Grace Kennedy's 'Father Clement' 1823

First edition  - 1823

On page 68 of Grace Kennedy's little book, one of her characters, Ernest Montague, remarks to his sister Adeline, "You are very ardent in proselyting, dear Adeline"... This sums up the whole of Kennedy's novel. Calvinism must triumph over Roman Catholicism. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, an expert on Victorian novels which shaped religious debates, argues - in her Victorian Reformations (2014) - that Kennedy wraps her Presbyterian catechetical dialogues in a combination conspiracy and inheritance plot set during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, indicting the Catholic clergy as conspirators...

Admittedly, I found the 'catechetical dialogues' rather wearying, but it was the essence, the raison d'être, of the polemic. There are frequent footnotes giving chapter and verse from the Bible to support her argument. Essentially, the novel is the story of the interaction of three neighbouring families. The Montagues are led by Sir Herbert, and consist of his wife, Lady Montague; son Ernest; and daughters Adeline and Maude - they are all of the Calvinist or Presbyterian persuasion and live at Illerton-Hall . Their family chaplain is Dr. Thomas Lowther. Nearby are the Clarenhams, residing at Hallern Castle -  widowed Mrs Clarenham; two daughters, Maria and Catherine. An old Roman Catholic priest, Father Dennis is about to be replaced by Mr. Dormer, the Father Clement of the book's title. Their son, Basil, has just returned from abroad with Dormer. The Montagues and Clarenhams are related - Lady Montague and Mrs Clarenham were first cousins.

The third family, the Carysfords, are led nominally by Sir Thomas Carysford, but are really controlled by the one 'evil' character in the novel,  Mr Warrene, their Roman Catholic Chaplain. As Father Adrian, he is the Superior over all the Jesuit priests in that part of England, he is deeply involved in the 1715 Jacobite Rising and his more parochial aim is to resurrect the Roman Catholic strength in his area, via the Carysfords and Clarenhams. He controls Father Clement, Catherine and, to a large extent, the Carysfords. He is also responsible for Basil Clarenham being taken by the Inquisition in Spain (a very unlikely part of the book's plotting!).

The period under study, 1715, saw the Roman Catholics barely tolerated: by every denomination of Protestants they were regarded with suspicion; and even the most truly religious and benevolent of their opponents regarded it as a sin, in many instances, to permit the observances of their church... However, the two families get on well enough, tolerating their religious differences even if regarding the other as simply 'wrong'. Ernest visits the Clarenhams and is invited to a church service; he sees it at least completely addressed to the senses; and which, in his opinion, only served to place a barrier between the soul and God... what a mixture of error and truth... Later he reasons with himself that the Romish faith is so utterly unscriptural...denying free access to the word of God - ordaining prayers to be offered up in a language not understood by the people - praying to departed spirits - setting up images and pictures in the churches for the people to prostrate themselves before...

Catherine Clarenham, the crypto 'saint'

The House of Hanover defeats the Jacobites and Biblical Christianity triumphs over Roman traditions. It centres on Jesus Christ; the worship of the Virgin Mary and saints, sculptures and stained glass, is simply idolatry. Maria Clarenham is convinced by her reading of the Bible (in English) that Roman Catholicism is misguided and she is helped on to a Protestant belief by Adeline. She only marries Carysford on the understanding she can keep her new faith and it is clear that their offspring will be Protestants! Basil Clarenham is weaned away from his faith by the persuasive Ernest. It is suggested that even the ascetic Father Clement has moved in that direction. On his death-bed (lay me in the ashes - in the coffin...), caused by his fasting and almost death-wish, he refuses to add the words Church of Rome to saved only by Christ, much to the disgust of Warenne. Catherine remains a Roman Catholic, partly (as Adeline remarks) because she is so fenced round by the good opinion she has of herself and so full of contempt for is poor heretics, who dare read the Bible...

