Seldon Truss' 'They Came by Night' 1933

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 2

This, the second of my Crime-Society novels, starts well: Body found on Terrace of House of Commons. I immediately made a mental list of who I hoped it might be; but Seldon Truss is writing about the 1930s not 2025. If you look for Seldon Truss (1892-1990)  on the Internet, there are reams of headings about Anthony Seldon's demolition account of Liz Truss' time as Prime Minister. Not helpful. In 2010, another reviewer simply said of the author, he's almost assuredly unknown to any but the most serious collector today. This is probably equally true fifteen years later. Truss was born in Wallington, South London, and was a film director as well as a prolific author. He was the creator of Chief Inspector Gidleigh, a CID detective (24 novels); Detective Inspector Shane, a Scotland Yard detective (6 novels); and Detective Inspector Bass (3 novels). He also used the pseudonym George Selmark. They Came by Night (1933) is among the other nine books he wrote.

The first chapter then goes on to introduce three characters who are integral to the storyline and who all read The Evening Mail's headline and short accompanying note: firstly, a  a shabby and ill-favoured loafer; secondly a man in the comfortable lounge of a Piccadilly Hotel - a big man, massive both in height and girth, and his full-moon, hairless countenance was puckered genially as he read; and, finally, in Whitehall, a spare-built [man] with greying hair and keen, tired eyes. The second chapter swiftly takes us into the very centre of England, where we meet the undoubted hero of the story: John Worth, an infantry captain with a War record in the Intelligence Department,  who is presently in a car belonging to Lord Marchington, the Foreign Secretary, and driven by the latter's chauffeur. They reach the little village of Hayling-Bois, where they gaze on an amazing sight: in the centre of a field adjoining the graveyard an immense pile of faggots had been erected, and surmounting these, lashed to a decrepit rocking-chair, a stuffed effigy garbed in rusty black clothes with an ancient top-hat above its grinning cardboard mask, perched drunkenly. Recent rain meant that, so far, there was much smoke and little fire. Guy Fawkes' Day? No - it is to burn an effigy of a local unpopular landowner, who locals think had murdered his wife. The fires now begins to burn; then, Worth notices one of the effigy's hay-stuffed gloves was beginning to singe. Suddenly, the hand twitched. What a brilliant start to the novel - shades of the Wicker Man! Worth and the chauffeur leap into action and rescue the 'effigy'; the hat and the absurd, leering mask came away together in a fluster of hay, disclosing the deathly white features of a girl.

It is hard for the subsequent story to live up to that opening; but, by and large, it does. The girl is taken to the early Georgian manor house of Montague Clayden and she proves to be Daphne Manners, the step-child of Clayden, my late wife's daughter. Clearly, there are rum doings afoot. Clayden, who had abnormally large eyes in a wasted face and who appeared to Worth to be a sour-faced eccentric (surely, that's a clue to his being a wrong-un), is further apparently shocked to hear that Daphne had been drugged. A garage bung full of petrol further adds to feeling something is not right. Can all this be relevant to Worth's original mission, to uncover a vast and diabolical conspiracy against the country? He is told by his superiors, which include Marchington, that Major Seton Richardson, the greatest daredevil of the War, now in retirement, due to his war wounds which included being nearly blinded, had unearthed details of the conspiracy. However, Richardson had disappeared! Hence Worth's journey to Hayling-Bois, where worrying cases of blindness have occurred. These cases will multiply alarmingly during the story and, obviously, are bound up with the conspiracy; Clayden has several unsavoury henchman, one of whom is an absurd little figure in a neckcloth, whose glass eye (I should have seen the clue there and then) glinted with an extraordinary effect of savagery. He goes by the name of Comrade William Smithers, of the Young Red Workers. He needs watching!

The scene switches to Whitehall, where Marchington is in discussion with the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Home Office pathologist  - they fear that the few cases of blindness will develop into a thousand a day. It is a declaration of war. The enemy? The Lilliputian and semi-barbarous State of Mongoria - on the shores of the Caspian Sea! Mongoria want to establish a powerful state and they need capital for road, rail and dock development. In return for supplying serum to cure the cases of blindness, they require complete immunity from any reprisals and an indemnity of £25 million pounds! Not a bad idea for a thriller. The Prime Minister is relaxed: a big task for one man, but Worth is a big man. And so John Worth proves to be. Working with the gorgeous Daphne Manners (Worth later sees her in a slender chiffon frock as a breath-taking little vision of sheer beauty that caused his heart to leap), he manages to outwit the Mongorian thugs. Perhaps rather far-fetched, but good fun. What one might call a rollicking-yarn. We could do with these particularly when one is confronted with such dire national and international news daily in the media. In fact, we could do with a few more John Worth and Daphne Manners characters in charge today.

