Saturday, November 27, 2021




 

FOUL PLAY


Charles Reade  (1814-1884)

Dion Boucicault  (1820-1890)


John Wardlaw is a successful business person but is retiring.  He's leaving the company to his son Arthur, who has just left Oxford and needs a job.  Arthur is none too honest, but he's quite ambitious, so he dives right in and spends a lot of money investing in chancy enterprises.  Soon he owes money to a lot of bankers and loan sharks and is about to lose everything.  So he forges a note-of-hand ( a check) for two grand and gets the blame shifted onto his best friend, Robert Penfold.  Robert has just graduated as a clergyman and is about to take up a position in a country curacy, when he's arrested and thrown in jail.  He and his dad try desperately to clear his name, but Arthur has hidden his devious moves too well and Robert is jailed for a year and then expelled to Australia, where he is appointed gardener to General Rolleston as a ticket-of-leave employee.  He works away at his job and falls in love with the daughter, Helen Rolleston.  The Rollestons are about to embark on a trip to England, and Robert, desperate, shaves his beard and buys a ticket under the name James Seaton, so as to be near his sweetheart.  Unknown to any of them, Arthur has employed a seaman, Joe Wylie, to do some dirty work for him.  The plan is to switch cargos between two of Arthur's ships which are anchored in Sydney harbor and about to sail to England, one of which will leave with the Rollestons on board.  One ship is loaded with commercial goods and the other one has a shipment of gold.  One night Wylie sneaks into the warehouse where both cargos are being stored temporarily, and moves the boxes around so that the ones designated for the Proserpine will be sent to the Shannon and vice versa.  Then Joe is supposed to sink the first ship in the middle of the Pacific so that Arthur can save his neck by collecting on the insured cargo, which is presumably laden with gold, when in point of fact the gold is being successfully carried to Liverpool.

Everything goes according to plan.  Seaton (Penfold) spots Joe drilling holes in the bottom of the ship one night and soon afterwards it sinks.  Two life boats full of crew and passengers abandon ship.  The one with the crew aboard (and the General) is eventually picked up by a passing trader, but the other one, with only crew members and James and Helen, get caught in a storm and driven westward into unknown territory.  The starving crew have murder in their eyes and are observing the two passengers thoughtfully, but they fight among themselves and commit mass suicide for one reason or another.  With only Helen and James left, the cutter (a small two masted lifeboat) sails before the wind and they are about to expire when James sees a palm tree in the distance.  They sail to the island and begin a Robinson Crusoe existence.  

After almost a year, dealing with food, shelter, and the wildlife, James has a brilliant idea.  He's seen that flocks of ducks pass over occasionally and stop for refreshment in a small lake situated in a caldera.  He realizes that, being land-based creatures, they must be going somewhere, so he captures one and attaches a message to its foot.  He does this fifty times and eventually the island's human occupants are rescued.  Well, one of them is.  The rescue team includes Helen's father who informs James that if he returns to civilization, he'll be arrested as an escapee.  So he's left to fend for himself.  By this time Helen and Robert have fallen deeply in love with each other, and are not happy about the separation.  But she leaves anyway, determined to investigate and clear James' name in London.

After continuing his survival studies on the island for a while, James gets fed up with hanging around and equips the cutter with water and food and sails east, where he's picked up by a Down East whaler.  During his isolation, James has discovered gold in a buried Spanish vessel, so he has plenty of money to reward the captain and to pay his way to London.

Meanwhile, back in London, Helen has been working hard to exonerate James, but without too much luck until she meets Mr. Undercliff, a hand-writing expert.  Undercliff becomes fascinated by what his analyses are telling him about the situation, and he throws himself whole-heartedly into  unveiling the perpetrators of the forgery.

It's probably fairly obvious what happens next, but in the interest of keeping mum in deference to whomever might want to peruse this book, i'll stop here.

