I, Dynamo

Pt. VII: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

Would to God your horizon may broaden every day.

The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; as system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard, it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new tail in a twinkling.

Ilya Turgenev as quoted by

Daniel Boorstin

The doctrine that correlates imply one another, that the father cannot be thought of without thinking of a child and that there can be no consciousness of a superior without consciousness of an inferior—has for one of its common examples the necessary connexion between the conception of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole. There are several ways in which inadequate knowledge of the one involves inadequate knowledge of the other.

Herbert Spencer

The Principles of Ethics

To understand a serious author like Reynolds it is necessary to place him in his context. Reynolds’ interest seems to be all Europe in its widest breadth and length and depth. By depth I mean its timeline. Ancient literatures line out what they consider their maximum territory. Thus the Greek story of the Argonautica travels East along the North of Anatolia to Armenia. Armenia then seems to be the dispersal point of Hellenes or Greeks. The line then runs West across the South coast of present day Russia, up the Danube into the Alps, beyond which the Hyperboreans live, and down the Adriatic side of the Balkans, the heel of Italy, across the Mediterranean to Include Libya and back around Crete to Greece proper. Something is being said.

The Novels of Reynolds do exactly the same thing including Armenia. His home base of England and London reflecting his personal history. His timelines slip up and down if less recognizably to the casual observer. The key topic running through the novels is the relationship of men to women. The big issue is that of Libertinage- specifically as codified by the Marquis de Sade.

While I have yet to find a reference to Dashwood’s Hell Fire Club the activities of the Regent, George IV epitomize the philosophy of the Hell Fire clubs in their motto, Do What Thou Wilt. It should be noted that these clubs and the philosophy predate the Marquis de Sade.

George IV In Full Regalia

The antecedents of the Hell Fire Clubs lead to the Jeffrey Epstein club of the twenty-first century as it is descended from the Hell Fire clubs of eighteenth century England. In Hollywood of mid-twentieth century the actor Errol Flynn led such a club there.

The problem rises much earlier than the Catholic Church with its rather strange sexual practices but by the fifteenth century the challenge to the Church’s sex notions was becoming acute. Hence societies such as the Free Spirits arose. Thus, bands of Free Spirits burst into nunneries and dragged the nuns out in a furious mode, raping them and demanding that they engage in free sex with any man at any time.

The later Anabaptists had very similar attitudes toward sex while the Libertines of the eighteenth century down to the current times are of the same opinion. Women’s Liberation is all about altering their sexual attitudes toward free sex. The gathering place for Libertines for centuries has been Bohemia. Hence the expression ‘marriage a la Boheme,’ which is to say a ‘union of hearts’ only. There is no commitment on the man’s part except convenience. The well-kept secret of Women’s Liberation is that women are encouraged to engage in free sex with any man at any time. This is what Women’s Lib is all about.

Reynolds attacks that problem directly usually falling, I think on the side of Libertinism.

As all experienced Time Travelers know, in our lifetimes as we inch along from year to year we are actually travelling through time. Today, myself at eighty-two, I have seen so many impossible changes as to be incredible. Mores between 1948 when I became aware and 2020 where I am today have changed by 180 degrees. What was true in 1948 no longer applies. Change after change. Whole industries have disappeared and new ones risen. The once ubiquitous savings and loan industry was completely looted and discarded, disappearing in the 1980s. That crime is still incredible to me.

The immense travel industry inaugurated by the Boeing 707 in 1959 has become so ubiquitous while being daily increased by the billions of Asians that tourist destinations can no longer handle the crowds. Sites are being destroyed by tramping feet of the hordes of gawkers. Whole cities contained in giant cruise ships are delivered to tourist spots in a single hour. In the not too distant future visitor permits will have to be issued limiting the number of tourists to specific time spots.

