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. 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.

Part V: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

Part V

Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Dead White Men

I dreamt I saw Joe Hill

Just as alive as you and me.

‘Oh, but Joe you’re dead,’ says I,

‘I never died said he…

‘I never died…

‘I never…’

 

Mankind longs for immortality.  A life beyond death.  Some believe that they pass on their genes to offspring that is a species of immortality.  It may be believed that corporeal immortality in any form is an impossibility.  However when corporeal existence ends there is a hope that one’s name and fame may live on in remembrance.  In this pursuit many have been successful, embalmed in the history books or literature.  Thus in the early twenty-first century Julius Caesar is a name known to all.  King Tut is a name well known though his name has survived only because his tomb had been successfully hidden and was only discovered in the twentieth century, 1922.

As discussed in Part IV, literary fame can be long lasting.  Homer is still a best seller in the twenty-first century three thousand years after his death.  His works are freshly translated in nearly every decade.  Thomas Mallory’s King Arthur is a steady seller six hundred years after having been published; the great Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire is a very steady seller two hundred and thirty years after his demise.  Of course, Shakespeare.  All of these men are alive and well intellectually millennia and centuries after leaving the planet.  They never died….

There is another we have not mentioned by the name of Francis Rabelais and his once immensely influential book, Gargantua and Pantagruel.  Once banned by the Catholic Church as obscene, and it truly is, the book became a sort of bible to large numbers of Europeans.  Rabelais is perhaps most remembered as the man who introduced the phrase ‘Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’  A very attractive law to a large number of people.

The law was adopted by the people who are known as Libertines.  The most famous Libertines of all were the Englishmen who established the Hell Fire Club of Medmenham Abbey.  Discontinued in the 1760s it continued a movement begun in 1719 in a short lived club that ended in 1721.  The famed author Tobias Smollett mentions a house he visited where impious practices were celebrated in his 1748 novel Roderick Random.

The key law in these clubs or gatherings was do what thou wilt.  The motto was popular and practiced from that time on.  For our purposes G.W.M. Reynolds records the attitude although strangely he makes no reference to Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel or Hell Fire Clubs although he does refer frequently to Libertinism; most probably because of his familiarity with the writings of the Marquis de Sade.

Reynolds was accused of being a pornographer and it can be substantiated by the strain of Libertinism that haunts his writing.  Consider this from the Second Series of Mysteries of London Vol III:

 

And now his sacrilegious hands drew aside the snow-white dress which covered the sleeping lady’s bosom.  And the treasures of that gently-heaving breast were exposed to his view.  But not a sensual thought was thereby excited in his mind; cold and passionless, he surveyed the beauteous spectacle only as a sculptor might measure the proportions of a marble Venus or Diana the huntress.

And not a trace of cancer was there:  no unseemly mark, nor mole, nor scar nor wound disfigured the glowing orbs that, rising from a broad and ample chest, swelled laterally over the upper part of the arms.

I say, visualize that.  …swelling laterally over the upper part of the arms….  This woman was endowed.  The gentleman doing the surveying was a physician although the physician had entered the room and closed the door and the woman had been drugged.  Fairly exciting, isn’t it?

So many of Reynolds’ characters are Libertines, and it may be assumed that Libertines were quite numerous in London societies and while not expressed their motto was certainly:  Do what thou wilt.

Continuing on from Part IV of Time Traveling then, let us consider the Reynolds approach in his monumental Mysteries of London.

He divides society into only two classes: the rich and the poor.  The rich go broke, usually by gambling or bad investments.  The poor, in that stratified society are hopeless.  There doesn’t seem to be a middle class although there are the fabulously wealthy merchants struggling for an entry into the aristocracy.  Generally however it is the aristocrats who are rich but there doesn’t seem to be any means for their making money, they just spend it.  The poor are the poor, and we mean destitute, usually driven to criminality though sheer desperation or they were trained to criminality from youth.

Thus, as the story opens the Markham Brothers Eugene and Richard are going their separate ways.  Eugene is choosing to follow vice and Richard to practice virtue.  The main story then will trace the careers of these two men.  But there are numerous side stories.

