Pt.
IX: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
by
R.E. Prindle
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| Young George IV En Regalia |
Now that in
parts six, seven and eight we have an adequate time line of Reynolds’ career we
can get down into the substance of his major works, Mysteries of London and
Mysteries of the Court of London. For
those not aware of the extent of his corpus, it is immense with about all of it
written concurrently with his two major novels.
For
instance, in the four years from 1844 to 1848 when the four series of Mysteries
of London were written, George also wrote Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals in 1847;
Wagner, the Wehrwolf in 1846-47; The Mysteries of Old London: Days of Hogarth
in 1847-48 and The Coral Island or, The Hereditary Curse in 1848 as he ended
Mysteries of London and began Mysteries of the Court at the same time. All of these are significant works are of
some length.
Also, in
1846, he began to publish his magazine, The Reynolds Miscellany which he
edited. While I have not received the copies
yet, Gyan Publishers of India offers ten volumes of the Miscellany in five
volumes of about eight hundred pages each.
I will browse them when they arrive.
Altogether
this seems to be a heavy writing load, an impossible load. Yet when one examines Reynolds’ working
methods and his careful time management it may have been easily done by him
given his large mind. Certainly the load
from 1844 to 1848 was, for him, light.
He was responsible for turning in eight double column pages, minus
illustrations a week.
As his mind
could apparently be rigidly compartmentalized; as he is said to have written
very fast, then his actual work period turning out eight thousand words could
be easily done in, say, six hours. He
had to keep his whole story in mind for each sequent but, as I imagine, as he
turned in an installment his mind, or part of it, immediately began plotting
out the next installment so that when his next deadline approached he had the
eight thousand words ready and could just spill them out. So, his whole work week by which he sustained
his whole extensive family was only six hours long.
The rest of
the seven days could be devoted to family matters, exploring the metropolis and
reading. George read and studied. His Greek mythology was correct and extensive,
and he drops classical references regularly.
Oddly he makes few Biblical references.
He very obviously was familiar with the British, French and German
literature of the day. He was definitely
literate in English and French and probably could read German. He takes his inspiration from where he can
get it. Could there be any coincidence
that the William Harrison Ainsworth depiction of the Gypsy camp in Rookwood is
reflected in Reynolds’ passages of Gypsy camps in Mysteries of London? I think not.
As I am
discovering, not many people are aware of W.H. Ainsworth. He seems to be virtually unknown, but then,
so does Reynolds. Ainsworth was a very
successful and influential author of the day turning out perhaps more books
than Reynolds while being a major influence on Reynolds. Very good books, too, well worth reading.
While I had
read Ainsworth’s name being frequently mentioned I had never read him until
just recently. I was fortunate to pick
up various sets of novelists of this period at an online auction for next to
nothing. Ainsworth was one of the
sets. While the books were nearly free,
about a dollar each, the shipping from Topeka Kansas was horrendous. So, while I have some reading of the period,
I can now immerse myself.
By the way,
I have been familiar with the French writers for some time and more recently
the German authors while an ardent admirer of ETA Hoffman for a couple
decades. While it is clear that George
read French with ease, it seems probable that he could wade through German
texts also. So, what he did with a full
week’s time is of interest.
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| The Beau |
Obviously,
one thing, was how to become his own publisher.
In 1846 only two years into Mysteries of London he obviously understood
enough about publishing to launch his successful Miscellany at which time he
began his ancillary novels to fill its pages.
The first issue began with his Wagner, the Wehr Wolf. Undoubtedly the other three novels also
appeared in its pages. I will find out
soon.
Now, the two
major works are immense. I have now read
each twice. The first time I caught the
most exciting highlights. The second
time I penetrated the depth but the stories are so long and diverse a third and
fourth reading would be necessary to organize all the characters and
incidents. Actually both works are
several novels in one. The stories are
braided in such a way that that one story branches out replaced by another
related story then rejoining further downstream. Each story could be abstracted and edited
into a complete novel with certain characters interchangeably distributed
throughout. Thus the story in the first
series of Mysteries of the Court of Tim Meagles and Lady Diana Lade is
completed and finished with Tim and Diana eased out of the rest of the novel.
