Finch Mason's 'The Tame Fox and Other Sketches' 1897

 

Hurst and Blackett first edition - 1897

'Don't judge a book by its cover' is a well known aphorism; but in this instance I should not have succumbed to the title. The Tame Fox turned out to be but the first chapter of nineteen and a mere dozen pages at that. In fact, if there was a common theme it was that of fox-hunting and a variety of personages involved in that 'sport'. Some of the stories had already appeared in the pages of several magazines and journals - to whit, Baily's Magazine, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, County Gentleman and Finch Mason's Annual - between 1895 and 1896. George Finch Mason (1850-1915), the son of an Eton schoolmaster, was a sporting artist, author and illustrator, specialising in humorous studies and caricatures. In fact, these days he is better known for his prints of fox hunts and race meetings than for his fiction. Prints of his sell for a considerable amount of money. He also worked for Punch magazine.  His books included Humours of the Hunting Field (1886), Tit Bits of the Turf (1887), The Flowers of the Hunt (1889), My Day with the Hounds (1890), The Run of the Season (1902) and Gentlemen Riders Past and Present (1909). He also edited Fores's Sporting Notes and Sketches, a quarterly magazine which ran from Volume I in 1884-5 until just before the Great War.

So, rather to my dismay, the fox merely figured as the prey of the Hunt and, only in that very first chapter, was it accorded the sympathy I was looking for. It was an unoriginal story of a tame fox, Slyboots, escaping from his mistress for the wild. It is told in the first person by her prospective partner, who has been getting increasingly downhearted as Skyboots appears higher in the pecking order than himself. Did I feel like having Foxyphobia?, he posits. Certainly, he is hard at it five and six days a week with the local Hunt when the pet vanishes. Miss Violet Goldthread's reaction? Fainting-fit on the spot, with hysteria to follow at intervals throughout the day, her butler informs the eventual hero. He manages to forestall a digging operation by the Hunt whippers to extract the cub from a drain. As a result, the loveliest of her sex has consented to be mine (a gold-mine, ha, ha!)

As for the other eleven 'sketches', I can see why they would appeal to the horse racing fraternity - of both sexes. Perhaps not so much to a vulpine audience (Fox News?). They are very much of the period, the 1890s (and why shouldn't they be) and are 'dated' in several ways. That, however, adds to their charm. Chapters include the wheeze of exchanging a squire's thoroughbred horses for local nags, lent by supportive tenantry, to fool sheriffs who were coming to seize his entire stable. The bailiffs went away empty-handed but probably the wiser. Mr. Burlington Bellamy, the millionaire from Manchester,  may have fallen head over heels with pretty Laura Lightfoot, but got nothing but chaff, and plenty of it, in return for his devotion. Instead Mrs. Kitto, (Kittums) the lively but impecunious widow, takes advantage of Burlington getting lost with her during a Hunt in Skelperdale Forest and convinces him, with artful strategies, that she is the right one. In Angels on Horseback, the Master of the Foxhounds, Mark Bramble, the popular young Master but confirmed bachelor,  meets his match in the pick of the bevy of ladies on the Hunt, Queen Mab, who has been waiting long for 'Mr. Right'. He comes to her aid when she faints after her horse just manages to clear a ragged fence to land in a gravel pit. I do not know how many kisses had been impressed upon her lips by that confirmed bachelor Mark Bramble, Esq., M.F.H., to the great edification of the field. On coming round and hearing loud cheering, Queen Mab asks what is the matter, and he told her, and she did not mind a bit. "They know who I'm going to marry now, don't they, dear Mark?"

Tubby, or not Tubby (how very Shakespearian), concerns one John Daventry, nicknamed on account of his rotundity, for all the world like a beer-barrel... his round-turned legs were the shortest of the short, and he could not stick on [a horse] at any price. Hearing that he had entered the Tallyho Steeplechase on his brown gelding Saucy Boy, he is mercilessly chaffed by the locals; in particular, by a hated rival Captain Bustard, late of the Queen's Roans, an undeniably fine horseman. A large wager is placed between them. On the day of the race, poor Tubby and his nag look also-rans up against the Captain and his chestnut mare, Lady of the Lake. However, Bustard is beaten by Tubby, who has hung on throughout. How? He had been strapped on!

I quite enjoyed the sketch The Lady at the Dragon. Young Lord Blythebury, just come of age, marries out of the county one Miss Violet Vollaire, the lovely and dashing equestrienne at Jingler's well-known circus, thereby nearly breaking his noble and venerable father's heart. Nothing more is known of their whereabouts, but considerable excitement was caused when a young, vivacious lady puts up at the Red Lion, with six horses and a pony, for the avowed purpose of hunting with Lord Harefield's hounds. This Miss Wilton - "one of the most charming and well-bred girls it has ever been my lot to meet", declared the Rev Frank Simpson - turns up for the opening day of the season at Harefield Place. She ends up riding with the Earl and a couple of others and is there to take charge when the noble lord falls off his horse when it failed to clear a brook. The earl comes round and in a faint voice, says he is dying and that his son must be sent for. Miss Wilton not only promises, but adds, "I will send for him myself. I am his wife".