Hugh Clevely's 'The Gang-Smasher 1928

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 1 

Having nearly finished collecting the Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' Crime Series, I have - like a moth to a candle flame - now embarked on another paperback flight; this time The Crime-Book Society Pocket Library. I have purchased the first eleven in the series, and have read eight of them whilst on holiday in Greece. 

Hugh Clevely starts the series - he also wrote No. 15 'Gang Law' and No. 41 'The Wrong Murderer'. Clevely was born in Bristol in 1898 and was a bank clerk at the start of the Great War. He enlisted in the Grenadier Guards in April 1915 and was posted to France in March 1917. Wounded in August, he returned to England but transferred to the RFC in March 1918. After the War, in March 1922, he joined the British Gendarmeries section of the Palestine Police as a Sergeant but left in the Spring of 1925. On his return, he found himself without either a job or money, his most prized possession being an old type writer. He lived for three months on 7/6 a week, in a disused furniture van in the middle of a Sussex wood! He set to work on the type writer and became a prolific writer of novels, publishing 23 books under his own name between 1928 and 1955. He wrote a further nine under the pseudonym Tod Claymore. He was also one of the dozens of authors who wrote for the story paper The Thriller in the 1930s - other writers included Leslie Charteris, John Creasey, Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. After the 2WW, Clevely contributed a dozen or so titles to the hugely popular Sexton Blake series. He died in 1964.

This tale is a fairly breath-taking account about the man nick-named 'The Gang-Smasher', a gigantic red-haired figure of a man yet human and attractive withal. It is the story of a born fighter, who sets out to smash the all-powerful Tortoni gang... John Martinson had worked his passage home from China only a week before the story begins. He was an educated man, who could shoot, fence, box, wrestle, command a battalion, and speak five languages. Walking aimlessly in a London fog, he deals with a pickpocket and an enquiring policemen in the same way - one to the head the other to the solar plexus! A quarter of an hour later the booking-clerk at the Paddington Station hotel was astonished by a large, deeply tanned, and very shabby man, with an ugly face, a bent nose, and the most aggressively red hair that he had ever seen, who smiled contentedly in a queer, lop-sided manner as he asked for food and drink immediately and a room for the night.

In his room, he searches what he had purloined from the pickpocket. An address (Sylvester Brown...) on a piece of paper, five cigarettes  and a cigarette tin with at least £400 in £1 notes! The following day, be spent £30 odd buying a refit of clothes, then travelled to the address on the piece of paper. He encounters Susan Brown - a very pretty girl, her dark, shingled hair, parted in the middle, fell in attractive waves on either side of her forehead, and formed a pleasing contrast with the clear, warm tints of her complexion. Her eyes were dark, tender with the dreaminess of youth, but shining with a light of humour and intelligence that gave a delightful air of animation to her face. Her mouth was small and red, a mouth that would very easily tempt men to forget themselves...What's not to like? Martinson, being a toughie but uncomfortable with girls, takes the whole book to succumb - in the last couple of pages she hears him say, luckily for my piece of mind there's nothing I can imagine myself hating more than being married. Equally luckily for him, he is no seer.

It is Sylvia who tells Martinson about the feared and ruthless Tortoni gang. Apparently, they want to kill her brother Sylvester. The latter turns up and says the gang recently knifed his friend Ted Williamson to death and he himself had received a threatening telephone call - don't talk or you die!  Well, Martinson 's reaction is obvious: I'm going after them. And so he does, over the next 260 pages. First, he relieves one of the gang of the stolen Duchess of Midhurst's diamonds, worth £60,000+. Before going to see the Duchess, he makes it clear his whole enterprise has no place for a woman. Sylvia responds: You seem to have a very poor opinion of girls, Mr. Martinson. I suppose that very brave and tremendously clever men always have. Or perhaps it's because you're what is called 'a man's man.' Are you? Do you smell of tweeds, and tobacco, and have you got an Irish terrier named Pete who's your best friend? What a girl! Martinson's meeting with the Duke and Duchess also includes a Comtesse de Varenne, who summons her friend Captain Vandaleur to verify the jewels. Are both of the latter what they seem? Of course not, or there would be no plot. And clever Martinson knows they are crooks from the start.

