Eighth Note: G.W.M. Reynolds And Pierce Egan, Casual Reference by R.E. Prindle In George’s first excursion into the novelist’s art, The Youthful Impostor (1832, 1835) he heads Chapter VI with this poem, that goes: Houses, churches mix’d together, Streets unpleasant in all weathers, Prisons, palaces contiguous, Gates, a bridge, the Thames irriguous, Gaudy, cheap enough to tempt ye, Showy outside, insides empty, Bubbles, trades, mechanic arts, Coaches, wheelbarrows, and carts; This is London, how do ye like it? George attributes this to Description of London. Elegant Extracts. For those thoroughly well read no discussion of Elegant Extracts is needed, but for those of us being regularly exposed to exciting discoveries let me say that George was opening the door to then what was very popular at the time. Elegant Extracts, is just that, a collection of poems by one Vicesimus Knox first published in 1789. I was able to acquire an 1826 copy for a very reasonable price. Pierce Egan also published the full text of Description of London in his very interesting volume, Real Life In London, or, the Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq. and his Cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall as a head to chapter VIII 1821-22, unattributed. Egan would have been a writer after George’s heart as he writes as a Man About Town with the sensibility of The Man Of The World. George wanted to be thought of as a Man Of The World but doesn’t appear to have too keen on being considered a Man About Town. I copy the full text of Description Of London from Egan’s Real Life In London. The original in Elegant Extracts obviously describes the appearance of London in late eighteenth century London. The description of London also applies with small changes to the London of 1826 when George entered Sandhurst Military Academy and was first acquainted as a country boy with the spectacle of London. So at twelve or thirteen his mind was blown by what must have been unbelievable to him—the squalor and glory of the big city. Life in London From Egan’s Real Life Houses, churches mix’d together, Streets unpleasant to all weather, Prisons, palaces contiguous; Gaudy things, enough to tempt ye, Showy outsides, insides empty: Bubbles, trades, mechanic arts: Warrants, bailiffs, bills unpaid: Rogues, that nightly rob and shoot men. Hang men, aldermen, foot men: Lawyers, poets, priests, physicians, Noble, simple, all conditions, Worth beneath a thread bare cover, Villainy bedaubed all over: Women, black, red, fair and grey, Prudes, and such as never pray: Handsome, ugly, noisy, still; Some that will not, some that will: Many a beau without a shilling’ Many a widow not unwilling; Many a bargain, if you strike it:-- This is London- How do ye like it? There, the two works Real Life In London and the Mysteries of London in a nutshell. The whole story. Real Life as a sort of social treatise but still exciting reading, especially as one’s knowledge of Reynold’s London gives added depth and meaning. The poem Description of London resonates with my own first view of London c. 1974. Of course I didn’t come from the provinces being a city boy from the US and having seen both sides of the Big City, East and West Coast. I’m not bragging, it’s just understood… London was a far cry from the City of Angels. Not reading very accurately in my younger days with literary vision I created a dreamland, although Joyce Cary’s two twentieth century trilogies, himself returning from a long residence in Africa, presented a grim image fully justified by my own experience. I was shocked, dismayed and sickened as my image of London crumbled in my mind. This was not the Disneyland of my imagination; this was Philadelphia. Oh my god, the horrors of Philadelphia at eighteen, the South side, one long huge slum and here in London as the taxi rolled slowly along the narrow streets in dense traffic through endless dilapidation. London was only redeemed by its fabulous book stores. Searching them out was no easy task either. If I could afford the books would I be able to afford the shipping. I can imagine George when he came back from Paris after a five year hiatus. What horrors he must have experienced, broke, even bankrupt, coming the City of Light to the City of Darkness. George loved Paris; he loved the French, preferred French sophistication and humanity to that of London. All of his comparisons of London to Paris are negative and this was before Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann had modernized the city and tore down its endless slums in the 1860s. Had I never seen life in London, I avoided Real Life in London, I could never have appreciated Reynolds’ writing as I do. Quite extraordinary stuff and dozens of works to give full expression to his equally extraordinary mind. Volume by volume he creates a three dimensional picture of the London and England he saw and knew. In a period of extraordinary writers, and the post-1830 revolution writer both in England and France are truly extra-ordinary. There is a certain quality of mind that almost universally existed that I have found no where else in literature. Of course George remained au courant with the writers of his time. Pierce Egan was a major influence as we will discover as we go on. The Journey is just begun.

14. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle Substrata in George W.M. Reynolds