Perhaps the central character of the story is a criminal by the name of Anthony Tidkins otherwise known as the Resurrection Man.  He seems to have a real hold on Reynolds imagination.  At one time resurrection men were the scourge of England.  The most famous of the kind were two Scotsmen named Burke and Hare.  In the interests of science resurrection men robbed graves of the recently dead to sell to physicians who dissected them in the interest of advancing scientific knowledge. In the case of Burke and Hare they didn’t always wait for victims to die natural deaths. The occupation of resurrection men was a horrible one while anxious relatives did their utmost to protect their loved ones graves.

Reynolds is quite taken with his character.  Indeed, Tidkins is involved in the lives of nearly all the characters, he is the thread that holds the story together.  He is really a horrid person but as Reynolds believed that no person could be wholly bad he provides a lengthy biography of Tidkins in which he explains that Tidkins began life inherently good but all circumstances conspired to make him bad leaving no way out but to become criminal and embrace it thoroughly .  His father before him was a resurrectionist and hence Tony was inducted into his father’s business.  He was born into the outlaw life.  No one wanted him around as a child and he was denied any opportunity to practice virtue.  He was intelligent and orderly in his thinking so he made himself a master criminal while being a born leader.  He brings to mind the Kray brothers of 1960s England.

One wonders why he had such a fascination for Reynolds.  One turns to the limited biography of Reynolds provided by Dick Collins.  Reynolds came from Kent in the South East of England.  His life in Kent runs all through his stories.  Reynolds father was a captain in the Navy.  He was stationed on the island of Guernsey during Reynolds early years, then he moved to Kent so that Reynolds  was familiar with the towns of Walmer and Deal and the shire capital, Canterbury.  Much of Master Timothy’s Bookcase centered around the Canterbury area.

As we know, Reynolds was born in 1814 while his father died in 1822 when his son was eight.  His mother died eight years later when the lad was fifteen.  She died in March.  He was an orphan then at fifteen.  He had been placed in Sandhurst Military Academy at the age of fourteen presumably at the instigation of the man who would become his guardian, his father’s close friend, a physician by the name of Duncan McArthur thus giving George William McArthur Reynolds his third name.  Collins says:

 

A curious link arises between McArthur and Reynolds’ best creation Anthony Tidkins, the Resurrection Man.  Tidkins was born in Walmer, and among his first body snatches is one done for the ‘surgeon of Walmer.’  In real life this was of course Duncan McArthur.  Since the latter was still very much alive when this episode was published in 1845 GWMR was accusing his guardian of complicity in grave stealing.  Certainly, as Trefor Thomas has said, the grave-robbing  scenes in Mysteries are among the most memorable in literature, are very realistic and seem to owe a lot to someone’s personal experience.  Since most surgeons of the day used illicitly obtained corpses, at one time or another, this someone was surely Duncan McArthur.

 

Conjectural perhaps, but probably accurate.  Physicians show up in the stories as at least semi-reprehensible people.  Reynolds frequently refers to physicians with preserved body parts, even heads.   Physicians might likely keep examples of diseased organs or heads for later examination.  If McArthur did and Reynolds had seen them that might account for their regular appearance in his stories.

In any event McArthur’s practice was in Walmer and Tidkins came from Walmer and sold bodies to the physician of Walmer.  What Reynolds may or may not have witnessed is open to conjecture but there is one scene, most terrifyingly presented in mysteries that would point to a terrifying experience in young Reynolds life and that may have been at the sensitive period in his life called puberty.

Richard Markham (a probable alter ego for Reynolds) and the Resurrection man may have tangled and an intense mutual antipathy occurs.  Richard tries to track the elusive Resurrection man down to turn him in to the police.  In the first instance, hot on the pursuit of Tidkins, Tony lures him down the mazy dark streets at the witching hour, lures him into his house where Richard is captured and thrown into a dark hole under the house from which he escapes.  Once free a terror seizes his mind, he wants to get far away from that Resurrection Man.  He begins running at top speed which pace he keeps up for hours and miles and miles.  Finally stopping, one imagines to catch his breath, he has no idea where he is.  A policeman conveniently appears who tells him:  ‘Why, you’re in Walmer.’  There is a Walmer district in Ealing, London so there seems to be a psychological connection in Reynolds’ mind between the Resurrection Man and Walmer, Kent so Collins is probably right in his conjecture that George did witness some dealings between Duncan McArthur and a grave robber.  Perhaps as the physician in the story was with the Resurrection Man when they raised the flooring in the church to retrieve a female body a young Reynolds was present.  Collins also states that there is a lot of autobiography in Mysteries.

