EVAN HARRINGTON

George Meredith. (1828-1909)

Meredith's paternal grandfather was named Melchizedek, and so was the founder of the Harrington family.  He was a tailor in Lymport-on-the-sea and had died just before the action begins in Portugal.  His issue was one son and three daughters, one of whom was married to a Portuguese Count.  Louisa and her family and nephew are first seen returning home from Lisbon, where they had spent some years enjoying the pleasures of the royal court.  Evan, the nephew, is uncertain about where his future lies.  He's been raised in a court atmosphere and the idea of taking over his father's business does not appeal.  Through Louisa's influence he comes to be accepted in the household at Beckley Court, the residence of the Jocelyn family.  He and Rose, the daughter of the reigning baronet, fall in love, but the path is not made easy for them mainly due to Evan being a common tailor.  Evan's sister, Louisa the Countess, has glommed onto the fact that a certain Abraham Harrington, a member of the upper classes, has recently died in the immediate vicinity, and while she doesn't actually lie about her family's relation to the deceased nobleman, she doesn't deny it either.  Which provides her family a tentative justification for a prolonged visit at the Jocelyn estate.  

Side issues involve the sisters' marriages with a retired Major and a rich brewer.  The former is brutal to Caroline and she stays away from him as much as she can:  Beckley Court seems like heaven to her.  Harriet is wedded to Andrew Cogglesby, the younger brother in the brewing firm.  The older brother, Old Tom, is retired and plays an important role in the developing plot as a hidden manipulator of some of the other characters, which he is enabled to do as a result of his abundance of money coupled with his bizarre sense of humor.  After ensconcing themselves in the Jocelyn household, the Harringtons more or less follow Louisa's lead in their dealings with their hosts and other guests.  There are abundant numbers of ancillary figures, a Duke, and assorted Lords residing in the area.  One of them,  Lord Laxley, is a competitor for Rose's hand in marriage and at one point a duel between Evan and Laxley seems imminent, but sober heads prevail and the situation is temporarily defused.  Another character, a friend of Evan's, is described thusly:  "Mr. Raikes stood about a head under him.  He had extremely mobile features;  thick, flexible eyebrows;  a loose, voluble mouth;  a ridiculous figure on a dandified foot.  He represented to you one who was rehearsing a part he wished to act before the world, and was not aware that he took the world into his confidence."  Then there is Juliana, a younger relation to Rose, who loves Evan desperately, but she is handicapped because of a certain lameness which is not elaborated upon.  Later in the denouement, she plays an important role in the final resolution of the plot.

Meanwhile, carousals at the local Green Dragon Inn take place;  a cricket game occupies quite a few pages; and Old Tom episodically looms in the background, laughing to himself at the antics of his victims.  Evan waffles about, trying to convince himself to take up his father's profession, but due to his love for Rose, can't decide to actually go home to Lymport and start to work.  In the interim, he is hired by Andrew Cogglesby to take care of some business dealings.  While in London, he sees Rose occasionally, but nothing very important transpires until Juliana arrives, apparently stricken with tuberculosis.  In the last stages of the disease, she writes her will, leaving Beckley Court (which she had inherited from her uncle) to Evan.  Guilt-ridden, Evan gives it back to the Jocelyns, but, as Old Tom's plans come to fruition, he's left in a prominent social situation nevertheless.  Do Rose and Evan finally get married?  Is Louisa going to be thrown into jail?  Will Caroline escape her cruel husband.  These questions and more are answered in the finale, but suffice it to say that everything works out in the end;  at least to the satisfaction of some of the characters, if not all.

This was one of Meredith's early works.  But in spite of that, it's "comedic" components are fully on display.  The lurking presence of Old Tom is just intrusive enough to attract the reader's attention, but not so kaleidoscopic as to dominate any of the peroration.  Of course, Meredith's principal purpose was to contrast and expose the dire consequences of the English social system, with its Grand Canyon split between the upper and lower, common, classes.  But rather than repeating the facts of the case ad nauseum, he much prefers to indicate the iniquities through the behavior and attitudes of his characters, using their reactions to the circumstances inherent in their social statuses to balloon up the injustices of the system until  they explode, leaving rags of rage and surprise behind like the tattered remnants of an overnight frat party.

