Pt. X, Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle: GWM Reynolds' The Necromancer

Part X, Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

A Review

Geo. W.M. Reynolds’ The Necromancer

by

R.E. Prindle

Reynolds’ writing system was such that he could write each installment of the Mysteries of the Court of London in seven hours leaving the rest of the week open.  Thus he had a seven hour work week leaving time to do a myriad other things including writing other books.  He says his mind was bursting with ideas.  He had a powerful compartmentalized mind so that he could keep two or three novels going at the same time so that in the year of 1851 he wrote his installments for the Court of London and The Seamstress, Pope Joan, Kenneth and the Necromancer,  the last two extending into 1852.  We are going to examine here his very fine novel, The Necromancer, or perhaps one might rename it the Magician.

If as seems evident that every novelist is writing his own life whether consciously or unconsciously, it is also true that the novelist reflects his own time.  Ostensibly the Necromancer takes place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but I think we can abstract a story about what was happening currently in his day.  This will require much background work.

As is uppermost in every twenty-first century White mind the question of is the author in any way anti-Semitic, non, Feminist, a racist, and as it is expressed a Homophobe.  We are going to explain the Necromancer as an explanation of Semitism in the England of Reynolds and ignore the other bete noirs.  You have been forewarned.

Whether you consider Semites, that is Jews, as a religion, a nation, a people or whatever they are an economic, political and social force working solely for Jewish interests to the exclusion of all others.  Jews consider themselves a nation and a people.  The period from 1814 through the nineteenth century saw the rise of the Jewish people as the pre-eminent people of Great Britain.  The rise was especially prominent from 1815 to 1860, the period most important of Reynolds novelist life.

It is not possible that he didn’t note the situation and if he didn’t mention it directly, which he doesn’t, then there must be a reason.  Why would he have to resort to a parable such as The Necromancer?  The answer was that even at that time there were penalties to writing ethnographical studies such as Reynolds’ that did not show Jews to critical advantage.

If one found it necessary to include Jewish characters they must be portrayed in the most benevolent light.  Reynolds does mention Jewish characters but in a peculiar way.  He lauds them as long suffering, unfairly victimized as a people but then he invariably displays them as what are called anti-Semitic stereotypes.  Thus the pawn broker in Wagner, the Wehr Wolf.

He is depicted as a totally inoffensive person, obsequious to the extreme as a persecuted member of the bedeviled people.  After these laudatory comments Reynolds then pictures a character bearing all the so-called Semitic tropes.  He changes the stones on the pawned diamonds to paste, which Reynolds justifies by his peoples ages long persecution, as well as other criminal acts.  It would seem that Reynolds knew the score.

The odd thing, since Jewish activity was at a height is that Reynolds makes no reference to Jewish economic or banking activities.  Let us do a brief survey of where matters stood at the time.  In 1815 Nathan Rothschild seized control of English currency and the Bank of England.

  To explain:

A famous European and Jewish canard is that of father Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his five arrows, that is, his five sons.  They were dispatched to European capitals to form a powerful network covering the continent and England.  Nathan Rothschild was sent to Manchester to engage in the booming textile industry.  Nathan was no businessman and could not succeed in textiles.  He therefore turned to crime becoming a smuggler which would turn out to fortuitously make his fortune.

In 1806 Napoleon was conquering the German States, moving in on the Margrave of Hesse-Cassel.  The Margrave was fabulously wealthy.  He wanted to conceal his wealth from Napoleon who was more than eager to appropriate it.  The Margrave then employed his Court Jew, Mayer Amschel Rothshild, to conceal it.  Mayer sent a substantial portion of it to Nathan who by this time was floundering around as a banker.  The money immediately established Nathan as a financial force.  At that time the British were engaging Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsular War.  Wellington the British general in the Peninsula needed cash desperately but the usually inventive English didn’t know of a secure way to get the money to him.  Nathan was then used to transport the money.  Using his, by this time, well developed smuggling skills in conjunction with his brother arrow, James, in Paris, they delivered the mail.

This was known to the French authorities as Fouche, the very clever Minister of Police, was aware of exactly how it had been done.  The method is well demonstrated in the German Movie, The Rothschilds.  So Nathan and his fellow Jews scored a bundle on that caper.

Nathan’s most outstanding feat that brought England to its knees was his capture of the currency after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.  He spread the rumor that Napoleon had won Waterloo causing a stupendous sell off that drove prices far down.  While others sold Nathan bought.  Then his special couriers raced to London to carry news of the English, or allied, victory.  Prices bounced back but by then using the fabulous wealth of the Margrave of Hesse Nathan owned huge amounts of securities that he sold at magnificent profit thus securing the base of the Rothschild dynasty, still going strong eight generations on.

To report this astonishing feat in history tends to mitigate the reaction of the Brits when they learned how they had been diddled out of the ruling of their country for Rothschild had pulled an astonishing cheat.  Reynolds who was very well informed across the board must have known this but was constrained from portraying it for fear of Jewish retaliation which even was formidable.

We are now moving to the 1840s and Nathan who had passed was succeeded by Lionel Rothschild as the scion of the family.  A most formidable and dangerous antagonist.

At this time young Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) was attempting to establish himself as a literary wizard before entering politics.  He had already written many novels when in 1844 he wrote Coningsby, Sybil in 1845 and Tancred in 1847.  In Coningsby he laid bare the Jewish influence in European affairs when he wrote that the world was actually governed by different people behind the scenes than the public imagined.  Thus he led the reading public to believe that the apparent rulers were mere operatives of others, that is, the Jews.

These three political novels made more of a stir than his earlier romances had so that it seems reasonable that Disraeli, Coningsby at least, had been read by Reynolds by 1851.  In Coningsby Disreali lauds his Jewish mastermind as the most astounding human being since Adam.  The character was based on the real life Right Honourable Lionel Freiherr Rothschild.  (1808-1879) Named Sidonia in the novel.

Lionel, Lion-el means Lion of the Lord or God, what we might say, Defender of the Faith in Christian terms.

The Jews since Nathan had owned the State of England but they as a different religion from the Anglicans suffered political and religious disabilities.  It was Lionel’s mission to remove them in which mission he was successful.