Scotland Yard get involved; Martinson inches every closer to finding out who the leader of the Tortoni gang is; the deaf and dumb Professor André, a neighbour of the wealthy Mrs. Somerville, whose jewels are also stolen, is clearly a Person of Interest; and the novel builds to a thrilling climax in the English Channel. It's a fairly convoluted, but well-controlled plot, and I enjoyed the flashes of humour interspersed amongst the skulduggery.  I look forward to purchasing Gang Law before too long.

Marthe McKenna's 'Hunt the Spy' 1939/40?

 

Jarrolds publishers - 1939/40?

I began collecting the Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' Crime Series paperbacks a few years ago and have managed to purchase 12 of the original 16, published between 1939 and 1940. The two Moray Dalton works (Nos. 15 and 16) and Alan Kennington's She Died Young (No. 9) are proving elusive. However, I received from Zardoz Books - that excellent paperback bookseller in Westbury, Wiltshire - only this morning the fourth book I was after: Marthe McKenna's Double Spy (No. 12). Once I have read it, I shall Blog on it. There are two others (at least), in addition to the numbered sixteen, which have been traced and, though unnumbered, I have detailed as No.17# and No.18#. Van Wyck Mason's, The Cairo Garter Murders, the first of these, I failed to win on Ebay - my top bid was beaten by another, more wealthy, collector.  I did track down another of Marthe McKenna's spy novels - again from Zardoz Books. This was the first of nine crime paperbacks I read on our recent holiday in Greece - all of which I will be Blogging on in sequence. Like Van Wyck Mason's book, the cover price has gone up from 6d. to 9d. A casualty of the Second World War.

 

The story of the author is at least as interesting as her spy books. Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert, born in West Flanders, Belgium, in 1892, began studying at Ghent University's medical school, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Great War. She was conscripted as a nurse at a German military hospital in her home village. She was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans for her medical service. Transferred to the German Military Hospital in Roulers, a family friend revealed she was a British intelligence agent and that she wished to recruit Marthe to an Anglo-Belgian intelligence network operating in the town. Such was the latter's success in passing on important military intelligence, she was mentioned in dispatches on 8 November 1918 by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and was made a member of the French and British Legions of Honour. She married John 'Jock' McKenna, a British army officer. Her memoir I Was a Spy - ghostwritten by her husband and published under her married name in 1932 - had a foreword by Winston Churchill. The following year, saw it made into a Spy Thriller movie, with Conrad Veidt as Commandant Oberaertz and Madeleine Carroll as Marthe. The film was voted the best British movie of 1933 and Carroll as the best actress in a British film that year.

Of the 17 books written by Marthe between 1932 and 1951, 13 had 'Spy'/'Spies' in their title. Although published under Marthe's name, it is speculated that her husband was largely responsible for their writing. In the Second World War, Marthe was listed in 'The Black Book' of prominent subjects to be arrested by the Nazis in case of a successful invasion of Britain.  After the war, the McKennas returned to Marthe's family home in Westrozebeke. Their marriage ended around 1951 and Marthe died in 1966.

Hunt the Spy tells the story of the inimitable British secret agent Jim Archer and a beautiful London shop girl, Susan Denton, who innocently becomes entangled in a sinister spy plot. Susan's close friend, and fellow worker at the outfitters Rayon and Crepe, has married Andrew Blair, a staid uncommunicative young man, who is an assistant to a Professor Justin MacArdle, who is working on some secret assignment in the small town of Bayleigh on the Thames Estuary. Strolling along window-shopping in Bond Street, Susan is accosted by a tall, slim young man, tanned of face, short dark crispy hair and glittering laughing eyes. He pretends he has mistaken her for someone else, but the tone of his deep caressing voice and other attributes soon enable him to wangle his way into her affections. The reader soon finds out (before Susan herself) that he is a dastardly spy - leaning towards the Germans but, more importantly, totally out for the highest bidder. What is he after? - Professor MacArdle's 'secret' invention, which could help turn the tide in a future war. Nicholas Talos, for such is he, at their first dining out, gives Susan a sparkling brooch (the reader should keep this in mind for a future episode).

