only for the dictates of a chastened and sanctified heart. Delicate in health, and fragile in extreme to appearance, there was something almost seraphic in the delicate purity of her lovely countenance... none looked at Clara without fearing that she could not be long for this world...extreme delicacy of her complexion, which was tinted like a rose-leaf on her transparent cheek... In fact, she dies in Italy of consumption.

Caroline Smythe (Howard): was gifted with an extraordinary degree of apparently heedless volubility...talking in a rapid, irregular manner of all events, past, present, or to come, with a brilliant confusion of drollery and humour...

Agnes Dunbar: formed to excite the most rapturous admiration, by the gorgeous magnificence of her almost regal beauty...[she] was brilliant without being interesting, and dazzling without being attractive, for her mind seemed irremediably and incorrigibly vulgar, selfish, and vain...the genius of Agnes for conversation lay only in the line of scandal. "I would much rather, Marion, that you took the typhus fever, than that you became a Methodist! Pray do not infect me with either the one of the other." ...None of the sacred duties or home affections ever entered Agnes' calculations. She lived merely for the triumphs of society...

Sir Patrick Dunbar: was eager and rapacious in acquiring money, and would incur any meanness to avoid paying it...cold and selfish in general...willing that everybody should be happy, provided it put him to no personal inconvenience

Lord Doncaster: an old gentleman considerably past the meridian of life...wearing a fashionable, well-contrived wig, a perfectly startling set of teeth, and a gouty black velvet shoe....he had altogether a look of individual eccentricity peculiar to himself, with an air of supercilious haughtiness...

As for the subtitle, A Month at Harrowgate (our modern Harrogate), it refers to all the main characters disporting themselves to the Yorkshire Spa. As Sir Patrick says to his sisters: "You are lucky girls! A month in Harrowgate! why! you might be married five times over in that time!" Agnes maintains that "I merely go to Harrowgate for Sir Arthur's good! It will renew his youth to be forced into balls, beguiled into pic-nics, and enlisted into dinner parties. A diet of ice and lemonade is excellent for old people." Once there, a gaily-dressed crowd may be seen from peep of day in the morning, hurrying along in rapid succession to the well, with looks of anticipated disgust in the prospect of that strange compound of horrors which they are about to swallow, only comparable to the washings of an old gun-barrel.  The sojourn in Harrowgate takes up the last 50 pages of Volume II and the first 200 pages of Volume III. It includes some of the most compelling writing, relating to the fire where Marion rescues Sir Arthur. The author commences the latter volume with this sentence: 

Little of what is really going on in society can be traced on its gay sparkling surface, where, amidst laughter, music, jesting, and smiles, a deep current may be flowing on of anger, envy, mortification, and disappointment. How true.

 

The histrionics displayed by 'Howard' and 'Dixon' are dangerously near mere caricatures; the 'goodness' of Sir Arthur and Marion occasionally cloying; the pietistic moralising of Richard and Clara irritating; and the final unveiling of Henry de Lancey spotted long before by an intelligent reader. However, I found the story well worth the telling, particularly the satirical take on the Harrowgate clientele - matrons, leaning on their gouty red-faced husbands, troops of marriageable daughters and solitary gentlemen...  (a smidgeon of Jane Austen?). 

Bernard Newman's 'The Mussolini Murder Plot' 1936

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.46 - 1938?

I found this novel fascinating, from the outset. Fiction or fact - faction? As the author says on his very first page: This is a strange story which I have to tell. Quite frankly, I do not expect it to be believed. "Truth is stranger than fiction"...let us pretend, then, that this story is a mere romance - that when I speak of Italy I really mean Ruritania, and that Mussolini is merely a colloquial name for Dando. Well, for a brief moment, Bernard Newman fooled me. The tale is in the first person and the protagonist is one Bernard Newman! I looked the author up on the Internet. Born in 1897, and dying in 1968, he was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, politics and travel. Then I read that some of his early fiction novels were written in the first person with himself as the main character. What helped to maintain a remarkable first-hand knowledge of the various countries and geographical areas he described was the fact that, from the early 1930s through to the late 1950s, he cycled in every European country. Riding a BSA cycle, all he took with him was a few changes of clothing, pyjamas, toiletry, a camera and relevant maps. He was a member of the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC), writing many articles for the Club's Gazette. He met, and interviewed, many political and cultural leaders - such as Winston Churchill, Ghandi, Franco and John Buchan. Due to his 'autobiographical' method, he was regarded by many as a real-life spy. He eventually said in an interview that "I am not a spy. I have never been a spy...I am trying to devise a new kind of thriller. I believe I have succeeded."