The question
in that instance is who was Tim Meagles in real life. I believe he was none other than the Beau
himself, Beau Brummell. As Mysteries of
the Court is a story of the Regency of George VI and as the Beau had the same
relationship with the Prince as Meagles, the two must be related as no other
than the Beau had so close a relationship with the Regent.
As my
authority for the history of Beau Brummell I use the biography of Capt. Jesse,
titled Beau Brummell. The Capt.
Published in 1844 and he is speaking first hand while having had an
acquaintance with Beau in his exile in France.
My edition is from a set called Beaux and Belles of England published
probably in the 1890s by the Grolier Society of London, a veritable treasure
trove of biographies of the era.
The Beau, a
Dandy and Beau, is an example of a social species with a long history in
England and indeed probably going back in the annals of time to the transformation
of the human species from the anthropoids.
It is certain that there were cavemen who wore their pelts better than
others and perhaps bathed more regularly.
The advent of Mr. Gillette being well in the future. The Beau himself was fastidious, apparently
unlike his contemporaries as his fastidiousness is mentioned as exceptional. Make your own judgment.
Brummel who
was named George as apparently were half the male members of England at the
time, was the son of a wealthy merchant thus inheriting thirty thousand pounds
on his father’s death or however long it took to get out chancery. Beau, surveying the social scene determined
that the only society worth having was that of the aristocrats. Having money but no title he did not qualify
for their company so the Beau became the Beau, the trendsetter of male fashion
and thus gained acceptability.
He also
developed into a master snob and as such rose to prominence or, at least,
notoriety. His notoriety attracted the
attention of the Prince, that is, George IV, later the Regent and then the King
in his own right. There is a remarkable
resemblance between the two. I post
pictures. From these it appears that the
two might almost have had the same father.
At any rate, Prince and Beau become bonded, much like Meagles and the
Prince. Remember that George IV in his
own persona is the main character in the story.
The Prince then resided in his mansion, Carlton House, on Pall
Mall. Let me interject that there is an
excellent survey of the Capital titled London by Charles Knight in six lengthy
volumes, Cambridge University Press, containing wonderful historical essays on
most of the locations mentioned by George- that is, Reynolds. The six volumes were originally issued in
parts ending in 1844, One can sharpen
one’s understanding.
But, George-
that is Brummel- was terribly irked by his inferior position to George- that is
the Prince and so he became demeaning and superior, ridiculing George IV in
conversations with others so that the Prince, George, became infuriated and
broke off relations with George, the Beau.
The crowning touch came when he and a fellow ran into the Prince while
walking. The Prince studiously ignored
the Beau addressing only his friend causing Brummell to caustically
remark: Who’s your fat friend? Well, come now. Completely in disfavor now the Beau
deteriorated and as a relatively young man was forced into exile in Calais,
France. This previous history is all
that concerns us in his characterization in Tim Meagle.
Meagles’
story was written a while after Dumas’ very famous The Three Musketeers was
published. The Three Musketeers is a
fabulous myth. A wonderful creation of
the equally fabulous Alexander Dumas. In
Meagles and his companion Lady Diana Lade it appears that Reynolds is trying to
create a myth to equal the Musketeers and female character, Milady. Indeed, there are such similarities that
Reynolds may have considered himself a rival to the great Frenchman.
Read what Andre
Maurois has to say in his biography of the three Dumas titled The Titans of
1957, pp. 182-83:
Quote:
Never in the
whole course of French literature has there been anything comparable to Dumas’s
output between the years 1845 and 1855.
Novels from eight to ten volumes showered down without a break on the
newspapers and bookshops. The whole
history of France was passed in review.