In 1847 he was the first Jew to be elected to Parliament.  This was success but it would also have absorbed Lionel as just another member.  He wanted more.  He in essence did not want to be absorbed as an English member of the House of Commons but as an autonomous Jew.  To be sworn in he had to take an oath of Christian formulation.  This he refused to do wishing to be sworn in as a Jew.

In order to accommodate him this would have required a changing of the rules with long term consequences.  Accordingly Lord Russell introduced a Jewish Disabilities Act to change the rules.  In 1849 when the Act failed the German-Jewish Baron Lionel Rothschild resigned his seat.  But still determined he won a bye election to keep his campaign going.  Returning he still refused to swear on the New Testament demanding the Jewish or Old Testament.  The oath still required him to say:  ‘Upon the true faith of a Christian.’  He refused to do so on the grounds that Christianity was not the true faith, Judaism was.  Once again he was compelled to resign his seat.

In 1852 he tried to bull his way through but once again was denied.  Finally in 1858 Lionel Rothschild forced through the oath changes.  Refusing to be bareheaded as required by English custom he demanded to wear his yarmulke  or skull cap and instead of saying ‘on the true faith of a Christian’ he was allowed to say ‘so help me Jehovah.’

Thus he became the first Jewish member of the House of Commons but the first Jew in the House rather than an English member of the Jewish faith.  Thus in this long battle to be seated Lionel changed the nature of the country into a country of Englishmen and nearly autonomous Jews.  Already in control of English currency the Jews would now aspire to political power while moving freely through society ostensibly equal but actually superior having all English rights as well as autonomous Jewish rights that were denied the English.

Thus Disraeli’s astonishing Sidonia/Lionel cleared the way for Disraeli to serve in the Commons but also to become the Prime Minister; the intermediary between the English people and their Sovereign.

These activities were not carried on in a vacuum or beneath the observance of interested parties of which Reynolds was one.  While he was only observing the struggle up to 1851-52 when he wrote the Necromancer the writing was on the wall.  No doubt Reynolds had read Disraeli’s Coningsby and had watched Lionel Rothschild’s maneuvering.  Being a novelist it was easy for him to shadow forth the denouement that occurred in 1858.

My reading of the Necromancer reflects Reynolds’ version of what was happening.  Thus his protagonist Lionel Danvers is Lionel Rothschild.  As an historical novelist he then creates a fictional history of the Danvers/Rothschild story.  He combines the five arrows into one.  As was commonly thought at the time the Jews were Satanic thus Danvers had sold his soul to Satan for a period of a hundred fifty years so and with the due date imminent it was necessary for Danvers to honor his commitment to Satan to redeem his soul.

Danvers existed under several names and guises as he was able to shape shift to any age at any time.  Thus at various periods he was the middle aged Walter, a mature Lionel Danvers and a boyish Reginald or Conrad. 

Even though he had sold his soul to the devil, Satan had given him an escape clause in that if he could find six virgins who would do anything for him, even die, he would take those six souls in exchange for Danvers’.  For some reason I always read Danvers in the French form of D’enfer.  Thus Danvers becomes The Lion Of the Lord of Hell.  Whether correct or not it certainly fits.

Now, Lionel Danvers to use that name of his existence, had all the wealth of Europe at his command.  While ostensibly an English Lord he spent all his time on the continent where he had the greatest concentrations of wealth in addition to his very large holdings in England.  For him money had no other meaning than to buy power in whatever form it took by any means necessary.

In his Walter incarnation, his first, as the clearest example, Walter shows up in Genoa where he befriends the scion of the Landini trading family.  He then bestows, not as a loan but for safe keeping interest free, an incredible fortune that Landini can use without any restrictions for his own benefit on the condition that whenever Danvers appears the Landinis are to return his money in full on demand or they become his slaves.

Naturally the Landinis being astute traders enjoy enormous success for several generations.  Even though Danvers has never returned they still maintain his fortune.  Each successor has been made aware of his obligation so that not only the trust is available ready to honor at any time but also interest.  However suddenly the worst fortune descends on them and all their deals begin to sour, whole argosies are lost at sea.  Danvers chooses this moment to return and demand his money.  The demand can’t be honored.

But, the Landinis have a beautiful virgin daughter, Bianca.  Danvers courts her, wins her heart and they set a date to be married.  In the meantime, as debtors to Danvers, the Landinis have become his slaves.  They are ordered to go to London and start a jewelry house, which they do.

Before leaving the marriage is arranged between Walter and Bianca.  Before the marriage Danvers carries Bianca off to no one knows where.  They both just vanish.  Bianca becomes the first of the virgins sacrificed to Satan by Danvers.  But, of course, the details that can be revealed here are mysteries to the reader.

Bianca had been abducted to Danvers ruined castle on the Isle of Wight.  In the secret chamber where Danvers murders the women a score card is on the wall in fiery letters, thus Bianca becomes virgin soul #1, five more to go.

As the story opens Lionel Danvers is sacrificing his fifth, Clara Manners.

One of the deepest mysteries in this astonishingly deep book is the problem of Musidora Sinclair who Lionel has selected as his sixth victim.  He seems to have had a singular attachment to the girl.  Musidora had been a charming girl but at the age of seventeen  she became of a very icy temperament unmoved by anyone or anything.  As it turns out Lionel had attempted to lead her to his secret chamber, she lived on the Isle of Wight, but she got cold feet on the way to the chamber and fled.  This event turned her heart cold.  Now, after having despatched Clara Manners he decides to try again to make Musidora his final victim.

I take Musidora to mean Golden Song or music. Whether right or wrong, she is.

Lionel now has a problem because Musidora won’t allow him near her.  Fortunately Lionel has a plan B.  He will impersonate King Henry VIII, during whose reign the story takes place at this point, and wed her.  Unfortunately her beauty overwhelms him and he impregnates her (another mystery) thus destroying her virginity.  Even Lionel Danvers was not so stupid that he didn’t know that it was impossible to diddle Satan.