So with Reynolds in his time. By 1859 when his novelistic career essentially terminates it was a different England from 1844 when he successfully launched himself as a novelist. Eighteen forty-four was a significantly different England than the Regency period and kingship of George IV. And in 1859 when Darwin’s Origin of Species was issued changes began to come too rapidly to be absorbed and diffused before new changes made the previous changes obsolete. The rate of change was commemorated by Washington Irving in his story of Rip Van Winkle. In 1903 the Wright Brothers completed the impossible dream by lifting off in a heavier than air craft.

The very changes rapidly occurring may have brought Reynolds’ career to the end by 1858-60. His novels would no longer have represented contemporary life. It is perhaps no coincidence that his last few novels dipped into the historical past.

He continued his newspaper work until his death and, indeed, his newspaper survived him by almost a century, longer that his novels did. I have vague memories of being encouraged to read the paper to prevent its going out of business when I was in San Francisco in the 1960s. But, what could that have meant to me? I had no idea of its significance.

The Beau w/Cravat

In 1848 Reynolds began his magnum opus, The Mysteries of the Court of London, attacking the British monarchy. This book, or two series of books, is actually a historical novel built around George IV. The first series takes place in 1794-95 and the second series during the Regency in 1814-1, thus actually a historical novel. In 1820 George’s father, George III, died; George took the throne and would die ten years later in 1830.

George Reynolds was born in 1814 while spending six of his first eight years on the island of Guernsey. He may never have heard of George IV until 1822 when he returned to England. How much he may have thought of George IV in the next eight years from eight to the age of sixteen it couldn’t have been much. Certainly not enough to give him his bone deep hatred of the Prince that he displays in the Court of London, in which George is the central figure.

Related to George is the aristocracy that Reynolds also hated, hated to the point of slander and defamation. His ire went far deeper than mere exposure. From 1848 to 1856 over which time the massive five thousand page novel was written there were a large number of people still alive that had lived through the Regency and kingship of George IV. The Regency began in 1811 when George’s father was declared mentally incompetent to rule.

Memories of others differ substantially from the George that Reynolds portrays. For instance a Capt. Jessie in his 1844 biography of George ‘Beau’ Brummel, an intimate of the Regent, says that ‘in spite of the opinion retailed by a modern novelist, that “in the zenith of his popularity and personal advantages he seemed positively vulgar by the side of the Count d’ Artois,” was allowed by his greatest admirers to be the most distinguished looking man of the day.’

I have no doubt that Capt. Jessie was referring to Reynolds as the modern novelist. Compare Reynolds’ opinion by this painting of George in his prime and Reynolds’ opinion seems highly prejudiced. True George became obese as he sped his course but in his prime he seems to have been quite the beau.

In his antipathy to the monarchical system Reynolds was all but beating a dead horse. By the time he began his effective career in 1844, Victoria, who he despises as a mere girl, was queen and the monarchy had been neutered becoming a mere symbol as all effective power passed to the House of Commons. So, his actually scurrilous biographical novel of George IV in the Mysteries of the Court of London merely commemorated his life.

Of course in 1848-52 of the First Series of Court perhaps the state of the monarchy wasn’t that clear but England cherished the institution so that the French system wasn’t to occur in England even though Reynolds wished it. Even the nobility were never physically endangered but as the role of Commons dominated it the House of Lords was reduced to a mere debating society. And, while the Reform Act of 1832 imprinted society’s growing understanding of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution it wasn’t fast enough for the revolutionaries with their pie in the sky utopian notions. The first really effective and successful attempt to ameliorate the conditions of unskilled labor would occur in 1914 when Henry Ford in the US courageously tackled the problem offering a living wage to the unskilled lumpenproletariat along with sanitary working conditions.

Responding to the successfully met revolution of 1848, never try the same joke three times running. In response in 1851 England presented the world with its Crystal Palace Exhibition of all the technological and scientific wonders achieved by scientists and industrialists which were going far to ameliorate the living conditions of the hoi polloi while increasing wealth.
Reynolds sniffs at the Exhibition in vol. I of the second series of Court of London, not exactly wishing the Prince Albert ill in his enterprise but snidely nevertheless. He knew its import.

