Alec Marsh's 'After the Flood' 2024

Sharpe Books first paperback edition - 2024

This is the fourth outing for Professor Ernest Drabble and his dipsomaniac hanger-on Percival Harris. This time they are accompanied by Drabble's new wife, Charlotte - who readers of the last escapade will recall. In fact, the Drabbles are on their honeymoon; both Charlotte and this reader would have preferred it if Harris had not been tagging along. However, all the qualities of Alec Marsh's previous thrillers are here - well-researched background (both historically and geographically) conveys the atmosphere of the Istanbul of Atatürk just before the Second World War.  There is a febrile encounter at the famous Hagia Sophia, followed by a break-in at Harris' room back at the hotel. The latter has gone AWOL (in the arms of Yasmin Yildiz, a Turkish woman working for a clandestine group) and, worse, Charlotte also disappears. This is but the beginning of all three of our intrepid honeymooners being drawn into a rather bewildering conspiracy. 

At its heart is a Turkish nationalist general's plan to uncover Noah's Ark from the upper region of Mount Ararat. General Sivilogu wishes to use this discovery to support the return of His Imperial Majesty, Sultan Adbulmejid II  to the Ottoman throne. Atatürk is known to be dying, so Sivilogu aims to exploit the inevitable ensuing power vacuum on behalf of the Sultan. He is supported by a Nazi group led by Major Hauptman and his side kick Captain Bloch, who wish to use the discovery of the Ark for the greater glory of their Führer. There is also another figure working for the same purpose on behalf of Comrade Stalin. Drabble is forcibly made to join Sivilogu's and Hauptman's expedition to the snowy region of Ararat, where he is to use his professorial expertise to prove that any structure found beneath the ice is, in fact, Noah's Ark. Good luck, Carruthers! The author skilfully immixes the various components of the tale - Charlotte's attempts to break out from her confinement; Drabble's inability to escape from duress; Harris' sozzled pursuit of Sivilogu's party. It's all good fun.

However,  the small 'curate's egg' feeling I had from the previous tales, grew somewhat this time. From first to last Harris is either drinking, smoking or being a coward. He also enjoys rutting, although why any sensible female would pursue this escapade with him is hard to comprehend. As early as page 4, he is sitting in his railway cabin pouring himself a broad whisky...next he fished out his pipe and prepared it. By page 15, Harris had taken the top off his first sidecar (basically a Margarita or White Lady with Cognac as its base) of the day and was contemplating lining up a second. He is soon at the  hotel bar and on to his second, then a third. He only slows down as the afternoon tipple might yet knock on into predinner sharpeners... He then gets semi-kidnapped by the girl - his romps in life are usually the result of the fairer sex having ulterior/nefarious designs - and finally meets up with Drabble, haggard but happy...with watery eyes. No wonder an irritated Drabble tells Harris to go and have a drink. Get whammed. That'll help. His vaunting self regard accompanies him through most of his life, except when cowardice takes over. Not for the first time in the series, Harris is captured (with a sack over his head) and subject to torture. His response, once left alone, is to chain-smoke Craven A cigarettes. And so it goes on throughout the book; whenever the author turns to Harris one feels it is with contempt. Did he know someone like Harris in real life?! Quite frankly, the tale would not have lost anything if Harris had stayed at home in England. In fact, I feel it would have been sharper. If there is to be a fifth story, can I plead for 'An Ernest and Charlotte Drabble Thriller'.                                                                                                                                                          

The novel deserves a better level of proofreading. I put a pencilled asterisk in the margin every time I spotted an error and there were far too many. Moreover, I am not sure if it was the proof reader or the printer (Amazon), but there were also too many instances of sentences being truncated on one line and then continuing on the next one.

John Thomas' 'Lloyd of the Mill. A Welsh Story' 1901

 

 Elliot Stock first edition - 1901

This is a morally uplifting (if one wants one's morals uplifted) story about a tiny Welsh hamlet in the mid 19th century. In fact, it was originally written and published in the Welsh language, as a brief comment opposite the title page states: In these pages the Welsh reader will recognise the popular Welsh novel, 'Arthur Lloyd y Felin', by John Thomas, D.D., of Liverpool, done into English, with some additions, by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Owen Thomas. I haven't been able to find out anything about the author, although I wonder if it is the same John Thomas M.A., who wrote To the Angel's Chair. A Story of Ideals in a Welsh Village (Hodder and Stoughton, 1897) - see my Blog of 7th July 2020. Both books are drenched in the non-conformist milieu; The subtitle for this novel is 'The first shall be last and the last first' - which I have always felt slightly unfair on those with initiative. 

Much of the novel is set in Nant, a remote and sequestered spot, in the bosom of a narrow glen...there were not more than a dozen and a half house in the place...all the houses were small, shabby-looking, and straw thatched, except for the mill, the shop and the smithy, all roofed in slate. Or, rather, that was the outward aspect of Nant many years ago; since then it has entirely changed and greatly increased.  Apart from the gossip centres of daily intercourse, the social life revolved around the three non-conformist chapels: the Calvinist Methodists (simply called 'Methodists', for Wesleyan Methodism was then unknown in those parts), whose chapel was called Glyn; the Baptists, with their ancient-looking chapel called Bont (Bridge); and the Congregationalists, or Independents, who were in the majority and worshipped at a chapel called Rhos, due to the land it sat on belonging to Rhos Farm. The parish church was more than three miles away and few besides the clergyman and his sexton gathered there.

The author then regales the reader with rather too many characters to remember and there is a touch of the Scottish kailyard community about them. Little Jones the Tavern, who had opened a day-school in the Baptist Chapel and after a while married the village publican's only daughter, at the same time securing for himself a comfortable home. Morgan Rhys the Shop, a tall, handsome man, calm and taciturn, of considerable ability...his wife wife was a rosy, garrulous little woman, always talking fifteen to the dozen.  They had six children, of whom the eldest Martha eclipsed them all. Siencyn the Shoemaker was a man of strong common-sense, keen and observant. He constantly employed two or three workman and two apprentices, with often an itinerant. Harri Parri the Smith was a lively, cheerful little man. There was nothing he enjoyed more than a racy sermon. Shon Rhisiart the Tailor was a hare-brained, quarrelsome busybody. His wife was a long-headed, cunning, smirking woman. Both were trouble-makers, eavesdropping for gossip; one story concerns their disgrace and departure from the village. Isaac Lloyd the Mill highly respected and esteemed; everyone spoke well of him. He was an influential deacon at Rhos Chapel. He had five children - three daughters and two sons; Arthur was the eldest, and he will be one of the most prominent figures in our story. In fact, a major component of the tale is the love story between Martha Rhys and Arthur Lloyd.

