Pt. VIII: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
by
R.E. Prindle
A Dialogue Between George Reynolds
and John Dicks with asides from R.E. Prindle.
Let us
imagine George Reynolds and John Dicks sitting over lunch and a nice glass of
Lafite, as George spelled it, reminiscing in early 1860 about the good old days. At this point in time George had ended, or
was about to, his novelistic career. He
would now devote himself to journalistic matters with his very successful
newspaper and magazine. John Dicks who
began his association with George in late 1847 had run a tight printing shop
always keeping up with developments in printing. An employee of George at this time he will
soon be made a full partner and go on to an illustrious later career of
publishing cheap literary editions for the masses.
Merely
getting by back in ’47 they are now well-to-do men with money in the bank and
more rolling in with every publication.
They have every reason to think well of themselves.
John asks
George how he came up with the idea or the first two Mysteries of London series
about the Markham Brothers and the astonishing Resurrection Man.
George: That’s kind of an interesting story John. As you know my last couple of books, damn
good books too, had flopped. My whole
early career was kind of a waste. My
apprenticeship one might call it. Personally I thought the Steam Packet and
Master Timothy’s Bookcase were great, but, the fickle public, you know…
There I was
approaching thirty supporting my family with odd jobs, looking desperately into the future with
great fear, a failure without an idea, when George Stiff approached me and said
he had a novel idea, serial, that he was calling the Mysteries of London, same
general notion as Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris. There was also another Mysteres de Londres by
this other French fellow by the name of Paul Feval who had actually published
his Mysteres de Londres that was alright.
I had this notion of two brothers who chose different paths in life,
Richard Markham, virtue, and his brother Eugene, vice.
John: Did that have anything to do with Ainsworth’s
two brothers in Rookwood?
George: I remembered that and then there’s Cain and
Able of course and Romulus and Remus of Rome but, more importantly I could
never get De Sade’s two novels Justine and Juliette out of my mind with De
Sade’s notions about the rewards of virtue and vice. So, I changed the sexes to men and reversed
the roles and made virtuous Richard more successful than vicious Eugene. I think I’m right too.
John: Did Eugene have any reference to Sue, his
first name?
George: Probably.
A little joke. I leaned pretty
heavily on Sue during my career. A lot
more from his Wandering Jew than The Mysteres de Paris, and then his later work.
Sue just died you know, young man. Worked himself to death. Terrific prolific writer. I borrowed a lot but don’t lets talk about
that.
John: I hadn’t heard about Sue’s death. Interesting fellow. You didn’t by any chance use him as a model
for the Marquis of Holmesford in the second series of Mysteries of London by any
chance did you George?
George: You got that, did you John?
John: I know your devious mind, George. I remembered how fascinated you were that Sue
kept a harem of women of many different nationalities and races in his castle. Then when Holmesford did the same thing I did
associate the two. Of course you made Holmesford
an old man for your literary purposes but the similarities were there.
George: The truth is stranger than fiction, John but fiction makes it more interesting. Do you know that many of those women were
actually Sue’s slave girls? He owned them.
John: No, I didn’t know that. Most of them were white women, how could he own
those? Where did he buy them?
George: Slavery hasn’t disappeared John, it’s true
that we English outlawed the African slave trade back in ’02 or whenever but
slavery is still going strong in America and the Brazils and the middle East. That fellow Livingston reports that the barbaric
Arab slave trade from East Africa to the Middle East is tremendous.
The Ottomans
control the Balkans and parts of the Caucasus so that slave marts selling
whites is still Strong. Samuel Baker,
the fellow that is organizing his African expedition actually bought his wife
in Hungary at a slave mart in Budapest.
Wonderful story. So, there were
many sources for Sue to buy his women.
Of course, I put in a sly joke with Holmesford in which, rather than die in bed, he struggles
to his feet to stagger to the arms of his favorite and dies on her capacious
bosom.
Everyone
takes a negative view of it when it’s supposed to be a tender moment if
humorous. Good way to die don’t you think
John? Hated to see Sue die, there goes
my inspiration. Dumas’ still alive but
my intuition tells me he’s finished. Boy,
what productively, exhausted his brain.
I’m learning how that feels.
John: You mean the inspiration of the Mysteries
series with Sue?
George: No. That
was Stiff. Right before my nose but I
couldn’t see it. Once I got into it
though and finished with George IV, I borrowed his stuff for things like Joseph
Wilmot, Mary Price and that sort of thing, his Matilda, or The Misfortunes Of Virtue
for instance. You can see the de Sade
reference. Sue plotted out the stories for me,
I mean I used them, something
like Maquet did for Dumas. And then I
rewrote them according to my own sensibilities.
Back to
Stiff. Nobody had any idea of how
astonishingly successful the Mysteries would be. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it, but
Stiff promised a five quid note a week and always came through. Two hundred sixty quid a year. This seemed like a good deal to me for only a
few thousand words a week. Coupled with what I could make on the side. I had a of words in me and they were free to me. Of course, as I came to realize I was making
him a heck of a lot more than I was getting.