Change was in the air and while not so rapid as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Reynolds was busy blasting the monarchy and aristocracy of 1795 to 1820 the world was moving forward and slipping beneath his feet. This was surely epitomized by Exhibition of 1851. Surely Reynolds visited the Exhibition more than one time and one wonders how it affected him. While one can pinpoint when changes occurred it is more difficult to understand how and when those changes were diffused among the whole population. There were certainly early adapters even then but as a novelist it is difficult to dwell on them before they had time to affect the mores of the civilization. One can’t be too far ahead of one’s readership.

On the other hand Reynolds’ responded immediately to the Crimean War of 1853-56 with his novel Omar of 1855-56, but then the war was easy to understand.

Technologically Reynolds does introduce mentions of the railroad and telegraphy. He marvels at the wonder of electricity which he understood as an actual fluid. Most astonishing to him was the introduction of the steamship or packets as they were called. These amazing ships were the product of the mind of an engineer by the name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Reynolds wrote his penultimate novel of his first period about the ships titled The Steam Packet.

Who was Isambard Brunel and what was his importance? The writer of the Wikipedia article says this:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel; 1806-1859, was an English mechanical and civil engineer who is considered “one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history”, “one of the 19^th-century engineering giants”, and “ one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions”. Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionized public transport and modern engineering.

So, in 1859 when Brunel died he left a different England behind. In 1839 he built the first transatlantic steamship, The Great Western. It was a metal reinforced wooden vessel driven with paddle wheels and sails. It was to that point the most magnificent ship ever built. It must have fired Reynolds’ imagination. He set to work a year later in 1840 producing his novel The Steam Packet. There were of course smaller steamships or packets plying the European trade. Reynolds produced an enthusiastic encomium of the vast numbers of ships gathered in the Thames Pool. A regular timewarp of the doomed sail and upcoming steamship laying side by side. Standing on London Bridge and watching this inspiring theme he imagined a trip down the Thames visiting the Cinq Ports of Kent, and the French Channel ports. He created an imaginary club called the Luminaries, a bunch of enlightened illuminated fellows to charter a ship. In 1865 Reynolds tried to make such a voyage a reality. On his company’s annual outing he tried to charter a steamer to take his employees to Herne Bay in Kent but he was unable to find a ship to charter, probably for political reasons.

As the Wikipedia article indicates Brunel spent the twenty years between 1839 and 1859 building ships and railroads. In 1853 he built the SS Great Britain an all metal ship that was the first driven by a screw and no paddle wheels. In 1859 as he died he built the Great Eastern. Eighteen fifty-nine was also the year that Reynolds essentially ended his novelistic career. Perhaps he was wise as time had passed him by, there wasn’t much nasty he could say about the girl Queen Elizabeth while politics had entered a new era in which his literary attitude was not quite relevant.

A part of the July Revolution in France in 1830 that had a profound effect on England seems to have passed him by. Napoleon in the 1790s had emancipated the Jews who then began their political rise as a nation. It is a mistake not to consider the Jews a nation with national aspirations, distributed throughout Europe, working in concert to their own agenda. Thus in 1830 the Jews were politically potent in all countries.

Now, for centuries, since 1492 and the expulsion from Spain the Moslems of the Mediterranean littoral had been plundering the Southern coasts of Europe both robbing, destroying localities and carrying off Europeans to enslave them in Algeria and other places. Europeans had not acted to stop this but in 1830 France did, destroying the corsair power and annexing Algeria as a French colony, actually considering it a department of France.