Both Martha and Arthur excel in Little Jones' school and both depart to nearby towns to improve their education. The author uses their stories to show up the girl's devotion to her chapel and faith, but Arthur's semi-backsliding when he goes to take up a job in that wicked Great Wen, London. Here, thousands of bright lives have been ruined, through the public-house, the music-hall and the dancing-saloon. One of the evils running through this very bible-based novel is that of drink. To 'take the pledge' meant you were halfway to Heaven. Arthur unfortunately faltered. The other major youthful character in the tale is Dafydd, son of Mari the Widow Bewitched.  According to Mrs Rhys, he is a wicked boy not fit to be in a school where there are girls. His father, a ne'er-do-well drunk, had absconded to America and had not been heard of since. His bitter mother let him run riot, using disgraceful language and worse behaviour. However, into the village, from the 'north' comes  a Wesleyan Methodist, Robat Eames, who takes up a cobbler's job at Siencyn's. Thanks to his and others' encouragement, Dafydd turns over not just a new leaf but a whole chapter, signs the pledge and becomes an upright member of the chapel. When Martha, whom he secretly but passionately loves, marries Arthur and moves to Essex and, then, his mother dies, he promises the latter that he will try and find his 'lost' father. Caught up in the murder of a gamekeeper (he was totally innocent) he takes ship at Liverpool, engages in several jobs in the USA and finally tracks down his dissolute old man to the west of Chicago. Here they patch things up just before his father dies.

The increasingly overt proselytising in the last third of the story starts to grate with this reader at least. As Arthur Lloyd continues his downward course, thanks to forsaking the chapel and ignoring his devoted and devotional wife (who becomes a Sunday School teacher in Essex) and his two children but consorting with two backsliders who encourage him to frequently consort with them at the local pub; so does Daffyd Thomas make a name for himself in the USA - becoming a partner in an ironmonger's and sticking steadfastly to his pledge. ...in all this Dafyyd 'sinned not'. Indeed, it was then he came upon the kernel of religion; it was then he obtained the promises, the sweetness of consolation, the cherishing warmth of His feathers, the support of the Everlasting Arms. He remembered it was God who had given, and, Godlike, given liberally... he bounces back after the death of his young wife; makes contact with Nant, his home village and even supports Arthur when the latter ends up 'washed-out' with drink in the USA as well. Martha travels over to see her dying husband; increasingly Dafydd and Martha become entwined through their love for their Maker as well as each other. Arthur dies; Dafydd follows Martha over the Atlantic to Nant, convinces the villagers that he is a 'good egg' and he marries Martha and they return to America to live happily ever after. The Last shall be First rather gave the plot away from the very beginning. The final paragraph sums up the author's purpose in writing his homily: Life's experiences had clothed Martha with quiet serenity and dignity. Dafydd thought her a perfect queen, as, with legitimate pride swelling his large heart, he escorted her about among his American friends. She began life afresh with a sense of security in, and reliance upon, the man of her choice. She was now mated to a man who sympathized with her in every particular - whose life and conduct the children might safely imitate; for the very walls of her new home were consecrated by his prayers. There may not have been a barrel of laughs in that family home, but it would be serene.

There is a touch of humour, when the author describes a neighbouring curate, Mr Pugh, making a play for an indifferent Martha - I should rather hear two notes from your lovely throat than a whole anthem from the most musical seraph...do you know what dimples were made for?...to be kissed...may I hope, Miss Rhys, that you will not forget me? To be answered with a crushing retort: I am sorry I can't promise, Mr. Pugh. I have such a wretched memory for faces. 

The major moral of the story is beware of the D.D. - not the author's Doctor of Divinity, but the Demon Drink.

I would not have entitled the novel Lloyd of the Mill, but Dafydd of Henblas; not after the anti-hero but the hero.

In my Blog on To the Angel's Chair, I wrote: This is a powerful book, redolent of its time; the author absolutely gives his all to conveying his message. This rings true for Lloyd of the Mill. It is rather ironic, therefore, to read, scrawled in black ink on the front pastedown the following snappy missive: Dear Mr Cole. In returning some of yr. books with many thanks, I send one I hope you will keep as it will perhaps be more interesting to you than to me.

Eustace Grenville Murray's 'French Pictures by English Chalk' 1878

 

Smith, Elder, & Co. first edition - 1878

I always look forward to receiving the Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers catalogues - they are worth keeping in their own right and I have a considerable archive of them. Their Summer 2024 Catalogue CCLXXI landed in my postbox in August, and amongst many other mouth-watering novels and non-fiction for sale were six works by Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (c.1824-1881). I already had his most well-known three-decker novel The Member for Paris (1871), which was published under the pseudonym Trois-Etoiles, and reading it with some enjoyment (see my Blog of 29 April 2023) inspired me to purchase two of the six on offer. They were Men of the Second Empire (1872) and French Pictures in English Chalk (Second Series) (1878).  This is a Blog on the latter. Only Round About France (1878) is still available - I am tempted. I had hovered over Young Brown (1874), as the critic John Sutherland regarded it as his most interesting work...a savage satire on his own aristocratic background (he was the bastard son of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham & Chandos). However, it was an American first edition - I will wait for the Smith, Elder & Co. first edition. 

