Pt. III
Time Traveling With
R.E. Prindle
George William McArthur Reynolds |
George
Stephens knew not what he had done when he put steam engines on the rails. The joint stock company essentially arose
from the railroads, giving birth to vast new streams of financial
criminality. Steamships and the Marconi
telegraph drew North America closer together and expanded opportunity.
Reynolds and
Dickens certainly seized the new financial crimes as important elements of
their stories. Dicken laments the
displacement of the stage coach and its social structure as a whole major part
of English civilization melted away as the snows of yesteryear.
The period
of the Regency Bucks of the Romantic period and the new Men of the World or Man
About Town captured Reynolds imagination.
His Mysteries of the Court of London captures the spirt of the Regency
Buck while the Mysteries of London chronicles the adventures of the Man of the
World or the Man About Town. Although
written in reverse order he apparently considered his two masterpieces as one
unit. And what a magnificent
achievement.
When he
began Mysteries of London in 1844, he was only a young thirty, ending the story
when thirty-four. During that period
mind and skill developed exponentially, so as he began Mysteries of the Court
of London, which would take eight years to write he moved into the years of his
peak powers. Well were they
exhibited. Court of London is amazing. Those eight years were astonishing years.
Thus, in
these twelve volumes (of my editions) Reynolds seems to have captured the dark
side of England. While apparently a true
representation there were many others who wrote from a different viewpoint. One of the finest was R.S. Surtees (Richard
Smith) who wrote great sporting novels centered on his hero Jorrocks and fox
hunting. Surtee’s novels too are
accurate portrayals of the Regency Buck but of rural England and not
London. George Borrow’s curious novels, especially The Bible In Spain, are
interesting although mostly concerned with the gypsies in England. The great Romanticists Byron and Shelley and
their interpreter Thomas Love Peacock. Who
can possibly ignore the great recorder of Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackery. The amazing career of the inventor of the
historical novel, Walter Scott. Scott in
his magnificent effusion literary skill influenced a couple of generation at
least to 1850 both in England and the Continent. Both Sue and Dumas acknowledged their debt to
the great Walter Scott. There were other
Penny Dreadful writers, perhaps more narrow in scope, such as James Malcolm
Rymer and his two great works Varney The Vampire and Sweeney Todd, William
Harrison Ainsworth, Bulyer Lytton, a major influence of Reynolds and
others. There is literary wealth to
equal the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, too precious to be forgotten.
While famous
in his time Reynolds’ fame was of a disreputable kind. He himself was disreputable and he wrote
Penny Dreadfuls.
Victorian
scholar Lee Jackson writes of general opinion of Penny Dreadfuls. He quotes a James Greenwood from his 1869
complaint against the literature, The Seven Curses of London.
Quote:
Is it
because it stands to reason that all such coarse and vulgar trash finds its
level amongst the coarse and vulgar, and could gain no footing above its own
elevation? It may stand to reason, but
unfortunately it is the unreasonable fact that this same pen poison finds
customers at heights above its natural low and foul waterline almost
inconceivable. How otherwise is it
accountable that at least a quarter of million of these penny numbers are sold
weekly? How is it that in quiet suburban
neighbourhoods far removed from the stews of London, and the pernicious
atmosphere they engender; in serene and peaceful semi-country towns where
genteel boarding schools flourish, there may almost invariably be found some
small shopkeeper who accommodatingly receives consignments of “Blue-skin,” and
the “Mysteries of London,” and
unobtrusively supplies his well-dressed little customer with these
full-flavoured articles? Granted, my
dear sir, that your young jack, or my twelve years old Robert… and so on.
Unquote.
Undoubtedly
young Bob and Jack received an eyeful and a magnificent addition to their
education.
So these
Penny Dreadfuls, like the Dime novels of slightly later US, the comic books
beginning in the 1930s, sci-fi movies and stories in the fifties and horror of all
horrors, the Rock and Roll explosion that was seen as soul destroying missiles
to be suppressed. Along the scale of
decades the nineteen fifties are overlooked for the exciting years they were.
Were Penny
Dreadfuls soul destroying? Well, a
little over a hundred years later society degenerated from Mysteries of London
to the totally soul destroying Tales From The Crypt comic books. A definite downward spiral there. But, how is it that the soul destroying
Mysteries of London passed from vulgar filth to valuable literary virtue?