The Jews had always been a subordinated nation in Algeria. But, as an important figure of the July Revolution the Jewish lawyer, Adolphe Cremieux, inserted a clause making the Jews of Algeria French citizens so that they catapulted to power over their former masters, the Moslems. This would have consequences. Of course France had colonies to the South of the Sahara and now to administer the Sahara they created that immortal band of misfits, The French Foreign Legion. Thus the North African desert area was opened to Europeans and the English. The English took to the desert like ducks to water, no pun intended. The Sahara became one of Europe’s playgrounds. Dangerous but fun.

Within short order series of novels placing Englishmen in the desert began to pour out including Ouida’s famous Under Two Flags, Robert Hitchins great Garden Of Allah, Mrs. Hull, and P.C. Wren. The twentieth century would see Algiers fill with English drug addicts and homosexuals. Very amazing. At one moment the Moslems were raiding Europe and the next France had its foot on their necks. In a twinkling so it appears.

Amazing. Adolphe Cremieux would go on to figure importantly in the Revolution of 1848 and the resistance to Napoleon III, behind the Paris Commune of 1871 and be instrumental in the writing of Maurice Joly’s Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu that was supposed to be the matrix for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion written in Vienna in 1897 during the Zionist convention. The Protocols had no importance until 1917 when they were promoted as a defensive measure to discredit critics of Jewish participation in the 1917 Revolution. But few could see the consequences of what was so deeply concealed in the annexation of Algeria by a seemingly insignificant people. But, if you look closely….

I hesitate to introduce this next section because I’m sure you have never heard of it and hence you probably may find it too far fetched. You’ll be skeptical. Nevertheless there are subterranean streams. I’m sure that you have heard of the psychologist Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious. I am not a believer in the notion but still life’s situations present themselves to all peoples and are interpreted by them. At the same once the problems are denominated they are thought of and examined down through the generations until they become the common property of initiates and/or investigators. The zodiac is one of those things, for instance. The zodiac which was merely an ancient timekeeping device to keep track of where you were between Dec. 21^st-25^th of one year and the next. Stonehenge for instance was very probably a representation of the Zodiac denoting the various key points of the year.

A great mythology was built up about those key points. For instance Castor and Pollux, Helen and Clytemnestra are legends of the solstices and equinoxes. Castor is the winter solstice and Pollux the summer. Helen the spring equinox and Clytemnestra the autumn. Hence Helen is the beautiful spring and Clytemnestra is the obnoxious precursor of winter.

The ancient religions had the motto: As above, so below. As there was a twelve month Zodiacal calendar on Earth so there must be a twelve month celestial calendar above. Thus, the Zodiac was translated to the sky. Just as the terrestrial Zodiac denoted the weather conditions prevalent during each month so, once the Great Year was discovered so weather conditions were apportioned to the Great Year. The Great year was caused when the Plane of the Ecliptic came into existence and a cycle of 25,900 years ensued.

Each Age was therefore 2000 some years long. I’m sure you know the signs of the Zodiac. The transitions from Age to Age were always fraught with terrific consequences because the ancients believed in the Zodiac. Now, the year O of the Christian calendar was also the transition from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces.

To properly understand the mass suicide of the Jews on the mountain fortress of Masada one has to understand that a new Age was beginning and those Jews sincerely believed that if they died they would be revived in a matter of days. Obviously it was a mistaken belief. Jesus was talking about immediate results not those of a far distant Age.

The symbol for Pisces was the two fish connected by an umbilical cord while swimming in opposite directions. Carl Jung sat and pondered this long and hard. He was a student of this submerged consciousness that he called the Collective Unconscious. He then noted that about the year 1000 AD the archetypes for the Age began to change. While Christ remained the male archetype, the female archetype, the fish swimming in the opposite direction assumed prominence over the male archetype. Thus, in the Catholic Church the Virgin Mary, the Great Mother, became the focus of worship over that of Christ. However, inr the North of Europe, the Nordics rejected the Great Mother as the female archetype choosing rather to adopt that of, in the Greek world, Artemis, who was called Diana in the Roman dispensation. Thus while the archetypes were Mary/Jesus in the South of Europe, in the North they became Jesus and Artemis-Diana. Artemis was known as the Mistress of the Animals, the huntress, the virgin goddess. She transcended Jesus. The last thousand years then have been dominated by the female archetype of the Age of Pisces. We are now on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius hence the archetypes will change appropriate to that Age. The Green Man will be the male archetype; I’m not aware of the who the female archetype will be.