For Reynolds the story of the impersonation of Henry III is the central point of the story.  Between Nathan and Lionel Rothschild a shadow government had been forming in England.  While Queen Victoria was the apparent ruler at this time the actual rulers were, as Disraeli had written, other than the seeming rulers.  Lionel lived till 1879 when he died at the age of seventy.

Granting that Disraeli was accurate then whatever power the shadow rulers had at the time, their power has gone on increasing to the present day when Evelyn Rothschild wields the power behind the throne.  Prior to the Communist Revolution of 1917 Rasputin was deemed the power behind the Russian throne.  He was also thought to be conspiring with the Germans.  As it happened Rasputin had a Jewish secretary and we must suppose that the secretary had ties to other Jewish revolutionaries so that he was able to pass information to them much as Dreyfus had done in France in the 1890s.

In all probability the German agents Rasputin was thought to be conspiring with was actually being done by his Jewish secretary.  The secretary would have been very intimate with Rasputin and would have had strong control over what information Rasputin received while having access to all or most of Rasputin’s info and plans.  Thus Through Rasputin the Jews would have been able to influence the Czarina and through the Czarina the Czar.

In the US during the same period, the Wall Street speculator Bernard Baruch would become the actual co-president of Woodrow Wilson free to issue commands on his own authority subject only to correction by Wilson himself and he and Wilson were of like minds.  So, at the crucial time of the Revolution both Russia and the US were subject to Jewish discipline.

Be that as it may, is it any coincidence that Lionel Danvers and Lionel Rothschild bore the same Christian name?  I think not.  Reynolds is trying to tell us something.  So Lionel Danvers having circulated rumors that he was dead or on the continent set about to realize his lust on the body of Musidora Sinclair while posing as Henry VIII.

It will be remembered that at this time Henry was seeking a divorce from his Spanish wife Catherine, but it had not yet been achieved.  Danvers has to fool Musidora into believing he, impersonating Henry, had succeeded in obtaining that divorce.  First Danvers has to lure Musidora from her retreat on the Isle of Wight.  He has a relative couple of Musidora living in the royal city of Greenwich invite Musidora to come for and extended visit to their castle.  Then he finds a probable excuse for Henry to be a guest of the Earl and Countess Grantham, Musidora’s relatives.

There is some hint that Danvers magically transformed himself into a duplicate form of Henry.  I don’t think that was necessary.  At this point in history but few people would have seen Henry.  So, all that Danvers would have had to have done is bought some clothes royalty would have worn and developed the persona.  Of course Musidora knew Danvers well as a young girl and ought to have been able to identify his voice.  But, this is Reynolds’ story and the disguise was complete although their was some uncertainty accepting face values.

Nevertheless Henry/Danvers showered Musidora with expensive gifts including a set of very expensive diamonds.  It will be remembered that the Landinis from Genoa had been running a jewelry shop in London for about a hundred years.

Eventually, with continued prodding from the Granthams, who were completely fooled, Danvers/Henry break Musidora down and she agrees to marry the faux monarch.  However suspicions remain and the strictest safeguards are taken.  Musidora demands to see the papal bull nullifying Henry’s marriage to Catherine which matter was not resolved at the time. 

Danvers has one forged.  As three papal seals are needed Danvers obtains authentic seals.

As a political operative he has suborned numerous members of Henry’s household putting them on the payroll and so has one obtain seals from an authentic papal communication.  The officiating priest is fooled and really has no choice but to marry Musidora and Danvers/Henry.  Danvers cannot allow Musidora to circulate or talk about her marriage so he swears her to secrecy about the whole affair.

Nevertheless Henry learns of the fraud and swears his informers to secrecy because he doesn’t want the public to know that a shadow King Henry is loose in the kingdom.  Reynolds here is describing the actual political condition in England that a second monarch is running the kingdom by secretive measures.  This answers to Disraeli’s claim that others than the seeming rulers are directing affairs.

In fact Disraeli himself will become Prime Minister and facetiously and destructively make Victoria the Empress of India.  Disraeli was ostensibly a Christian having changed from Judaism to Anglican at the age of thirteen.  Thirteen is when a Jewish lad takes his Bar Mitzvah becoming a young man with a man’s prerogatives.  It is very likely the change to Anglicanism was deceitfully made with political motives in mind.  Disraeli became a Jew disguised as a Christian.

While there may be some objectors to my analysis one should note that Sir Piers Dunhaven the father of the second female victim had once had an extensive property in Cumberland but he had lost most of his property to usury.  As Christians were forbidden usury it follows that Jews using their monopoly in usury had stripped Sir Piers of his property.  There are subtle hints such as this to Lionel Danvers nationality.

What we have here then is an allegory of the subjection of England by the Jews according to Reynolds.  On that level this is the shadow meaning of the novel.

On another level this is a near perfect Gothic novel.  One is reminded of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Mrs. Radcliffe.  As he was an old admirer of Mrs. Radcliffe I’m sure that Reynolds had Udolpho in mind as he wrote this.  The story is also first class mystery and would beat out Willkie Collins for longest mystery story.  And, Reynolds keeps the mystery going to the very end.  Who could have guessed that Marian Bradley, Danvers last possible chance to beat the devil was his and Musidora’s daughter?  Didn’t see that one coming did we?

The story is plotted out perfectly.   When we are shown the glowing signboard with the illuminated names and the blank spaces we have to wonder.  That was the first mystery and the finest first mystery explained.  This list of victims also gave Reynolds his opportunity to tell six tales and he loves to tell those tales.

Then there is the mystery of Danvers and where he gets his inexhaustible supply of money.  His fortunes, not just a fortune but fortunes, come from over all Europe and England.  An historical question often asked is how do Jews when expropriated and expelled out of one locality show up in a new one and immediately, as it seems, regain their wealth.  The solution to that one is easy—usury.  Aware that they may be expelled on short notice they kept jewels and portable wealth sewn into garments so that they could leave on amoment’s notice to resurface as wealthy elsewhere.

