Jean Erskine's Secret - D E Stevenson

Jean Erskine's Secret is one of the manuscripts by D E Stevenson that was literally "found in the attic" a few years ago & published by Greyladies. I've read & enjoyed The Fair Miss Fortune & Emily Dennistoun but Jean Erskine's Secret is the earliest of the manuscripts to be written. It's thought to have been written in about 1917 & is set in the Scottish village of Crale in the years just before & during WWI.

Jean Erskine is a daughter of the manse. Her father is advised to move from his city parish to the country &, soon after their arrival, Jean meets Diana McDonald. Diana is living at Crale Castle with her uncle Ian & cousin Elsa. Her parents aren't mentioned (Diana had previously lived with an aunt in Kensington) & Jean senses a mystery. However, the girls soon become great friends. Elsa is not a sympathetic person. She's engaged to a young man, Ray Morley Brown, who Jean knew as a child. Elsa is sarcastic, petty & generally unpleasant, spending as much time as she can in Edinburgh with Ray & her other friends & looking down upon country society. Her father sees none of this & assumes that his daughter & niece are good friends. Jean also meets Fanshaw Locke, who lives nearby & works in Edinburgh. Romantic complications develop as Jean is attracted to Fan but believes that he's in love with Diana.

The real subject of the book though is the friendship between Jean & Diana. The book is in the form of a story that Jean is writing about Diana, to explain the secret in Diana's life. I won't go into that part of the plot to avoid spoilers but the friendship between the two girls is touching & very believable. Both of them had been lonely & their friendship fills a gap in their lives that helps to make up for the disappointments & mysteries they have to overcome. Because so much of the plot is about secrets, I won't say any more about the plot.

There are many things to enjoy in this book although I do wonder whether D E Stevenson would have wanted it to be published. It's a very early work & there are plot holes & frankly unbelievably melodramatic incidents, particularly towards the end, that I felt were just ridiculous. One twist of the plot near the end reminded me more of Mary Shelley or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle than the comfortably domestic fiction I associate with D E Stevenson. To me, this book shows all the signs of being a way for the author to try out different styles of writing & I do wonder what she might have toned down or changed if she'd ever revised the manuscript for publication. There are changes of personality in some of the characters that are inconsistent. For example, after being pretty despicable all through the book, Elsa suddenly has a complete change of personality when war breaks out & goes out to France as a (completely unqualified) nurse. There are too many coincidences involving friends and relations of Jean being involved with Diana & the Macdonalds to be altogether credible or necessary.

One of the aspects of Stevenson's writing that I do love is her sense of place, particularly in her Scottish novels. Even in this early work, this is evident & I especially love she writes about weather. Here, Jean & Ian are walking through a rainy Edinburgh,

Edinburgh was a black dripping place today; the castle towered up threateningly, clearly seen against the light patches of grey sky in its jagged ebony outlines. Arthur's Seat was swathed in a wet and smoky mist; here and there it was rolled back by a puff of chill wind, one caught a glimpse of black shoulder or jutting crag only half real in the gathering gloom. The trees in the gardens were sodden, the gardens themselves deserted and sloppy, the houses all dripping wet and as black as if the rain had been ink. Every street was a running river of muddy water, across which here and there a light twinkled out, making long pale yellow reflections like pointing fingers in the quickly falling gloom. On every face was written a patient yet sullen acceptance of the comfortless conditions, as their owners ploughed through the muddy water on their several businesses.

As always, she writes about the countryside beautifully,

The day fixed by Diana for her return was one of those rare days in winter when the whole world is like an old-fashioned Christmas card. Hoar frost outlined every branch of every tree and gleamed like powdered silver over the crackling ground. A pale pink mist shrouded the valley and softened the hard glare of the sun on the white-coated land.

All in all, I'm pleased to have had a chance to read this early work of one of my favourite authors &  bringing more Stevenson novels back into print has to be a good thing.

Greyladies is also starting a new venture, a magazine, The Scribbler, that will be published three times a year. My copy of the first edition arrived on Tuesday & I couldn't wait to sit down with a cup of tea & read it from cover to cover. It's subtitled A Retrospective Literary Review & the first edition has articles on the Desert Island Discs episode from 1976 featuring Noel Streatfeild (you can listen to it here, or wherever you find your podcasts), reviews of novels set in girl's schools that concentrate more on the teachers than the pupils; the book that changed editor Shirley Neilson's life (it was called Shirley, Young Bookseller by Valerie Baxter!), an author spotlight on Lorna Hill, a literary trail of the Scottish Borders & a short story by D E Stevenson.

