George W.M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer And Some Etceteras
July 29, 2021
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:
- Is printed by John Dicks
- Is published by John Dicks
- Is printed at 313 Strand
- Is published at 313 Strand
- Belongs to G.W. M Reynolds and John Dicks
- Has just issued a Prince of Wales number with very loyal biographies
- Says that “the personal character of the Prince is essentially engaging
- 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:
- Is printed by John Dicks
- Is published by John Dicks
- Is printed at 313 Strand
- Is published at 313 Strand
- Belongs to G.W. M Reynolds and John Dicks
- Has just issued a Prince of Wales number with very loyal biographies
- Says that “the personal character of the Prince is essentially engaging
- 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.
I, Dynamo 
August 11, 2021 at 7:16 pm
“This is The End”
___The Doors / 1967
Now take a close look at those two first words in the verse:
“This is”
“Th/is is”
“Th Isis”
He starts singing 54 to 55 seconds in; bringing us to 2021 or 2022.
For Pamela is the Alpha and the Omega; the Beginning and the End…
August 11, 2021 at 7:18 pm
Th Isis = 84
Andrews = 84
August 11, 2021 at 7:39 pm
Pamela is Isis = 132
Pamela Andrews = 132
August 12, 2021 at 11:03 pm
The crucial element in the power of the state is its *appearance* of legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
After centuries of propaganda, the standard atrocities of the government are considered acts of benevolence, or at worst, necessary evils.
Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery.
If any other organization OTHER than that particular government of theirs committed these acts of violence; the people would be outraged beyond all comprehension.
But their mindwipe; commencing in childhood; and advanced by the schools; the church; and their own parents; make them absolutely oblivious to their own slavery and the slavery of everyone around them.
It is amazing.
August 16, 2021 at 8:08 pm
And, unfortunately, unescapable. What I’ve seen of the general level of intelligence and integrity they can expect nothing else.
August 14, 2021 at 2:45 am
“My goal from the beginning was a thousand times higher than being a president! One might be in danger of being forgotten along side dozens of other presidents!
I will be the destroyer of Christianity; the destroyer of equality; the destroyer of democracy. I am going to achieve this task; and then any title other than Empress or Queen will be an utter absurdity.”
Pamela
8/13/2021
August 16, 2021 at 8:09 pm
Bravp.
August 14, 2021 at 5:17 pm
“For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book learning; none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue; no fancy that what we call ‘life’ and ‘reality’ are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality.”
___Virginia Woolf / Orlando / Chapter One
Why is Pamela bitter? Because it is the 21st century. In another age; I would have been great monarch. But today; in 2021; we have the Triumph of the Retard; the Triumph of the Weak over the Strong; the Ignorant over the Wise; they call it “democracy”; allowing the unfit to rule over those who should be their masters.
The triumph of Slave Morality; and the Greatest Lie of them All: Equality!
August 14, 2021 at 6:57 pm
The Slime of the World is promoting ‘equality’, that is the reduction of the people to the lowest levels because equality of sorts can only be obtained when all the pigs jostle at the pig trough. Look at these idiot women who have bought into their degradation walking around in shredded denim looking for some guy with amphetamines to give them. It has all been planned to make the goyim cattle fit only for the slaughter. Watch the advertising. Dumb White people and brilliant, masterful Black people extending a protective hand. Don’t get me started.
August 15, 2021 at 4:18 pm
Ronald; you are the top historical man in the country; could you give Me some clarification as to what went on in ’36 with Edward 8 and his abdication.
Now the official story is he chose “the woman (he) loved”; the commoner Miss Simpson over the throne; but I have heard that he had a plan that after abdication; through the help of A.H.; his friend running Germany at the time; that somehow he would regain the British throne subsequent to the German victory over England; and Wallis could now be Queen of England.
Both he and Miss Simpson loved A.H.; and the feeling was mutual; Schickelgruber once said that “there would never have been war with England had Edward 8 remained King; and everything would have been different”.
So clue Me in on the details of what went down…
August 15, 2021 at 4:27 pm
I wasn’t privy to the conversations but with the wisdom of the Goddess you can easily understand that there was a lot of prewar maneuvering to ensure the best possible results according to your desires. There were many good reasons prewar to have confidence in the Wolfman. As you may easily ascertain the Jews (read Rothschilds) financially sustained Churchill and he was a fanatic for the war. Perhaps the reason is clear. Have you read my Jud Suss articles? If Edward was politically astute as he seemed to have to been then it was his duty to remain on the throne and scuttle that ridiculous woman. I think you’ve got it all in your post, just apply the knowledge. And thank you for your flattering but biased opinion as to my skills.
