A Note and Aside On George W.M. Reynold's Mysteries of Old London

A Note And Aside On George W. M. Reynolds Mysteries Of Old London:  Days Of Hogarth

by

R.E. Prindle

 

While Old London isn’t as widely read as George’s two masterpieces it is a very interesting book.  It is an historical examination of the eighteenth century period of Duke of Wharton and his Mohocks.

A comprehensive review will follow later, this note examines an interesting passage while other notes may follow.  In a review of the whole, one frequently omits significant observations or ideas.  In this quote that is very remarkable for its time (1848) Reynolds examines weaving in a manner that neither Dickens or Ainsworth could touch.

The quote occurs on page 14 of the British Library reprint while George is setting up his story.  Chapter 5, The Two Apprentices.

It has been well said that man is the noblest work of God; but it is not equally easy to decide which is the noblest work of man.  Though in contrast with the wondrous achievements of Almighty Power, the efforts of the human race are as nothing- though the most complicated, the most perfect results of mortal ingenuity are mean and  contemptible when placed in comparison with the stupendous creations of the Divine Architect- nevertheless the earth is covered with monuments, which excite our astonishment and our admiration at the intelligence, the power, and the perseverance of man!

But of all the acts which in their application, constitute the distinctions between social and savage life- between a glorious civilization and an enduring barbarism- that of Weaving is decidedly one of the chief.  For though the savage may affect the finery of shells and flowers- though he may study external adornment by means of natural products most pleasing in his sight- and though he may even conceal his nakedness with leaves, or defend himself from the cold by the hides of animals- yet is only in those portions of the globe where civilization has been the tutress of the human race, that comfortable clothing is known.  And for this we are indebted to the LOOM which we may therefore look upon as at least one of the noblest works of Man!

How much of her prosperity,- how much of her greatness does England now owe to that achievement of human ingenuity!  Amongst all the departments of National Industry, none is more ennobling in its tendency to commercial progress, than the art of weaving!  Alas! That War should ever impose its barbarism in a way of the pursuit of Peace!  For while Peace aspires to make our homes happy and increase our comforts, thus augmenting the enjoyments of life- War- hideous barbaric War- snatches our industrious mechanics from their looms, and our agricultural labourers from their plowshares, to place them in the ranks of armies or on the decks of fleets.  And, what gain we from War after all?  Glory- yes, plenty of glory; aye- and plenty of taxation also!  For taxation is a vampire that loves to feast on the blood of a Nation’s heart, and to prey upon the vitals of an industrious population.  It is an avaricious, grasping, griping fiend that places it finger on every morsel of food which enters into the mouth, on every article of clothing which covers the person, and on everything which is pleasant to behold, hear, taste, feel or smell!  It interferes with our warmth- our light- our locomotion- the very paper which diffuses knowledge!  It roams over the land to claim its share of the produce of our fields and our manufactures:  and it awaits on the key of our seaports for the unlading of vessels bringing things from abroad.  The moment that the industry or the intelligence of man originates something new, the fiend Taxation overshadows it with its loathsome bat like wing.  It plunges it fang into the rich man’s dish and the poor man’s porringer: but the poor man suffers the more severely from this rapacious robber because he has but one porringer, whereas the rich man has many dishes.  Oh!  Insatiate is that Fiend; for he attends the deathbed when the will is made, and  in the spiritual court when it is proven:- he has his share of the price paid for the very marble which covers the grave of the deceased-; and it is only there- in the grave-  that the victim of Taxation can be taxed no more.

 

As the chapter is entitled The Two Apprentices and as they are apprentice weavers I suppose that touches off George’s tirades against war and taxation.  His interpretation of the role of weaving in civilization manages to bring in a sort of evolutionary discussion of clothing.  Just as a note of interest Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus appeared about this time, and that is a discussion of clothes so the popular imagination may have been drawn to the importance of clothes in these marvelous years of the Dandies, of which George was one, and the early years of discovery leading to the opening of the European mind.

George elsewhere brings up the arrival of the silk weaving on English shores as, as he says, forty thousand Huguenots exiled from France arrived in England and set up the industry.

The novels are full of interesting historical facts as George was a very well read guy.

A Personal Aside

 

I have now read nineteen titles of Reynolds’ novels.  The major ones twice.  The third and fourth series of Mysteries of London only once, all of the novels up to and including 1850. I own most of the rest.  There is one novel that John Dicks lists titled Louisa, the Orphan, to which I can find no other reference.
Apparently George was really appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic in the US.  Unable to get enough of George, publishers had writers write numerous titles under his name and this was being done into the1890s.  I recently purchased a book titled the Countess of Lascelles or Self-Sacrifice, Part I, a sequel Bertram Vivian also in two parts published by Hurst and Company.

Here is a partial list of title, only a partial list, written and published in the US well into the eighties and nineties by a host of publishers:  Caroline of Brunswick, Lord Saxondale, Count Christoval, Eustace Quentin, Banker’s Daughter, The Opera Dancer, Child of Waterloo, Robert Bruce, The Gypsy Chief, Wallace, Hero of Scotland, Isabella Vincent, Duke Of Marchmont,  Life in Paris, Countess and the Page, Edgar Montrose, The Ruined Gamester, Clifford and the Actress, Queen Joanna, Ciprina or the Secrets of a Picture Gallery.  I recently purchased a title called The Countess of Lascelles, a sequel to Bertram Vivian and which is followed by the two volumes of The Doom of the Burkers.  Bertram, Lascelles and Burkers is a six volume series built around the same characters, all written in the US.

This is very strange because George W. M. Reynolds was apparently very famous in his day in the US but has been totally forgotten in the history of American literature.  How could this be?  A firm, T.B. Peterson of Philadelphia published more that a dozen titles under Reynolds name some legit and some not. And that was in the 1880s.  Another mystery to be investigated.  Why is Reynolds’ popularity in US literature totally forgotten?

Now is the time for a little recapitulation.