Although, after Oxford, Murray joined the Diplomatic Service, he was anything but diplomatic. In 1869, he had been horsewhipped by Lord Carrington for a slander on his father. To avoid a charge of perjury, he left for France, hence the essays and sketches of the next few years - regarded as caustic in manner and incisive in style. In fact the usual words one finds attached to Murray's character and works are scurrilous, scathing, satirical and candour. Whilst in Paris, Murray served as correspondent for the Daily News; contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, the Cornhill, the Illustrated London News, and other English periodicals, as well as to French and American publications. He also wrote for Charles Dickens' Household Words in the early 1850s. The sketches soon appeared under the collective title "The Roving Englishman", which became one of Murray's pseudonyms. Murray stated that his connection with Household Words opened to me a new life and launched him on his journalistic career. He much admired Dickens, referring to him as one of the greatest and kindest public teachers England has ever known.

This collection consists of nine short stories, the longest of which covers fifty-four pages. They are:

• L'Empire c'est la Paix, subtitled The Reminiscences of a Zouave (a class of light infantry linked to French North Africa). Here a young man, having being told that L'Empire c'est la paix, supports Imperialism, only to find it actually means almost permanent conflict. He is drafted unwillingly into the Zouaves and spends the time, when not fighting, thinking of his girlfriend Blanchette and marriage one day. The story is packed with the author's cynicism - one of the beauties of war is that it prepares men for a good many of the civic virtues, by making them splendidly indifferent to the sight of slaughter. Months, years go by. Peace remains elusive. He is regularly promoted - in the Crimea he is made sub-lieutenant  at Alma; lieutenant at Inkerman; then captain. He returns to France to seek out Blanchette, but the shy, rural maiden is no longer; still unmarried she might have been, but she is now an actress in Paris. He goes to the theatre/club where she is the main attraction: that flaunting, dazzling, spangled girl who had not ten ounces of clothing upon her...whose lips were smiling brazenly at the public...  Bah! I have never pronounced the name since.
• Fleur de Lys - this story, set during the Franco-Prussian War in October 1870,  concerns an old Duke (the Duc de Bressac) - a slight, thin-visaged man of about sixty, who walked with a stiff knee and leaned for support on a stick, a French nobleman of that school who have sent the present age to Coventry - and his divinely beautiful daughter. The Prussian army marches in and a detachment is quartered at the duke's chateau. Mdlle Fleur de Lys de Bressac falls heavily for a young Prussian officer, Count Friedrich Leoneizen, of strikingly handsome features, and eyes remarkably intelligent and mild. Then a young cousin of Fleur, the Marquis de Criquetot rolls up. He, too, is in love with her. The latter is chivalric enough to realise his cousin's real love is for the Prussian. So far, it is a fairly anodyne tale of love; however, the war's ebb and flow turns decisively against the ill-clad, ill-organised, ill-armed mobs of recruits on the French side, pitted against science, generalship, and discipline.  The denouement comes with an attack on the chateau itself, led by none other than Leoneizen.. The Duke is hit; his daughter picks up his dropped revolver and...shoots Leoneizen dead. She seizes a tricolour-flag and waves it crying Vive la France! They are falling back! The Prussian bugles were sounding the retreat. The French girl heard them as she dropped, and she breathed her last amid the triumphant cheers of her countrymen, shouting "Victory!". A tragic ending.
• Mademoiselle Viviane  commences with a gathering at the house of Monsieur le Président de Barre, Chief Judge of the Imperial Court of M---.  His only child and heiress, 18 year-old Viviane, was to be formally introduced to her future husband, M. Charles de Niel. Attached would be 500,000 francs. It was Charles de Neil's own father, M. le Président de Niel, Chief Judge in a neighbouring town who had proposed the match. The only two interested persons who had not been consulted were M. Charles and Mdlle. Viviane themselves. The two are introduced to each other; Charles could not takes his eyes off her: she was, in truth, a splendid creature, of a beauty lustrous and warm as the sunny climate of Provence, where she was born, and with eyes so teeming with expression that they seemed to shed light like precious stones...with a voice singularly musical, yet not shy. Alas, it's bad news for Charles. After a dance, she ushers him into the Library where she tells him she can never be his wife. She has to marry one whom she loves - and she has already found him. In just over two years, she will be free to marry whomsoever she wishes - it won't be Charles, who after years of dullness now feels what passionate love can do to a man. He leaves, desperate to discover who this unknown man is. Amazingly he bumps into an old school acquaintance, a dissolute character named Sixte Marjolain. An arrogant revolutionary. And it is he! The following day, Charles revisits Viviane, to warn her that Sixte is altogether unworthy of you. Viviane responded with a laugh full of hatred. disdain and defiance. Too bad. Ten months later, after a failed uprising by radicals in the city, Charles is at home when a haggard, scared trembling wretch gains admittance. It is Sixte, pursued by the government's soldiers. He swears to Charles that in future he will be an honest man and faithful to Viviane. Charles allows Sixte to escape and takes his place. Charles is arrested and shot. Sixte returns to France, under a new name, and marries Viviane. Shades of Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities?  
• The Sceptic is one of the best of the tales. It concerns Madame Aimée d'Arlay, the wife of a famous novelist and playwright, Paul d'Arlay, whose reputation was considerably more than a sceptic: he had been called the successor of Voltaire. He was an atheist of the aggressive sort...The problem? his wife was devoutly religious. He has forbidden her to read his works, which had all been banned by the Papal Index; she summons up enough courage to purchase a set of the Complete Works of Paul d'Arlay from a local bookshop. She reads them all. When Paul returns home from Paris, he finds a transformed woman; from an ardent believer, she has turned into an acolyte of his beliefs. From their rural backwater, the couple take a house in the Champs Elysées. Aimée flew to Paris like a bird uncaged. She togs herself up in the latest fashions and adorns herself with jewelry; she goes to see one of her husband's plays. She visits her young child back in the country just once.  Meanwhile, Paul is at work on a new book, Le Mariage d'Amour. In that book he had poured out his whole heart in pictures of the felicity of tranquil love in wedded life. He hears that his little son has whooping cough; however, his wife decides to attend a Ball instead of going home. The tables have been completely turned: the atheist radical has become a homely husband, the shy religious girl a Parisian airhead. Then, a miracle. Aimée burst in on him while he is composing a letter to her to part from her - she stood on the threshold, hugging her husband's new book to her breast, and looking at him with eyes brimming. "I have read it to the last line...Oh, my darling, let us go back to our home...God is good, and you believe in Him as I do"... 
