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!

 

JOHN SILENCE, PHYSICIAN EXTRAORDINARY

Algernon Blackwood. (1869-1951)

Five incorporeal adventures in the life of Dr. Silence are included in this volume.  As well as being a trained medical doctor, Silence has deeply explored the remote regions of human mentality, both in England and in little-known spiritual enclaves of the far East.  After receiving his degree in England, he disappeared for five years while pursuing those studies, and now runs a kind of psychic detective agency.  People with problems of a non-material nature seek his advice and assistance.

A PSYCHICAL INVASION

Felix Pender, successful novelist, is having trouble writing.  He is being followed around inside his house by something or someone with evil intent.  Dr. Silence suspects a vengeful ghost is causing difficulties, so he arranges for Felix to stay at his house while the Dr. spends the night in Felix's lodging.  He gets to the house later the same day, accompanied by two pets, a cat and a dog.  He trusts animal instincts as being keener than his own insofar as detecting malignant spirits is concerned.  Silence is dozing off in the library when all of a sudden he smells smoke, and wakes to a dark and threatening glamour that has settled over the room.  The cat sees something eery in a corner and the dog begins barking at an invisible intruder.  But gradually through the haze, a shadowy figure looms;  an old lady, haggard and staring, glares at him with murder in her heart.  The Dr. summons up his powerful psychic knowledge and counter-attacks the apparition which gradually dissipates.  Back in his office, he relates the story to Mr Pender and after further investigation, they discover that the house was formerly the residence of an old lady hung for multiple murders.  Silence recommends the house be torn down and the location turned into a garden.

ANCIENT SORCERIES

Arthur Vezin is traveling by train in northern France.  On impulse, triggered by loud-mouth fellow travelers, he gets off at a remote station located in the mountains and is so charmed by the idyllic ambiance that he decides to stay for a night.  He takes a room in an old inn and walks around the small village.  He becomes nervous when he notices that all the villagers seem to be watching him.  At dinner, the inn-keeper's daughter becomes very friendly and tries to make him fall in love with her.  Suspicious, he retires early only to be awoken in the night by loud cat cries and noises of yowling and fighting.  He sneaks outside and sees that some of the citizens have turned into cats.   The daughter accosts him and tries to get him to accompany her.  There is a parade of sorts leading out of town and lots of dancing and sinister merry-making.  As Vezin tries to escape, she grabs him by the neck, but he breaks away and runs off.  At the train station cafe, he meets Dr. Silence who explains to him that the village was formerly the habitation of witches who were burned at the stake, and that their ghosts invaded the townspeople on certain nights, causing them to engage in devil-worship.

THE NEMESIS OF FIRE

Horace Wragge needs help.  He's a retired Colonel and he and his sister live in an old farmhouse near the ocean in northern Yorkshire.  The house is located near a 12 acre wood that has an ancient mound at the center.  Spot fires are erupting with alarming frequency all around the manse and in the fields and the house itself it is uncomfortably warm, with a kind of sultry heat that seems to carry a lingering menace with it.  Dr. Silence and his assistant Hubbard arrive and immediately search the woods.  They find burned places and a pond but not much else.  But the same night, one of the rooms catches on fire and they are barely able to extinguish it.  Doing some research, Silence believes that there's an Egyptian connection.  The Colonel's brother had spent time in that country and was known to be an aficionado of ancient Egyptian culture.  A full moon is expected the same night and the Dr. gets ready:  he gathers some picks and shovels and a long rod.  After dark, he pokes the rod into the soil surrounding the building until he finds a hidden tunnel.  With the help of the Colonel and Hubbard, he digs out an entranceway and all three enter it and crawl toward the woods.  They come upon a large room under the mound and discover a mummy case buried just below the surface.  Just as they open the coffin, a fire Elemental comes to life and things heat up.  At that moment the sister crawls into the chamber with an ancient scarabeus and places it inside the coffin with the mummy and the Elemental vanishes.  Her explanation is that she had thought it was attractive when the brother brought it back from Egypt and kept it in her room.

