Henry Hetherington: The Revolutionary Life of a Radical Printer (1850) | G. W. M. Reynoldsby Stephen BasdeoThe following biography of Henry Hetherington originally appeared in Reynolds’s Political Instructor, accompanied with a portrait of Hetherington on the front page. Likely written G.W.M. Reynolds, it has been transcribed by Stephen Basdeo.[1] Henry Hetherington as featured in Reynolds’s Political Instructor (folio size, Stephen Basdeo Personal Collection)The name of the late Mr. Hetherington is no doubt familiar to our readers as that of a man who was ever engaged in the good work of political and intellectual progress, and who suffered severely by advocating those rights so tenaciously withheld from the humbler classes in this country. Henry Hetherington was born in the year 1792, in Compton Street, Soho, and was apprenticed to the trade of a printer, serving his time with the father of that well-known charitable gentleman, Luke Hansard. When his apprenticeship had ceased, the trade being dull and overstocked, Hetherington went to Belgium, where he worked for a considerable period. On returning to England he established himself in a shop situated in Kingsgate Street, Holborn, from whence he issued the first number of the Poor Man’s Guardian. This was in the year 1831. At the close of 1830 he was appointed by the working men of London to draw up a circular for the formation of Trades’ Unions; and that document being sanctioned by a meeting of delegates, formed the basis of the “National Union of the Working Classes,” which ultimately led to Chartism.Three convictions were obtained against Hetherington for publishing the unstamped Poor Man’s Guardian, and warrants were issued for taking him into custody; but he contrived for a long time to frustrate the endeavours of the Bow Street officials to capture him; and might have done so much longer in the country, had he not resolved upon returning to London for the purpose of having a last interview with his dying mother. He reached the door of his house, knocked hard, but was not answered; before his second summons was heard, the Bow Street runners had pounced upon him, and he was their prisoner. Hetherington was then conveyed to Clerkenwell Gaol where he remained for six months. The Guardian was carried on all the time. In the year 1832, before he had been many months at liberty, Hetherington was again imprisoned in the same gaol for six months, during which period he endured the most rigorous and cruel treatment,—all for the high crime of selling a penny paper without being stamped.A regular system of persecution was adopted by the government to suppress unstamped publications and crush cheap literature for ever. Heywood of Manchester, Guest of Birmingham, with about five hundred other news venders, were imprisoned for selling the “Unstamped.” In the year 1833 Hetherington removed from Kingsgate Street to his well-known shop in the Strand; he fearlessly persevered in his efforts to obtain for the people the immense advantages attendant upon cheap literature. The Destructive, ironically styled the Conservative, was issued from the Strand; and the London Dispatch followed, at one time obtaining a weekly circulation of twenty-five thousand. In 1834 Henry Hetherington was again tried for publishing the Guardian, he defended himself and obtained an acquittal; but was convicted for the Conservative. He, however, contrived for some time to elude the vigilance of the officers employed to capture him, by entering and leaving his house in the disguise of a Quaker. But the government revenged themselves by seizing in his shop for two hundred and twenty pounds, in the name of the commissioners for stamps, on the ground that he was not a registered printer: his premises were cleared out; but Hetherington, nothing daunted, purchased another printing-machine, and as no printer had courage sufficient to undertake his work, continued, in spite of the government’s persecution, to publish his unstamped periodicals until they consented to reduce the newspaper stamp to one penny, when he issued the Two penny Dispatch, a journal, edited by Mr. James Bronterre O’Brien. Mr. Hetherington had thus, by his persevering courage, achieved a triumph that should endear his name for ever to the poorer classes in England: he defied the law, he suffered imprisonment, and lost his property in struggling for a right which eventually was partially conceded; and to his energy, ability, and per severance are we indebted for the immense benefits de rived by the masses from the circulation amongst them of cheap literature.Henry Hetherington was one of the earliest and most energetic of working-men engaged in the foundation of the Mechanics’ Institute, and his zeal and intelligence procured for him the friendship of Dr. Birkbeck. Upon the opinions in respect of religion entertained by Mr. Hetherington, it is not our intention to dwell; holding it, as we do, an arrogant assumption on the part of any man to censure or denounce the honest conviction of his fellows on a question that alone rests between man and his Creator.The subject of this sketch represented London and Stockport in the great convention of 1839, of which the martyr Frost was a member; and his latter years were devoted to advocating the principles of Socialism and Chartism. In the parish of St. Pancras, where he was a director of the poor, he was universally esteemed for his benevolence, ability, integrity, and good sense, even by those who dissented from his views. His strict temperance warranted him in believing that he was not very to fall a victim to the prevailing epidemic—the cholera, and when first seized with it he refused to call in medical relief. Professional advice was subsequently summoned, but it was too late; Hetherington’s hours upon earth were numbered, and his useful life drew rapidly to a close. He sunk under the disease, and expired on the morning of August, the 24th, 1849, aged fifty-seven years; leaving behind him one son and a widow, who carries on her lamented husband’s business in Judd Street, New Road. Several orations were made over the grave of Hetherington by friends who had known him long, and appreciated the excellence of his intentions.[1] [G.W.M. Reynolds], ‘The Late Henry Hetherington’, Reynolds’s Political Instructor, 2 February 1850, 1–2.

This is a post from an associate in Yorkshire. We are investigating the life of the early nineteenth century novelist George W. M. Reynolds. Reynolds is a terrific story teller well deserving a revival. The below piece by Thomas Hood provides depth and context to the social environment within which Reynolds wrote. This is a cute little story. Well done.

Reynolds’s News and Miscellany

HISTORY, LITERATURE, POETRY, AND LITERARY CRITICISM

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2021SEARCH FOR…

19TH CENTURY

A Tale of the Great Plague (c.1840) | Thomas Hood

BYSTEPHEN BASDEOON 26 AUG 2021 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) was born in London and, his father being a bookseller, grew up around books. He went on to become a poet, novelist, and satirist. Most famous for his poetry, William Michael Rossetti in 1903 declared him “the finest English poet” between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson.” Although by their nature pandemics are very serious affairs, this particular short story takes a somewhat lighter approach to portraying a pandemic.[1]

“This is one of the pest discretions.”—SIR HUGH EVANS.

About five or six years after that deplorable great Plague of London, there befell a circumstance which, as it is not set forth in Defoe his history of the pestilence, I shall make bold to write down herein, not only on account of the strangeness of the event, but also because it carries a moral pick-a-back, as a good story ought to do.

It is a notoriously known fact, as collected from the bills of mortality, that there died of the plague in the mere metropolis a matter of some hundreds of thousands of human souls; yet notwithstanding this most awful warning to evil doers, the land did nevertheless bring forth such a rank crop of sin and wickedness, that the like was never known before or after; the City of London, especially, being overrun with bands of thieves and murtherers, against whom there was little or no check, the civical police having been utterly disbanded and disrupt during the ravages of the pestilence. Neither did men’s minds turn for some time towards the mere safeguard of property, being still distracted with personal fears, for although the pest had, as it were, died of the excess of its own violence, yet from time to time there arose flying rumours of fresh breakings out of the malady. The small-pox and the malignant fever being the prolific parents of such like alarms. Accordingly many notable robberies and divers grievous murthers having been acted with impunity during the horrible crisis of the pest, those which had before been wicked were now hardened, and became a thousand times worse, till the city and the neighbourhood thereof seemed given in prey to devils, who had been loosened for a season from the everlasting fetters of the law.

Now four of these desperadoes having met together at the Dolphin in Deptford, they laid a plot together to rob a certain lone mansion house which stood betwixt the Thames marshes and the Forest of Hainault, and which was left in the charge of only one man, the family being gone off to another mansion house in the county of Wiltshire, for the sake of a more wholesome air. And the manner of the plot was this: one of the villains going in a feigned voice was to knock at the front-door and beg piteously for a night’s shelter, and then the door, being opened, the other knaves were to rush in and bind the serving-man, or murther him, as might seem best, and so taking his keys they were to ransack the house, where they expected to find a good store of plate. Accordingly, one Friday, at the dead of the night, they set forth, having for leader a fellow that was named Blackface, by reason of a vizard which he wore always on such errands, diverting themselves by the way with laying out each man his share of the booty in the manner that pleased him best, wine and the women of Lewkener’s Lane coming in you may be sure for the main burthen of the song. At last they entered the fore-court of the house which they were to rob, and which was as silent as death, and as dark, excepting a glimmer from one window towards the top. Blackface then, as agreed upon, began to beat at the door, but being flushed with drink, instead of entreating for an entrance, he shouted out to the serving-man, bidding him with many terrible oaths to come down and to render up his keys, for that they were come to relieve him of his charge.

“In the name of God, my masters,” cried the serving-man from the window, “what do you want here?”

“We are come,” returned Blackface, “to relieve you of your trust, so throw us down your keys.”

“An that be all,” said the serving-man, whose name was Adams, “wait but a little while and you shall have the keys and my place to boot. Come again but a few hours hence, and you shall find me dead, when you may do with me and my trust as you list.”

“Come, come,” cries Blackface, “no preaching, but come down and open, or we will bring fire and faggot to the door.”

“Ye shall not need,” answered Adams, “hearken only to what I say, and you shall have free passage; but I give you fair warning, though I be but a single man, and without weapon, and sick even unto death, yet shall your coming in cost you as many lives as ye bear amongst you, for within these walls there is a dismal giant that hath slain his thousands, even the plague.” At these dreary words the courage of the robbers was taken somewhat aback, but Blackface spirited them on, saying it was no doubt an invention to deter them from the spoil.

“Alas,” answered Adams, who overheard their argument, “what I say is the solemn and sorrowful truth, and which I am speaking for the last time, for I shall never see to-morrow’s blessed sun. As for the door, I will open it to you with my own hands, beseeching you for your own sakes to stand a little apart, and out of the taint of my breath, which is sure destruction. There is one child herein a dead corpse, as you shall behold if you have so much courage, for it lieth unburied in the hall.” So saying he descended, and presently flung open the hall door, the villains withdrawing a little backward, and they saw verily by the light of a rush wick which he carried, that he was lapt only in a white sheet, and looking very pale and ghost-like, with a most dismal black circle round each of his eyes.

“If ye disbelieve me still,” he said, “look inwards when I draw back from the door, and ye shall see what was a living child this day, but is now a corpse hastening to corruption. Alas! in the midst of life we are in death: she was seized at play.” With these words he drew aside, and the robbers looking through the door, perceived it was even as he said, for the dead body of the child was lying on the hall table, with the same black ring round its eyes, and dressed in brocade and riband as though death had carried it off, even as he said, in its holiday clothes. “Now,” said Adams, after they had gazed awhile, “here be the keys,” therewithal casting towards them a huge bunch; but the villains would now no more meddle with them than with so many aspics or scorpions, looking on them in truth as the very keys of death’s door. Accordingly, after venting a few curses on their ill luck, they began to depart in very ill humour, when Adams again called to them to hear his last words.

“Now,” said he, “though ye came hither with robbery, and perchance murder in your hearts, against me, yet as a true Christian will I not only forgive your wicked intents, but advise you how to shun that miserable end which my own life is coming to so very suddenly. Although your souls have been saved from sin, yet, doubtless ye have not stood so long in this infected air without peril to the health of your bodies, wherefore, by the advice of a dying man, go straightway from this over to Laytonstone, where there be tan pits, and sit there for a good hour amidst the strong smell of the tan, and which hath more virtue as a remedy against the infection of the plague, than even tobacco or the odour of drugs. Do this and live, for the poison is strong and subtle, and seizeth, ere one can be aware, on the springs of life.” Thereupon he uttered a dismal groan, and began yelling so fearfully that the robbers with one accord took to flight, and never stopped till they were come to Laytonstone, and into the tanner’s very yard, where they sat down and stooped over the pit, snuffing up the odours with all the relish of men in whose nostrils it was as the breath of life. In which posture they had been sitting half an hour, when there entered several persons with a lantern, and which they took to be the tanner and his men, and to whom, therefore, they addressed themselves, begging pardon for their boldness, and entreating leave to continue awhile in the tan-yard to disinfect themselves of the plague; but they had hardly uttered these words, when lo! each man was suddenly seized upon, and bound in a twinkling, the constables, for such they were, jeering them withal, and saying the plague had been too busy to come itself, but had sent them a gallows and a halter instead, which would serve their turn. Whereupon, most of the rogues became very chop-fallen, but Blackface swore he could die easy but for one thing upon his mind, and that was, what had become of the dead child and the man dying of the plague, both of which he had seen with his own eyes. Hereupon, the man with a lantern turned the light upon his own face, which the rogues knew directly to be the countenance of Adams himself, but without any of those black rings round the eyes, and for which he explained he had been indebted to a little charcoal. “As for the dead child,” he said, “you must enquire, my masters, of the worshipful company of Barber Surgeons, and they will tell you of a certain waxen puppet of Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, which used to be carried at their pageants, and when it fell into disuse was purchased of them by my Lady Dame Ellinor Wood, for a plaything to her own children. So one head you see is worth four pair of hands, and your whole gang, tall, and strong knaves though you be, have been overmatched by one old man and a doll.”