On the last two full pages, Kennedy brings us forward to the present, in the guise of two travellers, who visit the ivy-covered, derelict chapel of the Carysfords, where Basil and Ernest used to go to read the Bible aloud to previous visitors: The Protestant traveller would recognise the spirit which dictated this only justifiable method of attempting to prevent an erroneous approach to God. The Roman Catholic traveller would sigh as he remembered, that in Britain his church is almost forgotten; her places of worship in ruins...her services regarded as unmeaning ceremonies; her doctrines held as too absurd to be professed by rational men...

Father Clement was in its 12th edition by 1858 and its 16th by 1868, and had been translated into several European languages. However, there was a 'fightback': Father Rowland (!829) by Charles Constantine Pise; Florence; or, the Aspirant (1829); the anonymous Genmoyle Castle (1831); Geraldine (1837-9) by E. C. Agnew; and the anonymous Father Oswald (1842). Above all, the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, by the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel, just six years after Grace Kennedy's novel, followed by the Tracts of Newman and others, paved the way for a resurgence of Roman Catholicism in England. Grace Kennedy did not live to experience this turnaround, dying in 1825. Did she turn in her grave? 

As an aside, I wonder if it is only me who reads into the book something else. Warenne has two very strong, athletic-looking young men (his young 'brothers') in attendance; Father Clement has strong feelings for both Basil and Ernest. Is the author on the same wavelength as when I gazed at the 'young men', in dark glasses and tight-fitting suits, patrolling St. Peter's when I was there last? An aspect of Roman Catholicism appears to be its love of dressing up, performing in a theatrical way. We will leave my thoughts in the air! 

Eliza Logan's 'St Johnstoun; or, John, Earl of Gowrie' 1823

 

 First edition - 1823

The Gowrie conspiracy of 5 August 1600 is shrouded in mystery. Although the facts of the actual attack and deaths of the Ruthvens are known, the circumstances by which that sequence of events came about remain obscure. John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, had reason to seek vengeance on James VI as the king had executed his father in response to the Ruthven Raid of 1582, which in turn was inspired by high debts of the King to the Ruthven family. Getting rid of the family got rid of the debts, especially if the family was stripped of all ownership for reason of "treason".

There are three possible scenarios of the tragedy which took place in St Johnstoun (Perth):

• that Ruthven and his brother concocted a plot to murder or, more probably, kidnap King James and that they lured him to Gowrie House for this purpose;
• that James paid a surprise visit to Gowrie House with the intention of killing the two Ruthvens;
• that the tragedy was the outcome of an unplanned brawl which followed an argument between the King and one of the Ruthvens.

'The Gowrie' Conspiracy'

Plots to capture the sovereign for the purpose of coercing his actions were frequent, more than one had been successful, and the Ruthven family had taken an active part in several of them. Relations between England and Scotland were more than usually strained, and the Earl of Gowrie was reckoned in London among the adherents of Elizabeth. The Kirk party, being at variance with James, looked upon Gowrie as a hereditary partisan of their cause, and had recently sent an agent to Paris to recall him to Scotland as their leader. Gowrie was believed to be James's rival for the succession to the English crown. As regards the question of motive, the Ruthvens believed their father to have been killed in treachery, and his widow insulted by the king's favourite minister. James owed a large sum of money to the Earl of Gowrie's estate, and popular gossip credited either Ruthven with being the lover of the queen.

The mystery has never been entirely dispelled. The two most recent studies subscribe to the kidnap theory. W. F. Arbuckle's study of 1957 favours the kidnapping that went wrong, while Maurice Lee proposes that James went to Gowrie House believing Ruthven was a conduit for political intelligence from London (that the pot of gold was a flimsy cover story), and when he arrived with an unexpectedly large retinue, Alexander realised that a successful kidnapping was not possible and attempted to take the King's life to avenge his father's death. Most modern research, in the light of materials inaccessible or overlooked till the 20th century, points to the conclusion that there was a conspiracy by Ruthven and his brother to kidnap the king. If this is true, it follows that the second theory, that James went to Gowrie House to specifically kill the Ruthvens, is invalid and that his own account of the occurrence, in spite of the glaring improbabilities which it involved, was substantially true.