Newman can certainly tell a great - and realistic - tale. In The Mussolini Murder Plot we find the protagonist, (supported by his friends Mason, a Foreign Office wallah - a principal secretary, to be precise...a little unorthodox in his methods; and Inspector Marshall, a keen, active, intelligent police-officer...of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard) is called upon to track down what appears to be a youthful conspiracy to assassinate Benito Mussolini. This League of International Amity is pushing out pamphlets and other media to state that it is leaders, not peoples, who are responsible for war. Therefore, any leader who commits a crime against humanity must die. Mussolini's recent invasion of  Abyssinia makes him their target. So, off sets Newman for Rome. He meets up with an old friend, Count Aderno (the author says that's not his real name - another clever way of suggesting to the reader that everything is factual) and the latter takes Newman to the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia where Mussolini gave most of his speeches/harangues (I have stood there, too!). An attendant there, leans on the stone rail; it collapse; he is hurled to his death. Aha! assassination likelihood looms large.

Newman reads of Mussolini's plan to visit Naples; so he sets off for the city and goes to the outskirts, less crowded but where the great man is to pass. Here he meets an English girl: my first impressions were of the pleasantest; it had nothing of the doll-like prettiness of the young Italian girls, or the Madonna flatness of the grown women; her hair was brown, dressed from a parting low on the side completely over the head in a waving swoop; it crowned a clean and honest face, with eyes which, serious now, could at will twinkle merrily. The bad news? - it soon becomes obvious she is part of the League. The good news? She is not keen on assassinations and over the length of the story she and Newman draw closer and closer together. The Naples plot fails (the man injured in a car hijack is a decoy). The girl disappears, leaving Newman only her name, Margaret Stirling. Returning to England, he tries to track her down. The name is not traceable (we later find out that's due to her erasing her surname, Hay, on her passport). Newman continues his quest to find the others involved in the plans to bump off Mussolini. It takes him to Rome, to Yugoslavia - Sarajevo and Serbia - this time with Marshall accompanying him. They end up chasing two men over the Slovene Alps in dreadful snow swept conditions. The passages describing the journey over the mountains are some of the most powerful in the book. Marshall and Newman are rescued, just in the nick of time, from a small cave (the two 'terrorists' actually died of hypothermia etc.) 

Newman returns to England and, to his amazement, in the audience of a play he is performing in at Swiss Cottage (he is an actor), is Margaret. They go to her small flat and engage in a long conversation about their respective beliefs. She confides in him about the League, its principles and aims. She tells him not to shake her loyalty to the League but also gives him her word that all ideas of executing Mussolini have been abandoned. Good. But then she vanishes again. Moreover, Scotland Yard have decoded a plan by the League to capture Mussolini and hold him to ransom as a bargaining chip to get the Italians out of Abyssinia.

Neman (much taller than the Duce) reluctantly agrees to impersonate Mussolini, get captured and lead the English/Italian authorities to the clandestine group. I found these last fifty or so pages rather far-fetched. Newman returns to Italy, made up to look like Mussolini and having practised his mannerisms and modes of speech. He finds the country not to his liking. The atmosphere in Italy is not pleasant. It is an atmosphere of subdued fear. People hesitate to speak their thoughts aloud, for fear of spies. The old smiling courtesy of the Italians has been replaced by bravado and suspicion. The author takes a long aside to explain his method of telling the story - quite effectively. Once in Rome, Newman goes out on a motorcycle, dressed as the Duce and, as intended, gets caught by the conspirators. He is whisked away to Corsica, where he meets the two main conspirators. One, an American named Grantern, is clearly an idealist; the other, Harim, has fanatical eyes - that's because he is a fanatic, and dangerous. Newman fools them both, until none other than Margaret turns up. 