The Catholic Church and its opinion on money making money, that is usury, which is the objection to loaning on interest, penalized its own adherents and enfranchised the Jews who it politically disenfranchised.  Interest in those days wasn’t six or seven percent either.  Usury laws only came into existence much later.  In those days interest was as much as fifty percent compounded daily or more so you can see how the money lenders, Jews, cornered the money supply wherever they were.  The Danvers unlimited, renewed wealth must have come from usury, that is, legalized theft.

And Danvers applied his wealth artfully.  The ruse of entrusting money to someone to be reclaimed whenever on no notice is a sure way to entrap the party.  Reynolds was no dummy when it came to understanding ruses and ploys.  He studied hard. The ploy that the Marquis of Leveson used to entrap Venetia Trelawney was classic.

The Marquis wanted sex from Venetia that she didn’t want to give.  Not unlike Danvers, Leveson had unlimited funds that he didn’t mind losing so long as he obtained his desire.  So he presented Venetia with a magnificent string of pearls.  He told her he would redeem one or all at a time at a thousand pounds each on demand and with the last pearl she was his.  Venetia then accepted what she thought was a guarantee that she would never be in want and never have to succumb.

However the wily Marquis set a series of matters in motion to compel Venetia to redeem the pearls.  Borrowing from Eugene Sue’s Wandering Jew he has accomplices debauch the formerly steady husband of Venetia so that he turns to dissipation and gambling thus having to be bailed out frequently.  Venetia soon has to bed the Marquis.  The mysteries are usually tragic stories if you compassionate with the characters.

In this novel, while none of the characters has the memorability of the Resurrection Man from Mysteries of London, the whole ensemble of characters all work well together to create a memorable story.

The Necromancer is one of series of Satanic novels that Reynolds wrote from 1847 to 52.  The first being Wagner the Wehr Wolf, 1846-47, Faust in 1847, The Bronze Statue in 1849-50 and then the Necromancer in 1851-52.  Each is a beat the devil attempt on the part of the protagonist.  Satan is a tough customer and none succeed.

The end of Danvers is a classic much exploited in novels and movies.  Lionel (Walter, Reginald and Conrad) has lived for a hundred fifty years.  When his attempt on the sixth maiden fails and Satan comes to receive his due, Danvers shrivels from a handsome young man into a withered old man bursts into flames and disappears.

I don’t know whether Reynolds was the first to use this dodge or not, but it becomes a classic dodge thereafter.

The estimable critic Dick Collins considers the Necromancer to be his favorite Reynolds.  While I have now read twenty-five volumes of Reynolds I can’t place the volume ahead of the massive novels of The Mysteries of London, The Mysteries of the Court of London, nor, for that matter, The Mysteries of Old London.  The last has a special place in my esteem; yet, as I have said, The Necromancer as a super-natural Gothic novel I think it may be near perfection.  I’m sure that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been pleased with George’s effort.

Par XI of Time Travels With R.E Prindle follows.

Pt. VI Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

    

Part VI:  Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

G.W.M. Reynolds: Building A Publishing Empire

by

R.E. Prindle

 

George W.M. Reynolds is an interesting story, almost epic actually.  No biography is currently extant.  His history must be patched together by certain fragmentary sketches and assembled based on those autobiographical details from his novels in addition to fragmentary researches and solid facts that provide hints to interpret the novels.

As to parentage:  His father was George Reynolds, a naval officer during the Napoleonic wars.  His dates: 1762-1822.  During those Napoleonic wars in 1802 he was commissioned a Captain and given command of the Tribune, a 36 gun frigate with which he was able to capture what researcher Dick Collins says, were several prizes.  The proceeds from those prizes were distributed in shares to the officers and crew.  Collins gives no idea of the richness of those prizes but we must presume that he received, possibly, ten to twenty thousand pounds overall and possibly more.  This is important as when his son assumed his inheritance in 1830 it is possible that he received twelve thousand pounds.  Thus, it would likely have come from the proceeds of these prizes.

Prize money would have been in addition to his wages and whatever emoluments that might have amounted to three hundred pounds or more per annum.  If Reynolds’ father had invested his prize money and lived on other earnings it would make his having twelve thousand pounds not unreasonable.  This is important because the size of GWM’s inheritance is disputed.  Dick Collins, for instance, seeks to diminish it to near nothing.  Guy Dicks places it at seven thousand.  Without any other assurance than the prizes I accept the figure of twelve thousand, if for no other reason than Reynolds was too affluent in France than for there being little or no inheritance.

On his mother’s side, Caroline Frances Dowers, 1789-1830, her father was a Purser Dowers, Purser is his Christian name, who was the commandant of the Royal Naval Hospital in Walmer, Kent.  Caroline and George were married in 1813.  George W.M. was born a year later in Sandwich, Kent but that location doesn’t figure in his writings while Walmer and Deal, two neighboring towns where Dowers and his guardian Duncan McArthur lived, have prominent places as well as Canterbury with a nod to Ashford.

GWM had a brother, Edward, born in 1816 with whom he was associated through life, serving with the publishing company George created.  Shortly after in 1816 his father was stationed on the island of Guernsey where GWM spent the next six years.  Guernsey will figure in his novels.  It was probably there, next to France, speaking a French dialect that his affection for France arose.

In 1822, the family returned to Kent in Canterbury where his father died soon after.  His mother at that time was thirty-three, a young and probably attractive woman.  She was appointed guardian of her sons.  As a backup guardian a great friend of her husband’s, the surgeon Duncan McArthur of Walmer, 1772-1850 accepted the responsibility on her death in March of 1830 at the very young age of forty-two.  Thus, Reynolds was an orphan at fifteen.  His being an orphan is important in his writings. George was eight years old when his father died, and fifteen when his mother passed. Excluding his two years of infancy his life had been divided evenly between Guernsey and Kent.  Orphaned at eight when is father died and then left parentless after another eight years his childhood must have had a profound effect on his psychology.

In 1828 he had been placed in the Sandhurst Military Academy in Berkshire.  Neither Sandhurst nor Berkshire have a prominent place in his novels.  His total experience in Kent then takes place from 1822 to 1828 and those years were apparently the most formative years of his life for which he appears to have had a great affection.  He was sent to school at Ashford, Kent, a relatively large town equidistant from Canterbury and Walmer-Deal.  Whatever happened in Walmer-Deal then happened between 1822 and 1828 but left an indelible impression on him.