In some ways i liked this book better than "The Egoist".  It was more broadly based in terms of its social analysis.  "Egoist". was more of a study of the effects of class prejudice on a few characters, whereas "Evan" seemed to extend that criticism to cover a larger portion of the citizenry, as well as the English institutions that were responsible for such misery and unhappiness noted in the less fortunate economic castes.  Also, the prose was easier to follow.  Meredith has been castigated by some reviewers for his involved and unpredictable sentence construction, and there's some truth to the idea that he's not an easy read.  But on the other hand, he is very perceptive and his books have a lot of depth, the bottom of which i'm certain i haven't plumbed in any of his works that i've read.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, tho...

ORLANDO INNAMORATO

Matteo Boiardo  (1440-1494)

Francesco Berni. (1497-1535)

William Stewart Rose. (1775-1843)

This was originally written by Boiardo, and intended to be a sort of compilation of various tales of Orlando (Roland) written by sundry authors and poets in years previous to the 1400's.  It takes place during the reign of Charlemagne, and ostensibly deals with the invasion of Spain by the Moors in the 8th century.  But contrary to the intuited intention, it has mainly to do with the adventures of Charlemagne's knights, their duellos with each other and with fairies, monarchs and legendary beasts such as giants and dragons.  At the outset, a big party is being held in Paris to celebrate the coming-together of all the elements of King Charlemagne's army, including Orlando, Rinaldo, Astolpho, Brandimart, Gryphon, and many others.  This assemblage is supposedly preliminary to the expected war with various African invaders, mainly Gradasso and Agramant, who have nefarious plots to subsume France in their coils.  During the height of the festivities, Angelica vanishes, spirited away to her father's (Sacripant) house in the Orient by Malgigi, Rinaldo's brother and practicing magician.  Since she's of royal blood and pretty to boot, there's a mad dash to find out what happened to her, and many of the knights fare forth to rescue her from whatever coils may have embroiled her.  Things are complicated by the ingestion of magic potions designed to either cause lovers to hate each other, or to make enemies fall in love.  One of the first major events occurs when the Moors capture Paris in the absence of its defenders.  But that situation is resolved when general Gradasso decides to release the city in exchange for Orlando's horse, Bayard.  He wants the Orlando's sword, Durandanna also, but it already left with its owner. When Rinaldo leaves the party he is trapped in a self-powered boat while crossing a river which carries him into the forest of Arden (a common place for magical incidents) where he sees a palace and is captured by a giant.  It's the castle of Altaripa, and is presumably owned by the castellan Gryphon and Stella, his wife.   Rinaldo is lowered into a deep dark cavern from which he's rescued by the knight Astolpho (the only English knight in the book) who lowers a rope and some wax into the cave while Rinaldo is being threatened by an all-devouring monster.  Rinaldo uses the wax to seal the creature's mouth shut and hauls himself up by the rope.

Meanwhile (there are lots of these "meanwhiles" in the book, as Boiardo weaves the narration between situations and events, leaving the reader gasping in wonder at what could possibly happen next to rescue whoever it was that is in imminent danger), armies are gathering before the town of Albracca,  to where Angelica was spirited during Charlemagne's party.  Agrican (a Tartar general) is leading the attackers and Astolpho is present to deny them their victory.  In spite of his magic spear, he's captured by the gloating Agrican.  Meanwhile, Rinaldo has wandered away from the castle Altaripa and met Sir Brandimart's lady friend who says he's been abducted at the Bridge of Oblivion and persuades him to take on nine other knights simultaneously.  Before that, however, he has to listen to the story of Iroldo and Tisbina, involving a devious escape from Medusa's garden through one of four gates named Life, Poverty, Death and Wealth and a thirty day crossing of an endless desert and the use of sleeping powder to free Iroldo.  Rinaldo has another epic battle with a giant and a herd of griffins, but loses his girl-friend when she's captured by a unicorn and swept downstream in a boat.  Back in Albracca, Angelica is besieged in a tower while the Tartars flail at the doors but she's able to leave due to her magic invisibility ring.  She and Flordelis rescue Orlando from Dragontina's garden and they return to Albracca.  At one point, Orlando and Agrican fight for a whole day before the walls of the city and Orlando wins, retrieving his horse Bayard who's been gone for quite some time.  Agrican coverts to Christianity just before he expires.