A burly chauffeur is sent to pick Susan up for the next date, but is attacked and Susan is 'rescued' from a difficult situation. Her rescuer? "My name is Archer - Jim Archer" (shades of "Bond. James Bond.") of the British Secret Service. Archer takes her to meet a friend, Philip Glade, who is immediately attracted to Susan.  Archer tells Glade that "Talon is a brilliant misfit. A God in forehead but at heart a fiend...he is a magnificent beast...he is the complete international spy..." He also explains that MacArdle's invention will possibly give Britain a cast-iron defence against air bombers (no wonder Talon wants the blueprint - to sell it to the highest bidder). The story develops with Susan not only visiting Rayleigh to see Muriel but also  going to a fortune-teller, Madam Sigratta, who is obviously up to no good. The latter appears to have links with Talon. In fact, it's all good, if dangerous, fun and the author can spin a promising yarn, with plenty of mishaps and near escapes on the way. Good and Britain will, of course, win out, as does Philip Glade with Susan Denton. Moreover, as the very last paragraph states: But, damn it all, it was well worth it. Professor MacArdle would recover the complete plans of his invention, and the day that saw its completion would be the signal for Britain's roar to be heard rumbling round the world. And this time it would roar with a set purpose, not of frightening persecuted insanity, but of carrying soothing peace to all men's minds. So, bah! to Hitler and his toughs.

Rudolf Tesnohlidek's 'The Cunning Little Vixen' 1985

First English edition - 1985

Vixen Sharp-Ears was a real fox who had real adventures with a real forester in the 19th century. Rudolf Tesnohlidek's novel is no fairy tale. It presents a world of not-so-innocent animals living out their short lives in brutal harmony alongside a world of longer-lived humans who are no less brutal, scarcely more intelligent, and a good deal less happy. The author, born in 1882, grew up with a father who was a 'knacker', who earned his living by dispatching ailing and unwanted animals, then skinning them and tanning their hides. Rudolph suffered from an eye problem that gave him a strange, almost manic appearance: his eyes would spin around, darting uncontrollably this way and that. He grew up introverted and oversensitive... As a young man, he headed for Prague, studying philosophy and languages at the university. His first publication in print was a collection of resoundingly gloomy verses! In fact, this was very much the style of the time - Prague was drenched in melancholy. In 1902 he met Jindra Kopecka (Kaja) and married her in 1905. Visiting Norway just two months after the wedding, tragedy struck. Kaja accidently shot herself. From then on, Rudolph, always sad, became even more gloomy. His books, poems and plays began to reek with melancholy. In 1910, he married an 18 year-old, but the relationship failed, Married for a third time, he began to rebuild his life, helped along by the popular success of The Cunning Little Vixen, which was serialised in Lidove Noviny in 1920.

The editor of Lidove Noviny, Jaromir John, recalled Rudolph as a man who manufactured sadness on purpose...he was physically and emotionally created for self-flagellation. No wonder his co-workers began avoiding him. On 12 January, 1928, the latter wrote a farewell, phrased in his funniest manner, shaped it to the length of his weekly column, put it on his desk and then shot himself in the office. When his third wife,  Olga, was told, she locked the doors, turned on the gas, and also committed suicide. Rudolph left behind a number of books, poems and plays - many still read in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) - and his children's books are still read with pleasure; none, though, fired the popular imagination as did The Cunning Little Vixen.  First known as Vixen Sharp-Ears, the story appeared roughly twice a week between 7 April and 23 June 1920. People just went crazy over the story...it was published in book form a year later. It has been in print ever since.

There are three translators - Tatiana Firkusnu and Maritza Morgan are both Czech and they prepared a separate literal translation of the novel. Robert T. Jones, an American, based the final English text on their work. The novel was written in the Moravian dialect of Brno, a patois of immense charm but great difficulty even for Czechs! The translators opted for colloquial English throughout.