The Light Of The World

by

Dr. Anton Polarion

Been reading some silly stuff about the Bible by some silly people.  A corrective necessary.  Let’s start from before the beginning.  There was only God, a universal god not a Jewish god.  God was universal and created all the peoples of the world.  Then, for some inexplicable reason he chose the Jews for his favorite people.  There must have been many peoples to choose from or he couldn’t have chosen the Jews.

This was the Old Dispensation and it went on for a while.  Then God got tired of having singled out the Jews as he now wanted to include all the peoples of the world for his subjects.

How to go about it?  I have it, he said, I will send a replica of myself, a son, to tell the Jews that they’re no longer special.  This raises the question:  was that son a Jew?   The question must be answered in the negative; he wasn’t a Jew.  Why not?  Because he was the son of God and God wasn’t a Jew.  God sent his Holy Spirit to implant his replica, his son, in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  God can do things like that so it’s not impossible.  Right? 

Mary delivered God’s son named Jesus.  Jesus was on his own.  No identifying marks, no passport, nothing.  He had to convince the Jews when the time came that he was divine.  The Jews when the time came would find this laughable.

First Jesus had to be prepared to have at least a half way convincing argument.  What did Mary do?  She didn’t turn him over to the Rabbis for educating, no, she sent him to Egypt to be educated and trained.  Thus, not only is Jesus not Jewish he wasn’t even educated in Jewish ideology.  Egypt was the Light of the World, the home of all wisdom.

If you’ll note Israel’s great teacher was the Egyptian Moses.  Moses did a lousy job, even gave them a cardboard god named Yahweh.  Separated them from the real God.  Probably why the Jews didn’t recognize Jesus.  Different image.  Jesus then was trained in Egypt, inculcated with the New Dispensation.  Enough of the old, new is the way.

And the New Dispensation?  For God so loved the WORLD that he sent his son to tell the Jews that he no longer wanted a special people so they were just like everyone else now.

Well, you know, that’s a tough message to take.  What do you do when you don’t like the message?  You kill the messenger and that is just what they did do.  So it is clear that God wasn’t Jewish and neither was The Light of the World, his son. Just like it says right there in the Bible if you read it right.

Bob Dylan, Edie and J.C.

by

R.E. Prindle

I read that Bob Dylan is accused of  statutory rape…back in 1965.  While I fail to take the sixty-eight year old woman’s claim seriously I have no doubt Bob acted cavalierly with women at all times.  At that time in 1965 Bob was courting a Playboy Bunny named Sara Lownds who he married in November of 1965; he was having an affair with Suze Rotolo that began in 1961, he was keeping Joan Baez at bay and more importantly and shamefully he was persecuting a young heiress named Edie Sedgwick.

Edie was a celebrity personality at the time.  Bob was in competition with another celebrity, Andy Warhol, for Edie’s favor.  And as usual Bob put his personal affairs into song:  Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street.  But as to his accusers complaint:  She claims she was sexually and mentally abused by him in April-May for six weeks.  If this in the case her memory misremembers the dates.  April is completely out as Bob was in England at the time however May/June is open.

A Dylan sycophant named Clinton Heylin in England who has written numerous books and biographies while living his life as a shadow Bob, has offered his services as an expert witness if the suit goes to trial.  He is willing to testify that Bob wasn’t even in New York for six continuous weeks in 1965.  Oh my, and this guy considers himself an expert on Bob’s life and whereabouts.  Let’s look at the facts.

Bob met Edie in December of 1964.  She stunned him so terrifically that he apparently forgot wife to be Sara Lownds to pursue Edie.  He came on strong, very strong, seemed to be doing well, but in January 1965 business called him away.  He extracted promises from Edie to remember him.

Subsequently in January Edie met Andy Warhol, who was a bigger celebrity than Bob at the time.  Here the feud between Bob and Andy begins.  Andy made Edie what she considered an attractive offer to be in his silly movies.  Edie snapped at the bait.  Remember that Bob thought he had a prior claim on her affections.

Several months later, May of ’65, Bob returned, it isn’t recorded that he went to see his betrothed Sara first, but he was astonished that Edie had defected for Andy.  Bob went ballistic.  In June he confronted Edie at one of Andy’s parties.  They went off into a corner to discuss matters.  Edie explained the movie thing.  Bob told her that he was going to make movies too leaving her to understand that she would be his co-star.  Oh, Bob.  Edie refused to budge as she was already connected to Andy.

Bob became half crazed.  He charged home trembling in every limb, grabbed a pen and in near frenzy filled several sheets of paper vomiting out lines for something called Like A Rolling Stone all about what a bitch Edie was.  I used to have this written in great detail on a post in my blog: Exhuming Bob 23a, Bob and Edie.  Someone has broken into my post and obliterated the contents.  I don’t know who would have done this except Bob.  Not nice Bob.  That was my copyrighted intellectual property not unlike your songs.  You may be liable.  That wasn’t nice at all.  Sort of like you treated Edie.

Andy and Edie then had the summer of their lives filling the pages of Time and Life magazines while Bob fumed.  Tidying up his lyrics he blasted them across the airwaves.  Andy and Edie may have been the only people who got it as the lyrics were so disguised l can assure that none of us on the other side of the radio got it.  Then Bob sat back down and penned a blast at Andy titled Positively Fourt Street.  More mysterious lyrics as a screed directed at Andy.

Bob would not leave Edie alone.  Pestering about the movie he had in mind, but failing to deliver so Edie was caught between two posts.  Then in November while Edie was begging him to make the movie deal and possibly marry her, who knows, Bob let the bomb drop that he was already married to his Bunny.

Bob wrote another couple vicious songs about her then passed her to his sidekick Bobby Neuwirth.  Edie’s fate after Bobby is too painful to relate.

Bob then was in town for most of ’65 contrary to Clinton Heylin’s expert testimony.  I have to discount Bob’s accuser until definite facts emerge.  As this woman claims that she apparently resisted Bob’s blandishments until he ‘groomed’ her with alcohol and drugs plus physical abuse I find that difficult to believe; I don’t think Bob would have had to use booze and drugs.  This was Greenwich Village in the Hippie days in NYC for Chrissakes.  The free sex capital of the world.  Every weekend hundreds, thousands, of girls flooded into Washington Square looking for action.  I doubt there was a single musician lacking as much sex as he wanted.

And Bob, you shouldn’t have messed with my intellectual property, my sacred words.  That Bob is an actual crime.

Bob Dylan, Edie and J.C.

by

R.E. Prindle

I read that Bob Dylan is accused of  statutory rape…back in 1965.  While I fail to take the sixty-eight year old woman’s claim seriously I have no doubt Bob acted cavalierly with women at all times.  At that time in 1965 Bob was courting a Playboy Bunny named Sarah Loundes who he married in November of 1965; he was having an affair with Suze Rotolo that began in 1961, he was keeping Joan Baez at bay and more importantly and shamefully he was persecuting a young heiress named Edie Sedgwick.

Edie was a celebrity personality at the time.  Bob was in competition with another celebrity, Andy Warhol, for Edie’s favor.  And as usual Bob put his personal affairs into song:  Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street.  But as to his accusers complaint:  She claims she was sexually and mentally abused by him in April-May for six weeks.  If this in the case her memory misremembers the dates.  April is completely out as Bob was in England at the time however May/June is open.

A Dylan sycophant named Clinton Heylin in England who has written numerous books and biographies while living his life as a shadow Bob, has offered his services as an expert witness if the suit goes to trial.  He is willing to testify that Bob wasn’t even in New York for six continuous weeks in 1965.  Oh my, and this guy considers himself an expert on Bob’s life and whereabouts.  Let’s look at the facts.

Bob met Edie in December of 1964.  She stunned him so terrifically that he apparently forgot wife to be Sarah Loundes to pursue Edie.  He came on strong, very strong, seemed to be doing well, but in January 1965 business called him away.  He extracted promises from Edie to remember him.

Subsequently in January Edie met Andy Warhol, who was a bigger celebrity than Bob at the time.  Here the feud between Bob and Andy begins.  Andy made Edie what she considered an attractive offer to be in his silly movies.  Edie snapped at the bait.  Remember that Bob thought he had a prior claim on her affections.

Several months later, May of ’65, Bob returned, it isn’t recorded that he went to see his betrothed Sarah first, but he was astonished that Edie had defected for Andy.  Bob went ballistic.  In June he confronted Edie at one of Andy’s parties.  They went off into a corner to discuss matters.  Edie explained the movie thing.  Bob told her that he was going to make movies too leaving her to understand that she would be his co-star.  Oh, Bob.  Edie refused to budge as she was already connected to Andy.

Bob became half crazed.  He charged home trembling in every limb, grabbed a pen and in near frenzy filled several sheets of paper vomiting out lines for something called Like A Rolling Stone all about what a bitch Edie was.  I used to have this written in great detail on a post in my blog: Exhuming Bob 23a, Bob and Edie.  Someone has broken into my post and obliterated the contents.  I don’t know who would have done this except Bob.  Not nice Bob.  That was my copyrighted intellectual property not unlike your songs.  You may be liable.  That wasn’t nice at all.  Sort of like you treated Edie.

Andy and Edie then had the summer of their lives filling the pages of Time and Life magazines while Bob fumed.  Tidying up his lyrics he blasted them across the airwaves.  Andy and Edie may have been the only people who got it as the lyrics were so disguised l can assure that none of us on the other side of the radio got it.  Then Bob sat back down and penned a blast at Andy titled Positively Fourt Street.  More mysterious lyrics as a screed directed at Andy.

Bob would not leave Edie alone.  Pestering about the movie he had in mind, but failing to deliver so Edie was caught between two posts.  Then in November while Edie was begging him to make the movie deal and possibly marry her, who knows, Bob let the bomb drop that he was already married to his Bunny.

Bob wrote another couple vicious songs about her then passed her to his sidekick Bobby Neuwirth.  Edie’s fate after Bobby is too painful to relate.

Bob then was in town for most of ’65 contrary to Clinton Heylin’s expert testimony.  I have to discount Bob’s accuser until definite facts emerge.  As this woman claims that she apparently resisted Bob’s blandishments until he ‘groomed’ her with alcohol and drugs plus physical abuse I find that difficult to believe; I don’t think Bob would have had to use booze and drugs.  This was Greenwich Village in the Hippie days in NYC for Chrissakes.  The free sex capital of the world.  Every weekend hundreds, thousands, of girls flooded into Washington Square looking for action.  I doubt there was a single musician lacking as much sex as he wanted.

And Bob, you shouldn’t have messed with my intellectual property, my sacred words.  That Bob is an actual crime.

George W.M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer And Some Etceteras

17. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

Reynolds: Corpus

Rymer, James Malcom: Varney the Vampire, Valancourt Pubs, Dick Collins Introduction.  Originally 1847

Rymer, James Malcolm:  A String Of Pearls or Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street  Originally 1847

Smollett, Tobias: Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Humphrey Clinker. 1740-1760

There seems to be a continuum in English literature.  A mentality that descends from generation to generation.  The same fictional character types appear and reappear.  This situation can only exist in a relatively small homogeneous population dealing with the same societal situations.