Harim races away, determined to assassinate Mussolini. The others follow, using Granthern's plane (how convenient, but he is very rich). The denouement comes in the Piazza Venezia, where Mussolini is to give the victory speech telling his adoring crowd that Addis Ababa has fallen. Again, the author's writing is of a top order. Those of you who have read Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal (1971) will feel a sense of déjà vu - both De Gaulle and Mussolini were not assassinated, for the same reason that they bent their heads at the very moment the assassin's shot was fired. As with Forsyth's tale, the skill of the writing meant it simply didn't matter that the reader knew from the outset that the plots had failed. Oh. The very last line is Newman about to kiss Margaret.

Rupert Croft-Cooke's 'Release the Lions' 1933

                                                                                                              Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' Library paperback - 1937 

This is the third book in a trilogy.  The author writes, in his Foreword, the three novels, while quite independent of each other, make a trilogy of the stories of these young men, who, while born to the same class, and given the same education, and living in the same part of the world, have differed widely in character and experience. The second novel in the trilogy, Night Out (1932) (also in the Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' paperbacks as No. 17), I read over two years' ago (see Blog 28th May 2024). I started that Blog by saying, This was the least enjoyable of the three Jackdaw paperbacks which I read on holiday. And then went on to write: why did I find reading it a bit of a struggle? First and foremost, I rather despised the main character (hardly to be called a 'hero'). Justus is a disgruntled twenty-four year old, who lodges in Dulwich with a nondescript family which includes a daughter Maureen. Both Justus and Maureen turn up towards the end in Release the Lions. Finally, I commented that it is not his story-telling that was depressing, but the fact that he accurately pinpointed the actual times he wrote about. Looking back, the Age of the Flapper was so seedy, puerile and nihilistic. But what can one expect after the catastrophe of the Great War? Well, if Justus was disgruntled, bordering on a ne'er-do-well, then the main protagonist in this book, is far worse. He is an unashamed misanthropist.

Twenty-seven year-old Max Dionysius walks smartly out of Girlstone Gaol, after a year 'inside'. Within the hour he has committed his first petty crime - a girl has bumped a car he was standing next to. He gets a quid from her for the damage and makes off on a passing bus before the real owner appears. He has also recognised the girl. A decade ago, during his last summer holidays from Bembridge School - not long after the Armistice - as a snub-nosed 16 year-old he had met the then 16 year-old Una Bray, seduced her (but she never completely gave herself) in the nearby woods. They had never spoken again. For years after he resolved to find her, he would persuade her into a car. Or he would abduct her by aeroplane to a far island. Anyhow - get her for his own. A thread running through the ensuing tale is his determination to track her down.

Before this, however, he must continue his life of (almost mania for) petty crime. He successfully seduces the barmaid of the Three Shovels; pretends he is her brother when her husband returns earlier than expected; steals £9 5/- from the pub's till and swiftly departs. The next day finds him knocking on a vicar's front door. The Rev. Pybald-Prichard listens to Max's cock-and-bull story about turning over a new leaf and not knowing what to do about a bag of gold sovereigns he needs to change to pay another man his share. The Rev. falls for it (the coins are counterfeit), and Max makes off with more ill-gotten gains. A mildly amusing aspect of the tale now occurs. Pybald-Prichard's young curate - plump and perspiring, with baby-blue eyes - bumps into Max. The curate is bored and falls into a near-worship of Max's bravado. The two of them link up and go on a spree - an adventure for the excited Eric Brodie -of crime. As Max remarks: A neat reversal. The practical Quixote, the romantic Panza. Do you know, little man, I believe I'll take you.

In their wanderings, they come across a group of naturists; they join them; Brodie is deputed by Max to steal all their money from their nearby clothes. The haul £17 12/- in 1933 is equivalent to £1,635.04 nowadays. This section of the novel is quite amusing, in the rather cruel description of the aged naked bodies. It is always dangerous to identify a character in a novel's opinions with its author, but the strength of the narrative when Max explains his modus vivendi and operandi to the spellbound curate is quite chilling. I think it's about time you ceased regarding me as Robin Hood, Don Quixote, Dick Turpin, Raffles, or anything in fact but a plain thoroughbred crook, out for money. Over the next dozen pages, Max sets out his credo. It not not just out and out passive misanthropy, but active, persistent criminal behaviour against other individuals and society as a whole. Love of my fellowmen is the commonest Society gives. But I don't love them. I find them on the whole selfish, unlovely, hypocritical, and dismally uninteresting...the most satisfactory future for the species of which I am a member would be extinction...sexually they are emasculated by excess, devoid of inspiration through facility, or chirruping perverts, with hairless chins and shifty eyes...for literature they are satisfied with the meandering silliness of sterile women-novelists, or the asinine mediocrity of popular writers...there's your human race today - the women a cluster of scarcely distinguishable bipeds whose faces are painted to a semblance of natural colour, and whose conversation gibbers insipidly on.  And how does the curate respond? "I think you are a great man."