• The Courtier of Misfortune is a very good example of the author taking direct shots at the corruption that is rife in government and civil service (plus ça change, anyone?). An upright soldier, Captain Jean Coeurpreux, of the 5th Algerian Spahis, is sent to Paris with despatches from Marshal M'Mahon to Marshal Leboeuf. Whilst there, he is invited to the last Ball given at the Tuileries by Napoleon III. He looks around for a girl he had fallen in love with twelve years earlier, when he was a quick-hearted boy of eighteen and she as beautiful as sunlight.  She is now married - as Violette de Cri; he dances (awkwardly) with her, but trips and falls to the ground. He is raised by none other than the Emperor, who recalled him fighting for him at Magenta.  He is also to be given a  prestigious post in Napoleon's regiment of Guides. This sparks an uproar amongst the de Cri Family who, related to the great house of Jobus, were all lined up for placements. The Emperor reigns, but does not rule - never a truer word. Coeurpreux's rivals/enemies manage to sow malicious rumours about him being a Radical and, instead of getting the Guides position, he is sent off to another garrison. Then the Franco-Prussian War explodes. Coeurpreux is the one who brings the news of the defeat at Sedan to the Empress. Three years later, not only has M. de Cri  being killed by the Communists with an accidental bullet but Coeurpreux, now a General, is engaged to be married to his old love, the now widowed Violette. As a loyal Imperialist, he attends Napoleon III's funeral at Chislehurst and pays homage to the Prince Imperial. The story ends with Ceoerpreux being summoned to the new President of the Republic's lodging - none other than his old commander, Marshal M'Mahon. There. he suggests plotting for Napoleon IV!     
• Prince Moleskine's Conspiracy. A slight tale of a spendthrift Russian, Prince Moleskine, having seen all that there was to see in the Capital of capitals (Paris), was about to return to his own country to accept a high post under Government. In fact, he is broke, but there is no such post awaiting him - that is, unless he can get his uncle, Prince Shepskine, to give him one. He butters him up by sending him a few Mayence hams, a Strasburg pie or two, and a case of Château Lafitte. On a farewell walkabout, he runs almost into the arms of a small, dapper man, who was scurrying along at a racing speed with a glass in his left eye, and a large bundle of papers under his arm. He is M. Jean-Jacques Roquet, a radical Republican journalist who is always in trouble with the authorities. Limpet like, he attaches himself to Moleskine and goes with him to Russia. Roquet has his papers confiscated, Moleskine is offered a post in the Cacasus, which he rejects - it's as bad as sending me to Siberia. So they both leave St Petersburg and, five weeks later, they arrive at Moleskine Hall, a dilapidated pile. Three months pass in an uneventful manner; but, Roquet is stirring up the local peasants with his firebrand socialism. They were arrested, taken to St Petersburg, found guilty of conspiring to undermine society, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Prince Moleskine, as being a Minister's nephew, was secretly pardoned and ordered out of Russia. Roquet, imprisoned, cries that Moleskine sold himself to the police. Amongst the general public, however, it is Moleskine who gets the credit for the intended uprising. The plot was to be for evermore known as "Prince Moleskine's Conspiracy".
• Jacques Girard's Newspaper is subtitled The Trials of a French Journalist and revolves around a young man, Jacques Girard, who was sub-editor of a local newspaper, Reveil du Coq. There are two other newspapers in the town of some 100,000 souls - the Ordre, the establishment organ, and the Progrès, which represented the opinions of the advanced Republicans and freethinkers. The founder, proprietor and editor of the Reveil du Coq dies, and Girard manages to borrow enough money to purchase the paper. He then brings it out daily, instead of the previous three days a week.  He has married Pauline Madray, the daughter of the manufacturer who has set up a new factory on the quay. - Madray is a coarse, burly, and gruff-spoken personage who had begin life as a common weaver, and adhered to the language, manners, and dress of mechanics, to prove that riches had not spoiled him. Girard also gets the money necessary to buy his paper from his new father-in-law. Through hard work and skill, he makes the Reveil the paper the city most loved to read at absinthe hour. Then, there's news that one of the Deputies has died. Girard decides to stand for the post. Once again, jiggery pokery ensures he fails and he not only loses the election but also his paper, which was suppressed.     
• Justin Vitali's Client - at the age of 30, Vitali had already achieved a reputation as a learned lawyer and an eloquent pleader...he had the gift of listening...he would plead no causes which he did not sincerely believe to be just...but he had also made himself numerous enemies. One day, he is approached in his chambers by a young lady, Madame Clotilde Displane, who wishes  him to appear for her as she has been accused of causing the death of her elderly friend, Captain Lacroix, who had left him half his fortune, a million francs. Matters look bad when it is discovered that the dead man had laudanum in his body and that Madame Desplans had purchased laudanum from a pharmacy. The "Desplans Poisoning Case" was destined to convulse not only the city of M---, but the whole of France. Vitali, who has fallen deeply in love with her,  was not allowed to see Clotilde until the Juge d'Instruction had finished questioning her.  French procedure isolates a prisoner - cuts them off from all human succour, and leaves them alone with the official inquisitor as a fly with the spider. Due to this ordeal, the young lady 'confessed' to the crime of poisoning. Another blow is to fall on Vitali; Clotilde tells him she is in love with a young engineer, Henri de Barre. At the trial, all remarked the aged look of the brilliant advocate: his shoulders were bent, his face wan and pinched. Thanks to his brilliant defence, culminating in two hours without notes, Clotilde is found not guilty; de Barre congratulates Vitali. The story ends when the beadle of the Church of St Gudule is about to lock up and when he notices a stranger in one of the lateral chapels, who was kneeling and sobbing like a child. It was Justin Vitali.
• A romance by Rum-Light is the shortest of the stories and is about an Englishman, John Brokenshire, who comes down to stay with French friends at Toulon whilst dealing with a contract for supplying a transport ship with tinned meat. He was a dry man, with a cold blue eye that repelled people of the begging sort. He never gushed with sentiment, as we Frenchmen do; and he seldom made promises, but when he did he kept them...imagine  the lankiest of men, with cheek-bones the hue of red-currant jelly, a hay-coloured beard flowing over his waistcoat, a grey tweed suit delved about with deep pockets fore and aft...This Christmas, he brings presents for the French family but tells the mother Noémie Leblanc that she cannot open her small square parcel whilst the others are opening theirs. Finally, she is allowed to. It is the official pardon for her husband who, having got mixed up in the doings of the Commune, had been exiled to New Caledonia. Well done, Mr. Brokenshire, who has used his contacts to procure the pardon!