Collins purportedly was also preparing an annotated edition of the Mysteries but it hasn’t appeared as yet.  Waiting, waiting.

Shortly after this scene Richard Markham successfully leads the police to Tony’s house.  The police rush in but in the confusion Tony drops into his dungeon where he has mined the house.  Lighting the fuse he escapes through a concealed exit just before the house is blown sky high.  Richard hadn’t yet entered the house so he too escapes.  At this point everyone believes that Tony Tidkins is dead but Richard is uneasy.

Was Reynolds then trying to exorcise a terrible memory in this sequence.  Did he think he could escape the memory by killing the Resurrection Man in his mind.  He must have realized he hadn’t as Tidkins escaped to rise again.

Reynolds is famous for creating incidents that aren’t resolved until the end of the story.  One of these, in more strands than one, involves the Resurrection Man.  Early in the story Tony and Cranky Jem are in custody.  Tony turns informer on Cranky Jem whereby Jem gets transported and Tony goes free.  A word on transportation.  Transportation is being exiled to imprisonment in Australia.  I always thought that it merely meant being sent out of the country but not so and the prison conditions in Australia were abominable.  There was no mercy and the worst of the prisons was Norfolk Island.  The most horrible story I’ve read about Norfolk Island was in Paul Feval’s John Devil.  Painful to read.  It is also not improbable that Feval based his account on Reynold’s, as well as Jules Verne in his In Search Of The Castaways.

And transportation at this stage in history was a very unpleasant affair.  Jem is sent to Australia where he is assigned to some logging camp on the Macquarie River.  Conditions are terrible and the food worse.  Cranky Jem escapes and after being recaptured and subjected to the worst conditions of Norfolk Island he escapes again to return to England and vengeance.

The description of his situation is so realistic that I believe that Jules Verne appropriated the episode of the logging camp on the Macquarie in his novel  In Search of the Castaways.  In fact Feval may have been influenced by it as his novel John Devil was written in 1862.

Now, these episodes of eight pages each were sold for a penny each week.  Penny sounds cheap but one remembers that pennies were cast also in half-penny and quarter-penny coins as well as the Mite which was one eighth of a penny.  I don’t know if you could buy anything with a mite but a farthing could be spent.  As noted, at least half the population was illiterate and another percentage barely literate so that market was closed except that enterprising fellows saw an opportunity and formed reading groups in which they read the weekly issue to the illiterates.  I have no idea what the readers charged whether a farthing or ha’penny or what but Reynolds was creating a livelihood for readers and that would go on for twelve years.

The readers became entertainment to be looked forward to each week.  That meant that each eight page episode had to end as a cliffhanger or on some interesting note.  Reynolds needed so many characters intertwined to keep the customers returning each week.  One method was to portray groups of commanding interest and mystery such as the Gypsies.

Here Reynolds has done his research and has a plausible explanation of the origin of the nation.  This discussion of the Gypsies allows him to develop transient characters and include old standbys in novel locations.  Thus Cranky Jem on his return fearful of being recognized joins a Gypsy band.  Jem accompanies the Gypsies to their palace in the Holy Land.  The criminal area of St. Giles of London was known as the Holy Land.  He has been searching for Tidkins but, even though he knows all his haunts, he hasn’t been able to find him as Tony is laying low. 

Chance however brings him to the Gypsie Palace where he is recognized by Jem who leaps on him and stabs him in the breast.  The wound is very serious but not fatal.  The Gypsies take Tony with them where over a period of a few months he recovers. 

Richard Markham and the rest believe him dead until he is spotted again in the East End.  Cranky Jem then dogs Tony through the streets finally locating his secret residence.  By this time Jem has settled down a lot, has rejected his criminal ways and makes his living selling ship models.  He is no longer quite so furious and violent as to attempting murder but there are hundreds and hundreds of pages to go before Tony gets his due.  Tony’s fabulous criminal career has many incidents left.

Let us leave Tony and his adventures for now.  Early on Reynolds introduces a character, a very good one too, he calls the Old Hag who lives on Globe Lane.  She lives criminally as a procuress of young girls for prostitution for the aristocracy but is not thoroughly hardened.  Reynolds refers to the story of the top courtesan of the Regency Era, Harriette Wilson.  She was a familiar of the Regency Bucks, Beau Brummel and that lot.  She is the woman who approached the Duke of Wellington, with whom she had been intimate, with the offer that for two hundred pounds she would edit him out of her memoirs.  Many men had paid but the Duke famously told her ‘Publish and be damned.’