They remain  together to near the end of the story. They rob a jeweller's shop; they hide away from the police with some travelling fruit-pickers in their caravan; and they reach the chocolate-box cottage of Justus and Maureen. I found it interesting, having read Night Out, to find out what had happened to those two characters. They are depressingly 'suburban'. Of course, Max tries, but this time fails, to seduce Maureen. At last, Brodie has had enough, leaves Max and returns to Rev. Pybald-Prichard with his tail between his legs. Meanwhile, Max has finally tracked down where Una lives.  After relieving a group of young cricketers from his old school of their wallets - he had promised to look after them when they went out onto the field - he ends up at her home. Now Mrs Una Lipcott, she quickly rolls back the years, accepts he is a jail bird and ends up in bed with him (the husband is fortuitously away), mainly because she is bored stiff with her marriage. The future? She starts to pack; abroad beckons. But it is clear Max is having second and third thoughts - he suddenly saw it all as a piece of rather flat fiction - this meeting with an old lover, the planning of a new life. Not for him. Surely not for him.  Luckily for them both, certainly for Una, at five-clock a police inspector and a constable knocked peremptorily at the door. They had tracked Max down after the cricketers had reported their loss. And in due course, as he had by then foreseen, the doors of Girlstone Gaol opened, and Max walked smartly in.

He was where he thoroughly deserved to be. A misanthropic, pathetic outsider. 

Was the fact that the author was a homosexual, which brought him into conflict with the laws of his time (actually sent to prison for six months on conviction for acts of indecency), and who moved to Morocco fearing continued persecution, relevant when one reads the powerful and bitter sections of his novels on society? I would be quite interested in reading the first novel in the trilogy - Troubador (1930), about the third young man, Manuel Rice, to find out how different he was from his two mates, Justus and Max. However, it was not published in the 'Jackdaw' Library, so I expect I never shall have that doubtful pleasure.

Bruce Graeme's 'Blackshirt takes a Hand' 1937

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.80 - 1939?

There were nine Blackshirt novels published by Bruce Graeme between 1925 and 1940, from Blackshirt to Blackshirt Strikes Back. This is the second one I have read (see Blog of 19 July 2025 for my review of Blackshirt Again (1929) which was No. 5 in the Crime-Book Society's "Pocket" Library paperbacks). This, with the above book, were the only two in the numbered, series of 85. There is also Lord Blackshirt (1942) - featuring the son of the original Blackshirt - which was in the paperback series, but  a later one and unnumbered; I have not, so far, tracked this one down.

Like Leo Grex (Leonard Gribble), the subject of my last Blog, Graeme was a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association.  Interestingly, his son, Roderic Jeffries, continued writing novels featuring Blackshirt. As one reviewer has written, Blackshirt is a fascinating character, audacious, quick-witted, humorous, tenacious and resourceful. His escapades in Blackshirt takes a Hand fit this bill perfectly. Essentially, it is three stories (which could have all been independent novellas) linked by dear Blackshirt (Verrell the famous crime writer) and an old sparring partner, Janet Dove. She had previously double-crossed Blackshirt, with a haul of jewels and fled to France for a very long holiday. She's back - and in his bedroom. She has a 'job' for him. A newspaper cutting explains: Wanted. - The services of a polite cracksman, required for a delicate but legitimate mission. Very liberal terms. Well, inevitably, he is 'caught'; so, off he goes to accomplish this mission. It brings him into contact with a short, stout man of about forty-five years. His hair, except where it was tinged with grey around the temples, was black, and so immaculately groomed that it reflected the soft blue light which filtered through the lamp-shade. He wore a monocle. Sounds like a well-off cove; and he is just that. The Comte de Vézier is a prominent sportsman and racehorse owner, a popular member of both English and French society and an inveterate European traveller. He had placed the (fake) newspaper ad to entice Blackshirt. He is also a major figure in the Cinque C's (Consortium Continental de Collectionneurs de Cristauux et de Curiosités), whose H.Q. is along the Champs Elysées. It is a highly sophisticated criminal organisation, which collects curios and objets d'art by any means.