by R.E. Prindle Substrata In George W.M. Reynolds’ The Mysteries of Old London Having now read perhaps a majority of Reynolds’ works I think I have detected substrata that run through those works. One substratum is not unique but appears in other writers such as W.H. Ainsworth and, perhaps even in Bulwer-Lytton and that substratum is a residue from at least the time of Queen Anne. Anne’s time seems to be the dividing line between what went before in English history and what would succeed it, that is, a cosmic shift. This substratum seems to be a strong sense of anarchy. In Queen Anne’s time that streak of anarchy could be glaringly found in the career of the Duke of Wharton and his Mohocks. (Mohawks) This wild American Indian streak shows up in Paris also in the Mohicans of Alexander Dumas’ time and the later Apaches. Europeans rebelled against the strictures of civilization. Echoes can be found in the African novels of Rider Haggard and even in the Jekyll and Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson. To provide a solid background I offer a quote from The Social Life of Queen Anne by John Ashton publishing in 1897 from original sources. On p. 382 et seq. Quote: In every age and country young blood Is hot blood and in this reign it was particularly so. The wild blood of the Cavaliers still danced in the veins of the beaus in Anne’s time and nightly frolics and broils were of frequent occurrence. They had their predecessors in this work—as Sir Tope says in Shadwell’s play of “The Scowrers”: Puh, that is nothing, why I knew the Hectors, and before them The Muns and the Titire Tus, they were brave fellows indeed, in their days a man could not go from Rose Tavern to the Piazza once, but he must venture his life twice.’ And Whackum in the same play, describes the days of the fraternity of Scowrers. ‘Then how we scour’d the Market Place, overthrew the Butter Woman, despoiled the Pippin Merchants, wip’d out the Milk Scores, pull’d off the Doorknockers, dawb’d the Gilt Sign.’ In Anne’s reign these roysterers were called Mohocks—why I know not, except that it is sort of generic term for North American Indians. In a later age this furore was termed Tom and Jerryism; but it had an intelligible origin, from Pierce Egan’s Life In London or the Day and Night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq. and His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom &c,’ It still exists although it has no special name. Unquote. So there you have a long tradition of anarchy, or major streak in the English character. Perhaps it was this type of roysterer that left England to conquer the world. It is this substratum in Reynolds and perhaps the writers of his time but seems to have toned down in the next generation. The streak may reappear in the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson toward the end of the century, especially in the novelette of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson himself was nurtured on the writings of the Penny Dreadful school if you read him with that background in mind an extra layer appears. Of course in the middle fifties and Sixties England had the Mods and Rockers succeeded by the Punks. The Punks theme song was anarchy in the UK. The leader of the Mohocks was the Duke Wharton. Wharton was an especially vicious psychopath. During the day he functioned as a political figure while at night he led his Mohocks in the tradition of the anarchic bands. So in Jekyll and Hyde, Dr. Jekyll appears as a respectable person but at night he howls through the streets injuring or offending everyone he meets. Stevenson then probably based Jekyll and Hyde on Wharton. Reynolds too, in his Mysteries of Old London: Days of Hogarth based his character that was based on himself, Jem Ruffles on Duke Wharton. Like Wharton Ruffles has recreated a gang of ruffians who cruise the streets at night beating, stealing and ripping off door knockers. Door knockers seem to have been a special thrill for them. As Wharton as a duke was able to protect his minions from justice so did Ruffles in one of his multiple personas. A ruffler was a person who routinely disturbed the peace hence the name Ruffles, a guy who ruffles things. Now, at the time Wharton flourished so did the first, perhaps, of the great criminal masterminds, the celebrated Johnathan Wild. Wild was the subject of several biographies including those of Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones. Wild organized all the thieves of London so that he was aware of every burglary and theft. He established a reputation for being able to locate and retrieve stolen goods, for a fee of course, that was shared with his employees, so to speak, in other words, the thieves. His method worked for some time; he passing himself off as respectable. Needless to say he was finally detected and took his place at the Tuck Up Fair to dance on air. His character recurs in several guises in Reynolds work, perhaps most notably as Old Death in the third series of The Mysteries of London. George does his research presenting a good outline of how stolen goods were disposed of internationally, thus an international crime network. As a young boy Reynolds in France learned of Wild’s French counterpart the famed Eugene Francois Vidocq. Vidocq began his career as a serious criminal. He was arrested on many charges spending a good deal of his time in prisons. Tiring of this life he offered his services as a police informer and was accepted. Amazingly from there he worked his way into being the chief of police. As chief he filled Wild’s function of retrieving stolen goods. His methods came under suspicion and he was relieved a rich man, which I rather suspect. He remained as the head of the Surete or Paris Police Force until 1832. So the very young Reynolds would have been witness to Vidocq’s presence and aware of all the rumors surrounding him. Reynolds’ detective of the Bow Street Runners was undoubtedly based on Vidocq as well, probably as Poe’s C.A. Dupin of The Murders In The Rue Morgue. Yet he doesn’t refer to the Paris police much. If Pickwick Abroad is any evidence he seems to have been under surveillance by the Gendarmerie which was an outfit separate from the police being some sort of National policing outfit. I haven’t found a clear explanation of how the force functioned other than they evolved out of a medieval security force hence having a military structure. Paul de Kock has them as a National police protecting highways in the Departments. Other than some enigmatic comments in The Steam Packet the only evidence I have found to corroborate my opinion was Reynolds desire to see Brussels. That city of Belgium was at the time an international refuge for criminals. Reynold says in the Steam Packet that when he was a few miles from the Belgian border he looked longingly towards Brussels. He gives no indication of what he was doing that far North in France. That means he was quite a distance from Paris meaning he would have been absent from Paris for at least two to three weeks. Something that seems clear to me is that it is almost certain that he was involved in fairly serious criminal activity, swindling in London forcing him to remove to France where he may very easily have had criminal associates in France. Certain, if Dick Collins is correct, he had run ins with the police in Paris. Further, if the Youthful Imposter was the point man in swindling the Jewish usurer in London the Jews, being an international brotherhood, it is quite possible that he was under surveillance by them waiting for vengeance. That vengeance would have been achieved when Reynolds was led into a usury scheme and swindled of what he had swindled. He was lured in 1835 into schemes that cleaned him of monetary resources and may have led to bankruptcy proceedings according to Dick Collins. I have no evidence of who did it but if he was involved in usury there is every chance the Jews were involved. In dire straits he very probably was ordered to leave France in 1836, thus the return to England. An aside: A very interesting ‘slip’, perhaps, occurs in Pickwick Abroad. If one assumes that the lead character is an alter ego of Reynolds it will be noted that he is more familiar with the Gendarmes than with the Paris Police. As a casual reader one equates the Gendarmes with the Paris Police. This is not the case. The Gendarmes are a National law enforcement agency whose jurisdiction is France rather than Paris. The Gendarmes, the etymology of the word means Gens-d-armes, that is, Men At Arms. The unit had a military organization derived from the Middle Ages. One, then, has to question Reynolds familiarity with the Gendarmes. He must have been a courier or something for organized crime units either French or international for the Gendarmes to have taken an interest in him.. Balzac and Paul Favel mention such organizations as highly developed . A modern example would be John Lennon and the Beatles who were taken under the wing of the European mafia when they performed in Hamburg. One then must question Reynolds’ familiarity with the Gendarmes, the Johnny Darmies. It is interesting that as Pickwick Abroad opens Pickwick’s group is on the road to Paris. In the diligence is Octavus Crashem, a hustler, gambler, crapshooter and cardsharp. Collins opines that Reynolds was arrested in Calais for shooting shaved dice. Crashem is cheating Winkle while in the one corner a man sits quietly watching and knowingly smiling. That was Dupont a Gendarme. No sooner does the group reach their hotel than Dupont and the police arrive to arrest Crashem as a debtor. So, an interest in crime appears at the very beginning. If, as he seems to have been inducted into crime at sixteen when he left Sandhurst, escaping to France to avoid arrest in England at the end of 1830 as seems to be the case, then, as an acknowledged criminal neophyte he might have been recruited by the rapidly developing international criminal organization. The French crime writer (and remember Reynolds is very much a crime writer), Paul Favel records the doings of organized crime in his Black Coats series recently translated by Brian Stableford. There are puzzling passages in Reynolds’ The Steam Packet in which he records being a few miles from the Belgian border looking longingly at the international crime resort, Brussels. He mentions several towns along the route of the steam packet of which he is fairly familiar meaning he must have traveled while in France. Many of the southern French locations he mentions seem to be familiar to him. So, he may actually have traveled extensively in France while also gaining some firsthand knowledge of Italy. Then in 1835-36 his affairs collapsed and his reason for returning to England may have been that he was asked to leave France. I do not offer this interpretation, founded on circumstantial evidence, as fact, nevertheless it is a perspective of his undocumented puzzling career in France. Something for which he had to be apologetic while seeking forgiveness for the errors of his youth. One of Reynolds subtexts is the concept of forgiveness and redemption. His characters are the most forgiving people you’d ever want to meet. They are always ready to forgive the greatest crimes against them imaginable. Reynolds seems to equate forgiveness with redemption. To be forgiven is to be absolved. This all leads back to The Days of Hogarth, The Mysteries of Old London and Jem Ruffles. End of aside. Days of Hogarth is a story of early transgressions with redemption and honorable amends. It is, in fact, the story of Reynolds’ life as of 1847-’48 when it was written. That was when he was putting the finishing touches to the Mysteries of London thus the two novels are complementary. Just as Reynolds slips over the nineteen years from his entry into Sandhurst Military Academy and the wild success of Mysteries of London in 1844-’45 thus slipping the misery of those years, he is pleading for redemption and forgiveness along with a brand new beginning. It is also a good explanation for beginning a story in 1926, the year he entered Sandhurst and skipping those offensive nineteen years to the beginning of his success, or a new life in other words. That doesn’t mean that the adventures portrayed are literal, Reynolds is writing for an audience, but they portray the horror of those years metaphorically. There is something symbolic about returning to the origins of Modern England formed in the reign of good Queen Anne merging into the Georgian period. One must remember that Reynolds was barely a grown boy becoming a young man when these adventures he’s recording occurred. (Nobody can write about what isn’t in his mind. Invention is very, very limited.) They originate when he is only twelve, take form when he is only sixteen and terminate in 1836 when he at twenty-two he has barely attained his majority. When he began writing Mysteries of London he was only thirty years old, thirty-four when he finished all four series. Only thirty-two when he finished the first two series which is about all of Reynolds that most people, no matter how many, have read. Those of us who have managed a couple dozen titles are few indeed. I couldn’t have imagined that he wrote forty or more, and most of them are very hard to find. The transition from novice to fairly accomplished writer was quick indeed. Perhaps more remarkable is that he was only 46 when he gave up novel writing, and then he lived for another nineteen years. Empress Eugenie’s Boudoir seems to have been a recapitulation in which he brings forward a few stories from the past that, perhaps ignored when originally issued he doesn’t want ignored. More especially his translation of Charles Paul de Kock’s novel Soeur Anne. That was a novel that was very influential for him and a good story. From Soeur Anne Reynolds lifts nearly intact the fleecing of DuBourg for the fleecing of Tupman. To return to the Days of Hogarth, Reynolds seems to have been enamored of Hogarth’s cartoons. While they may have accurately portrayed the social system of Anne and George I they are lost on me. I don’t have the patience to study them or the knowledge to accurately interpret as George apparently did. The ‘ good old days of good Queen Anne’ must have been uproarious indeed. But George is much more concerned with justifying his early conduct in a mythologized manner. George’s main character, Jem Ruffles patterned after himself seems to be based on both the infamous Duke Wharton and Johnathan Wild. Ruffles runs both a gang like Wharton’s Wild Boys and Wild’s control of the London underworld. While fully involved in the underworld Ruggles is uneasy in his roles wishing to reform. He gives up or closes out his Wharton side sending his Wild Boys out on their own. George then introduces the president of the East India Company where he becomes the head of the Company’s press gangs. This was an apparent step up from his criminal career because his crimes are committed in the Company’s name. According to the story the notion of press gangs was invented by the East India Company. Unable to recruit enough personnel for the company, the Company hired men to snatch men off the streets to send to India. Ruffles becomes the Captain of these crews. Not too different really than his role as Duke Wharton. I viewed this a little askance as I read it as Reynolds seemed to regard the kidnappings as legitimate work; but then this is also a historical novel and it is Reynolds story. By the time Ruffles is employed by the East India Company Reynolds in Ruffles persona is halfway to his own redemption, he is legitimately employed in a questionable occupation. As much as I know I’m reading fiction the proceedings and transitions are mind boggling. True, this is fiction but it still has to be written by a human being and after all you can’t get out of a mind what isn’t it. All fiction comes from the experience, knowledge and mind set of the author. More than anything one is impressed by the turmoil of Reynold’s life with its close association with crime. The brutal years from twelve to twenty-one including the death of his father when he was eight and that of his mother when he was fifteen, left him an orphan. His orphaning is a, if not the central fact of his life. I can’t remember if he states that Ruffles was an orphan but mid-transition to legitimacy he becomes associated with the wife of the President of the East India Company who turns out to be his long lost mother. Finally completing his transition to legitimacy, Ruffles is employed by the East India Company, going off to the sub-continent with his mother in tow. Now, Days of Hogarth was written in 1847-48 when Reynolds’ career was taking off. His four series of Mysteries of London was a roaring success. In 1846 he had launched his magazine, The Reynolds’ Miscellany that was a roaring success for fifteen years until John Dicks began his own magazine Bow Bells and folded the Miscellany into it. In ’48 Reynolds hired Dicks as his printer ensuring a runaway success until he sold out to Dicks in ’64 to devote himself to newspaper work. His contract to write The Mysteries of London with George Stiff and George Vickers terminated with the last installment of Mysteries of London so, looking to the future, he was exuberant. Then Jem Ruffles goes off to India working himself up into an outstanding administrator so, in real life, and in fiction Reynolds redeemed the early days of his youth. If one notices George’s characters are the most forgiving people who may never have existed. There is no egregious crime against themselves that they won’t forgive. Reynolds believed than any criminal past could be redeemed by subsequent good behavior in later life. That redemption required forgiveness on the part of society. He was obviously hoping for forgiveness and redemption. I don’t think he got it. For myself I find Days of Hogarth my sentimental favorite of his writings.

Sixth Note: George W.M. Reynolds And The Saxe-Coburgs

Sixth Note George W. M. Reynolds And The Saxe-Coburgs by R.E. Prindle As the first two series of The Mysteries Of The Court Of London indicate George Reynolds had a problem with the Saxe-Coburgs especially the reign of the four Georges. The first series of Court dealt with George III and his pre-reign clandestine marriage to Hannah Lightfoot, continuing in the second series to George IV’s regency and his problems with a forced marriage to Princess Caroline. Reynolds bid adieu to George IV as he left the Regency in 1920 to assume the throne at his father’ death. George IV lived until 1830 when he was succeeded by his brother William IV. He died in 1937 being succeeded by the daughter of his second next younger brother, Victoria. Needless to say, her reign filled the remainder of the nineteenth century and a little over. In 1840 Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. As a female and a beloved Queen she as a Saxe-Coburg was beyond the reach of Reynold’s scathing attacks. However, Victoria’s beloved husband Albert wasn’t. Reynolds contained himself until the fourth series of Court of London, writing in 1855 or ‘56 when he unleashed a scurrilous attack on Albert. As we know, George Reynolds was an advocate of violent revolution. While he had not actually been present at the 1830 violent revolution in France, he arrived in the French capital in its aftermath in very late 1830, what we might just as well call early 1831. He thus witnessed first hand the aftermath of that revolution. As he was a mere sixteen year old boy on his own he was enthralled. The revolution of 1830 is only the second stage of the French Revolution of 1789. The revolution would continue its struggle to the third stage, the 1848 European revolution, from there to the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. That was the end of that cycle. A shift in strategy then occurred. George Reynolds as a member of the British revolutionary activity, belonged to the group called the Chartists in which he was very active in the 1848 revolution in England. He was very disappointed at its failure. Then came the reaction to the revolution as the governing powers cracked down on the revolutionists, perhaps unable to understand. Even though working conditions were bad which the rulers recognized nevertheless from their perspective civilization had made astounding advances and they were right. Perhaps not understanding the workers reaction to the magnificent achievements of the scientific, technological and industrial advances to that time, Prince Albert took a hand in organizing the Crystal Palace Exposition of 1851, just three years after the failed revolution. The Crystal Palace Expo which sought to calm revolutionary fervor by displaying all those advances to the public was the first of the great expos that continued to mid-twentieth century. The greatest of all the expos by far was the fantastic Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. The Chicago Expo had the greatest impact of any of the expos emulating that of 1851. The like of the Chicago Expo has never come close to it again and now never will. The Crystal Palace Expo which sought to calm the revolutionary fever undoubtedly did so while raising the ire of the revolutionists. Witness the enraged George Reynolds attack of Prince Albert. Its display of all the scientific, industrial and technological marvels, and remember this stuff was new and unseen before, showed the shape of things to come while giving confidence and hope. That confidence and hope was realized in 1893 at the very height of Euro-American self-confidence as the apex of all humanity and history. Ironically the long downhill slide began at that moment. George Reynolds was infuriated at the success of the Crystal Palace Expo for which he blamed Prince Albert. He attacked through Albert’s Germanness and raged at all things German. Albert’s own status was as the Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha of Central Germany. All this happened before the unification of Germany in 1866. Germany and Central Europe served as matter for light opera as the imaginary country of Ruritania. Germany then was a congeries of over a hundred small duchies and principalities.. While these States strove to maintain the hauteur of royalty they were too small and impoverished to attain any real dignity compared to the large States like England and France. They were as fleas to England in George Reynolds’ mind. And Prince Albert represented that poverty sponging off England in George’s mind. His ire reached a peak in the fourth series of the Court of London composed in 1855-56 as this series was about to terminate. It might be worth while here to mention that the third and fourth series are not concerned with the Court at all. The third series, titled The Crimes of Lady Saxondale is concerned with denigrating the aristocracy while the fourth devolves almost to the level of celebrating the common people. George opens his attack on Prince Albert by vilifying the Germans. He creates the German Principality of Maxe-Stolburg-Quotha which is about the size of Hyde Park. The name is an obvious parody of Albert’s Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He makes the Prince of Maxe-Stolburg-Quotha Prince Albert’s brother. Maxe-Stolburg-Quotha is an impoverished dukedom as compared with Great Britain. Albert’s brother is continually visiting England to cadge handouts of a thousand pounds. A ridiculously low figure compared to Reynolds’ characters tossing around thousands, tens of thousands and even a hundred thousand pounds. The Duke brings his rag tag court with him. George gives them ridiculous names like Raggidbak, Kadger, Frumplehausen and Gumbinnen. They arrive in the most pitiful condition, dressed literally in rags while demanding to be treated as potentates. Reynolds drops all pretense of story turning to straight invective, heaping crude scorn on all German States. Writing in 1856 it would be a mere ten years before Bismarck united the German States, Duchies and Principalities into the first State of Europe. They became an industrial competitor of Great Britain, and indeed rapidly surpassed England as an economic power setting up the prelude to WWI. The laughable States known as the mythical Ruritania would soon disappear. George scornfully says that this position as Duke of Maxe-Stolburg-Quotha would have been Albert’s position had not Victoria rescued him to give him his magnificent position. This direct attack on Albert must have come to Victoria’s attention. She would have deeply resented it placing George on the non-person list. George had already offended the Army with his novel The Soldier’s Wife of 1952-53. That book was deeply resented by the Army to the point of banning the book. George’s reputation was already so bad that he wasn’t welcome in polite society. A Review of the ‘Popular Authors’ Essay by Robert Lewis Stevenson. This essay has some pertinency to George W. M. Reynolds. The essay may be found in full by typing in Robert Louis Stevenson Popular Authors on the Internet. I discuss merely the last paragraph.

