George W. M. Reynolds And The Many Novels In The Mysteries Of The Court Of London
by
R.E. Prindle
One may think that the ten volumes of George W. M. Reynolds’ Mysteries Of The Court Of London is one long novel, which of course it is, yet in that one novel are many others. In this essay I would like to discuss that of Prince George, Tim Meagles and Lady Lade.
Let us start with a chat about the changing times and change of consciousness occurring in the revolutionary age that existed from1789 to perhaps, gosh, I don’t know, perhaps 1860 or even 1880, at which time the revolutionary Benjamin Disraeli cast off his mortal coil. At least that phase of revolution which metamorphizing from shape to shape is continuing today and into the future,.
Now, I’m just discussing in the next few passages an idea I find interesting. Philip Jose Farmer, a twentieth century American novelist, noted that a comet fell on the town of Wold Newton in England in 1795. Musing from this point he dates modern popular literature as a unit he denominates the Wold Newton Universe. There is also an interesting French version of the Wold Newton Universe.
Now, it just so happens that 1795 was the approximate year that modern consciousness consolidated and emerged. As an indicator of its accuracy I point out that the Monthly Magazine of England changed it typography from the late Medieval style to the modern following the year 1795. Typeface did a transfiguration to the new fonts, most significantly changing the ff for ss to ss.
The changed fonts is a more significant event than one might think, because along with it went a change of consciousness. Men thought differently.
Of course, the evolution of consciousness was deeply affected by the emergence of the Industrial Revolution as well as the social, religious and political revolutions and the evidence became apparent in 1795.
This first act of modernity, Revolutionary Age, continued through the novelistic pen of George W. M. Reynolds. When he set down his novelistic pen c. 1860 England, at least, was passing into the second stage which we may say was initiated by Charles Darwin’s declaration of human evolution in 1859.
There is no coincidence that the Gothic literary period c. 1795, surfaced at the time of the Wold Newton comet. The post-Medieval period that ended in 1795 was one of mysterious supernatural happenings. At that period leading into the modern period the novelists began their tales on a supernatural, mysterioso basis of inexplicable circumstances then reduced them to understandable events by eliminating the supernatural mysteries through reason or rationality. Everything was made clear through the application, as it were, of scientific knowledge thus exemplifying the change in consciousness.
The world of mystery was left behind and writers began to write in rational terms. The writer GPR James neatly straddles this evolution of consciousness in his psychological outlook.
The Industrial Revolution solved certain societal problems and created others. At that time the population was expanding rapidly causing problems and creating opportunities. The population could not be absorbed under the pre-1795 conditions. Unless means could be devised to incorporate the new masses starvation must have resulted as Malthus predicted. But, the application of scientific principles and their technological application made the railroads a means of creating a massive number of jobs thus absorbing the surplus population; the change of scale from X to X+1 demanded additional workers.
However, as the under classes multiplied faster than the aristocrats this tended to make the aristocratic position untenable. This was the situation when George Reynolds came to maturity and exploited as a novelist. Thus he became a revolutionary or Red Republican attacking the aristocracy and monarchy while championing the underclass. His take was eminently successful.
.2.
Let us consider for a moment George’s place in the hierarchy of great novelists. In my estimation he belongs in the first rank whether eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth century. The times were changing rapidly although not at the warp speed of today. George’s popularity was based perhaps on a more parochial approach than a universal one. It was more closely identified with his specific time period.
I rank his Mysteries of the Court of London amongst the great literary achievements of the post-1795 modern period, as great or greater than Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Times as examples. Further, I would say that Reynolds was a significant influence on English writers who succeeded him. If he was in fact the most successful novelist of nineteenth century literature as is claimed, his contemporaries and successors had to take note of him. Just as one example in Vol. IV, Mrs. Fitzherbert, in the tale of the Monster Man he lays out the complete plot of Stevenson’s Jekyll And Hyde. It is well known that when as a child Stevenson was laid up with his illness he read the Penny Dreadfuls and obviously this stories of Reynolds. Seriously, Stevenson lifted the complete story. While he says that the story appeared to him complete in a dream, he must mean that his subconscious retrieved it from his early reading.