Great efforts were made by the government to prove the complicity of others in the plot. One noted and dissolute conspirator, Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig, was posthumously convicted of having been privy to the Gowrie conspiracy on the evidence of certain letters produced by a notary, George Sprot, who swore they had been written by Logan to Gowrie and others. These letters, which are still in existence, were in fact forged by Sprot in imitation of Logan's handwriting; but the researches of Andrew Lang have shown cause for suspecting that the most important of them was either copied by Sprot from a genuine original by Logan, or that it embodied the substance of such a letter. 

Fast Castle (or Scott's Castle Crag)

If this is correct, it would appear that the conveyance of the king to Fast Castle, Logan's impregnable fortress on the coast of Berwickshire,(Walter Scott's Castle Crag in The Bride of Lammermoor) was part of the plot; and it supplies, in all events, an additional piece of evidence to prove the genuineness of the Gowrie conspiracy.  Robert Logan died before May 1608 the last of his line; George Sprot was hanged at the Market Cross of Edinburgh for foreknowledge of the conspiracy on 12 August 1608.

On 7 August 1600, James's Privy Council of Scotland ordered that the corpses of Gowrie and his brother should remain unburied until further decisions were made over the matter, and that no person with the name of Ruthven should approach within ten miles of the court. Orders were also sent for the apprehension of the Earl's brothers William and Patrick, but they fled to England. The bodies of Gowrie and his brother Robert were disembowelled and preserved by one James Melville, who, however, was paid for his services, not by the magistrates of Perth, but by the Privy Council; and on 30 October they were sent to Edinburgh to be produced at the bar of Parliament. On 15 November, the estates of the Ruthvens were discerned by Parliament to be forfeited and their family name and honours extinct. The corpses of the Earl and his brother were hanged and quartered at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh on 19 November 1600. Their heads were put on spikes at Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth and their arms and legs upon spikes at various locations around Perth. Another act was further passed abolishing the name of Ruthven, ordering that the house wherein the tragedy happened should be levelled to the ground, and decreeing that the barony of Ruthven should henceforth be known as the barony of Huntingtower.

So what does Eliza Logan make of the 'Conspiracy'? She comes down firmly on the Ruthvens' side and creates a believable story of the perfidy and cowardice of King James, mashed with the jealousy and hatred of other Scottish courtiers and the scheming of a Jesuit spy. It is not until one has finished the novel, that Logan cleverly adds a 'Letter' at the end of Volume III. It purports to come from a Peregrine Rover, Esq. (a less annoying name than Scott's usual 'editors') writing to a Tacitus Torpedo (more irritating!). In a rather convoluted way of some 85 pages, Peregrine tells of a boat journey to visit Fastcastle, the ancient residence of Logan of Restalrig. Here, after scrambling off the boat into a cave beneath the ruined fortress, he finds a narrow passage leading up to a small underground chamber (Caleb Balderstone's "Secret Chammer"). He sees a huge wooden chest, staved in on one end, which contains a bundle of old documents. One roll is marked "Anent the Gowrie Conspiracie", bearing the date 1611. Returning to his home in Edinburgh, Peregrine completely made out and understood every line of it; when it struck me, that it would become more interesting by being put into the form of a modern novel, by which compliance with the prevailing taste of the day it was more likely to be read. Hence St. Johnstoun.

Humorously, Logan (or Peregrine) adds: you must not imagine...I have suffered myself to suppose that this child of my adoption is to escape lash-free from the castigating whips of the critics; far from it, I assure you. They are a race of beings who, however some folks may affect to despise, I am well aware are now more formidable than ever to a person who ventures to dress up a new dish of literary trifle for their eminencies' pampered appetites...(shades of Scott's Introductory comments). Notwithstanding this, Logan cunningly makes reference to another roll which dealt with many particulars respecting the last Logan of Restalrig and his family...which she will not mention, but with reserve should I ever require their aid. The title of her next novel? Restalrig; or, the Forfeiture (1829) !