The range of George’s interests and the seeming depth of his knowledge is quite astounding.  One wonders what his sources were. I’ve mentioned many of his more obvious influences even doubling in some cases such as the Pickwick Papers as sources.

One title I have come across in six volumes is Charles Knight’s amazing title, London.  I think it is pretty clear that Reynolds read the work.  It was originally published serially then issued in book form when enough articles accrued to bind from 1841-1844.  These were years when Reynolds wrote no novels although remaining active journalistically.  I have the Cambridge University re-issue.  I can do no better than to quote the Cambridge intro:

The publisher and writer Charles Knight (1794-1873) was apprenticed to his printing father but later became a journalist and the proprietor of various periodicals and magazines, which were driven by his concern for education of the poor.  As an author, he published a variety of works, including The Old Printer and the Modern Press (also issued in the [Cambridge] Series.  He claimed that this six volume work on the architecture and history of London, published between 1841 and 1844, was neither a history nor a survey of London, but looked at the Present through the Past and the Past through the Present.  It relies on the skills of eminent artists to bring both the present and the past of London to life, and it is arranged thematically rather then chronologically or geographically.  This is a fascinating account of what was the greatest city in the world.

The articles are by several different authors that lovingly describe the attributes of London past and present.  George may have read the articles and then examined the sites himself in these four years in which he obviously absorbed much of the information he includes in his novels.  Some details fascinated him.  In Old London he mentions the Fleet Ditch which was uncovered in the 1720s.  

The Fleet Ditch is what was once a stream that was turned into a muddy, foul ditch by the advance of civilization.  It was later covered so that it flowed under the city itself.  George mentions it here in Old London and then opens his The Mysteries of London with a description when Eliza Sydney was pitched into it by the criminals.

As fascinating as his stories are, acquiring background information then makes the stories more intelligible while opening vistas of what the deeper meanings of the works are.  Fathoming the depths of Reynolds mind is important, getting the references.  So while I began writing knowing little but the stories, I have worked to develop an understanding of what George saw and was describing.

The struggle or effort goes on.  I am now about to begin reading the works of Reynolds mature years, those after 1850, while I have to reread The Mysteries of London, third reading, and The Mysteries of the Court of London, also third reading.  It appears that the edition most people are reading of Mysteries of the Court is that published by the Oxford Society (of which there is no knowledge) in England and the Richard F. Burton Society in Boston, USA.  It is an expurgated and partially revised edition.  Apparently Reynolds was more racy and explicit in the original. In his The Parricide he gets really raunchy.  Thus for the third reading I would like to obtain the original.

Just as Mysteries of London had a third and fourth series it is possible that John Dicks actually published a third and fourth series of Court of London.  In five volumes each they were titled The Crimes of Lady Saxondale and The Fortunes of the Ashtons.  Thus the Oxford edition of 1900 consists of twenty volumes containing all four series.

It seems apparent that the latter two series were not the product of Reynolds’ pen.  They must have been written by others.  It seems to me that Reynolds does the same thing as Charles Knight did, that is employ other writers to write according to his plan.  Thus he might also have done as Alexander Dumas did and put his name on others writing.  Certainly Court of London does not seem long enough to have taken eight years to publish it.  The four series of The Mysteries of London are equally massive as the The Court of London and they took only four years to publish. The massive first two series must have been completed by 1846 leaving the shorter two series to finish the series by 1848 when Court began.  Thus it is probable that Dicks went on publishing Saxondale and The Ashtons after Reynolds finished with George IV and the Regency.  Reynolds says that he then abandoned George IV and the Monarchy years.

It seems to me that Reynolds does the same thing in relation to the Past and Present as Charles Knight did in his London and, indeed, that is the approach I am taking in my Time Traveling series. 

Knight’s work in a way forms a template for Reynolds novels that in the main are historical combining the past and present.  The current novel under consideration, The Mysteries of Old London pertain to the early eighteenth century just after the reign of Queen Anne and the beginning of the four Georges.  More particularly does it involve the beginnings of the Hell Fire Clubs of the next hundred years from 1720-21.  George specifically mentions that this story begins in 1721 and deals with the period of the historical Duke of Wharton and his Mohocks who terrorized the after dark streets of London during the period.  Reynolds character Jem Ruffles certainly represents aspects of the Duke of Wharton as well, probably, of the arch criminal Johnathan Wild.

One of the studies of Charles Wright is of the locality of Spitalfields which was associated with weaving, silk weaving to be specific.  The association began with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by order of Louis XIV by which the Huguenot sect was expelled.  The Huguenots were Protestants who had evolved out of the Albigensian faiths of Provence and who were nearly exterminated in the thirteenth century.  The Huguenots evolved from the earlier belief systems of the Albigensians and were in direct conflict with the Catholic Church.  They were harder to deal with than the Albigensians and were constantly at war with Northern government of France.  In the fifteenth century under Charles IX a truce was made with the Huguenots and their  being invited to Paris to celebrate.  This was a ruse and trick of Charles and the Huguenots were set upon by the Catholics and murdered in the celebrated St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.  The remnant remained in their stronghold in Gascony in the South of France ruled by Henri of Bearn.  Charles was murdered and replaced by his brother Henri III.  At Henri  III”s death he was succeed by Henri of Bearn, the Huguenot, who became Henri IV.  He negotiated the Ediict of Nantes giving his Huguenots the protection of the crown.  A little under a hundred years later the Edict was revoked by Louis XIV resulting in the displacement of their silk weaving industry to Spitalfields in London.

This history of the Huguenots was covered by Alexander Dumas in his novels of the Valois kings of France written in the mid forties that Reynolds would have read.  Thus the mention of the Huguenots and Spitalfields in the quote from Old London.  Reynolds repeatedly gives brief accounts of the various London districts such as Spitalfields following the Wright method of uniting the past and the present.  Since his info is so similar to that of Wright one of his key readings must have been Charles Wright’s London.

Of course, Reynolds tramped the streets of all those districts he mentions and probably talked to old timers who may have remembered far back.  As Wright lived to the 1870s one wonders whether Reynolds and he had any talks.