What kind of talent is necessary to please the mighty public? That was my first question and was soon amended with the words “if any.” J.F. Smith [no longer a house hold name] was a man of undeniable talent, Errmyn [James Malcolm Rymer] and Hayward have a certain spark, and even in [Pierce] Egan the very tender might recognize the rudiments of a story of literary gift; but the case on the other side is quite conclusive; or the dull ruffian Reynolds, or Sylvanus Cobb, of whom perhaps I have only seen unfortunate examples—they seem to have the talents of a rabbit, and why anyone should read these is a thing that passes wonder. A plain-spoken and possibly high-thinking critic might here perhaps return upon me with my own expressions. And he would have missed the point. For I and my fellows have no such popularity to be accounted for. The reputation of an upper class author is made for him at dinner-tables and nursed in newspaper paragraphs, and, when all is done, amounts to no great matter. We call it popularity surely in a pleasant error. A flippant writer in the Saturday Review, expressed a doubt if I had ever cherished one “genteel” illusion; in truth I never had many, but there was one- and I have lost it. Once I took the literary member at his own esteem; I behold him now like one of those gentlemen who read their own MS descriptive poetry aloud to wife and babes around the evening hearth; addressing a mere parlour coterie and quite unknown in the great world outside the villa windows. At such pygmy reputation, Reynolds or COBB or Mrs. Southworth can afford to smile. By spontaneous public vote, at a cry from the unorganic masses these great ones of the dust were laureled. For what?

While tracking down references to George Reynolds on the internet I came across this essay by Robert Louis Stevenson entitled Popular Authors with a couple mentions of Reynolds. By Popular authors Stevenson doesn’t mean all authors; no, he means ‘Popular’ as in ‘Popular Mechanics’ or ‘Popular Science.’ Something dumbed down for the multitude. He means ‘Popular Literature’. Literature dumbed down for the masses; that is Penny Dreadfuls, Dime novels, Pulps. Literature with high tones eliminated. Polite or literary fiction is for an elite crowd trying to avoid rubbing shoulders with vulgar reality. The essay opened my eyes to Stevenson, whom I may confess, I have never liked, his novels that is. Stevenson was born in 1850 thus becoming aware in 1862-63. This time would have been the heyday of the Penny Dreadful writers, a large catalog by that time would have been available to him. As he mentions no Gothic authors in his essay we may assume that if read a few they made no impression on him, but he immersed himself in the Penny Dreadfuls. Stevenson’s most famous imitation of Penny Dreadfuls is his astonishingly successful Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a fundamental text for the psychology of the generations following. The idea of the story is great but the execution of it a little less so. The book is pretty nearly a mere outline. Stevenson was sickly as a youth, bedridden in fact, so that he apparently spent his time reading ‘sensational’ fiction or Penny Dreadfuls and even stranger stuff. When I learned this, Stevenson’s writing style fell into place, he’s an epigone of his masters. There is a rather extended review of the origins of Jekyll and Hyde on the internet (https://.grunge.com/230634/the-bizarre-truth-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/ that gives a detailed list of possible influences. While not disparaging the list of influences, I think the author misses a very important one, that of Duke Wharton and his Mohocks (Mohawks). One can mention another Queen Anne notable, Johnathan Wild although Hyde has no criminal network. One imagines all youth of the time reveled in the stories of Wharton and Wild. For my sensibilities the resemblance of Hyde to Wharton is striking. Both men, the real Wharton and the fictional Hyde had respectable day jobs, but they really came out at night. They both roamed the streets at night completely ignoring caution or disguise. Wharton and his Mohocks even engaged in street battles with the Night Watch that they frequently outnumbered while being such hardened street fighters that they seldom lost and if any were captured Wharton had the influence to get them released. So Hyde openly committed crimes arousing a crowd that pursued him to his lair. While the movies that had him experimenting with weird chemicals to release his inner Satan, Stevenson’s Hyde like Wharton had been a rowdy in his youth and merely wished to experience those lost thrills again. In a way Jekyll and Hyde could have been a companion volume to James Malcom Rymer’s (Errmyn) Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. As will be noted from Stevenson’s essay, he gives Reynolds the back of his hand calling him ‘the dull ruffian’ Reynolds’. Stevenson may have thought Reynolds was a ‘ruffian’, probably correctly, but I can’t believe that he thought he was dull. It is probable that he owed more to Reynolds than he cared to admit. Even though the reputations of Rymer and Reynolds’ may have been eclipsed by WWI certainly the likes of J.F. Smith, and the Americans Sylvanus Cobb and Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth have fallen further from favor. Oddly enough Cobb and Southworth were the top selling authors of the last half of the twentieth century in the US. Both were phenomenally prolific and popular. Stevenson rightfully wondered how commonplace you have to be to find success. Popularity involves finding a very large market and satisfying it. Literary fiction quite often appeals to a small niche market. Stevenson falls between pulp and literary fiction and while he succeeded it was not to the extent of Reynolds whose sales really opened Stevenson’s eyes. As it evolved, popular fiction in the twentieth century by writers like Mark Twain, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, even Mary Shelley and a host of others dominated book sales while literary fiction languished. One might also mention movies that on the screen translated literary fiction into the genres of the popular along with numerous sci-fi and horror writers too numerous to mention. Stevenson’s essay is worthwhile to consider.

For Whom It Might Concern: The Plot Against America

The Plot Against Ameeica. by R.E. Prindle For whom it might concern: Let us try to put the last nineteen years into some sort of perspective. My last article, Reviewing 9/11, dealt slightly with the Twin Towers. It became obvious in that article that President Bush was implicated with the Saudis to perpetrate that terrible crime. Bush was succeeded by the half Negro, Barack Obama. Among the first things Obama did was his infamous apology tour in which he begged pardon for American behavior. He especially appeared before the Saudi king as a suppliant, before whom he made a deep bow from the hips to a very erect haughty Moslem. The symbolism was quite clear but the effect goes much deeper. Americans never take into account the mindset of the other. But, consider the Saudi point of view. Yes, the US is a diverse society but the Arab isn't. For thirteen centurys (1300 years) minimum Negroes served only one purpose for the Moslems and that purpose was as slaves. Thousands were collected annually from Africa and sent to the Moslem States where they were dispensable. Thus what King Fuad saw before him was a Negro slave doing obeisance to his master, hence the stances of Fuad and Obama. So, this Arab Negro slave was now now the President of the United States thus making the US subordinate to Saudi Arabia. Obama succeeded in Bush's subordination and his complicity or obedience in destroying the invaluable Twin Towers and 3000 American lives. Total destruction. Obama then proceeded to destroy or diminish US military power by reducing the Armed Forces, discontinuing NASA and generally diminishing US prestige in the world. He even destroyed the US economy by shipping US industry to China. The list of his crimes is extensive but not necessary to repeat here. Obama himself was a mere street person living hand to mouth in New York City until for some reason he was seized upon as a potential President and favored with a Harvard legal degree, a book contract worth 100,000 dollars equal to at least 500,000 in today's dollars. One shudders to think that he and the nitwit Joe Biden were running the country. The president designates, Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush were ambushed by Donald Trump in a completely unexpected result of the election. President Trump immediately set about to correct the crimes of the previous sixteen years under Bush and Obama. A vile completely criminal process was then set afoot to render his presidency ineffective at least or to remove him 'by any means necessary' as best. The current Democratic candidate has publicly stated that he will 'sure as hell' include numerous Moslems into the government of the US. Moslem theocracy joining religion and government. The only thing preventing his undesirable result is the reelection of President Trump and forceful action on his part of disabling the plot against America. The so-called democracy will be over no matter who wins. Vote Trump and save American ideals.