Waldo Hilary Dunn's 'R. D. Blackmore' 1956

Robert Hale first edition - 1956

I have had Kenneth Budd's brief biography of R. D. Blackmore for some years and quoted from it in my Blog (20 June 2024) on Cripps the Carrier. Recently, I found out that a more substantial biography had been written by the American author, Waldo Hilary Dunn, well-known in the first half of the 20th century for his history of biography in the UK and his own biographies of Froude, Carlyle and George Washington. An admirer of Blackmore for over fifty years, his work is very much a 'labour of love'. Dunn collected over 600 of the author's letters, covering all phrases of his life, as well as valuable reminiscences from friends and relatives. I was particularly drawn to a comment Dunn made in the first Chapter, entitled A Personal World. When I first read Lorna Doone I knew nothing whatever of the author's life. Always, however, when reading a book that appeals to me powerfully and intimately, I begin wondering what manner of man wrote it. What is the inner nature of the man from whom the work came? Is there any relation between the mind of the author and the manner of his expression? The next step is clear. I simply must know, for my own satisfaction, all that can be known about the author... A man after my own inclination. As a teacher of History, I used to say to my students, Know the Historian before his History. With fiction, so much of the best of it is based on the personal experiences of the author - they live through their work. R. D. Blackmore's intimate acquaintance with Nature, and his regular descriptions of natural scenery were not there just to adorn his pages, but revelations of the texture of his mind. He was the very incarnation of England and may well be regarded as John Bull, with all of John's virtues, idiosyncrasies, stubbornness, kindliness, gentleness, touchiness, aloofness, provincialism, patriotism, with a gentle tolerance which enabled him pretty well to understand his fellow creatures of whatever clime or race.

The next eleven chapters give a detailed account of Blackmore's life, from his birth on 7 June 1825 until his purchase of land in late 1857/early 1858 at Teddington, twenty-one miles to the south west of the heart of London, to set up a market gardening business. Born at Longworth, Berkshire, Blackmore lost his mother before he was four months old; for the next six years he was looked after at Newton Nottage in Glamorganshire by his maternal grandmother, and at Elsfield Rectory, just a dozen miles from his birthplace, where his aunt Mary Gordon and her husband the Rev. Richard Gordon lived. His father had accepted the curacy of Culmstock in East Devon and remarried - Charlotte Platt - in 1831. Blackmore and his brother Richard now moved to be with their father again. So strong a hold did the region take a hold upon Blackmore that he always regarded himself as a West Countryman. In everything, except the accident of birth, I am a Devonian. In 1835, Rev John Blackmore became curate at Ashford. For several years, Blackmore moved between family connections in Devon, and these memories were later put to good use in Lorna Doone, Perlycross and other tales. Holidays took him to the Glamorgan coast, which also took a strong hold on him, as evidenced by The Maid of Sker (which I will be reading next).

Aged twelve, Blackmore was sent to Peter Blundell's School (founded in 1604) at Tiverton. Although occasionally bullied, he was popular with his peers and remembered his school with affection. He acquired, and maintained, a particularly high standing in Greek and Latin whilst he enjoyed exploring the countryside along the boundary between Somerset and Devon. He matriculated as a member of Exeter College, Oxford in November 1843 and proceeded to the B.A. degree in December 1847. He applied himself pretty closely to his studies. His feelings for the city and its colleges can be gleaned from Cripps the Carrier and Cradock Nowell. After Oxford, Blackmore turned to the Law, being admitted to the Middle Temple, London as a student in January 1849. Aspects of his life there can be found in Alice Lorraine. Called to the Bar in June 1852, for the next five years he practised as a conveyancer. Apparently, he abandoned the profession due to ill-health, which included epileptic seizures (again one can experience this in his novel Clara Vaughan). He wedded Lucy Maguire in November 1853, and they remained happily married until her death on 3 February 1888. They were exactly suited to each other, loving quiet and seclusion, but for the last twenty years of her life she was a half-invalid - my wife, who never knows a moment free from pain (except in sleep)...

Blackmore's favourite uncle, Rev Henry Hey Knight, Rector of Neath in Glamorganshire, died on 30 September 1857. His nephew was left a considerable bequest; so much so that he was able to purchase a sixteen-acre plot and, by 1860, complete the construction of a plain but substantial home, Gomer House (Gomer was the name of a favourite dog). For the next forty years, Blackmore divided his time and industry between his writing and his market gardening. One acquaintance wrote: he seems wedded to his garden in the summer and his book-writing in winter. An image has persisted of him being anti-social and the majority of people in the neighbourhood knew almost nothing of him. However, as Waldo Dunn is at pains to show, he had very positive and long-term relationships with a small group of friends and acquaintances (both in person and by correspondence). Two chapters of the biography are entitled Gomer House Circle and American Friendships.