Lewis Grassic Gibbon's 'Cloud Howe' 1933

 

Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw Library' paperback edition - 1937

Of course,  I am reading the author's famous Scots Quair in quite the wrong order. Last Summer, I read the final book in the trilogy, Grey Granite (see my Blog of 23 June 2023) and had mixed feelings about it. I recall that I was slightly unsettled by the unfamiliar (was it 'poetic'?) syntax used, as well as the strange - to me - Scottish words that kept popping up. 'Grey granite' was a term applied to Ewan Tavendale, the son of the main character of all three books, Chris Guthrie/Tavendale/Colquohoun, The focus swerved towards him rather than his mother and I had no sympathy with his humourless, left-wing activism. Now I have read the second novel in the trilogy, Cloud Howe, I can see his character germinating from his very early teens.

The story focuses on Chris Colquohoun's 'middle years'. She has left the farming background of the fictional estate of Kinraddie in The Mearns and after a brief widowhood - her husband Ewan Tavendale Snr. died in the Great War - has married the Revd. Robert Colquohoun. They have moved, with young Ewan, to the small borough of Segget, which stood under the Mounth, on the southern side. Above lies the ruins of Kaimes, that was builded when Segget was no more than a place where the folk of old time had raised up a camp with earthen walls and with freestone dykes, and had died and had left their camp to wither under the spread of the grass and the whinns. It is an eerie place, often covered in mist or smothered in rain, with a history, part fiction part fact. Chris' second husband is not an easy man to live with: sometimes a black, queer mood came on Robert, he would lock himself up long hours in his room, hate God and Chris and himself and all men, know his Faith a fantastic dream; and see the fleshless grin of the skull and the eyeless sockets at the back of life.

The author's often powerful prose is suffused with poetry, with deeply-felt descriptions of the countryside and its seasons and, most compellingly, with a variety of three-dimensional characters. Every so often, I felt a breath of George Douglas Brown's The House with the Green Shutters (1901) and John Galt's The Provost (1822) - the former for its coruscating attack on Kailyard 'life', the latter for his mischievous humour. The Colquohouns have taken over from an old minister, who had died of drink, fair sozzled he was, folk said, at the end; and his last words were, so the story went, 'And what might the feare's prices be today?'...Ah well, he was a dead and a two-three came to try for his pulpit, more likely his stipend...Unfortunately for Segget, the Revd. Colquohoun was to preach meaty and strong and preached with some fire... Not surprisingly, his popularity waned quickly.

Half of the Segget folk worked at the mills - the spinners, as the rest of Segget called them; the others kept shops or were joiners or smiths, folk who worked on the railway, the land, the roads and the gardens of Segget House. There was wee Peter Peat, the tailor, who was the biggest Tory in the town, the head of the Segget Conservative branch, and an awful patriot, keen for blood...ready to kill you and eat you forbye, and running his tape up and down your bit stomach as though he were gutting you and enjoying it. Will Melvin kept the only hotel, the Segget Arms, he'd a face like a cat, broad at the eyes, and he'd spit like a cat whenever he spoke; he aye wore a dickey and a high, stiff collar and a leather waistcoat, and leggings and breeks...he had married late in life, an Aberdeen woman, right thin and right north, she kept a quick eye on the bar and the till. Rob Moultrie had once been the saddler of Segget...and as coarse an old brute as you'd meet...though a seventy years old and nearing his grave....he couldn't abide the sight of the gentry, or the smell of the creatures either, he said, and that was why he was Radical still. Old Leslie was maybe a fair good smith: he was sure the biggest old claik in Segget. He'd blether from the moment you entered his smiddy. One of the best defined characters was his son, Sim Leslie, the policeman. Folk called him Feet, he'd feet so big he could hardly coup...his feet had fair a sure grip on Scotland. There was also MacDougall Brown, the postmaster, who preached every Sabbath in the open air at the town's Square - he wasn't Old Kirk and he wasn't of the Frees, he wasn't even an Episcopalian, but Salvation Army, or as near as damn it. There he'd be, with his flat, bald head, and beside him his mistress, a meikle great sumph, she came from the south and she mouthed her words broad as an elephant's behind...

These were just some of the characters the Colquohouns had to deal with. And then there were the spinners. The worst of the lot were the Cronins, fair tribe of the wretches. The worst of the breed was young Jack Cronin  - he worked as a porter down at the station...him and his socialism and the coarse way he had of making jokes on the Virgin Birth; and the sneering at Jonah in the belly of the whale; and saying that the best way to deal with a Tory was to kick him in the dowp and you'd brain him there; so, when the upheavals that led up to the General Strike descended on Segget, he was at the forefront of any disruption. The other side of the coin was represented by Stephen Mowatt, resident at the big house and owner of the Segget mills. He'd a face that minded Chris of a frog's, with horn-rimmed spectacles astride a broad nose, and eyes that twinkled. His English accent made him say Oh, thenks! and I say! and How Jahly! He will be the butt of the author's political slant for the rest of the novel - castigated for his role in ensuring the General Strike failed and forever playing the capitalist swine. When Jack Cronin decides to call it a day and move to Glasgow to join the middle classes, he, too, is caustically appraised.  

The author's humour, rarely downright malicious, and then usually only aimed at the gentry, saved the novel for me. The story of the dead pig in a wife's bed and the drunk husband only realising the fact when a lantern is brought and then saying: Well, then, I'm damned. Man, but it fair looked her image to me, was well told. I have yet to read Sunset Song, the first of the trilogy, regarded as a classic and voted Scotland's favourite book in a 2005 poll supported by the Scottish Book Trust. That will have to wait until I can track down the Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition. I realise that if I was a Scot and a socialist, I would be even more whole-hearted in my praise of the two I have read. But I am neither.