Reviewing 9/11 by R.E. Prindle I just bought a book entitled The Engineering Book by Marshall Brain, if you can believe the author’s name. It is a little compendium of engineering feats. On p.54 Mr. Brain has an entry about Building Implosions, the process beginning 1773. I quote from the entry in full: Quote: There is a funny thing about building implosions. On the one hand we have a group of architects and engineers who originally designed a building to stay standing, even in the case of catastrophic events like hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes (hence modern innovations such as earthquake-safe buildings.) With a building implosion, another set of engineers must defeat all of that hard work and bring the structure down as efficiently and safely as possible. The goal is for the building to fall straight down and land in a pile roughly the size of the building’s foundation. So how do they do it? Initial efforts were crude—massive explosions leveled the building, as in the 1773 destruction of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Waterford Island. Today, this simplistic approach is frowned on because large explosions cause collateral damage to other nearby buildings. In a modern building implosion, some of the exterior of the original building will be removed manually because it has value. Remaining exterior walls may be perforated or removed entirely. Interior structural beams that keep the building standing will be exposed. And this is where the real engineering comes in. The easiest thing would be to simply cut all the beams and let the building fall. However, this approach is unsafe and would probably, because of the timing, cause the building to fall over rather than collapse in a pile. Instead, engineers carefully analyze the structure and the loads to understand how the building needs to collapse. Some of the beams are partially cut to weaken them. Then explosives are attached to the columns at carefully calibrated positions. The explosives are called “shaped charges”, which focus the explosive force in specific directions. The effect is to cut the steel support beams precisely where required. The shaped charges also reduce the total amount of explosives needed. This is important to demolition engineers because large explosions can damage adjacent buildings, and infrastructure, for example by breaking windows. Once all the charges are set, they are wired back to a controller. The explosions throughout the building are carefully ordered and timed so that they occur in the correct sequence. Gravity does the rest and the building collapses. Unquote. Mr. Brain has succinctly described the only way that engineers have to bring a tall building down into its foundation as each of the twin towers did. Two separate building fell directly into their foundations. Let’s look at how the Towers themselves were engineered. These are enormous projects involving years of planning and construction. At the end of the above page Mr. Brain refers us to the Twin Towers page. The Towers were astonishing triumphs of engineering ingenuity. Note how Mr. Brain places the engineering for bringing a building down, such as the Towers, on page 54 and a description of the Twin Towers on page 330. Quote: World Trade Center, architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1996) The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City became two of the most famous buildings of the world because of what happened to them in 2001. But prior to their destruction they were two of the most famous buildings in the world because of their engineering and their iconic architecture. They truly were a work of art. The lead architect on the project was Minoru Yamasaki assisted by other architects and a structural engineering firm. The structural engineering of the towers was impressive for several reasons. The buildings had a dense core to hold the primary steel support structure along with all utilities and services. Four dozen steel box columns ran from the floor to the roof in this core, which measured 135 feet (41 meters) by 85 feet (20meters) from the core to the outer wall without any interior columns. The trusses supported poured reinforced concrete floors. The elegance of the design came in the beautiful repeatability. In addition, the floor space between the core and the outer wall was completely open—no supporting columns on the interior at all. Each floor was almost a perfect acre in size, with three -quarters of an acre open, usable, and infinitely configurable space on every floor. The design also meant that the building was quite light for its volume—perhaps one-quarter the weight per volume of an older building like the Empire State Building. This lower weight meant lower cost. Most skyscrapers have a number of setbacks on the rise. This happened because of zoning ordinances designed to avoid a canyon-like effect in New York City. The setbacks kept skyscrapers from blocking too much wind and sunlight from neighboring areas. The Twin Towers were able to rise without setbacks because there was so much open space around them—another truly unique feature. Unquote. So there we have what was built and what was destroyed. As is evident it was a marvelous structure, built to withstand all conceivable disasters including planes flying into it. It was impossible for the concussion of the planes to bring the towers down. They were cosmetic effect to draw attention from the destructive engineering. And yet the towers came down. Now let us look at the background for the attack. We were and have been led to believe that the attack on the Towers was solely an act of Moslem aggression, almost entirely performed by Saudi Arabians. But how could the Moslems have been in the US where they formed a Fifth Column? Moslem immigration, because of its history of animosity to the West was forbidden in the US until 1965 when the McCarren Act was repealed and unlimited immigration was encouraged from the entire world. Why was this insanity so? Was the plan from the beginning to undermine the United States which has been the result. The US had virtually been at war with the Moslem States since the end of World War II. Tensions had been high for decades when the gates were suddenly thrown open to people who must have been groomed to hate the United States. They came flooding in and tensions immediately escalated on US soil. The Moslems marched, demonstrated and terrorized until getting bolder, in 1993 they bombed the Twin Towers. A mere 28 years after gaining admission. A large fertilizer bomb in a truck was parked beneath the Tower and detonated causing minimal damage while not bringing the Tower down. But that sent brains spinning while eight years later it produced 2001. Now, 9/11/2001 was not a few bumblers setting off a fertilizer load without forethought. 9/11 was a professional affair requiring engineering specialists, access to the building and complicity between the US and Saudi governments. Unless I mistake the attack was well beyond the competence of the Arabs requiring an intimate knowledge of the construction of the Towers. The planning took several years, it was not a spur of the moment thing. The execution was so loose that it is impossible that it could not have escaped detection either of one or all: the Mossad, Interpol, national intelligences or the FBI and the CIA. Remember out close ally the Saudis were behind it. The Jewish Mossad with its excellent penetration of Moslem States must surely have known of what was stirring. The actual Arab agents had been sent to the US years before as ‘immigrants’. They had enrolled in flying schools for small aircraft long before the event. These guys were not professionals and must have blabbed in pride of why they were in the US. The US’ own intelligence services must have known. Good god, any suspect organization is immediately filled with agents. British and German intelligence must have known. Tensions were so high evidence of something about to happen was so apparent that even I guessed that something must have been in the planning because it was apparent that the Arabs were not going to give up and the US government was not taking the situation seriously. The Moslems said they were going to do something. The US on the other hand invited more and more Moslems to settle in the US. Even immediately after the bombing the Bush administration allowed huge numbers of Moslem into the country. Even that might be taken as complicity. Remember the attack was a very large plan; the two WTC towers, the Pentagon and the White House were to be destroyed. Those were the top four symbols of US power. Four hi-jacked airliners. The planes could create havoc by crashing into the tower but they could not bring it down, and yet after an hour without further molestation the Towers sank into its foundations. Refer back to the first article from Mr. Brain’s (is anyone named Brain) engineering book and you have a step by step description of the destruction process. The planes flying into the buildings were merely a decoy, an explanation that people without technical knowledge would accept. The effect of the crashes was visually stunning, close to a volcanic eruption. The affected floors burst into more than flames as the fully fueled planes sent from Boston erupted but the buildings didn’t even quiver from the impact. The pilots trained on small propeller driven planes probably couldn’t fly the big jets but they didn’t have to. The planes were obviously riding a radio beam. But then in the blink of an eye, faster than the eye could react the building sank to the ground. Refer back now to the first article by Mr. Brain. As required each floor had ‘shaped bombs’ placed at each of the four corners. You can see the puffs blow as the bombs blew out the supports at all four corners simultaneously in floor sequence in uniform puffs allowing the buildings to collapse into their foundations. At some point in a natural fall the building would have had to tip. Remember, not only did one building fall perfectly but two did. Not possible. The bombs necessarily were activated by phone according to a program. A little later another of the four planes crashed into the Pentagon. The Pentagon being a much lower building than the Towers required more flying skill. These so-called pilots had been trained on small propeller crafts. They had never flown at five hundred miles an hour so that their reflexes had never been conditioned to those speeds, yet the plane did a fine job of hitting the Pentagon at nearly touchdown level. The plane must have been riding a radio beam meaning someone was remotely guiding it in. That means government involvement. The Bush government. The fourth plane was destined for the White House. This is interesting because the movie Independence Day had been released in 1996 depicting just such a destruction. Thus the four premier symbols of US power were to be destroyed in a couple hours and at least hopefully the President of the United States himself. Bush was therefore a target. The White House attack was aborted when the flight passengers revolted, the plane crashing short of its destination. Where was Pres. Bush at this critical juncture? Behind his desk in the Oval Office? No, he wasn’t at the White House. He chose this critical moment to be in a Florida primary school reading fairy tales to Kindergartners. Coincidence? As can be seen this whole scenario took careful planning and especially with the Twin Towers the cooperation of US authorities. The supports could not have had bombs placed without expert US engineers placing them there and arranging the timing sequences. It can’t be any other way. The planes which had no effect were used simply for cosmetic purpose to blow the public mind with their colorful explosions. An hour after impact there was no sign of collapse until the explosion puffs at the supports dropped the buildings in seconds. Another question is, did our companion Israelis know? They had to or their legendary intelligence capabilities are a fraud. The did not tell this country with whom they have a ‘special relationship’. Why were cameras set up at least an hour in advance focused on the Towers waiting to film the event if no one had advance notice? Why was the bombing captured so perfectly if no one knew? They knew. It is said and denied that Jewish workers were advised to stay at home and in fact they did stay at home. Yes, it was denied that they were told to and in fact, they did. Another coincidence? What was Bush’ reaction to this terrible insult and injury from our ally Saudi Arabia? Within a few days he flew to Arabia and chummed with the king as a seeming subordinate. At home he shut down the entire country for four days. He laughingly told the public to go out shopping; nothing happening here. He didn’t want to see any retaliation on the Moslems. Just a few bad eggs. What the hell? He grounded all commercial flights and then put every fighter jet the country owned whizzing around in the air over the East Coast. How crazy was that? The Arabs didn’t have an air force nor could they have flown from Arabia undetected if they had. They had used our own commercial liners for Christ’s sake. Was there US involvement in the destruction of the Twin towers? Unless you can ignore the complex actions necessary there had to be. It couldn’t have been done otherwise. And who was the chief American culprit? The finger points directly at President George W. Bush.

Note #4 The Return of George W.M. Reynolds

Note #4 The Return of George W.M. Reynolds by R.E. Prindle In the twenty-first century when the public mind was focused on exorcizing the past the search was to correct or eliminate unapproved statements and thoughts from literature. This attitude was nothing new. In the nineteenth century censorship was concerned with sexual matters. In the explosive time of the 21st century anything goes as far as pornography. For this time one can be disqualified for life over racial matters. In 1837 the seemingly immortal Charles Dickens created a criminal character by the name of Fagin in his Oliver Twist. Fagin was a Jew. As he tried to explain in his defence when he was accused of defaming the Jews, in 1837 the underworld of the nineteenth century was run by Jews. In other words, he was depicting reality. He was simply citing underworld facts. Dickens was made to humble himself and since his works were reproduced in numberless editions he agreed that in future editions he would scrub references to Fagin as a Jew. Historically, after the French Revolution of the eighteenth century had emancipated the Jews, the conflict between Jews and Europeans shifted in their favor. As the nineteenth century advanced they began to dominate all social and financial areas. This was universally recognized and resented. The question was alert. One of the English writers who early realized and wrote about it was the best selling author of the nineteenth century. No, it wasn’t Charles Dickens, it was an author who was wildly popular until the first world war. His name was George W.M. Reynolds. He wrote an entire 500 page allegory about the situation, much disguised in his fabulous novel The Necromancer, readily available today. In addition and openly in about 1854-55 when the attack on Dickens was gaining intensity the following extract from his novel published by the Wildside Press, The Fortunes of the Ashtons, Vol. 1, page 201: Quote: In one of the principal thoroughfares, so narrow, so crowded, which constitute the City of London, stood the immense establishment of Mr. Samuel Emanuel, the great clothier. The reader will not require to be informed that this individual was of the Hebrew race; nor if we be compelled to say anything to his disparagement, it must not be presumed that we are holding him up as an invariable type of his nation. It is nothing of the sort. We yield to no one, we may without vanity affirm, in enlightened opinions with respect to the Jews, and we have the conviction that there are many excellent persons amongst them as well as many admirable traits in their national character. [Here we must acknowledge that Reynolds anticipates the twentieth century psychologist Sigmund Freud in his Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego in which Freud definitely states that groups such as his own Jews do have identifiable traits, while to be in a group by definition is having similar traits. How could a group be considered a group without identifying traits? I have found Reynolds to be an excellent psychologist.] But, there ae good and bad of all kinds and species in this world—good and bad Christians,, good and bad Musselmans, good and bad Buddhists, and therefore why not bad Israelites as well as good ones? We will even go farther and we will affirm that within the range of our own experience have met persons professing Christianity, of a viler stamp of rascality, and capable of more unmitigated scoundrelism, that ever we discovered a Jew to be guilty of. Unquote. Thus, at this time we can see to what a pass society, English society, had come because of the extreme Jewish sensitivity. I have to believe that in this openly broaching of the question that George W.M. Reynolds is coming to the defense of Charles Dickens and indirectly defending freedom of speech that is being encroached on by the Jews. Reynolds might well have asked why the Jews should be given a favored position free from any censure? In accurately describing English society which consisted of several races and nationalities, various Anglo-Saxon tribes, Normans, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Jewish, Gypsy and we might as well throw in the French Huguenots why should the Jews be excused from the generality and given a special and higher position. How could English society be accurately portrayed without them. How could their deeds and practices be ignored. Indeed they would have complained of neglect had that been the case as they have complained in the nineteenth and twentieth and twenty -first centuries. I ask how can a historian write accurate history if an historian is required to self-censor to favor a particular race, while at the same time that race has the privilege of censoring the conduct of all others? In the twenty-first century a writer is required to self-censor any accurate depictions of Jews, Moslems, Negroes, Women and Sexual Deviants, and actual madmen. Indeed, one is forbidden to write a factual account of something that happened to one’s self lest it should offend those sensitive perps. One must censor one’s very own life. If so, history and many other Liberal Arts studies become meaningless. In Reynolds’ case he was no pansy as was Dickens who cut his jib to suit the Jews. Fagin was an accurate depiction of a Jewish criminal, in fact, he was not the worst of the lot while the whole lot had a very negative impact on society. Indeed the Jews were disproportionately represented in the criminal ranks as they were in financial circles. This is a historic fact. It cannot be denied. Perhaps after his daring confession of faith Reynolds, because he was more than capable of defending himself, was not taken on by the Jews. Perhaps also the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of his works after 1914 was because he was banned by Jewish vengeance. There is increasing evidence that a hundred years on after his expulsion he is being rehabilitated and recognized as the great literary artist he is. There is much to be learned from his writing. George W.M. Reynolds was very nearly sui generis.