As a market gardener, times of disaster alternated with times of plenty. For many years Blackmore  attended the marketing of his fruit in London and the activities at the Covent Garden Market is well described in Alice Lorraine. He became widely known among fruit-growers and horticulturists and surviving correspondence shows how seriously he took his work. Equally obvious was his industry as regards his writing. Between 1854 and 1897, he published fourteen novels, seven volumes of verse, and one volume of short stories. That meant an average of one long work of fiction about every two and a half years. By 1869, Blackmore had written Clara Vaughan (1864) and Cradock Nowell (1866); both had been received with some success, but it was his next novel, (1869) which was - eventually, after a poor start - to catapult him into the literary pantheon. However, it became a little bit like an albatross around his neck, and the ensuing eleven works of fiction were always compared with Lorna Doone and came up wanting. Blackmore became fed up with the critics. In 1890, he wrote to a friend: From first to last - with a few exceptions - the English critics - if they deserve the name - have pegged away at me, like a rook at a rotten apple. Sometimes I used to be annoyed, though I never let them know it; but now it never disturbs me. And: It is hard to tell a tale, but easy to find fault with it.  (In The Maid of Sker)

Waldo Dunn summarises Blackmore's character thus: It will become apparent that his strong and abiding faith, his sterling common sense, and his abounding sense of humour always enabled him to meet [the ills of life] with equanimity and resolution. His wholesome philosophy of life sustained him through trials and difficulties and physical handicaps that would have overcome lesser men, and he continued to the end not only unembittered but resolute and content... in brief, it is perhaps only necessary to say that his temper was the logical result of his inheritance, his education, his political beliefs, and his religious faith. Blackmore died on 20 January 1900, unable to resist a prevailing influenza. On 26 April 1904, there were dedicated to his memory in Exeter cathedral a window and a portrait in marble.

R.D. Blackmore's 'Dariel' 1897

 

William Blackwood and Sons first edition - 1897

Dariel was first serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1896 to October 1897, before being published in the latter year. It was the only one of his novels which was first published in one volume. The novel contains 14 illustrations by Miss Chris Hammond, which were criticised for being rather 'flat' and lacking in movement. The novel itself received mixed reviews (no change there for the Author). The Spectator complained that Mr. Blackmore's method is too leisurely, and his canvas is crowded with characters who, though very engaging in themselves, retard the march of the story. The problem was that, whereas the author had not changed his style, the late 1890s's reader was very different from that of thirty, even twenty, years' earlier. The Publisher, at any rate, thought highly of the book: unquestionably the most important contribution made to fiction this year...the love element is singularly fresh and delightful...the characters are alive in every fibre, and there are scores of those wonderful descriptions of nature in which Mr. Blackmore has no existing peer save Mr. Hardy or Mr. Meredith. A more measured appraisal puts the novel somewhere in between these comments. It is slow to get going and the pace is leisurely, but the characters and descriptions of nature are of Blackmore's usual high standard.

Perhaps the novel's subtitle - A Romance of Surrey - disguises the fact that the last 123 pages are set in middle Europe and the far-off Caucasian mountains. In fact, the English setting could have been equally placed in several counties surrounding Surrey. The romantic element is only accidentally connected with England, where a noble Lesghian chief, Sur Imar, was exiled from the Caucasus as a result of a blood feud. He has taken refuge with his only daughter, Dariel - a girl of surpassing loveliness and, through her deceased mother, heiress to the throne of Georgia. The first person narrator of the tale, 26 year-old George Cranleigh - an athletic young gentleman-farmer, the son of an impoverished Baronet ruined, according to the author by the "farce of Free-trade", falls in love at first sight with Dariel - so much so that he leaves all at home to go on a quixotic expedition to the Caucasus to save her and her father. His subsequent adventures among Ossetian cut-throats, led by the evil sister of Sur Imar, the Osset Queen Marva, leads to a daring raid (akin to Indiana Jones) and ends with a fractured skull from the Ossets' clubs. His bravery is ultimately rewarded with the hand of the lovely Dariel. 

Does all this work as a novel? One could argue that the author spends far too long in getting to the Caucasus; the rural idyll of Surrey and the rugged landscape of the latter don't really jell (in a way, they are not meant to). The mixture of melodrama and idyll is hard to pull off. However, the introduction of what is a romantic tribe, who seemingly trace their origin to the Red Cross Knights of the Crusades. is compelling. Chapters XXII-XXVII, where Sur Imar tells George the story of his life and exile, drag rather, even though they are integral to the overall tale. What Imar's narration does do is to bind George to the family even more closely: Here was a man who never knew what fear was, suspicion, falsehood, meanness, envy, or even the love of money...it seemed to me that if ever there had lived a man of honour and kind heart, who deserved the favour of Heaven and the reverence of his fellows, it was this man long oppressed by some mysterious curse of destiny. And he had a lovely daughter.