So, the initiates are aware of this and George W.M. Reynolds was an Illuminated initiate. He knew about Diana, hence in the two Mysteries stories if you are reading attentively, you will notice the prominence of the name Diana. It is most prominent in the story of Lady Diana Lade and Tim Meagles in the Court of London. I am not an initiate or Illuminated in the religious sense, I am merely an independent historical scholar. I come by my understanding through study.

You may want a couple illustrations that demonstrate my point. They are readily available in plain sight. For those of you who are familiar with the Arthurian Cycle you will remember the story of Vivian or Nemue and Merlin the Magician. Merlin can be designated Jesus/Merlin and Vivian, Vivian/Diana. In the cycle that was written about mid-Age you will recall that Merlin was the wisest man of all and he was associated with Blaise to whom he related his adventures to compose for posterity. Merlin as a male represents the first half of the Age when the male was dominant. Thus the young and beauteous Vivian makes up to the doddering old Merlin and flatters his masculine drive. She wheedles his magical secrets from him then turning on the charm, placing his head in her lap, as it were, she wheedles the great secret from him which he knew better than to tell her but…love, love, love.

Having the secret she then says the magic words and imprisons Merlin in the earth, Mother Earth, the feminine, that is. He’s still there, obviously. Thus Diana assumed prominence as the female archetype of Pisces in the North.

Now, here’s where it gets kind of spooky. About the turn of twentieth century as the Age of Aquarius got nearer, rumblings began to appear premonitory of the transition. Then, in 1920 an Englishwoman by the name of Mrs. Hull published her novel, The Sheik. The same Sheik that made Rudolf Valentino famous. In this novel the huntress, as Diana was called, who had been brought up as a boy by her father, was visiting the English watering hole in the desert, Biskra, in Algeria. There was a railway from the coast about 115 miles long to Biskra which is on the verge of the Sahara. We now have Diana coupled with the English fascination with the desert.

That fascination may perhaps be best described by the Saharan explorer Byron Khun De Prorok in his Mysterious Sahara. Mrs. Hull who had actually been in Algeria makes an attempt. In her story Diana is the haughty male despising huntress who is about to make a crossing of the desert from Biskra to Oran unescorted. The Sheik, ostensibly an Arab and a Moslem sees her about town and decides to abduct her, which to make a longer story short, he does. Now, he has to tame Diana, this is interesting, he rapes her night after night until her spirit is broken. In the course of the story she assumes the subordinate role to the male. This is a strange story. Naturally the Sheik turns out to be not Arab but half English and half Portuguese more or less giving the English a claim to the Sahara but creating a weird relationship between England and the Moslems that now appears to be manifesting itself in reverse. If Mrs. Hull was an initiate and that isn’t unlikely then possibly she is, or was, preparing the way for the coming Aquarian Age when a new female archetype will be needed. That’s about as far as my researches have taken me so far. It will be noted however that in Reynold’s story Lady Diana Lade, who wears men’s clothes and is repeatedly denominated the huntress marries Tim Meagles who has become a Marquis, hence noble and a fitting mate for the princessly Diana. One may compare that with Mrs. Hull’s story.

As I say, this tremendous story runs underground like the above ground Nile. However the traditions of the Zodiac are transmitted, they are being transmitted.