17a. The View From Prindle's Head

17a. The View From Prindle’s Head by R.E. Prindle As it is now time to deal with the career of Joseph ‘Suss’ Oppenheimer the reformer of Jewish customs and mores beginning about 1740. I will have to deal with the consequences of his career out of historical order, that is the consequences extend to 1945 and the end of WWII. As there appears to be nothing written in English about Suss I will rely on the translation of the German novel titled Jud Suss by the Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger that was published in 1925. Just as a note, here one has to keep the different nationalities in mind. The Jews were acting a nation or people with their own goals and methods in mind. The wished to subordinate all European government to their rule as well as Great Britain and the US. They had an international government operating across all other nations. This is a fact that must be accepted. Thus one speaks of Germans, English, Russians and hence Jews. They are resident in all nations. The Jewish nation merely lives among the various nations and peoples. They must take responsibility for their actions. Feuchtwanger originally wrote Suss’ story as a play staged in 1916. The play was staged then withdrawn. As the play as well as the novel is pro-Jewish and anti-German I’m sure it was a wise move. He then turned the play into the novel of the same name in 1925. This was the height of the Jewish attempt to take over Germany according to Suss’ methods. The translation was then published in England where it met with great success. It was then made into an English propaganda movie also titled Jud Suss in 1933, in the US it was titled Power, in the same year Samuel Untermyer declared war on Germany on behalf of the Jewish people. While the novel and its movies, both Jewish and German are important perhaps the name Lion Feuchtwanger is unfamiliar to most. Certainly few are aware of the importance of the man. As an historian, prior to reading Jud Suss I had seen the name mentioned frequently but I knew little further about him. Feuchtwanger, while not logorrheic did write a corpus. Most of it is historical concerning the greatness of the Jews. He wrote a trilogy, 1500 pages, around the character of Josephus and the Jewish-Roman wars of the first and second centuries AD. He also wrote a longish novel titled Success about the political situation in Weimar Bavaria in the twenties published in 1930. This was before the Jewish-German hostilities of the thirties and forties, so while Hitler was mentioned there is no inkling of the holocaust and Hitler is seen as a crank and not a threat. Perhaps it was the times and the Jewish propaganda machine that credits Feuchtwanger with the mantle of the greatest historical novelist. He isn’t even close to that, not even a contender. Nevertheless Jud Suss was a best seller in Germany and abroad. My copy from the English reprint publisher Hutchinson bills itself and the 158th thousand. Perhaps for propaganda effect itself. Suss is told in a fantasia style, mythologizing the story. Suss was what was known as a Court Jew serving the Duke Karl Alexander of Wurttemberg, the companion State of Bavaria to the East and Alsace to the West. It is south of Frankfort in Hesse-Cassell which was the operational capital of the Jews in the West. I am sure that few people in the West know anything of Suss Oppenheimer if they have ever heard the name. Little known outside of Germany, I have found no study of him in English. While the book and movies have historical validity they are not documentaries. There is some invention in them however apart from emphasis the stories closely follow the facts. If you’re Jewish your interpretation will differ from the German. That’s a matter of interpretation. Feuchtwanger himself had access to Jewish accounts that are perhaps not accessible to non-Jews, in any event the story line conforms to historical results. What Feuchtwanger has actually done is to write a manual for gaslighting societies. Suss was a master gaslighter while his employer, Duke Karl Alexander was an old soldier. He was a very successful warrior but his profession didn’t prepare him to deal with a smooth politician like Suss whose religion and nationality placed him in conflict with that of the Duke. He followed the Jewish agenda, for instance, Jews were forbidden in Wurttemberg but Suss enticed the Duke to allow them admission much to the disgruntlement of the population. Used to having military subordinates who obeyed orders the Duke expects the same from Suss. Suss however is subversive to the core. The Duke has no familiarity with numbers while Suss was a master arithmetician. Suss cultivates a fancy or luxurious tastes in the Duke while suggesting military grandeur that was well beyond the Dukes imagination. All these fantasies were very expensive and while the Duke has an organic connection to the his land and people while Suss doesn’t. To Suss land and people are merely props for exploitation. His policies such as taxing the people for the use of the roads, making every road a toll road, destroys the economic balance, impoverishing the citizens. Thus, Suss becomes the Duke’s financial support. As Nathan Rothschild will be made to say in the American film The House of Rothschild: Money! The only weapon I have is money. In sexual competition Suss who studies the arts of seduction alienates the Duke’s wife from him and she joins Suss’ gaslighting. Constantly demeaned and belittled the Duke turns to drink. Suss in order to do the things he wants encourages the drinking while obtaining powers of attorney so that he can act in the Duke’s name gaining the benefits while being able to fix the blame on the Duke. In the end the Duke goes apoplectic and dies. At that point the Wurttemberg authorities are able to arrest Suss and charge him with the crimes that had been committed against them and the State. Suss counters an airtight alibi. He had a power of attorney and therefore was acting with the Duke’s authority so that the Duke was responsible for all Suss’ acts. The Germans obsessed with legal restrictions, Suss is about to get away with his crimes, but there was an old legal statute that held Jews who had intercourse with German women were subject to the death sentence. Suss had no argument against that, guilty as hell. As a lesson to the Jews as to methods for corrupting men and States the method is one that has been well taken and followed ever since. Now, as a transitional figure, Feuchtwanger pits Suss against the traditional old fashioned Jews, Isaac Landau and Rabbi Gabriel. Landau was the actual Court Jew of Vienna. He is the living caricature of the Jew, side curls, caftans and all. He is content to wield the power while remaining obscure. Suss is a Western Jew longing to shine amongst the goyim in the Western grand style as the Rothschilds would so ably do. In the end Landau still lives while Suss’ body is hanging high swinging in a cage, the highest gibbet ever erected. Landauer’s triumph was short lived as the Rothschilds soon took center stage. Suss had shown the upcoming generation the way. Jewish affairs were multi-varied, at the same time Suss was active in Wurttemberg to the East the Jews in Alsace were wielding usury like master knife throwera. They had that State in thrall. If they plundered Spain a few centuries earlier they owned the souls of the Alsatians. With compound interest working against the Alsatians, they were as good as slaves. The French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews to full citizenship was on the horizon in 1791. With that freedom to operate openly the conflict between Jewish mores and French mores gave the Jews every advantage. There is little doubt that France would have been in the position of Alsace within a decade or two. The conflict between the two nations escalated until Napoleon became the Emperor and had to grapple with the problem. European civilization had been rapidly evolving since the Renaissance and increasing freedom from the Catholic/Jewish straight jacket. In the eighteenth century it took its tentative moves into modern institutions. In 1720 the Scot, John Law, had succeeded in introducing the concept of paper currency in France. The notion was based on the idea that money could equal a nation’s gross national product and at first it was stunningly successful but as the novelty was not understood the method ran out of control and crashed. The English enviously watching from across the channel dreamed up the South Seas Company that was thought to develop an immense business not unlike the East India Company. Thus, expectations were divided into shares that quickly traded at immense value and then just as quickly crashed. Nevertheless new systems emerged from the wreckage as the modern banking system and the stock exchange slowly took shape. The Jews understood the new systems perfectly. Subsequent to the two Bubbles the Industrial Revolution evolved from new scientific and technological knowledge, most notably in the emergence of the railroad which would change the face of the land and create immense new sources of wealth largely based on paper money as there wasn’t enough gold to go around. These developments slowly changed the social balance of power that manifested itself in the explosion of the French Revolution. The Revolution marked the rise of the Bourgeoisie that was securely in place by the passing of the Napoleonic period. The Jewish avatars of this new order were the Rothschilds who rose phoenix like from the ashes of the Suss period. As I indicated the principalities of Wurttemberg, Alsace and Hesse-Cassel were the heart of Jewish operations of Europe. Suss had briefly captured Wurttemberg while in Alsace to the East Jewish usurers repeating the earlier Spanish success of bringing the whole of that State into their debt. The German Margrave of Hesse who was no mean usurer himself had amassed a huge fortune in financial obligations. One of his methods had been to lease his male citizens to other States as soldiers. According the Feuchtwanger Suss had tried to get Karl Alexander to do the same but he refused. As is well known the Rothschild father, Mayer, had sent his five sons to different European capitals as bankers. Remember Mayer’s attributed statement in the House of Rothschild that his only weapon was money and he intended to use it. Sending his sons out as bankers was that move. Once they found banking , that is, usury on a massive and legal scale the family was on solid ground. What Mayer’s intent was in dispensing his sons wasn’t dwelt on but judging from the results it was the political domination of Europe, the realization of the Jewish goal of world dominion. Nathan I, who went to England to engage in the burgeoning textile business of the Industrial Revolution knew nothing of textiles, hence failed, but failing there he followed the maxim, ‘by any means necessary’. He turned to criminal activities and became a very successful smuggler gaining some useful knowledge that would stand him in good stead soon. Then Napoleon invaded Hesse-Cassell in hot pursuit, some people say, of the Margrave’s million which he assuredly meant to appropriate for himself. The Margrave, no doubt thinking that all things must pass, looked to secrete his chests of obligations and as luck would have it he settled for Mayer Rothschild as his agent. What a boon, what a boon. Mayer took the riches and turned them to account sending a big bundle of cash to the failed textile merchant but successful smuggler, his number one son, Nathan I who immediately set himself up as a banker. What reputation Nathan made in textiles and smuggling isn’t known but it would seem certain that when he showed up in the City with millions it must have been somewhat of a surprise. Ill dressed and eccentric but with marvelous skills in usury, which is almost to say, banking, trained to the philosophy ‘by any means necessary’, Nathan couldn’t help but succeed and succeed he did in a most spectacular way. When Napoleon failed a decade later, when the dust had settled and the smoke had cleared Nathan all but owned the bank of England. He was the George Soros of his day. Well and good but Europeans still had the Jewish problem that Emancipation and Napoleon’ efforts had only exacerbated. Henry Ford tried to do the same about a hundred years later but with no more success than Napoleon. They didn’t understand the problem while the problem had grown and grown. After 1806 and his conquest of Central Europe Napoleon furthered the emancipation of the Jews from the French Revolution of 1791. He sent his Minister of the Interior, Champigny a letter in 1806 outlining his program: (following the Wikipedia entry)