The sub plot of  George Cranleigh's sister, Grace, being wooed and falling for the wealthy nouveau riche stockbroker, Jackson Stoneman, who has taken over the Cranleigh estate, is poetic. But the narrator, George, is too stolid and self effacing for my liking. Salt of the earth, maybe; a right little Surrey John Bull; dull, although to be saluted for his fortitude both in England and the Caucasus. His very odd brother, Harold, flits his way across two or three scenes, but adds little to the point of the tale. Dariel, however, is quite another matter. Chapter I is entitled A Nightingale and it is as early as page 6 that George meets his beloved: the silvery light of the west fell upon the face of a kneeling maiden. The profile, as perfect as that of a statue, yet with the tender curves of youth, more like the softness of a cameo...I thought that I had never heard any music like her voice, nor read any poetry to be compared to the brilliant depths of her expressive eyes. George's wooing of her is tenderly done and very natural. And they deserve each other in the end: I felt myself all right again. The strength that had been shattered by big Osset clubs, and long prostration, lonely wanderings of bloodless brain, feeble doubts of woman's truth, all flowed back, and filled my heart and life with the joy of this great love.

The author has lost none is his descriptive powers. Here he is on a ferocious local bulldog: 

...of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this Grab was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes. 

And a walk in the Surrey countryside:

It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it...how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always...Welcome to the Caucasus!

There is an interesting aside on another contemporary writer: Who is the most delightful writer of our race, since Heaven took Shakespeare away in hot haste? The answer, although so long in coming, comes louder, as every year adds to the echo - "William Makepeace Thackeray". That man of vast brain, with the fresh heart of a child... (and I have never read any of his works!)

G.P.R. James' 'The Cavalier' 1859

 

T.B. Peterson and Brothers first edition - 1859

The Cavalier was written 21 years after Charles Tyrrell  (see my Blog of 7 August) and the style hasn't changed! One could, perhaps unkindly, suggest it was set in aspic. It was James' ninety-first work, which started with the poem A Ruined City, in 1828.  James had sent off the last two chapters to the American publishers in April 1859 - from Venice, where he had been sent by the British Government as Consul-General for the Adriatic. Just over a year later on 9 June 1860, he was dead, having suffered two major strokes which left him in a state of paralysis. He died in the Palazza Ferro, on the Grand Canal, aged only fifty-eight. His last year had been a sad one - he was a complete wreck, bodily and mentally. His many ailments increased, and he was at times in a state of imbecility. He drank more alcohol than was wise or necessary. (S.M. Ellis, The Solitary Horseman, 1927).

The Cavalier was a sequel to Lord Montagu's Page (1858), which had started with the [in]famous It was a dark and stormy night - a very dark night indeed. The phrase became the archetype for bad writing, but it appears to have been first used by Bulwer-Lytton in his Paul Clifford (1830) - It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents. The Cavalier was not published in England until 1864, in two volumes by Richard Bentley and with a different title - Bernard Marsh.  Bentley was the firm which had issued his first books in 1828-9, thirty-six years previously. This last work received the usual criticism levelled at the author over all those years. Robert Louis Stevenson, writing from Saranac in February 1888, to a friend, asked the latter to send him some of the works of my dear old G.P.R. James...this sudden return of an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, The Cavalier and  Morley Ernstein.  I read the first with indescribable amusement - it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging... At least RLS wasn't as cutting as a mock Advertisement in The Comic Times for 31 August 1850: "Mr. Newby begs to announce the following new work in the press: In Three Volumes. The Old Oak Chest (made out of his own head), by G.P.R. James, Esq."  Cruel.

That James was well aware of his reputation can be gleaned from the following extracts in The Cavalier. 

I remember quite well the time when long and minute descriptions of scenery, costume, armour, personal appearance - ay, and even character - were highly palatable to the reader. The exquisite pictures afforded by the poems and romances of Sir Walter Scott were the delight of intelligent minds...but we have changed all that; we hear from the lips of every little critic deep condemnations of long and wearisome descriptions; and every sort of stimulant, from blood and thunder to philosophical infidelity, is required to excite the public taste. Fifty thousand throats cut in one chapter, five or six thousand young ladies seduced by one villain, with a reasonable admixture of gambling, swindling, drinking, and lying, form the best sauce to any story that can be told... The author, essentially, then says "Bah" and carries on with a detailed description of the countryside around mid 17th century Paris! 

And again: Now, there are a thousand different ways of falling in love in this world; and I have descanted upon this subject enough in other works to render it unnecessary to dwell upon it here...

On true love: There is an interpreter more eloquent than words, a voice more clear, more convincing, than ever issued forth from human lips, a wring of the soul upon the tablet of the face...I am fond of such themes, thought they are of things passed away from me...