John Macadam's 'The Reluctant Erk' c.1942

 

Jarrolds' Jackdaw Library paperback edition - c.1942

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Jarrolds had already started the first of their new series of paperbacks, under the title Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Crime series. These continued until 1940, with No. 16,  Moray Dalton's The Stretton Darknesse Mystery being the last published. However, most publishers continued to bring out paperbacks for the Armed Forces, on very cheap, fragile paper. Penguin had their Forces Book Club, which issued a series of 120 paperbacks between October 1942 and September 1943. I have a lovely copy of John Meade's Falkner's The Nebuly Coat, published in July 1943. The ten sent out that month included E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and Evelyn Waugh's Put Our More Flags. Strangely, although Penguin was the first to bring out such paperbacks, its Forces Book Club was a miserable failure and, when it ended in September 1943, the publisher was left with significant quantities of unsold stock.

Jarrolds, too, brought out a few paperbacks in their 'Jackdaw' Library. Few survive for obvious reasons, but my copy of The Reluctant Erk is as new. On the back cover, it reads: This edition is produced for the SERVICES CENTRAL BOOK DEPOT Artillery House, Handell Street, London, W.C.I for circulation to the FIGHTING FORCES OF THE ALLIED NATIONS. On the bottom it states, HIS BOOK MUST NOT BE RE-SOLD. There were only around half a dozen other titles published in the series, as far as I can gather, one being Ethel Mannin's Women Also Dream. I have not been able to track any of them down.

What of John Macadam's (autobiographical?) reminiscences of his time as an R.A.F. Erk? I had never heard of the word, so I turned to the Imperial War Museum's excellent website. An Erk was the R.A.F's equivalent of the Army's 'Tommy'. All airmen below NCO status were Erks, and the title embraced men of all trades and occupations. Wikipedia states the term is short for aircraftman, an old R.A.F. nickname originating in the Great War, which started out as airk. So, there we are. The author has sensibly supplied a Glossary at the back of this slim paperback (just 126 pages long), which may not have been necessary to the servicemen reading his book in the War, but is very helpful to the modern - ignorant - reader. Apparently, Charlie and George were names given by Corporals to every Erk; whilst Blue was the other ranks' uniform. Thus, working-blue and best-blue.

Although, the brief reminiscences were not really my usual  'type' of reading, I must admit I quite enjoyed the author's account of the trials and tribulations of an Erk, which he accompanied with lashings of Service humour. From the very beginning, when twelve hundred erks on parade in the early morning stiffly conscious of their creased uniforms and the weight of the stuffed kit-bags and the biting packs; stomachs distended after the excited rush of breakfast...the bawling of drill corporals from the other drill grounds comes to them on the morning air. They tilt their ears to it, attentively, like animals scenting danger...to the last chapter, where the onetime Erk becomes a 'gentleman' and makes his way from the railway station to the Officers' School, the author keeps up one's interest. There is a marvellous range of 'characters' (I kept thinking of Sergeant Bilko - that dates me! - and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum). The Actor - a good-looking cove and dead West-end, even in his working blue. He had his missus starch his collars and send them on to him and he used to get one of the erbs (aircraftman) to shine his boots. As far as I could see, all the erb got out of it was an autographed photo; Shino - who spent his time polishing his buttons, morning, noon and night; Titch - the smallest, littlest bloke I ever did see inside a uniform, and he had the biggest eyes...big, brown things, like at Saint Bernard's, that seemed too heavy for his face, which was thin, bony and white. When he moved his eyes it looked like a big physical effort. They slewed round; Young Izzy, with a PLAN - to become the Camp barber, but got killed in a German air-raid.

Above all, there was the Sarnt (sergeant), who shouted in Capital Letters - YOU LEANING AGAINST THE WALL. GET OFF THAT WALL BEFORE I PUSH IT OVER ON YOU. ..You're going for your inoculations. NEVER MIND WHAT AGAINST...THERE'S NOTHING TO FEEL SCARED ABOUT..(Fond memories of Battery Sergeant Major Williams in It Ain't Half Hot Mum!). One chapter commenced: The argument was all about Sarnts. Funny thing, but when you get a bunch of erks together they're either talking about women or grub or sarnts, which about the only things they have any time to think about apart from their jobs.

One of the stories which I fondly recall is that entitled 'Madame'. The author, Titch, Bluey and the Actor are asked to visit 'an old dear' living in a big house all alone with a 'butler cove' waiting to meet and greet them. In conversation, they established she was once a famous opera singer. Apparently, she had suddenly ended her career (she had been the lead role in Carmen) on her husband's death in a mountaineering accident, and not sung a note since. The four Erks revisit and Bluey gives her a present - a small model of Carmen. The old lady leaves the room and they hear in the distance the sound of a piano being played and 'Carmen' being sung, like an angel...the butler cove's eyes are still popping out of his head and a big tear's streaking down his cheek. The lady returns to the room, saying "It came back only for a moment".

Matthew Richardson's 'The Scarlet Papers' 2023

 

Penguin paperback edition - 2023

This is the second novel my daughter gave me for my birthday in June and I saved it for holiday reading in Spain. To use an old-fashioned term, it is a bit of a blockbuster, running as it does to 575 pages, with a further five devoted to its source material. Even the author calls it a monumental project. However, I found it an 'easy read', in that the style was fluent with an excellent narrative drive to it. I am not surprised the author studied English at Durham University and Merton College, Oxford. The list of brief (extracted) comments on the covers of the paperback were uniformly (and inevitably) positive - Hugely impressive and compelling:  William Boyd; A breathtaking thriller. A classic in the making:  Peter James; A shot in the arm for thriller fans: The Times (in fact it was that paper's 'Thriller of the Year' in 2023) - but I totally concur.