The Three Musketeers was followed by Twenty Years After and that by
Vicomte de Bragelone, another trilogy- Chicot the Jester (La Reine Margot), La
dame de Monsoreau and The Forty-Five Guardsmen.
Simultaneously
with these, Dumas was busy narrating the decline and fall of the French
monarchy—The Diamond Necklace…Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, Memoires of a
Physician…Ange Pitou and La Comtesse de Charny.
From early on he had planned to annex the whole of history to his romantic
domain. “There is no end to what I want
to do,” he said. ‘I long for the
impossible. How am I to achieve what I
have in mind? By working as no one has
ever worked before, by pruning life of all its details; by doing without
sleep…’ This programme accounts for the
five or six hundred volumes which so astonish the reader…. No one has read all
Dumas.
Unquote.
Compare
Reynolds and his output from 1844 to 1859.
He too wished to write the history of all Europe. When Maurois mentions the five or six hundred
volumes he means, I imagine, parts. Thus
if Reynolds is broken into parts he can account for three or four hundred
volumes. The eight or ten volumes of
Mysteries of the Court of London can be broken down to eight or ten complete
novels all interrelated. Truly the
period from about 1840 to 1880 is the height of British and European
literature.
Reynolds
changes the character of Meagles from Brummell’s own. The Beau according to Capt. Jesse was quite
effeminate. Indeed, he never married and
apparently had no female lovers. Meagles
and Lady Lade seem to have had a platonic relationship until her husband died. They extorted a Marquisate from George III
and then as the Beau had disappeared from England they disappear from The
Mysteries of the Court.
Indeed, the
Beau must have been trying to inveigle his friend, George IV, into making him a
Marquis or ennoblement of some kind. Had
Brummel been ennobled then he would have been entitled to associate with the
aristocracy instead of being a hanger on.
Lady Lade
throughout her and Meagles’ episodes dresses in men’s clothing so that she and Meagles
appear as two men to the unobservant. As
her name Diana indicates she represents the virgin huntress Artemis in Greek
mythology or Diana in the Latin; the female archetype of the Piscean Age in
Northern Europe. Reynolds repeatedly
refers to her as the Huntress and other attributes of Diana, Tim must therefore
be meant to be the male archetype of Pisces in Reynolds’ mind, not as the
Redeemer but perhaps as the Trickster.
Just as the
Beau longs for a title so does Tim.
While the Beau retreated ungratified Tim and Lady Diana Lade obtain
their Marquisate by criminal or blackmail means. Without going into details here, Tim and
Diana have knowledge that would compromise the reputation of the Georgian
House. Using this knowledge then they
criminally extort their Marquisate from George III.
To some
extent then, Mysteries of the Court is a roman a clef. How many of the other novels in the Mysteries
of the Court collection may reference actual histories remains to be addressed.
The main
theme is a condemnation of the Regent, George IV. Reynolds detests him as well as the whole
aristocracy to the maximum. But, how
much of that detestation is sheer envy.
How much of himself did Reynolds put into Meagles/Brummell? Reynolds himself has the appearance of a
Dandy or Beau and Ainsworth definitely was one.
He is so vehement one has to wonder about his accuracy. Is this a fictional history of reality or
mere raving. It is apparently reasonably
accurate. Capt. Jesse who wrote of Beau
Brummell while a stalwart member of his class condemns George IV for, as he
puts it, teaching the aristocracy to live beyond their incomes, squandering
their great wealth frivolously while living the lives of Libertines.
Reynolds
then has the spirit of the times correct and while he may perhaps exaggerate he
is not false. He himself believes he is
writing fictionalized history; that is, fleshing out the fact with probable
detailing.
Thus, in
what might be termed the fifth and sixth series of the extended Mysteries of
London and the Court, although these two series are not related to the first
four, the fifth series concerns itself with the years around 1795 leading to
the marriage of George IV with the Princess Caroline. The key point being his previous secret
marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Reynolds
does not tackle his main theme directly but embeds it in a series of stories,
or novellas, or novels, peripheral to it while creating a sociological portrait
of the times making George’s character confirmed by external events.