We who write books - aye, even the best of us - are very much accustomed to confine our painting to a single character, instead of giving a broad view of human nature. It is especially the characteristic of the present school and day...of course I speak not of myself; for heaven knows I have rarely and incidentally attempted anything like large views...in this work I have especially devoted all my efforts to paint oner character, "The Cavalier", and have drawn the ideal from the real...

He still has a penchant for 'philosophising', which may be all very well but it does slow the pace of the narrative down. In this strange life, where every sort of pleasure has its zest from pain, either preceding or concomitant - where love has its doubts and fears for the present, and fruition its apprehensions for the future, and success too often its regrets for the past - the sudden change from eager activity to tranquil calm, seems in itself so great a happiness that the spirit springs up with a bound, and one is almost tempted to throw away the peaceful blessing, and to compensate - if such compensation were possible - the pains, anxieties, and cares just gone, by tasting the exuberant cup of joy.

and - What a wonderful and blessed thing is night, when nature withdraws the stimulus poured upon the brain through the little channel of the eye...

The novel's main action takes place from 1648, in Cardinal Mazarin/young Louis XIV's turbulent France (the period of the Fronde) to the 1651 Battle of Worcester in England. The hero, Bernard Marsh (for the early part of the book he is not using his title - the Earl of Dartmoor), a committed Royalist, is in exile only waiting for the chance to return to England to help his monarch - firstly Charles I and then Charles II. He is given succour in the mansion of Sir Edward Langdale - the hero of Montagu's Page - whose face now told tales of exposure and of strife...he was active and vigorous, however, though somewhat spare in form; and his wife, Lucette, whose face was still beautifully fair, and not a line or wrinkle showed the work of age. They have four children, two young boys of nine and ten, who Bernard is set on to tutor; a 16 year-old son, Henry, with a somewhat delicate look and slender form; and Lucy, but 17 years-old, and yes, because it is a James story, destined to fall in love and be loved by Bernard.

After a worrying fracas, where there is an attempt to abduct Lucy, whilst on a family outing, Bernard goes in search of the guilty.  He meets up with the Prince de Condé, which once again allows the author to indulge in his descriptive powers. The reader is introduced to more dark nights, interesting character studies of both good and bad personages, and an increasing desire to support Bernard in his political and love lives. He becomes the heart and soul of all the arrangements in the Langdale family and Lucy, though she was a little timid at first, called him nothing but Bernard. He is on the right track, then. As Bernard himself admits to Sir Edward, I never thought to love any one. I gave up my whole youth to one great cause, and I had thought that no one - no passion, no affection, could never alienate one thought from that cause . But I love your daughter...

When Sir Edward and Bernard are told that Charles I has been 'murdered', they are determined to help his son regain the throne. Back in England, there are several exciting scenes, where the little band of cavaliers come under attack; both Sir Edward and Bernard fight at Worcester but the young Charles II himself never appears in the novel. However, a strange monk does, who turns out to be another important string to the Langdale tale. There is a shrewd appraisal of Cromwell, much to this reader's approval. 

...a man of middle height - rather above than below it - powerful and muscular in frame, but not at all obese. He wore a simple gray coat, with a plain linen collar, and a tall, unornamented black hat. His face, as far as features and colouring went, were decidedly coarse and plain, the features generally large and heavy, and the nose especially thick and ill-shaped; but the brow was massy and powerful, and the brownish gray eye, though it had no fire, had a world of stern, grave power in it, and seemed to menace and rule all it fell upon...the whole expression, indeed - and it spread through the entire figure - was that of command. A consciousness of power was in every line and in every movement; and yet, strange to say...a look of cunning; ay; and at times a look of soft weakness.

One must remember that the whole slant of the novel favours the Cavalier side, but one still gets the feeling that the author dislikes, disapproves of Cromwell even if he admired his leadership qualities. At the very end of the book, he wrote: it is well known that the end of the great rebellion was followed by evils more terrible than those which excited it. Charles I was misled by his sycophantic advisers; Charles II and James II were not worthy of the throne (if one reads James' other works), but good times come again - according to this novel's very last words - with the more peaceful and beneficial changes of 1688. James clearly believed in the monarchy, if not particular monarchs (e.g. James I), and regarded the Interregnum with some distaste.  Sir Edward, his family, and Bernard Marsh, Earl of Dartmoor, would have totally agreed.

A Trip Down Memory Lane - Desmond Bagley, Jack Higgins, Hammond Innes, Gavin Lyall

Every so often, intense (if kindly) pressure is put on me to relieve my groaning shelves of books. The suggestion of 'one in, one out' has, thankfully, not yet come to pass; however, recently I have been having a more ruthless look at the ageing paperbacks I have cossetted since the last century. My growing collection of the 1930s Crime-Book Society 6d issues, has meant, in order to make room for them, some of these older ones have had to depart the Hillier mansion. I have already seen the removal of all the more recent Susanna Gregory series, featuring the 14th century Matthew Bartholomew and the 17th century Thomas Challoner; my entire collection of Candace Robb's books set also in the 14th century with Owen Archer as the hero; and nearly all of my Edward Marston novels. A kind bookseller lady in Derby gave me 50p a paperback, as they were all in pristine condition; but now the older ones are in the firing line.