The end result was that he bought himself a damn good income and
lifestyle for next to nothing. Look how
we’re living.
By the time
I got into the second series though, I began to think that there’s something
wrong here. If my writing could make their
fortunes, my writing could do a lot better for me, I thought.
In ’46 then,
still under contract for Mysteries, I began my Reynold’s Miscellany that has
been fairly successful as you know.
Somehow that brought us together.
I realized your genius from the beginning—no, no, I’m serious John, no
need for false modesty with me, your integrity, the whole works. So, when the second series was coming to the
end, and the expiration of my contract, I had worked up the general outline for
the George IV fifth and sixth series so were we’re ready to go as soon as I
turned in my last clip to Stiff and refused to sign a new contract.
John: They weren’t too happy with that, were they?
George: I should think not. Of course, I had foolishly talked about the George
IV series, so they thought they were going to have that too. That would have put them on Easy Street with
me getting five pounds a week. They
owned the rights to the Mysteries of London, lock, stock and copyright. Owned
the title. If Stiff could have found a
writer the Mysteries might have gone on forever.
Finding
another writer wasn’t that easy. They
should have come to terms with me and shared the income more equitably but, as
they said, a contract is a contract.
They apparently didn’t understand that contracts are written with a
fixed term. They got lucky with me but
although I think Tom Miller who they signed next is a fine person and a very
adequate writer neither he nor Blanchard who succeeded him understood the audience. I, in association with you John, continued
the success.
John: Stiff and Vickers came unglued then in ’48
and forced you into bankruptcy proceedings?
George: Damn ‘em.
That was more Vickers who lost a lot of printing business so the clod
uses my name to try to make up for my loss.
Attacked the Miscellany, putting out a vile rag called the Reynolds
something or other because he had some obscure typesetter with the name of
Reynolds. Got his though. I know how they got me into that bankruptcy
mess. I only owed two thousand and by
’48 that was nothing what with the Miscellany and the beginning of George IV. We were already bringing in that much each
month. Vickers was just being vicious,
humiliated me and got nothing out of it.
Hope the villain is happy and rots in hell.
But that was
then and this is now. Look where Vickers
is at and look where we’re at.
John: I think your politics had something to do
with that too, George. Remember what
year that was? ’48? Ring any bells?
George: (laughing immoderately) I thought that Revolution of ’48 was the real
thing; an ’89 that worked. Was I ever
wrong. Marx put that manifesto out in
’47, alerting the reactionaries as to what was coming and were they ever ready
for us. We were all riddled with spies. Put the government is a tizzie though. A little better leadership and it might have
been done. I wasn’t keen on the
Communist stuff though. Our Chartist
idea was the best. No violence.
John: I was always of the opinion that revolutions
mean violence. Anyway, they smashed the
revolution and the revolutionaries scattered like leaves in the wind. Hope the Americans know what to do with them
because they got a lot and the worst of them.
I always
wondered, George, to change the subject a bit, of all your characters which was
your favorite?
George: The Resurrection Man of course. Boy, did he really come from the depths of my
subconscious. Terrified myself more than
he did my readers. You know something
though, John? I think I had stumbled on
to something but I didn’t know what to do with it.
John: What might that have been?
George: Remember Larry Sampson the leading detective
of the Bow Street Runners? And the
hangman, Daniel Coffin?
John: Yes. That
was strong, very effective. But…?
George: Better than strong, John. I don’t know if you’ve read this American
Edgar Allen Poe, he’s dead now, tragic story, collapsed and died on the streets
of Baltimore. Tragic death, tragic. Great artist.
He wrote a story called The Murders In The Rue Morgue. Wonderful imaginative tale. He has an intellectual sort of detective, C.
August Dupin. Initials spell CAD. Good joke, what? Poe was very intellectual keen on acumen. He thought he was a genius, probably was. Dupin solves the crime in the Rue Morgue, an
impossible closed door mystery, sitting in his armchair. Acumen you see. I appreciated the acumen but I thought a true
detective would keep records and biographies and with the information would be
able to lead him more quickly and accurately to probable perpetrators. Thus, I introduced Lawrence ‘Larry’ Sampson
of the Metropolitan Police, chief of the Bow Street Runners.
John: Your old friend Paul Feval has written a book,
John Devil, in which he introduces a master
detective from Scotland Yard by the name of Gregory Temple. Have you read that?
George: No, not yet.
Have you read any of Feval’s Black Coat series? The crime network he portrays reminds me of
our Johnathan Wild who had criminal London pretty well organized in the last
century. Wild in turn reminds of Vidocq,
the head of the Paris Surete. Francois
Vidocq, who died a couple years ago by the way.
Vidocq was a nasty criminal and obviously the greatest of con men. Imagine hiring a master criminal to be he
head of police! There was a scandal. Just like Wild he was amazingly able to
recover stolen goods without having to arrest a thief? Same routine Wild was running. The thieves stole and got a commission from
the money Wild received for returning the stolen merchandise.