What of the three-volume novel itself? I enjoyed it. Gowrie is, perhaps, too saint like on occasions; but, beneath his rather austere front he is capable of deep feelings, particularly for the Lady Agnes, who returns his love in equal measure. BUT, alas, he is a Presbyterian and she is a Roman Catholic. Logan is good at conveying the conflict between the love for another human being and for one's faith. Gowrie's brother, Ruthven, and sister, Lady Beatrix, are well-drawn, with identifiable characters. The 'baddies' - the ruthless Jesuit; the preposterous but vicious Doctor Herbal; Rathsay, James' page (I found it hard to understand how the latter had so much influence from so lowly a station); and Gowrie's deceitful  servant, Laurence - are also believable characters. I found Queen Anne (of Denmark) a fascinating mixture. As for King James VI - Logan can stand a candle with Scott's portrayal in The Fortunes of Nigel. What a contemptuous figure of a 'man'. These characters (nearly all real historical figures) carried the story along at some pace, with fewer 'asides' that bedevils Scott's narratives. I must wait before I can purchase Logan's second novel - at present, the only copy on the Internet is being offered at a ridiculous price.

Galt's 'The Spaewife' 1823

 

First edition - 1823

I must admit, this was the first Galt novel I struggled a little with. I missed his humour and he was clearly not as comfortable in the 15th century as in the late 17th or nearer his own times. As soon as Galt had finished Ringan Gilhaize - a much better book - he started on two new projects, one of which was this Scottish historical novel. It came out in December 1823, in an edition of 3,000. Here is Ian A. Gordon, a well-known writer on Galt:

Writing on the {earlier) centuries, his realistic historical sense deserts him and he is blindly unaware that the genre he has chosen is fancy-dress fiction, sentimental and romantic evocation of history, intrinsically worthless. The error is compounded by dialogue in the language of melodrama...'I do' (says the Countess of Atholl to the Earl) 'by our long cohabitation and faithful love, implore you not to embark on this business'. 

So, what didn't 'click' for me?

• Biblical phraseology - all things being again ordered... Now it came to pass... when they came nigh to... thus it was determined... now it had so chanced... among other events that came to pass, about the epoch of these things whereof recital has been made... Was Galt aiming at a Chronicle in language terms?
• Often bewildering number of characters (too many Stuarts!), not helped by the jumping around of locations in chapters. There's the Duke Robert of Albany; the Regent Murdoch; the Earl of Atholl; Isabella, Duchess of Albany; the Earl of Ross; the Earl of Lennox; Lord Walter, Lord Alexander and Lord James Stuart; Lord Robert Stuart and several others. 
• No character really likeable. In fact, the one who stands out in my memory, who was the bitter, vengeful (successful) pursuer of James I, Sir Robert Graeme, is the most unpleasant of the lot. Lady Sibilla is simply uninteresting. I did like Father Mungo deservedly getting stoned (literally!). King James was a not very convincing figure.
• Purple patches about the scenery and diversions about what an individual was wearing or what a room contained - touches of both John Wilson and Walter Scott.                                                                                                         viz.: It was then the green and pleasant month of May, when the leaves are bright and the waters clear, and the birds, and bees, and blossoms, and butterflies, are all fluttering in the blitheness of the sunshine. Cheerfulness shone on the foreheads of the mountains, and the valley of Strathearn smiled to the gracious Heavens, that were shedding, with a bountiful hand, the treasures of summer into her broad and flowery apron. Or - the hills and woody skirts of the lake were darkened with their own shadows, and hung over the clear depths of the stillness of the sleeping waters below, wherein the glories of the evening sky lay reflected, as if they had been clouds enviously drawn between the world and some marvellous apocalypse of brightness and beauty... the mountain-ash, that holds up his ruby berries amidst the fading woods and fallen leaves, like a young hero who has dyed his sword for the first time in the blood of some renowned warrior...; again - the twice-visiting primrose was seen among the cliffy rocks peeping from her mossy nook, like some pale and timid spinster... Ugh!
• the very irritating 'language'/speaking of Glenfruin - with his repetitive "Sowlls and powdies!" - which was on a par with Scott's Dirk Hatterick in Guy Mannering and Dousterswivel in The Antiquary. At least they were meant to be foreign. Eventually, I skipped over any speech of his longer than a couple of sentences.
• Above all, the nonsense of the Spaewife, Anniple o'Dunblane, a young woman of a wild and uncouth appearance... long matted locks... with her loud and shrill raving of malaisons... who laughs in an eldrich manner. Like an adolescent's pimple, she pops up everywhere - cried a voice at his feet from amidst the bushes on the steep. Totally unbelievable. If Galt was trying to create a similar figure to Scott's gallery of female wierdoes, who were usually much older (Meg Merrilees, Meg and Madge 'Wildfire' Murdockson and Norna of the Fitful Head), then he did not succeed. The stabs at poetry/verse did not help, either. The extracts were as bad as Scott's in so many of his novels.