But, back to Reynolds and his story of the Steam Packet and its place in his corpus. The story was written and published in ten parts at one shilling each before the last novel of his first period Master Timothy’s Bookcase which was published in 1942. The edition I have, reissued by Gyan Press of India, is all ten parts bound and published together originally in 1844 with an ad for Master Timothy on the back cover. Each of the installments was priced at one shilling, twelve pence. Master Timothy was advertised by the publisher W. Emans for sixteen shillings. Apparently the public rejected Reynolds at very high prices compared to a penny. Perhaps Reynolds despaired of success after both titles failed. The advertisement for Master Timothy sounds like a plea to the reader. Very interesting, I reproduce it here.

“We have frequently had occasion to speak favourably of the writing of this author; and we see no reason in the work before us for changing that opinion. Part I. of ‘Master Timothy’s Bookcase’ contains forty pages of letter-press and two beautiful steel engravings, and is sold at the usual price of one shilling. At that rate it is decidedly one of the cheapest works of the day; and its intrinsic merits will doubtless aid not a little in procuring for it an adequate share of the public patronage. The design of the tale is singular; the hero, Sir Edmund Mortimer, becomes possessed of a magic bookcase, which reveals to him all the secrets and mysteries of human life. The chief aim of Mr. Reynolds in this work seems to be to involve his hero in a series of doubts and mystifications; and when his curiosity and suspense are worked up to the highest pitch, he appeals to the book-case, and the truth is immediately made apparent. That which as first sight appeared virtuous, turns out to be vicious; seeming injustice proves to be justice; and every thing turns out in a contrary manner from what either the hero or the reader of the tale anticipate. We are told in the Preface that ‘one of the principal aims of the author, is to illustrate the truth of the ancient aphorism that we should never trust to appearances.’ The interest of the reader is most acutely excited; and he must lay down the first Part with a wish to become acquainted with the next. We perceive by the Preface, that in the course of forthcoming Parts the story of Madame Lafarge and the historical subject of the Man with the Iron Mask are to form episodes in the tale. The plot is ingenious and original; for, although, from the title, the reader might imagine that it is an imitation of ‘Master Humphrey’s Clock,’ we can vouch that no similitude of design is apparent in the tale before us.” –Dispatch, July 4^th, 1841.

The reader would certainly be justified in thinking that the title refers to Dickens’ Master Humphrey and as the book ends with a story about Mr. Pickwick it would seem he was justified. Perhaps Reynolds did despair as both The Steam Packet and Master Timothy seem to lean on Dickens for a sense of direction. He seems to be a parasite of Dickens.

To move ahead a bit to 1844 when Reynolds began Mysteries of London for the publishers Stiff and Vickers. At the end of the Second Series of Mysteries of London in 1848 Stiff and Vickers say that they own The Mysteries of London and imply that Reynolds can no longer use the title. Indeed, they found another writer, Miller, to write, I assume, for hire to continue the series.

One wonders then whether Stiff and Vickers didn’t approach Reynolds to write a Mysteries of London in imitation of Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris. Another Frenchman, Paul Favel, had also published his novel Mysteries of London in 1843 which, judging only from a few excerpts, the book has never been translated, it is similar in concept to that of Reynolds. It is possible that Stiff and Vickers seized on the idea and recruited Reynolds to write the story to which occasion Reynolds supremely rose.

In any event The Steam Packet is written much in the Dickens style although as usual much superior to Dickens’ execution. The story has a tristesse about it as though Reynolds’ first period is ending with a feeling of failure. In fact, he seems to have made small impression at this point in his career.

Reynolds reverts to a Dickens motif of a club and its leader not dissimilar to the Pickwick Club. This is the Club of Luminaries led be a Mr. Pifpaf. Not exactly an endearing name, not quite as good as Pickwick. As in Pickwick Abroad the Club organizes an outing on a Steam Packet that probably was a novel concept at the time and in accordance with Reynolds interest in The Great Western. In this case the trip is down the Thames from the Pool, past Margate and the Cinq Ports to a tour of the French ports with its various adventures comically told. It’s not bad. It is a very good effort of Reynolds that probably deserved better acceptance except for that fatal association with another man’s work. Dickens is always on your mind.