As for the story itself - it concerns forester Bartos, a hot tempered man who is a regular at the local pub, where he plays bowls and other games mainly with a Reverend Father and the local schoolmaster. After a typical drinking session, the forester falls asleep on his way home. He needs to find an excuse for his tardiness for his wife and creeps up on a young fox family - close enough to grab spoiled little Sharp-Ears. Home they go. Sharp-Ears meets a human cub: how ugly it was! It had only a handful of hairs on its head...the most hideous part of it was its legs: there was not a single good claw on its hind paws. With the human cub came another small animal - and thus Sharp-Ears meets Catcher, a little dachshund, who becomes the vixen's friend. It wasn't long before Sharp-Ears felt like the mistress of the house. She had realised that Catcher was useless and totally green, afraid of humans and a complete coward. Not surprising, as the forester regularly whipped him.

Inevitably, Sharp-Ears tries to escape back to the wild. Her first effort fails and she is tied to the dog kennel. Interspersed with all this are roosters and hens 'talking', a mosquito soliloquising - which doesn't really 'work' for this reader. Sharp-Ears' second attempt at freedom succeeds. She soon evicts Mr. Badger, an elderly bachelor, officious bureaucrat of the forest realm, now in retirement, from his sett. To describe the rest of the story in any detail is not for this short Blog. Suffice it to say, there are touches of morbid humour - as when the forester mistakenly shoots his only pig, much to the chagrin of his curmudgeonly wife; when the priest staggers home drunk; and the description of the poacher Martinek. There is a strong element of anti-clericalism and the author is clearly on the side of the animals rather than the humans. Sharp-Ears escapes on one occasion by losing her tail in a gin trap. She finds fulfilment when she meets a roguish male fox, Golden-Stripe and, presumably lives happily ever after.

Golden-Stripe probably sums up the author's own views here:

You think that humans aren't just like us when they're in love? They're worse. They do everything for the sake of appearances, to put on a show, but reality they fight and quarrel like starlings when they've had their fill of love.

People are nothing but pride, lies, and deceit. Not one single vixen can be as deceitful as a young girl tossing up her short skirts. No fox is as immoral as a handsome man-about-town. Man...likes to keep running into his victim so he can degrade her, grind her into the mud, and then walk over her.

The lay-out and general production of the book is excellent - by the Bodley Head - with a particularly striking dust wrapper, but I must confess I wasn't keen on some of Maurice Sendak's illustrations. They were bright and often amusing, however they were the original designs and watercolours that the artist created for the New York City Opera production of Janacek's opera, which had its first performance on 9th April 1981. 

The schoolmaster and the little priest

It meant that, amongst some lovely watercolours of woodlands and village life, of genuine animals and people, there were too many of humans 'inhabiting' animal costumes. 

Golden-Stripe

Frances Pitt's 'Toby, My Fox-cub' 1929

 

Arrowsmith first edition - 1929

Another Fox story; in fact, a third one from Frances Pitt, who wrote Tommy White-Tag (see my Blog for 21st February this year) and Scotty. The Adventures of a Highland Fox (my Blog of 24 December 2024). It is Volume Nine in The Library of Animal Friends, which, so far, were stories by Pitt and Cherry Kearton. The book was clearly written for children, above all to encourage them to learn about and respect wild life.

Pitt saved two cubs - the mother and four other cubs had gone where all creatures must go sooner or later. The surviving cubs were but two days old, very small, blind and perfectly helpless. With their snub noses, blunt muzzles, their short, woolly, dark coats, little rat tails, no longer than my little finger, and small ears flat to their heads, they could only be compared to very very young kittens. One of the attractions of the book is the black and white photographs taken by the author; the one opposite the text just quoted shows she had described them accurately.

The author does not really explain why a female cub is called Toby (it looked like the drawing of Toby-dog on the cover of Punch), but does say she was the most mischievous little imp that ever ran on four legs. Unfortunately, her brother Jack did not survive - he refused to suck, and seemed listless. His little nose was dry, instead of soft and damp... Pitt goes into some detail as to how she fed the cubs - at regular three-hours intervals with the warmest, richest cow's milk - and kept them warm next to a hot water bottle. Toby was not interested in eating rabbit, until Pitt gave her a piece with fur attached! Then, there was no stopping her!

The next few chapters follow the cub growing up, in size but not in goodness. She devoured Pitt's father's bootlaces and was a self-contained  little creature, independent, and as disobedient as any spoilt child that ever walked. She had no notion of coming because she was called. She was more like a cat in her ways than a dog. The two pet dogs endured Toby rather than enjoyed her company. She took greatest delight in teasing and annoying them. She loved to be petted, especially by the author's mother. Once her timidity of venturing outside left her, she was everywhere. There was a standoff with the large black-and-white tom cat, Spitfire, who had to be chained to a dog-kennel due to long time misbehaviours! Like all bullies, the latter soon found a mistress who proceeded to tease her remorselessly.