With fond memories of Neville Shute's novels (and a re-reading not that long ago of a few), he is safe for the time being; but there are four other 'thriller' writers whose continued presence now appears shaky. Big names in the last quarter of the 20th century, perhaps they are unfamiliar to present-day readers. First up for the chop: 

1978                       1985                                1976

Jack Higgins (1929-2022), real name Henry Patterson, is best-known for his The Eagle Has Landed, but that is probably due to the much acclaimed film starring Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland (I have watched it several times on DVD). During the 1970s and 1980s, Higgins was regularly in the bestseller lists and I purchased and read six of his novels in paperback - The Testament of Caspar Schultz (1962), Night Judgement at Sinos (1970), Storm Warning (1976), Day of Judgement (1978), Confessional (1985) and The Eagle Has Landed (1975). He had written 35 thrillers before he hit the jack-pot with The Eagle, which was in the Top Ten Bestseller list for 36 weeks. Many of his books featured good guys fighting for rotten causes, as personified by Kurt Steiner and Liam Devlin. I must admit, after over a quarter of a century, I can't remember much about Higgins' books, and they are now destined for our local Charity Shop - apart from The Eagle Has Landed!

1960                                1954

Hammond Innes (1913-1998), who ended up a Major in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, wrote 34 novels - they were mainly what I would term 'hairs on your chest', macho books. Rugged landscapes and rugged men abound. They often featured ordinary men thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. I hadn't realised I had collected, and probably read, twenty-four paperbacks - well over half of his output. They are: The Trojan Horse (1940); Attack Alarm (1941); Dead and Alive (1946)*; The Lonely Skier (1947); The Killer Mine (1947); Maddon's Rock (1947); The Blue Ice (1948); The White South (1949); Air Bridge (1951); Campbell's Kingdom (1952)*; The Strange Land (1954); The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956); The Land God Gave to Cain (1958)*; Harvest of Journeys (1960)*; The Doomed Oasis (1960); Atlantic Fury (1962); The Strode Venturer 1965); Levkas Man (1971); Golden Soak (1973); North Star (1974)*; The Big Footprints (1977)*; Solomon's Seal (1980)*; High Stand (1985)*; Medusa (1988). Those with an asterisk are also off to the Charity shop. The others have been given a reprieve - for now.

1972                                  1980  

Gavin Lyall's (1932-2003) early stories have been divided into 'aviation thrillers' and 'Euro-thrillers', usually written in the first-person narrative, Apparently feeling that he was become predictable, he changed to a series of 'espionage thrillers', starring Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer. In the 1990s, he changed literary direction again and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the British secret service before the Great War. He was married to the Observer journalist Katharine Whitehorn (1928-2021). I have a dozen of his novels in paperback and will be retaining them all for now. The Wrong Side of the Sky (1961); The Most Dangerous Game (1964); Midnight plus One (1965);  Shooting Script (1966); Venus with Pistol (1969); Blame the Dead (1972); Judas Country (1975); The Secret Serpent (1980); The Conduct of Major Maxim (1982); The Crocus List (1985); Uncle Target (1988); Flight from Honour (1996).

Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) was going to be my fourth author destined, now or eventually, for the Charity shop. However, I find that 'the birds (or, rather, books) have already flown'! They must have gone in an earlier clear-out; a pity, as I would have liked a last thumb through of his novels, as I remember enjoying them. He was usually linked with Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean for setting  a tough, resourceful but essentially ordinary hero pitted against villains determined to sow destruction and chaos for their own ends.

I realise now that I read all these authors in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them before I was married. Did they fit the image of myself as a macho man enjoying a singular and single life?! Another reason, perhaps, was the need to get away from the awful pedestrian years of the Wilson-Heath-Callaghan governments. Just as nowadays I plunge into 19th century (often three-decker) fiction to shut out the present ghastly political landscape.

NB Between 14 March and 9 August 2020, I re-read seventeen novels of  Helen MacInnes and did a series of Blogs on her work. Her world-view was very black and white: Fascists/Communists bad. the West (especially the USA) good. She might have second thoughts these days, if not about Russia perhaps about the West!

G.P.R. James' 'Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood' 1837

Richard Bentley first edition - 1837

After my Summer indulgence in the Crime-Book Society paperbacks (I have just bought nine more for future holiday reading), I returned with pleasure to my old friend G.P.R. James. This time it was to the huge - potential hernia inducing - 717 page Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Nearly all James' novels were published in the [in]famous three-deckers   - I have recently counted a total of 52. There were only three two-volumed  publications and just seven in one volume. Charles Tyrrell would easily have fitted into the three-volume format; why this 'blockbuster' issue was chosen is unknown (to me, anyway). The story has all of the author's usual faults and qualities.