Apparently, due to Great Britain being once more on the road to prosperity (1937? huh!), the Cinque C's are wanting to move their operations across the Channel. We are criminals only because - like yourself, Blackshirt - we were born with a desire for adventure...But, the Comte also has disturbing news: Inspector Cavaroc of the French Sûreté Nationale is, like a bloodhound, fast on the group's trail. Cavaroc will figure often in the following story. In three days' time the daughter of Sir Martyn Milligan is to be married. Among her presents is a very fine pair of ear-rings which came from India just after the Indian Mutiny. Blackshirt is challenged to steal them. He takes up the challenge; goes home, dons his black outfit and succeeds in breaking into the Milligan household. He acquires the ear-rings. But Cavaroc knocks on the front door before he can escape. Caught, he is taken by a 'policeman' to - the Comte! The latter not only pockets the ear-rings but says Blackshirt has to do a major job for him - steal the famous Orb of Rheims.

Janet Dove contacts Blackshirt again, to meet up in  Hyde Park. It is then that she delivers a second bombshell - she is not Janet Dove, his old mucker,  but Lady Janet Tremayne, who ran away from her  father the Marquis of Brete and her family to pursue, eventually, a life of crime. She now wants him to travel to Crex Abbey, the home of Lord Crex, where her brother Lord Robin Tremayne, who is in the Diplomatic Service is involved in a vital mission. The German Ambassador is coming to the Abbey to discuss a draft pact of non-aggression between Great Britain and Germany. Alack and alas, the terms of the pact has been stolen from Robin. Blackshirt, please help. The story describes how Blackshirt and Janet get invited to Crex Abbey (but so do the Comte, followed by the sleuth Cavaroc) and attempt to retrieve the draft pact document. Blackshirt foils a ingenious ruse to get the document out of the country to France. Lord Robin is saved from disgrace.

The scene then moves to Peak House, the residence of Sir Thomas and Lady Ragge. They are to celebrate the 21st birthday of their son, George Edward. Relevance? This is where the Orb - amongst a large pile of goodies - is kept. A very clever set-up enables Blackshirt to get into a strongroom, snatch the Orb and pass it to a member of the Cinque C's (who had once more impersonated an officer of the law) and return to the bedroom corridor to link up with the Hon. Janet. The Orb is on its way back to France. The novel ends with Lady Janet, Verrell and the Comte celebrating together, to be joined by the rueful Cavaroc.

Although much was improbable, I enjoyed the fast-moving narrative. Blackshirt was not just a super hero going it alone; this time he had to rely on others to extricate himself from being caught. I had hoped for more romance between him and Janet - perhaps this occurred in the later novels.

Leo Grex's 'Transatlantic Trouble' 1937

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.74 - 1939?

As with so many of these Crime-Book Society inter-war writers, I had never heard of Leo Grex before reading this novel. He was an incredibly prolific wordsmith, writing scores of crime and western fiction and crime non-fiction. Born Leonard Reginald Gribble in February 1908, he also wrote under the pseudonyms of Bruce Sanders, Dexter Muir, Piers Marlow, Louis Grey and Sterry Browning. He used the name Landon Grant for his Westerns. His family came from Barnstaple, Devon and he had his first novel, The Case of the Marsden Rubies, published in 1929. Some of his crime fiction was football based. He married Nancy Mason in 1932 and served in the Press and Censorship Division of the Ministry of Information between 1940 and 1945. After the War, he was a founding member of the Crime Writers Association in 1953. Gribble died in September 1985. His final work, Violent Midnight, was published posthumously in the following year.