August 15, 2021 at 6:07 pm
As a general rule you NEVER give up power once you have it…
Maybe one exception; you are the king; every member of your army & guard has been killed by the enemy; they come into the throne room with you still sitting there; you are outnumbered and outgunned 10,000 to 1; and the enemy is kind enough to offer you a generous retirement package out of state if you just peacefully LEAVE.
That might be the one time you take it…because who knows what the future holds; and you might still live to fight another day…
Otherwise…
Recall the Great Example of Theodora; Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire…
The Niko Riots were in progress in Constantinople circa 531 AD (?); her entire court and her husband Justinian wanted to get out of town and crawl away like cowards; but the Great Empress stood tall:
“I never wish to live another day when I am not addressed as Empress; far better to be dead…and behold; doth not purple maketh the Finest Burial Shroud!”
The speech was so moving that it inspired the government to crush the rioters; and Justinian and Theodora ruled for the rest of their lives.
She was a Great; Great Woman…
August 16, 2021 at 8:06 pm
Better dead than Red.
August 15, 2021 at 6:12 pm
Recall the trick Isis (then known as Semiramis) pulled on one of her husbands; a King of Assyria; I believe…
She was His Wife; she asked him to turn over power to Her “for just 24 hours”; like a dumb schoolboy he did….
And what happened?
Within those 24 hours; Semiramis; now the Absolute Monarch; had her now powerless husband and king executed; and She did rule happily ever after for a long; long time…
August 15, 2021 at 7:39 pm
vaguely remember that.
August 15, 2021 at 11:58 pm
I see the Taliban took-over in Afghanistan…
I’m no expert on the geopolitics of the whole thing…and maybe you can fill me in here too…
But from what little I know; there are more actual REAL MEN in that little Taliban clique than you could find in all of America and Western Europe combined!
So lets drink a toast to the Taliban; who gave “western feminism” a good kick in the ass today!
And a long overdue one!
August 16, 2021 at 3:58 pm
Are you watching Mike Lindell?
August 16, 2021 at 4:54 pm
The pillow Man?
Why would I listen to anything he says?
Trump is old news; he should go sell some property or something…
You know I do not like Trump; the “Father of the vaccine”
“Operation warp speed”
He is just as responsible for the genocide in progress as the rest of them, probably more.
August 16, 2021 at 5:39 pm
The Pillow Man appears to be really determined. He just held a conference in SD, your State, with representatives from Arizona and other States. More drive than I’ve seen elsewhere. He may be the coming thing. Of course Trump is old news but he’s the only news. You have to play the cards in your hand.
August 16, 2021 at 6:07 pm
The Only Thing Coming Is Me…
August 16, 2021 at 7:55 pm
That’s a given of course, but the picture is a divided screen on the way to occupying the full screen which you surely will. On the road to the Emerald City interesting characters will be met. Perhaps Mike is one.
August 16, 2021 at 8:45 pm
On the road to the Emerald City
>>>>
I don’t think the tornado has hit South Dakota yet to send Me to Oz…
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>
Ron; do you think I get to play Dorothy; Glinda; or the Wicked Witch?
Maybe all Three!
They call that a composite; or something like that…
I love Me soo much…
August 16, 2021 at 8:50 pm
I’m Phineas T. Wogglebug T.E.
August 16, 2021 at 6:07 pm
So lets drink a toast to the Taliban; who gave “western feminism” a good kick in the ass today!
>>>>>>>>>>>>
May Allah grant them the strength to secure their well-deserved victory against the forces of evil and hyper-degeneracy (US/NATO).
Amen.
August 16, 2021 at 6:11 pm
I believe this could be one of the first major cracks in the American/Western clown world liberal empire…. We will see.
August 16, 2021 at 8:01 pm
I think quite possible that the dam has burst. The American mentality doesn’t allow any intrusions into its delusion so they haven’t a clue that certain people may not have appreciated being bombed into oblivion. It was absolutely necessary to maintain power to prevent retaliation. Now they will bring untold thousands of Afghans to the US which will include at least hundreds of Taliban. The stupidity of the US is pervasive and bred to the bone. Your mortification will be plentifully gratified.
August 16, 2021 at 8:04 pm
Savage beasts from the lower regions, may they croak on whatever it is they eat. The better of the forces of evil is US/Nato/UN which is saying much but, as you say, the Big Bang may be beginning. Moslems are embedded in all Western States.