Max Archer, Associate Professor of Intelligence History at the London School of Economics (BA MPhil Cantab, PhD Harvard), is sent an old-fashioned calling card, like a prop from a period drama, to go to a house in Holland Park. It is in the name of Scarlet King. She was a legendary, almost mythical name in the intelligence community. Once upon a time, she'd been the top Russian expert at MI6 and even lined up to be the first female Chief. There was no public photograph of her...she was that tantalizing thing for all intelligence historians: a real-life ghost. He is met at the door by a petite woman of indeterminate age - thirtyish, perhaps, though with an older, weathered air about her. Even though Max had been told to Dry-clean thoroughly, and he had glanced into shop windows, doubled back and turned suddenly into side streets, he had failed to spot the A4 watchers on the top floor of the stuccoed house opposite. The watchers uploaded photos of Max, cross-referenced his facial features against MI5's internal database, confirmed the target name with Thames House and vacated the property. Operation Tempest was officially in motion.

Max is ushered into a sitting room, where there was a large flat-screen, iPads and laptops strewn around, the detritus of the twenty-first century. Then a small, elderly figure sitting in the middle of it all. Scarlet King looked like an anomaly in a high-backed chair by the coffee table, a leftover from a previous century. Thus begins an enthralling tale, which cross references between 1946, 1964, 1992 and 2010. It is the story of treachery, blackmail, spying and other nefarious practices and involves both fictitious and real-life people. Scarlet 'interviews' Max - her voice was stronger than he predicted...she smiled now. It was a spymaster's smile. The smile charmed while exploiting It had a venomous sincerity, like a weapon, teasing out secrets. Few were ever fully immune.

Scarlet soon reveals that she knows all of Max's 'secrets' - his childless marriage; his wife getting a divorce to marry her lover, whose baby she is carrying; his treadmill existence marking undergraduate essays while earning less than most of his former students; and the fact that he failed to become a spy himself still rankling. Scarlet hands him some scans of a diary or notebook - it is her Memoir, which breaks the Official Secrets Act. She wants Max to publish it: Welcome to the secret world. Do you roll the dice or do you walk away? Is this gold dust or chicken-feed? She also tells Max that she has been a double-agent, spying for her actual homeland. Her real name is Colonel Anastasia Chekova and she worked for the NKVD as a so-called illegal operating within the British Empire. As another character says later in the book, She makes the Cambridge Five look like schoolboys. The reader is only on page 24 of a 573 page novel, but the rest of the story, with its twists and turns, its time travel over 60 years, stems from this. Max manages to stay (just) a step ahead of the British spy service - thanks to the help of the petite woman of indeterminate age, who turns out to be a skilful Israeli agent. On the way, the story takes in the real life Kim Philby as well as Gordon Lonsdale (Konon Moldy); Sir Anthony Blunt (Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures); Anatoliy Golitsyn, Oleg Gordievsky, Sergei Skripal, Maurice Oldfield, and the U.S. traitor, Aldrich Ames.

One interesting fictitious figure is Scarlet's 'aunt', Maria Kazakova, a White Russian who sought refuge in England after the Revolution. She taught at Oxford for most of her life. More patriotic than the British. In fact, she is Scarlet's 'handler' and responsible for recruiting others to spy against the British. 

So, Miss Scarlet King of Baker Street and the Secret Intelligence Service was really Colonel Anastasia Chekova of Directorate S of the KGB. Or was she? There are two huge 'twists' at the very end of the novel, neither of which I saw coming, and I am not going to reveal them! Matthew Richardson holds the reader's attention throughout, through all the twists and turns. Max was tasked with discovering the 'truth'. But what was the truth?

George Goodchild's 'Return to Eden' 1929

 

Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937

After the rather depressing novels set between the Wars which I have read recently in the 'Jackdaw' Library series - Rupert Croft-Brooke's Night Out and Ethel Mannin's Crescendo - it has been a relief to turn to George Goodchild's story. Goodchild (1888-1969) appears to have been a fascinating character. He started his career in publishing, working in turn for Dent, Jarrolds and Allen & Unwin. He edited volumes of poetry and anthologies and wrote short stories and articles for magazines. He was also music critic for the Saturday Review and Outlook. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery during the Great War and took part in the Battle of the Somme. He soon became a Lieutenant/ Acting Captain but was wounded, shell-shocked and gassed and repatriated to England. His editing of anthologies included England, My England, a War anthology (1914); The Blinded Soldiers' and Sailors' Gift Book (1915); Battle Poems and Patriotic Verse (1915); and Made in the Trenches (1916).

During a writing career of over 60 years, Goodchild had four pseudonyms: Wallace Q. Reed, Jesse Templeton, Manda McGrath and Alan Dare. It was under the latter name that he published Return to Eden in 1929, but with the title Body and Soul. In fact, I think that title is even more apt, as the story involves a young artist, Paul Stafford, searching for peace and a philosophy of life after serving in the War - recently he had come out of a sea of trouble (not only the hideousness of the Western Front, but the loss of a sister and mother in quick succession) into a haven of rest, and he desired nothing better than to dream a little longer.

He travels through France to the Côte d'Azur and books a sunny room in a hotel in Mentone. Here he meets Colonel Roppe (also once of the Royal Garrison Artillery) whose chief hobby was to visit Barclay's Bank three or four times a day and gamble on the exchange rates. There was also a wife and a daughter, Virginia, but to expect any intelligent conversation from the Roppe family was asking too much. Stafford starts to paint again but also decides to visit the halls of dazzling light, Monte Carlo's casinos. Here he eventually meets a strange personage. It was the girl who on his first visit had staked against the eleventh red, and won....he judged she was about twenty-two, and of fairly good upbringing. They bond over saving an injured pigeon and she tells him that she has a small son, Michael, but her young husband had been killed in Flanders one day before the Armistice. Their bond deepens and when Stafford decides to rent a villa, Yvonne agrees to become his housekeeper. Inevitably, they fall in love, she body and soul, he certainly body but does not address his 'soul'. 

At the same time, a very wealthy Russian ex-patriot, who has fled the Revolution with enough jewels to live an ostentatious and wealthy lifestyle as a Russian Crœsus, desires to purchase one of Stafford's painting. Thus, the latter is drawn, unwillingly, into Serge Petroff's world, which includes his sultry cousin Lydia Kopki - a tall Russian girl with eyes like Chloe. She had that far-away look that is so characteristic of her type, a long but delicately moulded neck, and perfect arms. [Stafford] could have formed an opinion of almost all the rest of her anatomy, for there was little to conceal it. Serge buys a painting and Lydia poses nude for Stafford, much to Yvonne's disgust.