Copies of Jean Erskine's Secret & many other books by D E Stevenson are available in the US from Anglophile Books.

The Man with the Dark Beard - Annie Haynes

Dr John Bastow is an unlikely murder victim (especially if you believe my theory that it's the unpleasant characters who are marked for murder in Golden Age novels). He is a respected doctor, a widower with two children & seemingly no enemies. So, when he's found murdered, the motive seems elusive. Just before his death, however, he had a conversation with his old friend, barrister Sir Felix Skrine, where he hinted that he had knowledge of a crime that had gone undetected. Sir Felix advises him to go straight to the police & advises Dr Bastow to take a holiday as he's obviously overworked. There are other potential motives lurking under the surface of the doctor's seemingly placid life. Dr Bastow's daughter, Hilary, has fallen in love with her father's assistant, Basil Wilton, but the doctor doesn't approve of the relationship. Dr Bastow forbids the relationship & sacks Basil. Also in the household are Hilary's disabled brother, Felix, named after his godfather (usually known as Fee), the Doctor's secretary, Iris Houlton, & Aunt Lavinia, an outspoken, eccentrically dressed woman who lives with the Bastows in between her travels to exotic parts of the world. She struck me as a cross between Mary Kingsley & Lady Catherine De Bourgh. Aunt Lavinia disapproves of Basil & is also suspicious of the Bastows' new housemaid, Mary Ann, who she suspects of planning to entice the doctor into marriage or worse.

That same evening, the doctor is in his consulting room but doesn't respond to the parlourmaid or Basil knocking on the door. Even Aunt Lavinia can't rouse him. The maid goes goes into the garden, looks through the consulting room window & sees the doctor slumped at his desk. When the household break in, they find him dead, shot through the head at close range. Inspector Stoddart of Scotland Yard is called in & examines the scene of the crime. He finds a half-written letter to Sir Felix, about the subject of their earlier conversation, & a scrap of paper with the words, "It was the Man with the Dark Beard". A Chinese box with the proofs of that other suspected crime has also been stolen. A colleague of Dr Bastow's, Dr Sanford Morris, has a dark beard & when he shaves it off soon after the crime, & confesses that he had an appointment with Dr Bastow on the night of the murder which he says he didn't keep, he becomes one of the main suspects. Adding to the puzzle is the disappearance of the mysterious parlourmaid, Mary Ann Taylor, & the sudden transformation of Iris Houlton, who seems to have inherited money. When a second murder occurs, it seems too much of a coincidence that the same person could be involved with both victims & not be the murderer. Inspector Stoddart & his assistant, Harbord (is he a Sergeant? I assumed he was but I don't think his rank is ever mentioned) have their work cut out for them.

This is the first of four detective novels by Annie Haynes featuring Inspector Stoddart. As with The Crystal Beads Murder, I enjoyed Stoddart's investigation of the crime, with its red herrings & false trails. However, I don't think this book is as good as the later one. The villain is fairly obvious from the start although I didn't work out how the murders were done. There's also a touch too much melodrama for me in several scenes. Some aspects of the plot were more Wilkie Collins than Agatha Christie. I did enjoy some of the characterizations. Hilary's brother, Fee, has been indulged because of his disability & is peevish & demanding because of it. My favourite character was Aunt Lavinia. I enjoy characters who call a spade a spade, even though they may be completely wrong. I can't believe that she ever actually left the house in an outfit like this,

Today she wore a coat and skirt of grey tweed with the waist-line and leg-of-mutton sleeves of the Victorian era, while the length and extreme skimpiness of the skirt were essentially modern, as were her low-necked blouse, which allowed a liberal expanse of chest to be seen, and the grey silk stockings with the grey suede shoes. Her hair was shingled, of course, and had been permanently waved, but the permanent waves had belied their name, and the dyed, stubbly hair betrayed a tendency to stand on end.

I also didn't believe the end of Lavinia's story for one moment. However, The Man with the Dark Beard is a suitably convoluted mystery. Once the second murder is committed, I couldn't stop reading. I'm looking forward to reading more Annie Haynes & luckily, Dean Street Press are reprinting all her novels & kindly sent me this one for review.