I am still glad I read the novel, not least because it was next on my long list. However, I much preferred Evan John's portrayal of James I and the other major characters, in his Crippled Splendour (Nicholson & Watson, 1938). They all seemed realistic individuals and more 'alive' - until dead, of course.

Hay-on-Wye. The Book Town

While the cat's away, the mouse will play; so, off I went to Hay-on-Wye - scene of many a book-buying fest in the past. Apart from the mandatory masks in most of the shops, remarkably little had changed. And yet... Hay Castle, dominion of the King (Richard Booth) was shut with scaffolding all over the place. Stella & Rose had gone (back to their H.Q. near Tintern?); the Poetry Bookshop had moved nearer the centre; Addyman's Books and Richard Booth's Emporium seemed inferior to the past. Only the Cinema Bookshop delivered the 'goodies' this time. I always start there, with good parking by the building. 

On this occasion, with plenty of time as I was staying overnight nearby, I went through their 'Books for £1' much more slowly and picked up two bargains.

                       

Philip Magnus biography (1964)                   Richard Mullen biography (1990)

The Magnus book can join the one by Giles St Aubyn: Edward VIII. Prince & King (1979); while Richard Mullen's joins my ever expanding collection of Trollope biographies. Only last week I picked up another Trollope, again for £1, at the Astley Book Farm.

C. P. Snow biography (1975)

I read all the Barchester novels a few years ago - in the 'right' order, of course - and Dr. Wortle's School. It won't be for the last time.

What of the other purchases? A mixed bag. First, several on Napoleon III, a man I have a real 'soft spot' for. I think I have said before - it's his boulevards!

Then, a book to add to my small collection on Smuggling and another on the beautiful river, the Windrush, which flows past one of my favourite spots in southern England - Minster Lovell Hall.

Finally, two oddments - nothing to do with each other or any of the above. Having twice gone round the Museum of the Risorgimento in Rome, I have a great regard for Garibaldi (I like his biscuits, too). I have often wanted to read M. R. James' Ghost Stories (egged on by my esteem for Meade Falkner's The Lost Stradivarius); so, I picked up a cheap Wordsworth edition paperback - and read two that very night.

A good haul, methinks.

Napoleon III: Buffoon, Modern Dictator, or Sphinx?

 

Amberley Publishing - 2018

The Blog's title comes from Samuel M. Osgood's paperback in the Problems in European Civilization that held sway with so many university students in the 1960s; I know, I was one of them. I still have other volumes on The Character of Philip II, The "New Monarchies", Metternich, the "Coachman of Europe".

D.C. Heath and Company - 1963

Osgood's book is a compendium of the various approaches to Napoleon III's character and regime, ranging from Victor Hugo's but a rascal...he has the look of a person who is not quite awake..., to J. M. Thompson's he was a man to be pitied more than to be blamed. I wrote an essay for a Mr. Chorley (I can recollect nothing about him) at the start of my second year at University College, London University, entitled How far did Napoleon III succeed in establishing his avowed aim of restoring social unity to France? Although I gained a B+ for my effort, his comments were fairly critical and they ended with Watch your English. Something I have been trying to do ever since.