In those years George must have associated in Walmer with Duncan McArthur and possibly his grand-father Purser Dowers.  George is fixated on these years and these towns plus Canterbury.  Walmer especially is connected to his character of the Resurrection Man, Anthony Tidkins, in the First Series of The Mysteries of London.  At that time body stealers from graveyards, known as resurrection men were supplying corpses to physicians for dissection in the advancement of science.  Dick Collins speculates that Duncan McArthur, a surgeon, bought bodies.  In the novel Tony Tidkins was born in Walmer and supplied bodies to ‘the surgeon of Walmer.’  Thus, Duncan McArthur.

This is quite possible if not probable.  Reynolds seems quite familiar with doctors and their scientific experiments.  The Mysteries of London were written in two series.  For some reason Collins thinks that the Second Series was never written but it is readily available today.  It comes in two volumes totaling sixteen hundred pages.  It doesn’t appear to be well known.  However in Volume III,  that is, First Series, Vols. I and II and Second Series, Vols. III and IV, Reynolds describes some offices of ‘the foremost surgeon in England’, a Dr. Lascelles that he leased from a cadaverous, hideous criminal Benjamin Bones, also known as Old Death.  Old Death was not a resurrection man but looks like he had been resurrected.

There are many alter-egos of Reynolds  in the Mysteries and one in Vol. III is the highwayman, Thomas Rainford or Tom Rain as he was known.  He is in Old Death’s crummy old house in which Dr. Lascelles, the foremost doctor in England rents rooms.  Rainford enters these rooms to find pickled body parts, lifelike casts of human heads and such.  Lascelles is a phrenologist in interest.  One, then, is led to ask, did Dr. Duncan McArthur also have such a collection and was an eight to fourteen year old G.W.M. Reynolds introduced into such a gruesome environment by his guardian.  Where else could he have witnessed such scenes and attributed them to Walmer.  The influence in the novels is extensive.

At fourteen then he was entered into the military academy.  What happened between he and his guardian after the mother died while he was a few months short of sixteen isn’t clear.  It is hard to believe that Reynolds with his literary bent wasn’t restless in a military environment while being exposed at fourteen to that, to me, repulsive environment was negative.  It was probably there that he had his first experiences with gambling and drinking.

He wrangled his way out of Sandhurst in September of 1830.  One imagines that McArthur and Dowers resisted this but as military men they probably thought they had to give the young fellow his head.  He demanded his inheritance then and there which he must have received but with great reluctance.  Whether his brother also had an inheritance isn’t clear but as his brother joined George in France he may have brought a fresh supply of money.

As important as 1822-28 were to Reynolds development, the years in France from 1831-36 were equally important.  There is no clear account of what happened in those years, only what may be gleaned from his writings and some facts Dick Collins has collected.

What is clear is that the most significant occurrence was that Reynolds was illuminated almost upon landing in France.  Reynolds says that he became a Liberal at Sandhurst, by which he means, that among the sons of the aristocracy as an inferior he developed a deep resentment for that faction of society. In France his illumination codified that resentment into a program.

Illumination may be a new concept to many readers but the term and concept arose from the dissolution of the Medieval Order and the rise of the scientific consciousness promoted by astronomers and alchemists.  It became apparent to many that the old order was no longer suited to emerging social exigencies as condensed into the 1789 Revolutionary slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.  Its key components were the elimination of monarchy, the aristocracy, that is the privileges of birth, and the rejection of established religion and priestcraft and certain sexual revisions.

In its evolution in the sixteenth century it took the form of the Rosicrucian Order and Rosicrucianism remained the backbone of Illumination down probably to the present.  The Illuminati sect of Rosicrucianism appropriated the word.  Thus Reynolds appears to have been initiated into the Rosicrucian Order.  At least, in his novel the Wehrwolf he has his hero Wagner leave the Island of the Lotus Eaters in his novel to go to Sicily in which the venerable head of the Rosicrucian Order existed as a 164 year old man with whom he had a long interview, or, as I read it, he was initiated or illuminated.  This chicanery was common during the eighteenth century and the formation of Freemasonry that incorporates all these legends.

Most famous in the Revolutionary days were Cagliostro, otherwise Joseph Balsamo and the Count de St. Germain, alchemists and magicians.  Alexander Dumas has a wonderful interpretation of the career of Cagliostro in his novel Joseph Balsamo.  You may be sure Reynolds read it.  Of course, such men as these were not what they claimed to be but society was credulous and many took them at their word.  After all, with that great European legend or myth of the Wandering Jew sightings of him were common as there were many Jewish poseurs.  They wandered and announced themselves and were credited as such.  Cagliostro and St. Germain were actually a significant part of the Revolution.

Another impostor of sorts was Adam Weishaupt who appropriated illuminism to form the Illuminati.  That group is now passed off as legendary for whatever reasons the Left has, but they did exist and were a key part of the Revolution as Jacobins.  Nobody denies the Jacobins.

One must remember that the revolutionary and Napoleonic years were from 1789 to 1815 and Reynolds was born in 1814.  He was an ardent follower of Napoleon considering him the greatest man of history.  Joseph Balsamo (Cagliostro) and the Comte de St. Germain were still living legends while Reynolds was in Paris.  Dumas was writing amazing stories about Cagliostro and the Revolutionary period concurrently with Reynolds’ novels.  The French writers he would have been familiar with in the 1830s were all imbrued with the events of 1789-1815.  This period was one of most breathtaking events in the history of Europe.

More or less as an aside these first fifty years of the nineteenth century were the formative years from which the succeeding two hundred years have evolved.  A work still treasured by the cognoscenti was published in 1841, Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds containing long essays on John Law and the Mississippi Bubble as well as that amazing phenomenon The South Sea Bubble.  W.H. Ainsworth wrote a wonderful novel describing the South Sea Bubble.  I don’t think there’s any doubt that Reynolds’ read it as he has numerous examples of bubble companies and frauds in his pages.  In the early nineteenth century the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon would add his magnificent psychological study the Crowd:  A Study of the Popular Mind that Freud would incorporate into his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego thus forming the basis of mind control today.