In the ending of the Oxford edition of the first two series of Court of London Reynolds says that he has tired of writing about George IV and chose not to follow him into his reign as monarch.  He says he has other projects to follow.  If those projects were Lady Saxondale and the Ashtons then he probably did hire other writers to compose the text according to his plan.  Otherwise where the latter two series came from is a total mystery.  The Mysteries of the Oxford Edition need clearing up.

Pt. VIII: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

Pt. VIII:  Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

A Dialogue Between George Reynolds and John Dicks with asides from R.E. Prindle.

 

Let us imagine George Reynolds and John Dicks sitting over lunch and a nice glass of Lafite, as George spelled it, reminiscing in early 1860 about the good old days.  At this point in time George had ended, or was about to, his novelistic career.  He would now devote himself to journalistic matters with his very successful newspaper and magazine.  John Dicks who began his association with George in late 1847 had run a tight printing shop always keeping up with developments in printing.  An employee of George at this time he will soon be made a full partner and go on to an illustrious later career of publishing cheap literary editions for the masses.

Merely getting by back in ’47 they are now well-to-do men with money in the bank and more rolling in with every publication.  They have every reason to think well of themselves.

John asks George how he came up with the idea or the first two Mysteries of London series about the Markham Brothers and the astonishing Resurrection Man.

 

George:  That’s kind of an interesting story John.  As you know my last couple of books, damn good books too, had flopped.  My whole early career was kind of a waste.  My apprenticeship one might call it.   Personally I thought the Steam Packet and Master Timothy’s Bookcase were great, but, the fickle public, you know…

There I was approaching thirty supporting my family with odd jobs,  looking desperately into the future with great fear, a failure without an idea, when George Stiff approached me and said he had a novel idea, serial, that he was calling the Mysteries of London, same general notion as Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.  There was also another Mysteres de Londres by this other French fellow by the name of Paul Feval who had actually published his Mysteres de Londres that was alright.  I had this notion of two brothers who chose different paths in life, Richard Markham, virtue, and his brother Eugene, vice.

John:  Did that have anything to do with Ainsworth’s two brothers in Rookwood?

George:  I remembered that and then there’s Cain and Able of course and Romulus and Remus of Rome but, more importantly I could never get De Sade’s two novels Justine and Juliette out of my mind with De Sade’s notions about the rewards of virtue and vice.  So, I changed the sexes to men and reversed the roles and made virtuous Richard more successful than vicious Eugene.  I think I’m right too.

John:  Did Eugene have any reference to Sue, his first name?

George:  Probably.  A little joke.  I leaned pretty heavily on Sue during my career.  A lot more from his Wandering Jew than The Mysteres de Paris, and then his later work.  Sue just died you know, young man.  Worked himself to death.  Terrific prolific writer.  I borrowed a lot but don’t lets talk about that.

John:  I hadn’t heard about Sue’s death.  Interesting fellow.  You didn’t by any chance use him as a model for the Marquis of Holmesford in the second series of Mysteries of London by any chance did you George?             

George:  You got that, did you John?

John:  I know your devious mind, George.  I remembered how fascinated you were that Sue kept a harem of women of many different nationalities and races in his castle.  Then when Holmesford did the same thing I did associate the two.  Of course you made Holmesford an old man for your literary purposes but the similarities were there.

George:  The truth is stranger than fiction, John  but fiction makes it more interesting.  Do you know that many of those women were actually Sue’s slave girls?  He owned them.

John:  No, I didn’t know that.  Most of them were white women, how could he own those?  Where did he buy them?

George:  Slavery hasn’t disappeared John, it’s true that we English outlawed the African slave trade back in ’02 or whenever but slavery is still going strong in America and the Brazils and the middle East.  That fellow Livingston reports that the barbaric Arab slave trade from East Africa to the Middle East is tremendous.

The Ottomans control the Balkans and parts of the Caucasus so that slave marts selling whites is still Strong.  Samuel Baker, the fellow that is organizing his African expedition actually bought his wife in Hungary at a slave mart in Budapest.  Wonderful story.  So, there were many sources for Sue to buy his women.  Of course, I put in a sly joke with Holmesford  in which, rather than die in bed, he struggles to his feet to stagger to the arms of his favorite and dies on her capacious bosom.

Everyone takes a negative view of it when it’s supposed to be a tender moment if humorous.  Good way to die don’t you think John?  Hated to see Sue die, there goes my inspiration.  Dumas’ still alive but my intuition tells me he’s finished.  Boy, what productively, exhausted his brain.  I’m learning how that feels.

John:  You mean the inspiration of the Mysteries series with Sue?

George:  No.  That was Stiff.  Right before my nose but I couldn’t see it.  Once I got into it though and finished with George IV, I borrowed his stuff for things like Joseph Wilmot, Mary Price and that sort of thing, his Matilda, or The Misfortunes Of Virtue for instance.  You can see the de Sade reference. Sue plotted out the stories for me,  I mean I used them,  something like Maquet did for Dumas.  And then I rewrote them according to my own sensibilities.

Back to Stiff.  Nobody had any idea of how astonishingly successful the Mysteries would be.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it, but Stiff promised a five quid note a week and always came through.  Two hundred sixty quid a year.  This seemed like a good deal to me for only a few thousand words a week. Coupled with what I could make on the side.  I had a of words in me and they were free to me.  Of course, as I came to realize I was making him a heck of a lot more than I was getting.  The end result was that he bought himself a damn good income and lifestyle for next to nothing.  Look how we’re living.

By the time I got into the second series though, I began to think that there’s something wrong here.  If my writing could make their fortunes, my writing could do a lot better for me, I thought.

In ’46 then, still under contract for Mysteries, I began my Reynold’s Miscellany that has been fairly successful as you know.  Somehow that brought us together.  I realized your genius from the beginning—no, no, I’m serious John, no need for false modesty with me, your integrity, the whole works.  So, when the second series was coming to the end, and the expiration of my contract, I had worked up the general outline for the George IV fifth and sixth series so were we’re ready to go as soon as I turned in my last clip to Stiff and refused to sign a new contract.