I have to admit straightaway that I did not enjoy Transatlantic Trouble. Over half the book was set in a seedy New York, involving minor crime bosses, their unpleasant and thuggish henchmen and some rather unlikeable businessmen. James (Jimmy) Keith is the English half of a two-man Anglo-American Detective Agency. He is the son of a respected Scotland Yard officer, now deceased. The American partner is Carl Hoffman, a man used to dealing with shady crooks in the American capital and not above using shady methods himself. Jimmy is over in New York to drum up business; at the Agency's office he first bumps into Virginia Kelsey, Carl's secretary: who flashed her dark eyes at me as I walked in. She always gave me the impression of being excited at meeting me. The Agency are to meet a Mr. Mitchell Bainbridge, broad-shouldered, full-faced, with heavy brows and thick pink hands, he embodied power. I had met his like in clubs and at parties: men who bludgeoned their way up over the heads of their fellows. However, Bainbridge has a problem - his wayward daughter Marilyn has disappeared. This is but one string, albeit a major one, in the story. Apparently, she has absconded to marry Tony Rossi, a crooner at the Cloven Hoof. Her father had already rescued Marilyn from unwise attachments to two saxophone-players, a Greenwich village airedale, a Pan-American pilot, one pug and a couple of floozies. A real-goer, then.

If the author had just kept to that main story, perhaps I would have enjoyed the tale more. However, we get involved with a small-time, but puffed-up Italian crook called Luigi Spinelli, his side kicks Herman (his body had the willowy line of a dancer's, his neck was as thick as a bull's) and Sweeny Burke (who has a wizened pig's face), and a rather rambling tale about racehorse skulduggery (betting is, of course, involved). On top of this, is another story about a rivalry over oil exploration. Bainbridge's great competitor is Stanley Dorrance, a Britisher who lives in Mexico and who controls Allied Mexican Oil - he is a pain the neck and sundry other places to Bainbridge. I soon rather lost track of who was doing what to who; this didn't really get much clearer once the settings changed to a transatlantic voyage and then London and the Newmarket area. I found I couldn't engage positively with any of the characters, not even the narrator, Jimmy Keith. The dialogue was usually staccato. I suppose a good thing was that the bad people all died or were imprisoned - in England as well as the USA - the two fairly ruthless businessmen made up and Jimmy and Virginia looked likely to become a permanent item. But, frankly, by the end of the novel, I just didn't care!   

Hugh Clevely's 'Death Counterfeit' 1937

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.71 - 1939?

This is the fourth Hugh Clevely novel which I have read in the Crime-Book Society paperback series. The others are No. 1 The Gang Smasher (Blog 16th July 2025), No. 41 The Wrong Murderer (Blog 28th July 2026), and No. 54 Amateur Crook (Blog 16th August 2026). Floolishly, I have started to collect another of Hutchinson's Pocket Library paperbacks - their "M" Series, and I notice Clevely wrote two of the first 16 (I'm not sure if there were any more). I have one of them, No. 9 Hell To Pay, so something to look forward to. I wrote a brief account of Clevely's life and work in that first Blog, so there is little point in repeating this; just a reiteration of the fact he wrote for the story paper The Thriller in the 1930s, a publication which included stories by Leslie Charteris, John Creasey, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Edgar Wallace.

Death's Counterfeit is a tightly written thriller, concerning skullduggery around aeroplanes. T[erence].M[ichael]. O'Donovan, a well-known and highly-regarded aviator (he broke the Transatlantic record and won the King's Cup race), has to force land, due to his engine misfiring, on a private airfield belonging to The Greenfield Aircraft Company. Three people rush forward to help: a tall, fair young man, clad in a shabby tweed sports coat, a blue, high-necked sweater and grey flannel trousers. Probably a good egg?; a tall, compactly built, neatly dressed man with dark hair, dark, rather intolerant eyes, and a small tooth-brush moustache. Wants watching?; and a girl, there was a certain air of elegance about her. Her small shoes were very neat; there was nothing clumping about them. The stocking enclosing her long, slim legs were of the sheerest silk. Her hands were carefully manicured with the finger-nails tinted a bright pink. Her dark, wavy hair was admirably set. She had lovely eyes, dark, almond shaped, slightly slanting, set under delicately arched eyebrows. Definitely wants watching then. The three are Alan Hamilton, Captain Geoffrey Leacock, and Alan's sister, Stella.