Her work is hundreds of pages long and, personally, I found it pretty boring stuff.  As many of the people, including herself, were alive in the forties, perhaps that made her work more racy.  Her book, along with other sources gave Reynolds necessary info to work with.

So, the Old Hag was a procuress, she found pretty girls to be mistresses for these Libertines, Rakes and old reprobates.  This involves her with one of the story’s heroines, Ellen Monro who is involved with Richard Markham.  Her father was the man who lost Richard’s fortune.  The Old Hag plays a major role in the story until she is murdered by the Resurrection Man.

Tony finally meets his end as Reynolds draws his story to a close in one of the more thrilling adventures of the story.   Like all the adventures it is hundreds of pages long beginning way back when interrupted by other peoples’ adventures and years pass before the climax occurs.

Reynolds vision of society has two classes, the rich and the poor.  The criminal element is part of the poor and the criminals are only criminals because they’re poor which doesn’t explain why the rich may behave as criminals.  Somewhere between the criminals and the ‘pure’ honest folk is a class called Men of the World or Men About Town.  These are usually Libertines and men of easy conscience who take the world as they find it and essentially do as they wilt.

Curiously Reynolds want to be considered a man of the world.  He embraced the idea, for instance, of bankruptcy as a financial tool rather than something to be avoided.  While he inveighs against gambling, in his youth according to Dick Collins he was arrested for playing with loaded dice in the city of Calais and taken back to Paris where Collins believes he was convicted and did time.  If so, my guess would be that he was incarcerated in the Bicetre prison and insane asylum about which he writes familiarly.

Insane asylums figure prominently in his work, while he was aware of the Frenchman Pinel who pioneered humane treatment of the insane.  I would imagine that life was so tough during this period that insanity was a fairly prominent condition, certainly among women who were seriously mistreated, abused and left with no recourse.  Pinel worked in the early nineteenth century but real progress in understanding mental disorders wasn’t made until the 1860s when another Frenchman, Jean Martin Charcot, the father of modern psychology, of the Salpetriere Women’s Asylum in Paris, employed hypnotism in treating the women he treated who had endured terrific psychological abuse so that hysterical insanity was their only refuge.  Once in the Salpetriere the doctors frequently continued the abuse.

While as a man of the world Reynolds seems to know a great deal about criminality and the world of the desperate poor he doesn’t seem to have much real experience with the world of Fashion or of the aristocracy.  As seriously as he attacked them there was no reason for them to associate with him.

So, in this novel his two principle characters other than Tidkins are from a father who was a successful merchant who amassed a fairly large fortune and lived in a large house in the Holloway area in the North of London.  The house seems to be isolated from all other habitations.  Stephen Knight in his book points out that Holloway neither then nor now was a particularly desirable part of town.  Its meaning in the novel he thinks was that you could see all of London spread out before you.

So, back to the beginning.  As I said, I consider the Resurrection Man as the principle character, however, the story is rich with memorable characters.  Next to Tony Tidkins the central character is the rather insipid Richard Markham, a man so pure and good he seems to have been born yesterday.  He is virtue incarnate, which is, of course, the point.  He is not only willing but eager to forgive even the direst injury.

Per the Marquis de Sade and Reynolds the question is does a life of Vice lead to unhappiness or does a life of Virtue.  De Sade came down on the side of Vice as leading to happiness and Virtue to poverty and shame.  But no matter how seeming the success of the vicious life and no matter how rocky the road of Virtue Reynolds says, Virtue in the end will prove the happiest and most successful.

Richard’s brother Eugene who becomes George Montague and then George Greenwood chose a life of Vice, that is a swindling man of the world.  His early adventures bring him great success.  While Richard is plagued with troubles and almost destroyed.  His father’s old financial manager named Monro, at an age when he should have known better, makes a bad financial decision (is bilked by an adventurer) he then compounds the losses by frantically chasing other bad deals.  While Eugene/George Montague is going from success  to success by dubious Man of the World type ventures, confidence games, Richard begins life broke except for his mansion and two hundred pounds a year.  His misfortune is compounded when he is drawn into a criminal situation and receives a two year sentence in prison even though he is innocent.