In many ways the Romantic era can be seen as the last of this concentrated mentality before the Industrial Revolution transformed English society; the population began to grow almost exponentially to the present day and the experience of the confusion of different cultures were introduced into the country.  Today there is no cultural uniformity in England, only a mélange of competing cultures.

George William McArthur Reynolds then can only be understood in reference to this cultural continuum and his place in the authors of his time.  The society in which he labored perhaps began to be shaped by the restoration of the monarchy as Charles II Stuart returned from France.  They came from the era of absolute monarchy.  Absolutism had been destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution and could not be restored.

Charles II nominally accepted the Protestant religion but his successor James II insisted on Catholicism which could not be tolerated so absolutism was then completely replaced.  William and Mary succeeded, followed by the last of the Stuarts, Queen Anne.  Modern England began to form with the ascension of the German Georgian dynasty.

This period from 1714 to 1837 formed the mind of late Romantic authors that included George Reynolds.  A whole body of writers would rework the period with shared, if differing, perspectives.  They would be succeeded by mid-century writers such as Anthony Trollope, George Elliot and others for whom the results of the Industrial Revolution would displace the mind set of the late Romantics.  Perhaps the Great Exhibition of 1851 could be set as the end date of the Romantic period.

George Reynolds, for instance, who lived through the railroad boom seldom even mentions the railroads, even though his contemporaries were affected by them, preferring  to live in the days of the stage coach.

He does acknowledge steam but the telegraph and photography never enter his stories.  His is a storied career, a career that was very short.  If one begins his successful career in 1844, he was only thirty years old.  When his career effectively ended sixteen years later in 1860 he was only forty-six, but he was done.  His wild ride was over.  He wrote nothing after that point at which he had nineteen years left to live perhaps dreaming of earlier glories.  One might ask, what happened?  Why did he stop cold?  Why did his magazine, the Reynolds Miscellany, disappear, folded into his publisher and printer John Dicks magazine Bow Bells.  Why did he sell his copyrights to John Dicks losing control of his incredible sixteen year effort?  Shuffling off his life so to speak?

I think the answer is politics and the key to the politics is John Dicks, Reynolds’ printer, friend and partner.  While there is no biography of Reynolds extant there is a fair amount of information about Reynolds contained in a volume by Guy Dicks (don’t ever look that name up on the internet) entitled The John Dicks Press self published by Guy.  While its primary subject is John Dicks, he and Reynolds are inseparable.

Their association seems to have been an unlikely one.  The two minds were far apart.  Dicks was a conventional middle class mind while Reynolds was a Bohemian questioning all authority.  Dicks born in 1818 was four years younger than Reynolds.  Our biographer here, Guy Dicks, was an amateur writer so he doesn’t always provide sufficient information.  It appears that John Dicks had a minimal formal education.  He may possibly have attended Sunday School for a couple years.  If so he must then have been self-educated, perhaps only been taught a minimal amount of reading and writing.  Nevertheless he became a printer beginning his career sometime at the Queen’s Printers a large organization employing hundreds.  Guy then skips to 1841 which finds him working for Peter Perring Thoms…

Quote:

…the Sinologist (China expert), publisher, printer, and stereotyper to the trade at Warwick Square…

Unquote.

Dicks would become his chief assistant.  It would appear that he knew how to apply himself.  So John proved himself to be a master printer somewhen at twenty-three or shortly after.  In 1844 Dicks married so he had a wife and family by 1847 when he took a flyer leaving Thoms to join Reynolds as his printer.  A seemingly chancy move as Reynolds was coming off the success of his Mysteries of London but no proven record as a businessman.  This might have proven perilous to Dicks as Reynolds was in bankruptcy court in 1848.  However Reynolds pulled through and thus began a lucrative successful partnership.

If Reynolds was a successful writer Dicks was a great printer who fully complemented Reynolds.  Guy Dicks quotes Victor E. Neuburg’s  Popular Literature: A History and Guide, concerning Dicks:  The scope of the vast publishing empire over which Dicks presided in the second half of the nineteenth century awaits investigation. 

And one might say, still awaits.  Dicks was a real innovator.  His relationship with Reynolds was two sided:  a great writer on one hand and a great printer on the other.  However there was a problem.  Reynolds was an advocate of violent revolution in the same manner as France in 1793.  He advocated that and that would cause problems with the authorities, especially after the failed revolution of 1848 in which Reynolds played a prominent part in England.  One wonders if John Dicks wasn’t a government spy used to monitor Reynolds.  Apart from slighting references to Reynolds association with the Chartist Movement his political activities have not been investigated.  There can be no doubt that Reynolds favored violent revolution as in the French Revolutions of 1789, 1793, 1830 and 1848 all of which were bloody and in sequence disinherited thrones and aristocracies.  The British Government could not have looked on Reynolds complacently.

It would have been essential to place an informer inside the organization.  The Sinologist Thoms who spent years in the East, primarily in Macao, where he was instrumental in publishing a Chinese-English dictionary, thus the government must have referred to him on Chinese matters.  Who better to have insinuated Dicks into Reynolds’ organization?  As we will see, Dicks disinherited Reynolds from his company while at the same time destroying his very successful magazine, Reynolds Miscellany, acquiring his copyrights, and his newspaper essentially pushing Reynolds out the door into the street at the very young age of forty-five.

All that was left of his copyrights was Pickwick Abroad that he republished in 1864 by another publisher.  Was that his last effort?

By the time of his exit his reputation as a revolutionist was fully established.  There was a loyal body of followers who revered him.

Dicks himself who had established his empire, as Neuburg puts it and was publishing series such as Dicks’ English Novels and others, as well as six a shilling, later three shilling, complete Shakspere, as he spelled it, that sold a million copies.  In his ad at the back of Reynolds’ Mary, Queen Of The Scots, Dicks notes six Dickens, all early, at the top of the list; five Ainsworth titles, he even published first editions of three of the titles that the author couldn’t place elsewhere at that time in his career d of which was Ainsworth’s excellent novel The South Sea Bubble.  It is noteworthy that Dicks demeans Reynold titles in his English novels.  It would seem that the severance of the partnership was one sided and complete.

So what was Dicks thinking when he left Thoms for Reynolds.  One should not put Dicks in the background in the combination.  Dicks was obviously an ambitious guy and perhaps he saw Reynolds as a stepping stone to found an empire he had already projected in his mind.  Of course, originally Reynolds’ work was his function as a printer.  Still he started out as Reynolds’ employee and yet many of the titles state:  Printed for the author by John Dicks.  So Dicks must always have considered the printing division his and compelled Reynolds to accept him a full partner later, probably to gain title to the printing plant.

All of this is going to transpire quickly, thirteen years is a blink of an eye, yet in those years Reynolds and Dicks made two fortunes, one for each.  At their deaths they left a combined 50-60 thousand pounds to their inheritors.  The Dicks empire was the printing and publishing plant,  probably equaled that.

It appears that the firm prospered from the beginning.  Guy Dicks says that each received one hundred pounds a week in salary for several years, probably beginning in 1854.  Thus both men were earning 5,200 pounds a year.  Whatever they might have gotten from outside sources would be in addition.  The acme of an attainable annual income at the time was 10K a year.  Ten thousand would be over a million pounds in current coin.  The year end division of profits might easily have reached five thousand pounds so that both Dicks and Reynolds may have been 10K a year men.  Very successful.    

Eighteen fifty-four was the year that Reynolds removed his family to Herne Bay.  We have a picture on the gwmreynolds.com website of the house they lived in which was handsome but not palatial.  Today the same house might sell for a million pounds.  The move may have been prompted because George’s wife Susannah was ill and in decline as she died in 1858 at which time George moved back to London with twenty years left to his life.

A question to be asked is what John Dicks was doing all this time?  As Reynolds was presumably absent from the plant most the time while living in Herne Bay, probably visiting London for only a few days a month Dicks would have been in full control of the plant and the accounting department.  By 1854 the business would have required a fairly large office staff including compositors and a shipping and sales force. Dicks would have been running the company and perhaps enjoying it.

Perhaps, on returning in 1858 Reyolds may have found himself something of an outsider.  By 1858 his writing career was in noticeable decline.  The books after 1858 are running toward recapitulations with a noticeable decline in mental energy.  Princess Eugenie’s Boudoir, for instance recapitulates three of Reynolds favorite stories that he doesn’t want forgotten.  The rest are pitiful compared to his star in full flame. They’re OK, don’t get me wrong but they’re not worth the study as are the 1844-56 corpus.  Twelve stunning years.

Another aspect to consider is how Reynolds fit into the literary scene.  During this period the primary literary salon was run by Harrison Ainsworth from his house in Kensal Green.  Kensal Green is North of Chiswick.  The Kensal Green cemetery was used by many of these writers as a last residence.  Of course as Charles Dickens was a member of Ainsworth’s salon George Reynolds was barred while none of the Penny Dreadful writers ever belonged.  Time dispersed  the salon by the Sixties as the next wave of writers led by Anthony Trollope dominated the literary scene.

Who did Reynolds associate with?  Ever since he came back from France he was involved with the literary scene.  As a young twenty-three year old he was given the editorship of the Monthly Magazine and turned it from a nearly defunct magazine into a new success.  The success itself may have been a problem as with George’s wild enthusiasm for the continuing revolution in France he may have been attracting a more unwelcome readership than his more staid employers approved..  Then his appropriation of Dicken’s character Mr. Pickwick ‘may have been the last straw so that he was relieved of his duties.

While he issued several titles subsequently to 1837 he was not having success.  When George Stiff tapped him as the writer for The Mysteries of London in1844 he was given an opportunity to work within a framework in which he could display his talents to maximum effect.  Obviously he must have been known in literary circles.  Making a success of the Mysteries Stiff then tapped him to edit his London Monthly that Reynolds successfully did while writing the Mysteries at the same time.

Certainly he must have known the Edward Lloyd stable of writers including James Malcolm Rymer.  Rymer’s serials Varney the Vampyre and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, were sources for at least four of Reynolds’ titles while many incidents were lifted whole.

We’ll get back to that while we consider another of Reynolds’ sources and that of the Romantic school. That writer would be the eighteenth’s century’s Tobias Smollett (1721-1771).  While not a prolific novelist what he did write was influential.  His first novel was the wonderful Roderick Random followed by Peregrine Pickle and next the superb and monumental Ferdinand, Count Fathom, these three being the heart of his production.  The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker terminated his novels while two minor novels intervened  The History of the Atom and Launcelot Greaves.

Charles Dickens has been said to have been influenced by Smollett.  However you might as well be reading Reynolds in The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom.  The resemblance is astounding.  The Man of the World and the Man About Town replaced Smollett’snot  eighteenth century Adventurer.  The resemblance is astounding. 

While Rymer may have read Smollett, after all one criterion of education of the period was to be read in your country’s literature, I have not read enough Rymer to recognize it.  I’m sure it’s there.

Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker seem to be thought Smollet’s best novels.  While I admire all his work I am especially knocked out by Count Fathom.  The novel was not well received on issue.  Indeed, the character of Count Fathom is quite repulsive.  Even Smollett says that it pains him to have to relate the acts of his character.  While I was exasperated at the selfishness and self-interested obtuseness of Fathom I found the novel extraordinary and a mine of historical information.  Perhaps the depiction of Fathom and his situation is too realistic for most people to handle.  Indeed, I found the novel somewhat sickening but so is reality under the magnifying glass.