Miss or Mrs? The Haunted Hotel & The Guilty River - Wilkie Collins

On the back of my OUP edition of these three novellas by Wilkie Collins, there’s a quote from T S Eliot, “Melodrama is perennial and the craving for it is perennial and must be satisfied.” Melodrama should have been Wilkie Collins’s middle name. Along with Mary Elizabeth Braddon, I can’t think of any 19th century author who does melodrama as well as Collins. He’s best known for the great sensation novels of the 1860s, The Moonstone, The Woman in White, Armadale & No Name. But, his career lasted into the 1880s & he was writing novellas & short stories to satisfy the magazines of the day throughout his career. This selection of novellas highlights some of the themes of his longer works. Miss or Mrs? further explores the themes of the anomalies of the marriage laws. Collins also explored these in his novel Man & Wife that I read earlier this year. The Guilty River returns the one of Collins’s favourite themes, the Outsider, with one character returning to England after many years abroad & another, a deaf man, who is bitter about his disability. Both men fall in love with the same girl & abduction & tragedy follow.

But, the story I enjoyed the most was The Haunted Hotel. This is a story of fate, destiny, unrequited love & murder. As is often the case, the most vibrant character is a wicked woman. Countess Narona is a mysterious figure. She engages our interest when she visits a doctor & asks him if she is going mad. She presents an odd appearance, extraordinarily pale (her complexion is described as corpse-like) but with beautiful, glittering eyes. She speaks with a foreign accent, dresses well, a handsome woman in her early thirties, apart from her pallor & “a total want of tenderness in the expression of her eyes.” The Countess is going to be married to Lord Montbarry, & the marriage is the subject of some scandal because Montbarry has jilted another woman, Agnes Lockwood, in order to marry the Countess. The couple met at the gambling tables of Europe & Montbarry was immediately captivated by her. Agnes has been noble in releasing Montbarry from his vow. She still loves him although everyone, including his own family, condemns him for his behaviour. Montbarry’s brother, Henry Westwood, is in love with Agnes & is patiently waiting for her to forget her love for the man who jilted her.

Montbarry & the Countess are married but not before the two women have met at a social function. The Countess is a woman much influenced by signs & prophecies & she feels that she & Agnes are doomed to meet again & that Agnes is fated to destroy her. After their marriage the Montbarrys travel to Italy accompanied by the mysterious figure of Baron Rivar who is said to be the Countess’s brother but some uncharitable gossips call him her lover. The Montbarry’s marriage seems to be unhappy. Montbarry regrets jilting Agnes almost as soon as the marriage has taken place. He distrusts his wife & resents the Baron asking him for money to fund his strange chemical experiments.

While they are in Venice, Lord Montbarry is taken ill & dies. The courier travelling with them, Ferrari, has mysteriously disappeared not long before. Ferrari was an Italian married to Agnes Lockwood’s former maid & Agnes had allowed her name to be mentioned to her former lover in an effort to get the post for Ferrari. Mrs Ferrari becomes obsessed with the idea that her husband has been murdered. Lord Montbarry had insured his life for a great sum of money just after his marriage & the insurers send out investigators to Venice to discover the circumstances of his death.

The prophecy of the Countess regarding Agnes is fulfilled when Montbarry’s family, the Westwoods (including Agnes, who is staying with the family of the new Lord Montbarry, brother of the dead man) travel to Venice to stay in a new hotel, partly bankrolled by Henry Westwood. This hotel is in the very same palace that Montbarry & the Countess stayed in & where he died. The palace has been completely refurbished but, the room where Montbarry died & the room above, where Baron Rivar slept, have been left intact. One after another, the Westwood siblings unknowingly stay in the room where their brother died. One by one they are driven from the room by strange happenings. One experiences disturbing dreams, another is driven out by a horrible smell, another is afflicted by a sense of desperation & depression. The culmination of these experiences is when Agnes stays in the room & fulfils the Countess’s prophecy that Agnes will be her doom.

There are some truly gruesome scenes in this story. I don’t think Collins used the atmosphere of Venice very well. The hotel could have been anywhere. He certainly doesn’t exploit the atmosphere of the canals & waterways of Venice as Daphne Du Maurier did, for example, in her short story, Don’t Look Now. But this is a truly creepy story. The character of the Countess is enigmatic. Her gradual descent into madness is well done & her confession written in the form of a playscript is different, to say the least. In a story of just over 150pp there’s a lot of very convoluted plot & not everything is tied up eg the true relationship of the Countess & the Baron is left unexplained. But, if you love Wilkie & want a story that grabs you in the first few pages with the appearance of the Countess & doesn’t let go until the last page, I’d recommend The Haunted Hotel.

The string of pearls - Thomas Preskett Prest

I’ve never seen any of the many versions of the story of Sweeney Todd. So, I was intrigued to read the original novel when it was chosen by my 19th century bookgroup. We’re currently reading 19th century books & plays that inspired musical versions. We’ve recently read La Dame aux Camellias & now Sweeney Todd. The novel is actually called The String of Pearls & I’ve discovered through the posts of the very knowledgeable members of the group, that there have been many changes to the story in the subsequent musical versions. My copy of the book actually has Johnny Depp in the latest movie version of the Stephen Sondheim musical on the cover, but I couldn’t take a non-flaring photo of it so I used this one instead.

All I knew about Sweeney Todd was that he murdered his victims by means of an ingenious swivelling barber’s chair which dumped them in the cellar where he cut their throats & that they were made into meat pies by Mrs Lovett. What I didn’t expect was that the book would be such a great read.

The author is supposed to be Thomas Preskett Prest but even this isn’t certain. The story first appeared in Edward Lloyd’s People’s Periodical. Lloyd was renowned for ripping off famous authors of the day. Some of his other serials were Oliver Twiss & Nikelas Nickelberry. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you whose books were being plundered there! Copyright laws were practically non-existent in the early 19th century & unauthorized print & stage versions of any successful novel were commonplace.

The String of Pearls is set in the 1780s in London. Sweeney Todd has set up his barber’s shop & is murdering wealthy men with alacrity. He has cupboards & chests filled with the money, gold, jewels & walking canes of these unfortunate gentlemen & their remains are conveyed by an underground tunnel to Mrs Lovett’s pie shop where they’re made into pies by a succession of unfortunate cooks. As soon as the cooks work out where the meat is coming from, they’re made into pies as well & a new employee is sought. This is a rip roaring story with grotesque characters & not a lot of character development. We never discover how Todd & Mrs Lovett met or why they began their evil trade. Todd has a resourceful assistant, Tobias Ragg, who is shocked when he disobeys orders & searches Todd’s rooms when he’s out. He soon realises what’s going on &, after trying to escape, ends up imprisoned in an asylum.

The pearls of the title are the property of a young seaman who is presumed lost at sea. Mark Ingestrie went to sea after his love affair with the beautiful Johanna Oakley is forbidden by her parents. He is on his way home to her with the pearls when his ship is lost. The only survivor is Captain Thornhill, Mark’s friend. He has the pearls & is on his way to tell Johanna of Mark’s death when he stops for a shave at Sweeney Todd’s barber shop. That’s the last we see of Thornhill, although his faithful dog, Hector, stands guard outside the door of the shop, arousing the suspicions of his friend, Colonel Jeffrey, who is determined to find out what has happened. One of many loose ends in the story is what happens to Hector. We can only presume he ended up in a pie but his fate is uncertain. Johanna is heartbroken when she hears Jeffrey’s story & decides to get a job as barber’s assistant, dressed as a boy. A local magistrate with his own suspicions of Sweeney Todd becomes involved & the scene is set for the exciting ending.

Along the way, we see Todd trying to sell the pearls, falling in with a set of thieves & barely escaping with his life & a particularly horrible picture of an insane asylum run by rogues for the sole purpose of incarcerating forlorn heiresses & unwanted children. The story is full of macabre humour & melodrama. Todd talks to his customers of “polishing you off” but they think he means a brush & a shave & he means something altogether more sinister. The pies are described in the most luscious way,

And well did they deserve their reputation, those delicious pies; there was about them a flavour never surpassed & rarely equalled; the paste was of the most delicate construction, & impregnated with the aroma of a delicious gravy that defies description. Then the small portions of meat which they contained were so tender, & the fat & the lean so artistically mixed up, that to eat one of Lovett’s pies was such a provocative to eat another, that many persons who came to lunch stayed to dine, wasting more than an hour, perhaps, of precious time...

The enjoyment of the young clerks & lawyers who frequent the shop is emphasized & lingered over in the most stomach-churning way as the reader knows what the eaters do not. As usual in this type of melodrama, the villains are much more interesting than the hero & heroine. This is definitely a page turner. It’s a story that could have been forgotten if its vitality & ingenuity hadn’t ensured its popularity at the time & made it the basis for the many versions of the story that have followed.