In addition the Regency Period and Reign of George IV were part of his living memories.  When he arrived in France very late in 1830, the year George IV died, really 1831 the Revolution of 1830 had just taken place in July 1830- the July Revolution- that removed Charles X and placed Louis Phillipe on the throne.  Almost from enthronement the Revolution of 1848 was being planned and a mere eighteen years later took place ending the monarchy in France permanently.  Reynolds himself was working toward 1848 probably from the day his shoes hit French soil.

Reynolds was an enthusiastic supporter of the July Revolution and cheered wildly at the displacement of the aristocracy.  In his estimation it placed the French high above the English who retained both monarch and aristocracy.  He despised the English nobility.  That attitude would have been a common one of course but, I believe it likely that Reynolds humiliating experiences at Sandhurst cemented that hatred in his mind.

Sandhurst would have been full of the sons of the aristocracy who would have demeaned mere commoners.  Nor would he have had the money to keep up with them. 

What drove him to France isn’t clear but those five years were to be the most influential of his life.  Reconstructing those five years is not easy although some key events can be dated. 

A sixteen year old striking out on his own in a foreign country with inadequate language skills is daring while if he had what to a sixteen year old was an enormous sum of twelve thousand pounds in his pockets sharpers and sponges would have spotted him immediately.

There is a passage in Vol. II of The Mysteries Of The Court Of London that might explain his situation. A sixteen year old orphan girl, the beauteous Carmilla, actually Rose Foster has been cleaned out of her inheritance by sharpers.

Another home!  Alas! Alas! ‘tis much more easily said that done; and the orphan felt that it was so, and her heart, as it were, came up into her throat as she reflected that the only true home which she had ever enjoyed had been swallowed up in the grave of her parents.

O God! robbery is bad, forger is vile, rape is atrocious, and murder is abhorrent; but to ill-treat an orphan, to be merciless toward the poor being from whom death has borne away the fond mother and the doting father, never to send them back again, oh, this is abhorrent also, and the wretch who has no pity for the orphan is capable of robbery and forgery and rape and murder.

 

There is a cri de couer, a hysterical wringing of hands.  We can’t reconstruct exactly what happened after Reynolds’ beloved mother died orphaning him completely.  What his relationship with his new guardian was we don’t know, but, just as Carmilla was easy prey for the criminals who took advantage of her youth and innocence, it is more than likely that something similar happened to Reynolds in France.

Thus it cannot be accidental that his account of his first adventures in France should have been recreated in his continuation of Dicken’s Pickwick Papers, Pickwick Abroad. It is a novel full of sharpers and spongers preying on Pickwick who may have been a variant of the prosperous Reynolds. This novel is an interesting account of English ex-pats in Paris.

In the post-Napoleonic years there was such an influx of English people into Paris for extended stays that the Meurice Hotel was created to accommodate them by creating as English an atmosphere in France as possible.  It would be almost the same as the Jewish and Italian colonies in New York City c. 1900.  It is in the atmosphere of the Meurice that Reynolds places his version of Mr. Pickwick for the duration of that famous character’s stay in France.

It is there that Pickwick is surrounded by sharpers and sponges and plain thieves.  One wonders how Reynolds saw himself in that mélange.  Perhaps with his twelve thousand pounds he is Mr. Pickwick himself though certainly not as a sponge although one gathers the impression that Reynolds was somewhat addicted to sharp practices.  Perhaps his first year or two were spent Pickwick fashion.  Quite high living for a sixteen year old.  Remember though as Mortimer from Master Timothy’s Bookcase returns to England Mortimer philosophizes whether a young man can be a Man of the World.  Perhaps that can be interpreted that he had tried and failed in France.

In these five years in France of rapid intellectual development at no time could he have let the grass grow under his feet.  He obviously worked in a vast amount of reading.  One should keep in mind that in 1839 in England he compiled a book, The Modern Literature Of France, a book of excerpts with prefaces.  It is certain that he read and was deeply influenced by Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame De Paris, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame in common parlance.  The book was published in the year of his arrival in 1831.  He carried the memory of its pages in mind from that time forward.  He read the Marquis de Sades’ Justine, and Juliette, and the Philosophy of the Boudoir and was deeply influenced by those books.  His rather racy sexual descriptions probably derive therefrom.  He praises the apparently horror novelist, Frederic Soulie (not translated into English yet) while making use of his techniques in his own novels.

Paris must have been wildly active while he was resident.  Survivors of the 1789 revolution would have been sixty or seventy years old, filled with stories.  Reynolds endorsed the crimes of the French Revolution.  The Bohemia immortalized by Henry Burger in his 1859 novel would have been in rapid development thus combining the political, art and literary scenes.  Balzac, Sue and Dumas as well as lesser light were all writing in the shadow of the Revolution and Napoleonic years.  That Reynolds showed interest in the art scene is evidenced by his chapter in Mysteries of the Court of London.  Thus his brain was swarming with images and innumerable scenes copped from the French novelists.

Connected to all would have been the process of illumination, the formation of Reynold’s Weltanschauung and his uniting with the Zeitgeist.  I have been unable to identify a reference to the Freemasons but the mystic cult of Rosicrucianism seems to have attracted his attention, hence illumination.  Reynolds was a very prominent Liberal, touting Liberalism, hence illumination constantly.  A Liberalism almost current with that of the twenty-first century.  He was true blue.

After three years in France he made his first novel attempt:  The Youthful Impostor.  I haven’t read that as yet but the title perhaps indicates his feelings about himself.  He was probably premature in taking on the trappings of The Man of the World that he so much wanted to be.

He began a bookstore at about this time while attempting to found an Anglo-French newspaper.  One can only conclude that they were unsuccessful and left France a year later as a bankrupt.  But not before he married Susannah Frances Pierson at the British Embassy.  In Volume IV of the Mysteries of London Charles Hatfield and Perdita Hardinge were married at the British Embassy in November.  Was this a reenactment of his and Susannah’s marriage?  As he seems a little gushy about the event his and Susannah’s marriage at the Embassy must have made a significant impression on him.