So, this essay brings us to an examination of Rymer and Reynolds..  It is perfectly obvious that Reynolds read and appreciated both Varney The Vampyre and Sweeney Todd.  If Count Fathom was tough reading, Sweeney Todd almost makes you vomit, but in a good way.  Gawd, what a story.  Dick Collins wrote the introduction and provides background.  The story is a simple one.  Sweeney Todd, a barber, wants a lot of money, thinking he will be able to pass as a gentleman if rich.  He, therefore, forms an alliance with a Mrs. Lovett to produce the fortune.  Sweeney kills the victims, chops up the bodies and Mrs. Lovett bakes them into meat pies that become the rage.  At the time Mr. Gillette had yet to perfect his safety razor, that will come in the twentieth century, so, unless you had the courage to use a straight razor and shave yourself, you employed an expert in the use of one, that is a barber.  When Sweeney Todd shaves a customer who confides the fact that he has valuables on him, Sweeney murders him divesting him of valuables and baggage.  He then butchers the body into gobbets and cuts and forwards them to Mrs. Lovett who turns them into delicious meat pies.

According to Dick Collins there is no factual basis for the story although many think there is.  I’m with the many on this one.  While as Dick Collins says, if there ever was hard evidence for the story its gone now, however, he says that there was a French model for the story while providing no details.  While speculating now, there is a true account during World War II in France which gives credibility to the possibility.

There is a true story of a French barber in WWII Paris who almost exactly replicated Sweeney Todd.  The man was known as Dr. Petiot.  There are several books available including Thomas Maeder’s The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot and some visual treatments.

During the war there were many people seeking to escape Europe from France through Spain.  Dr. Petiot ran a barbershop to which people wishing to exit Europe were directed.  Dr. Petiot negotiated a price guaranteeing to get them through France into Spain. 

 Petiot takes his victims to his house, secures their money and baggage and kills them.  He then butchers the bodies into pieces and burns them in his furnace.  Thus replicating Sweeney Todd. He did this to hundreds of people, retaining the baggage in storage, hundreds of suit cases and effects.  Note the baggage.

Dr. Petiot falls behind in burning bodies so he overloads his furnace creating a huge stench in the neighborhood bringing in the police.

Sweeney Todd murdered his victims in subterranean passages that ran under St. Dunstan’s Church creating a nauseous stench that permeated the church alerting the police.

Dr. Petiot absented himself from the house returning to find a mob and the police milling around the street.  His gig is up.  He is arrested and sentenced to be hanged.  On the scaffold he is asked if he has any last words to which he calmly replies in black humor:  “No. I’m the kind who takes my baggage with me.’  Very funny line.

Sweeney Todd was arrested, incarcerated  and hung himself taking his baggage with him.

So, the stories are almost identical.  In our time Jeffrey Dahmer in the US was a cannibal and like President Sekou Toure of Guinea kept his human flesh in the refrigerator.  Toure said that human flesh is very good; there are some things that the West just doesn’t understand.

As incredible as Sweeney Todd’s story is then it is more than possible and quite probable.  After all, Rymer didn’t invent the story.

Reynolds read the story, much admiring it, and while he didn’t replicate the cannibalism in his story of Princess Amelie’son abducted by the Monster Man, the son was placed with the master criminal of his time who ran a barber shop where the actual princeling was brought up to a detestable criminal. That’s quite evil in itself.  There is a direct line of descent from Todd to his successor.

In this case when the boy was about twelve Amelie discovered his presence and has Reynolds’ master detective, Larry Sampson take the lad under his wing to reform him.  It proves impossible to reverse his criminal indoctrination and conditioning.  Like all good criminals the lad was shipped to the United States.  Many of Reynolds criminals are exiled to the US.

There is however no solid evidence to Sweeney’s and Mrs. Lovett’s pies.  Remarkably there is evidence of a predecessor in French history along the lines of Dr. Petiot.  Must run in French culture.

Varney the Vampyre and George W. M. Reynolds

It is quite clear that George read Sweeny Todd and was obviously very impressed.  Rymer also wrote another enduring title from which George profited greatly, and that was Varney the Vampyre.  Both Varney and Sweeney have survived into the present, Sweeney more than Varney.  Not a bad record for Rymer.  Both stories were first published in 1847.  Varney being much longer than the published text was begun almost at the same time as Reynolds’ Mysteries of London while running as long.  Thus in terms of popularity they must have rivalled each other.  That means that Edward Lloyd, the publisher, and Reynolds were in competition.  When Reynolds began publishing the Miscellany in 1846 he might have been an equal to Lloyd while soon having a much better publishing and printing arm.

At present I can find only one reference to Sweeney in Reynolds’ work and that is in The Mysteries of the Court of London written in 1851 or 52.  On the other hand I find four titles that reference Varney.  The most obvious is Wagner the Wehrwolf.  Varney the Vampyre-Wagner the Wehrwolf, a direct appropriation.  So Rymer had co-opted the vampire,  Reynolds would obviously have to co-opt another European legend, that of the werewolf.  Further next he would co-opt the legend of Faust and of the Holy Vehm.  He still wanted a crack at a vampire story but not so obvious as to be noticeable.

For that Reynolds retreated for a couple years to consider then mythologized Varney to come up with the third best of his novels, The Necromancer.  Now, in Varney Rymer has this passage (my copy is the Illustrated Varney the Vampyre published by Pulp-Lit Productions, Corvallis, Oregon pp.1181-82):

Quote:

…There was the grave of Mr. Brooks with its circular mound of earth, all right enough; and the Mr. B was known to have been a respectable man.  He went to the City every day, and used to do so just for the of granting audiences to ladies and gentlemen who might be laboring under any little pecuniary difficulties, and accommodating them.  Kind Mr. Brooks.  He only took one hundred pounds percent.  Why should he be a Vampyre?  Bless him.  Too severe, really.

Unquote.

As concerned with usury as George was, he must have given a sardonic chuckle over that passage.  The passage clearly unites usury with blood sucking or Vampirism.  George then was prompted to work over Vampirism, usury and the Jews in his subconscious.   Thus in 1851 he created the character of Lionel Danvers who, while not described as a Vampire he did appropriate the souls of six women as a blood sucker or soul devourering usurer, allows Reynolds to write a Vampire story while avoiding the imputation of copying Rymer and Varney as he had Dickens and Mr. Pickwick in his Pickwick Abroad.

He also makes a controversial association with a burning question of the day, the character of England’s Jews.  In 1851 Lionel Rothschild was head of the Rothschild dynasty of the Jewish Shadow Kingdom not only in England but all of Europe.  Thus the empire of Lionel Danvers is not only in England but the whole of Europe.  Reynolds expertly combines all three strands.

At one point Rymer says that Varney only wanted the blood of young virgins who said they loved him.  He doesn’t adhere to this tenet in his story but he says it and Reynolds obviously picked up on it to use.  Thus George has Danvers, or Lionel Rothschild and the Rothschild family, sell their souls to the devil for worldly success.  A popular theory for the unresolved and mysterious success of them was that the family had sold its soul to the devil.  Thus, Danvers did in the fourteenth century before the rise of the Rothschilds.

Danvers obtained a caveat from the Devil that he could redeem his own soul if he could find six young virgins who would love him body and soul and die for him, thus giving the devil six souls as the price of his.  After each conquest Danvers then sacrificed the girl to the Devil.

As the story of The Necromancer opens Danvers has just sacrificed the fifth girl, Clara Manners, and begins the conquest of the sixth girl, Musidora Sinclair.  The Sinclair family was closely associated with the Knights Templar and its successor: The Freemasons.  George was a Freemason, actually getting Rymer to join his lodge.  His grade isn’t known, but I would imagine that he was well on the way to the highest grade, the thirty-third.  I don’t know what that has to do with the story but the Sinclairs are central to the Freemasonic story.  Perhaps Sinclair vs. Rothschild gives the triumph to the Sinclairs thus preserving English superiority.

It may be that since the Jews or Rothschilds were struggling  for preeminence in the kingdom that Reynolds translated that struggle into a Masonic contest of Danvers vs. the Sinclairs.  In The Necromancer, the struggle for the soul of Musidora, the real Henry VIII is captivated by Musidora and intends  to marry here, as he  is temporarily without a spouse, but he excuses himself for the necessity of attending to the cares of the realm.

In his absence Danvers/Rothschild transforms himself into a replica of Henry wooing Musidora in Henry’s place.  In this he succeeds, the carries Musidora off to his ruined castle on the Isle of Wight that just happens to be next door to her father’s, Sinclair, estate.  Kingdom and Shadow Kingdom.

He conducts Musidora to his abattoir where the five maidens were sacrificed.  Still he hasn’t captured her soul; in fact Musidora recognizes him  as the seducer of her girlhood.  She repudiates him, as her father and her local idolizer burst into the chamber.  Having failed Satan Rothschild/ Henry VII/ Danvers’ hundreds of year old body crumbles into dust.  Supposedly England is freed from the vampirism of the Jews  much as when Edward III expelled them from the kingdom in 1290.

Compare this to Trollope’s The Way We Live Now of 1875, a mere twenty-five years later.

It appears that Reynolds and Rymer had a fairly close friendship during the fifties.  When Lloyd collapsed Rymer switched to Reynolds’ stable while attending a company picnic or two.  At any rate Reynolds makes a couple of  other references to Varney.  For instance in Varney, the Vampyre has a conscience, regretting his existence so much that he ascends Mr. Vesuvius and throws himself in.

Bulwer Lytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii of 1934 popularized Vesuvius and its eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD.  The novel was a great success and most deservedly so as it is as perfect a novel as can be.  Vesuvius has since remained the epitome of the erupting volcano so Rymer has Varney pitch himself into the boiling cauldron.  In George’s novel Faust also of 1847 which couples Europe’s legendary Faust character with the equally legendary Holy Vehm, thus co-opting those two story lines, emulates Rymer by having Faust step off the ridge of Vesuvius thus terminating his contract with Satan.

Faust take place in the Holy Roman Empire in which the Holy Vehm was instituted to take up the slack of the legal justice system.  They sought out, arrested and tried criminals the instituted authorities couldn’t find grounds for prosecution.  Reynolds imagined they became a criminal organization somewhat like the Mafia today.  Faust and Wagner were both written in the same year of 1847 while the Mysteries of London were in progress.

One might suppose that Reynolds was so threatened by the success of Rymer and his Varney that he pulled out all the stops and tried to drown Rymer in a sea of prose.  Eighteen forty-seven must have been an exciting year for the reading public.

Reynolds The Bronze Statue of 1849 may also have some reference to Varney.  By 1851 then  and the Necromancer George had worked out the perfected reaction to Varney

One wonders if Rymer was his only serious competitor.  Other than Thomas Prest I’m not sure I could name another Penny Dreadful author.  I’ll have to check that out in the Wildside Press Catalog.  Wildside and Valancourt seem to be the leading publishers of popular literature of the nineteenth century.

Previously in this essay I mentioned the seventeenth century author Tobias Smollett.  Smollett’s 1753 novel Ferdinand, Count Fathom had a large influence on these late Romantic authors.  Charles Dickens is said to have been highly influenced by him although I find little resemblance.  Count Fathom is virtually a template for George Reynolds.  Like Reynolds Smollett was much concerned about usury.  In Chapter 47 his Count Melvil in desperate straits attempts to borrow money.  None of the English usurers will have anything to do with him because he is not a qualified borrower.  He has no collateral or obvious means of repayment while he intends to leave the country.  As no English borrower could enforce recovery in foreign countries he would have had to remain in England.  Melville is friends with Fathom, in fact he is in his hands.  Fathom then advises him he will have to ‘go to the Jews.’  Here’s how it went. Chapter 47:

Quote:

Melvil having signified his request, “Young gentleman” said the Israelite, with a most discordant voice,  “What in the name of goodness could induce you to come to me upon such an errand?  Did you ever hear that I lent money to strangers without security?”

“No,” replied Renaldo, “ nor did I believe I should profit by an application, but my affairs are desperate; and my proposal having been rejected by every Christian to whom they were offered, I was resolved to try my fate among the Jews, who are reckoned another species of men.”

Fathom, alarmed at this abrupt reply, which he supposed could not fail to disgust the merchant, interposed in the conversation, by making an apology for the plain dealing of his friend, who, he said, was soured and ruffled by his misfortunes; then exerting that power of eloquence which he had at command, he expostulated upon Renaldo’s claim and expectations, described the wrongs he had suffered, extolled his virtue, and drew a most pathetic picture of his distress.

Unquote.