I think that W.M. Thackeray in his epic novel Vanity Fair, that has survived two hundred years being still read today, is very dependent on Reynolds style, as well as Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. And others. Victor Hugo, the French writer gives indication of having read Reynolds most especially in Jean Valjean’s episode in the sewers of Paris. A couple of Reynolds more startling passages are his characters mucking about in the sewers of London before Hugo wrote Les Misérables . If Hugo wasn’t influenced by Reynolds in that respect then Reynolds definitely takes priority in sewer episodes.
Bear in mind that things are rapidly changing now and almost the whole of the last two hundred years is being discarded as inapplicable to current consciousness, as well as what went before. When the older people now existing are gone a curtain will fall between the old and the new. The past will have become irrelevant. But, as the past is still relevant I will speak of it as timeless.
Hugo has two of the great novels of the period, Notre Dame De Paris, or under the movie title, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables. Court of London easily surpasses Les Misérables and measures up to Notre Dame De Paris. The latter is in a special category of genius. Reynolds has greater genius than Marcel Proust and I think is substantially superior. Proust’s style did produce excellent results but in a peculiar way. Reynolds easily matches Cervantes. I’ve only read a few pages of Tolstoy but I have no respect for his premise. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is another in the special class of genius. It’s not really a very good novel but Dostoyevsky penetrates to the heart of the matter.
And then, as George was hanging up his pen in the Sixties the style began another change. Along came the beginning of Science Fiction with the Frenchman Jules Verne and on top of Jules the Empire writer, H. Rider Haggard, emerged with his tales of African adventures along with the real life adventures of Samuel Baker, Richard F. Burton and the immortal Henry Morton Stanley. Fiction could barely stand up to those guys. The pursuit of the source of the Nile is one of the three great Western epics: The Iliad, The Arthurian saga and The Source of the Nile. What a trilogy, but, that’s another story. So-called Literary fiction continued apace under numerous other writers, interesting but not exciting. With this change the Wold Newton Universe began in earnest.
Back to George Reynolds. As I intimated earlier the Court of London as a whole is built around the character of George IV. He is the central character of all the sub-novels. One also has to include London as Central character after the manner of Hugo and Notre Dame. Reynolds much admired Notre Dame De Paris in which Victor Hugo examines architecture as an indicator of civilization making his story revolve around that churches structure. Reynolds follows that method with the city of London.
As I indicated the first of these sub-novels of Court of London first series, I’m undertaking is the story of Tim Meagles and his companion Lady Lade.
The Court of London is essentially a historical novel taking place from 1795 to 1820. Can it be a coincidence that George’s unhappy marriage to Caroline of Brunswick occurred in 1795? Boy, that Wold Newton comet was some comet wasn’t it? As a historical novel many of the characters are historical or based on historical characters.
Having read the novel twice before, this third reading I was surprised to find that Lady Lade was a historical figure and presented fairly accurately while Tim Meagles appears to be an amalgam of the very interesting Beau Brummel and perhaps an Irish character, maybe Daniel O’Connell, I’m just guessing on the latter.
Meagles seems to be a favorite character for Reynolds. Meagles model Beau Brummel was also a hero to Reynolds. The Beau was the premier Dandy at the time while in Reynolds’ pictures he also appears as a Dandy.
Tim Meagles
Tim Meagles is one of the very best characters George Reynolds created. He, Lady Lade and George IV would make a wonderful movie or a terrific streaming series.
We don’t have access to the depth of Reynolds knowledge for his fictional history of George IV was, but he has obviously studied George’s life. Reynolds is very knowledgeable about history. His reading sources would be much different from ours; while at the same time he would have had conversations with knowledgeable people who may have lived through the times as well as bull sessions with associates and friends. Much of that would have been gossip and much would be fact.
Much that he writes may seem preposterous to our eyes, but the times, customs and possibilities were different from our times but still amazingly similar if you look behind the façade.
One telling point he made concerning George IV’s times compared to his was that there were no New Police back then. One was virtually free to do what one wished, that there were no police means that it was a wide open society while the influence of Rabelais and his famous dictum in Gargantua and Pantagruel: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law while diminishing still prevailed. The spirit of the Hell Fire Clubs slumbered in the embers.
Two law standards existed, Rabelais for the aristocracy strict morality for the common people. Reynolds repeatedly calls this out.