August 16, 2021 at 8:38 pm
The US & NATO were brutal invaders of a sovereign nation; installing a corrupt hand picked puppet government to serve the needs of American and British corporations; and to corrupt Afghan morals with all the 21st century Anglo-American degeneracy.
The Taliban did not like having THEIR NATION OCCUPIED BY FOREIGN INVADERS; AND THEY DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
It is no accident that their victory came with so little resistance; for it is obvious that THE PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN VERY MUCH SUPPORT THE TALIBAN; AND WANTED THE ILLEGAL US OCCUPATION AND BOMBING OF THEIR NATION TERMINATED; ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Bravo & Hosanna Monsieur Taliban!
August 16, 2021 at 8:48 pm
Yeh, right. When Genghis Khan came through with a program of thorough the Afghans sand a different tune. Now there was a tragedy.
August 16, 2021 at 9:22 pm
Genghis Khan! Now that was an hombre for sure!
August 18th, 1227 was his check out…so 794 years ago Wednesday!
August 16, 2021 at 9:26 pm
You need to remember Ron; there was no tv or internet back then; so invasions were the only way to kill time…
August 17, 2021 at 1:21 am
Yeah field and track were big in those years, the javeline throw, archery, running, jumping, standing still. Gosh, I wish I hadn’t missed that. Oh, and you forgot the —-ing contests. Women were put through paces in those days. No head aches allowed.
August 16, 2021 at 12:55 am
This is some good stuff written about 15 years ago by Ray at Da Black Whole…copy n pasted:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“The past few generations in the West have been conditioned strongly to believe that masculine consciousness — and indeed, manhood itself — is the destroyer of the Earth and the enemy of humankind, and that the world’s “only hope” and salvation is a de-gendered, emasculated, single-minded world of “perfect equality”…
America has always been predominantly matriarchal, except perhaps in its first century. Today, it is almost entirely matriarchal. The practical influence of REAL men is virtually nil.
It’s hilarious — in a depressing sorta way — to watch all the Trumps and Clintons and Bushies, the Colin Powells and Ted Turners strutting around like ancient Eastern despots, pretending they’re powerful!
LOL!! American females rule them utterly. They can’t even stand up to their wives — much less to an unemasculated man.
And they imagine themselves fit to rule the world. And the heavens!
Frickin’ Freddie Nietzsche, now . . . there was a real hombre. Everybody disagreed with him, most despised him, resented his genius . . . so he ignored the rabble and did whatta man’s gotta do.
Long before John Lennon suggested that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, Freddie — a superb Christian, though he’d have denied it apoplectically– rubbed our faces in the unpopular reality that God was dead.
By that, he meant not that Jesus wasn’t a true son of God (which he is), but that in the subsequent two millennia, Judeo-Christianity had degenerated into not merely a shadow of itself, but in many senses the antithesis of itself. And if Fred could see what goes on in the denominations today, well . . . I suppose he’d conclude that God’s even dedder!
Nietzsche (rhymes with “peachy”) correctly perceived the rotting of Judeo-Christianity into a self-oppressing, self-victimizing, totalitarian “slave morality” in which the “Herd” tramples actual excellence — truly noble, truly superior values and behaviors — into the lowest-common-denominator of an enforced “equality” based in the Herd’s recognition of its own inferiority. This “McDonalization of culture” exactly describes modern America’s victimocracy, its Realpolitik of Resentment.”
Freddie predicted the triumph of the hypocritical, lame, passive-aggressive “morality of paltry people” that infests Western civilization, egged on and codified by (mis)leaders who manipulate the Sheeple’s raging inferiority complexes, dividing the citizenry with “slave moraity” values until the desired (and oh-so-profitable!) Total Information/Total Security State is enabled.
The cunning beauty of this Machiavellian/Hegelian-Dialectical scheme is that the “free” and “democratic” citizenry — most of whom are Herd members — will absolutely insist upon their own bondage. The Republic’s death-blow was dealt when all females were included into a functional “protected class” status under the Civil Rights Act — leaving everyone except lower-class Evil White Males with a codified social and economic stake in Playing the Victim. No wonder Junior Bush was so gleefully eager to re-up that Act recently . . . and why he made such a Grand Show of it.
Give the Sheeple What They Want, and toss in a Ready Scapegoat. That’s the success-secret of any totalitarian regime. Worked great for Adolph.
Herod, Pilate, and Augustus were giddy over it too!