His trademark is there at the very beginning: Amongst all the many fine and beautiful figures and modes of reasoning, that the universe in which we dwell has afforded, for the illustration of the bright hope that is within us of a life renewed beyond the tomb, there is none more beautiful or more exquisite, that I know of, than that which is derived from the change of the seasons...he then spends the next three pages extolling the beauties of each season and of nature. The reader then has to follow James as he describes an old Hampshire mansion house, its surrounding walks and its kitchen garden. He tries to pre-empt criticism by saying that these descriptions are pertinent to later parts of his story (much later, on page 147, he does say: this is, in fact, the place where our story should have begun!); only on page 14 do we meet one of the main progenitors of the tale: Sir Francis Tyrrell, the irascible father of Charles. And it is here that we recall one of the author's strengths: that of character drawing. Sir Francis is an ogre and the novel's subtitle recognises this. Never quite a caricature, the man is nearly irredeemable. He comes from a line of scurvy knaves: one had been killed by a blow of the axe, received from a woodman; another had been almost torn to pieces by a mob at the end of the reign of James II, and died of the injuries received; three or four of them had been killed in duels, and one had been shot by a soldier under his command...in the whole race, there was a fierce and furious disposition, an impetuous and ungovernable temper, which, combined with a general fearlessness of character, and heedlessness of consequences led them into dangers and even crimes.

No wonder his wife, once gay in spirit, had shrunk into a timid state of mind and cheerless despair. Their only son, Charles, grew up in this intimidating environment. He had his father's shortness of temper and a vigorous approach to life. The one real friend he made at school, Everard Morrison, who became a local solicitor, was to prove in the course of the story a godsend to Charles. By the time the tale begins, Charles is at Oxford University, glad to get away from his father's taunts but determined to support his mother. On a return home, he finds himself in the same coach as another man on his way to Sir Francis. He is  Mr Henry Driesen, descended from a family originally German, but which had been settled for many centuries in England. Possessed of but a small property, he had become perhaps Sir Francis' only friend. The fact that he relied on the latter for financial support, and was thus somewhat in his power, suggests the main reason for Sir Francis tolerating him. James spends two or three pages describing Driesen, both in looks - the expression of an old and malicious monkey; and character - artful as a sophist; and, aided by his own vanity, deceiving himself while he deceived others...his love of himself was an impregnable citadel, which nothing could storm. He is, like Morrison, to play a major role in the story's development and eventual outcome.

An old acquaintance of Sir Francis having died, he has invited his widow, Mistress Effingham, and her daughter Lucy Effingham, to take up residence in the ancient Manor House on his estate. True to form, in the author's novels, Charles and Lucy fall for each other. Even though that was what he wanted, the perverse Sir Francis flies into a rage because he had not been consulted! As the story develops Charles, now in love, gradually improves his character - he even saves a fisherman's little boy from the sea - but his father, if anything, gets worse. violence, the irritability, the exasperating nature of his temper and disposition, it must be owned, went far beyond anything [Mrs. Effingham] had expected or even believed possible.  

In fact, by the middle of the novel everyone, including Driesen, the author and the reader has had enough of Sir Francis. As an old fisherman, who has accosted him in the Park says: I'll tell you what, Sir Francis, you're a passionate man, and a bad man, and if all be true that's said, you treat your own lady and your son as bad as any one else. You'll repent all this some day when you can't mend it. You'll repent it. I say - I'm thinking God has tried you long enough, and it's time you should be taken away. And 'taken away' he is; on page 413 we read that he has been shot dead by a hunting rifle in the back of his head. Who is the culprit? I'm afraid I guessed almost immediately, but it is his son Charles who stands accused. After all, it was his gun. The rest of the novel sees him in front of a coroner's court, imprisoned, escape, attempt to flee abroad with Lucy (which includes a thrilling sea chase) and finally return to meet his just deserts at the local Assizes. All this takes another 300 pages. But they are crammed full with incident and character drawing. I enjoyed the ramble! 

There is a sub plot, which all good tales must have, involving Everard Morrison and a naval captain's daughter Hannah Longly - remarkably pretty, full of grace and warm colouring, with dark eyes and deep brown hair, slightly approaching to auburn. She had in most things a natural good taste, and notwithstanding having been at a school, was not in reality vulgar... The blackguard of the story, Lieutenant Arthur Hargrave, not only one-time fancied Lucy Effingham but tried to abduct Hannah; thus neatly tying the main characters and the sub-plot together. Of course, Hargrave meets his just deserts at the same time as getting Charles Tyrrell out of a very sticky position.