George IV according to George Reynolds held that there was a third law that existed for him alone: The King, or heir apparent, could do no wrong. George IV was a libertine Rabelaisian of a high order in the spirit of the Hell Fire Clubs. That particular past weighed heavy on the mind of George IV.
The only difference was that the power of the English kings was being rapidly usurped by the Parliament; he was under scrutiny while the Hell Fire Clubs operated with impunity. Therefore, in Reynolds’ fictional history Tim Meagles’ function was to do dirty deeds dirt cheap. Tim found the ways to bail George IV out of difficulties.
Beau Brummel, Tim’s model was merely an arbiter of fashion having a hand in shaping men’s fashions at the time. He was the son of a successful entrepreneur who died leaving him with twenty thousand pounds and a burning desire to be ennobled. Thus the Beau had to try to enter high society with no title and inadequate means; he was a simple Mr.
Assuming the pose of the Dandy he succeeded in making himself the arbiter of fashion while insinuating himself into George’s favor thus succeeding to make himself the arbiter of fashion, the King of the Dandies, Men About Town and Men of the World.
George IV allowed him to live in his private residence, the Carlton House, whileTim Meagles had a key to a private entrance directly to George’s quarters so that he could come and go as he pleased without being observed.
The Beau unfortunately failed to remain in his subordinate place foolishly trying to make himself greater than George, while actually he was a mere hanger on. The crisis in the relationship came and the Beau was expelled. While the Beau had been badgering George to be ennobled he had failed. Out of favor then, he had no status.
Desponding, the Beau ran through his inheritance, ran into debt, and had no choice but to exile himself to Calais. He died a shattered man.
Lady Lade
If George Reynolds liked Tim Meagles, he loved Lady Lade, she was the woman of his heart his belle ideal. She appears in many forms and under many names is this fabulous work. Lady Letitia Lade was a very real person, as significant as Beau Brummel, that George presents almost unfictionalized. She was very notorious in her time being avoided by respectable ladies. She came from the bottom stratum of society working her way up. She was said to have been married to the notorious highwayman Sixteen String Jack Rann who lived fast, loved hard and died young, 24 years old, at the end of a rope.
Apparently a strong minded woman, she worked her way up, marrying a Lord, John Lade. Reynolds has her surviving her aged husband but in reality she died in 1825 while her young husband strung his life out to 1838.
George also makes her a transvestite wearing men’s clothes exclusively whereas John Stubbs, the painter, in his portrait of her, pictures her wearing a voluminous dress sitting side saddle on a rearing horse. Her athleticism was masculine.
George also relates her mythologically with the Roman Goddess Diana, in Greek Artemis, Our Lady of the Animals, or the huntress. George gets fairly deep here as he is inferring a deeper knowledge of European Mythology than one expects. I also think that this links him with the European Faery religion that still has a subterranean existence.
If you remember, Shakespeare in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream revives the Faeries and their king Oberon who was said to have abandoned his role in Bordeaux at the end of the story of Huon. Elizabeth I was known as the Faerie Queen and the heroine of Spenser’s poem of that name. The transition from Elizabeth to Charles I represented a significant break from the past.
If you have delved into the massive work of King Arthur you will remember that Lancelot was abducted by the Faerie Queen, Vivian, in France and reared beneath the Lake in preparation of reestablishing Faerie rule. Lancelot then when he turned eighteen was sent by Vivian/Diana to challenge Arthur for the Faerie kingdom of Camelot. He rode forth from the lake dressed in flowing white satin, his horse caparisoned the same. It appears that Vivian sent her acolyte to usurp the kingdom of Arthur, thus Arthur unknowing sent Lancelot to escort Gwenivere his future queen to Camelot. Well trained in Faerieland Beneath the Lake by Vivian/Diana, the Queen of the Faeries, Lancelot had no trouble winning Gwenivere’s heart from Arthur. There began the last stand of the Faeries that resulted in the destruction of Camelot.
This story resonates strongly with Homer and Troy. Guinevere taking the place of Helen and Lancelot Paris, the battle before Lancelot’s Beau Regarde, that of the sacred city of Troy.
How much of this Faerie lore George Reynolds might have known isn’t clear to me but Meagles wins the heart of the Huntress, the Amazon, the desirable, the fascinating Lady Lade/Diana, the Faerie Queen, from John Lade. Could be true, nevertheless the Meagles/Lady Lade story is a most enchanting tale, my favorite of the Mysteries of the Court of London, first series..