SECRET WORSHIP

Harris, a silk merchant, visits his old theological school near Strasbourg.  It's located in a remote valley, isolated and unpopulated.  He's welcomed by the Priests even though it's been thirty years since he was a student there.  They become more and more friendly, demanding that he spend the night.  The head of the school, Asmodelius, is about to arrive and they want to introduce him.  Things get weirder and Harris gets scared and starts yelling but the brothers show no reaction, which really freaks him out.  He runs but the monks catch him and begin to strangle him and he faints.  Next day he wakes up on a pile of old bricks and while walking back to the depot meets Dr Silence who had followed him to the school and later rescued him from the glamour that had captured him.  Silence tells Harris that the school had burned down and the village abandoned because the fathers were devil-worshippers.

THE CAMP OF THE DOG

Hubbard with some friends is on a camping trip in the northern Baltic Sea.  They're traveling by canoe and stop at one of the islands to build a more permanent encampment.  The Reverend Tim Maloney, Mrs. Maloney and their daughter Joan as well as the family friend Pete Sangree compose the party in addition to Hubbard.  They are having a wonderful time fishing, swimming and story-telling for a while, until their evenings begin to be disturbed by a wolf invading their camp.  One night it tears a hole in the wall of Joan's tent.  Hubbard tracks it but loses the trail until he happens to look into Pete's tent and sees the wolf merge into Pete's body.  Luckily, Dr. Silence arrives soon after Hubbard sends him an urgent message, and he verifies that Pete is indeed inhabited by a "fluidic body", i.e., a werewolf.  The good Dr. knows all about lycanthropy of course, so he manages things such that the incipient love between Pete and Joan becomes a reality.  This puts a halt to the form-changing and the two live happily ever after.

Blackwood led a checkered life, pursuing a number of different careers, but writing ghost stories and novels between  and during his various employments.  He even taught violin lessons upon occasion.  But he also worked for a number of newspapers and came to know some of the movers and shakers of that world.  He was a past master at word-smithery, and his descriptions of eerie and spine-chilling events has never been exceeded, imo...  The resemblance between Silence and Sherlock is pretty evident, even so far as the mysterious absence in the East was concerned.  That's where Sherlock was supposed to have gone after his fight with Moriarty at Reichbach Falls when he was presumed, erroneously, to have died.  Anyway, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

 

WALLADMOR

Sir Walter Scott (attrib.)

G.W.H Haering  (pseud. Willibald Alexis, 1798-1871)

Thomas de Quincy  (1785-1859)

The good ship Halcyon, inbound from France, was just entering the harbor when the crew espied smoke pouring out of the forward hold.  Since the cargo was gunpowder, they became berserk, dashing about and desperately breaking into the liquor cabinets in the mad attempt to make themselves jolly before meeting their maker.  The master knocks Bertram overboard with one punch.  He flounders around until a barrel drifts within reach, then straddles it to save himself at just about the same time that the ship disintegrates in a giant explosion.  Something jerks the barrel out from under him and he sees another survivor of approximately his own age disputing his possession of the barrel.  They disagree, physically, for a bit and then decide to share, turn and turn about, the barrel between them.  The top to the barrel falls off and the new arrival discerns a bottle inside of it.  He grabs it and pulls the cork, drinks a goodly amount of it, then sinks out of sight.  Bertram hangs on until a passing ship under the command of Monsieur de Harnois rescues him.  A short, stocky figure, de Harnois is also a master seaman, a drunk, and avaricious.  He lands Bertram on Anglesea Island, charging him 60 francs for the passage.