I have always had a 'soft spot' for Napoleon III, partly because I have nothing but admiration for the Paris of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Georges Haussmann's transformation of the narrow, winding, gloomy streets into the magnificent boulevards is stupendous and awe-inspiring. The combustion engine has tried hard to destroy the achievement, but has only partially succeeded. Whatever; I have amassed a small selection of books about Napoleon III, both biographical, historical and fiction.

Hamish Hamilton - 1971

Biography and History:

n.d.:   The Prince Imperial. A Short Biography (St. Michael's Abbey Press)

1971: Joanna Richardson - La Vie Parisienne 1852-1870 (Hamish Hamilton)

1972: W.H.C. Smith - Napoleon III (Wayland Publishers)

1973: Edgar Holt - Plon-Plon. The Life of Prince Napoleon 1822-1891 (Michael Joseph)

1978: David Duff - Eugénie and Napoleon III (Wm. Collins, Sons & Co.)

1997: Roger Price - Napoleon III and the Second Empire (Routledge Lancaster Pamphlets)

1999: Fenton Bresler - Napoleon III. A Life (HarperCollins Publishers)

2004: Desmond Seward - Eugénie. The Empress and her  Empire (Sutton Publishing)

2018: Alan Strauss-Schom - The Shadow Emperor. A Biography of Napoleon (Amberley)

                      

Novels:

1905: William Dana Orcutt - The Flower of Destiny. An Episode (A.C. McClurg & Co.)

1906: Ladbrooke Black and Robert Lynd - The Mantle of the Emperor (Francis Griffiths)

1910: Henry de Vere Stacpoole - The Drums of War (John Murray)

1912: Richard Dehan - Between Two Thieves (William Heinemann)

1918: H.C. Bailey - The Pillar of Fire (Methuen & Co.)

1921: Max Pemberton - Prince of the Palais Royal (Cassell and Company)

I aim to read the novels next Spring; I have read some of the non-fiction books and I still have a sneaking regard for Napoleon! He never stopped trying to get to the top and, once there, enjoyed himself.  Eugénie coped as best she could, even after the tragedy of the loss of her son, the Prince Imperial, done to death by the Zulus in far-away southern Africa. I want to visit the family tomb in Farnborough - before it's too late. In the 1990s, a committee of 200 French politicians, writers and historians started to lobby to bring Napoleon's remains back to France. A book by the Gaullist Speaker Philippe Séguin, argued that the emperor had been sadly misunderstood. He modernised and liberalised France, building roads, railways and establishing the first credit unions as a means of furthering industry and encouraging trade. Un bon oeuf. However, first they kicked him out, now they want him back. They haven't succeeded so far and Brexit, hopefully, has put the kibosh on the idea.

Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act

 

Pimlico edition - 2004

I knew very little about the 1832 Reform Act (even less about the 1867 one). Stanley Weyman's Chippinge was an excellent literary taster, the real Malmesbury giving colour to the fictional Chippinge Borough and the Bristol Riots being faithfully portrayed. I had read Edward Pearce's excellent Lines of Most Resistance (The Lords, The Tories and Ireland, 1886-1914) a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed, and learned much about that period of bitter politics in late Victorian and Edwardian times. This book I found heavier going and took over a week to digest it.

Politicians and others queued up to praise it when it first came out in hardback. Gerald Kaufman called it exciting, amusing, and engrossing; Jane Ridley commented on Pearce's lean, incisive prose;  Roy Hattersley - no mean author himself - was nearer the mark suggesting it was a serious book for serious people (i.e. like himself). I occasionally became lost in who was who, often because both Tories and Whigs were split - into diehards, or waverers etc. What Pearce does do is to place firmly under the glass men like the Duke of Wellington, Lords Durham and Brougham, Earl Grey and the more radical Thomas Attwood; he also seems to have got the measure of Sir Robert Peel and John Wilson Croker. I found it harder to pin down Lords Althorp, Melbourne and Palmerston.  Pearce's useful early Chapter on The Cast is a must-read and I returned to it more than once. 