.3.
The story has more than one center and at the center of each is George IV, the origin of all the stories is closely related to the Page and Julia Lightfoot story. It’s hard work but you have to keep all the stories in your mind at the same time. A clue mentioned off hand is realized a hundred or a hundred fifty pages on. Sometimes he refreshes the reader’s memory, sometimes not.
George III was thought to have been married to a Quaker woman named Hannah Lightfoot in his youth so this novel centers on the proofs of the marriage. Reynolds believes the story, constructing his story on the ‘facts.’ The facts, rather fictional or actual, consist of a couple documents and ultimately on a packet of letters written by George III. Reading George’s representation I conclude that there was no wedding ceremony but according to the old dodge he and Hannah were married ‘in the sight of heaven.’ That dodge was universal in its application then as now. No matter, Reynolds says they were married. As it’s his story he should know. Meagles and Letitia have come into possession of one half of the document while Page and Julia Lightfoot have the other half. Page plays a large role in the novel but I will deal with him separately in another essay. Here he had been captured and imprisoned by some villains. He escapes by digging through a wall entering the adjacent unit where Hannah Lightfoot’s brother lies dying. Julia Lightfoot, the brother’s daughter, Hannah being her aunt, returns from an errand to find Page sitting next to the now dead brother rifling through his wallet. Not particularly disturbed by her father’s death she and Page team up. A paper refers to some treasure secreted in the basement to which the two unite to find. The treasure seems to be six bags of sovereigns.
The papers have provided the proofs of George III’s marriage to Hannah Lightfoot, Julia’s aunt, and a seeming pile of gold if handled correctly. Ever scheming Page sees a fortune looming. He and Julia immediately marry. The marriage, a real one, seems made in heaven as destiny is apparently involved here.
Page learns that Meagles and Lady Lade have the other half of the document proving the marriage. They then sell their half to Meagles and Lady lade for a thousand pounds real money, the gold having been discovered as counterfeit as Julia’s father was a coiner.
The bold Meagles then makes his way to George III in an interesting scene to extort a peerage, you can read it for the details.
My first thought was that the scene was impossible but as I read into the history of the period I thought it could have been.
After the restoration of the crown after the Cromwellian intermission the Stuarts tried to restore the absolute power of the king. Charles II held on but under James II the magnates rebelled offering the crown to William and Mary of Holland. Now, the future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who studied the era said that the Whigs wanted a ceremonial king after the fashion of the Doge of Venice. William refused the crown on those terms, he had no wish to be a powerless king, so an accommodation was arranged.
The last of the Stuarts was Queen Anne who succeeded William. When she died in 1720 a new dynasty had to be established. Avoiding a civil war, the Whigs went to Germany and recruited the Hanoverian sovereign George making him George I. He was ideal. He spoke no English, cared little for English affairs, spent most his time in Hanover, leaving the way open for the Whigs to usurp monarchical powers. Perfect for this Whigs. This continued under George II who was also considered a foreign intruder. Still perfect.
When George III, who was born and bred in England but was still considered something of a German intruder by the Whigs, became king he refused to be ceremonial and sought to recapture monarchical powers at which he ultimately failed. George IV, now thoroughly English rebelled at being ceremonial but royal powers were beyond redemption.
So, while George III was still king it might have been possible for someone like Meagles to gain access and extort benefits from the King of England. This is Reynolds portraying it so he must have thought it possible.
In an important episode Meagles, who did dirty deeds dirt cheap for George IV, at George’s insistence that he must have 15,000 pounds, found a dupe named Foster, a merchant, to proffer the money. Lending money to George IV was like sending a light beam into a black hole; it went in but never came out. Nevertheless, time passed, the merchant needed the money in an emergency. George said: Help me, Tim. Tim went to work.