Still, I see it as a Sentimental Journey as Reynolds more or less recaps his life to this point.   Consider this passage from page 75. He has just been criticizing Margate in Kent as a place where they roll up the sidewalks at five. Then this lovely passage:

Still—in despite of all that I have just written—I love Margate well. I am deeply attached to that part of Kent in which the Cinque Ports are situated; for I myself first drew breath of life in one of them. There are some men who regard love for one’s native place as a kind of fanaticism;–mind how you speak before them of the village where your eyes first held light—of your attachment to the very earth—to the atmosphere—to the village bell—or to the gently murmur of the passing stream;–all this is an impenetrable mystery to their cold egotist souls: in such hearts Self is the dominant power—such men love naught but themselves. They possess not a single generous association: listening to them you might believe that they exist without having ever submitted to the weakness of infancy—that they are secure from tomb.

Delicious is the privilege of enjoying the remembrance of a spot upon the earth where all our delightful dreams are assembled, our youthful loves and our parting hour! Delicious is it to picture a happy life in the little white cottage, sheltered with rosy tiles, as did Rousseau! There are you known by the very trees that grace the hamlet: that crowing cock that announced your birth—that wooden cross looked on while you received the name of Christian—that heavenly star rose through the ethereal arc to protect your life—the old church portals have creaked a kindly welcome to your repeated presence. There alone are you at home and beside your family;–there rests your father, there sleeps your mother;–there you were a helpless babe; and thither will you return in old age! Oh! spurn not that patriotism which is circumscribed to one’s native place,–it is patriotism still; for he who can love the humble village which saw his birth, possesses that sacred fervor which prompted Decius and Curtius how to die! Oh! even as my hand traces these words, I feel myself carried back to the days of infancy—and I rove with light and buoyant step once again amongst my native valleys. And so it is with the old man, too: though many years have glided by, and time has touched him with its silvery hand—though the roses of spring be faded, and the merry song of youthfulness be hushed; yet over these does memory linger, and draw from the remembrance a fragrance redolent of the gathered flower.

I think that sort of sentimentalism pervades Reynolds writing and gives it much of its interest. My life circumstances prevent me from sharing the view but Reynolds experience is as mine should have been and which I miss having been prevented to see.

When the steam packet lands at Dunkirk it is as though Reynolds is conducting a tour of his stay in France which he found equally as wonderful as his childhood even though he experienced some rough times. He seems fully conversant with Dunkirk and nearby St. Omer although the necessities of fiction prevent it from becoming a travelogue.

Reynolds was always quite observant of place and people as he shows in his excellent portrait of Calais. It sounds as if he had returned for a visit as he compares the present fallen state with the bustling past. At one time Calais was the only point of entrance into France from England while at the time he is writing other ports have assumed importance and Calais has become a shadow of itself with all institutions in decline. He himself claimed to have spoken with George ‘Beau’ Brummel when he first arrived in 1831. The Beau was the prime credit exile at the time. At that time all English visitors landed at Calais. There his old acquaintances saw the decaying Brummel and were dunned by him for loans that he could never repay. His was a sad story as he began his long decline dying a few years later a tattered remain of his former glory.

The Steam Packet was a much better book than I expected. It has multiple charms. Not least of the charms is that Reynolds is describing the French Channel ports as they appear to have actually existed at the moment while comparing them to the recent past. One is led to believe that Reynolds visited them just prior to writing. In a very interesting manner he interjects one of his long tales, as he calls them, short stories as a later period might, that ultimately leads to the career of the Seeress Mlle. Lenormand.

Mlle Lenormand was a real person and was alive at the time of writing dying in 1843. She was a very famous Seeress dating back to the time of the Revolution. She was probably a topic of conversation in Reynolds’ circles. I would hesitate to call a seeress such as Mlle. Lenormand fraudulent except that she and all Seers and Seeresses lay claim to have supernatural powers. The good have acute vision and highly developed acumen. They are able to look at what is happening, compare it with the past, and make fairly accurate prognostications of the future. Thus before the Revolution Mlle. Lenormand was able to accurately project the course of the Revolution gaining her reputation. Thus she was assumed to have supernatural powers so that she would have had to have worn the mantle to protect her reputation.