In point of
fact, even as fiction, the Mysteries is accurate reportage of conditions in
London of the time. Reynolds might have been
of questionable morality himself, Mysteries reads as though he had personally
experienced the incidents (literary skill perhaps,). His portrayals are of what he considered
‘men of the world.’ Indeed, he
desperately wanted to be known as ‘a man of the world.’ And that ‘man of the world’ seems to be a
‘gentlemanly’, or at least an aspirant to gentlelimaness, criminal. George Montague Greenwood schemes to separate
rich men from their money by devious financial schemes. And he and his kind are successful. Was Reynolds one of these schemers? Certainly his knowledge of their ways would
indicate that he associated with them.
Amongst the Chartists, a political group, with which he was involved, he
earned a reputation for promoting financial schemes for which he was
rejected. Was his mind not then
conditioned to such schemes? It would
seem that he used false bankruptcies to advance his own financial affairs.
Reynolds
very likely paraded the ‘Man of the World’ notion in his life or because it was
so prominent in his novels that Dickens, who certainly bore Reynolds no
goodwill, with justice, may very likely have been referring to him in this
passage from The Old Curiosity Shop:
Quote:
‘He, he!’
simpered Brass, who in his deep debasement really seemed to have changed sexes
with his sister, and to have made over to her any spark of manliness he might
have possessed. ‘You think so, Sarah,
you think so perhaps; but you would have acted quite differently, my good
fellow. You will not have forgotten that
it was a maxim of Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—Always suspect
everyone. That’s the maxim to go through
life with.’--…
With
deference to the latter opinion of Mr. Brass, and more particularly to the
authority of his Great Ancestor, it may be doubted with humility whether the
leveling principle laid down to the latter gentleman, and acted on by his descendant,
is always a prudent one, or attended by practice with the desired results. This beyond question a bold and presumptuous
doubt, in as much as many distinguished characters called men of the world, longheaded
customers, knowing dogs, shrewd fellows, and their like have made, and do daily
make, this axiom their star and compass.
Still the doubt may be greatly insinuated. And in illustration it may be observed that
if Mr. Brass, not being over-suspicious, had without prying and listening, had
not been in such a might hurry to anticipate her (which he would not have been,
but for his distrust and jealously.) he would probably have found himself much
better off in the end. That it will
always happen that these men of the world, who go through it in armor, defend
themselves from quite as much good as evil, to say nothing of the inconvenience
and absurdity of mounting guard with a
microscope at all times, and of wearing a coat of mail on the most innocent
occasions.
Unquote.
I would not
consider the lawyer Brass of Dickens’ story a man of the world nor as I
perceive Reynolds using the term. So
long as one retires from the world to some extent that rescues oneself from
many of the hazards of the world, but as nearly everyone must move about in the
world I would prefer a very close attention, and if that attention slopped over
into paranoia so be it, to who is doing what.
Reynolds
very brilliantly portrays the hazards of fixtures and forces that may be
operating to one’s detriment in the background.
Indeed, if Richard Markham had been more of a man of the world and less
naïve he would have avoided the snares that landed him in prison. Thus Reynolds’ trusting characters are always
being blindsided.
Sometimes
one’s projected villainies that are foiled save one from a greater danger. Reynolds very cleverly does this in the case
of George Montague and Eliza Sydney. Eliza
has been unwittingly mired into a scheme by her mentor, Mr. Stephens. Stephens has employed George Montague, alias
of Eugene Markham, to bear false witness in the situation. A day or so before its realization Montague
and Eliza who have become close, Eliza in love with him, during a horrid storm later
at night, offers Montague a room to save him walking home as cabs are no longer
available. Gorgeous woman of the swelling ivory orbs, Montague works himself
into a fever entering her room with evil intent. Eliza awakens, is horrified at the thought of
what Montague was contemplating and breaks relations off completely then and
there. She is not a woman of the world.
This means
he can no longer serve as Stephens accomplice.
Stephens replaces him with the shifty lawyer, Mac Chizzle. Meanwhile, the police who had a spy system
reviewing the mail working from a Black Room in which they open letters have opened
and read a letter by Stephens detailing the scheme and the date of execution. The authorities are alerted. Stephens, Mac Chizzle and Sydney are arrested
as Stephens would have been if he had maintained strict morality and not
thought to rape Eliza. Thus his evil
intents saved him from being caught in the police snare.
An excellent
detail that shows off Reynolds’ brilliance and is something that the more basic
Dickens could never have conceived and executed.
Ramifications
from this incident in the first hundred pages will be continued throughout
twenty-four hundred additional pages.
So, we have
a huge record of virtue and vice as outlined in Part II of Time Travel. Add the concern with virtue and vice to that
of the concept of man of the world and you have the core of Reynolds’
concerns. Now, how did Reynolds learn
all the details that make his work interesting.
After all he was now only thirty years old and seems to have the
experience and knowledge of a much more mature man. He gives us at least a partial answer in this
passage from his Mysteries.