Meagles and Lady Lade turned London upside down finally finding a French expatriate, this is during the French Revolution remember, French expatriates abounded, who was willing to advance his cache of 20,000 pounds to George. Taking the money George refused to give the 15,000 pounds back to Foster. At the climax, unable to meet his obligation, the now bankrupt Foster went home and shot himself in the head leaving his wife and daughter destitute. This ‘heartless’ attitude of George absolutely disgusted Meagles and the Amazon. Rose Foster subsequently turns up at Mrs. Braces House of Assignation under the name of Rose Morton. George is a regular patron of Mrs. Brace, (quite another novel) desiring Rose. Adventures ensue, Rose escapes Mrs. Brace, is recaptured and offered once again to George. Skipping details, George is about to rape Rose when Meagles and James Melmoth break into the room. The police arrive but since they cannot possibly arrest the Prince, George has them arrest the two knights errant. The Prince in his rage at Meagles has him exiled to America. Reynolds has a regular conveyer belt of criminals going to America.
James Melmoth will later appear as the Monster Man, another story, but the interest here is that it indicates that Reynolds has read the Irish author, Charles Maturin, who wrote his fabulous Gothic novel Melmoth, The Wanderer, flashes of which appear in Reynolds’ work, as here.
In a spectacular sequence of events the exiled Meagles is returned to England. Now this is interesting. The ship that carries him is named the Diana. Thus this whole sub novel of Meagles and Lady Lade is related to the Faerie and mythical kingdoms. Reynolds knows a lot more than he openly reveals. I would dearly love to know the books he read.
Leaving out the details leading up to Meagles’ success in extorting a Marquisate and 10K pounds a year from George III, then marrying Lady Lade whose aged husband had been frightened to death by George’s agents as they searched his house for papers relating to Hannah Lightfoot. Those important papers were a packet of love letters from George to Hannah Lightfoot.
The corrupted banker Ramsay had the packet. As that story evolved Ramsay determined to flee to, where else, America to try to begin a new life. As a last foray he intends to blackmail Lady Desborough. Meagles is onto him following him to Aylesbury on a hunch.
Having already despoiled the Desboroughs of thousands of pounds they are fearful that this will be a continuing situation so they determine to kill the parasite which they do. Meagles is in the bushes observing. he rushes out to offer aid in concealing the body. He thus discovers the Lightfoot letters in Ramsay’s pocket.
Bingo! Back to George III. Meagles and Lady Lade extort a Marquisate from George to gratify his desire to be ennobled and a bundle of cash, next getting married, then fleeing London for the shires.
Reynolds sums up Meagles’ career: Thus enriched, our sporting friend was enabled to cut a fine figure in the West End; and in due course it was announced in the newspapers that Mr. Meagles had laid claim to the dormant Marquisate of Edgemore. The matter was brought before the House of Lords; no opposition was offered, and behold! The dashing, gay, and unprincipled Tim became elevated to the peerage. He soon afterward married Lady Lade and the remainder of their days were passed happily enough. Thus George culminates his little fairy tale of Tim the faerie king and Diana the faerie queen.
This is unlike Beau Brummell who broke and depressed lived his last days in misery as a common man…
I think I will next review the sub-novel concerning Page the Commercial Traveler. Page apparently had no need of a first name and if Reynolds mentioned it, I missed it.
Part XIa: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
February 29, 2020
Part XIa
Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
I have been having trouble finding a way into this chapter. Three efforts have been thrown aside; perhaps the fourth will succeed. I have been successful in finding a copy of The Youthful Impostor and added Vo. I of The Modern Literature of France. The latter is available under the title Georges Sand. A couple of quotes from those may possibly be a good lead in.
A preliminary quote is from David De Leon’s introduction to his translation of volume fifteen of Mystere’s du Peuple, Eugene Sue’s The Executioner’s Knife or Joan of Arc: A Tale of the Inquisition. De Leon:
Whether one will be satisfied with nothing but a scientific diagnosis in psychology, or a less ponderous and infinitely more lyric presentation of certain mental phenomena will do for him, whether the credit of history insists on strict chronology or whether he prizes in matters canonical the rigid presentation of dogma or a whether the tragic fruits of theocracy offer a more attractive starting point for his contemplation- whichever case may be (the career and novels of George Reynolds…) will gratify his intellectual cravings on all three heads.
Of course I have substituted Reynolds for De Leon’s quote of Sue. He pretty well covers the approach I am taking. The smooth or turbulent waters of a rolling river are what is meant by canonical waters, while the real history lies beneath the shining or muddy waters in the hidden river bed. With Reynolds it is necessary to penetrate the river’s surface and search beneath to understand the depth of Reynold’s thought.