The South France idyll is shattered when Stafford decides, in his wanderlust way, that he wants to travel on to Switzerland, but not before, at last, Yvonne sleeps with him and is allowed to destroy the painting of Lydia. He spends the forthcoming summer avoiding the vast tribes of tourists round about the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn but, as winter approached, he decides to join the 'mob' in an hotel in Grindelwald. Here he meets Catherine Ryder, the daughter of the Dean of Portchester Cathedral.  Her beauty entrances him and they get on well enough for him to return to England, visit her parents (a great pen portrait of her father - dark and lean and aristocratic. As an orator he was magnificent, but as a preacher he was a failure) and marry Catherine. It soon proves a major error. The last hundred pages describe the unravelling of their marriage; a disastrous decision to go to the Riviera where they meet up with Yvonne (now married to Stafford's old friend McBride), Serge and Lydia; their mutual decision to separate; more, rather aimless, wandering by Stafford. McBride, alerted to Yvonne's previous attachment to Stafford by a vengeful Lydia, casts her adrift. Like a cork on a turbulent sea, Yvonne floated among the human flotsam of the Riviera. The storm had passed and left her bruised and battered at heart...like Stafford, she had taken the lone road, but with a heavier heart than he. 

I mustn't spoil the ending; suffice it to say that body and soul reunite. The last few chapters are written in an almost poetic style, with deeply felt feelings by Stafford and Yvonne (and the author?) Stafford finds not only his true love again but also his Soul. Reason! This reason which we rate so highly is but a limited thing. It cannot live in the blinding light of reality. Art! That, too, is not the uttermost. Its value lies in the joy it gives, not in itself. There is something beyond and above - something yet veiled, but willing to be revealed to him who finds the key. The Times Literary Supplement judged the novel a vivid though quietly recording pen. I feel the better for having read it and wish the fictitious Paul Stafford and Yvonne D'Indy a wonderful life together. It is an Eden they return to. They certainly deserved it!

G.P.R. James' 'Forest Days. A Romance of Old Times' - 1843

 

 Saunders and Otley first edition - 1843

Good old G.P.R.; he has done it again - given me a few hours of pleasure wallowing in the past. This time he has set a novel in the days of Henry III, just prior to, and after, the Battle of Evesham. Of course, one has to swallow hard occasionally when the author embarks on yet another purple passage (he was often mocked for this by contemporary critics). Here is his opening paragraph:

Merry England! - Oh, merry England! What a difference has there always been between thee and every other land! What a cheerfulness there seems to hang about thy very name! What yeoman-like hilarity is there in all the thoughts of the past! What a spirit of sylvan cheer and rustic hardihood in all the tales of thy old times! Certainly, the printer's compositor must be worrying about using up all his exclamation marks too soon.

However, we then plunge into the tale itself, commencing in a well-described country inn, surrounded by medieval rustics but each with individual characteristics. We meet flirtatious Kate Greenly serving a man in the garb of a countryman...his form had that peculiarity which is not usually considered a perfection, and is termed a hump...his legs were stout and well turned, his arms brawny and long, his chest singularly wide for a deformed person, and his grey eyes large, bright, and sparkling...his nose was decidedly the point of the epigram, standing out a sort of sharp apex to a shrewd, merry ferret-like face. There he sat, sopping his bread in the contents of his jug...Not for long. In comes the villain of the book, toying with Kate, the landlord's daughter. The peasant sums him up: if his heart be as black as his face...Well, it is. He is Richard de Ashby, kinsman to the Earl of Ashby. After a fracas, the 'peasant' departs, into the nearby greenwood. He will appear intermittently throughout the tale - sans hump -, as Robert of the Lees, aka the legendary Robin Hood. Both Kate, who leaves her local yeoman lover for Richard de Ashby and a time of absolute misery, and Robin are  going to be the downfall of de Ashby. The latter sustains his vileness throughout: he never prayed: the blessed influence even of an imperfect communion with Heaven never fell like the summer rain upon his heart, softening and refreshing. The idea of his dependence upon Providence, or his responsibility to God, would have been far too painful and cumbersome to be daily renewed and encouraged by prayer. He was one of the idolaters; and the god of his heart was himself.

James places a considerable part of his tale in the forest to the north of Nottingham: no forest contained more to interest or to excite than that of merry Sherwood - comprising within it self, as the reader knows, a vast extent of very varied country, sweeping round villages, and even cities, and containing, in its involutions, many a hamlet, the inhabitants of which derived their sustenance from the produce of the forest ground. Here Robin reigns supreme, even if it is in Henry III's reign and not the usual earlier period of King John. These scenes are contrasted with the gaiety, but also the treachery and deceit, of the Court. The author's portraits of the vacillating Henry III; the troubled, but awe-inspiring Simon de Montfort; the chivalric Prince Edward and his cherished wife Eleanor; the solid and, essentially, moral earls of Ashby and Monthermer, are well-drawn and life-like. If there is a heroine, it is Lucy de Ashby, who provides the necessary love story with the undoubted hero, Hugh de Monthermer, only nephew of the earl of Monthermer. and presumptive heir to his title and estates.

Other passages of note are the description of the Battle of Evesham and its aftermath; the scenes between Hugh and Prince Edward; and the denouement of the story at the projected to-the-death tournament between Alured de Ashby (Lucy's brother) and Hugh de Monthermer. James keeps control of his quite convoluted tale throughout, bringing in a gallery of minor supporters as well as the genuinely historical and fictitious main characters.   It is truly, as the subtitle proclaims, A Romance of Old Times.

Left in my James' 'locker' are Arabella Stuart 3 vols. (1844); Russell 3 vols. (1847); and The Cavalier (1859). I look forward to reading all three later in the autumn. And then?  I have my eyes on another dozen, all in three volumes, to purchase; that is, at an affordable price and only in first editions.