Eugene
Markham alias George Montague now becomes Greenwood, the moniker, George
Montague having been worn out and no longer useful. Greenwood wishes to employ the criminal Tom
the Cracksman, or burglar, for a crime.
They are negotiating:
Quote:
“What the
natur’ of the service?” demanded the Cracksman, darting a keen and penetrating
glance at Greenwood.
“A highway
robbery,” cooly answered this individual.
“Well, that’s
plain enow,” said the Cracksman. “But
first tell me how you came to know of me, and where I was to be seen because
how can I tell but what this is all a plant of yours to get me in trouble?”
“I will
answer you candidly and fairly. A few
years ago, when I first entered into London life, I determined to make myself
acquainted with all the ways of the metropolis, high or low, virtuous or
vicious. I disguised myself on several
occasions in very mean clothes, and visited all the flash houses and patter
cribs- amongst others, the boozing ken in Great Saffron Hill. There you were pointed out to me; and your
skill, your audacity, and your extraordinary luck in eluding the police, were
vouched by the landlord of the place in no measured terms…”
“…the
landlord’s a fool to talk so free; how did he know you wasn’t a trap in
disguise?”
“Because I
told him that my object was merely to see life in all its shapes and I was then
so very young I could scarcely have been considered dangerous. However, I have occasionally indulged in such
rambles, even today…”
Unquote.
Now, looking
freely at what is known of Reynolds’ history, his father being a naval Captain,
he was stationed on the British island of Guernsey next to France until
Reynolds was eight, then was moved to Canterbury in Kent where he attended a
school in its proximity. Then at
fourteen in 1828 he was placed at the military academy at Sandhurst, which
according to his scenario he left to flee to France at the age of sixteen in 1830. Perhaps this has something to do with so many
of his heroines being sixteen. You have
to pay attention to his very precise dates in his stories. Most of the biographical details I’m using come
from the two Dick Collins’ articles noted under the title of the this essay.
Collins disputes
the 12,000 pound inheritance of 1830 but I find it difficult to believe that a
sixteen year old kid would have attempted to be an ex-pat in France without a sixpence
in his pocket. Perhaps from his early experience in Guernsey he could handle
the French language. I doubt if French
was on the curriculum of Sandhurst.
Collins points out that during the Napoleonic wars Reynold’s father
captained a frigate and took several prizes.
The proceeds from the prizes were parceled out in shares to officers and
crew. It is not unlikely that the
captain’s share might have added up to twenty thousand pounds, or more, to
Capt. Reynolds’ estate, which have escaped Collins’ attention. Certainly the Reynolds family was not living
hand to mouth. Reynold’s says
specifically that he received the inheritance from his father. I have no difficulty believing that his
father left his son twelve thousand pounds. His mother died in March of 1830
when he was fifteen thus he would have come under the jurisdiction of his
active guardian Duncan McArthur. So
McArthur would have been in charge of the family finances. He would have had to pay Reynolds way from
those funds. It appears probable that Reynolds
got into some kind of trouble at Sandhurst, possibly inducted into a gambling
crowd, so that he left Sandhurst, removed by his friends, so the phrase has it. That happened in July of 1830 just as the
revolution in France occurred. Now
adrift with no direction it seems likely that he would have petitioned McArthur
for his inheritance and with it leave for France where he stayed for six or
seven years until his money was gone. He
was probably a prey to the sharpers he depicts so well while learning their ways. Of course, the above may be just one solution
to the Mysteries of G.W.M Reynolds.
At any rate
as Reynolds returned to England in 1837 at the young age of twenty-three he had
no familiarity with the metropolis having formerly lived in Kent at Canterbury
which is why the area figures so prominently in his stories. Twenty-three is one of ages, along with
sixteen, that recur frequently in his writings.
So, beginning in 1837 at the age of twenty-three Reynolds began
familiarizing himself with London high and low, East End and West End. A great and daunting adventure.
Now,
Reynolds had met and married his wife Susannah Pierson in Paris. She was English but Collins can find few
details about her except that Reynolds met her in prison, whatever that means,
either as a visitor or an inmate. She
may also have been married before at fourteen making her Reynolds her second
husband at the age of either late sixteen or early seventeen. That occurred in in 1835 when Reynolds was
twenty-one. The marriage was one of
those made in heaven as they were happily married until she died.
A sixteen
year old showing up in France with twelve thousand pounds must have attracted
every sharper, or man of the world, in Paris, thus Reynolds’ education
began. He knows whereof he speaks.