George Cruickshank - The System Works So Well (1831)

In Cruickshank's cartoon, the House of Commons is shown as a water mill. The water wheel bears the names of rotten boroughs. Underneath lies the corpses of the poor, and from the mill pours a stream of benefits of being MPs, which they stuff in their pockets, while praising the system and opposing reform.

As I read on, the more I realised politicians are the same in every generation. Mind you, they are as every other human being - capable of genuine friendship, loyalty, far-sightedness, with certain principles; but, equally, deceitful, out for the main chance, and fully equipped with the Selfish Gene. The major reason, I got bored once or twice with the book was that it appeared to be a tale of 'action replays'. The die-hards  failed to budge, on either side, and the Waverers said one thing on a Monday and another on the Tuesday. Notwithstanding all this, I am glad I persevered as I now know (and understand) much more about the politics of the 1830s - and then there's Ireland and the Irish!

Romilly Lunge in 'The Door with Seven Locks' 1940

 

2014 DVD of 1940 Movie 

Those readers who lived in Ashby from the 1960s to the mid-1990s might remember passing a distinguished-looking, elderly gentlemen on their way along Lower Church Street.

He was Ernest Romilly Maundrell Lunge, better known in the theatre and film world  of the 1930s as simply Romilly Lunge. He made 15 films and appeared in many stage plays between 1933 and 1940. He played a secret agent masquerading as a newspaper journalist in Traitor Spy (1939). Other movies included The Dictator (1935) with Madeleine Carroll and Emlyn Williams; and The Mind of Mr. Reeder (1939) as Inspector Gaylor. His last film was The Door with Seven Locks (1940) with Leslie Banks, based on the 1926 Edgar Wallace novel. One can watch it on DVD, as one can The Clairvoyant (1935), starring Claude Rains and Fay Wray; and Sidewalks of London (1938), with Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison. He remembered Vivien Leigh during rehearsals being quite distracted by her secret liaisons with Laurence Olivier. Hitchcock once interviewed him and they both admitted to being nervous. He learned to sing opera in La Scala theatre in Milan, being trained briefly by Caruso.

He recalled living for a year in Wiesbaden, Germany in the mid-1930s and paying his monthly rent with a briefcase filled with thousands of Reichmarks. From 1941 to 1945, Romilly served in the Royal Navy, working with fine tuning sonar to better detect German U-Boats, once showing Prince Philip the secret research needed to trap the submarines.  Between 1947 and 1966, he set up as a ‘gentleman farmer’ near Austrey, Warwickshire. His mother had moved from London to Ashby and, after she died, Romilly came to live in Lower Church Street, next to the Lyric Rooms (aptly once a short-lived cinema and theatre). He ran Ashby’s only-ever washeteria at No. 17 Market Street and could occasionally be seen in the town. Sadly, he became virtually blind and was eventually housebound. He died on 1^st August 1994, aged 89.

His gravestone, in Ashby Cemetery reads: He was very tall, distinguished in appearance, had an easy and attractive manner and could act with just the right proportion of human interest and emotion.

I bought and watched the DVD  of his last film - The Door with Seven Locks -  which he starred in with Leslie Banks, Lilli Palmer and Gina Malo. I realised afterwards that I should have watched the 16mm-sourced version rather than the 35mm Network transfer onto DVD. It appeared sharper and may well have got rid of the occasional jump in the picture (and dialogue!). The story is average fare, but Romilly does his best; he is tall, moderately handsome and speaks with a splendid upper class accent - the norm for films in those days. The DVD cover says the four heroes/heroines are caught in a terrifying web of deceit, torture and murder... Well, to a certain extent. There were murders, potential torture and plenty of deceit. Terrifying? No.