As an ex-con then his reputation is severely compromised which leads to a few unpleasant results.  Remember that Reynolds is writing for the illiterate and barely literate so he has to gear his story to their verbal capabilities while attempting to find a place in literary society.  His vocabulary is quite extensive while he tosses off the obscure seldom used word or two.

His language surely was above the understanding of the illiterates attending the readings.  Thus the reader probably extended the time of reading with explanations.

Reynolds acknowledges the issue when among others Richard’s Butler misuses nearly his whole vocabulary by trying to sound literate.  It is good comic relief and probably represented the actual situation of the listeners.  Yet, they loved Reynolds.  Still, the question is, what did they understand?  How did they hear what they heard?

Reynolds, as I say, acknowledges his listeners turning Richard’s story into a rag to riches fairy tale in which he even marries the Princess and become the heir apparent, a Prince.  He always leaves ample latitude for the listeners or readers to imagine that those fairy tales might come true for them.

Thus among the vicissitudes and turbulence a very large part of the novel is the ridiculous tale of how Richard, an ex-con becomes an actual Prince of the fairy kingdom of Castelcicala just North of Naples and South of the Papal States.  But, back to the slums and the Resurrection Man.

Now, all these characters relate to each other in some way and their tales are actually fair sized novels when considered individually.  Significantly each novel takes a couple years to work out so the audience is kept in suspense for a very long time.  At the various readings it would be necessary to reprise the story to that point so that Tony Tidkins might probably have become a real man to the listeners, he had his place in all of the tales, and a significant place.  These readings may almost have become seances while the listeners sat in the semi-darkness of oil lamps.  Reynolds hypnotizes and jollies his listeners along often speaking directly to them through the reader’s voice.

Perhaps the Resurrection Man’s crowning achievement was his relationship with Adeline Enfield later Lady Ravensworth.

As this tale, or novel even, begins Adeline and Lydia Hutchinson are teachers at an elite boarding school.  Adeline is an aristocrat and Lydia is not.  Hence Lydia has to respect Adeline.  Naturally they are very young and outstandingly beautiful.   Either Reynolds was a wild flatterer or he somehow moved in a world of only the most beautiful women.  He would have been the man to hang out with.  By the way the term to hang out was a current phase at the time, nothing new about it.  Lydia is pure in mind and body while Adeline may be described as fast.  Adeline then sets out to corrupt Lydia and makes her her partner in libidinous activities.

As they are subjected to a rigid discipline at the school their affairs have to be done on the sly.  Adeline plays the role of a procuress.  One of many of Reynolds female characters who recruit women for prostitution.  Or frails, as Reynolds politely has it.

She and Lydia step out at night to meet Captain Cholmondely, pronounced Chumley and written as such in this review and Lord Dunstable, a couple of army officers.  Adeline goes with Chumley and Dunstable is given the task of deflowering  and corrupting Lydia.  Being a Lord it may be expected that he overawed Lydia.  The two men are Libertines, Rakes or Men on the Town.  Dunstable having no luck in seducing Lydia, drugs her.  Once deflowered she is easy to manage.  So Lydia becomes a frail or lost woman.

The upshot is that Adeline becomes pregnant, which condition she successfully conceals until the actual birth of the child.  Women had skills in those days.  The baby is stillborn.  Adeline conceals the baby in Lydia’s luggage then finks on Lydia who is thought to have been the mother.  Apparently what should have been marked changes in either Lydia or Adeline went unnoticed.  But then Adeline was an aristocrat and immune to censure.

Lydia fired from her job has a long relationship with Lord Dunstable which ends when he and Captain Chumley’s regiment is sent to Europe.  Lydia rapidly goes downhill becoming a street walker and finally destitute and wrecked physically wandering the winter streets in thin rags.  As she trudged wearily a flush rosy cheeked Adeline is being escorted from a private club to a coach by her gallant.  Lydia accosts her asking for a sovereign to keep the cold at bay.  Adeline cuts her dead.

Hatred of Adeline enters Lydia’s soul.

Moving ahead a few hundred pages and several months of readings Lydia is rescued from her life of shame by kind people and rehabilitated then sent out to be a lady’s maid.  Adeline, now Lady Ravensworth, requires a new maid and as luck would have it Lydia Hutchinson is sent for the position.