John:  They weren’t too happy with that, were they?

George:  I should think not.  Of course, I had foolishly talked about the George IV series, so they thought they were going to have that too.  That would have put them on Easy Street with me getting five pounds a week.  They owned the rights to the Mysteries of London, lock, stock and copyright. Owned the title.  If Stiff could have found a writer the Mysteries might have gone on forever.

Finding another writer wasn’t that easy.  They should have come to terms with me and shared the income more equitably but, as they said, a contract is a contract.  They apparently didn’t understand that contracts are written with a fixed term.  They got lucky with me but although I think Tom Miller who they signed next is a fine person and a very adequate writer neither he nor Blanchard who succeeded him understood the audience.  I, in association with you John, continued the success.

John:  Stiff and Vickers came unglued then in ’48 and forced you into bankruptcy proceedings?

George:  Damn ‘em.  That was more Vickers who lost a lot of printing business so the clod uses my name to try to make up for my loss.  Attacked the Miscellany, putting out a vile rag called the Reynolds something or other because he had some obscure typesetter with the name of Reynolds.  Got his though.  I know how they got me into that bankruptcy mess.  I only owed two thousand and by ’48 that was nothing what with the Miscellany and the beginning of George IV.  We were already bringing in that much each month.  Vickers was just being vicious, humiliated me and got nothing out of it.  Hope the villain is happy and rots in hell.

But that was then and this is now.  Look where Vickers is at and look where we’re at.

John:  I think your politics had something to do with that too, George.  Remember what year that was?  ’48?  Ring any bells?

George:  (laughing immoderately)  I thought that Revolution of ’48 was the real thing; an ’89 that worked.  Was I ever wrong.  Marx put that manifesto out in ’47, alerting the reactionaries as to what was coming and were they ever ready for us.  We were all riddled with spies.  Put the government is a tizzie though.  A little better leadership and it might have been done.  I wasn’t keen on the Communist stuff though.  Our Chartist idea was the best.  No violence.

John:  I was always of the opinion that revolutions mean violence.  Anyway, they smashed the revolution and the revolutionaries scattered like leaves in the wind.  Hope the Americans know what to do with them because they got a lot and the worst of them.

I always wondered, George, to change the subject a bit, of all your characters which was your favorite?

George:  The Resurrection Man of course.  Boy, did he really come from the depths of my subconscious.  Terrified myself more than he did my readers.  You know something though, John?  I think I had stumbled on to something but I didn’t know what to do with it.

John:  What might that have been?

George:  Remember Larry Sampson the leading detective of the Bow Street Runners?  And the hangman, Daniel Coffin?

John:  Yes.  That was strong, very effective.  But…?

George:  Better than strong, John.  I don’t know if you’ve read this American Edgar Allen Poe, he’s dead now, tragic story, collapsed and died on the streets of Baltimore.  Tragic death, tragic.  Great artist.  He wrote a story called The Murders In The Rue Morgue.  Wonderful imaginative tale.  He has an intellectual sort of detective, C. August Dupin.  Initials spell CAD.  Good joke, what?  Poe was very intellectual keen on acumen.  He thought he was a genius, probably was.  Dupin solves the crime in the Rue Morgue, an impossible closed door mystery, sitting in his armchair.  Acumen you see.  I appreciated the acumen but I thought a true detective would keep records and biographies and with the information would be able to lead him more quickly and accurately to probable perpetrators.  Thus, I introduced Lawrence ‘Larry’ Sampson of the Metropolitan Police, chief of the Bow Street Runners.

John:  Your old friend Paul Feval has written a book, John Devil, in which he introduces  a master detective from Scotland Yard by the name of Gregory Temple.  Have you read that?

George:  No, not yet.  Have you read any of Feval’s Black Coat series?  The crime network he portrays reminds me of our Johnathan Wild who had criminal London pretty well organized in the last century.  Wild in turn reminds of Vidocq, the head of the Paris Surete.  Francois Vidocq, who died a couple years ago by the way.  Vidocq was a nasty criminal and obviously the greatest of con men.  Imagine hiring a master criminal to be he head of police!  There was a scandal.  Just like Wild he was amazingly able to recover stolen goods without having to arrest a thief?  Same routine Wild was running.  The thieves stole and got a commission from the money Wild received for returning the stolen merchandise.

 

Prindle:  Reynolds was of course right that the detective novel would become, or perhaps, was already becoming at the time he wrote a new genre.  For the origin of the detective story most people nominate Poe and then trace it through a series of French writers leading up to Emile Gaboriau who has supposed to have been the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s great Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.  From there it was off to the races.

Reynolds seems to have been overlooked as an early source.  I’m sure that Doyle would have read Mysteries of the Court and have noted Sampson.  Doyle used both acumen and a thorough record system.  It can’t be proven, of course, but Reynolds was a staple for nineteenth century proto-pulp fiction, especially before the adventure novel of the Rider Haggard type and the detective stories of Conan Doyle and his epigone.

Certainly, during Doyle’s boyhood and youth Reynolds would have been essential reading along with W.H. Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton and James Malcom Rymer.  These writers were very popular throughout the nineteenth century while becoming passe at the beginning of WWI.  They were old fashioned and didn’t fit into the post-war world.  Thus they dropped out of literary history, if the Penny Dreadful, pulp writers, were ever a part of it.  Back to George and John.

 

George:  Speaking of criminals, that reminds me of those criminal Americans who respect no writer’s rights.  It’s bad enough that they pirate my own works but they have the audacity to hire writers and then publish their stuff under my own name.

John: (laughing)  You must be very popular in the United State.

George:  I should hope so and maybe you laugh.  Maybe I could sue over appropriating my name but I don’t think there’s a chance of success.

It’s not just a book either, listen to these titles:  Ciprina or, the Secrets of the Picture Gallery, Lord Saxondale, Count Christoval, Lucrigia Marano, The Child of Waterloo or, the Horrors of the Battle Field. And there are more.  I must be an entire industry over there.  There might be dozens more under my name.  People must think I’m a super-man, turning out not only my own works but these other people under my name.  My god, don’t they have sense of decency?  What’s a poor writer to do?