The Greenfield Aircraft Company are in trouble. They have been preparing for the London-Edinburgh-London race, but three of their four of their Hamilton Swallow machines have crashed preparing for it. The three aviators were killed. No wonder the aircraft are being nicknamed 'The Flying Coffin'. Everyone is feeling nervy, especially as there seems to be a 'ghost' plane involved - it has been heard in the night but not seen. Is it linked to a man named Karvell, who had previous landed at the airfield, taken off again and vanished over the sea - now dead? O'Donovan then meets the father of Alan and Stella, and Bobby Trevor, another pilot who has been with old man Hamilton a long time. When Alan also is involved in a crash (watched by O'Donovan and all the others) and ends up in hospital, it looks as if the 'ghost' plane has struck again - is it Karvell's ghost haunting the area? The Greenfield monoplane's control stick had been broken off at the bottom - hardly the sabotage of a ghost. So, what is going on? It transpires that many years ago old Hamilton and Karvell, who had both studied at the same engineering college in California, had fallen out over a woman. Hamilton had married this Jean, but Karvell, far richer than Hamilton, had used his wealth to get the latter sacked from various jobs. Worse, he murdered Jean and got imprisonment for life. For some reason, he was released and also ended up in England. Trouble ahead? Ended by his death?    

It emerges that the airfield had been sold to the Hamiltons by a trickster (known to O'Donovan) called Mallery. A link is established between the latter and the 'dead' Karvell. Have the Hamiltons been 'set up'? O'Donovan goes to London to chase up Mallery - too late - he, too, has been murdered! On to the scene comes Chief-Inspector Williams of Scotland Yard (who has figured in the author's books previously). Between them, they begin to unravel what mystery there is. It centres on one word - revenge. I twigged very early on that Karvell was probably still alive, and that a strange man, with a funny French accent, Monsieur Norville, who lives in a big house between the airfield and the sea is clearly bound up with the nefarious goings-on. But, equally clearly, there is someone within the Hamilton group who is acting as a fifth columnist - is it Bobby or Captain Geoffrey. Again, I sussed that out quite quickly. Notwithstanding my amazing detective work, the tale was still a pretty good one. Shot at by a Westley Richards repeating rifle during a foggy night, nearly blown up by a device placed in his digs in London, O'Donovan is obviously in the 'ghost's' sights as well. But British pluck and skill will carry the day. The 'ghost' planes are explained, Norville is unmasked, and the last Hamilton Swallow wins the London-Edinburgh-London air race, even though it was up against O'Donovan, who came second.

Jeannette Lucraft's 'Katherine Swynford. The History of a Medieval Mistress' 2006

Sutton Publishing first edition - 2006

Although there is a 600 year gap between the last 'biography' I have read (on King Offa, see Blog for 4th October) and this one, there is the same problem of a lack of facts for the respective lives. Only Chapter I Katherine's Life and Family really tries to get to grips with this fascinating, but still obscure, woman. The author quotes Anthony Goodman in her Introduction, saying that his claim is correct: Katherine is enigmatic, famous and controversial. But what else can be said about her? The aim of this book is to reveal more of the real Katherine Swynford. There are obstacles in the way, notably a lack of evidence for her life. Her will is frustratingly, and curiously unavailable...no personal letters or diaries remain for us to use to establish her personality. Her thoughts and feelings are not available....she is the appendage of other notables...I am interested in her as a medieval woman and with what she can tell us about medieval society. So, bluntly, there lies the rub. Such a book will, inevitably, be the Times of rather than the Life of.