Monodontes, the King of the Distant Isles wanted to marry his daughter to an old friend.  She actually loved a younger man instead, who she married without her father's permission, but at the same time she agreed to marry the old petitioner.  The two suitors lived in adjacent castles and there was a tunnel connecting the two domiciles, so when the second ceremony occurred, as a result of running back and forth between both castles, she was able to convince the unloved one that she was the twin sister of herself and this worked great until the King discovered the tunnel and was not very happy about the situation.  But it was all resolved when she was captured by two giants while running from one to the other.  One of the major players was a lady knight, Marphisa.  She was a friend of Orlando's and aided him in several of his ventures, mostly relating to defending Albracca against the Tartars.  The new general of which, Truffaldino, Orlando fought with until he defeated him as a result of which Angelica persuaded him to investigate Falerina's garden in Orgagna, near the entrance to Heaven and Hell.  There was a bridge there and a lady hanging up by her hair named Orgilla.  He cuts her down and while he's peering into the black entrance, she steals his horse (Bayard).   This is the end of Book one.

Book two begins with Orlando entering the Heaven and Hell gate and initially coming across a golden donkey with prehensile ears and a sword for a tail.  He sees a tree with golden fruit that throws apples at him.  He cuts it down with his sword (Durandanna) and everything turns black, but he's guided out by Falerina after freeing all the prisoners.  Back at Albracca (again), Marphisa and Sacriphant are still defending the city.  Angelica's invisibility ring is stolen by Brunello the expert thief.  He also steals Sacriphant's horse while he's riding it.  And Marphisa's sword while she's using it.  A Turkish army arrives to relieve the city.  Then Orland and Rinaldo have a long adventure in the subterranean kingdom of Morgana's.  Orlando had defeated the guardian of her lake, Arridano, and found that the lake bottom was actually an extension of her vast holdings.  With a kind of permanent coal lamp to illuminate the darkness, Orland passes a gate into a field of jewels and then finds another bridge which he crosses after contending with the guards.  He enters a building housing a King who's sitting under a sword suspended by a single hair that will decapitate him if he tells a lie.  Orlando finds Rinaldo who attempts to steal a golden chair while en route out of the kingdom, but it flies back in when he tries to carry it up a long flight of stairs that lead the surface.

The adventures continue for several hundred more pages, the second Book ending with the Moors invading once more and all Paris in a state of alarm.  The first two books were published in 1483 and the last one in 1495.  There are only the first two extant, however, as, with one exception, the complete edition was lost sometime in the 16th century.  The one exception is one copy of all three books located in the Marciano, in Venice i think...  The last volume has never been translated.  Francesco Berni rewrote and republished the work in 1531 and it achieved some success at that time.  Then the two books faded into history until interest revived in the late 1700's.  The edition that re-popularized the saga was the translation in prose of William Rose in 1831.  He claimed that the original, written in octave stanzas, was unsuitable for the English language.  This is the version that i read.  And it's the only one, so for as i know, that's available in English.  It's in Gutenberg's files.

It was a lot of fun reading this even though it got fairly confusing at times.  Boiardo had a great sense of humor, which shows through from time to time.  His tongue can be seen at intervals, bulging his cheek out.  Rose, in addition to rewriting the two books, occasionally included some of the original stanzas from Boiardo, and i thought they were excellent and quite poetic.  I think it's a shame that he didn't translate the entirety that way, but, as he was not a very well person, maybe it would have been too much for him.  Comparisons with Spencer are inevitable, and I couldn't help but see commonalities between the two works;  there was a certain amount of allegorical reference to the court of Charlemagne, i thought.  And the compositional style was pretty similar, with interwoven plot lines and fantastic adventures.  Perhaps Spencer was a bit more moralistic than Boiardo, though.  The latter seemed to more interested in relating an entertaining story for the most part, while Spencer really seemed to have a moral imperative, even if, as was perhaps possible, he was just writing that way to impress Queen Elizabeth.  Fun book, and i hope to get to the sequel fairly soon:  Orlando Furioso!

 

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".

 

A Taste of Walter de la Mare:

                                IN THE LOCAL MUSEUM

They stood - rain pelting at window, shrouded sea -

Tenderly hand in hand, too happy to talk;

And there, its amorous eye intent on me,

Plautus Impennis, the extinct Great Auk.

            WINTER COMPANY

Blackbird silent in the snow;

Motionless crocus in the mould;

Naked tree; and, cold and low, 

            Sun's wintry gold...

Lost for the while in their strange beauty - self how far! -

Lulled were my senses into a timeless dream;

As if the inmost secret of what they are

           Lay open in what they seem.