Prindle: Reynolds was of course right that the
detective novel would become, or perhaps, was already becoming at the time he
wrote a new genre. For the origin of the
detective story most people nominate Poe and then trace it through a series of
French writers leading up to Emile Gaboriau who has supposed to have been the
inspiration for Conan Doyle’s great Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. From there it was off to the races.
Reynolds
seems to have been overlooked as an early source. I’m sure that Doyle would have read Mysteries
of the Court and have noted Sampson. Doyle
used both acumen and a thorough record system. It can’t be proven, of course, but Reynolds
was a staple for nineteenth century proto-pulp fiction, especially before the
adventure novel of the Rider Haggard type and the detective stories of Conan
Doyle and his epigone.
Certainly,
during Doyle’s boyhood and youth Reynolds would have been essential reading
along with W.H. Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton and James Malcom Rymer. These writers were very popular throughout
the nineteenth century while becoming passe at the beginning of WWI. They were old fashioned and didn’t fit into
the post-war world. Thus they dropped
out of literary history, if the Penny Dreadful, pulp writers, were ever a part
of it. Back to George and John.
George: Speaking of criminals, that reminds me of
those criminal Americans who respect no writer’s rights. It’s bad enough that they pirate my own works
but they have the audacity to hire writers and then publish their stuff under
my own name.
John:
(laughing) You must be very popular in
the United State.
George: I should hope so and maybe you laugh. Maybe I could sue over appropriating my name
but I don’t think there’s a chance of success.
It’s not
just a book either, listen to these titles:
Ciprina or, the Secrets of the Picture Gallery, Lord Saxondale, Count
Christoval, Lucrigia Marano, The Child of Waterloo or, the Horrors of the
Battle Field. And there are more. I must
be an entire industry over there. There
might be dozens more under my name.
People must think I’m a super-man, turning out not only my own works but
these other people under my name. My
god, don’t they have sense of decency?
What’s a poor writer to do?
John: Speaking of that, I’m thinking of beginning a
series called Dicks’ English Novels.
I’ll have twenty or so of your novels plus your favorites by Dickens,
Ainsworth, Bulwer-Lytton along with your favorites Notre Dame de Paris and
Dumas’ Queen Margot. All your major
influences except Byron. What do you
think?
George: Any money in it?
John: Should be.
All of it’s still popular and we’ll get it out at prices that will shock
the industry.
George: Interesting.
That sounds very good John and I’m sure that it will be a great success. We’ve worked together for ten years or more now,
and a very successful partnership it’s been.
Now that I’m about finished as a novelist and going to work for the
newspaper perhaps with your plans we should make our relationship a full
partnership. Does that sound feasible to
you John?
John: Very satisfactory George. It would make me proud. Together I think we can make John Dicks the
most successful publishing house in England while educating those the most that
afford it the least. We can change the
face of England and make it a better place. I want to get the prices down as low as
possible. Without the paper tax we
should be able to cut costs.
George: If you get the type any smaller John and keep
our readership you may obtain both goals.
I don’t know how those type setters can set such small type.
John: Quite a skill, I can assure you. I’d like to be able to invent a type setting
machine where there are keys for the alphabet and punctuation marks so that the
type setter can punch keys and the letters fall into place.
George: I’m sure someone is working on it. The steam press itself is a modern
miracle. It would be impossible to get
out the tens of thousands of papers and books we get out every week without
them.
John: Yes.
We’d be making a lot less money than we are now anyway. Quite a machine. By the way, George, I’ve got a suggestion.
George: Yes…
John: Well, as you know the government’s pretty
unhappy with the Miscellany.
George: Yes…
John: It think we could get rid of some pressure by
discontinuing it.
George:
(unhappy but aware of the problem) Discontinuing the Reynolds Miscellany?
John: Not exactly getting rid of it but changing
the name anyway. I’ve got an idea for a
magazine I’d call Bow Bells. We could
fold the Miscellany into it, under my editorship. It would be the same program but a little
less…uh…er…aggressive, to keep the hounds off us. Doesn’t have to be done right now but
something to think about, maybe. I’d
really like to do it George. They
haven’t forgotten ’48. That still
rankles them.
George: How would that affect the newspaper?
John: Not at all, not at all. That would continue under your editorship
and I would edit the combined Bow Bells and Miscellany. Just a thought. We can keep it in the back our minds I’ve got some newer writers in mind.
George: Hmm, newer writers. I know your concern, John, and it is
something to consider. I’ll consider it. I am getting pretty tired and fourteen years
of turning out a zillion words a week has taken its toll. My brain doesn’t have the elasticity and vitality
that it used to have. You see, I know
how Dumas feels. Things don’t come as
easily anymore. That would be a load off
me. Let me think about it.
John: Let me say that I really admire your energy
George. The ten years or so I’ve been
working with you have been amazing. I
wish we had The Mysteries of London from Stiff and Vickers. What a catalog that would make; Mysteries of
London and Mysteries of the Court. I’d
even throw in Mysteries of Old London, the Days of Hogarth. Underappreciated but it has one of the
greatest tales I have ever read. My land,
what an outstanding three works.
George: Oh, flattery…flattery. Keep it up. (laughing)
John: Just the truth, George, just the truth.
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