Up to this time Reynolds has escaped the biographer’s pen. Fortunately for us Reynolds has left some pretty transparent clues in his writing making them fairly accessible auto-biography, more especially in the novels of his apprenticeship before embarking mid-stream as he began the fullness of his career with The Mysteries Of London. Two novels stand out in auto-biographical detail. The first is The Youthful Impostor first composed when he was eighteen in 1832 and edited before publication in 1835. The completely rewritten version of 1847 retitled The Parricide bears small relation to the first published version. The second work is his Modern Literature of France published in 1839 when he was twenty-five. The latter is non-fiction. In it he says in the introduction speaking directly to the reader p. XVII
The literature of France previous to the Revolution of 1830 resembled that of England at the present day; inasmuch as a moral lesson were taught through the medium of almost impossible fiction. Now the French author paints the truth in all its nudity; and this development of the secrets of Nature shocks the English reader, because he is not yet accustomed to so novel a style. To depict truth, in all its bearings, consistently with nature, is a difficult task; and he who attempts it muse occasionally exhibit deformities which disgust the timid mind. A glance at life in all its phases, cannot be attended with very satisfactory results; and while the age surveys much to please, it must also be prepared to view much that will be abhorrent to the virtuous imagination. The strict conventual usages of English society prevent the introduction of highly coloured pictures into works of fiction; and thus, in an English book which professes to be a history of man or of the world, the narrative is but half told. In France the whole tale is given at once; and the young men, and young females do not there enter upon life with minds so circumscribed and narrow that the work of initiation becomes an expensive and ruinous task. We do not become robbers because we read of thefts; nor does a female prove incontinent on account of her knowledge that such a failing exists. The pilot should be made aware of rocks and quicksands, that he may know how to avoid them; it is ridiculous to suffer him to roam on a vast ocean without having previously consulted the maps and charts which can alone warn him of peril. Such is the reasoning of French writers, who moreover carry their system to such a an extent, that they cannot hesitate to represent vice triumphant, and virtue leveled with the dust, for they assert that the former incredibly prospers, and the other languishes without support; whereas the English author points to a difficult moral in his fiction.
One might say that Reynolds plan of literature was formed in France while his five years there were the most significant and formative in his life. Whether he witnessed the three important days of the July Revolution that unseated Charles X is not important, what is important is that their import coalesced his own political outlook. Thus when he returned to England in 1836 it was in full revolutionary mode and remained so promoting the Revolution of 1848 by any and all means at his disposal. He directed his revolutionary effort toward ’48 by his involvement in the Chartist Movement in which he was ultimately successful. Coming from France where he believed that the July Revolution swept away ancient ways be violence, belief in violence offended the English agitators who believe evolutionary tactics the better approach. They belittled his contributions and diminished him personally. Notwithstanding his vision of Chartism triumphed changing English society and he should be rehabilitated and acknowledged as such.
Secondly the quote displays perfectly Reynolds’ literary ideals to present reality starkly as he saw it. I do not agree with many of his conclusions and in observing his usages do not necessarily endorse them in their entirety. Time has proven many of his observations fatuous and against human nature. To ignore them is to misunderstand his import. He is almost always going against the grain. Especially compared to Dickens and Ainsworth.
The French literature he discusses was prior to the effusion of the Forties, which was astonishing. In his critique he is referring to the theatrical or poetic works of Dumas and Victor Hugo. He apparently was an ardent theatre goer.
The tremendous events of the fifty years preceding 1830 were brought to a head in the July Revolution of France and the Reform Act of 1832 in England. The political and belated explosion in France in 1789 was only less significant compared to the Industrial Revolution of England and the subsequent economic reorganization. When the Napoleonic era ended modern society had been reorganized emerged complete.