One more example of James' predilection for philosophising - on page 584: True love is an unselfish passion; or, at all events - if the painful doctrine of some philosophers be correct, and there be no affection of the human mind without its share of selfishness - true love partakes thereof , as little or less than any other passion, and that share of selfishness which it does admit, is of the noblest and most refined kind. (Are you following?) Yet we are inclined to believe that it is without selfishness; for we cannot understand such a thing as being selfish by proxy. It is, in fact, a contradiction in terms; and when we love another so well as to be willing, ready, desirous of sacrificing our convenience, our comfort, our safety, our happiness, ourselves for them, we may admit the doctrine, that it gives us greater satisfaction to do so than not, without admitting that we are selfish in so feeling. Q.E.D.

I liked the throwaway reference to J.G. Lockhart's Reginald Dalton, the most beautiful and interesting of modern novels (published in 1823. See my Blog for 25th July 2021).

Eustace Clare Grenville Murray's 'Side Lights on English Society' 1881

 

Vizetelly & Co. first edition - 1881

After all those Crime-Book Society, mainly fast-paced, paperbacks, it was a bit of a struggle to concentrate on this much longer (and rather repetitive) volume. This is the fourth work of Murray's I have read, having started with his very readable The Member for Paris (1871), a cutting dissection of morals in Napoleon III's France (see my Blog for 29th April 2023). I recall that Murray was horse-whipped outside the Conservative Club in 1869 by Lord Carington, who had taken exception to Murray's casting aspersions on his deceased father. Much of Murray's writings cast similar aspersions or other cynical ploys on his contemporaries (particularly politicians and diplomats), so it is no wonder he based himself in Paris from then on. Side Lights was published in the year of his death.

Murray dedicates his work to Queen Victoria and the language is so couched that the reader (and the queen?) can't quite make out if it is a genuine tribute or satirically taking the proverbial Michael! ...as a loyal subject, I eagerly embrace the opportunity of laying before you the tribute of my homage. I am proud, as a man of letters, to seek for my work the notice of a Sovereign, not the least of whose titles to the gratitude of distant posterity will be, that in her reign, and owing, in no small degree, to her fostering care, arts and letters have so flourished in this island that the Age of Victoria may challenge comparison with the Ages of Elizabeth and Anne. And he ends: that your Majesty may long be spared to be the protectress of the weak and the terror of evil-doers, and still to direct your people in the way of peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, is the fervent prayer. Hmm. Take your pick.

In a longish Preface, Murray can't help but put the knife into Authority: when there is a tacit understanding among public men that Government must be carried on by an organised system of falsehood, deceit, and injustice... nepotism and patronage are at the bottom of it. Are you listening Victoria? After all, it is your Government. Murray bemoans the fact that I have written these lines with all the sad and yearning love which an exile feels towards his country. I have suffered twelve years of banishment. However, from this rather bitter harangue, comes a first Volume devoted to distinguishing between the various types of Flirts, whom the author appears to have studied in passionate detail!

Here are a few extracts, which give a flavour of the volume as a whole.

About Flirts in general:

A girl is a Flirt who exchanges a coy glance with a middle-aged eligible bachelor who picks up a glove she has dropped; she is something worse than a Flirt - a minx - if she makes herself pleasant to another girl's betrothed.

Women are less able than men to live without admiration, and have less other work in life than the labour of securing praise.

...the first-class Flirt cares not a pin for scorches. She is the salamander who lives in the fire. Sparks fly round her and she revels in them...

The Flirt's power:

The goal of woman is marriage, and flirting is to girls a means of reaching the goal; in the case of married women it is a pastime, a consolation, or a vengeance...flirting is flattery in action...

The girl smiles...grizzled veterans, whose breasts are covered with medals, nudge each other at her approach; and sundry old ladies, with mortally plain daughters, eye her with that stony stare which, when it is levelled by woman at woman, is as good as purest incense.

And so Murray goes on, with sections on The Flirt who has Plain Sisters; The Ecclesiastical Flirt; Regimental Flirts; The Seaside Flirt (including the one-month-a-year Flirt [who] has a keen eye for the names on the visitors' list of the seaside town to which she resorts); The Studious Flirt - many of whom patrol the British Museum!

Over one hundred pages are devoted to Flirts embedded with those On Her Majesty's Service - whose targets are Attachés, Consuls and Vice-Consuls, Ambassadors and Interpreters. The final section is headed Semi-Detached Wives, where the contents may well have occasioned both most mirth and most anger. Murray begins with the Semi-detached Wife is a lady whose husband exists, but not for her. He may be in prison, or mad, or playing truant...the Semi-detached Wife is an 'acting' widow, but without widow's rank or privileges. Much of the book is very droll and I found myself smirking and mildly chuckling on several occasions. However, to sustain such a myopic Aunt Sally for over 300 pages is really beyond any author, and Murray's shafts become rather repetitive, somewhat tiresome and even bordering on the misogynistic.

The book was much enhanced by the scores of illustrations - redolent of Punch, The Illustrated London News, The Graphic and The Girls' Own Paper. i.e. very nineteenth century.