Of course, the inevitable (rightly) happens. In two chapters - The Call of the Wild and Toby in the Wild Woods - the young vixen leaves the comforts of her artificial home for the natural environment of her species. Frances Pitt cleverly uses odd scraps of evidence - half eaten rabbits, foot/paw prints, fox fur on barbed wire fencing, to surmise what and where Toby was up to.  Yes, Toby was handicapped, badly handicapped, by her upbringing, but every moment more and wild impulses welled up within her. The final chapter - Were they Toby's Cubs? - describes the author catching sight of a fox cub: his sandy jacket showed against the greenery, as did his keen, alert little face, delicate muzzle and pricked ears; so like, so exactly like Toby at the same age! Was he indeed Toby's cub? The author certainly wanted to think so; and, we the reader, probably do too.

Nancy Goldstone's 'The Rebel Empresses' 2025

Weidenfeld & Nicolson first edition - 2025

I was delighted when I read about this dual-biography in the 15th March issue of The Spectator, as it concerned two of my favourite 19th century women! Readers - I immediately ordered it. Nancy Goldstone has produced a free-flowing, though detailed, 'popular' account of Eugénie of France and Elisabeth of Austria - although the former was Spanish and the latter Bavarian.

Goldstone's book is more than a dual biography - it is a wonderful gallop through the second half of the 19th century, focussing obviously on the French and Austrian Empires, but also bringing in the whirlwind of ever-changing relationships between the old-established and newly-emerging political entities. We read of how the wily Count Cavour draws Napoleon III into the enticing web of inter-state rivalry in what was to become Italy (ironically the same year that the Emperor lost his throne); of the doomed attempt of the last King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II, and his wife Maria Sophie of Bavaria (younger sister of Elisabeth) to hang on to their throne; the rampaging meteor that was Garibaldi, upsetting everyone's applecart; the so-called mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria (nicknamed the Swan King or Fairy Tale King), Elisabeth's cousin, who apparently took his own life; Count Gyula Andrassy of Hungary, a firm supporter of Elisabeth and both fervent believers in Hungary; Prosper Mérimée, the French dramatist and short story writer and confidant of Eugénie, who died in 1870, the same year the Third Empire collapsed; the wily and ruthless Bismarck and his near-puppet King of Prussia, soon to become Emperor of Germany (proclaimed at Versailles!). All these important figures are brought to life by the author, who shows a sure grasp of her source material. Queen Victoria hovers on the sidelines, ready finally to give refuge to Napoleon III and his family. All three are buried in England. Tragedy looms large throughout: the mad escapade of the Archduke Maximilian, sent to Mexico as Emperor, only to be executed, whilst his wife Charlotte returned to Europe to end her days in an asylum. The tragic episode of Mayerling, where Crown Prince Rudolph first shot his teenage lover, Mary Vetsera, and then himself. It marked the Empress Elisabeth for the rest of her life. The equal devastation for the Empress Eugénie, whose son, the Prince Imperial, was killed in a Zulu ambush in 1879. 

Other biographies of Elisabeth, such as Brigitte Harman's The Reluctant Empress (1982) and Andrew Sinclair's Death by Fame (1998) are more measured in their approach, certainly on occasions more critical. Sinclair argued that the Empress never counted the costs of her caprice...she took for granted the subsidy of everything she wanted to do, even though it flouted the traditions of her paymaster. His forbearance was her good fortune and the condition of her rebellion.  Elisabeth is portrayed as a narcissist, her 'beauty' condemning her to a lifetime of trying to stem the tide of aging. Her self-confidence increased in the 1860s due mainly from the circumstance of her increasingly more striking beauty. It turned her into a worldwide celebrity. At 5' 71/2", she was taller than the Emperor; her weight rarely varied throughout her life - 110 lbs; her waist was an incredibly tiny 191/2". In 1864, the American envoy to Vienna wrote home: The Empress is a wonder of beauty - tall, beautifully formed, with a profusion of bright brown hair, a low Greek forehead, gentle eyes, very red lips, a sweet smile, a low musical voice, a manner partly timid, partly gracious. Of course, this reputation became more burdensome the more it grew and, especially, as she aged.