Her hatred of Adeline has scorched her soul for a few years and now fate has placed Adeline in her power.  Where is the Resurrection Man you say?  He’s in the wings waiting to come on stage.  Lydia, of course, know the history of Adeline’s malfeasance and threatens to expose her unless Adeline becomes her slave for a year.  Thus Adeline falls under Lydia’s discipline which she can’t endure.  She learns of Anthony Tidkins, disguises herself and visits him in his den.  She commissions Tidkins to murder Lydia.  He does, in Adeline’s presence and boudoir thus placing Adeline in his power.  Lydia is strangled and disposed of in a pond on the premises.  To give credit to the claim that Lydia absconded Adeline throws her jewellery box in after Lydia.  Thus when Tidkins hears that the jewels were missing he quickly puts two and two together.  He goes diving for the box.  Without the added weight Lydia floats to the surface.  Discovered she is given a burial above the lake’s marge.

Cut to the Baron of Ravensworth’s younger brother, a Mr. Vernon, who has been a reprobate while living as an ex-pat in the Middle East for some time.  He is in financial trouble needing to inherit the estate to bail himself out.  Murder seems the best course but it must look natural.  Therefore Young Vernon had sent the Baron tobacco that had been treated with an undetectable poison that was only activated when lighted.  So as the Baron deteriorated even though the tobacco was chemically tested it appeared normal.  Reynold’s will use the undetectable poison dodge again in Mysteries of the Court of London.  In that novel it is known as the Heir’s Friend.

However the Baron marries Adeline and at this point in the story as the Baron is wasting away she is pregnant.  If she bears a son Young Vernon’s hopes of succession will be blown away forever.  Therefore, he has to devise a plan to murder the child if a son.  Who is recommended  as the man for the job?  Who else?  The Resurrection Man.

The Baron dies, a son is born, Tidkins to the rescue.  He has a rather elaborate plan that fails, failing as improbably as the plan, so everything falls apart.  Adeline departs for the Continent with her son.  Now there is much business as they would say on the stage that keeps the reader spell bound.

Reynolds is superb at this sort of business.  A bare outline such as this does no justice to Reynolds story telling abilities.  The man’s skill is outstanding.  I can’t think of anyone comparable in English literature with the exception of Walter Scott and then that is of a much different quality but even the qualitative difference may be in favor of Reynolds.  Amongst the French only Dumas, a consummate master, may equal or exceed Reynolds.  Eugene Sue, as great as he is, is a notch or two below Reynolds although Reynolds plundered Sue much more than in the Mysteries of Paris and the Wandering Jew.  Sue has more novels after these two, prodigious productions, and he died in 1857 at only fifty-four years of age.

Amongst the great English writers after Scott none can compare to Reynolds.  Anthony Trollope another prolific guy with forty-seven novels to his credit, two excellent series, The Barchester novels and the Palliser Set is merely a pleasant writer.  Interestingly Trollope was only four years younger than Reynolds, born in 1818, and began writing in the forties.  Strangely, while Reynolds is lost in the past, Trollope seems to be part of a different reality and of the future.  His six Palliser novels, at a length of four thousand pages or so might very possibly have been inspired by Reynolds multi-volume novels.  His are genteel novels in which his characters are proper.  While Reynolds penetrates deeply into the English character from which the future of England over the next hundred and fifty years could be extenuated, prefiguring in his way the Profumo scandal of the nineteen sixties and the race situation.  His criminal world and his association with the money world could easily be seen in comparison with the Kray Brothers and their penetration of polite society.  Their today scarcely mentioned criminal activities involving Lord Boothby and his ilk somewhat resemble those of the Resurrection Man.

I think it noteworthy that that period was drawn to a close only after Ronnie Kray used physical violence against Boothby that the police were allowed to, or ordered to, smash the Kray gang.  It was all fun for the Boothby crowd until Ronnie Kray manhandled Boothby allowing him to see the dangers of their association.

Reynolds would have been quite at home writing that situation and it would have been as long as three thousand pages and better than the reality.  Trollope one feels would have smoothed the situation over so that the crimes were only minor peccadilloes although a few people regretfully went to prison.  But then Trollope was socially acceptable and Reynolds was not.  So with Reynolds we have two different nations but different than those of Benjamin D’ Israeli novels.

Pardon the digression.

As I was saying, Young Vernon in order to eliminate his older brother had sent a large box of tobacco tainted with a debilitating poison thus in order to make the death look natural his brother was wasting away.   The Baron had long been a bachelor so Young Vernon would have been his heir but the Baron had married Adeline and she was again pregnant.  If the child was a girl, no problem but if a boy Young Vernon was out in the cold without an overcoat.