Once again, Reynolds was keenly aware of changing customs and mores. This vision was held up starkly to him when he set foot in France shortly after the July Revolution. One should also note this was after the cholera epidemic of the same year. To quote him again: The +*-Modern Literature of France pp. XIII-XIV:
The literature of France since the July Revolution of 1830 is quite distinct from that under the fallen dynasty. A sudden impulse was given to the minds of men by the successful struggle for freedom which hurled the improvident Charles from his royal seat; and all aims—all views—and all interests underwent a vast change. Ages of progressive but peaceful reform couldn’t have accomplished so much, in reference to the opinions and tastes of a mighty nation, as those three days of revolution and civil war. The march of civilization was hurried over centuries; and as if France had suddenly leapt from an old into a new epoch without passing through the minutes, the hours, and the days which mark the lapse of time, she divested herself of the grotesque and gothic apparel, and assumed an attire which at first astounded and awed herself. And then men began to congratulate each other upon the change of garb; and now that they are accustomed to see and admire it, they look upon their rejected garments as characteristic of antiquity, and not as things that were in vogue only a few years since.
As a Chartist, other Chartists who were more evolutionarily minded disliked Reynolds because he was known for wanting drastic results by violent revolutionary means Reynolds retorts, p. XVI:
It is a matter of speculation whether the Reform Act (of 1832 in England) would have been even now (1839) conceded to the people of this country, if it had not been found necessary to keep pace as much as possible with the giant strides made by the French. Certainly a change has taken place in the literature of England since the passing of the Reform itself as well as that of France since the three days of July.
The change in literature in England was led by Edward Bulwer Lytton, William Harrison Ainsley, perhaps Charles Dickens, by Reynolds himself and quite probably writers like Pierce Egan and the Penny Blood and Dreadful writers as developments in printing and paper made ever cheaper editions possible making books of all qualities affordable to the rising literacy among the underclasses. Indeed by the 1850s, John Dicks, Reynolds printer and partner, would make available the complete Shakespeare for pennies. Of course, the type was so small they are virtually unreadable except to the most dedicated.
All of these writers were reformers, writing especially about the harsh penal laws.
The core attitudes of Reynolds remained unchanged from his introduction into France. It was in France that a very young eighteen year old wrote his first book, The Youthful Impostor.
-II-
Reynolds incorporates his entire life into his novels so this might be the right time to assemble a chronology of his life. For those who may have read my earlier chapters this account may seem familiar but it incorporates much new material, better organization and deeper thinking. Or so I think.
While George’s first novel, The Young Impostor was first composed in 1832 when he was eighteen the book was not to published until 1835 when he was twenty-one. There was some touching up for the 1835 version as he includes a chapter head quote from W. Harrison Ainsworth’s Rookwood that was only published in 1832 and couldn’t have been read for his original manuscript. He also chapter headed a quote from Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford. That novel was definitely an influence on The Youthful Impostor. The Youthful Impostor is highly autobiographical so we can form an almost biographical account of his early years. By the way the 1847 rewrite of the Impostor, The Parricide, bears almost no resemblance to the earlier version. It can read as an independent novel and not his best.
George was born July 20, 1814. His father, a naval post-Captain commanded a cruiser during the Napoleonic wars. Born in Sandwich, Kent of the Cinq Ports, the family was moved to the island of Guernsey when George was two. Six years later the family returned to Kent and its capital Canterbury. Reynolds has indelible memories of all this so references to his early life crop up frequently in his works.
Returning to 1822, at the age of eight he was saddened by the death of his father thus making him an orphan. Orphans figure prominently in his works. His mother died eight years later depriving him of both parents leaving him on his own at fifteen under the guardianship of his father’s best friend Duncan McArthur, hence George’s third name. He passed under that man’s guardianship after his father’s death. His mother was not his guardian.
His relationship with McArthur, if we judge from his writing, was not a happy one. There are other references but in 1854 writing in his novel, The Rye House Plot, which by the way is a superb novel, George had this to say about his guardian: Rye House Plot, p. 63,
This guardian of mine was a man of stern disposition; and I loved him not.
I think we can apply the quote to Duncan McArthur. He, himself, was an old Navy man, a surgeon. From the age of eight to sometime at the age of thirteen George attended a school in Ashford, a few miles from Canterbury which were happy years for him as he idolized his schoolmaster. Then, as George styles it, at the tender age of thirteen he
was placed in the Sandhurst Military Academy in Berkshire. Thirteen would indeed had been tender to have been thrown in with older boys of sixteen or eighteen and even young men heading into their twenties. Tom Brown’s School Days at Rugby by Thomas Hughes at roughly this time shows how difficult George’s situation probably was. He was impoverished while probably the majority of the cadets were from titled families having plenty of money. So from thirteen to sixteen when George was either removed or removed himself the years must have been unpleasant. The Youthful Impostor covers those years.