[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of the Jewish people to practice a great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it, to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…. Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will come to leave Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French. Unquote. You see how little Napoleon understood the Jews. Had the term been available at the time the Jews would have called Napoleon an anti-Semite. His program was exactly what the Catholic Church’s had been for about 1500 years and in which they failed miserably. That is, converting the Jews. A little over a hundred years on, after Henry Ford’s failed attempt, the German Chancellor Adolph Hitler would review all the failed efforts to incorporate the Jews into society and in answer to a Jewish call to exterminate the Germans and raze Germany to the ground, call the for the Final Solution. That didn’t work either. Napoleon, thus, was no psychologist or ethnologist. He makes the mistake of thinking that all people’s interest and sentiments can be changed by fiat. The French learned nothing from Napoleon’s mistakes as they are now finding it impossible to integrate Moslems and Africans and make Frenchman of them. As they failed miserably at integrating the Jews two hundred and some years later one may find a hint at the outcome of this experiment. Lest Napoleon’s opinion of the Jews be mistaken, in another letter of 1808 to brother Jerome Napoleon he said this: (Still Wikipedia) Quote I have undertaken reform to reform the Jews, but I have not endeavored to draw more of them into my realm. Far from that, I have avoided doing anything which would show esteem to the most despicable of mankind. Unquote. Indeed, as if to acknowledge this opinion: (still Wikipedia) Quote: In 1808, Napoleon rolled back a number of reforms. (Under the so-called decret infame, or Infamous Decree of 17 March 1808) declaring all debts with Jews to be cancelled, reduced or postponed. The Infamous Decree imposed a ten year ban on any kind of Jewish money-lending activity. Similarly, Jewish individuals who were in subservient positions—such as a Jewish servant, military officer-or wife- were unable to engage in any kind of money-lending activity without the explicit consent of their superiors. Napoleon’s goal in implementing the Infamous Decree in 1808 was to integrate cultures and customs into those of France. This caused so much financial loss that the Jewish community nearly collapsed. Unquote. Thus it can be seen that the central problem was the Jewish practice of usury. Nor was usury forced on them as why should it be, it is the most lucrative business short of drug dealing ever devised by human minds. The Jews embraced usury. They were usurers from biblical times on. Jesus chased the money lenders from the temple porch. You may be sure that the Jews were enraged at losing that most lucrative of all businesses. By usury Jews were able to control the money and hence the people. As society developed and nationalism became more developed, central banks came into existence. All nations borrowed and the loans were immense and secured by the taxes of the countries. Thus Jews managed to control the central banks and the entire currency. Governments then had to apply to the banks, that is the Jews for loans, they thus became more important than the governments themselves. While attacking that Jewish activity Napoleon could only have a surer victory while restoring himself to full sovereignty. Indeed, the Florentines of Italy had already faced up the problem by instituting a municipal pawn shop lending at reasonable rates thus bypassing on that level the Jewish usury industry. France would also create a State run pawn shop. However, if a world be borrower had no alternative he could ‘go to the Jews’ and obtain money at exorbitant rates. In England, of course, no such laws were passed giving Jewish usurers full license to handle the currency. With the rise of the great banking organizations and the stock exchanges some order was brought into the currency, while laws began to be passed regulating maximum interest rates. Napoleon believed he could integrate an alien culture and people into the dominant French culture thus converting the Jews into authentic Frenchmen. He merely gave the Jews entry into the dominant culture in which they could impose their customs and culture while piously claiming to be French. Within very few decades, fighting only with money as their weapon, the Jews would have more magnificent castles than the French nobles who had been stripped of all their prerogatives by the revolutions of 1791, 1830 and 1848. As the monetary royalty then, the commons and debased nobility were sheep that had been sheered. France, in all but name, belonged to the Jews. It was then, sometime after the Father Thomas affair in Syria of 1840 that alarmed writers began to write exposes of the Jewish threat that were immediately countered with defamatory anti-Semitist charges. The Jews became adept at organizing incidents that strengthened their hold on the various nationals as the reactions would be defamed as anti-Semitism. That includes the famous Dreyfus Affair of France of the 1890s. To return to Feuchtwanger and Jud Suss. As mentioned in 1933 Feuchtwanger managed to have a movie of made of Jud Suss, while in 1934 the American Jews made a movie romanticizing Mayer Rothschild and his sons called The House of Rothschild. That movie is withheld from distribution as a DVD while it is available on the internet. Both movies are strictly Jewish propaganda and given the timing and circumstances anti-German especially as the Jews had declared war against Germany in 1933. US boycotts and other forms of discrimination enacted by the Roosevelt administration followed. The situation was so fraught with danger that the anti-war faction in Congress strengthened the neutrality laws to prevent the Roosevelt administration from taking military actions. Roosevelt and his Jewish coterie found ways to get around the laws, that is, violate them. The US of Roosevelt had virtually joined the Jewish war against Germany. One must assume that the Germans were affronted, we don’t have to assume, we know they were affronted by these movies. Both were essentially acts of war. More concerning that issue further on. Let us now return to 1808. It is true that Napoleon enfranchised the Jews, that is, emancipated them as he conquered Central Europe. This was much against the objections of the conquered States which had long negative experience with the Jews and very likely recognized their hostile intents. Indeed, the Zionist movement would arise in Vienna. When Napoleon was conquered and sent into permanent exile on St. Helen’s in the middle of nowhere the Central and Eastern States tried to reimpose Jewish disabilities but with ill success. Now empowered, Jewish hostilities increased apace enveloped in the Communist movement. In the US movie The Rothschilds, Mayer Rothschild expresses his hatred toward Europe and states more than once that the only weapon the Jews have in the fight is money. In viewing the film it is often difficult to distinguish the portrayal of the Rothschilds from overt ‘anti-Semitism; even though the movie is authorized. Nathan Rothschild I delegated to England has been quoted to say: I care not which politicians run the country so long as I control the currency. Money was essential to the Jewish campaign. Nathan Rothschild had captured control of English currency, and the Jews did what they liked with British politics. His brother James had done the same with the French currency. In England from being a ‘persecuted’ people they won pre-eminence until a Jew, Benjamin D’Israeli disguised as Church of England, was the prime Minister and the entire Rothschild family owned the largest and most magnificent of estates. James Rothschild in France, while not being Nathan, was establishing a Jewish dynasty that would endure from 1815 until the French people disenfranchised them in mid-twentieth century by confiscating their bank. The revolutionary period from 1791 to 1830 was both a critical period in world history and the ascension of the Jews. In France the Jews integrated themselves into the government early and they knew what to do to advance themselves further. The aristocracy was dispersed as a political force, neatly disenfranchised in the Revolution of 1830 during which the monarchy lost the right to absolute power. In 1830 the French finally disposed of the Barbary Pirates who had raided the Med coast for slaves and booty for hundreds of years since the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Thus security was assured the coast. As part of the conquest of the Barbary Coast France annexed Algeria. They subjected the Algerians making Frenchman the dominant caste. Algeria had a substantial Jewish population who were subjects of the Algerine Moslems. A French Jew named Adolph Cremieux who was one of the most important Jews of the nineteenth century forced a law through making the Algerine Jews French citizens thus elevating them in a moment over the Moslems. You may be sure that they took full advantage of their position to revenge themselves. Thus putting the French into even worse odor as conquerors. Thus the Jews constantly pushed the envelope. They had an unrecognized superior position. They played a semi-autonomous role. While posing as the various nationals they claimed all the rights of citizens while at the same time maintaining their own legal and moral code in opposition to the citizens of the home country. They were quick to deny any criticism labeling any such as ‘anti-Semitism. Thus a very strong tension developed as national analysts wrote books exposing and detailing Jewish machinations. And this would continue to develop until the confrontation of the Second Thirty Years War of 1914-1945. More importantly Jewish religious pretentions were successfully challenged by the emergence of the scientific method and its results. The European mind was advancing far beyond the Jewish magical mind. During the Catholic centuries in which the Jewish and European minds were centered on the Arien Age magic of the Jewish bible, the two mentalities were equal or at least on the same evolutionary level. The rise of Science invalidated Jewish magic while elevating the European mind far above it. Thus in the attempt to deal with Science the Jewish religion split into many sects until the beginnings of Zionism in 1797 began to direct Jewish magic to the undermining of science by infecting it with that magic. Jewish power would find a savior in the United States of America, that while insignificant at the turn of the century became the dominant world power. Hence the Jewish version of the Jud Suss movie was named Power in the US. Once the Jews realized this, they quickly sent millions to colonize the US. They were successful by 1913 as when they elected Woodrow Wilson they became co-governors. At that point they were able to sway European affairs at will. Continue to 18. The View From Prindle’s Head.

13. Time Traveling with R.E. Prindle George W.M. Reynolds Lady Saxondale's Crimes.

13.  Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

 

The deeper one gets into Reynolds the more deep it gets.  The question becomes how did perhaps, after Walter Scott, the greatest English novelist of his or any other time get swept under the historical rug or in contemporary terms disappear down the memory hole.  While I can only claim to have begun my study I am overwhelmed by George’s narrative abilities.

In my study I have been introduced to various writers of George’s period of which I had only known by name such as William Harrison Ainsworth, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Lever, Captain Marryat, Dickens and Thackeray of course, and none can compare to him.  This was a stellar cast in English literature, too.  Of succeeding writers such as Trollope, Eliot, Collins, Mrs. Gaskell and a host of others appear as epigone to my mind.  Apart from, perhaps, Thackeray, Reynolds is easily the most prolific.

He did however have one tragic flaw, if he liked something he read he either emulated or appropriated it.  While perhaps not so obvious now as it was glaring at that time.  A key example will appear in this essay, that of Georges appropriation of Harrison Ainsworth’s Ride of Dick Turpin from his novel Rookwood.