Compare that with Arnold’s introduction of Crawford to the usurer in the Youthful Impostor and Reynold’s treatment of that scene.  In this case Smollett is a true Man of the World who indicates what his countrymen thought, that the Jews were a different species of men, which by the way is what the Jews think, between which the English and the Jews was a great divide. But perhaps not so great as Smollett as an objective observer indicates.  This usurer has a heart of gold. (No pun intended.)

Strangely in this situation, after checking Melvil out the Hebrew (Smollett’s term) not only advances Melvil an astonishing five hundred pounds on his signature but provides him with references to important usurers in Vienna with instructions to supply him with unlimited funds on request.  He is not concerned that Melvil is going to leave England.

Thus while the English usurer loses all authority outside his national borders, the international Jews can confidently expect to collect anywhere in Europe not only through his own ‘species’  but with the cooperation of important nationals of the various countries.

Compare this with the Youthful Impostor who through Arnold borrowed from a Jewish usurer in England while fleeing to France, stiffing the usurer.  The usurer notifies his people who steer Crawford into a business deal then clean him out leaving him penniless.

The whole real national political division is cleansed from academic histories, the mention of Jews being ‘as long suffering.’  Thus history is totally distorted and incomprehensible.

Reynolds as well as condemning usury also condemns the gambling spirit of his time.  Gambling ‘hells’ as they were called.  Apparently this gambling rage arose in Smollett’s time which astounded him.  I append a longish quote of Smollett’s discussion of the phenomenon, Chapter Fifty.  Fathom had been a successful gambler on the continent by knowing percentages, but here in England the spirit infusing gambling had changed to more wild speculation.

Quote:

Besides he perceived that gaming was now managed in such a manner as rendered his skill and dexterity of no advantage.  For the spirit of play had overspread the land, like a pestilence, raged to such a degree of madness and desperation that the unhappy people who were infected laid aside all thought of amusement, economy, or caution and risked their fortunes upon issues equally extravagant childish and absurd.

The whole mystery of the art was reduced to the single exercise of tossing up a guinea, and the lust of laying wagers, which they indulged to a surprising pitch of ridiculous intemperance .  In one corner of the room might be heard a pair of lordlings running their grandmothers against each other, that is, betting sums on the longest liver; in another the success of the wager depended upon the sex of the landlady’s next child; and one of the waiters happening to drop down in an apoplectic fit, a certain  noble peer exclaimed, “Dead for a thousand pounds.”  The challenge was immediately accepted; and when the master of the house sent for a surgeon to attempt the cure, the nobleman, who set the price upon the patient’s head, insisted upon his being left to the efforts of nature alone, otherwise the wager should be void.  Nay, when the landlord harped upon the loss he should sustain by the death of a trusty servant, his lordship obviated the objection by desiring that the fellow might be charged in the bill.

In short, the rage of gaming seemed to have devoured all their other faculties, and to have equalled the rash enthusiasm of the inhabitants of Malacca in the East Indies, who are so possessed with that pernicious  vice  that they sacrifice to it not only their fortunes, but also their wives and children; and then letting their hair down upon their shoulders in imitation of the ancient Lacedemonians when they devoted themselves to death, those wretches unsheathe their daggers, and murder every living creature in their way.  In this, however, they differ from the gamesters of our country, who never lose their senses, until they have lost their fortunes, and beggared their families; whereas, the Malays never run amuck, but in consequence of misery and despair.

Such are the amusements, or rather such is the continual employment of those hopeful youths who are destined by birth to be the judges of our property, and pillars of our constitution.

Unquote.

It seems that Smollett is describing a psychological malady here, a group frenzy, a sort of herd madness affecting upper class society..  It would appear that the malady didn’t exist before the Georgian period of the eighteenth century.  What disturbance in society might have induced it?  Perhaps gambling was associated to the usury of the borrowing mania.  They may be related.

After all, what disordered mind borrows money without the means to pay it back at perhaps cent percent compound interest? What monsters prey on their fellow men in that way.  Nor was the money borrowed for any other use than to temporarily maintain an exorbitant lifestyle that must end in prison?  These people were too intelligent to adopt either course and yet they suspended their intelligence and essentially committed suicide.  Usury and gambling.

What changed in English society in Georgian times?  One societal change that did not bode well was when Cromwell readmitted the Jews into England in 1660.

The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 precisely because of their practice of exorbitant usury that was impoverishing the populace.  When the Jews were readmitted the practice of expropriatory usury began again.  Of course, lending at interest was practiced but as Smollett shows it was at moderate rates with collateral so that the borrower  had to put the amount of the loan into the hands of the usurer.  Sort of a type of pawn shop.  English usurers did not lend on expectations as collateral.  But the Jews did.

It therefore follows that gambling hells were a desirable occupation to reap the cash.  The initial influx of returning Jews then increased from 1660 to 1740-50 thus reaching critical mass, got the lay of the land and organized.  Once organized the assault on laws and mores began to accommodate the invaders.  Two competing systems cannot exist side by side in the same ‘house’ without one or the other first dominating then ousting the other.  At least by mid-nineteenth century laws governing these procedures were discovered if not understood and implemented.  In Reynolds’ time Lionel Rothschild was busy attempting to change the rules governing Parliament to suit the Jews thus attempting to form a partnership of Jews and English rather than one people.

Darwin’s Origin of Species explained the competition of species while Gustave LeBon enumerated the hysteria of crowds in 1895 The Crowd: A Study Of The Popular Mind which was amplified and put into execution by Sigmund Freud in his An Analysis of the Ego and Group Psychology of the early 1920s. The processes are clear; they have been explained.  They only need to be applied.

The important thing in social control is to get the money.  Get the money.  Money is where social power begins.

Usury at exorbitant expropriating rates is therefor a big element in getting the money while a gambling mania such as Smollett describes transfers the cash into casino operator’s hands.  Key occupations then have to be occupied.  It follows then that Jews were an important element in usury and gambling down through Reynolds times.  That would explain what mystified Smollett.  The gambling rage had to be incited.

These two problems were not abated by the time of Reynolds but intensified.  As Smollett’s Melvil says:  Jews were regarded by the English as a separate species and he might have added despised.  By Reynolds’ time the Jews had the money and then wanted entrance into the governance of the country.  In this the Rothchilds led the way from a shadow kingdom into the light of day. The founder of the Jewish dynasty was Nathan Rothschild who made the Jews that is his people economically dominant..  Nathan’s son Lionel replaced his father in 1837 at the former’s death, hence Reynolds called his usurer Lionel Danvers, the Lionel pointing directely at Lionel Rothschild who was attempting to change the rules of Parliament to suit Jewish desires.  In other words he refused the Christian oath preferring a Jewish oath so that he could serve as a Jew and not a Christian.

Thus, when Lionel Danvers assumed the form of Henry VIII there was a shadow king and the actual king vying for authority.

At the same time in real life the radical Chartists and Communists were making a frontal assault on the governments.  The Communists succeeded in France where the king was abolished and the aristocrats were disenfranchised.  The Governance was transferred to the Bourgeoisie.  This is exactly what Reynolds was working toward in England.  Thus, he was an enemy of the State and had to be controlled directly.

John Dicks And His Relationship To Reynolds.

I think it should be apparent that John Dicks was transferred from Thoms to Reynolds.  Dicks was a sort of printing and publishing genius as that, as the partnership between he and Reynolds began the company consisted of Reynolds’ writing and Dicks’ printing.  As I see it, by the time Reynolds completed the Mysteries of the Court of London in 1856 he had essentially peaked while his succeeding work was less popular while at the same time the genius of Dick’s printing and publishing became the more important asset to the firm.

By 1856 Dicks was not only publishing Reynolds but various Libraries of English novels published at the lowest possible price to encourage newly literate people to read and buy.  So this was a very large organization employing hundreds of people.  Perhaps Dicks thought he built it and it was his.

Back in 1846 Reynolds had established his magazine Reynolds Miscellany.  The magazine prospered and was very popular but very radical and critical of the government.  Then Dicks formed a competing magazine called Bow Bells that was much more conventional and not critical of the government.  The Miscellany had a strong revolutionary bent.  Bow Bells on the other hand was strictly Bourgeois.  The below quote from Guy Dicks book. The John Dicks Press, gives some idea of the confusion between the two magazines.  The Figaro was apparently a competing magazine.  Reynolds believe that such magazines were put up by the government to undermine the Miscellany.

The Figaro and Reynolds’ Miscellany were in a running battle in 1872 that had started with the Figaro exposing the fact that Reynold’s and Dicks’ two main publications were at odds over their coverage of the royal family, going so far as to describe Reynolds as a disgusting and scurrilous publication—”a paper which no decent person dreams of touching, save with a pair of tongs,”  and moreover it was filthy rag, filled with disloyalty and obscenity, prepared by mischievous pens for the readers of the very lowest and vilest class.

Figaro published these lists to demonstrate the “wicked fraud” of these “unprincipled” traders and “vile slandering of the Prince of Wales” [future Edward VII], the Carrion Journal.

Facts:

Reynolds’s Newspaper:

1. Is printed by John Dicks.

2.  Is published by John Dicks

3.  Is printed at 313 Strand

4.  Is published at 313 Strand

5.  Belongs to G.W.M. Reynolds and John Dicks

6.  Compared the dead child of the Prince of Wales to a rat

7.  Has called the Prince of Wales a louse

8.  Constantly and with bestial coarseness assails the royal family

Now Bow Bells Magazine:

1.  Is printed by John Dicks
2.  Is published by John Dicks
3.  Is printed at 313 Strand
4.  Is published at 313 Strand
5.  Belongs to G.W. M Reynolds and John Dicks
6.  Has just issued a Prince of Wales number with very loyal biographies
7.  Says that “the personal character of the Prince is essentially engaging
8.  Says  “England is equally fortunate with the Prince of Wales in the presence of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who is a perfect lady and an admirable mother.  She will worthily follow in the footsteps of the Queen, whose social example has always been perfect.

Unquote.

Reynolds’ Newspaper brushed off the Figaro with:  We laugh at its impotent rage. And delight at seeing it writhing under the whippings we administer to its crabby carcass.

Unquote.

Well, what about this?

The writer in Figaro sees a mystery.  He obviously believes that Dicks and Reynolds were of one devious mind.  I think a correct interpretation of the information we have, that Figaro didn’t’, is that Dicks’ Bow Bells magazine represents Dicks’ real mind.  Having worked out from under Reynolds beginning about 1858-60 the firm, which after all was known as the John Dicks Press, already eliminates Reynolds who may popularly have been thought of  as merely an author the John Dicks Press published.  Many of the title pages of Reynolds’ books specifically state:  Published for the author by John Dicks.  That implies a separation not a partnership.

Perhaps John Dicks was a clever fellow from the beginning.  Anyway by 1869 and the consolidation, and elimination, of Reynolds’s Miscellany into Dicks’ Bow Bells Reynolds was out.  There appears to have been no loyalty to Reynolds; Dicks appears to have used him as a stepping stone.  I think it more than probable that Dicks detested Reynolds.

If one looks at Reynolds last novel, the pitiful, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, Dicks doesn’t even list the titles by Reynolds on the title page.  For all intents and purposes Reynolds past is wiped clean.

On the ad page at the back of the book a list of ‘Dicks’ English Novels, the top author listed is Charles Dickens with six titles, all early.  Clearly an insult to Reynolds.  Then six novels by Bulwer-Lytton, then a foundational novel by Charles Lever, The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, then six by Reynolds none of which is among his best, ending with eight by William Harrison Ainsworth who held a special place in Dicks’ heart.

In conclusion then I think it highly probable that Dicks was a covert agent of government security and he was there to do what he did:  baffle Reynolds’ career as much as possible, finally eliminating him from his legacy. It will be noted that after a large printing about 1880 nothing further was printed until something called the Oxford Society republished the Mysteries of the Court of London at century’s end.  I intend to discuss this publication in my next essay.