John:  Speaking of that, I’m thinking of beginning a series called Dicks’ English Novels.  I’ll have twenty or so of your novels plus your favorites by Dickens, Ainsworth, Bulwer-Lytton along with your favorites Notre Dame de Paris and Dumas’ Queen Margot.  All your major influences except Byron.  What do you think?

George:  Any money in it?

John:  Should be.  All of it’s still popular and we’ll get it out at prices that will shock the industry.

George:  Interesting.  That sounds very good John and I’m sure that it will be a great success.  We’ve worked together for ten years or more now, and a very successful partnership it’s been.  Now that I’m about finished as a novelist and going to work for the newspaper perhaps with your plans we should make our relationship a full partnership.  Does that sound feasible to you John?

John:  Very satisfactory George.  It would make me proud.  Together I think we can make John Dicks the most successful publishing house in England while educating those the most that afford it the least.  We can change the face of England and make it a better place.  I want to get the prices down as low as possible.  Without the paper tax we should be able to cut costs.

George:  If you get the type any smaller John and keep our readership you may obtain both goals.  I don’t know how those type setters can set such small type.

John:  Quite a skill, I can assure you.  I’d like to be able to invent a type setting machine where there are keys for the alphabet and punctuation marks so that the type setter can punch keys and the letters fall into place.

George:  I’m sure someone is working on it.  The steam press itself is a modern miracle.  It would be impossible to get out the tens of thousands of papers and books we get out every week without them.

John:  Yes.  We’d be making a lot less money than we are now anyway.  Quite a machine.  By the way, George, I’ve got a suggestion.

George:  Yes…

John:  Well, as you know the government’s pretty unhappy with the Miscellany.

George:  Yes…

John:  It think we could get rid of some pressure by discontinuing it.

George: (unhappy but aware of the problem)   Discontinuing the Reynolds Miscellany?

John:  Not exactly getting rid of it but changing the name anyway.  I’ve got an idea for a magazine I’d call Bow Bells.  We could fold the Miscellany into it, under my editorship.  It would be the same program but a little less…uh…er…aggressive, to keep the hounds off us.  Doesn’t have to be done right now but something to think about, maybe.  I’d really like to do it George.  They haven’t forgotten ’48.  That still rankles them.

George:  How would that affect the newspaper?

John:  Not at all, not at all.   That would continue under your editorship and I would edit the combined Bow Bells and Miscellany.  Just a thought.  We can keep it in the back our minds  I’ve got some newer writers in mind.

George:  Hmm, newer writers.  I know your concern, John, and it is something to consider.  I’ll consider it.  I am getting pretty tired and fourteen years of turning out a zillion words a week has taken its toll.  My brain doesn’t have the elasticity and vitality that it used to have.  You see, I know how Dumas feels.  Things don’t come as easily anymore.  That would be a load off me.  Let me think about it.

John:  Let me say that I really admire your energy George.  The ten years or so I’ve been working with you have been amazing.  I wish we had The Mysteries of London from Stiff and Vickers.  What a catalog that would make; Mysteries of London and Mysteries of the Court.  I’d even throw in Mysteries of Old London, the Days of Hogarth.  Underappreciated but it has one of the greatest tales I have ever read.  My land, what an outstanding three works.

George:  Oh, flattery…flattery.  Keep it up. (laughing)

John:  Just the truth, George, just the truth.

 

Part IX of Time Traveling With R.E Prindle continues.

Part IV Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

Pt. IV

Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

The Past Is Always Present

 

While we are concentrating on the early mid-nineteenth century it may be worthwhile to travel back to a few earlier periods of interest.  In addition to Time, Place is equally important.  As there are limitations to the human mind to be all inclusive I limit my travels to Greater Europe and the US.  If one had the great universal mind of the god Zeus one might be able to include all times and places but the information could hardly be presented in a coherent, comprehensive manner to a reading public and that public could not ingest and digest such massive amounts of information.  Forgetting begins the moment the impression begins.

Even an author like Reynolds with only forty some really long books has probably never been read in his entirety nor is it likely he should for a well rounded education.  I will attempt it but at my age completion is unlikely.

Speaking of Zeus, perhaps the most important book ever written is Homer’s Iliad which recounted the great struggle between East and West, the Patriarchy and the Matriarchy during the years circa 1200 BC that finally was reduced to written form c. 800-600 BC.  Proto-scientific it catalogued all the personality types and their characteristics.  In the sense of as above, so below it fused seamlessly the celestial and terrestrial worlds.  The supernatural and natural in a comprehensive rationalistic manner.  Homer, to whom the work is accredited while not having the universal mind of Zeus came as close as any human will.  As a single work it will never be topped.

Moving back toward mid-nineteenth century, the end of the eighteenth,  a marvelous piece of time travel by the great, the immortal Edward Gibbon is the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that runs through fifteen hundred years of the spectacular and unbelievable crimes and follies of humanity, but true.  Together with the Iliad of Homer the two works present an incomparable view of the human situation.  Indeed, Zeus threw Folly our of heaven for making a fool of his Great Universal Mind.

These two works are the greatest of the Time Travelers but sometimes one, a reader, finds he has landed in a period with a guide who forms a complete personal rapport.  Such was the case with me when I entered the world of the Frenchman, the Duc de Roquelaure.  The Duc lived during the time of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century.  His memoirs were unknown in the English speaking world until 1895.  The secret memoirs were kept secret from England and America to that date.

The Duc speaks to me though person to person.  He transports me back to that amazing time.

Going even further back there is an amazing time capsule called Huon of Bordeaux.  What an adventure this is.  Huon is trapped in a world conflict between the terrestrial Charlemagne, the Christian God and Oberon of the Faerie Kingdom.  Part of the Chansons de Geste of Charlemagne it captures the feel of the struggle between the worldly kingdom of Charlemagne, the Faerie Kingdom of Arthur and the Pope in Rome.  The author lives in a multiplicity of supernatural and natural worlds.  He posits a contest between the Catholic God and Oberon, King of the Faeries.  One can almost believe God and Oberon are real, of course, Charlemagne was.