I've read books by Reade before.  I read "The Cloister and the Hearth" when i was in my teens, about sixty years ago, and have liked his style ever since.  He's the sort of author who will never use one word when a hundred would do.  If the word "potboiler" were to have a defining identity, Reade would be it.  There's just something about his work that's attractive:  he's light-hearted normally, and never leaves the reader imagining that something dire is going to occur without indicating that things will all turn out for the best nevertheless.  And he's so obviously having so much fun creating whatever book it is, that he carries the reader right along with him.  Also, his career began in the theater, and some of his explications seem taken directly from the script of a play.  Boucicault, who was one of his friends, was even more into theater than Reade, having had an extensive vocation in England and America both.  His reputation as an actor was without parallel.  Unfortunately i don't know exactly how the two friends organized the production of this novel, but i can imagine that it didn't happen without a lot of laughter and jollity.  Recommended to anyone who's able to find a copy.  Mine was from Gutenberg, under "Reade".

19 comments:

  1. I've really wanted to read The Cloister and the Hearth but this book sounds very stressful although also fun. Thanks for the exciting review. You're put Reade back on my radar!

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    1. great! i have fond memories of the cloister and hearth book; it really introduced me to a new world of reading that i hadn't known... but some of his other books are pretty good also, including this one... how is it going with the "atmospheric river" and associated flooding? not to mention the gas shortage...

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    2. We had another storm and the highway closed and another storm is on its way. Not as bad as the first flooding but unfortunately it's not over yet. As for gas, we're still rationed to 30 L per fill up as far as I know. Crazy times! One never knows what's going to happen next!

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    3. looking at the weather map it looks like a new lake Superior is forming up there... pretty good evidence of climate change, i'd say, lol... stay dry!

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    4. Well, apparently there used to be a lake there that was drained for farmland, so perhaps its Mother Nature taking what was hers back, lol!

      Thanks! One more storm and I think we're clear!

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  2. I read The Cloister and the Hearth years ago & loved it. But I've never managed to read anything else by Reade. This sounds...rather different? Although pretty entertaining.

    I can't say that I know anything about Dion Boucicault.

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    1. i read what Wiki had to say about him and i still don't know much, except he was apparently wildly popular in Europe and the U.S. both. i've read several others by Reade, but not all by any means: stuff to look forward to (important for old people, lol)

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  3. This does indeed sound like an entertaining read. A Robinson Crusoe story without Robinson. Or Friday.

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    1. it was very much like reading DeFoe's book, but even more detailed as regards the technical aspects: food processing, house building, dealing with natural dangers and events; all quite interesting, actually... I guess Helen took the place of Friday, haha...

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  4. The theater chap I remember from my thespian days …. I haven’t read Reade ….. you always dig deep and find lost gems … have you considered a career in treasure hunting? ….

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    1. i'd never heard of him before, but not having a background in theater... i was seriously interested in lost treasure about 70 years ago... lol

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  5. That's quite the adventure Robert/James has in this book. I'd probably really like the shipwreck part. But I can't believe Helen and her father just leave him behind on that island. Harsh! I'm glad things work out for him in the end. :)

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    1. i probably wasn't very clear: if he'd returned he would have been incarcerated and made the efforts to clear his name more difficult, was what it was... shipwrecks are awesome! earthquakes are even better!

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  6. Interesting story. I HAVE NOT HEARD OF EITHER OF THESE AUTHORS, BUT I'M GOING TO SEE IF I CAN
    AND FIND THE BOOK IN MY LIBRARY OR IN GUTENBERG.Somehow I had the caps on and I'm too tired to rewrite my statement. Just to say I'm not as excited as it looks. I NEED TO GO TO BED.

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    1. no problem... you sound over-pushed... Reade i know is in Gutenberg; i don't know about Boucicault...

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  7. Sounds great, Mudpuddle. I wonder if it's on Kindle - always on the lookout for books for my book devouring daughter. Have you read anything by D.K. Broster? She might be an author you'd like.

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    1. i don't actually know... but i've had some success(keeping in mind my sub-average computer skills) in changing formats thru using Calibre; maybe it could change Kindle into epub, which would allow you to download it from Gutenberg... don't know Broster; i'll look for the name in the upcoming library sale.. tx!

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  8. I wouldn't mind hanging out for a bit on that beach in your picture, but only as long as the charge holds on my Kindle. Then I'm out of there!

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