The first Chapter (pp.1-37) takes the reader at a canter through what little is known of Katherine.`  The daughter of Gilles or Paon Roet, even Katherine's birthdate is argued over. Conventionally, it is c.1350, making her Paon's youngest child, but it might be earlier than 1348, making her the older sister to Philippa, who married Geoffrey Chaucer. It is from the writings of Froissart that the details of Katherine's early life are known. She grew up within the English court and joined the household of Blanche of Lancaster after the latter's marriage to John of Gaunt in 1359. The earliest public record related to Katherine in in 1365, where she is mentioned in the accounts of Bishop Buckingham as Katherine Swynford, 'ancille' or servant, of Blanche. She is granted permission to hear mass in a private ceremony. She had probably married Hugh Swynford, retainer to Gaunt, c.1363-5. Little is known of that marriage; Hugh's background was not of high estate. They had at least two children - Thomas, born in September 1368,  and Blanche, born either c.1366 or c.1370 (!) Katherine possibly became governess of Gaunt's children, Philippa and Elizabeth, c.1366, taking charge of the ducal household after the death of Blanche of Lancaster in 1368-9. Katherine's husband Hugh died in November 1371 while fighting in Aquitaine under Gaunt. Most historians suggest Katherine's relationship with Gaunt started in the spring of 1372. She appears regularly in Gaunt's registers during the 1370s as nostre tres chere et bien amee. By 1375 the affair was seemingly public knowledge. Gaunt's register includes many instances of gifts to Katherine.

Lucraft then traces what information survives of Katherine's daughter and son by Hugh Swynford; followed by a section on the Chaucer family; before turning to the four illegitimate children sired by Gaunt. They were John (born 1373), Henry (1375), Thomas (1377) and Joan (1379). Gaunt recognised them officially from the first, granted them the name  Beaufort. They were clearly included in the Richardian and Lancastrian worlds. John showed military ability and accompanied his father on campaign in France; he also showed political skill by appearing loyal to both Richard II and Henry IV. He married Margaret Holland and died in March 1410, being buried in Canterbury Cathedral. Thomas also did well under Henry IV and Henry V, the latter making Thomas responsible for Henry VI's upbringing. Kenneth McFarlane, the 15th century Historian, describing Thomas as the most trusted personal friend and minister of Henry V. Joan married as her second husband, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland and had 13 children and worked hard to ensure her children received the lion's share of the Neville inheritance. She died in November 1440. Most politically astute, powerful and wealthy of all of Katherine and John's children was Henry. Bishop of Lincoln, Chancellor of England under Henry IV, then Bishop of Winchester in 1404 and Cardinal in 1426 - and rumours of one day the Papacy. His death in 1447, deprived England of its wisest and most experienced administrator at a time when his guiding hand was sorely needed. Gaunt and Katherine's descendants became the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III; Henry VII; and James I of Scotland - i.e. the royal houses of York, Tudor and Stuart.

Chapter 2, The Historiography of Katherine Swynford, is simply a study of how she was viewed through the Chronicles and Histories of the 15th century and beyond. Her image underwent a revival under the Tudors (Vergil, Rous, Fabyan, Hayward); the 17th century historians followed suit (Weever, Biondi); but in the 18th and 19th centuries a more negative view gained strength (Rapin, Wylie); however, Armitage-Smith in his extensive biography of Gaunt (1904) was more positive. Anya Seton's novel of 1956, (rather like Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time of 1951, for Richard III's reputation) produced the seminal romance which possibly has had more effect than any historian's efforts. Similarly, Chapter 3, Contemporary Opinion just details the works of chroniclers such as Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-c.1422) and Henry Knighton (d.c.1396), where Katherine is seen, above all, as a temptress, the now familiar stereotype of the clerical view of base and lewd women. Lucraft also discusses whether Chaucer portrayed Gaunt and Katherine's affair in his works - The Physician's Tale, The Monk's Tale, Troilus and Creiseyde are all commented upon.

Chapter 4, Katherine's World is on more solid ground. It discusses the art, the fashion, the courtly behaviour of the time, and the importance of books and education - for women as well as men: women were among the more important consumers of vernacular literature. Katherine's Beaufort sons are known to have been highly educated and owners of numerous manuscripts. The last two Chapters - 5 Construction of Identity and 6 Saintly Appropriations, I found less interesting and 'solid', but I understood what the author was trying to do. After discussing the SS collar and Gaunt/Lancaster links, coats of arms and funerary emblems in general, the author focuses on Katherine and her identification with St. Katherine (and her wheel). She argues that this was a desire to create for herself an image of royalty and respectability. The final chapter spends overlong on the story of Margery Kempe (12 pages), which I didn't think advanced the case as a 'biography' of Katherine Swynford. There was also, on more than one occasion, repetition - of whole sections not just a sentence.

There are useful Notes and a decent Bibliography, as well as some photographic illustrations. All in all, a typical Sutton Publishing 'popular history' book which is well worth reading.