        ARROGANCE

I saw bleak Arrogance, with brows of brass,

Clad nape to sole in shimmering foil of lead,

Stark down his nose he stared;  a crown of glass

Aping the rainbow, on his tilted head.

His very presence drained the vital air;

He ate erect - stone-cold, self-crucified;

On either side of him an empty chair;

And sawdust trickled from his wounded side.

           AND SO TO BED

"Night-night, my Precious!";  "Sweet dreams, Sweet!"

"Heaven bless you, Child!" - the accustomed grown-ups said.

Two eyes gazed mutely back that none could meet,

Then turned to face Night's terrors overhead.  

Mr. de la Mare lived on the same street that Tennyson did but at a later date.  He also wrote a biography of Lewis Carroll which i'd love to get my hands on.  He was noted for his appreciation of child-like minds (why i identify with him, lol) and for his classic horror stories as well.  A rare and rarified personality;  not many of them left, nowadays...

 THE EXPLOITS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Sherlock Holmes (1887---)

Adrian Conan Doyle (1910-1970)

John Dickson Carr (1906-1977)

This is a collection of pastiches about Sherlock.  Twelve stories in the traditional assemblage.  Carr and Doyle wrote the first six and Doyle alone was responsible for the rest:

The Adventure of the Seven Clocks:  Celia Forsythe is traveling is Switzerland with her employer, Lady Mayo, when they meet Charles Hendon, a suave gentleman of leisure traveling by train through the Alps.  Celia is interested in him, but doesn't understand why he hates clocks, destroying them with his stick or burying them in the snow...

The Adventure of the Gold Hunter:  What does the death of Squire Trelawney have to do with a gold watch (a hunter) and a jar of vaseline?

The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers:  Sherlock engaged in fisticuffs with Bully Boy Rasher and knocked him out, receiving a sprained ankle in the melee.  Watson is pressured into touring a wax museum in order to get the goods on Sir Gervase Darlington, a loud-mouth braggart with too much money.

The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle:  Mr. Cabpleasure worships an umbrella and his wife is upset.  What has this to do with the misplacement of a bottle of milk?

The Adventure of the Black Baronet:  Colonel Jocelyn Dalcy has been fatally stabbed while drinking a cup of port.  How is the Battle of Bosworth Field between the York and Lancaster adherents relevant to his death?

The Adventure of the Sealed Room:  Colonel Warburton has been shot and killed in a locked room.  A game of bezique and a fireplace poker almost end Homes's career.

The Adventure of Foulkes Rath:  Is Squire Addleton's nephew implicated in his uncle's death?  And what has a medieval executioner's axe have to do with it?  Holmes, meanwhile, collects samples of dust...

The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby:  Black thumbs, red camellias, and the NonPareil Club all lead Holmes and Watson to Oxford Street when Holmes accuses himself of idiocy.

The Adventure of the Dark Angels:  Joshua Ferrers lives in the country and never mows his lawn or weeds his garden.  Dark nights and seraphic post cards spell his doom..

The Adventure of the Two Women:  Blackmail and secret documents lead Holmes and Watson into the world of crime...

The Adventure of the Deptford Horror:  not for the faint of heart unless interested in arachnology.

The Adventure of the Red Widow:  Watson marries, but leaves his bride in the lurch when Lord Jocelyn Cope is slain in Arnsworth Castle.  Rug fibers tell Holmes that the perp is fifty years of age, has a malformed left foot and smokes Turkish tobacco in a cigarette holder.  Holmes gets a chance to practice his pyromania.

These stories were a lot of fun, taking me back to when i first read the originals.  The first six were quite in the style of Arthur Doyle;  the last ones were very slightly different in aura, perhaps using a bit more detail than Adrian's father would have employed.  i've noticed in the past, and in reading these stories, that too much detail can interfere with the reader's mental conception of the action.  Arthur Doyle was a master at providing entrancing descriptions that drew in the reader but didn't hamper his/her imaginative facilities.  Pastiches in general, the ones i've read anyway, usually are couched in the author's habitual style, with not much attempt at duplicating that of Arthur.  The first six included in this volume come very close to imitating to perfection the atmosphere of the originals, and are very well done.  The last six are also good, but not quite possessing the genuine ambience of Arthur's descriptions, even though they are just as enjoyable as the first six.  If you're interested at all in re-visiting Holmes and Watson, these stories would be a great place in which to do that.