Mrs.
Fitzherbert had ruled Carlton House and the Prince, as George then was, before
the Regency, and enjoyed great privileges.
The crisis came when George’s father, demanded that George marry the
German Princess Caroline of Hanover, Germany who was something of a
rustic. That meant he had to put away
Mrs. Fitzherbert whom he found compatible and take up with Caroline who he
detested.
He tolerated
her long enough to create an heir, the Princess Charlotte and then made
Caroline’s life miserable so that she exiled herself to the Continent. In Reynolds’ story, sixth series, she is
living in Switzerland twenty years later.
As this is 1815 Napoleon has just returned from his exile on Elba to
Paris.
Reynolds is
a clear writer and as his title indicates he is essentially writing a mystery
he reveals clues only as necessary. The
sixth series, then, titled Venetia Trelawney tells of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s attempt
to regain her position at court through a surrogate, Venetia.
We are not
permitted to know this until at the conclusion of the series of book five. Apart from all the subsidiary stories the
main burden of the sixth series is George IV’s machinations to injure his wife,
Caroline. He attempts to portray her as
dissolute and morally corrupt for consorting with her equerry, Bergami. he was
a fine figure of a man.
To achieve
this goal the Prince, now Regent, goes to great lengths in a more or less
improbable scheme. A Mrs. Owen has four
lovely daughters who, following the Prince’s instructions, she is turning into
courtesans and mistresses of duplicity.
The youngest, Mary, refuses the training but the other three go to
Geneva to be ladies in waiting for Caroline.
There by subterfuge they make it appear that Caroline and Bergami are
having an affair. Needless to say the
scheme is baffled through the agency of Mrs. Fitzherbert.
That’s the
general plan but of course much excitement is created by circumambient subplots
that are braided into the main story.
Many interesting characters are created.
Larry Sampson, the Bow Street detective and his adversary the Hangman,
Daniel Coffin. Coffin comes close to
being as interesting as the Resurrection Man of the first two series of the
Mysteries of London. Doctor Death of the
third and fourth series doesn’t come close to the above two as a villain.
Coffin is more related to the eighteenth century criminal master mind Johnathan
Wild or Conan Doyle’s fictional Moriarty.
Of the six
series the third and fourth are the weakest although having brilliant moments
and a very good temptress, Laura Lorne. That
will be dealt with separately. Having
discussed the main story of The Mysteries Of London is the first eight parts of
Time Travels there is no need to do so here.
When George
closed off the second series of The Mysteries of the Court he said that he was
through with George IV but that his head was bursting with ideas for a new
series. Now a mystery ensues.
My edition
of Mysteries of the Court was published by the Francis F. Burton Ethnographical
Society in Boston and an Oxford Society in England in twenty volumes c. 1900
under the general title The Works of George W.M. Reynolds. By works is meant twenty volumes of The Mysteries
of the Court of London, that’s all.
Thus, the set is divided into four units of five volumes. The first five deal with the coming marriage
to Caroline, the second five to Venetia Trelawney and the plot against Caroline. Then a third set issued under Reynolds’ name
with his picture on the title page under the title, Lady Saxondale’s Crimes,
while the fourth division of five volumes is called The Fortunes of the Ashtons. Thus, if the last two divisions are authentic
the total work would be ten thousand pages.
However there is no mention of the latter two series by any Reynolds scholar. Neither the Oxford Society nor the Burton
Ethnographical Society give any indication of the provenance of the latter two series.
Richard F.
Burton is the famous Victorian explorer, most notably in the search for the
source of the Nile, and being the first European to penetrate into Mecca. He translated the entire Arabian Nights in
seventeen volumes. So he became among
the first ethnographers. The Oxford
Society was also an ethnographical society.