In 1836 his French adventure ended as he went broke, returning to England with wife and new son in tow.  He was only twenty-two and had lived a lifetime or two in France. The years from 1837-44 seems to have been a period of struggling to re-orient himself.  After all having been under the impression that he was rich in 1831 to have gone smash in 1836 and then having to find a way to wealth again must have taken some courage.  During 1842-44 he seems to have realized that his early efforts were getting him nowhere so was searching for a new direction.  1844-48 is an expression of that reorientation that ended in the Revolution of 1848 and the elimination of the French monarchy at last.

Even though only twenty-two in 1836 it would seem that some interest in his abilities adhered to him from his French journalistic activities because on his return he found ready employment as the editor of the Monthly Magazine then tottering, and which he revived.

The English loved to sojourn in Paris.  In the brief period of peace in 1802 as Venetia Murray records in her An Elegant Madness when the English rushed to France.  Then after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 the love affair with France recovered.  Indeed, much to Reynolds’ chagrin the English offered Louis Philippe sanctuary in England after 1848.  As mentioned the Meurice Hotel was established to cater to English tastes.

As magazine editor in Paris Reynolds published Thackeray’s first appearance in print so it is probable the he had established some sort of reputation that was honored on his return.  Reynolds then began publication of Pickwick Abroad in the Monthly’s pages.  While usually considered a plagiarism Reynolds’ explains his position clearly:

The founder of the ‘Pickwick club’ which now exists no longer had violated the promise he had sometime since made to himself and voluntarily deviated from that tranquil mode of life it was his intention to adopt when his first biographer, ‘Boz’ took leave of him.

 

So, as Reynolds apparently saw it, if the first biographer abandon’s a biography a second biographer may legitimately write a continuation.  Remember that the club no longer existed so it was Mr. Pickwick himself.  A fine line perhaps but Pickwick Abroad is not about the club.  Indeed, the grand epic of the Greeks was written by several hands of which Homer’s was just one.  There were several continuations written for Chretien De Troye’s Grail story.  Not everyone agreed with the notion but Pickwick Abroad was a success giving Reynolds a literary reputation, of sorts, in England.

None of the following six efforts leading to 1842 created much of a fuss. During that time, however, Reynold’s was exploring all of the highways and byways of London and he may have devoted much of his time during his two missing years to that endeavor as well as doing extensive reading.  He was certainly well read and aware of scientific, technological and societal developments.  It seems clear to me that he had read the psychological literature of his time and knew how to apply it accurately.  He apparently visited many insane asylums in both France and England as the interiors of the various asylums seem to be accurately portrayed.  He was aware of Dr. Pinel who liberalized the handling of the insane in France.  All of this interest in matters combined with his illumination gives an extraordinary depth to his writing making the most of intense experiences giving them almost a visual reality.

While writing Vol IV of the Second Series, the Revolution of 1848 occurred about 40% of the way through in February of that year.  Reynolds broke off his narrative to celebrate the event and encourage the Chartists to do the same in England.  As he was in the process of writing about his heroine, Laura Mortimer, he has her begin her course in illumination as taught by her music teacher beginning with the Marseillaise and some poems by Victor Hugo.  Hugo was a monster influence on Reynolds.  Cross fertilization was apparently widespread.

Reynolds, once again taking inspiration from Dickens for the last volume of his early period, Master Timothy’s Bookcase, he then remained unpublished from 42-44.  Looking again to France, Reynolds read the early installments of the great Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.  Receiving this inspiration his thoughts fell into place and he began to write the magnificent First Series of The Mysteries Of London.

At this point I wish to cautiously introduce a work that appeared simultaneously with Reynolds and Sue, Paul Feval’s own version of The Mysteries of London.  While virtually unknown in the US today Feval was a magnificent crime writer inking the stories of the Black Coats.  Being aFrenchman his take on haunts that both he and Reynolds were aware are yet quite different but equally as terrifying as Reynold’s.

The First Series of Mysteries of London quickly set Reynold’s on his feet and he was in a position to look forward to building a publishing empire and regaining the dreams of his youth.

The First Series ended in 1846 and it was that year that he established his weekly newspaper the Reynolds Miscellany.  The First Series had been stunningly successful, selling in the tens of thousands per week so that perhaps giddy with success he thought his name so familiar and respected the magazine would sell by itself.  On the other hand, it was a dream coming true.  The first issue began with his novel Wagner The Wehrwolf.  The story itself may have been patterned on the success of James Rymer’s Varney the Vampire of recent issue.  If so, the story worked, the magazine was a success and continued to large sales for several years before being folded into John Dick’s Bow Bells.

At this time, 1846-48, Reynolds was also getting increasingly involved in the politics that led up to the February Revolution and the Trafalgar demonstration  of that April.  This shows in his erratic writing of the Second Series.  While having high points such as story of Perdita Hardinge the Second Series is a low point in his production.  In getting involved in the Miscellany and the Revolution it is clear that he was taking on too much.

A sea change took place in his career when he formed an alliance with the printer John Dicks in 1847.  Dicks would remain his printer for the rest of his career being made a full partner in 1854.

Make no mistake, Reynolds great success depended on his relationship with Dicks.  Without a relationship such as this, carrying much of the burden, great success is impossible.

He was now able to free himself from his association with Stiff and Vickers who published The Mysteries of London.  They appear to have regarded Reynolds’ writing as for hire and kept the copyrights as theirs. This departure does not appear to have been amicable. Stiff tried to undermine the Reynold’s Miscellany while Reynold’s believed that his 1848 bankruptcy was engineered by Stiff in spite.  Nevertheless the groundwork for a remarkable publishing empire was being laid.

Nearly all the information on Dicks I take from his grandson Guy Dicks’ and his book The John Dicks Press, self-published in 2005 and reprinted in 2016.

As an amusing aside if you google Guy Dicks what comes up is a series of articles on men’s penises.  Guy Dicks doesn’t get a mention.