 THE PICAROONS

Will Irwin (1873-1948)

Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

Coffee John and Big Becky were part of a vaudeville act when Sol Bauer, a newspaper editor,  fell for Becky.  John managed to finagle $4,000 out of him when he decided to marry Bertha Wolfstein instead.  John used his share, $2,000, to buy a cafe in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.  To celebrate he invited three down-and-out friends to a feast at his place, paid for by Bauer.  After oysters, steak, halibut and other unaccustomed delicacies, John gave each friend a dime and told them to go find their fortunes.  

James Coffin began by winning 40 cigars, then betting another scrounger that he could smoke all of them one after another for $100.  He won but it put him off tobacco for the rest of his life.  Coffin had been a student at Harvard who was kicked out for hiding alarm clocks in his professor's houses all set to go off in the middle of the night.  So he started riding the rails and wound up broke in San Francisco.  He had been arrested for stealing bananas on Fisherman's Wharf just before meeting Coffee John.  Professor Vango was a medium who was doing well, bilking society ladies through the use of necromantic trickery, until Mrs. Higgins began haunting him whenever he tried to continue his business.  Consequently he was broke and in dire straits.  Admeh Drake was a cowboy for two and a half years until he met Susie Latham who he promised to marry but couldn't because he had to go fight in the Philippines (the Spanish-American War) except he never went there.  He had a friend send Susie fake messages from the islands describing all his heroic adventures while he was down and out in San Francisco the whole time.  Now Susie has come to the city to welcome him back at the end of the war and he doesn't know where to hide.

The three "picaroons" each have a series of hilarious and bizarre adventures in which they meet other victims and opportunists whose stories are related, resulting in a chain of tales that in the end result in the them meeting one another again at Coffee John's place to see how and if they have succeeded in improving their individual lots in life.  Professor Vango meets Harry Maidslow who regales him with a story of mixed identities and how he survived in the Philippines while being chased around the back country by enemy natives.  One long history concerned a lady who married a Chinese dope smuggler and how she managed to win a fortune by outwitting the San Francisco Tong while stealing a boat-load of their opium.  And there's the street car conductor (horse drawn in those days)named Eli Cook who got into the habit of pilfering some of the coins paid by the passengers until he got greedy and decided to stop doing that, but noticed that the street car began squeaking when he reformed.  It got so bad that people wouldn't use that car any more because the creaking and banging was so disturbing.  So he had to retire and because he was afraid of the car's threatening attitude, he had to use some of his ill-gotten gains to buy it.  He parked it on one of the SF beaches and lived in it.  There's the history of the Klondyker who struck it rich in Alaska, but was robbed and left for dead by a no-account villain.  He was rescued by an Indian girl who showed him a mountain of gold and then married him:  actually he bought her for ten sled dogs and a rifle.  To celebrate they sailed to SF and blew the whole fortune:  "We skated through town like a forest fire" was his description.  He blamed it all on his wife, who didn't know what money was for.  When they decided to return to Alaska, she decided she didn't like money and threw the $20.00 gold pieces they had left over into the bay.

Burgess and Irwin were both newspaper reporters and editors in San Francisco.  Irwin was kicked out of Stanford for "rowdy behavior" and Burgess went through a series of odd jobs before deciding to write.  They were good friends and undoubtedly had a great time writing this book together.  At times, reading it was a jaw-dropping experience;  i've don't recall reading a book that portrayed such bizarre events.  At the very end, the three meet once more at Coffee John's to share their experiences and John was so excited by the tales he heard that he...  well, i'll leave to the next reader to discover what he did!  Any time a reader becomes bored with average, everyday literature, he or she would be advised (by me) to investigate the uproarious shenanigans included in this one-of-a-kind excursion into old San Francisco for a comprehensive attitude readjustment, lol...  available at the Gutenberg site.