George W.M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer And Some Etceteras

17. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

Reynolds: Corpus

Rymer, James Malcom: Varney the Vampire, Valancourt Pubs, Dick Collins Introduction.  Originally 1847

Rymer, James Malcolm:  A String Of Pearls or Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street  Originally 1847

Smollett, Tobias: Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Humphrey Clinker. 1740-1760

There seems to be a continuum in English literature.  A mentality that descends from generation to generation.  The same fictional character types appear and reappear.  This situation can only exist in a relatively small homogeneous population dealing with the same societal situations.

In many ways the Romantic era can be seen as the last of this concentrated mentality before the Industrial Revolution transformed English society; the population began to grow almost exponentially to the present day and the experience of the confusion of different cultures were introduced into the country.  Today there is no cultural uniformity in England, only a mélange of competing cultures.

George William McArthur Reynolds then can only be understood in reference to this cultural continuum and his place in the authors of his time.  The society in which he labored perhaps began to be shaped by the restoration of the monarchy as Charles II Stuart returned from France.  They came from the era of absolute monarchy.  Absolutism had been destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution and could not be restored.

Charles II nominally accepted the Protestant religion but his successor James II insisted on Catholicism which could not be tolerated so absolutism was then completely replaced.  William and Mary succeeded, followed by the last of the Stuarts, Queen Anne.  Modern England began to form with the ascension of the German Georgian dynasty.

This period from 1714 to 1837 formed the mind of late Romantic authors that included George Reynolds.  A whole body of writers would rework the period with shared, if differing, perspectives.  They would be succeeded by mid-century writers such as Anthony Trollope, George Elliot and others for whom the results of the Industrial Revolution would displace the mind set of the late Romantics.  Perhaps the Great Exhibition of 1851 could be set as the end date of the Romantic period.

George Reynolds, for instance, who lived through the railroad boom seldom even mentions the railroads, even though his contemporaries were affected by them, preferring  to live in the days of the stage coach.

He does acknowledge steam but the telegraph and photography never enter his stories.  His is a storied career, a career that was very short.  If one begins his successful career in 1844, he was only thirty years old.  When his career effectively ended sixteen years later in 1860 he was only forty-six, but he was done.  His wild ride was over.  He wrote nothing after that point at which he had nineteen years left to live perhaps dreaming of earlier glories.  One might ask, what happened?  Why did he stop cold?  Why did his magazine, the Reynolds Miscellany, disappear, folded into his publisher and printer John Dicks magazine Bow Bells.  Why did he sell his copyrights to John Dicks losing control of his incredible sixteen year effort?  Shuffling off his life so to speak?

I think the answer is politics and the key to the politics is John Dicks, Reynolds’ printer, friend and partner.  While there is no biography of Reynolds extant there is a fair amount of information about Reynolds contained in a volume by Guy Dicks (don’t ever look that name up on the internet) entitled The John Dicks Press self published by Guy.  While its primary subject is John Dicks, he and Reynolds are inseparable.

Their association seems to have been an unlikely one.  The two minds were far apart.  Dicks was a conventional middle class mind while Reynolds was a Bohemian questioning all authority.  Dicks born in 1818 was four years younger than Reynolds.  Our biographer here, Guy Dicks, was an amateur writer so he doesn’t always provide sufficient information.  It appears that John Dicks had a minimal formal education.  He may possibly have attended Sunday School for a couple years.  If so he must then have been self-educated, perhaps only been taught a minimal amount of reading and writing.  Nevertheless he became a printer beginning his career sometime at the Queen’s Printers a large organization employing hundreds.  Guy then skips to 1841 which finds him working for Peter Perring Thoms…

Quote:

…the Sinologist (China expert), publisher, printer, and stereotyper to the trade at Warwick Square…

Unquote.

Dicks would become his chief assistant.  It would appear that he knew how to apply himself.  So John proved himself to be a master printer somewhen at twenty-three or shortly after.  In 1844 Dicks married so he had a wife and family by 1847 when he took a flyer leaving Thoms to join Reynolds as his printer.  A seemingly chancy move as Reynolds was coming off the success of his Mysteries of London but no proven record as a businessman.  This might have proven perilous to Dicks as Reynolds was in bankruptcy court in 1848.  However Reynolds pulled through and thus began a lucrative successful partnership.

If Reynolds was a successful writer Dicks was a great printer who fully complemented Reynolds.  Guy Dicks quotes Victor E. Neuburg’s  Popular Literature: A History and Guide, concerning Dicks:  The scope of the vast publishing empire over which Dicks presided in the second half of the nineteenth century awaits investigation. 

And one might say, still awaits.  Dicks was a real innovator.  His relationship with Reynolds was two sided:  a great writer on one hand and a great printer on the other.  However there was a problem.  Reynolds was an advocate of violent revolution in the same manner as France in 1793.  He advocated that and that would cause problems with the authorities, especially after the failed revolution of 1848 in which Reynolds played a prominent part in England.  One wonders if John Dicks wasn’t a government spy used to monitor Reynolds.  Apart from slighting references to Reynolds association with the Chartist Movement his political activities have not been investigated.  There can be no doubt that Reynolds favored violent revolution as in the French Revolutions of 1789, 1793, 1830 and 1848 all of which were bloody and in sequence disinherited thrones and aristocracies.  The British Government could not have looked on Reynolds complacently.

It would have been essential to place an informer inside the organization.  The Sinologist Thoms who spent years in the East, primarily in Macao, where he was instrumental in publishing a Chinese-English dictionary, thus the government must have referred to him on Chinese matters.  Who better to have insinuated Dicks into Reynolds’ organization?  As we will see, Dicks disinherited Reynolds from his company while at the same time destroying his very successful magazine, Reynolds Miscellany, acquiring his copyrights, and his newspaper essentially pushing Reynolds out the door into the street at the very young age of forty-five.

All that was left of his copyrights was Pickwick Abroad that he republished in 1864 by another publisher.  Was that his last effort?

By the time of his exit his reputation as a revolutionist was fully established.  There was a loyal body of followers who revered him.

Dicks himself who had established his empire, as Neuburg puts it and was publishing series such as Dicks’ English Novels and others, as well as six a shilling, later three shilling, complete Shakspere, as he spelled it, that sold a million copies.  In his ad at the back of Reynolds’ Mary, Queen Of The Scots, Dicks notes six Dickens, all early, at the top of the list; five Ainsworth titles, he even published first editions of three of the titles that the author couldn’t place elsewhere at that time in his career d of which was Ainsworth’s excellent novel The South Sea Bubble.  It is noteworthy that Dicks demeans Reynold titles in his English novels.  It would seem that the severance of the partnership was one sided and complete.

So what was Dicks thinking when he left Thoms for Reynolds.  One should not put Dicks in the background in the combination.  Dicks was obviously an ambitious guy and perhaps he saw Reynolds as a stepping stone to found an empire he had already projected in his mind.  Of course, originally Reynolds’ work was his function as a printer.  Still he started out as Reynolds’ employee and yet many of the titles state:  Printed for the author by John Dicks.  So Dicks must always have considered the printing division his and compelled Reynolds to accept him a full partner later, probably to gain title to the printing plant.

All of this is going to transpire quickly, thirteen years is a blink of an eye, yet in those years Reynolds and Dicks made two fortunes, one for each.  At their deaths they left a combined 50-60 thousand pounds to their inheritors.  The Dicks empire was the printing and publishing plant,  probably equaled that.

It appears that the firm prospered from the beginning.  Guy Dicks says that each received one hundred pounds a week in salary for several years, probably beginning in 1854.  Thus both men were earning 5,200 pounds a year.  Whatever they might have gotten from outside sources would be in addition.  The acme of an attainable annual income at the time was 10K a year.  Ten thousand would be over a million pounds in current coin.  The year end division of profits might easily have reached five thousand pounds so that both Dicks and Reynolds may have been 10K a year men.  Very successful.    

Eighteen fifty-four was the year that Reynolds removed his family to Herne Bay.  We have a picture on the gwmreynolds.com website of the house they lived in which was handsome but not palatial.  Today the same house might sell for a million pounds.  The move may have been prompted because George’s wife Susannah was ill and in decline as she died in 1858 at which time George moved back to London with twenty years left to his life.

A question to be asked is what John Dicks was doing all this time?  As Reynolds was presumably absent from the plant most the time while living in Herne Bay, probably visiting London for only a few days a month Dicks would have been in full control of the plant and the accounting department.  By 1854 the business would have required a fairly large office staff including compositors and a shipping and sales force. Dicks would have been running the company and perhaps enjoying it.

Perhaps, on returning in 1858 Reyolds may have found himself something of an outsider.  By 1858 his writing career was in noticeable decline.  The books after 1858 are running toward recapitulations with a noticeable decline in mental energy.  Princess Eugenie’s Boudoir, for instance recapitulates three of Reynolds favorite stories that he doesn’t want forgotten.  The rest are pitiful compared to his star in full flame. They’re OK, don’t get me wrong but they’re not worth the study as are the 1844-56 corpus.  Twelve stunning years.

Another aspect to consider is how Reynolds fit into the literary scene.  During this period the primary literary salon was run by Harrison Ainsworth from his house in Kensal Green.  Kensal Green is North of Chiswick.  The Kensal Green cemetery was used by many of these writers as a last residence.  Of course as Charles Dickens was a member of Ainsworth’s salon George Reynolds was barred while none of the Penny Dreadful writers ever belonged.  Time dispersed  the salon by the Sixties as the next wave of writers led by Anthony Trollope dominated the literary scene.

Who did Reynolds associate with?  Ever since he came back from France he was involved with the literary scene.  As a young twenty-three year old he was given the editorship of the Monthly Magazine and turned it from a nearly defunct magazine into a new success.  The success itself may have been a problem as with George’s wild enthusiasm for the continuing revolution in France he may have been attracting a more unwelcome readership than his more staid employers approved..  Then his appropriation of Dicken’s character Mr. Pickwick ‘may have been the last straw so that he was relieved of his duties.

While he issued several titles subsequently to 1837 he was not having success.  When George Stiff tapped him as the writer for The Mysteries of London in1844 he was given an opportunity to work within a framework in which he could display his talents to maximum effect.  Obviously he must have been known in literary circles.  Making a success of the Mysteries Stiff then tapped him to edit his London Monthly that Reynolds successfully did while writing the Mysteries at the same time.

Certainly he must have known the Edward Lloyd stable of writers including James Malcolm Rymer.  Rymer’s serials Varney the Vampyre and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, were sources for at least four of Reynolds’ titles while many incidents were lifted whole.

We’ll get back to that while we consider another of Reynolds’ sources and that of the Romantic school. That writer would be the eighteenth’s century’s Tobias Smollett (1721-1771).  While not a prolific novelist what he did write was influential.  His first novel was the wonderful Roderick Random followed by Peregrine Pickle and next the superb and monumental Ferdinand, Count Fathom, these three being the heart of his production.  The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker terminated his novels while two minor novels intervened  The History of the Atom and Launcelot Greaves.

Charles Dickens has been said to have been influenced by Smollett.  However you might as well be reading Reynolds in The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom.  The resemblance is astounding.  The Man of the World and the Man About Town replaced Smollett’snot  eighteenth century Adventurer.  The resemblance is astounding. 

While Rymer may have read Smollett, after all one criterion of education of the period was to be read in your country’s literature, I have not read enough Rymer to recognize it.  I’m sure it’s there.

Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker seem to be thought Smollet’s best novels.  While I admire all his work I am especially knocked out by Count Fathom.  The novel was not well received on issue.  Indeed, the character of Count Fathom is quite repulsive.  Even Smollett says that it pains him to have to relate the acts of his character.  While I was exasperated at the selfishness and self-interested obtuseness of Fathom I found the novel extraordinary and a mine of historical information.  Perhaps the depiction of Fathom and his situation is too realistic for most people to handle.  Indeed, I found the novel somewhat sickening but so is reality under the magnifying glass.