George’s mother died in March of 1830 when he was fifteen. He left the academy shortly after his sixteenth birthday in September. He left for France at the end of 1830, a greenhorn of sixteen. A sitting duck for sharpers one might say.
The question then is how much money did he have. Dick Collins think nothing but I think he had to have much more so I accept his statement to the adjudicator at his 1848 bankruptcy hearing when George told him that he had had seven thousand pounds. Where did they come from?
In The Rye House plot he discusses such an issue like this. His character General Oliphant is speaking. “Eighteen years ago, when I was a youth under twenty, I embarked with my uncle, Mr. Oliphant, on board a vessel bound for a Spanish port where he had some mercantile business to transact, he being engaged in commercial enterprises. Mr. Oliphant was my +
guardian, my parents having died when I was very young. I must observe that Mr. Oliphant being a man of reserved and stern disposition had kept me in the most perfect state of ignorance as to my own affairs; and although I had reason to believe that my parents had left some little property, which I should inherit on obtaining my majority, I had not the smallest conception of what amount or value it might be or what nature it was nor where situated or deposited.
As it turned out the inheritance was a couple thousand pounds payable at twenty-one. This coincides with Dick Collins researches in George’s finances. So, I think we can believe that George is describing his own situation in the above quote. While it is generally thought that George inherited twelve thousand pounds when his mother died, we can I think dismiss the account. Where, then, did George get seven thousand pounds. If The Young Impostor is as autobiographical as I think it is then George was involved in a substantial swindle and fled England in somewhat of a hurry at the end of 1830.
George does not often write about his military life but he does in YI and the Rye House Plot. The cadets were given a fair amount of liberty and traveled from the barracks to London frequently. This was George’s first acquaintance with London and it was overwhelming.
In Chapter VI of the Parricide a rewrite of The YI Reynolds quotes this verse:
Houses, churches, mix’d together
Streets unpleasant in all weather,
Prisons, palaces contiguous,
Gaudy things enough to tempt you
Showy outsides, insides empty,
Baubles, trades, mechanic arts,
Coaches, wheelbarrows, and carts,
-This is London! How do ye like it?
Sometime then at thirteen and fourteen he had his first introduction to the Big City in company with other cadets on the town. Breathtaking and terrifying. And that was my impression of London too. I’m sure he was stunned by his first vision as I was a hundred seventy years later.
He frequently mentions the Hounslow barracks. Highwaymen infested the highways from Hounslow to London and also in the vicinity of Bagshot.
Reynolds with little money in his pocket traveled from Sandhurst to London and back many times apparently following at times through Bagshot and Hounslow.
Now, as a young cadet, he has himself returning from London late one night when he is accosted by two highwaymen. Naturally he had little money and was being harassed accordingly when a third party appeared who dispersed the robbers and rescued him. It would seem apparent that as the robbers worked in parties of three that the third party also a robber who intervened for another reason. Reynolds names him as Arnold. Having read the story and reviewing it, it should be apparent that Arnold thought he had found a use for the young cadet and he and, actually the other two, were contemplating some large scale swindle but needed a naïve young man to complete the ensemble as bait. George may very probably have been that young man.
Reynolds has James, his character, and Arnold dupe a Jewish usurer named Mr. Nathanial. The amount George mentions was seven thousand pounds. This may be a coincidence or it may be where his seven thousand pounds came from when he absconded to France at the end of 1830.
It may have been at this time that Long’s Hotel became familiar to the young orphan. Long’s was apparently London’s most luxurious hotel at the time. Reynolds is almost breathless when he mentions the name. Long’s figures prominently in his pre 1844 works. Most often with criminal acts. And indeed, Reynold’s is familiar with endless hotel scams.
According to Collins there is some question as to young George’s integrity and George himself from time to time mentions that he has redeemed his youthful crimes, while swindles are frequently performed in his novels. That’s not proof of course but such a swindle would have provided the seven thousand pounds he said he had plus an incentive to leave England just ahead of the Bow Street Runners. At any rate we know that he showed up in France at the end of 1830 and we’ll take his word that he had seven thousand pounds.
If George was associated with this ