Old Bestsellers: The Man from Scotland Yard, by David Frome

The Man from Scotland Yard, by David Frome

a review by Rich Horton

This book might not have been a real bestseller but it seemed to do OK: the edition I have was the fifth printing (in about a year) of the Pocket Books edition. Indeed, its publication history is interesting (to me), and a bit of a window on publishing history in general.

The first edition, in 1932 was from Farrar and Rinehart. This company was founded in 1929 by John C. Farrar and Stanley Rinehart, Jr. This was the first of two prominent publishing firms founded by Farrar -- the second of course is the legendary Farrar, Straus and Giroux, founded as Farrar, Straus in 1946. Stanley Rinehart was the son of famous mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. He and his brother Frederick had worked at the firm George H. Doran (which published the last book I reviewed, You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner), but which became Doubleday, Doran after a merger in 1927. Stanley and Frederick then joined Farrar in his new venture, taking their mother and her future books with them. After Farrar left Farrar and Rinehart, the company was called Rinehart and Company until 1960, when a merger with two other companies, Henry Holt and John C. Winston, created the prominent firm Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

There were no mass market paperbacks in the early '30s, so the first inexpensive edition of The Man from Scotland Yard was a hardcover from Grosset and Dunlap in 1934, one of the (perhaps THE) leading reprint hardcover houses. The mass market paperback was essentially invented by Pocket Books in 1939, so this book, first reprinted in paperback in 1942, was a fairly early example. And my edition, I should add, was a wartime edition, and the publishers made special note of that, with this disclaimer: "In order to cooperate with the government's war effort, this book has been made in strict conformity with WPB regulations concerning the use of certain materials." There is also a sort of PSA at the end urging people to "HELP WIN THE WAR! Don't waste anything."

As for the author, "David Frome" has a somewhat interesting history. Frome was a pseudonym for an American writer with the unlikely name of Zenith Brown (nee Jones). Zenith Brown was born in California (daughter of a missionary to Indians), and was educated at the University of Washington (in Seattle), and briefly taught there, but lived much of her life in Annapolis. Her husband, Ford K. Brown, was a Professor at the very well regarded liberal arts school St. John's College in Annapolis: known primarily for their "Great Books" curriculum. Zenith Brown (1898-1983) published her first novel in 1929, when she was living in London: In at the Death, as by Frome. Her English-set books continued to be published under the Frome name, but she also wrote a great many mysteries set in the US (mainly in the DC area) as by "Leslie Ford", and also a few books as by "Brenda Conrad". As "Leslie Ford" she was apparently a regular in the Saturday Evening Post. She stopped writing )or at least publishing) in 1962.

Well, after all that blather, what was the book like? I quite enjoyed it. It's billed as "A Mr. Pinkerton Mystery", as were most or all of her British-set books. Mr. Pinkerton is a mousy Welsh widower, free at last from the domination of his horrible wife, but with nothing in his life except his (apparently accidental) friendship with Inspector J. Humphrey Bull of Scotland Yard. Pinkerton is not really central to the book, though he's an important character. The story is told from multiple points of view, but Bull's POV is most important.

It opens with a pair of young men noticing an acquaintance of theirs, the somewhat older (but still beautiful) Diana Barrett, looking distressed and heading to a moneylenders'. It seems she is known as a reckless gambler on horse racing. And indeed Mrs. Barrett is next seen begging Mr. David Craikie for extra time to pay back her £5000 loan. But it seems she must ask David's brother Simon instead, and he is not in. Then we meet handwriting expert Mr. Arthurington, returning from holiday in France. When Mr. Arthurington gets home, he is shocked to discover a dead man in his house, which had been rented but (mysteriously?) vacated a short time previously. Next up is Inspector Bull, looking into the matter of an odd note claiming "a mother and three little ones" have been killed and buried in the back garden of a small house ... only to find that the murdered creatures are cats. And finally we meet Mr. Arthurington's daughter Joan and her friend Nancy, also returning to England in the company of their duenna, Miss Mandle.

All this seems terribly complicated, and it is. Before long another murder has occurred, and Inspector Bull is on the case, soon realizing that -- perhaps -- the two murdered men are in fact the moneylenders Simon and David Craikie. Or are they? The two brothers were reclusive people, and the identification doesn't seem absolutely certain. Mr. Pinkerton shows up begging to help, and to get him out of his hair Bull asks him to investigate the matter of the murdered cats ... and somehow Pinkerton, largely by accident, finds out, or helps Bull find out, and unexpected connection between that disquieting but trivial incident and the double murder. As for all the other characters ... Mrs. Barrett, the Arhuringtons, even the two young men in the opening scene ... they are all connected to each other -- mostly they are neighbors, and indeed they also have at least slight connections to the Craikies, or to the Craikies' lawyer.

Complications build on complications. There is a Craikie sister and a (missing) Craikie daughter. The Australian tenant of the Arthurington house might be implicated. Social climbing Americans are mentioned. Mr. Arthurington's handwriting expertise comes into play. And Mr. Pinkerton goes off to Liverpool ...

The whole construction is highly improbable and overcomplicated, but it does pretty much hold together, and it makes for a satisfyingly intricate mystery with a fairly believable solution (believable under the implicit conditions of this subgenre). Inspector Bull is an pretty well-realized, if somewhat stock, character, and enjoyable to read about. There are moments of suspense and danger, and the book is always readable and interesting. It's far from a great work -- it's an artificial construction. But on its own terms it's quite fun. Edmund Wilson (not a favorite of mine ... wrong about Lovecraft, wrong about Tolkien, wrong about entertainment in general -- though to be fair, pretty much right about the likes of Nabokov and Hemingway and Fitzgerald) famously asked "Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?", and of course that's a classic case of entirely missing the point. No, we don't really "care" about Ackroyd -- or, in this book, the Craikies -- in any deep way: the pleasures are different and doubtless shallower, but this sort of book does what it does (when done well) effectively.

Old Bestsellers: You Know Me Al, by Ring W. Lardner

You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner

a review by Rich Horton

You Know Me Al remains, I think, fairly well known, even 100 years after it was first published, as a series of short pieces in the Saturday Evening Post. The book version came out two years later, in 1916, from George H. Doran. I confess I had assumed it was a bestseller: Lardner was a popular writer, and the book was immediately famous and sequels followed. But apparently it sold only modestly at first -- perhaps because so many people had read it first in the SEP. (My edition is a 1992 trade paperback reprint from Prairie State Books, an imprint of the University of Illinois Press, with an introduction by well known baseball novelist Mark Harris, author of Bang the Drum Slowly.)

Ring Lardner was born Ringgold Wilmer Lardner in 1886, in Niles, Michigan, in the Southwest corner of the state (nearish to Chicago, and an area I'm moderately familiar with). He disliked his full first name and insisted on being called Ring ...but then he named his son Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Jr. (Ring Lardner Jr. was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten screenwriters -- he won Oscars before the blacklist (for Woman of the Year) and after (for M*A*S*H, though supposedly he disliked that film because director Robert Altman changed the script so much (I had thought he allowed his actors to improvise and change lines?))

Lardner (Sr.) was, like Irvin S. Cobb who I've mentioned here previously, rather precocious, and became a reporter on the South Bend Tribune as a teenager, moving to Chicago, and eventually the Chicago Tribune, soon after. Lardner spent time on the baseball beat, covering the White Sox, and that became the genesis of You Know Me Al. You Know Me Al is considered his only "novel", but that's a stretch -- structurally, to me, it is a collection of linked stories, with admittedly something of a narrative arc. Lardner went on to publish many more stories about Jack Keefe, the hero of You Know Me Al, and indeed it became a comic strip in the '20s. Lardner published many excellent short stories on other subjects than baseball, perhaps the most famous being "Alibi Ike" and "Haircut". His editor, later in life, was Maxwell Perkins, who begged him for a novel -- or at least a novella! -- that never came. Lardner died quite young, in 1933.

You Know Me Al is a sequence of letters from a young man named Jack Keefe to his best friend, Al Blanchard, back home in Bedford (which is presumably a rural town in Indiana or Michigan). Keefe has been pitching for Terre Haute but is bought by the White Sox. The book, in 6 chapters, tells the story of Keefe's first two or three years in the major leagues. He's a pretty talented pitcher, though not so talented as he thinks he is, and he's arrogant and lazy. Over the course of the book he has some ups and downs, though it seems that when he pitches regularly he does quite well. But he also messes up some, doing things like hitting a man on purpose with the bases full, and he finds himself sold to Milwaukee, and out of a job, and eventually back with the Sox but on the second team. He is also naive about money, insisting he will hold out for much more money than he ends up settling for, etc.

We get some details about baseball training at the time -- it seems the White Sox trained in California in those days. There's a bit of inside baseball, and some hints about the other ways teams tried to make money -- barnstorming, foreign trips, etc. And there are a lot of tidbits about the famous players of the time, like Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, and Tris Speaker.