In order to succeed she had to have a system to collect information wide and deep then present her findings in a mysterious manner. She must have been at the height of her fame in 1840-41 when Reynolds wrote the Steam Packet.

By 1841 many societal things were happening that tended toward the encouragement of the supernatural. The Spiritual movement was beginning that would persist through the century finally becoming the Society for Psychic Research. Table turning and rappings were to become the rage. Mesmerism or Hypnotism as it became controversy was simmering along merrily in which Reynolds was heavily involved along with Franz Gall’s phrenology that was taken quite seriously at the time, the study of physiognomy is frequently referred to by Reynolds. And then there was the misunderstood phenomenon of electricity shrouded in the mystical, that Reynolds believed to be an actual fluid. And the telegraph, my Lord, messages could be sent hundreds of miles instantaneously. This was quite a mindblower at the time. By the twenty-first century you could transmit your own picture to anyplace in the world instantaneously. Perhaps then as now it wasn’t easy to determine what was real and what wasn’t. Today you address a black column and instead of saying abracadabra, you say Alexa and all kinds of improbable, seemingly impossible, things can occur. So, what isn’t possible? Perhaps then as now it wasn’t that easy to determine what was real and what wasn’t.

At any rate, in this atmosphere, Reynolds chose to expose the methods, or some of them, of Mlle. Lenormand. It is questionable how effective the Steam Packet was in discrediting her, nevertheless it’s the intent that counts. One wonders if she heard of it.

I think that one can couple The Steam Packet with Master Timothy’s Bookcase. They are both highly emulative of Dickens. Reynolds wouldn’t shake off the influence of Dickens until he began the Mysteries. Astonishingly Reynolds was only twenty-six years old when he wrote Steam Packet and it is an involved and intricate story with very good characterizations.

Reynolds first attempt, The Youthful Impostor was first written when he was only eighteen, that would have been in 1832, and published in 1835 when he was twenty-one. Reynolds rewrote it as The Parricide. As Reynolds describes that work in the advertisement:

This work has been completely remodeled, incorporating with it almost the whole of the episode involving the adventures of Sophia Maxwell and the Tale, in its new—reshaped—improved form, and Is now issued to the public under the more appropriate title of “The Parricide”

And that is dated 1847. So he has been reborn as a success and thus brings forward what he considered an important work under his own imprint. It appears that the four series of the Mysteries of London remained the property of Stiff and Vickers as I have found no evidence to this point that the series was ever republished by Dicks.

There is some mystery concerning the Court of London that putatively exists as four series also. The Oxford Society in England and the Burton Ethnographical Society of Boston USA published a twenty volume ‘Works’ of G. W. M. Reynolds that includes the first two series undoubtedly written by Reynolds but then continues on with a five volume work titled The Crimes of Lady Saxondale and a fourth five volume series titled The Fortunes of the Ashtons.

I have no idea where the third and fourth series came from but Reynolds could not have written them while they were available in 1900 when the Oxford and Burton sets were published. It is physically impossible that Reynolds could have written the two continuations while the style of writing is quite different from his.

Today, times and mores have changed, 1840-56 is 170 years or so in the past. Even the Oxford and Burton editions are well over a hundred years old, one hundred and seventy years of eventful history, two centuries almost, and millions of books. The mentality of the current age cannot elate to the changes the human mind has gone through so any thoughts of a revival, any such hopes, are futile. As Stendhal dedicated his great novel, The Charterhouse of Parma to the ‘the happy few’, so only the happy few will appreciate this fantastic author. I am happy to be one of them.

Next: Part VIII, Into The Mysteries.