Elisabeth simply refused to conform (hence Goldstone's title). She did not play the devoted wife; accept the  need for the constant presence of a mother (she must share a portion of blame for her son Rudolph's suicide); nor the role of a principal figurehead in the Austrian Empire. She insisted on her rights as an individual - and she prevailed. That her self-realisation did not make her happy is the tragedy of her life. She was obsessed with her hair and the expense of caring for it huge. It took nearly three hours each day to achieve what she wanted. The older Elisabeth grew, the more strenuous became her struggle to keep her looks. Hours of daily exercise, constant diets; nightly face masks (raw veal, strawberries!) and warm olive-oil baths; damp cloths over her hips to maintain her slenderness; and drinking a mixture of five or six egg whites with salt;  all were used to retain her beauty. She had an exercise room installed wherever she lived. She knew her beauty was her power and she used it to fulfil her wishes. It could not last - she was human!

By the late 1890s, Elisabeth was nearing sixty. Prince Alfons Clary-Aldrington, as a small boy, saw Elisabeth in 1896-7: ...this time the Empress did not open her fan! My sister curtseyed, and I made my best bow; she smiled at us in a friendly way - but I was stunned, for I saw a face full of wrinkles, looking as old as the hills.

A major flaw was her bad teeth. Archduchess Sophie had noted and criticised this defect even before Elisabeth's engagement to her son. Thus, from her first day in Vienna, Elisabeth parted her lips as little as possible and her enunciation was soft and indistinct. The actress Rosa Albach-Retty saw Elisabeth in 1898 in a small country inn in Bad Ischl. She was alone at a table. For seconds Elisabeth stared downward, then with her left hand she took out her dentures, held them sideways over the edge of the table, and rinsed them off by pouring a glass of water over them. Then she put them back in her mouth. All this was done with such graceful nonchalance, but most particularly at such lightning speed, that at first I could not believe my eyes.

On finishing Goldstone's account, I found myself having greater sympathy for the Empress Eugénie - reviled by so many of the French simply because she was Spanish but, by and large, doing her very best for her adopted country and would probably have made a better ruler than her husband. As for the Empress Elisabeth, more of a mixed feeling. She hadn't asked to be caught up in the stultifying atmosphere of the backward-looking Viennese court. Her mother-in-law was an absolute dragoon, controlling her daughter-in-law's children from the first; her rigid husband totally under the influence of that mother. In fact, Elisabeth seemingly would have preferred a Republic to an autocratic Empire.

Sic gloria transit mundi.

Other relevant books in my Library include:

Maurice Paléologue - The Tragic Empress (1928) : Harold Kurz - The Empress Eugénie (1964) : David Duff - Eugénie & Napoleon III (1978) : Desmond Seward - Eugénie. The Empress and her Empire (2004)

Brigitte Harman - The Reluctant Empress (1982) and Andrew Sinclair's Death by Fame (1998)                

ed. David Holmes 'A History of Market Harborough' Volume 2 2024

A History of Market Harborough Vol. 2 - 2024

After the excellent standard set by Volume I (see my review in The Local Historian Vol.52 No.4 October 2022), it was with mild trepidation that I awaited the publication of Volume 2, which brings the history of Market Harborough up to the Present. One need not have worried, as it is a worthy successor. Again, it is salutary to note the involvement of so many contributors: there are fourteen individuals responsible for writing the chapters; others loaned photographs or instigated maps, plans, tables and graphs; the proof reading was first-class as was the typesetter and designer. When one adds the knowledgeable support of the County Records Office staff and members of the Museum Service, it is no surprise that this second volume is such an informative and (also thanks to Biddles, the printer and binder) quality production. The Market Harborough and the Bowdens Charity and the Howard Watson Symington Memorial Charity are again to be saluted for funding the entire project. In fact, along with the Grand Union Canal (1809) – “Canals did not increase the pace of life, rather they broadened the scope of opportunity” – and the LNWR and Midland Railway (1850), the factories of W. Symington and R & W.H. Symington (starting humbly with a grocer’s shop in 1827) were mainstays in the steady growth of the market town.