The Chansons de Geste were written at the same time the fantastic fairy stories of Arthur were.  Between the two they create a whole new universe that is provides an intimate connection to the world of Homer and through both and woven through both worlds that of Christianity.  And that of course leads us up to the nineteenth century universe of George W.M. Reynolds.

Reynolds does not have the universal mind of Zeus but then who does?  Reynolds at his peak from 1844 to 1856 or 58 was Herculean.

Reynolds began his career floundering around trying to find his method and style.  He always considered himself an educator.  He called one of his magazines The Political Instructor.  In the epilogue to the Mysteries of London in his own signed voice he rather peevishly responds to the criticism of his writing ‘sensational literature’ rather than moral or instructive. I quote:

‘Tis done: VIRTUE is rewarded—VICE has received its punishment.

Said we not, in the very opening of this work, that from London branched off two roads, leading to two points totally distinct the one from the other?

Have we not shown how one winds its torturous way through all the noisome dens of crime, chicanery, dissipation and voluptuousness; and how the other meanders through treacherous rocks, and wearisome acclivities, but having on the way-side the resting places of rectitude and virtue?

Unquote.

The triumph of virtue over vice is very important to Reynolds.  While in France he had read the novels of the Marquis de Sade in which de Sade posits the superiority of vice over virtue.  The notion mortally offended Reynolds and so he seeks to refute de Sade in novels at least as long as Justine or Juliette.

He goes on in self-justification:

Quote:

Have we not taught in fine how the example and the philanthropy of one good man can “save more souls and redeem more sinners than all the Bishops that ever wore lawn sleeves?”

Unquote.

Quite obviously Reynolds considers himself one of those good men, indeed, a very priest among them.  And further more:

Quote:

And if, in addition to considerations of this nature, we may presume that so long as we are able to afford entertainment, our labors will be rewarded by the approval of the immense audience to whom we address ourselves, --we may with confidence invite attention to a “SECOND SERIES of “THE MYSTERIES OF LONDON.”

Unquote.

So, in other words, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet and if you are not part of ‘the immense audience’ you don’t count.  And justly so as the second series would be The Mysteries of the Court of London that doubled down on the original.  In the second series he would continue his explanations, the odd fact, criminal argot.  His researches that appear fairly extensive are always informative and enlightening.  For instance his history of the catacombs of Paris was entirely new to me.  It turns out that there is an extensive necropolis under Paris containing the bones of six million or more souls.  At one time the cemeteries  of Paris became so overcrowded that the bodies, buried in stacks, one on top of the other were dug up and the bones removed in organized piles in these catacombs.

In fact, cemeteries seem to be a major interest of Reynolds as he conducts a tour of London’s burial grounds led by his character The Resurrection Man.  But that doesn’t concern us here.

Before Reynolds found his way beginning in 1844 he wrote a total of eight books that by 1842 when he took a hiatus of two years were leading nowhere.  Apart from sparks of genius flying from these volumes they are not seminal works although exhibiting many high points of interest.

His continuation of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, Pickwick Abroad, has already been discussed while it is perhaps the most worthy of his early oeuvre followed closely by Master Timothy’s Bookcase.  His novel The Steam Packet of 1840 is not readily available nor the Modern Literature of France, 1839.  Robert Macaire, of 1839, has already been discussed while Alfred de Rosann or The Adventures of a French Gentleman, 1838, and Grace Darling or The Heroine of the Ferne Islands, 1839 remain.

Reynold seems unable to generate a novel without a model on which to base his work.  Thus, as we know, he used Charles Dickens and in Alfred de Rosann he piggybacked on Bulwer Lytton’s first novel Pelham or The Adventures of a Gentleman.  Bulwer Lytton as a novelist does not move me.  Pelham apparently launched him but I find it a very amateurish first effort.  Difficult reading.

With his Grace Darling Reynolds is piggy backing on the fame of one Grace Darling or The Heroine of the Fern Islands as the novel barely uses the story of her fame as a prop.  Now spelled Farne Islands and perhaps pronounced that way in Reynolds’ day, the story alerted me to the identity of such an island group.  The Farnes are a group of small islands off the coast of East Anglia.  I had never noticed them on my maps or heard of them before.

At any rate a big storm arose in the days of the paddle wheel steamships or ‘packets’ as they were known then and one of them became disabled and thrown on the rocks guarding one of the islands.  Grace and her father braved the waves rowing out to rescue the passengers.  On an apparent slow news day this event was made big news and Grace became a temporary celebrity.  Reynolds takes advantage of it in an attempt to sell his book.

I shouldn’t say temporary because in the early twenty-first century there were half a dozen or more books available to the reading public that celebrated this celebrated rescue by Grace and her aged father.  But Grace’s story appears to be a mere bid for a few sales as it contributes nothing to the novel.  Reynolds should have been ashamed of himself.  Maybe he was.

Otherwise in a disjointed novel I found several charms that made for an enjoyable read before the disappointing ending.  The novels protagonist, the humorous Slapwell Twill, might possibly be based on Reynolds himself.

The novel was written after a stay on the Queen’s Bench prison by Reynolds in 1837-38.  As Dick Collins mentions that Reynolds may have been committed for trying to steal jewelery to pay his bill at Long’s Hotel that may have been the reason he was in prison.  While it is true that he was involved in a bankruptcy at this time bankruptcies didn’t involve imprisonment.  In fact, Reynolds who may have used bankruptcies as a tool to avoid paying debts without injury speaks rapturously about it or has a character do so in The Mysteries of London.  His imprisonment may therefore have been the result of a failed theft and a complaint from Long’s.

At any rate Slapwell Twill suffered the same fate while he seems to have had plenty of money in prison as he was an aristocrat while serving.  It is clear that he was familiar with the inside of prisons both in France and England.  In addition he toured all these establishments so his descriptions are very accurate.  He often seems to be reporting with additional fictional fillups.