But all that makes it sound very little like the book really is. It's definitely a baseball book, yes, but not in a dry way at all. For one thing, Jack Keefe's personal life is also central -- he has a lot of woman trouble, taking up with two different women who end up throwing him over when he seems in danger of losing his job with the Sox, then marrying the sister-in-law of one of his teammates, who leaves him for a time after a quarrel. He has a child eventually, who he loves but doesn't quite know how to deal with. And he is quick to threaten a fight, if slightly slower to follow through, and he likes his liquor and his food rather too much. In fact, he's kind of a jerk -- a blowhard, rather stupid and not very aware of it, careless with his money and with others and yet very cheap at times as well, not always a good teammate (constantly blaming his fielders for any runs he gives up, that sort of thing).

The real joy of the novel is the language. Jack Keefe is not an artful writer, nor speller, though he's a facile writer, and Lardner captures his voice beautifully. Here he describes Tigers' manager Hughie Jennings trash-talking him before a game: "Jennings says You ain't going to pitch that bird are you? And Callahan [Sox manager] said Yes he was. Then Jennings says I wish you wouldn't because my boys is all tired out and can't run the bases." Here he asks Charlie Comiskey, the owner, if his wife can come to spring training: "He says Sure they would be glad to have her along. And then I says Would the club pay her fair? He says I guess you must have spent that $100 [that Comiskey had advanced him] buying some nerve. He says Have you not got no sisters that would like to go along to? He says Does your wife insist on the drawing room or will she take a lower birth? He says Is my special train good enough for her?"

And much more like that. So, it's a fine work, a good picture of life in the early part of the century, and of baseball at that time, and engagingly written. It did drag a bit after a while, though -- I wonder if it read a little better in installments as originally published. Later stories apparently took Keefe to World War I, among other things. Lardner, a huge baseball fan, apparently gave up on the game after his beloved White Sox threw the World Series in 1919, in the worst scandal in the game's history, however, and that was the end of the Jack Keefe stories as well.

Old Bestsellers: Cleek of Scotland Yard, by T. W. Hanshew

 

Cleek of Scotland Yard, by T. W. Hanshew

A review by Rich Horton

Back to a book that really is old (1914), was apparently at least something of a bestseller, and is pretty much forgotten. This is Cleek of Scotland Yard, by T. W. Hanshew.

Hanshew was an American, born in 1857 in Brooklyn, but he lived in the UK from 1892. He died in 1914. He was an actor, playing when very young with the famous Ellen Terry, but he became a writer, and a very prolific writer of early pulp fiction. Wikipedia claims he wrote some 150 novels, many as by Charlotte May Kingsley. His wife, Mary E. Hanshew, was also an author, and they apparently collaborated while he was alive, and further books and stories were published under his name or both their names for some years after his death -- they may have been finished by his wife, or written entirely by her with his name included on the byline for better sales or for some other reason. There is some evidence that their daughter, Hazel Phillips Hanshew, also an author, may have written some later books published under her parents' names, including some of the later Cleek stories.

Hanshew was well enough known in his life for his prolificity that he was identified -- apparently wrongly -- as the author of the "Dora Thorne" stories as by "Bertha Clay" -- I found an extract from a New York Times article that appeared shortly after his death claiming to have disproved this assertion.

I should add, by the way, that the most useful source for this information was the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, despite that Hanshew was at the best only marginally a writer of fantastika -- Cleek has a mild "superpower", the ability to change his looks by mental effort (supposedly, rather absurdly, because his mother played with a rubber toy while he was in the womb). This is not the first time the SFE has proved the best source of online information about a non-SF author -- it is a thoroughly wonderful resource.

Cleek was by far Hanshew's most famous character. The first Cleek book was The Man of the Forty Faces (1910), a fixup of a number of short stories. The book at hand, Cleek of Scotland Yard, reads like another fixup: it's a set of separate crime-solving episodes, linked to some extent by an encompassing plot arc. The SFE says it was published over a number of issues of Cassell's Saturday Journal as "Cleek of the Yard" in 1912 (and, I suspect, 1913, based on my edition's copyright dates: 1912, 1913, 1914). The book appeared, then, in 1914. My copy is from Doubleday and Page.

The book is illustrated, interestingly, "from photographs of the motion pictures", "by courtesy of Thomas A. Edison, Inc.". Thus I presume there were a number of films (perhaps shorts) made from the stories herein. (The photographs, and there are quite a few, do illustrate scenes from the book, always featuring the same actors as Cleek and his friend and sort of boss, Narkom.)

Update: Jess Nevins and (I presume) John Grant have pointed me to references to the Cleek films -- there were quite a few, from 1911 to 1914, all shorts, based on single episodes, presumably from both books. 

(Another bit of publishing trivia: at the end their is a seal for "The Country Life Press, Garden City, NY". What is the relationship of this press to Doubleday and Page (also located in Garden City)? Is it the printers as opposed to the publisher? Update: Richard Fidczuk found a reference to the still-extant Country Life Press Railroad Station, on the Long Island Railroad. Apparently this was originally a station explicitly for the use of the Country Life Press, which was indeed part of Doubleday, presumably the place the books were printed.)

The book itself opens with a prologue featuring Scotland Yard Superintendent Maverick Narkom. Several men have been mysteriously murdered, and he hasn't a clue (or clew?) what is up, and he has no idea where his former helper Hamilton Cleek is to be found. Then comes news that Cleek's old house in Clarges Street has been dynamited, and Cleek's old enemy (and one time fellow thief), Margot, the French "Queen of the Apaches" is implicated, along with the rulers of Mauravania (a country which, as Langford and Clute write in the SFE, might as well be called Ruritania), which has become embroiled in revolution led by Count Irma, who is loyal to the former Crown Prince, once thought dead but now rumored to be alive ... All this turns out to be important in the end (and it's easy to guess why eventually), but first a chase into France to try to capture Margot ...

Not surprisingly, Cleek turns up -- he wasn't in the house after all -- but Margot escapes. The rest of the book is a series of mysteries that Cleek solves, usually by leaping to far-fetched conclusions that are invariably correct. Cleek also occasionally uses his mysterious power to disguise himself. He is also often on the run from the Mauravanian Count Waldemar, who wants revenge for Cleek having fouled up some scheme in the past.

The mysteries really are mostly a bit absurd, though sometimes amusing. Some of the weapons are curious -- I liked the secret of the projectile used to shoot someone with curare (mainly I suppose because I figured out what it was immediately). In a couple of cases Cleek realizes that no crime was actually committed. Narkom, his constant companion, is something of a buffoonish foil, though not completely so.

The mysteries are interposed with occasional scenes of Cleek preparing a house for his fiancee, the saintly Ailsa Lorne, who "redeemed" Cleek from his former life of crime. Cleek plans to marry her once he has paid back all the victims of his burglaries. But towards the end, a strange secret from Cleek's past threatens their happiness ...

As noted, it reads mostly like a fixup of separate stories, but there is enough connecting material, and something of an overarching story arc, to consider it ultimately a novel, if a bit of a broken backed mess. One issue is that we see little and learn little of Ailsa Lorne, so that Cleek's relationship with her does not affect the reader at all. I would rank it as one of the less impressive examples of "old bestsellerdom" that I've encountered.

Not a Bestseller, not that Old, and not Forgotten: Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

A review by Rich Horton

Apologies this week, because this book was certainly not a bestseller, and also cannot be called forgotten. But I'm a bit behind on the next "Old Bestseller" I wanted to cover, so I beg your indulgence while I cover one of my favorite books of recent years.

Marilynne Robinson was born in 1943 in Sandpoint, Idaho. She attended Pembroke College, then the women's college at Brown University, and got her Ph. D. at the University of Washington. She has primarily been an academic since then, famously at the University of Iowa's notorious writing program; but at many other places as well. She is also noticeably a Christian writer: she was raised Presbyterian and became a Congregationalist, which is the United States' version of John Calvin's Reformed Church. It's all a bit convoluted, as Congregationalists are now part of the United Church of Christ, which seems a lot more liberal than the reputation of Calvinism. Robinson's views here are, as far as I can tell, politically liberal but theologically quite conservative (or Reformed) -- which to my mind is not really where the UCC is these days. (I have a UCC friend, and they seem to me politically liberal and also theologically "liberal", whatever that means.)

Robinson came to my attention with the 2005 novel Gilead, or more precisely, with an excerpt from Gilead published in the New Yorker. I loved the novel, which is about a Congregationalist pastor in Iowa in the 1950s. At the time her only other novel was Housekeeping, written about a quarter century before Gilead. It  had also been very well received in literary circles, though I don't think it got quite the attention (or sales) that Gilead received. (After all Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize.) Since then Robinson has written two more novels, both set contemporaneously with Gilead and covering the same events from a different perspective. Home (2008) is an incredibly powerful novel, and Lila is coming out this October -- I can only hope it is as good as Gilead and Home.