This
learning curve must have been painful and arduous requiring a strong mind to
survive and overcome. If he had twelve
thousand pounds when he arrived in France he left without any. Twelve
thousand pounds was a lot of money to go through in six years. He, therefore, arrived in England without any
of the ready. He had to find his way out
of the hole, what with a wife and offspring arriving frequently.
How
autobiographical is the Mysteries? I
think highly but it requires a lot of imagination and interpretation, and then
you can’t be certain. It would appear
that the two brothers Eugene and Richard Markham represent the two halves of a
split personality. Richard is the naïve
young sport who left England for France and came back as a variation of Eugene,
this also plays into the de Sadian dichotomy of Justine and Juliette, virtue
and vice. Thus viewing each half
separately one arrives at the whole.
In the story
Richard survives while Eugene/GeorgeMontague/Greenwood is killed off by an
aggrieved victim. Thus virtue triumphs
over vice reversing de Sade’s reverse understanding of life. That was in 1848. Does that mean that Reynolds lived the rest
of his life in Richard’s shoes? Not as
late as 1850 it doesn’t. According to
his Chartist friends he was still full of questionable financial schemes.
Those
schemes may very well have resembled the schemes of his characters and possible
his alter ego Montague/Greenwood. If so,
his alter ego was a much more successful schemer than he was. According to Dick Collins, who seems
knowledgeable, but never gives the sources of his information, Reynolds was
arrested in France and imprisoned in France for playing with loaded dice in Calais. The man certainly outlined the tricks of
doctoring dice in the Mysteries, even with illustrations. Collins says that he met Susannah Pierson in
prison in France. Whether that means
that a very young Susannah was a visitor or a prisoner Collins doesn’t make
clear. If she had been convicted of some
malfeasance, then both she and Reynolds were partners in skirting the law.
Collins even
makes a not implausible accusation that Reynolds was arrested for stealing
jewels in order to pay his bill at
Long’s Hotel in Bond Street. Reynolds’
has long passages that take place in Long’s Hotel in his novel Grace Darling or
The Heroine of Fern Islands. His
character Slapman Twill may have been his alter ego in this incident. At any rate Mr. Twill is arrested at Long’s
restaurant for non-payment of bills and goes to King’s Bench prison much as
Collins says Reynolds did.
And then
Reynolds files for bankruptcy three times apparently having learned to take
advantage of bankruptcy laws. He has the
proprietor of the Dark House public house gloat that the bankruptcy laws were
great as he had filed and was doing very nicely.
Thus as
Reynolds roamed the lower and higher reaches of society he definitely lived in
the lower until later in life. Even then
he was probably not accepted in society because of his prison time as Richard
Markham has a very difficult time living down his prison stay even though he
was a dupe and innocent of the charges.
Collins has him living in the lowest area of London, the Borough, at one
time as well as other terrible locations.
One imagines
Reynolds prowling the streets of these poverty stricken areas examining each
and every side street until he became thoroughly familiar with the
streets. This is especially evident in the
Courts of London which can be very terrifying.
Streets, buildings and inhabitants, Reynolds knew them all. He provides an accurate portrait of all
aspects of London as it then existed.
I would like
to close part III with an aside, that of the great plan of Reynolds’ novels, because
all the novels seem to have a resemblance to Balzac’s Human Comedy. I am just sketchy here as I familiarize
myself with Reynolds’ vast corpus.
Reynold’s himself said the Mysteries of London and Court of London were
one vast story. If so, then it appears
that rather than two parts of the continuum there are three written out of
order. Mysteries of London is actually
Part three and it was written first.
Mysteries of the Court of London is the second part written after both
the first and last parts. Reynolds
undertook to write The Mysteries of Old London or Days of Hogarth which
portrays mid-eighteenth century London previous to the birth of George IV in
the last two years of Mysteries of London.
The Court of
London chronicles the doings of George IV during the Regency when Reynolds
appears to have hated him for whatever reason.
George IV died in 1830 just as Mysteries of London begins. Reynolds who was sixteen with George IV died
then had actual memories of him as king.
So, between
the three novels, Old London while not as long as the other two is not that
short either, we have one long semi-historical novel of a hundred some
years. Mysteries of London and Court of
London are said to contain four and a half million words with perhaps a
hundred-fifty to two hundred thousand for Old London so unraveling the mind of
Reynolds which I believe is a worthy pursuit is a mighty project especially
with all the side novels of further explication thrown in.
I doubt if I
will be equal to the task but I hope my analysis is not an unworthy effort.
Part IV of
Time Traveling with R.E. Prindle follows in which I will examine primarily the
early novels Alfred de Rosann and Grace Darling and perhaps Master Timothy’s
Bookcase.