Meanwhile, the Feds post “non-discrimination” notices all about their office buildings and discriminate against men, especially “non-elite” [read: unprotected] white men, to the max. Row-upon-row of gubbermint cubicles are filled with (ahem “oppressed”) women, the universities are becoming male-free zones, families with intact fathers are rarer than rooster eggs, etc.
American males are withdrawing from “their” culture at warp-speed. That is not a coincidence, nor is it an unreasonable response.
After all: what’s the world without a Scapegoat?
Sanity. Bliss. Heaven.
Equal opportunity and Enforced Outcome aren’t the same thing. Even more disturbing, all men are NOT created equal. Neither are all women. Neither are women and men.
Some people are more noble, more capable, more righteous, just plain old better than most other people.
Don’t like that truth?
Too fucking bad. Try IMPROVING yourself, upon your OWN MERITS, instead of depending on your Protected Status, or your daddy’s power and money, or the police, or your neurotic therapist, or the government, to fix you for you — instead of raging about the “unfairness” of “elitism” to your betters, and then deluding yourself that you’re “speaking Truth to power.”
Freddie was also spot-on that imposition of “universal moral rules” was a cover for Herd-fascism, under control of a likewise-inferior, transgenerational, self-elevated, nepotic “elite.” He also correctly asserted that occasional “Supermen” exist, and that in future (and the future is now, folks!) a group of “Supermen” would emerge, distinguished by two rare identifying qualities: first, their inherent superiority, deriving from both genetic “wiring” and highly individuated character/egoic capacities (Jung’s Self); and second, that such an ubermensch gradually learns to fulfill, and simultaneously to check, his own will-to-power, so that he doesn’t fall into the control/totalitarian urges common amongst the Herd.”
Nietzsche contrasted the “master morality” Overman with the Herdist “Last Man,” whose desires are always for comfort and security — which the Nanny State and its operators are only too willing to provide . . . at price of our souls, and of national integrity, health, and future.
Fred envisioned the Superman as balancing Dionysian and Appolonian urges and natures, combining “the Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul” — hardly the sentiment one might expect from a dood who supposedly opposed Christianity, eh?
Jesus, obviously, was one of Freddie’s “Ubermen” — and the Moo Krew mocked, tortured, and murdered Christ because he reminded them every day, in every way, of what they weren’t — of what they hadn’t the courage to be. Think the Sadducees and Pharisees didn’t understand that dynamic?
Think they still don’t?
The last American President not a shill of the Matriarchal Herd was J.F.K. He detested government-by-secret-society, and said so publically. Perhaps he wasnt a full-fledged Superman under Neitzsche’s criteria — but he was close enough to prod our Controllers, with the unconscious approval of the Herd — to exterminate him, in a public fertility ritual that sent a clear message to other potential mavericks. The King Arthur/Camelot persona J.F.K. carried was not mere public projection, nor media-hype. He was a noble and courageous man who, like Jesus, was quite aware of the consequences of his activities.
The one thing the Matriarchal Herd and its lackeys can’t abide — or truly ever extinguish — is the living flame of a real man.
The Show ain’t over yet. J.F.K., and the brave and good people like him, will yet overcome. You heard it here last.”
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Though Ray is a Christian; he is one hell of an intelligent soul and writes wonderfully…it was from your site and his that I learned the most from.
August 16, 2021 at 9:39 pm
I saw some interesting tv yesterday; a dramatization of Aberfan…
I thought it would be about a routine mining accident (a few guys trapped in a mineshaft and the ensuing rescue attempt…I knew nothing of it previously)…and was shocked beyond shocked when it turned out to be a catastrophe of Biblical proportions when a tidal wave / avalanche / tsunami of sludge cascaded down a Welsh mountain in October 1966 and buried a small mining community; killing 144 people.
I’ve seen horror; and I have seen horror; and this ranks with the worst of them. It was a truly catastrophic event.
August 17, 2021 at 1:25 am
That’s why I live at 1000 feet on the crest. I have no fears of rising oceans or tides. You probably don’t know this but although Portland is 100 miles from the ocean the Willamette River is affected by the tides. The bed of the Columbia is below sea level all the way to Bonneville Dam. I don’t worry about sliding the hill so I am smug and content up here.
August 20, 2021 at 2:00 am
(CNN / 19 Aug 2021)Three US senators — Angus King of Maine, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John Hickenlooper of Colorado — announced separately Thursday they have tested positive for Covid-19.
All three have been vaccinated.
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*Praying for the virus*
August 20, 2021 at 2:25 am
Let’s just say they had a vaccination to soothe troubled minds but unfortunately it didn’t work. Well, no matter, the money is in the bank.