In many ways Gilead is a novel about fathers and sons. So it is convenient to describe Housekeeping as a novel about mothers and daughters. (And indeed Home turned out to be, to a great extent, about a father and a daughter.) And to a considerable extent this is true, though as with Gilead, any simplistic description sheerly fails to capture any idea of what the book is like. Still, it is true that it is told from the point of view of a woman whose mother committed suicide, and who, along with her younger sister, was after that raised by first her grandmother, then two rather dotty great-aunts, and finally her mother's somewhat odd sister. But in no way does that describe the effect of this quite lovely book.

The novel is set in Fingerbone, Idaho, an isolated town on the shores of a mountain lake. Ruth, or Ruthie, is the narrator. She and her sister Lucille spend the bulk of their childhood in the house their grandfather built after coming, almost on a whim, to Fingerbone. Their grandfather worked on the railroad until his spectacular death in a derailment. There were three daughters. One became a missionary, and the other two married quite unsuitably -- neither marriage seeming to last long.

Ruthie and Lucille live with their mother for a few years in Seattle, after their father, who seems unknown to everyone, abandons them, and then their mother takes a borrowed car to Fingerbone, drops the girls off at her mother's house, and drives the car into the lake. There follows a few years with their matter of fact and sensible grandmother, a few months with the rather comical great aunts, then the arrival of Sophie, their aunt, who was married about as unsuitably as their mother, and probably for a much shorter time. Apparently she has become a hobo, or in Robinson's term a transient, riding the rails in the Upper Northwest. The bulk of the novel concerns Ruthie and Lucille's life with Sophie, and how they are affected by Sophie's "housekeeping", or lack thereof. The two girls, for a long time close only to each other, react differently to Sophie's ways, leading to a quite unexpected resolution.

Indeed the novel surprises everywhere. It is not ever what the reader expects -- it is always original. This extends to the prose, which is as lovely and elegant and firm as that of Gilead, though in a somewhat different voice. If I was to nitpick I would say that I had a firmer sense that the first person narrative in Gilead represented the narrator's voice, while in Housekeeping I think it is more the author's voice than Ruthie's. But quite a lovely voice -- the prose is simply wonderful. Best perhaps to offer longish quote: "Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water -- peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt where would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand upon one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries."

Housekeeping is a remarkable novel. The spare cold Western landscape is central. Everywhere there is solitude, abandonment. Everywhere houses are lost, not kept. It is quite strikingly moving, and as I said quite unexpected at every turn. As I said it is one of my favorite novels I've read in the past decade -- and Home is another, a great great novel.

Old Bestsellers: The Queen Pedauque, by Anatole France

The Queen Pedauque (La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque) by Anatole France

A review by Rich Horton

This week I'm going back into my archive of reviews of older books for a book that doesn't quite fit the parameters of this series -- it's old, and it was probably a bestseller or nearly one, but it was published in France, by a man named France. In fact, Anatole France (1844-1924) was a major figure in French letters (no, not THOSE French letters!), a member of the Académie Française, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. His best known novel might be Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard  (1881). Other well known novels include Thaïs (1890), which was the source material for the Jules Massenet opera, and the book at hand, La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque. It is my sense that his reputation has declined somewhat in the past century or so, though I'm not sure -- perhaps in France he is still highly regarded.

The Queen Pedauque was first published in 1892 as La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque. My edition is a tatty 1926 Modern Library edition, translated by Jos. A. V. Stritzko, with an introduction by James Branch Cabell. There was a sequel of sorts, The Opinions of Jerome Coignard.

It's the story of a young man in the late 1700s, Jacques Menetrier, the son of a cookshop owner (the cookshop is called "The Queen Pedauque), who falls under the sway of a somewhat rascally cleric named Jerome Coignard.  Coignard freeloads at the cookshop for a while, teaching young Jacques Latin and other things.  After a while they are jointly hired by a dotty nobleman, M. d'Asterac, who employs them translating some ancient documents.  D'Asterac believes in alchemy, and to that end also employs a Jewish man named Mosaide, who claims to be a 135 year old Kabbalist.  D'Asterac furthermore is constantly propounding his theories of "salamanders" and "sylphs", spirits of fire who will come if called, and who are the only worthy lovers.  When he has Jacques call a salamander, Mosaide's beautiful niece shows up by coincidence, and soon becomes Jacques' lover.  Before long, Jacques is in further trouble, as his one-time object of devotion, the lacemaker Catherine who (it is hinted) was previously Jacques' father's lover, tries to lure Jacques into a relationship, embroiling him in rivalry with a nobleman and with the merchant who is keeping Catherine.  The plot is resolved when the merchant breaks in upon a wild party involving the nobleman, Jacques, Coignard and Catherine.  At the same time Mosaide, who hates Christians, becomes convinced that Coignard has compromised his niece's virtue (which the book hints might be the case, although it is Jacques and later Jacques' noble rival who actually commit the acts that Mosaide directly lays at Coignard's door).  All flee, and by mischance Catherine ends up on her way to Canada, Coignard ends up dead, and Mosaide's niece throws over Jacques for the nobleman, who after all can offer her a lot more in the way of material possessions.  Jacques ends up a bookshop owner.

The core to the story is not the plot, though, but the sly nature of the telling, and the character of Coignard.  Throughout there are hints that more is going on than Jacques is either aware of, or willing to tell us of (he is the narrator).  Coignard's philosophy is a rather odd version of Catholicism.  One of his major tenets is that to properly repent, one must properly sin, and he seems to have missed few chances in his life of properly sinning.  Though apparently a priest (though once again, Coignard's assumption of the title abbe may be his own story, and not the Church's doing, it's hard to tell), he is a womanizer, a card cheat, and a thief. He's also a legitimate scholar, and always interested in knowledge as well as cadging a good meal.  The book is slyly funny throughout, also pretty exciting, and at times just strange.  It is marred mainly by the anti-semitism of the treatment of Mosaide, though I'm not sure but that France was in this way mocking the harsh and morally wrong views of 18th Century Frenchmen. (I also caught France in a curious anachronism: he has Coignard refer to the greatness as a writer of French of Balzac.  But the book is set in 1770 or so, certainly before 1789, and Honoré de Balzac was not born until 1799. Unless there is another Balzac? (And as BV Lawson notes in the comments, there was another Balzac, and perhaps that is who France meant.)

Old Bestsellers: Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini

Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini

A review by Rich Horton

I will begin with a disclaimer aimed at those who have navigated here from Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books page, who may complain that Scaramouche is hardly forgotten. I concede this of course -- but the collective title of my review series is "Old Bestsellers", and Scaramouche was indeed a bestseller, nigh on a hundred years ago -- at least, it is routinely described in such terms as "runaway bestseller"; and it has been filmed at least twice, in 1923 and in 1952. That said, it does not appear in the Publishers' Weekly list of the ten bestselling novels of 1921. Sabatini did appear on the list in 1923 (with The Sea Hawk, first published in 1915), in 1924 (Mistress Wilding, from 1910), and in 1925 (The Carolinian, from 1924). None of those three novels have the reputation of Scaramouche (though The Sea Hawk still has readers). (I should add that The Sea Hawk is NOT the source material for the Errol Flynn movie of that title.)

Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950) had an interesting life. He was born in Italy to two opera singers, an Englishwoman (Anna Trafford) and an Italian (Vincenzo Sabatini). They were apparently not married when Rafael was born, which is reflected in the parentage of the protagonist of Scaramouche, though they may have married later (Anna referred to herself as Mrs. Sabatini, and the couple stayed together). Sabatini was raised mostly in England with Anna's parents while Anna and Vincenzo travelled, but after the couple settled down as singing teachers in Portugal, he moved back with them, and was schooled in Portugal and later Switzerland. At 17 he took a commercial job in Liverpool, and shortly thereafter began to write stories. though he was fluent in at least six languages, he wrote in English, he said, because "all the best stories are in English". Sabatini lived in many places, but his eventual permanent home was on the English/Welsh borderland.

(My source for most of this, by the way, is an excellent website, The Life and Work of Rafael Sabatini, compiled mostly by Jesse F. Knight.)
 
Sabatini's earliest stories are apparently lost, perhaps having appeared in local newspapers, but by the late '90s he was appearing in major magazines such as Pearson's. His novels started appearing in 1902, but his first major success was with Scaramouche, which appeared when he was 46. After its success, many of his earlier novels were reprinted, hence the bestselling status, years after first publication, of The Sea Hawk and Mistress Wilding. Captain Blood, perhaps his second most famous novel, followed quickly on Scaramouche in 1922: it was a fixup of several short stories (and the two subsequent Captain Blood books were overtly story collections). Sabatini complained somewhat about some of those reissues on the grounds that his earlier work was not nearly as good as Scaramouche, partly, he confessed, because "At the time of writing them, I had yet to make the discovery that, to produce an historical romance of any value, it is necessary first to engage in researches so exhaustive as to qualify one to write a history of the epoch in which the romance is set."

Sabatini's personal life was somewhat sad -- his only son died in 1927 in a car accident, and he and his wife divorced in 1931. He remarried, and his stepson died crashing his plane shortly after joining the RAF.

The first line of Scaramouche is one of the most famous in literature: "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." It does slow down a bit after that, for the first few chapters, before gaining momentum. The main character is called André-Louis Moreau, an illegitimate child raised by a country gentleman who calls himself the boy's godfather or uncle -- tongues wag, of course, though we are told that honest and bluff Quintin de Kercadious, Lord of Gavrillac (in Brittany), always denied to his ward that he was the boy's father.

André-Louis becomes a lawyer, and rather a cynic, in particular fond of mocking his best friend Philippe de Vilmorin's revolutionary views. But when Philippe is goaded into a duel by the odious Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, after the latter ordered the shooting of a poacher on his property, André-Louis vows take up his friend's cause, largely because that will annoy the Marquis -- and perhaps also because the Marquis is courting Andre-Louis's cousin Aline, and he is disgusted that she seems ready to sell herself for a title.

Soon André-Louis is fomenting revolution in the provincial towns of Rennes and Nantes, and he becomes a wanted man. Aline urges him to flee, and he does, meeting up with a traveling band of players in the tradition of the improvisatory Italian Commedia Dell'Arte. It is about at this point that the novel takes off. André-Louis is beguiled by the beautiful lead actress of the troupe, Mlle. Climène Binet, and he volunteers to join them as property-man and carpenter -- and also to use his knowledge of the classical theater to help the leader, M. Binet (Climène's father), in preparing scenarios. Before long André (as he now calls himself, surname Louis -- a pretty transparent alias) has taken on the traditional trickster role of Scaramouche, and he has completely reformed the troupe, making them a remarkable success with his new scenarios and his acting. And he has also become engaged to Climène. But when Climène agrees to become the mistress of a nobleman -- no other than the Marquis de la Tour D'Azyr -- André is enraged and foments a riot, hoping the crowd will punish him.

His acting career over, he proceeds to Paris, now awash in revolutionary sentiment. André apprentices himself to a fencer, and soon becomes pretty much the greatest swordsman in the history of the world, inventing new techniques that will later become standard textbook fare. He tries to ignore the political torrents swirling about him, but he is drawn into things when the aristocrats -- led, naturally, by the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr -- begin baiting leading men of the more democratic party into duels.

Things move quickly from this point ... we see, of course, a duel between André and the Marquis, and André's fraught reunion with his stepfather and with Aline, still being courted by the Marquis, and, oh yeah, the French Revolution ... followed by the onset of the Terror, and a decision for André-Louis, not to mention resolution of the issue of his parentage. (Easily enough guessed!)

It's really great fun: there's no way around that. It's nicely written, funny when it needs to be, and stirring when it needs to be. There's a love story (or two or more), none of which fully convince (mainly because the story is so focused on the men that we never really get to know the women well enough). The main drawback is the way André-Louis is so perfect -- suddenly a great orator, then a great actor (not to mention a budding playwright who it seems would have rivaled Molière had he stayed with it), then the greatest fencer of all time, then a significant politician (though to be fair not really a leader in this area). This stuff is fun, but perhaps just a bit too much. Still, I really enjoyed it, and it's easy to see why it was so popular.

Sabatini wrote a sequel, Scaramouche the King-Maker, published in 1931. It was not well-received. The 1952 movie version of Scaramouche, which starred Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker, Janet Leigh, and Mel Ferrer (big enough names, anyway), seems to be popular but in synopsis it looks to have played way too fast and loose with the plot and the motivations of the novel. The climactic swordfight is famous as one of the longest in movie history.

Old Bestsellers: Ladies and Gentlemen, by Irvin S. Cobb

Ladies and Gentlemen, by Irvin S. Cobb

A review by Rich Horton

Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944) was an extremely popular author early in the 20th Century, probably best known for his Judge Priest stories and for his newspaper writing. He was born in Paducah, KY, and was managing editor of the Paducah Daily News by the age of 19! By 1904 he had moved to New York, where he worked for the Evening Sun and later the Saturday Evening Post. Later he was part of the staff of Cosmopolitan, and he also wrote a widely syndicated humor column. He also worked on silent films, and by the '30s he was even acting in a few films. He was also the host of the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony. And he was a leading opponent of Prohibition.He was, for a time, on top of the world.

His daughter was a writer herself, of novels and plays and also a memoir of Irvin S. Cobb: My Wayward Parent. Her daughter, Cobb's granddaughter, was Buff Cobb, a television personality of the 1950s and the second wife of Mike Wallace.

And by now, it's fair to say, I think, that he's all but forgotten. Sadly, this process seems to have started while he was still alive. His writing seems to have dated rather quickly. He also apparently grew somewhat bitter in his last years -- perhaps his health was an issue, likely finances were an issue, his declining popularity (underscored by the abrupt cancellation, in about 1940, of his humor column) was a major issue. Early in his career he had a fairly good reputation on matters of race: he was a vocal opponent of the Klan, he wrote an influential article for the Saturday Evening Post praising black soldiers in World War I. But, still, he was a creature of his time -- born in the South shortly after the Civil War (albeit not born in a Confederate state) -- and his attitudes about black people, which seem to have been somewhat patronizing, never changed, and what seemed, perhaps, almost mainstream in 1915 was offensive in 1940.

I should add that he wrote some well-regarded horror stories, perhaps most notably "Fishhead"  and "The Unbroken Chain", both of which are regarded as significant influences on Lovecraft.

Ladies and Gentleman is a collection of stories, published by Cosmopolitan Book Corporation in 1927. Those stories that I can trace to earlier magazine publication appeared in Cosmopolitan between 1924 and 1927 -- I'm not sure if the other stories appeared in other magazines or if they are new to this book. The stories have definitely dated -- they are slickly enough done, often fitfully amusing, but they don't convince, and they can seem quite contrives. One critic called him "the last disciple of O. Henry", and not in a good way. As with many writers of the past, he doesn't compel revival on his merits, but he does seem worth a look simply to understand what was very popular in those times, and to acknowledge those skills he had, which were not negligible.

Here's a quick look at each of the stories. The dominant mode is somewhat comic, and some of that remains, despite the datedness, but some is lost on the contemporary reader. But that's by no means the only mode -- there's some sentimentalism, and some stories more in a crime mode.

"A Lady and a Gentleman" (7100 words) ... an aging Confederate veteran gets lost looking for a place to stay in a town hosting a reunion of Civil War veterans, and ends up being hosted by a mysterious woman. The two, over the brief time of his stay, strike up a friendship, even though it is clear that the man has no idea that she is not a "Lady", nor does he realize what business her house in engaged in.

"The Order of the Bath" (10300 words) ... somewhat sub-Wodehousian comedy about an English novelist visiting a town in New Jersey on a lecture tour, and the chaos that ensues when the lady of the house is convinced by her brother to employ a butler during the novelist's stay.

"Two of Everything" (8300 words) ... a man narrowly avoids getting caught in a landslide in northern Montana, and realizes he can fake his death to escape a trying marriage. The title turns on his habit of always carrying two of everything, and how that messes up his plans.

"We of the Old South" (9700 words) ... another story of an aging Confederate veteran treating a woman of iffy character with great respect and getting good results... this time the man has been lured to Hollywood to do character acting. He stays in a boarding house and strikes up a friendship with a starlet who hasn't had a break yet. She pretends to be Southern, and he chooses to believe her story ... His kindness ends up getting her her big chance while he takes a role in a Civil War film -- alas, it's about the battle of Gettysburg, and he chooses to "fight" for the wrong side.

"Killed with Kindness" (6600 words) ... Another story about a Madam ... in this case, she and one of her clients become associates ... he helps out her business dealings, all the while becoming more and more prominent, which has unfortunate consequences when he runs for the Senate ...

"Peace on Earth" (10800 words) ... another comic story: a New York couple decide to skip the over-commercialized Christmas in the city, and engage a house in rural upstate New York, only to realize that neither the area nor the inhabitants match their idea of innocent traditional bucolicness.

"Three Wise Men of the East Side" (6200 words) ... a bit of a caper story: a man on death row inveigles his lawyer into helping him escape the chair in exchange for the location of some stolen money ... all three people involved in the scheme end up the worse for things.

"The Cowboy and the Lady and her Pa" (8600 words) ... a rich man from Pittsburgh and his wife are appalled when their daughter falls for a cowboy at the dude ranch they are visiting. The man hatches a scheme to separate the two ... wobbly in tone and uncharitable, to my mind.

"A Close Shave" (2700 words) ... Story of a state Governor, a violent prisoner, the warden and his pretty wife ... again, people's bad motives end up leading them into trouble.

"Good Sam" (8000 words) ... The title character is a Good Samaritan whose every attempt at benevolence turns out wrong.

"How to Choke a Cat without Using Butter" (2200 words) ... a nouveau rich man foolishly allows himself to be written up in a business magazine, which his wife is convinced will ruin their chances of being accepted in society.

Old Bestsellers: The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley

 The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

A review by Rich Horton

The Haunted Bookshop is a 1919 novel by Christopher Morley, apparently a big bestseller at the time. It has retained considerable popularity, at least to the extent that I had heard of it, so when I saw it for a song at a used book sale I bought a copy. And of course buying a copy of The Haunted Bookshop used seems very appropriate: it's about a used book store. The edition I found is a later reprint, from 1955.


Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was a journalist, poet, and novelist, quite well known in his day. He was one of the founders of The Baker Street Irregulars. I noted in my post on John Reed Scott that one of my daughter's college visits was to Scott's alma mater, Gettysburg College; so I should note here that my daughter also visited another Pennsylvania college, Haverford, which is where Morley went to school. (Indeed, he was the valedictorian.) (I liked Haverford a lot, though again it was way too expensive for us to send Melissa there.) (Three parens in a row: I thought to mention as well that one of my favorite novelists, Nicholson Baker, is also a Haverford graduate.) Besides The Haunted Bookshop, which came early in Morley's career, he is probably best known for Kitty Foyle, which came much later (in 1939), and which became a film with Ginger Rogers in the title role. (And with two very well-regarded screenwriters: Dalton Trumbo and The Philadelphia Story's Donald Ogden Stewart, both of whom were later blacklisted.)

It is very much a post World War I novel, a direct reaction to the war. Which in a way is odd because it's also a feather light comedy. It's also the sequel to an earlier novel, Parnassus on Wheels, which apparently concerned Roger Mifflin's traveling bookstore. Indeed, much of this new novel (and I would guess much of the earlier one) appeared in The Bookman, a magazine devoted to bookselling concerns. The Haunted Bookshop is Mifflin's nickname for his non-traveling bookstore in Brooklyn.

Roger Mifflin is a pleasant and rambling middle aged man, devoted to the trade of selling used books. He is very idealistic about this, and about reading in general. Indeed, he's rather a snob about reading, not going in much for popular fiction, unless it happens to be popular fiction he likes. Which would be OK except for the way he disapproves of other people reading stuff he doesn't like.

The action of this story starts when a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, stumbles into Mifflin's store, hoping to convince him to open an account. Of course Mifflin will have none of that, but he does invite the young man to dinner. Shortly thereafter Mifflin takes on an assistant, a very pretty and very rich young woman named Titania Chapman, the daughter of the owner of the Daintybits company, which by coincidence is the biggest account for Gilbert's firm.

You can see where THAT's going! Of course Gilbert has occasion to visit Mifflin's shop again, and is smitten by Titania's charms. At the same time, a book keeps going missing and turning up at Mifflin's shop: Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell. Gilbert soon realizes something fishy is going on, and indeed gets a bop on the head for his pains. He begins to spy on Mifflin's shop, partly to protect Titania, partly because he thinks Mifflin is in on a sinister plot. And it turns out there is a sinister plot, involving disaffected Germans, but of course Mifflin is completely innocent.

Besides this somewhat silly plot, much of the book is taken up with Mifflin's perorations about books and bookselling, but also about war, and the futility of the just-completed war. Mifflin is basically a pacifist, and the book itself argues for Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations idea with some passion. (The German plot in the book turns out to involve Wilson.)

All in all the feather light and silly aspect of the book prevails. It's a fairly enjoyable read, but it doesn't strike me as truly memorable. On the other hand, it's still being read getting on to a hundred years since its publication, which is certainly something pretty impressive.

Old Bestsellers: The Night of Temptation, by Victoria Cross

The Night of Temptation, by Victoria Cross

a review by Rich Horton

Perhaps my primary goal in this series of reviews is to find books and authors that were once big sellers and are now totally (or all but) forgotten. And all the better if the writer has an interesting story. That's certainly the case with Victoria Cross.

Victoria Cross was born Annie Sophie Cory in 1868. Her father Arthur was a Colonel in the British Army, and also editor of the Civil and Military Gazette. This is the same newspaper for which Rudyard Kipling wrote --  Arthur Cory almost certainly knew Kipling (and Kipling's father was a contributor to the newspaper as well) -- but seems to have left the paper about when Rudyard joined it. Annie had two older sisters. The family was apparently well off and to some extent upper class. She grew up in India but by the age of 20 was in England attending London University. She seems to have continued to travel widely throughout her life. One of her sisters also became well known for her literary efforts: Adela Florence Nicolson, who wrote faux-Indian poetry as "Laurence Hope". Both of Annie Sophie Cory's sisters ended up committing suicide -- the fate also of some of her female heroines. Annie Sophie Cory (or Vivian Cory Griffin as she later called herself) died age 84 in 1952.

In 1895 her first published story appeared: "Theodora: A Fragment", which was in fact one chapter of a novel she had finished in 1894 but did not publish until 1903, perhaps because its unconventional eroticism made it a hard sell for a new writer: the title heroine was androgynous in appearance, had a mustache, had no interest in marriage, and ended up committing suicide after being gang-raped. Her first published novel, The Woman Who Didn't (1895), concerns an unconsummated shipboard affair between a man and an unhappily married woman. Her most famous novel by far, Anna Lombard, appeared in 1901. It is a love story set in India between a young woman and an idealized man (according to Cross, he was supposed to be a Christ figure). The kicker is that the woman has an affair with her Pathan servant, and her English lover does not reject her or even ask her to stop the affair. However, he does not marry her until her Pathan lover dies, and until she kills the newborn child of that union. All this was shocking enough to get it banned in New Zealand (or so I assume -- at any rate Cross had to fight a court case on its behalf), and to sell some 6,000,000 copies. SF readers may find one of her later novels rather interesting: Martha Brown, M.P., A Girl of Tomorrow (1935), which is set in a future in which women and men in England have exchanged traditional gender roles. The novel ends, however, with Martha Brown abandoning her English political career and going to America, where, apparently, men are still real men.

A note on the author's names: she wrote variously as Victoria Cross (sometimes spelled "Crosse"), Vivian Cory, and V. C. Griffin. Griffin was her mother's maiden name, and also of course the name of her uncle, Heneage Griffin. Annie Sophie Cory never married, but after her father's death she moved in with Heneage Griffin (who was independently very wealthy), and they lived together (traveling constantly) until his death in 1939. It is not clear whether their relationship was sexual, but it was certainly rumored to be so at the time, and some later researchers have come to the same conclusion. (Indeed, Cory once claimed (falsely) that she had been bequeathed to her uncle upon her father's death.) That said, her mother was also part of the household. She did fall in love with a younger man after Griffin's death (when she was 71): this man reportedly stole some £100,000 from her. I should note that the book I have, The Night of Temptation, though published as by "Victoria Cross", is copyrighted by "Vivian Cory Griffen [sic]". It appears that she called herself "Vivian Cory" in everyday life from about 1895, and added the "Griffin" after joining her uncle's household.

Most of the above details I owe to Charlotte Mitchell, who compiled a bibliography of Cross's work for a series of Victorian Fiction Research Guides. Mitchell's take on Cross's work seems to me fairly level-headed, even accounting for her general advocacy. Mitchell writes:  "Even her most enthusiastic readers acknowledge that her work is characterized by lapses in taste and logic, vulgarity, implausibility and craziness." And also, after noting that many readers laud Cross for her seemingly modern attitudes towards interracial love affairs and extramarital sex, she adds: "As I read more, however, I became conscious that its appealing features coexist with and are inseparable from others which are less well adjusted to the taste of early twenty-first-century academic critics. To portray her as a heroine of feminism, or of racial tolerance, which was my first thought, seems to present more difficulties than can simply be resolved by pointing out that, naturally enough, she was influenced, for all her impatience with conformity, by the ideas of her time."

Mitchell seems to me to have the right of it. In fact, I would say, based mainly on the evidence of The Night of Temptation, that Victoria Cross was rather a nutter. Her attitudes on class -- mainly represented by utter contempt for the "lower classes" -- were revolting. Her attitudes on gender were odd: on the one hand she thought women indisputably the superior sex: men, she wrote, had no interest at all in intellectual pursuit. On the other hand once a woman met her true lover she was bound to be submissive to him -- a truly worthwhile man, if rare perhaps, was apparently far superior to any woman. I was reminded of Ayn Rand. (And, indeed, some of Cross's economic views also appear to be vaguely Randian.) She also expresses, in this book, some downright weird theories about genetics and the influence on a person's character of the time spent in the womb.

Anyway, on to The Night of Temptation. This book was first published in 1912 in England, by T. Werner Laurie, and in the US in 1914 by Macauley. I have a copy of the latter edition, possibly a first, but in no better than fair condtion, no DJ.

The book opens in a rectory in Stossop, England. Regina Marlow is 18, the youngest daughter of the Rector and his wife. In reality, it seems, she is illegitimate, the product of an affair her mother had, never acknowledged. But, due to Cross's eugenic theories, this means she is a superior child, because her mother's love for her father affected her positively during her gestation, while her older sisters were ruined because the mother hated their father (her husband). At any rate, Regina is a beautiful young woman (as are her sisters, physically), but she is little liked by her family. She spends her time studying, painting -- she is (Mary Sue-like) approximately the greatest painter in the history of England -- and communing with nature in her garden. She had managed to attract the attention of three local men, whom she rejected of course. (One of them subsequently committed suicide.)

One of her father's college acquaintances, Everest Lanark, comes to visit. Everest, some 30 years Regina's senior, is the most perfect possible specimen of manhood. The Rector of course hopes he'll take one of his daughters off his hands, and both the older girls have a go at him. Everest, naturally, is repelled by their vulgarity and lack of intellectual depth. Before long he is visiting with Regina privately, and within a week they have begun a sexual affair. (Alas, though the book makes it clear they are sleeping together, there are no intimate details.) Everest is a bit concerned -- is this merely a temporary infatuation? He resolves to leave and break off the affair, but becomes too involved, and proposes marriage. But Regina rejects him -- she intuits that to marry him would be to unfairly tie him to her. Instead she offers to marry him if he still wants to after spending some time away. And so he leaves. But soon her family's insufferability makes it clear she can't stay, and she follows Everest to London, moving in with him and resuming the affair, but still refusing to marry him. She also establishes financial independence (a key theme for many of the women in Cross's books) by selling one of her paintings for £500.

After a while they travel to Africa, planning to sail down the Nile and then hunt lions. Regina decides she will marry Everest once she is sure she can provide him an heir ... but then Everest's extremely beautiful but terribly stupid cousin joins him. It is clear that the cousin believes she is Everest's rightful mate, and before long she too is sleeping with him. (It seems that Everest, as the alpha male, has the right to sleep with whichever women he wishes.) Just then Regina realizes she is at last pregnant -- but what shall she do if Everest prefers his stupid cousin? But then comes the lion hunt, which of course provides a means of revealing the true worth of each of the young women!

I have to say, after an agonizingly slow opening, I found the novel engaging enough on a plot level. I had to ignore the Mary Sue-ism, and the repugnant social views, and the rather one-dimensional characters. Cross also throws in a brief reference to her novel Anna Lombard. And, as I hinted, I regretted the lack of explicit sex -- it really seems this is a novel that would be improved if there was just a bit of detail on the obviously rather active sex lives of the protagonists. I can't by any means call this a good novel ... the prose is indifferent and sometimes awful, the action melodramatic, the characters thin, the attitudes nutty ... but, except for the first couple of excessively slow and far too long chapters, the story is entertaining. I can see why Victoria Cross's books sold well, and also why they are largely forgotten, and also why a few (apparently feminist) critics have chosen to revive them at least to a mild extent. On balance, I'm happy to have read this novel, though I don't think I'll seek out any more.

Old Bestsellers: Through Space to Mars, by Roy Rockwood

Through Space to Mars, by Roy Rockwood

a review by Rich Horton

I found this book at a flea market some years ago ... in 2005, actually. I didn't know anything about it -- it looked like a pretty early children's novel about travel to Mars, so I picked it up on a whim, and I read it, and it was, in my judgement, pretty bad.

I'll get to my review later, as I wrote it in 2005, but I'll say right now that I think I was a little bit harsh. I didn't take into account sufficiently the time of writing, and the type of book it was. Relative to its category, perhaps this book isn't quite as bad as I said. Put another way -- perhaps I came to it expecting too much.

"Roy Rockwood" was a pseudonym, a house name, used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The syndicate was founded by Edward Stratemeyer to package childrens' books for publishers. Stratemeyer originally wrote many of the books himself but sooned turned primarily to other writers, who often worked from outlines by Stratemeyer. The book series were extremely successful -- none of these would have been on bestseller lists, in some part because childrens' books weren't considered for such lists, but as a whole the books sold very well indeed. Stratemeyer's most famous series were the Nancy Drew books, the Hardy Boys books, the Bobbsey Twins books, and the Tom Swift books.

The series attributed to "Roy Rockwood" included the Deep Sea adventures, the Dave Fearless books, Bomba the Jungle Boy, and the Great Marvel books. Through Space to Mars is from the latter series, which comprised 9 books, appearing between 1906 and 1935. Through Space to Mars was #4, and it came out in 1910. At least the first 5 books of the Great Marvel series were written by Howard R. Garis, one of the best known Stratemeyer writers. Garis wrote the great bulk of the first Tom Swift books as well. He also, under his own name, wrote some 15,000 (!) Uncle Wiggily stories for the Newark Evening News (and for syndication) -- many of these were collected in 79 books. His wife Leslie was also a writer for the Stratemeyer Syndicate (and for the Newark Evening News) -- she is credited with many of the Bobbsey Twins books, among others.

The Great Marvel books were originally published by Cupples and Leon, but my copy is a reprint from Whitman. No dust jacket, only about "good" condition.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia has entries for Garis and Rockwood. The latter, credited to John Clute and Everett F. Bleiler, two writers I respect greatly, praises the early books in the Great Marvel series highly (relative, it should be said, to other books of their type, such as the Tom Swift books) -- and others such as Jessica Amanda Salmonson have written about the joys of collecting the books (admittedly, not necessarily the same thing as enjoying reading the books). This gives me pause, I admit, when placed next to the harsh judgement I offer below. Perhaps I simply was not reading the book with the right mindset. And, I should note, I have read almost none of the Stratemeyer Syndicate books -- a couple of my sister's Nancy Drew books back in the day, and maybe one or two Tom Swift books. That said, I'm reproducing what I wrote back in 2005.

Is Through Space to Mars any good? Hmmmmm, that would be a NO. Or, rather, NO NO NO NO NO!!!! One of the worst books I have ever read, more like. Luckily it's only about 45,000 words. But not only is the science silly -- and mind you I'm not measuring it by very high standards -- but the plot is stupid and poorly structured as well.

The story involves two friends, orphans raised by a Professor Henderson, now students at college (after several adventures with the Professor -- a trip to the center of the Earth, for example). They are summoned back to the Professor's house -- it seems a German named Roumann wants his help in making a spaceship to go to Mars. Why? Apparently he has decided that the substance that makes Mars red is fabulously valuable and he wants to steal some.

The boys help the Prof and Mr. Roumann make the ship. One measure of the stupidness of the plot is that this takes almost half the book -- with no action except occasional mysterious vandals trying to sabotage the spaceship. Do we ever really learn their motives? No.

Finally they head off to Mars, and we are subjected to excruciating scientific stupidities. There are really too many to mention. Just a couple -- the "etherium motor" shuts off in the middle of space and they start "falling". I.e. not heading to Mars any more. They encounter a comet, which somehow attracts them. It seems comets are fiery mini-suns -- well, mini? Not exactly -- this one is described as being hundreds of thousands of miles across. There are many more even worse absurdities. Oh -- here's one -- the red stuff that makes Mars look like it does is only visible on Mars' night side -- I guess it's only red when it's glowing at night. But in reality of course we always see the day side of Mars.

Finally on Mars they meet the highly advanced Martians, and in a very brief time they decide to steal some of the red stuff and escape, because the highly advanced Martians superstitiously believe that if any of it leaves Mars the planet will be destroyed. And that's pretty much the end.

I haven't even mentioned the outrageously racist (if I suppose sympathetic) depiction of the Professor's black servant, Washington White, who speaks in a mixture of a Stepan Fetchit dialect and an absurd farrago of misused long words, some of them made up.

Old Bestsellers: The Woman in Question, by John Reed Scott

The Woman in Question, by John Reed Scott

a review by Rich Horton

John Reed Scott (1869-1942) was born in Gettysburg, PA. He attended Gettysburg College (here I will note that we visited the college a few years ago when my daughter Melissa was looking for a school -- I was impressed, but it was too expensive). He became a lawyer and practiced from 1891 to 1907, in Gettsyburg and in Pittsburgh, before returning to Gettysburg to write. He had a fair amount of success with romantic adventure fiction, such as his first novel, The Colonel of the Red Huzzars (1907 or perhaps 1906 (sources disagree)), and its sequel, The Princess Dehra. He has an entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia because his 1914 novel, The Duke of Oblivion, has slight science-fictional elements (it concerns an underground English colony in Mexico) -- there it is said that he was only active from 1907 to 1916, which seems curious as he was only 47 in 1916, and he lived for 26 more years. Perhaps he returned to the practice of law? He is referenced as being involved in efforts to preserve Gettsyburg as an historical site. He died in Maryland, but was buried in Gettysburg. (Some of these biographical details come from a 1911 book that I was able to "look into" via Google: Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, others need to be credited to the sleuthing of Denny Lien and Steve Holland, who found information in the National Cyclopedia, and an obituary in the Gettysburg Times.)

Here's a 1909 portrait of John Reed Scott.

The Woman in Question is not an adventure story -- it's pretty much pure romance fiction. I have a J. B. Lippincott first edition (no DJ, only Good condition) from 1909. It opens with a young and beautiful widow, Evelyn Leicester, at her country club, in "Northumberland". She has just come out of mourning, and there is some (sometimes catty) speculation on her next husband. Could it be her longtime friend, Colleton Harwood? He is revealed to be an excellent tennis player, if somewhat indolent and apparently allergic to the prospect of marriage.  But he has just inherited an estate in rural Egerton -- and Evelyn quickly inveigles him into hosting a house party at his new place.