The main story involves the seduction and abandonment of Eliza Richards.  She was impregnated by her seducer and abandoned.   Not unreasonably she has a deep hatred of him that can only be satisfied by his death.  Unable as a woman to encompass this she marries a man on condition that he find and kill her seducer, Henry Hunter. 

Reynolds of course as a sociologist portrays as many types of women as he can.  While he is very sympathetic to the plight of women he is no ideologist and portrays both good and bad women.  But woman as woman is indispensable to him.  In Mysteries of London he says:

Quote:

…he learnt that woman possesses attractions far—far more witching, more permanent, and more endearing than all the boons that nature ever bestowed on their countenances or their forms.

Unquote.

Such an attitude may explain why he and Susanna had such a satisfying marriage.  Still Reynolds is no slave to feminism or its more ridiculous attitudes.  Women had positive and negative attributes the same as men.

Eliza becomes bad even evil in her hatred and distress.  Thus, she meets her future husband Sommerville who she marries on condition that he avenge her by murdering her seducer, known as Mr. Stanley.  He is difficult to find because Stanley had been an alias while his real name was Henry Hunter.

So incident rolls along until Sommerville and Eliza find Stanley/Hunter and Sommerville challenges him to a duel which he wins, wounds Stanley but doesn’t kill him.  Eliza is unsatisfied she wants Stanley/Hunter dead.

As the novel is titled Grace Darling Reynolds has to work her in somewhere.  That somewhere was in the Fern Islands where the whole outfit is improbably aboard the Forfarshire as it lands on the rocks.  While on the island Hunter arrives and Eliza demands that Sommerville fight another duel with him and this time Sommerville kills Stanley/Hunter.  There was only one hitch;  Sommerville also receives his death wound.  So Eliza drove her husband, who had inherited a fortune making them rich to his death, negating the revenge on her seducer.  One is reminded of Paris and Helen.

Thus Reynolds shows another side of woman:  too weak to revenge themselves they induce a man to sacrifice himself for them.  I think it is the absence of the doctrinaire that makes Reynolds interesting.  He has strong and consistent opinions that are based on reason and sociologically sound.

The last of the early group of novels and the last of the group I will consider here is Master Timothy’s Bookcase.  I think it fair to say that the early novels did little to establish Reynold’s reputation.  The most successful of the early batch, Pickwick Abroad, probably hurt his reputation as much as it helped as it was considered a plagiarism rather than a continuation.  Adapting Bulwer-Lytton’s Pelham in Alfred Rosann led nowhere.  However, let me say, that except for some obvious faults his early books have merit.  The description of the prison at Brest was worth the read.  Sociologically valuable.

Grace Darling apart from touches was laughable but fun.   So, by 1842 Reynolds was obviously at his wits end and the only role model he could come up with was another stab at Dickens.  Dickens himself appears to have had few novel ideas so he began a magazine called Master Humphrey’s Clock which was a collection of short stories held together by a very loose narrative something after the manner of ETA Hoffman and his Serapion Brethren.

I’m no Dickens fan so I have a fairly low opinion of his early output although those novels were rapturously received.  His reputation far exceeded his talent but he was riding a wave.  His magazine faltered after a couple issues, most likely because of its ridiculous three pence price, until The Old Curiosity Shop emerged from its pages.  My first reading was recent at eighty years of age and I didn’t find it very impressive.  At the time it was another great success for him and is still highly regarded.

So, seeking a model, Reynolds plagiarized  Dicken’s idea once again composing Master Timothy’s Bookcase.  Two thirds is French based while the last third takes place in England as Reynolds had returned to England himself while he also ended the Bookcase with another continuation of Pickwick apparently having run out of inspiration.  As Reynolds was also familiar with German literature as well as French and English one wonders whether he too was influenced by ETA Hoffman’s masterful Serapion Brotherhood collection of stories.

The French part of Bookcase is superb.  A collection of short stories with a tight narrative continuation.  I highly recommend it.  The book definitely presages Reynolds’ finest work.

It probably disappeared with but moderate success at best.  Reynold’s ran out of inspiration so for two years from 1842 to 1844 he was infertile.  Amazingly after following up The Old Curiosity Shop with Barnaby Rudge Dickens ran out of novelistic ideas putting out only a series of long short stort stories or novellas until Dombey and Son.

The question is then what was Reynolds doing during those two years that he wasn’t writing.  There are hints in the earlier novels that the idea central to the Mysteries Of  London of the two brothers and the two trees representing them was gestating in his mind but he had no framework to base his story on.  He had during his time in France read the Marquis de Sade’s novels Justine and Juliette in which de Sade contrasts whether a life of virtue or vice leads to greater happiness coming down in favor or vice.  Reynolds was offended by this conclusion and Mysteries of London is written in refutation of de Sade’s notion.

The important question here is what was Reynolds doing during his writing hiatus between 1842-44?  As of 1842 at the age of twenty eight, a very important age, he may very well have been considered a failed novelist and one who plagiarized freely.  Two years later in 1844 at the age of thirty his situation was precarious.  It was a do or die point in his life.

On one level one must believe that he was reading furiously.  He, at that time, was familiar with English, German and French literature.  He had a concept of British and European history.  Certainly he must have been surveying the scene, analyzing the periodic literature situation to come up with a sure fire or hit story to make his fortune.   In looking at the previous few years it was quite clear that the penny serialization story could be made profitable if a good story line could be continued for several years.

The problem with that was getting a good deal with the publisher who had the whip hand.  Even Dickens’ Pickwick Papers was not a solo effort.  Publisher, illustrator with Dickens as writer worked out the novel in concert so Dickens probably received a slim return from serialization profits; the publisher undoubtedly getting the lion’s share.  This literary scene can be compared with the music record scene of the mid twentieth century.