So, this essay brings us to an examination of Rymer and Reynolds..  It is perfectly obvious that Reynolds read and appreciated both Varney The Vampyre and Sweeney Todd.  If Count Fathom was tough reading, Sweeney Todd almost makes you vomit, but in a good way.  Gawd, what a story.  Dick Collins wrote the introduction and provides background.  The story is a simple one.  Sweeney Todd, a barber, wants a lot of money, thinking he will be able to pass as a gentleman if rich.  He, therefore, forms an alliance with a Mrs. Lovett to produce the fortune.  Sweeney kills the victims, chops up the bodies and Mrs. Lovett bakes them into meat pies that become the rage.  At the time Mr. Gillette had yet to perfect his safety razor, that will come in the twentieth century, so, unless you had the courage to use a straight razor and shave yourself, you employed an expert in the use of one, that is a barber.  When Sweeney Todd shaves a customer who confides the fact that he has valuables on him, Sweeney murders him divesting him of valuables and baggage.  He then butchers the body into gobbets and cuts and forwards them to Mrs. Lovett who turns them into delicious meat pies.

According to Dick Collins there is no factual basis for the story although many think there is.  I’m with the many on this one.  While as Dick Collins says, if there ever was hard evidence for the story its gone now, however, he says that there was a French model for the story while providing no details.  While speculating now, there is a true account during World War II in France which gives credibility to the possibility.

There is a true story of a French barber in WWII Paris who almost exactly replicated Sweeney Todd.  The man was known as Dr. Petiot.  There are several books available including Thomas Maeder’s The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot and some visual treatments.

During the war there were many people seeking to escape Europe from France through Spain.  Dr. Petiot ran a barbershop to which people wishing to exit Europe were directed.  Dr. Petiot negotiated a price guaranteeing to get them through France into Spain. 

 Petiot takes his victims to his house, secures their money and baggage and kills them.  He then butchers the bodies into pieces and burns them in his furnace.  Thus replicating Sweeney Todd. He did this to hundreds of people, retaining the baggage in storage, hundreds of suit cases and effects.  Note the baggage.

Dr. Petiot falls behind in burning bodies so he overloads his furnace creating a huge stench in the neighborhood bringing in the police.

Sweeney Todd murdered his victims in subterranean passages that ran under St. Dunstan’s Church creating a nauseous stench that permeated the church alerting the police.

Dr. Petiot absented himself from the house returning to find a mob and the police milling around the street.  His gig is up.  He is arrested and sentenced to be hanged.  On the scaffold he is asked if he has any last words to which he calmly replies in black humor:  “No. I’m the kind who takes my baggage with me.’  Very funny line.

Sweeney Todd was arrested, incarcerated  and hung himself taking his baggage with him.

So, the stories are almost identical.  In our time Jeffrey Dahmer in the US was a cannibal and like President Sekou Toure of Guinea kept his human flesh in the refrigerator.  Toure said that human flesh is very good; there are some things that the West just doesn’t understand.

As incredible as Sweeney Todd’s story is then it is more than possible and quite probable.  After all, Rymer didn’t invent the story.

Reynolds read the story, much admiring it, and while he didn’t replicate the cannibalism in his story of Princess Amelie’son abducted by the Monster Man, the son was placed with the master criminal of his time who ran a barber shop where the actual princeling was brought up to a detestable criminal. That’s quite evil in itself.  There is a direct line of descent from Todd to his successor.

In this case when the boy was about twelve Amelie discovered his presence and has Reynolds’ master detective, Larry Sampson take the lad under his wing to reform him.  It proves impossible to reverse his criminal indoctrination and conditioning.  Like all good criminals the lad was shipped to the United States.  Many of Reynolds criminals are exiled to the US.

There is however no solid evidence to Sweeney’s and Mrs. Lovett’s pies.  Remarkably there is evidence of a predecessor in French history along the lines of Dr. Petiot.  Must run in French culture.

Varney the Vampyre and George W. M. Reynolds

It is quite clear that George read Sweeny Todd and was obviously very impressed.  Rymer also wrote another enduring title from which George profited greatly, and that was Varney the Vampyre.  Both Varney and Sweeney have survived into the present, Sweeney more than Varney.  Not a bad record for Rymer.  Both stories were first published in 1847.  Varney being much longer than the published text was begun almost at the same time as Reynolds’ Mysteries of London while running as long.  Thus in terms of popularity they must have rivalled each other.  That means that Edward Lloyd, the publisher, and Reynolds were in competition.  When Reynolds began publishing the Miscellany in 1846 he might have been an equal to Lloyd while soon having a much better publishing and printing arm.

At present I can find only one reference to Sweeney in Reynolds’ work and that is in The Mysteries of the Court of London written in 1851 or 52.  On the other hand I find four titles that reference Varney.  The most obvious is Wagner the Wehrwolf.  Varney the Vampyre-Wagner the Wehrwolf, a direct appropriation.  So Rymer had co-opted the vampire,  Reynolds would obviously have to co-opt another European legend, that of the werewolf.  Further next he would co-opt the legend of Faust and of the Holy Vehm.  He still wanted a crack at a vampire story but not so obvious as to be noticeable.

For that Reynolds retreated for a couple years to consider then mythologized Varney to come up with the third best of his novels, The Necromancer.  Now, in Varney Rymer has this passage (my copy is the Illustrated Varney the Vampyre published by Pulp-Lit Productions, Corvallis, Oregon pp.1181-82):

Quote:

…There was the grave of Mr. Brooks with its circular mound of earth, all right enough; and the Mr. B was known to have been a respectable man.  He went to the City every day, and used to do so just for the of granting audiences to ladies and gentlemen who might be laboring under any little pecuniary difficulties, and accommodating them.  Kind Mr. Brooks.  He only took one hundred pounds percent.  Why should he be a Vampyre?  Bless him.  Too severe, really.

Unquote.

As concerned with usury as George was, he must have given a sardonic chuckle over that passage.  The passage clearly unites usury with blood sucking or Vampirism.  George then was prompted to work over Vampirism, usury and the Jews in his subconscious.   Thus in 1851 he created the character of Lionel Danvers who, while not described as a Vampire he did appropriate the souls of six women as a blood sucker or soul devourering usurer, allows Reynolds to write a Vampire story while avoiding the imputation of copying Rymer and Varney as he had Dickens and Mr. Pickwick in his Pickwick Abroad.

He also makes a controversial association with a burning question of the day, the character of England’s Jews.  In 1851 Lionel Rothschild was head of the Rothschild dynasty of the Jewish Shadow Kingdom not only in England but all of Europe.  Thus the empire of Lionel Danvers is not only in England but the whole of Europe.  Reynolds expertly combines all three strands.

At one point Rymer says that Varney only wanted the blood of young virgins who said they loved him.  He doesn’t adhere to this tenet in his story but he says it and Reynolds obviously picked up on it to use.  Thus George has Danvers, or Lionel Rothschild and the Rothschild family, sell their souls to the devil for worldly success.  A popular theory for the unresolved and mysterious success of them was that the family had sold its soul to the devil.  Thus, Danvers did in the fourteenth century before the rise of the Rothschilds.

Danvers obtained a caveat from the Devil that he could redeem his own soul if he could find six young virgins who would love him body and soul and die for him, thus giving the devil six souls as the price of his.  After each conquest Danvers then sacrificed the girl to the Devil.

As the story of The Necromancer opens Danvers has just sacrificed the fifth girl, Clara Manners, and begins the conquest of the sixth girl, Musidora Sinclair.  The Sinclair family was closely associated with the Knights Templar and its successor: The Freemasons.  George was a Freemason, actually getting Rymer to join his lodge.  His grade isn’t known, but I would imagine that he was well on the way to the highest grade, the thirty-third.  I don’t know what that has to do with the story but the Sinclairs are central to the Freemasonic story.  Perhaps Sinclair vs. Rothschild gives the triumph to the Sinclairs thus preserving English superiority.

It may be that since the Jews or Rothschilds were struggling  for preeminence in the kingdom that Reynolds translated that struggle into a Masonic contest of Danvers vs. the Sinclairs.  In The Necromancer, the struggle for the soul of Musidora, the real Henry VIII is captivated by Musidora and intends  to marry here, as he  is temporarily without a spouse, but he excuses himself for the necessity of attending to the cares of the realm.

In his absence Danvers/Rothschild transforms himself into a replica of Henry wooing Musidora in Henry’s place.  In this he succeeds, the carries Musidora off to his ruined castle on the Isle of Wight that just happens to be next door to her father’s, Sinclair, estate.  Kingdom and Shadow Kingdom.

He conducts Musidora to his abattoir where the five maidens were sacrificed.  Still he hasn’t captured her soul; in fact Musidora recognizes him  as the seducer of her girlhood.  She repudiates him, as her father and her local idolizer burst into the chamber.  Having failed Satan Rothschild/ Henry VII/ Danvers’ hundreds of year old body crumbles into dust.  Supposedly England is freed from the vampirism of the Jews  much as when Edward III expelled them from the kingdom in 1290.

Compare this to Trollope’s The Way We Live Now of 1875, a mere twenty-five years later.

It appears that Reynolds and Rymer had a fairly close friendship during the fifties.  When Lloyd collapsed Rymer switched to Reynolds’ stable while attending a company picnic or two.  At any rate Reynolds makes a couple of  other references to Varney.  For instance in Varney, the Vampyre has a conscience, regretting his existence so much that he ascends Mr. Vesuvius and throws himself in.

Bulwer Lytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii of 1934 popularized Vesuvius and its eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD.  The novel was a great success and most deservedly so as it is as perfect a novel as can be.  Vesuvius has since remained the epitome of the erupting volcano so Rymer has Varney pitch himself into the boiling cauldron.  In George’s novel Faust also of 1847 which couples Europe’s legendary Faust character with the equally legendary Holy Vehm, thus co-opting those two story lines, emulates Rymer by having Faust step off the ridge of Vesuvius thus terminating his contract with Satan.

Faust take place in the Holy Roman Empire in which the Holy Vehm was instituted to take up the slack of the legal justice system.  They sought out, arrested and tried criminals the instituted authorities couldn’t find grounds for prosecution.  Reynolds imagined they became a criminal organization somewhat like the Mafia today.  Faust and Wagner were both written in the same year of 1847 while the Mysteries of London were in progress.

One might suppose that Reynolds was so threatened by the success of Rymer and his Varney that he pulled out all the stops and tried to drown Rymer in a sea of prose.  Eighteen forty-seven must have been an exciting year for the reading public.

Reynolds The Bronze Statue of 1849 may also have some reference to Varney.  By 1851 then  and the Necromancer George had worked out the perfected reaction to Varney

One wonders if Rymer was his only serious competitor.  Other than Thomas Prest I’m not sure I could name another Penny Dreadful author.  I’ll have to check that out in the Wildside Press Catalog.  Wildside and Valancourt seem to be the leading publishers of popular literature of the nineteenth century.

Previously in this essay I mentioned the seventeenth century author Tobias Smollett.  Smollett’s 1753 novel Ferdinand, Count Fathom had a large influence on these late Romantic authors.  Charles Dickens is said to have been highly influenced by him although I find little resemblance.  Count Fathom is virtually a template for George Reynolds.  Like Reynolds Smollett was much concerned about usury.  In Chapter 47 his Count Melvil in desperate straits attempts to borrow money.  None of the English usurers will have anything to do with him because he is not a qualified borrower.  He has no collateral or obvious means of repayment while he intends to leave the country.  As no English borrower could enforce recovery in foreign countries he would have had to remain in England.  Melville is friends with Fathom, in fact he is in his hands.  Fathom then advises him he will have to ‘go to the Jews.’  Here’s how it went. Chapter 47:

Quote:

Melvil having signified his request, “Young gentleman” said the Israelite, with a most discordant voice,  “What in the name of goodness could induce you to come to me upon such an errand?  Did you ever hear that I lent money to strangers without security?”

“No,” replied Renaldo, “ nor did I believe I should profit by an application, but my affairs are desperate; and my proposal having been rejected by every Christian to whom they were offered, I was resolved to try my fate among the Jews, who are reckoned another species of men.”

Fathom, alarmed at this abrupt reply, which he supposed could not fail to disgust the merchant, interposed in the conversation, by making an apology for the plain dealing of his friend, who, he said, was soured and ruffled by his misfortunes; then exerting that power of eloquence which he had at command, he expostulated upon Renaldo’s claim and expectations, described the wrongs he had suffered, extolled his virtue, and drew a most pathetic picture of his distress.

Unquote.

Compare that with Arnold’s introduction of Crawford to the usurer in the Youthful Impostor and Reynold’s treatment of that scene.  In this case Smollett is a true Man of the World who indicates what his countrymen thought, that the Jews were a different species of men, which by the way is what the Jews think, between which the English and the Jews was a great divide. But perhaps not so great as Smollett as an objective observer indicates.  This usurer has a heart of gold. (No pun intended.)

Strangely in this situation, after checking Melvil out the Hebrew (Smollett’s term) not only advances Melvil an astonishing five hundred pounds on his signature but provides him with references to important usurers in Vienna with instructions to supply him with unlimited funds on request.  He is not concerned that Melvil is going to leave England.

Thus while the English usurer loses all authority outside his national borders, the international Jews can confidently expect to collect anywhere in Europe not only through his own ‘species’  but with the cooperation of important nationals of the various countries.

Compare this with the Youthful Impostor who through Arnold borrowed from a Jewish usurer in England while fleeing to France, stiffing the usurer.  The usurer notifies his people who steer Crawford into a business deal then clean him out leaving him penniless.

The whole real national political division is cleansed from academic histories, the mention of Jews being ‘as long suffering.’  Thus history is totally distorted and incomprehensible.

Reynolds as well as condemning usury also condemns the gambling spirit of his time.  Gambling ‘hells’ as they were called.  Apparently this gambling rage arose in Smollett’s time which astounded him.  I append a longish quote of Smollett’s discussion of the phenomenon, Chapter Fifty.  Fathom had been a successful gambler on the continent by knowing percentages, but here in England the spirit infusing gambling had changed to more wild speculation.

Quote:

Besides he perceived that gaming was now managed in such a manner as rendered his skill and dexterity of no advantage.  For the spirit of play had overspread the land, like a pestilence, raged to such a degree of madness and desperation that the unhappy people who were infected laid aside all thought of amusement, economy, or caution and risked their fortunes upon issues equally extravagant childish and absurd.

The whole mystery of the art was reduced to the single exercise of tossing up a guinea, and the lust of laying wagers, which they indulged to a surprising pitch of ridiculous intemperance .  In one corner of the room might be heard a pair of lordlings running their grandmothers against each other, that is, betting sums on the longest liver; in another the success of the wager depended upon the sex of the landlady’s next child; and one of the waiters happening to drop down in an apoplectic fit, a certain  noble peer exclaimed, “Dead for a thousand pounds.”  The challenge was immediately accepted; and when the master of the house sent for a surgeon to attempt the cure, the nobleman, who set the price upon the patient’s head, insisted upon his being left to the efforts of nature alone, otherwise the wager should be void.  Nay, when the landlord harped upon the loss he should sustain by the death of a trusty servant, his lordship obviated the objection by desiring that the fellow might be charged in the bill.

In short, the rage of gaming seemed to have devoured all their other faculties, and to have equalled the rash enthusiasm of the inhabitants of Malacca in the East Indies, who are so possessed with that pernicious  vice  that they sacrifice to it not only their fortunes, but also their wives and children; and then letting their hair down upon their shoulders in imitation of the ancient Lacedemonians when they devoted themselves to death, those wretches unsheathe their daggers, and murder every living creature in their way.  In this, however, they differ from the gamesters of our country, who never lose their senses, until they have lost their fortunes, and beggared their families; whereas, the Malays never run amuck, but in consequence of misery and despair.

Such are the amusements, or rather such is the continual employment of those hopeful youths who are destined by birth to be the judges of our property, and pillars of our constitution.

Unquote.

It seems that Smollett is describing a psychological malady here, a group frenzy, a sort of herd madness affecting upper class society..  It would appear that the malady didn’t exist before the Georgian period of the eighteenth century.  What disturbance in society might have induced it?  Perhaps gambling was associated to the usury of the borrowing mania.  They may be related.

After all, what disordered mind borrows money without the means to pay it back at perhaps cent percent compound interest? What monsters prey on their fellow men in that way.  Nor was the money borrowed for any other use than to temporarily maintain an exorbitant lifestyle that must end in prison?  These people were too intelligent to adopt either course and yet they suspended their intelligence and essentially committed suicide.  Usury and gambling.

What changed in English society in Georgian times?  One societal change that did not bode well was when Cromwell readmitted the Jews into England in 1660.

The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 precisely because of their practice of exorbitant usury that was impoverishing the populace.  When the Jews were readmitted the practice of expropriatory usury began again.  Of course, lending at interest was practiced but as Smollett shows it was at moderate rates with collateral so that the borrower  had to put the amount of the loan into the hands of the usurer.  Sort of a type of pawn shop.  English usurers did not lend on expectations as collateral.  But the Jews did.

It therefore follows that gambling hells were a desirable occupation to reap the cash.  The initial influx of returning Jews then increased from 1660 to 1740-50 thus reaching critical mass, got the lay of the land and organized.  Once organized the assault on laws and mores began to accommodate the invaders.  Two competing systems cannot exist side by side in the same ‘house’ without one or the other first dominating then ousting the other.  At least by mid-nineteenth century laws governing these procedures were discovered if not understood and implemented.  In Reynolds’ time Lionel Rothschild was busy attempting to change the rules governing Parliament to suit the Jews thus attempting to form a partnership of Jews and English rather than one people.

Darwin’s Origin of Species explained the competition of species while Gustave LeBon enumerated the hysteria of crowds in 1895 The Crowd: A Study Of The Popular Mind which was amplified and put into execution by Sigmund Freud in his An Analysis of the Ego and Group Psychology of the early 1920s. The processes are clear; they have been explained.  They only need to be applied.

The important thing in social control is to get the money.  Get the money.  Money is where social power begins.

Usury at exorbitant expropriating rates is therefor a big element in getting the money while a gambling mania such as Smollett describes transfers the cash into casino operator’s hands.  Key occupations then have to be occupied.  It follows then that Jews were an important element in usury and gambling down through Reynolds times.  That would explain what mystified Smollett.  The gambling rage had to be incited.

These two problems were not abated by the time of Reynolds but intensified.  As Smollett’s Melvil says:  Jews were regarded by the English as a separate species and he might have added despised.  By Reynolds’ time the Jews had the money and then wanted entrance into the governance of the country.  In this the Rothchilds led the way from a shadow kingdom into the light of day. The founder of the Jewish dynasty was Nathan Rothschild who made the Jews that is his people economically dominant..  Nathan’s son Lionel replaced his father in 1837 at the former’s death, hence Reynolds called his usurer Lionel Danvers, the Lionel pointing directely at Lionel Rothschild who was attempting to change the rules of Parliament to suit Jewish desires.  In other words he refused the Christian oath preferring a Jewish oath so that he could serve as a Jew and not a Christian.

Thus, when Lionel Danvers assumed the form of Henry VIII there was a shadow king and the actual king vying for authority.

At the same time in real life the radical Chartists and Communists were making a frontal assault on the governments.  The Communists succeeded in France where the king was abolished and the aristocrats were disenfranchised.  The Governance was transferred to the Bourgeoisie.  This is exactly what Reynolds was working toward in England.  Thus, he was an enemy of the State and had to be controlled directly.

John Dicks And His Relationship To Reynolds.

I think it should be apparent that John Dicks was transferred from Thoms to Reynolds.  Dicks was a sort of printing and publishing genius as that, as the partnership between he and Reynolds began the company consisted of Reynolds’ writing and Dicks’ printing.  As I see it, by the time Reynolds completed the Mysteries of the Court of London in 1856 he had essentially peaked while his succeeding work was less popular while at the same time the genius of Dick’s printing and publishing became the more important asset to the firm.

By 1856 Dicks was not only publishing Reynolds but various Libraries of English novels published at the lowest possible price to encourage newly literate people to read and buy.  So this was a very large organization employing hundreds of people.  Perhaps Dicks thought he built it and it was his.

Back in 1846 Reynolds had established his magazine Reynolds Miscellany.  The magazine prospered and was very popular but very radical and critical of the government.  Then Dicks formed a competing magazine called Bow Bells that was much more conventional and not critical of the government.  The Miscellany had a strong revolutionary bent.  Bow Bells on the other hand was strictly Bourgeois.  The below quote from Guy Dicks book. The John Dicks Press, gives some idea of the confusion between the two magazines.  The Figaro was apparently a competing magazine.  Reynolds believe that such magazines were put up by the government to undermine the Miscellany.

The Figaro and Reynolds’ Miscellany were in a running battle in 1872 that had started with the Figaro exposing the fact that Reynold’s and Dicks’ two main publications were at odds over their coverage of the royal family, going so far as to describe Reynolds as a disgusting and scurrilous publication—”a paper which no decent person dreams of touching, save with a pair of tongs,”  and moreover it was filthy rag, filled with disloyalty and obscenity, prepared by mischievous pens for the readers of the very lowest and vilest class.

Figaro published these lists to demonstrate the “wicked fraud” of these “unprincipled” traders and “vile slandering of the Prince of Wales” [future Edward VII], the Carrion Journal.

Facts:

Reynolds’s Newspaper:

1. Is printed by John Dicks.

2.  Is published by John Dicks

3.  Is printed at 313 Strand

4.  Is published at 313 Strand

5.  Belongs to G.W.M. Reynolds and John Dicks

6.  Compared the dead child of the Prince of Wales to a rat

7.  Has called the Prince of Wales a louse

8.  Constantly and with bestial coarseness assails the royal family

Now Bow Bells Magazine:

1.  Is printed by John Dicks
2.  Is published by John Dicks
3.  Is printed at 313 Strand
4.  Is published at 313 Strand
5.  Belongs to G.W. M Reynolds and John Dicks
6.  Has just issued a Prince of Wales number with very loyal biographies
7.  Says that “the personal character of the Prince is essentially engaging
8.  Says  “England is equally fortunate with the Prince of Wales in the presence of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who is a perfect lady and an admirable mother.  She will worthily follow in the footsteps of the Queen, whose social example has always been perfect.

Unquote.

Reynolds’ Newspaper brushed off the Figaro with:  We laugh at its impotent rage. And delight at seeing it writhing under the whippings we administer to its crabby carcass.

Unquote.

Well, what about this?

The writer in Figaro sees a mystery.  He obviously believes that Dicks and Reynolds were of one devious mind.  I think a correct interpretation of the information we have, that Figaro didn’t’, is that Dicks’ Bow Bells magazine represents Dicks’ real mind.  Having worked out from under Reynolds beginning about 1858-60 the firm, which after all was known as the John Dicks Press, already eliminates Reynolds who may popularly have been thought of  as merely an author the John Dicks Press published.  Many of the title pages of Reynolds’ books specifically state:  Published for the author by John Dicks.  That implies a separation not a partnership.

Perhaps John Dicks was a clever fellow from the beginning.  Anyway by 1869 and the consolidation, and elimination, of Reynolds’s Miscellany into Dicks’ Bow Bells Reynolds was out.  There appears to have been no loyalty to Reynolds; Dicks appears to have used him as a stepping stone.  I think it more than probable that Dicks detested Reynolds.

If one looks at Reynolds last novel, the pitiful, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, Dicks doesn’t even list the titles by Reynolds on the title page.  For all intents and purposes Reynolds past is wiped clean.

On the ad page at the back of the book a list of ‘Dicks’ English Novels, the top author listed is Charles Dickens with six titles, all early.  Clearly an insult to Reynolds.  Then six novels by Bulwer-Lytton, then a foundational novel by Charles Lever, The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, then six by Reynolds none of which is among his best, ending with eight by William Harrison Ainsworth who held a special place in Dicks’ heart.

In conclusion then I think it highly probable that Dicks was a covert agent of government security and he was there to do what he did:  baffle Reynolds’ career as much as possible, finally eliminating him from his legacy. It will be noted that after a large printing about 1880 nothing further was printed until something called the Oxford Society republished the Mysteries of the Court of London at century’s end.  I intend to discuss this publication in my next essay.