A quick aside: where is Egerton (and for that matter, the big city: Northumberland)? Well, it is said to be somewhat isolated and quiet. Its only claim to fame is that a major Civil War battle occurred there. It was founded in "the first year of the last century". Now, let's see: John Reed Scott was born, and lived the bulk of his life, in Gettysburg, PA. Certainly a major Civil War battle was fought there! It is quite isolated (as I can attest, having driven the twisty roads on the way there). It was settled in 1780 and incorporated in 1806. Seems reasonably consistent with The Woman in Question's Egerton! Which would presumably make Northumberland either Philadelphia or perhaps Pittsburgh (where Scott lived for a time). This latter question was resolved when Denny Lien found an old biographical entry on Scott that says, of The Woman in Question: "the scenes in which are laid in and around Pittsburg [sic], and the book caused considerable flutter among the smart set of the smoky city, who thought they recognized a number of their prominent townsfolk among its characters."

Back to the story: on arriving in Egerton, Harwood all but immediately falls in love with his estate and its history. He is also immediately intrigued by his neighbor, a very mysterious (and beautiful) young widow, Mildred Gascoyne. His lawyer, the crusty old Judge Casson, assures him that Mrs. Gascoyne, despite her mysterious past, is a "lady". Hmmm ... it seems Evelyn Leicester may have a rival!

The house party arrives -- a group of guests chosen by Mrs. Leicester. All are unexceptionable people from Northumberland society except for one -- Henry Landor, who, it seems, is that most awful of things: a social climber!

We quickly learn that Mrs. Gascoyne must have some past, unhappy, acquaintance with Landor, for she is terribly upset to see him. Except that somehow he doesn't quite recognize her -- surely the lady he remembers had black hair, and Mrs. Gascoyne's is red. And indeed Colleton Harwood realizes he has encountered Mrs. Gascoyne before -- in Venice, where he decided that she was the only woman to rival Evelyn Leicester in beauty.

That sets up the plot, which bounces along nicely enough over the week or so of the house party. No point in detailing it: it's clear already that all will turn on the mystery of Mrs. Gascoyne's past and on her connection with Henry Landor. We have already been told quite clearly who the heroine is (she is, after all, the Judge tells us, "a lady") and who the villain is (he is, gasp!, a social climber). It's pretty readable stuff, enjoyable in a forgettable fashion -- it never surprises, and doesn't really convince, but it's kind of fun.

Except ... well, the book was published in 1909. It is "of its time". But, I have to say, some of the attitudes expressed seemed more virulent to me than in most popular fiction I have read of its time. Some of it is expressed in the attitude towards Henry Landor (who, to be sure, is later revealed to be a truly bad person, guilty of both financial bad dealings as well as abusive treatment of women: but the author puts his fingers on the scale to lay those failings on his quote low unquote birth.) Worse, though, are the attitudes toward black people -- which are introduced for no particular reason (they don't really affect the plot).  Some quotes: from Judge Casson: "The negro is a child, sir -- easy to manage if you understand him, worthless and trifling if you don't." Casson also objects that Harwood's butler, William, was allowed to attend college. Harwood responds: "William has told me he thinks his education was likely a mistake -- that God meant the negro for a servant and learning only unfitted him." Harwood is also unsettled when he thinks William has been reading a learned journal, and relieved to find that it was not him but Mrs. Gascoyne. For a brief time I thought maybe Scott was setting us up to reveal how wrong those views were ... but no -- he just made sure to have them expressed (by Judge Casson, a sort of "wise old man" figure) -- and then no more mention is made -- they're of no importance to the plot.

Old Bestsellers: Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household

Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household


A review by Rich Horton

Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male is a classic thriller. It's not really forgotten, but it has, I think entered a phase of slow drifting out of any sort of general consciousness. Though perhaps not: it has been reprinted as recently as 2007, and it has been cited by David Morrell as a significant influence on First Blood (the Morrell novel that introduced Rambo to the world).

Household was a British writer, born 1900, died 1988, who spent some time in the US "just in time for the Depression". He began writing in the US, then returned to England. This is his second novel, published in 1939. He spent the War as an Intelligence Officer in Rumania, then returned to a fairly successful career writing. Rogue Male remains his most famous novel, though Arabesque (made into a movie with Gregory Peck, as I recall) is also well known. Rogue Male itself has been filmed at least twice, as Man Hunt in 1941 and as Rogue Male for TV in 1976.

Rogue Male opens with the never named first person protagonist aiming a rifle with a telescopic sight from 550 yards at a certain Head of State. It's never made precisely clear who that is -- a country on one side or the other of Poland, which leaves two pretty evil candidates as of the late 30s. The cover of my 1977 Penguin edition shows a picture of Hitler in the crosshairs, which to be fair is pretty likely who Household intended. But the book takes care never to reveal which of Hitler or Stalin was the target -- on purpose, I think -- and I think the cover illustration is a blunder.

The protagonist claims he had no intention of shooting -- he was just "stalking the most dangerous game" for the fun of it, to see if he could be successful. This doesn't play well with the local secret police, who torture him and leave him for dead. But he rather incredibly escapes, and makes his way down a river, soon pursued by his enemies. He stows away on a boat for England, but soon is again pursued. When he is forced to kill one of his pursuers, he becomes wanted for murder by the British police. He flees to the country, planning to literally hole up for the duration. But even his careful plans aren't quite enough -- some bad luck leads to the British police getting a lead, and though he can elude them, the bad guys are able to track him down.

It's pretty good stuff. Exciting, not too ridiculously implausible, and at least somewhat interested in exploring the moral basis of the protagonist's decisions. (Though there is plenty of guff, too, in particular lots of stuff about the wonderful ineffable qualities of the English Upper Class.) (Some of the book is the protagonist's own coming to terms with his real motives and intentions.) It helps of course that the protagonist's target is a real-life maximally evil sort -- even if we continue to disapprove of his assassination attempt, it's hard not to sympathize at some level. The book is also quite dryly funny on occasion. The ending is interesting in retrospect. The protagonist, having again escaped, decides his only recourse is to finish the assassination job. And there the book ends. But it was published in 1939. Then it was a very "open" ending. Now -- any time since 1945 really -- the ending has closed somewhat -- we can only conclude that the protagonist failed in his attempt and was presumable summarily executed. (Though there was a sequel, Rogue Justice, published much later (in 1982).)

Ace Doubles: The Blank Wall/The Girl Who Had to Die, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

The Blank Wall/The Girl Who Had to Die, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

a review by Rich Horton

This blog is primarily about "old bestsellers", but other "old" books are interesting to me, and one of my favorite publishing lines of the past is Ace Doubles, inexpensive paperbacks featuring two books printed back-to-back (or dos-a-dos), each upside down relative to the other. These appeared between 1952 and 1973. They are most famous in the Science Fiction genre, but a number were printed in other genres, especially mysteries and Westerns.

I went to an antique mall in Kansas City after attending ConQuest (a science fiction convention) a few weeks ago. One stall had a bunch of old paperbacks, including an Ace Double. This one intrigued me because it was a mystery by an author I had never heard of, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. The covers including some impressive quotes praising Holding, from places like the New Yorker; as well as one from Raymond Chandler: "She's the top suspense writer of them all."

I confess I had visions of rediscovering a completely forgotten master of the pulp era. But when I researched Holding I learned that plenty of people are way ahead of me. That's not to say she wasn't somewhat unfairly forgotten. She was born in 1889, died in 1955. She began her writing career as a romance novelist, but switched to mysteries during the depression. Her novels sold fairly well, and she was well-praised. She wrote at least one YA fantasy, Miss Kelly, which Anthony Boucher praised in the pages of F&SF. But she did seem to be mostly forgotten after her death.

That said, The Blank Wall, generally considered her best novel, had already been filmed in 1949 as The Reckless Moment (starring Joan Bennett and James Mason). It was filmed again in 2001 as The Deep End, starring Tilda Swinton. (This was pretty much Swinton's "breakout" film, "breakout" here being relative to Swinton's career -- that is, she didn't become a major movie star, she just moved from a well-respected indie actress to an even more respected Hollywood actress, who would contend for Academy Awards (and, indeed, eventually win one).) More recently, a number of Holding's books have been reprinted by Persephone Press and by Stark House (the latter, neatly, are double editions). The Blank Wall was even featured in a Guardian list, in 2011, of the "Ten Best Neglected Literary Classics". She has been called "The Godmother of Noir". So she's not forgotten, and indeed I think her reputation is slowly increasing at last.

My Ace Double includes two novels, The Girl Who Had to Die (1940) and The Blank Wall (1947). The Girl Who Had to Die was first published by Dodd, Mead; and The Blank Wall by Simon and Schuster. There was a 1950 Pocket Books edition of The Blank Wall, with the classic blurb: "Playing with jail bait earned him a date with death!". (In perfect blurb fashion, this is not at all false, but neither does it describe the book in any useful way.) The Ace Double edition was part of a series of six Holding doubles that appeared in 1965.