A word on Harrison Ainsworth as background.  Ainsworth in his time was as famous as either Dickens or Reynolds with Dickens only, so far, surviving the test of time.  This is difficult for me to understand.  Dickens makes for painful reading.  Ainsworth was prolific and had an extended career although dim at the end.  He was from Manchester and a Midlands, almost regional author.  He made his fame on what were called Newgate novels.  Like others he was active as a magazine editor having an eponymous magazine, Ainsworth’s to showcase his writing.  He was a very social type who enjoyed his fellowship of writers.  He ran a literary salon out of his house in Kensal Green to which Reynolds was not invited.

As a writer, after Rookwood published in 1832 which established his reputation he was most successful from 1838 to 1845 when he issued his string of historical novels based on English history.  These are quite good.  Competent with flashes but not quite genius level.  His account of the plague year of 1665 and London fire of 1666 is outstanding.  His later career had its ups and downs but his histories of the John Law currency scandal in France and the South Sea Bubble in England are well worth reading. 

Reynolds took up his pen in 1844 to successfully launch his career with his Masterwork, The Mysteries of London as Ainsworth’s masterly historical novels were appearing one after another.  In reading both authors I sometimes have trouble distinguishing which author I’m reading; so, after several failed attempts, excluding his Dickens appropriation of Mr. Pickwick with his Pickwick Abroad,  Reynolds probably adjusted his style to that of Ainsworth.  While Ainsworth’s style is flat and Dickens slightly archaic I find Reynolds’ to be quite modern.  While Ainsworth’s style is flat, mostly surface, Reynolds has an amazing depth as he strives for every nuance to bring his characters to life.  Of course, his style changes slightly with the advancing years.

While I have not read every thing I have read much of the oeuvre and except for his historical novels which form a large part of his corpus he places his contemporary novels in the years from 1826 into the forties.  He seems to set up those novels  from 1826 into the forties, and then to their conclusions.  As his mind was fixated on that period, other than age, a possible reason for his ceasing to write novels about 1860 was that his novels became dated.  Strangely even though his works were selling very well when he stopped novel writing he sold his copyrights to his printer John Dicks and never looked back.  By that time he was very well off, dying in the seventies with twenty thousand pounds in the bank.

Ainsworth himself in his later years after 1860 also struggled to appeal to contemporary readers.  The late fifties to the break time of 1860 was when the Romantic period faded and Auguste Comte’s Positivism commanded and that was finished by Herbert Spencer.  Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859 leading the scientific succession from Comte and Spencer.  Spencer sat astride the succession.

The role of psychology was developing rapidly during the thirties, forties, and fifties and Reynolds who was deeply interested in human maturation was no mean psychologist.  He is quite remarkable.  The principal work I am studying here is Series III of the Mysteries of the Court of London.

The final two series have nothing to do with the Court but the title must have been worth something so he continued it much as Stiff attempted to do when Reynolds left Stiff’s Mysteries of London.   I first came upon Reynolds through the first two series of The Mysteries of the Court of London that bowled me over.  Gradually as my interest expanded I discovered the Valancourt edition of The Mysteries of London that really excited my interest.  And then I came across a bibliography of his work that is as inclusive as any but still misses a number of his titles, many of them virtually unknown.  Even with his two major works, the Mysteries the first two series of each are well known and until recently the latter two volumes of each are, if not unknown, neglected.  Wildside Press began to publish Lady Saxondales’s Crimes of the Court but gave up after a combined edition of the first two volumes of the 1900 Oxford Society edition, presumably from lack of interest although they did publish all five volumes of the fourth series, The Fortunes of the Ashtons.  Those volumes are out as remainders.  When those have been gone through the volumes will be scarce.

The whole series of the Court was serialized from 1848 to 1856.  I think most readers, as few as they may be, believe that Series I & II occupy that whole space and I did also.  Actually the first two Series were finished sometime in 1852, Lady Saxondale would have been from perhaps l853-54 and the Ashtons from 1855 and 1856.  Dicks then published all four series in eight volumes. 

For as popular as Reynolds was said to be it seems odd that copies of early printings are impossible to find except in American editions that are slightly less difficult to find mostly in the odd volume.  So for the two Mysteries one has to rely on The Oxford Society edition.  They publish the four series in five volumes each instead of two as with Dicks.

This Oxford Society itself seems to have disappeared without a trace.  Scholars in England have been unable to locate it, yet they published the last edition of the Mysteries of the Court while combining with the Richard Francis Burton Society of Boston.  The edition was in multiple forms and apparently a fairly large number.  The title page says that it was published for members of the Society but they had a deluxe edition of a thousand copies, a flexible leather covered ‘paper back’ edition and an edition of apparently ten volumes combining two volumes each listed as London and Boston.  Either the Oxford Society Membership was very large or the publishers merely published under that name as no evidence of the society is known.  In any event Reynolds sales continued until WWI when nearly all memory of him vanished under the Guns Of August.

As a note for those not familiar with Richard Francis Burton he was a noted Ethnologist and Anthropologist as well as one of the most famous of explorers that opened Europe to the world.  His expeditions take a prominent place in the opening of Africa while his studies of Moslem literature have still a prominent place in Ethnic studies. His most famous work is A Secret Pilgramage to Mecca and Medina when he is alleged to have been the first European to penetrate to the Kabah.  I have been able to learn nothing of the Burton Society of Boston.

There is no biography extant about Reynolds.  Dick Collins’ short essay published as a preface in the Valancourt Edition of Reynolds’ title The Necromancer being the closest we have.  However, Dick Collins points out that George was a highly auto-biographical writer so that armed with the few acts and hints Collins puts out it is possible to get a probable history of the writer.

This is possible because as he is an astute psychologist his works can be seen as essays in self-analysis.  In Vol. III the depiction or analysis of Lady Saxondale is central from her first crime to the dissolution of her character.  The maturations of all the characters are thoroughly examined while Freud would not have been disappointed in the results.  I know, because I’m not.  So, sometime in late 1853 Reynolds began the third series of the Court of London

Reynolds was a revolutionary.  During the forties he had been a central participant in the evolutionary Chartist Movement of England.  He does not seem to have been involved in Marxism. I have found no reference to the Communist Manifesto of 1847.  Reynolds career as a violent revolutionist collapsed after the failed Revolution of 1848 in which he played a prominent part in England.  He first became a revolutionist when he arrived in France in 1830.  His analysis was that the violence of that revolution cleared away ancient customs allowing for a brave new world.  From 1830 for the eighteen years to 1848 he was an active revolutionist using his literature to subvert the existing order.  His major role in the 1848 revolution was his literary agitation against the Crown and the Aristocracy.  All of his writing is subversive.  As a violent revolutionist he did not endear himself to the other Chartist leaders.

One of his problems other than advocating violence was that he always had financial schemes that were probably on the edge of legitimacy.  Accounts of such schemes fill his pages.  His sons were later convicted for employing financial schemes.  Con men abound with the most vile criminal figures in every book.  Crime is the central theme of Lady Saxondale’s Crimes, indeed, crime is the last word in the title.  Lady Saxondale tries to solve all her problems with criminal acts that get her in deeper and deeper blasting nearly all those around her.

Reynolds frequently mentions crimes committed in youth and how they are redeemed by virtue in maturity.  Undoubtedly he is referring to himself.  An interesting example in Crimes is Lady Bess who will figure in this analysis.  Following his regular method she and her brother were orphans.  Reynolds and his brother were orphaned.  Their father died when Reynolds himself was eight and his mother died when he was sixteen.  Orphans and sixteen year olds ramble through his pages. 

His first book was written in 1832 when he was eighteen and published in 1835.  It was a record of a crime he committed that scarred him for life.  His mother died in March of 1830 and George  was placed in the guardianship of his father’s best friend Duncan McArthur.  He is the McArthur of Reynolds third name.  He was a naval doctor living in Walmer.  Dick Collins thinks it not unlikely that McArthur bought bodies from Resurrection Men.  It was from these men that doctors obtained bodies for dissection and scientific experiments.  Once again such doctors have prominent places in his novels.  If Reynolds was aware of this and if McArthur indoctrinated him in these practices that he describes so well Georges’ mind was profoundly affected.  Perhaps McArthur had an anatomical museum such as the one that Dr. Ferney has in Crimes that George describes so minutely.

George’s father probably appointed his friend as guardian to give his sons male guidance in case of his death.  If so, he made the wrong choice.  In another place, his novel the Steam Packet, George has a character, probably an alter ego and an orphan declare that his character hated his guardian who was overbearing and brutal who also was executor of his parents will and would never tell how much the legacy was or what it consisted of.   In the dispute about how much George inherited if there was a will then it must have substantial enough for McArthur to possibly appropriate it for his own purposes which as executor he could do.  In the absence of details one can only speculate but there does seem to be an issue here.

When George wrote his first  version of the novel in 1832 he may have felt it too early to the crime depicted to publish so he waited for three years and then probably rewrote or edited it, as he had had time to think the material over.   The novel titled A Youthful Impostor involves a sixteen year old youth who is a cadet at the English military academy at Sandhurst in Berkshire as was Reynolds. Thus his obsession with sixteen year olds.  One time coming back to the school from London to Hounslow his character was accosted on the road by two highwaymen as a third watched.  After being bandied by the two, the third who watched from a distance thought he would be ideal for a swindling operation he had in mind.  The Youth is recruited.  In real life this would have been between September and December 1830.  In the novel the swindle goes well and the youth is treated to a couple months of the highlife before the swindle goes sour.  In real life this must have been the time that George became familiar with Long’s Hotel.  Long’s was the posh hotel in London.  Reynolds refers to it frequently in his novels.

The bubble must have burst in December so that Reynolds fled to the Continent to avoid prosecution.  Then began his exile of five years.  Collins believes that Reynolds was involved in criminal activities such as using loaded dice.  As George believes that adult honesty redeemed criminal activity he must be referring to himself.

Fresh from a criminal milieu then, this sixteen year old set out to conquer the world by any means necessary.  George is so familiar with con games, cheats and sponging that one thinks he must have experienced  such activities.  I think George did.  He was especially solicitous of the gendarmes in Pickwick Abroad so that one imagines that he was quite familiar with them and probably saw first hand the insides of the jails he so minutely describes.

On the other hand George was a curious guy.  He came, he saw, and picked a few pockets.

And so, Lady Bess of Crimes who had lost sight of her brother, she was told he was dead, is reunited with him; he is horrified to find that she is a lady highwayman living a life of crime.  This is Geroge speaking through Lady Bess now, that when, she explained to her brother,  when she was thrown destitute out on the world she had two evil choices, one was to sacrifice her chastity and live a life of degradation and shame from which she could never recover or take up a life of crime while retaining her precious chastity and therefore remain pure while the crimes she was committing could be readily forgiven an hence with her chastity secure she could reenter society as she will when the orphans are discovered to be of noble parentage on the bastard side.

So, while George had erred as the Youthful Impostor his own life had been redeemed by his success as an author and publisher.  His crimes in his mind were swept under the rug.  A little sophistry goes a long way.  Sexual purity, by the way, obsesses George.

Reynolds writing also encompasses several genres from fairy tales to history to true romance, to crime and others.  Per its title, Lady Saxondale’s Crimes is primarily a crime and mystery novel with a lot of romance.  He does have an audience to maintain and this is the way he does it.  Remember the episodes are published on a weekly basis so he has to follow a Perils of Pauline type cliffhanger formula.