The sequence of Maps, showing the expansion of the town – from that of Samuel Turner in 1776 which highlighted the recently enclosed fields, through the OS maps of 1885, 1920, 1961 and 1968, to the Google Earth views of 2004 and 2021 – are a clear way of understanding the type of growth as well as its extent. Ribbon development, council houses, infilling and the large housing estates all around the town, highlight where the population of c.2,800 in 1800 had expanded to over 25,000 in the present day.

Chapter I, ‘The Development of Market Harborough since 1800’, is a splendid overview. It describes how a small, compact market town developed, due to the emergence not only of canal and railway linked buildings, but also other industrial units, residential developments and public buildings. It highlights the 1990s, when the whole canal basin was redeveloped and the area of water was doubled in size for leisure purposes, with residential apartments surrounding it. It charts the importance of Samuel Symington, who erected a large four-storey, red-brick factory, now converted to apartments. “Few of the many 19th and 20th century purpose-built industrial buildings remain, but none is still in industrial use, all having been adapted for other uses or demolished.” A salient point is made that, although in 220 years Harborough’s and the Bowdens’ population increased almost tenfold, its area increased a hundredfold. “Its growth reflects that of many small market towns.”

Further chapters concentrate on the growth of retail – most retailers became primarily sellers of goods made by others – and town improvement schemes: the overcrowded residential yards of the early 19th century, which housed many of the working class, were gradually demolished or converted for storage or into workshops; local government and public services; health and educational provision; the religious make-up and buildings of the town (the Congregationalists were the largest non-conformist group); more on the canal and railway effects are added to by addressing the development of the road system – such as the 1992 bypass diverting the busy A6 and the 1994 opening of the A14, which removed much of the east-west traffic. Recreational pursuits are well covered, showing how, from the mid-1840s onwards, cricket, football, tennis, golf, hockey and rugby clubs were established. In 1893 the Market Harborough Choral Society was founded, followed five years later by the Operatic Society.

There are other interesting chapters on ‘Town Life in War Time’, looking at the effect of the Napoleonic, Crimean, Boer and the two World Wars on the town’s life; on ‘Changes in Farming Practice’; and a long account of ‘Industrial Harborough’. The latter goes into some detail on the importance of W. Symington & Co. William Symington opened a business in 1827 from a small warehouse in Adam and Eve Street, selling mainly tea. As the business prospered, he added coffee and groceries; then, in 1850, he purchased land and buildings in Springfield Street in 1850. Here he patented a method of ddrying peas and barley, which was then turned into flour so it could form the basis of a soup. Patents were taken out on ‘Roasting and Treating Coffee’ Buildings were built or extended. In 1882, the company won a Gold Medal at the New Zealand Exhibition. In 1901, the company was commissioned to supply Pea Soup and Pea Flour for Captain Robert Scott’s first expedition to the Antarctic. Around 1919, the company branched out into an important catering business. The 1930s saw the introduction of canned soups and ready meals in a can. However, the company was taken over in 1969 by J. Lyons & Co. and, then in 1980, by Golden Wonder and its sister company HP Foods. The factories in Market Harborough were closed in 1996. There is an equally interesting section on the R. & W.H. Symington & Co business, where the first mechanised corset factory was born. The more casual fashion after the Second World War led to the demise of the corset and by the mid-1960s Symington’s factories were closing. The company finally shut down in 1990. Sic transit gloria mundi. The chapter has some fine colour illustrations.

The final chapter deals with ‘Some Notable People Associated with Harborough’. Living in Melbourne, Derbyshire myself, I was particularly pleased to read the account of Thomas Cook, who was born here in 1808. I hadn’t realised he lived in Harborough between 1832 and 1841. He had a shop in Adam and Eve Street, signing ‘The Pledge’ to forsake alcoholic drink, preaching the benefits of temperance locally. The many tavern owners were not impressed and his shop window was smashed on more than one occasion. He moved to Leicester in September 1841. Another ‘Notable’ is Martin Johnson, who lived in the town from the age of seven and was educated there. Captain of the English Rugby team from 1999, he led them to victory at the World Cup in 2003.

Once again, there is the most useful Time Line – which has a few additions from that of Volume 1 – and detailed Bibliography. This time, there is a separate ‘Sources’ section, which links the list of material such as Primary Sources, Reports, Journals, Directories, Newspapers and Web sites, directly to the relevant chapters. I ended my previous Review, “I look forward to the second volume”. It was well worth the wait. It is noteworthy, but not surprising, that Volume 1 has been reprinted this year.