 

THE DEAD SECRET

Wilkie Collins. (1824-1889)

This is a Cornish romance set mostly in coastal Cornwall, the critical action taking place in Porthgenna Tower, a very large mansion with wings, North, South, East and West.  In the beginning Sarah Leeson is tending to the wants of the dying mistress of the house, carrying and fetching and other last rite things.  Mrs. Treverton's husband is a Captain of commercial ships and is absent on a voyage, so Sarah is being seriously attentive to her boss.  Before dying she writes a letter to the Captain revealing a large secret that is burdening her.  Giving it to her maid Sarah, she emphasizes the urgency with which the communication needs to be given to her husband.  But Sarah, knowing the contents of the letter and being intimately involved with same, is aghast.  She feels impelled to do her mistresses' bidding nevertheless.  So as the lady is about to expire, she makes the maid swear that she'll not destroy or let the letter leave the building, but she passes just as she's about to add the most important part:  to give the letter to the Captain when he returns.  Sarah is out of her mind with worry and since she was not verbally instructed to deliver the letter, just to keep it, she decides to hide it.  Which she does, in the Myrtle Room situated in the North wing of the house.  Then she packs up a few possessions and leaves the house, never to return.

Fifteen years pass and the plot moves to a nearby town where Rosamund Treverton is about to marry Leonard Frankland.  Leonard has recently become blind because of over-straining his eyesight while repairing watches.  Captain Treverton is off on a ship somewhere, so the local curate gives Rosamund away.  The Captain has a brother, Andrew, who doesn't take any responsibility for his niece's activities, as he's a miser and a human-hater.  About a year after the ceremony, the couple receives a letter saying her father, the Captain, has been drowned and that she has inherited the Porthgenna establishment.  The two decide to move there and hire a nurse for their new baby.  They travel to Cornwall from London and at one of the last rest stops, the nurse becomes ill and they hire another named Mrs. Jazeph.  The Jazeph lady acts peculiarly and whispers odd things to Rosamund so they dismiss her.  She's actually Sarah under an alias that she acquired in the previous fifteen years through marrying a drunken and violent person who is now deceased.  Something she says alarms the Franklands and they fire her.  She travels to her uncle, her last living relative, who is a little old music box maker named Joseph;  a merry old soul with a fixation on Mozart.  He carries a portable music box with him everywhere that plays "Batti Batti", a nursery tune composed by Mozart in his youth.  After revealing her troubles to her uncle, they decide to travel to Cornwall as well, hoping to reclaim the letter that was hidden in the Myrtle room.  Once at the house, they are faced with a suspicious housekeeper and a bumbling overseer named Mumber.  Both staff members try to frustrate the intentions of Sarah and her uncle, but they evade them and she races upstairs to the Myrtle room door.  But since a window is broken inside, a passing breeze rips off a piece of decrepit wall paper and blows it across the door, causing Sarah to faint, convinced a ghost inside bears evil intentions toward her.  They escape and elude pursuit, returning to London.

Meanwhile, Andrew the brother of the Captain and his valet Schrowl receive a letter from Rosamund's lawyer interested in whatever they might know about the Myrtle room.  They know that that room is where the Secret is hidden but they don't know where in the North wing it is.  Andrew rips up the letter but Schrowl pieces it together and wants to sell his information about Porthgenna for five pounds.  The Franklands reach the Tower and move in and begin to search the dilapidated and abandoned section of the house for the right room.  They finally discover it and force an entrance and start poking about in the bits of furniture that are left.  In an old escritoire, Rosamund discovers a folded up sheet of paper and, opening and reading it, is SHOCKED!

I'll leave the ending to be unveiled to such readers that might be driven through sheer overwhelming curiosity to read the novel.  Suffice it to say everything is wound up more or less satisfactorily, thereby resolving the driving force that has been augmented throughout the narration.

I was curious about the book's popularity until i started thinking about the social conditions and limited lives led by the tech-free inhabitants of Victorian England.  This book and others like it must have been regarded as absolute treasures to those readers who had very little opportunity or ability to enjoy their lives in such a regimented and class-bound society.  Even today, with TV, movies, stereo, computers and all the ancillary gizmos open to the average person, i found myself caught up in Collins' world and eagerly turning the pages until i found out what the SECRET actually was...  it was a fun read and i'll probably investigate more of his lesser-known works...

I should add that Collins has a great gift for depicting odd characters.  In addition to the ebullient uncle Joseph, his description of the attitude and thoughts of the lumpkin Munder are hilarious.  And the designing and slavering Schrowl, after his five pound note,  seems taken from the life.  Andrew himself would be unbelievable if similar personalities had not been known to exist in reality.  Earlier in the book, Mr. Phippen and his delicate digestion equal any description i've read concerning gastric tribulations and the overall debilitating effect on the sufferer thereof...  Read it you'll like it!