Guy’s grandfather John was born four years after Reynolds in 1818.  He served a fairly long apprenticeship with specialty publishers before joining Reynolds.  His most interesting was with the Chinese dictionary compiler Robert Morrison.  He came to Reynolds as an expert printer and innovative publisher.  He and Reynolds were on the same wavelength although I don’t know whether Dicks was illuminated or not.

Although Dicks was an employee of Reynolds until 1864 when he was made a partner in that year the two men worked working even more  expanded the empire.  In addition to Reynolds’ novels and the Reynolds Miscellany they created the Reynolds News paper that survived for well over a hundred years. As their business grew and as technological innovations improved publishing methods the firm kept up, changing with the innovations adding huge steam presses that turned out thousands of impressions an hour.

Between the two of them they tried to be model employers much in the style of the twentieth centuries Henry Ford.

Those developments were in the future, in 1846-7 it is clear that Reynolds was writing weekly installments in a rush while trying to establish a publishing empire of his own.  His mental energy must have been enormous and his ability to organize his time phenomenal.  Let us never forget that he had a wife and large and growing family.

While the Second Series, especially Volume IV, suffers from all this activity, in 1847 he wrote a complete novel of several thousand words titled Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals that is well plotted and tightly written. It also displays a fair amount of historical knowledge and research. This must have been in the second half of 1847 as in 1846-47 he was turning out Wagner the Wehrwolf which is interesting and exciting but a lower quality than Faust.  At the same he was writing these three novels there are reference in the Second Series indicating that he was organizing his thoughts to begin the phenomenal Mysteries of the Court of London.

His mental capacity was phenomenal, his mind was so compartmentalized that he could be working on four separate extensive novels while editing the Reynolds Miscellany during 1846 and part of 1847.  His wife Susannah must have been managing the family finances while bringing up a troop of noisy children, and also, it might be added attempting novels also.  Her novel Gretna Green appeared at this time.

He began his magnum opus, The Mysteries of the Court of London in 1848 and from then on, he was on solid ground with Dicks backing him up in the founding and development of his publishing empire.

While the humiliations Reynolds suffered as a sixteen year old striking out on his own had been extremely painful to him providing wretched memories, with the rise of his empire he redeemed those years and mistakes.  When he died he left an estate of nearly thirty thousand pounds thus putting him up in the class of those aristocrats he despised so much.  Alls well that ends well, eh GeorgeP

A High Wind In Jamaica

A High Wind In Jamaica

by

R.E. Prindle

 

The New York Times has given front page space to the most amazing non-story every seen on the propaganda sheet, pardon me, putative newspaper.  They title this piece, it reads more like a movie idea or scenario than not:  1 Pistol, 9 Killings:  An Epidemic Overseas, Spread by U.S. Guns.  Takes place in Jamaica.

Jamaica!  The most violent place in the world, tops Chicago by a mile.  Jamaica was the first visit of my wife and I outside the US.  Our travels began there.  One of the most horrific experiences of my life.  I thoughr sure we were going to be murdered or worse a half dozen times.  Kingston, Jamaica, oh, and Montego Bay.  Christ almighty.  There was more violence and crime in an hour than any place in the universe.  One guy riding double on a motor scooter—a motor scooter—shot an extremely steatopygic fat women in the right cheek of her ass and rode away screaming laughter.  I saw this.

I will say one thing in Jamaica’s defense- their newspaper was a hell of a lot better and more honest in its reporting than the NYT.

But, to the point.  Once I see a byline by Azam Ahmed I know that this loyal American, (he was born in the USA.) is going to bash the country he loves so much.

Here’s the first three or four paragraphs.  Commentary later.

CLARANDEN, Jamaica—She came to Jamaica from the United States about four years ago, sneaking in illegally, stowed away to avoid detection.  Within a few short years (is a few, the same as four), she became one of the nation’s most-wanted assassins.  She preyed on the parish of Clarendon, carrying out nine confirmed kills, including a double homicide outside a bar, the killing of a father at a wake and the murder of a single mother (single MOM would have been more heart rending) of three.  Her violence was indiscriminate. She shot and nearly killed a 14 year-old girl getting ready for church. (On the street?)

With few clues to identify her, the police named her Briana.  They knew only her country of origin—the United States—where she had been virtually untraceable since 1991.  She was a phantom, The eighth-most-wanted killer on an island with no shortage of murder, suffering one of the highest homicide rates in the world.  And she was only one of thousands.  (One of thousands?  That’s a lot of murder. However she was from the US making her special.)

Briana, serial number 245PN70462, was a 9-millimeter Browning handgun.

An outbreak of violence is afflicting Jamaica, born of small-time gangs, warring criminals and neighborhood feuds that go back generations—hand-me-down hatred fueled by pride.  This year, the government called a state of emergency to stop the bloodshed in national hot spots, sending the military into the streets.

 

Jamaica has always been in a state of emergency .  I and my wife were in a state of emergency, eager to get out.  Kingston-my god!  I would suggest that Azam get a new role model for his fiction as there wasn’t one verifiable fact in the story above.  There is a good movie in there though.  Or perhaps it’s already bee made- Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come.  Now, there was the real Jamaica.

This piece is all fiction and it can be developed for the movies.  For instance, Briana perhaps arrives from the US by ship but when she disappeared in 1991- virtually disappeared that is, it was from Jamaica where she had been raped and gangbanged.  Fleeing to Mexico she entered the US from Brownsville, illegally, so actually as native Jamaican she wasn’t entering Jamaica illegally as Azam reports.  Of course we’re dealing with virtual facts here so we can make it up as we go along.  Once back in Jamaica with her American made 9mm Browning, she had apparently never heard of a Glock, she began tracking down the gang bangers who hurt her sore in mind and body.

Now, these gangbangers, and indeed, all Jamaicans had been reared on American records, movies and violent video games.  Without these three items and the Browning, Jamaica would have been a sunny happy go lucky place.  All singing and dancing as they say in Hollywood.  Zippity do dah if you know what I mean.

The Times should change their motto to ‘All The Propaganda We Can Create.’  When you create news is that the same as faux.  Anyway, just in case this movie idea is acted on by Tarantino, I get half or you’ve got real trouble buddy.  Where’s Matt Damon?