Certainly Reynolds had connections in the business.  I imagine Reynolds was working for a way to realize his concept of the two brothers, good and evil. He was trying to work out a method of presenting it.  Then, when the Frenchman Eugene Sue began the serialization of the Mysteries of Paris, that monumental long work, in 1843 the entire plot line of his own Mysteries of London was laid out before him.  Of a sudden the means of telling the story of two brothers became clear in his mind.  Using Sue’s solution for the story he was able to write with incredible coherence for forty eight straight months, four years. Two hundred four instalments.  Within a year the story was selling thirty thousand copies a week, edging up toward fifty thousand.  You should let those figures sink in.  They’re phenomenal.  At the time the population of England was something over twenty million with more than eleven million illiterates.  Fifty thousand weekly copies was market penetration.  It blew Reynolds’ mind.  In the postscript to Mysteries of London, speaking in his own voice Reynolds says this about that:

Quote:

…we may presume that so long a we are able to afford entertainment, our labours will be rewarded by the approval of the immense audience to whom we address ourselves—we may with confidence invite attention to a SECOND SERIES OF THE MYSTERIES OF LONDON.

Unquote.

In other words it worked so well the first time we’re going to do it again and make it twice as long.  Further his confidence was justified by the results. 

I have to make a correction here.  I reported erroneously (I’ve left the original text below.)  In fact there were 240 pence to the pound and twenty shillings. Twelve pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. I couldn’t make the values jibe so I belatedly researched English coinage terms.  It’s good to know the value of the coins being thrown around.

Beginning with the Guinea then.  A Guinea is valued at one pound and a shilling, 21 shillings to the Guinea.  The slang term was Yellow Boy.

A pound consists of 20 shillings or 240 pence.  Larger amounts are expressed by Reynolds as notes, as in a five pound, ten pound notes and larger.  Slang for notes are flimsies.  Flimsies were held less in estimation than the gold pound coin called a Sovereign.  Thus the characters press Sovereigns or Guineas into a servitors palm for a valuable service.

A Sovereign was relatively small, light weight being 22 millimeters in diameter and just short of 8 grams or less than a third of an ounce.  Thus the thousand sovereign bags Reynolds has his characters throwing around didn’t weight that much.

And then there is the half-sovereign, weighing half of its big brother with a 19mm diameter.

Below that was the shilling or twelve pence or 1/20 of a pound.  Then there are numerous shilling pieces.

A half shilling was called a tanner

A Crown was worth five shillings.  Crowns are frequently referred to by Reynolds.  A Tanner or a Crown would be semi-respectable coins.

Next came a Groat worth four pence.

Then a Thruppence or three pence

After that the Tuppence or two pence

And then we come to the workhorse of the coinage, the penny of which as aforesaid 240 make a pound.  The pence had good value such that it was divided into the half-pence,  or ha’ penny,  the quarter pence or farthing and even the one-eight pence called the mite.

As you can see the opportunity to cheat the unwary was immense.  While the values of merchandise the penny could buy must also have been extensive.  Perhaps an item might be one and a half pence or one and a quarter pence so all that coinage was necessary.

One must assume that large numbers of poor people had never seen a sovereign or guinea.  In their neighborhoods getting change for a Guinea must have been difficult.  It also should be noted that flimsies were difficult to negotiate due to extensive counterfeiting.

 

The values for Reynolds’ earning as below must then be adjusted downward.  He was still doing very well and according to the author Guy Dicks he left 20,000 pounds in his will.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum, containing the erroneous first valuation I made.

 

Now, fifty thousands of pennies a week at twenty pennies to the pound equates to two thousand five hundred pounds a week.  We are now talking big money.  Profits might amount to somewhere between a thousand to perhaps fifteen hundred pounds a week.  I haven’t read anywhere what deal he had cut with his publisher on the first series.  It isn’t clear what he was paid or on what schedule.  As in the record business of the twentieth century the publishers or manufacturers were very reluctant to pay royalties at all and if they did pay it was only after a very long delay and sometimes you had to sue to get paid.  Thus Reynolds may have believed he was cheated, and I can almost guarantee that he was, so he was reluctant to repeat the process with the second series.

At any rate with the vision of satisfying the entertainment needs of an immense public before him Reynolds elected to strike out on his own being his own publisher while employing the printer John Dicks to manufacture the parts.  On the title page of the books it says explicitly:  Printed for the Publisher by John Dicks.  Dicks therefore contracted to print the books for a fee.  He had no rights.  In the early sixties when Reynolds gave up novel writing he sold the copyrights to Dicks, thus rewarding him for loyal service.  One wonders what Dicks paid:  thirty of fifty thousand pounds?

Stephen Knight in his G.W.M. Reynolds And His Fiction posits that he had a falling out with George Stiff his first publisher because of an abrasive personality.  I have nothing to say on that score but Reynolds would have been foolish not to have struck out on his own unless he could cut his own deal with Stiff which he could not do.  Manufacturers tend to consider writers and performers their personal property, something like owning a gold mine.

A comparable twentieth century situation is afforded by the relationship between the Beatles and their company EMI/Capitol Records, EMI being the English publisher and Capitol being the American.  As non-entities the Beatles had been signed to miniscule royalties as was the custom with record companies.  Like Reynolds the Beatles then became a massive seller representing perhaps fifty percent or more of EMI/Capitol’s sales.  A tremendous battle ensued in which the contract was voided.  In the new contract the Beatles acquired a much larger royalty and the establishment of their own record label distributed by EMI/Capitol.

The two companies could not afford to lose the revenue the Beatles provided.  I’m certain that Stiff refused to cut Reynolds a new deal and Reynolds went out on his own.  Thus while he must have been very prosperous during the twelve Mysteries of London and other novels years, when the second series, The Mysteries of the Court of London, began he must have been earning at minimum two thousand pounds a month, probably more or say twenty to thirty thousand pounds a year.  The gap between the rich and the poor, with which he was so concerned,  remained the same but it was more rewarding for George William McArthur Reynolds.

So, as if 1844 Reynolds had mastered the format.  As the record people used to say in the age of vinyl, he was in the groove, groovy.