Bertram wakes up in a brush-made hut in which an old lady with wild grey hair, ragged clothes and a piercing stare is cooking an obnoxious mixture on a wood stove.  Her name is Mother Gillie Godber and she's deranged through having lost a son, hung for a misdemeanor charge by Sir Morgan Walladmor, the local noble who lives in a castle of the same name constructed at the end of a local peninsula.  Leaving the old lady, Bert gets to the mainland and walks to Machynleth town.  Stepping into the first tavern he saw, he found himself in the company of a troupe of actors who had just finished performing "Venus Preserved", a popular work by Thomas Otway.  Other personalities are on the scene:  Dulberry the lawyer, a spouting fountain of radicalism directed against any speck of prejudicial attitude toward the lower classes.  He talks a lot, but is not listened to very much.  The owner/bartender tries to maintain a modicum of civilized behavior, but the crowd becomes rowdy,  especially while mourning the death of Edward Nicholas, a local smuggler, who supposedly was blown up along with the Halcyon.  Bert sees the latter upstairs, standing in a corner, when he is going to bed.

The next day is St. David's Day and a huge parade is scheduled with 120 Snowdon archers, decorated carriages, uniformed militias of various identities, and a carriage with Sir Morgan himself.  After a church service, Dulberry and Bertram walk over to the town hall where they find out that Captain de Harnois is going to be buried the next day.  A bit surprised, Bert agrees to go along with the entourage accompanying the cortege to the cemetery.  He's told to bring a big club.

Next day, as the funeral gets under way, Miss Walladmor's carriage almost careens over a cliff, but a figure that suspiciously resembles Edward Nicholas saves her at the last minute.  Reaching a toll gate, the line of mourners is stopped for inspection.  The officers want to inspect the inside of the coffin, but a mighty uproar at the very idea causes a riot.  In the ensuing melee, the carriage with the coffin aboard disappears.  Bert receives a note from an anonymous personage instructing him to come to the ruins of Ap Gauvon for a meeting at the Abbey.  Gillie Godber leads him in that direction and they see a lot of piratic appearing individuals trundling barrels and demijohns into the Abbey cellar.  The revenuers show up and Bert is arrested.  They think he's Edward Nicholas, the notorious smuggler, whom he apparently resembles .  The real Edward rescues him and Bert runs off but gets lost in a snow storm.  He finds a barn to sleep in at the last moment before freezing and the next morning is accused by the farmer of killing his dog who has died in the night.  Bert wanders off but is recaptured and taken to Walladmor Castle and ensconced in a perilous tower looming over a sheer cliff with wild waves crashing against the rocks below.  His trial takes place in a few days.  Things look bad for Bert until Edward, mainly due to his hopeless love for Sir Morgan's daughter, and unwilling to live any longer without her, surrenders himself to the authorities and Bert is freed.  There's a relationship between Ed and Bert which is revealed in the ensuing text, but at this point i'm going to not spoil the ending, which is not a very cheerful one, in light of the unlikely event that some other person might read the book.  Suffice it to say that Mother Godber has had a lot to do with what happens.

In Leipzig, in the early years of the nineteenth century, there was a book fair held twice a year.  One of the highlights of the festival was the publication of humorous or clever pastiches of famous books or authors.  Mr. Haering was inspired to participate one year, and produced a three volume set entitled "Walladmor", supposedly written by Sir Walter Scott.  Haering claimed that it was a translation from the original English.  Thomas de Quincy apparently obtained a copy of the book and, having time on his hands, translated the German text which had ostensibly been written in English, back into English again, only this time leaving out what he regarded as philosophical piffle, codswallopian claptrap.  The result was two volumes instead of the more classical three.  Anyway, Quincy's version in addition to being considerably shorter, also has some continuity to it, which the original probably lacked.  Not that it bore any resemblance to any book Scott might have written, but at least it was comprehensible, couched in the reasonably fluent English characteristic of the time.  I can't say the book was comparable to any of Scott's work, but it was entertaining and quite funny some of the time.  The ending was not what i expected, but was in some sense logical.  I guess i liked it, i'm still not quite sure...