If a son, it had to be put away.  But how?  Seeking a reference Vernon was directed to who else?  The Resurrection Man.  Tony was the man with devious plans and he has a humdinger for the child.  As I say, this is a bare outline, you have to read Reynolds.  The plan fails and Adeline takes her boy and leaves for an extended stay in France.

If you remember Cranky Jem, his inveterate hatred for Tony drove him on.  He has spied on Tidkins, found his crib, and observed him carefully.  Tony has a dungeon at his place in which he imprisons victims and where he stores his cash.  While he was busy in the Ravensworth affair Jem broke into his house and explored the dungeon.  On Tony’s return he notices things have been disturbed but, as yet, Jem hasn’t robbed him.

As this is an involved story involving many characters from the opening pages of the novel a couple of the Men about Town inveigle a young wastrel to use the mansion of Ravensworth in Adeline’s absence to impress the wastrel’s people by claiming the mansion as his own.  As the group is enjoying themselves Adeline chooses the moment to return from France.  In her absence Tony has been using Ravensworth as his hideout as he is too hot to return to his crib in London.  He’s been selling off the odd picture and knickknack to finance his stay.  Adeline notices missing items, asks the aged housekeepers what happened.  They hadn’t noticed anything for  Tony was staying in the large mansion parts of which they had no reason to visit.  Tony reveals himself and takes Adeline captive.

In the interim Lydia Hutchinson resting in her grave had been exposed during a high water and her hand sticking out of the mud is noticed.  The body is dug up and deposited in the kitchen.  Now, remember that Tony and Adeline were partners in Lydia’s murder.  To impress Adeline with her criminal guilt so that she can’t go to the police Tony takes her into the kitchen and shows her the reeking and decayed body.  Already seriously overwrought Adeline shrieks and falls down dead.

Tony Tidkins, the Resurrection Man, puts his hand to his chin and soliloquizes :  I think I’ve gone too far this time.  The funniest line in a serious novel.

Tony quits the scene returning to his crib.  Jem has been busy.  Tony notices the disturbances in his house and hurries down to the dungeon to grab the cash and flee to America.  Remember the Statue of Liberty:  ‘send us the wretched refuse of your teeming shore?’  Look out America, Tony wants to reverence that great Statue.

But, he won’t get to.  Jem has stolen his stash.  As Tony is trying to guess who has taken the money his lamp illuminates an inscription at his feet- Crankey Jem has been here.  And he still was. He suddenly confronts Tony and hustles him into a cell locking him in.  Tony is prepared; he has mined the cell with a bomb.  Pipe bomb.  He threatens to blow the dungeon, himself and Cranky Jem sky high.  Jem says go ahead making no attempt to flee.  Tony lights the fuse but in the damp cellar the powder is too damp to create a real explosion.  Rather than blow the building sky high it frazzles into a small explosion blinding the Resurrection Man.  The Devil, Tony gets his due.  Jem sneers at him and as Reynolds says disappears from sight.  He was never seen again but he undoubtedly took Tony’s stash and left for the refuge of criminals, The United States of America.

And so that strand of the novel ends.  There are numerous other strands left to resolve.  This first series of the Mysteries was a monumental achievement second only to GWM’s The Mysteries Of The Court Of London which is even greater.  Reynolds also wrote a second series in two volumes that formed the two series lasting for four years.

As the second series was ending in 1848 he began the even longer Mysteries Of The Court Of London.  That story is a sort of historical novel concerning the period of the regency of the future George IV.

As Reynolds was writing the second series of Mysteries of London, in 1847-48 he also wrote a substantial novel, worthy of comment- The Mysteries Of Old London: Days of Hogarth.  I will tackle that in a future Time Travel.  Reynold had taken on further responsibility by beginning his magazine Reynolds Miscellany in 1846, while writing the Second Series and engaging in a bankruptcy trial so, while an excellent book, better than the Second Series it still shows a lack of attention that denies making  it the equal of the First Series.

Thus, in sequence the historical period of the three novels is Mysteries Of Old London, 1723-50, Mysteries Of The Court Of London 1795-1820  and Mysteries Of London, 1731—48, and the date of the Revolution of 1848.  If you want to read them in sequence it is no small task, this is their order and a reading is well worth it.