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.

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?

Part IV Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

Pt. IV

Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

The Past Is Always Present

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unquote.

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

He goes on in self-justification:

Quote:

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

Unquote.

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

Quote:

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

Unquote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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

Unquote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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

Unquote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A half shilling was called a tanner

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

Next came a Groat worth four pence.

Then a Thruppence or three pence

After that the Tuppence or two pence

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum, containing the erroneous first valuation I made.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.