Little can be found on either on the internet.
Burton
established his Society in 1843 splitting off from a predecessor. One wonders if Reynolds, ever curious,
associated himself with the Burton Society and perhaps its predecessor. His Mysteries of the Court of London may be
construed as an ethnographical study. I
certainly read it as such. Possibly the
Oxford and Burton Societies found the Mysteries of the Court so suitable that
they commissioned writers to write the two additional series.
It might be
possible that Reynolds commissioned the two series but there appears to be no
earlier record of them at this tim, indeed, no record but their publication in
the Works of George W.M. Reynolds. There
is a story worth investigating in the American publishing house, T.B. Peterson. They were responsible for the publication of
several novels written by their stable of authors under Reynold’s name. There is information on T.B. Peterson on the
internet.
The firm was
located in Philadelphia. They had a huge
catalog what literature is in the Penny Dreadful style including a large
selection of titles from writers like W.H. Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton and, of
course George W.M. Reynolds. They
published a two volume edition under the title of The Mysteries of the Court of
London. I have no idea whether it
included the whole of the two series or a condensed version. They published twenty, perhaps more titles
written by their authors under Reynolds’ name, including Ciprina or, The Secrets
of the Picture Gallery.
This volume
has actually been issued by the British Library as an authentic Reynolds. Possibly T.B. Peterson is unknown to them. Lord Saxondale, who was apparently a little
less criminal than his wife Lady Saxondale, Count Christobal, and Lucrizia
Mirano, Edgar Montrose or, the Mysterious Penitent, the Ruined Gangster. Peterson really liked The Necromancer while
that title was also published by a New York firm.
Anent the
Necromancer. I am of the opinion that
this book was also not written by Reynolds, or possibly with a collaborator,
even though it was published in his Miscellany in 1851. The style isn’t his, the vocabulary isn’t his
while in my reading I had the feeling that the book was written by a woman. The detailing just seemed feminine. I think it probable that Reynolds was
following in the footsteps of his model Alexander Dumas. Dumas collaborated with Auguste Maquet and
others although the books were always issued as Dumas alone.
Perhaps in
this case, Peterson called the Necromancer, the Mysteries of the Court of Henry
VIII, Reynolds roughed out the story while employing someone else to do the
actual writing. At any rate, I do not
believe he was the writer or perhaps the sole writer.
Needless to
say, Reynolds received no economic benefit because the US did not honor English
copyright laws. Nor could Reynolds do
anything about the counterfeits written under his name.
So, then,
the question is from whence came the final two series and at what date were
they written? And perhaps, why? Certainly they were commissioned. Having never read them I am unqualified to
speculate but, perhaps, someone might know and be willing to share their
knowledge?
Reynolds
began the two works in 1844 and so far as we know finished them in 1856. Eighteen fifty-six was three short years
before Darwin changed the world by issuing The Origin of Species and making
evolution a household word.
By 1856 when
the last word of the Mysteries was written Reynolds was already living in the
Brave New England whether he knew it or not, and I suspect that he did know. Being wide awake was a new term at the time
but I suspect that Reynolds was wide awake.
The very face of England was changing as well as tunnels under the
Thames. The tunnel probably cost several
times what a bridge would have cost and have been more useful.
While
writing mysteries of the Court Reynolds turned out twenty other volumes many of
great length. Perhaps in the mode of
Dumas he was making the maximum use of his time working long and sleeping
little. Or, perhaps, as he was accused
by Dickens, of employing other writers. Reynolds denies it.
Around him a
new crop of novelists were rising, each having become aware of different times
and formed by different social conditions.
I suspect that although Reynolds remained a best seller throughout the
century he became a little old fashioned.
Certainly his newspaper kept his name alive and before the public. His politics would always have been ‘avant
garde’ although by the turn of the century most of the Chartist demands had
been met. The triumph of the Revolution
still lay ahead a few years.
Part X Follows