The starting point for Lady Saxondale that develops into quite a string of crimes began when she presents her elderly husband with an heir to the title.  From a first marriage he has a ne’er do well son name Ralph Farefield who is depending on his inheritance to bail a wastrel life out.  When Lady Saxondale’s son is born who displaces him, Ralph determines to remove the baby.  This introduces the criminal character Chiffin the Cannibal who is quite reminiscent of the Resurrection Man of Mysteries of London.  The chief difference here is that Chiffen is a creation of George’s imagination rather then erupted from his subconscious as did Tony Tidkins, the Resurrection  Man.  While Tidkins was organic Chiffin has the manufactured feel, however quite good.

Having now read a few million of Georges  twenty million plus words I am getting more comfortable with Reynolds’ mind.  It now becomes apparent that he is creating his own universe.  For instance, this is the first time I’ve noticed him do this, he takes a character from another novel and works him in.  I had just finished his million worder Mary Price before beginning  Crime.   In Mary Price he introduces a ne-er do well strolling player by the name of Thompson who was still alive at novel’s end.  In that novel we now learn he had become involved in a valuable secret that Harietta (Lady Saxondale) needs.  Mary Price was begun in 1850 running concurrently with the second series of Mysteries of the Court.  The first series of that novel terminated and was published in book form in 1853.  The last we saw of Thompson he was in prison on some charge of flim flam.  He was obviously an obscure personage as no one in Saxondale has ever heard of him nor is he known to be dead or alive.

Lady Saxondale actuates a dragnet at some expense to locate him.  I imagine that if Reynolds could have planned his whole oeuvre  consciously in 1844 he might have composed a huge panoramic novel.  Subconsciously he has, as the novels can be integrated but with shifting casts of characters.  Tony Tidkins, the Resurrection Man could have been kept alive thus appearing here obviating the need for Chiffin.  The two characters are quite close with Chiffin doing some resurrection work.

Well, Ralph the Heir employs Chiffen to abduct and murder the infant which he promises to do.  Circumstances prevent the murder.  Lady Saxondale, Harriet is determined that Ralph shall not inherit.  She sets out to find the child.  The astute reader intuits that she will not find it but will find a substitute.  The difficulty here is that the real baby has a strawberry birthmark on his shoulder.  Harriet was an aristocrat you know; in those day an aristocrat could do and get away with anything they willed.  Harriet appealed toa Dr. Ferney to create the strawberry on the substitute.

A reader familiar with Reynolds knows doctors, medical matters, are an obsession with him.   This probably refers back to his guardian, Duncan McArthur.  He creates many and Dr. Ferney, along with Tidkins, the Resurrection man, is perfect of his kind.  Now, of course the reader can guess the baby is a duplicate but that’s about all.  It’s pretty clear that one of the characters is going to be the real baby.  Which one.  George keeps his audience guessing, strings the issue out.  However, Ferney’s depiction is wonderful.  According to biographer Dick Collins, Georges guardian who you will remember had been his father’s best friend, Duncan McArthur had been a doctor in Walmer, Kent who also bought bodies from resurrection men.  Collins speculates that George had even worked with Duncan, perhaps even accompanying him on a removal.  At any rate George’s description of Dr Ferney seems really detailed, the kind of detail you can only get by having been involved.

George’s doctors always have a museum of embalmed body parts, the random head collection and the obsession with creating life.  These doctors appear regularly.  The description of Ferney’s collection is magnificent.  Of course, Ferney falls deeply in love with Harriet having met her while grafting the strawberry on the substitute.  Ferney’s crime haunts him carrying that frightful secret as a burden.

Ralph becomes desperate when he learns of the discovery of the child or replacement.  He now has to murder the replacement, in the process he is discovered by Harriet and murdered in the crypt of the Saxondale private chapel.  This is because Harriet has a vial of newly discovered chloroform acquired from Dr. Ferney.  One whiff of which lays you out.  She gave Ralph a whiff and shoved him into the pool and walks out locking the door behind her.  Nobody ever visits the chapel so she thinks she is cool.

At this point she has launched herself into a life of hideous crimes that will unfold one after the other. If you think Harriet was alone in her crimes you are mistaken.  There will be many crimes and many criminals.  For the most attractive of them George reinvents the wonderful Lady Lade, Letitia Lade, from the first series of the Court of London.  In that novel she was an associate of Tim Meagles who was  a very close buddy of George IV as a young man. She was known as an Amazon and Diana the Huntress. Appellations of Lady Bess. She wears men’s clothes as does Lady Bess.   Meagles was based on the relationship of the real life Beau George Brummell with George IV.

George Reynolds introduces Lady Bess, also known as Elizabeth Paton.  She is a difficult character, as we will learn she was the sister of Francis Paton, presumably orphans, but we will learn further on that they are the natural children of Lord Everdean who mated with Lady Everton, a married lady to produce them out of wedlock.  Lord Everdean finds it expedient to leave England for a decade or but when Lady Everton’s husband dies he returns to reconcile with that widowed Lady.  He also reunites with his two children.  He can forgive Lady Bess for her criminal activities because she has jealously guarded her virginity so that she is pure.

Lady Bess while not hardened ran with and commanded a ferocious gang led Chiffin the Cannibal.  Bess is a lady highwayman.  Reynolds is associated with the Newgate Calendar school of Penny Dreadful writers along with Ainsworth although neither really fits that description.  The Newgate Calendar was a series of brief histories of famous crimes and criminals that writers mined for their own stories.

Reynolds is very familiar with the Newgate Calendar and especially likes the character of the highwayman, perhaps because of his youthful encounter.  He also favors female characters dressed in men’s clothes.  Lady Bess fits all his preferences.  As her story begins she along with Chiffin are holding up a stages coach quite close to where she lives.  Her victims are two lawyers, Marlow and Malton who will figure prominently in the novel.  Things go wrong when Marlow punches Lady Bess and knocks her down thus capturing her.  She talks them into taking her to her house, where she lives for crying out loud, to tidy up.  Incredible as that sounds she has a hutch of carrier pigeons so that she pens a note in code, attaches it under a wing and sends it off.  It seems that there is a criminal network that is connected by carrier pigeon from London to Dover.

Hang in now, don’t leave me, George, as I pointed out, was much influenced by Harrison Ainsworth.  Ainsworth wrote a novel in 1832 titled Rookwood.  This was one of the first Newgate novels from which he selected as a hero the legendary highwayman, Dick Turpin.  In it Turpin commits a crime in London and to foil detection he set out on a wild non-stop ride to York two hundred miles distant.  He rides his wonder horse Black Bess, hence Lady Bess is a tribute, at top speed the two hundred miles in eight hours, a seemingly impossible feat.  That means he can claim to have been in York when the crime was committed in London.  Confederates could claim that he had been seen in York during those eight hours.

Ainsworth’s depiction of Dick Turpin’s ride created a sensation while making his reputation.  George was one of those in the admiring crowd.  As ever George lifted the story, which was obvious to everyone, much as he had Dickens Mr. Pickwick for his own Pickwick Abroad.  While it might appear that George was plagiarizing, and I suppose he was, he apparently wanted to emulate, or appropriate, that which he admired.  Hence Lady Bess does a ride from London to Dover in five and half hours.

Now, Dick Turpin’s great horse, Black Bess, dropped dead after her grueling race of eight hours.  George Reynolds’ objected to that in Lady Bess’ case although in Crimes of Lady Saxondale he has Count Christoval make a dash from Madrid to Barcelona, 300 miles, in an effort to save a man from hanging, in which the horse does drop dead at the end of the run.  In his The Necromancer he has the devil, Danvers’, make a run from London to the Isle of Wight over hill and dale and water with no ill effects to his magic horse. 

Lady Bess’ pigeon post is set up on a start, two relays  and a finish system.  Thus, while the two lawyers, Marlow and Malton, are waiting Lady Bess sends off her pigeon to the first relay station.  Pigeons apparently fly sixty miles an hour thus arriving before Lady Bess.

The lawyers hear her horse clatter off realizing that they have been hoodwinked.  Now Turpin was followed by a posse who were delayed by changing horses so the lawyers rode off after Bess but are no match for her.  The first relay station prepares a horse for her so that she can jump off hers and remount within seconds.  That station then sends the pigeon on to the second station signaling that Bess is on the way.  The second station repeats sending the final message to the terminal point the Admiral Hotel in Dover.

Ainsworth had Turpin and Black Bess clatter noisily through towns; George notices this error so he has Bess ride around towns to avoid notice which she can do because she knows the whole of Kent like the back of her hand.  Arriving at Dover at daybreak (4:00 AM in England at that season and latitude) she checks into the Admiral hotel whose owners are in cahoots and have prepared an alibi and set it up.  Unlike the desperate characters of London who look and act vicious, these criminals in Dover maintain the appearance of respectability and hence can function within the law as well as without.  When Marlow and Malton arrive and try to bring charges the magistrates blow them off as Bess couldn’t have been in two places at once.  Bess wins that one

To follow the Lady Bess thread of the novel a little further, she had been separated from her brother Frank Paton a few years earlier.  She had lost track of him but then she spots him walking down the street.  He was wearing the livery of Lady Saxondale whose footman he was.  Bess rescues him from service, which was considered an indignity, but he is aghast when he learns she is a criminal.  Here George indulges in a little sophistry.  In order to reconcile Frank she explains that when they were separated she had no means, having only the choice of sacrificing that greatest jewel that woman possesses, that is her virginity, and become a kept woman or worse or turning to crime which was a much lesser evil than becoming frail and living off her body.  Frank thinks for a couple minutes and agrees.  I offer no opinion of my own.

Some adventures intervene until their father, unknown to them, Lord Eagledean returns to England, tracks them down along with their mother who, it may be kept in mind, was seduced  from virtue byhim making her a frail twice over.  Eagledean is fabulously wealthy, we are talking millions of pounds, a multi-billionaire in today’s money, so the two orphans are now fabulously wealthy while being elevated to the nobility.  Nice trick, Lady Bess becomes Elizabeth and amazingly drops her whole criminal psychology.  She had maintained that jewel of womanhood so that probably redeemed her criminal career while making her acceptable to Eagledean.

Lord Eagledean is an enigmatic character.  While he maintains that he is a virtuous, highly principled person who is highly censorious of other people’s conduct his methods hover around the unethical into hypocrisy.  It is difficult to determine what Reynolds wants readers to think of the man.  Is it Reynolds’ art that he preaches the contrast between Eagledean’s word an his actions so as to let the reader form his own opinion of the man or is he unaware of the contrast but wants the reader to take him at his word.  Eagledean’s activities do take place at a very complex point in the story in which the ethics of all the characters have become ambiguous in their morality.  This part of the story is actually quite frightening.  It takes place in the latter half of vol. IV and there’s still five or six hundred pages to go.

In 14. I will begin an analysis of the  principal character of the Crimes of Lady Saxondale.  As guilty as Lady Saxondale became she is hardly more culpable than every other character in the novel.  Indeed, Lady Saxondale’s Crimes is one long study of criminality of one degree or another.  I think you will find the climax invigorating.  It will take some effort on my part to capture the essence of Reynolds’ mind.

 

14. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle follows.