Both books are told in tight third person, and spend much of the time in the protagonist's mind, exploring their internal reactions. This serves to portray the character quite effectively, at least in The Blank Wall -- one of the weaknesses of The Girl Who Had to Die is that the main character never really convinces.

The Blank Wall's protagonist is Lucia Holley, a New York housewife in her late 30s, who has rented a house on Long Island, on the ocean, while her husband is away. (He's an officer in the U.S. Navy in World War II.) She lives with her two children, 17 year old Bee and 15 year old David; as well as with her elderly father (who is English) and an African-American maid, Sibyl. Bee is going to art school and New York, and Lucia is upset that she has been seeing a 35-year-old married man, Ted Darby. Darby shows up at their house, lurking by the boathouse, and Lucia's father goes out to confront him, and (without knowing it) accidentally kills him. Lucia discovers the dead body the next morning and, to protect her father and Bee from scandal, hides the body on an island.

Of course this doesn't work, for multiple reasons. The body is soon discovered. Darby, it turns out, is every bit as bad as Lucia thought, a gangster and a dealer in porn (no doubt his intention for Bee was to make her a model). For a time it seems the crime might be pinned on a ganster associate of Darby's. But Lucia has further troubles: a couple more gangsters show up trying to extort money from her in exchange for some embarrassing letters from Bee to Darby that Darby had sold them. And a neighbor saw Lucia taking the boat out with Darby's body, though not closely enough to identify her. But that -- and other aspects of the crime -- is enough to raise the suspicions of the investigator, Lieutenant Levy (who is apparently a character in a number of Holding's books).

Then Lucia starts to get a bit attached to one of the blackmailers, Martin Donnelly. He seems to like Lucia, and offers to pay off his partner so that he'll stop the blackmail, and he even sends them some black market meat. (One of the excellent minor points of the novel is its depiction of the difficulties of household management because of the rationing during the War.) Their meetings, though basically innocent (if hinting at suppressed sexual attraction) infuriate David and Bee, who suspect the worst.

There is another killing, and another desperate attempt to hide a body, and Lieutenant Levy seems to know pretty much everything ... well, I won't detail the ending. But the book works beautifully. Lucia's actions, each on the face of it understandable, if often foolish, keep winding the noose tighter around her. Her motivations ring true, her inner life -- missing her husband while worrying she's forgetting him, fretting that she hasn't raised Bee right, frustration at her relative incompetence as a housekeeper (only Sybil really keeps the household going), her isolation from the neighbors -- is excellently portrayed. The prose is quite fine as well. As noted, Lucia is depicted very well, and so is Sybil (who has her own sad back story, a husband unfairly imprisoned (in a way only too understandable for African-Americans of that time). The children are perhaps a bit caricatured, especially Bee; and Martin Donnelly's unexpected nobility, though affecting and well-described, seems perhaps a bit fortuitous. As I said, the background details of wartime life on the home front are very well done. This is a novel that deserves its reputation.

The Girl Who Had to Die is less successful. The protagonist is Jocko Killian, a clerk from New York who has spent a year in Argentina, and is returning in the company of an unstable and alcholic 19 year old girl, Jocelyn. Jocelyn tells him that there are 5 people who want to murder her. Soon after she falls overboard, and though she is rescued, Jocko is accused of pushing her. This leverage ends up enough to force him to accompany her to the Long Island home of a rich old man, Luther Bell, along with a few other people from the ship.

Over the next couple of days Jocko learns a bit more of Jocelyn's unfortunate history. She is given an overdose of drugs, and one of the other men flees, perhaps incriminating himself. In something like desperation, Jocko decides to marry Jocelyn, as much because she insists he's the only man who truly cares for her, essentially making him feel guilty -- he half or more suspects that both the overdose and the plunge into the ocean were suicide attempts. But there are more and more secrets in Jocelyn's life, and concerning her history with the various residents of the Bell household as well as the visitors from the ship. Can Jocko escape her clutches -- or instead can he rescue her from her sordid past?

As I said above, my main problem with this book is that Jocko's motivations and thoughts just didn't seem real to me. Jocelyn's story is interesting and sad, but a bit fuzzed out, held too much at a distance. The novel is interesting and strange but on the whole it seemed too artificial a construct to me.

Old Bestsellers: The Man in Lower Ten, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Man in Lower Ten, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

a review by Rich Horton

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was a very popular mystery/suspense writer in her time, and her fame, while slowly dwindling, seems to me, has not disappeared. I certainly was aware of her in the '70s when I was reading Agatha Christie and the like. I confess I'd have guessed she was closer to a contemporary of Christie's, and that she was still alive in the '70s. (For that matter, I sometimes have confused her with Mary Higgins Clark.) Rinehart was often called "the American Christie", but that was really unfair to her, as she started 15 years or so before Christie (who was 12 years her junior) and was quite popular well before Christie even began writing.

Rinehart was born in (what is now) Pittsburgh, trained to be a nurse, and married a doctor, Stanley Rinehart. She began publishing stories in the downmarket magazines of the time in 1904, to help her family's finances after the stock market crash of 1903. Her first novel was the one covered here, The Man in Lower Ten, which was serialized in All-Story Magazine in 1906. (Her second novel, The Circular Staircase (1907) is often sloppily called her first, as it was the first to become a book.) The Man in Lower Ten was published in book form in 1909, and it was the fourth bestselling novel of that year according to Publishers' Weekly. It is considered the first novel clearly in the mystery genre to become a general fiction bestseller. My copy is a 1959 Dell paperback, complete with interior illustrations.

A bit later I ran across an early hardcover reprint as well -- I had hoped on first seeing it that it might be a first edition, but instead it's a Grosset and Dunlap reprint from perhaps 1913. It is also illustrated, by Howard Chandler Christy. I've reproduced (in photographs by my son Geoff) the cover, and title page with frontispiece, below:

Rinehart diversified somewhat in later years, writing Broadway comedies, nurse fiction, and mainstream novels. (The latter apparently at the urging of her husband, who seems to have been a bit ashamed of her reputation as a trashy genre writer. He also apparently eventually resented the fact that she made much more money than he did.) By the end though she returned most often to mystery/suspense stories, and those are by far her best remembered works. I can recommend an excellent website by Michael Grost (mikegrost.com/rinehart.htm) for a detailed analysis of her career.

One tidbit about Rinehart that is often repeated is that she originated the phrase "The butler did it". This is untrue, though in one of her better known novels the butler is indeed the murderer. But there were novels and stories in which the butler was the murderer before that, and she never used that exact phrase.

According to Grost, her first two novels, The Man in Lower Ten and The Circular Staircase, may be her best. I can't comment -- The Man in Lower Ten is the only novel of hers I've read. But it is pretty decent work.

Lawrence Blakely is a Washington, DC, lawyer. His partner, Richey McKnight, inveigles him into taking a trip to Pittsburgh to take a deposition from a rich old man in a forgery case. It seems McKnight has a date with a girlfriend. Girls are famously of no particular interest to Blakeley ...

On the way back from Pittsburgh, strange things happen. There is repeated confusion over which bunk Blakely has engaged. There are a couple of interesting seeming people on the train. Blakely ends up forced into another bunk by a drunk passenger, and when he wakes up, his bag -- with the critical deposition -- and also his clothes are gone. He is forced to dress in another man's clothes, and in searching for his bag he discovers a murdered man.

Almost immediately Blakely is the prime suspect -- but before anything further happens the train crashes. Blakely is thrown free, and indeed is one of only four survivors, sustaining only a broken arm. He and another survivor, a beautiful young woman, Alison West, escape to a farmhouse where something unusual happens that Blakely doesn't understand for some time. He does realize, however, that a) Alison West is the granddaughter of the rich old man from whom he took the deposition; b) she is another prime suspect in the murder; and c) he is in love with her.

Blakely returns to DC but soon his troubles multiply. The police are lurking around his house. Another survivor from the wreck fancies himself an amateur detective and insists on investigating the otherwise almost moot murder case (after all, the witnesses are mostly dead and the victim could have been written off as merely another casualty of the train crash). Someone seems to be lurking in the house next door. And, finally, it seems that Alison West is the girl whom his partner McKnight has been seeing.

The shape of the resolution is not surprising, and indeed the solution to the primary crime, while not ridiculous, does seem a bit strained. But the novel bounces along nicely enough. Lawrence Blakely is not exactly a convincing three-dimensional character, but he's still kind of intriguing, and his voice, as teller of the story, is effective. Rinehart's writing is not brilliant, but it's solid storytelling prose, with some good turns of phrase. She does slip once or twice (for example, Blakely's arm heals for a brief passage before returning to its broken state), but really it's a solid professional effort. I liked it, though I have to say, not enough to make a special effort to seek out more of Rinehart's work.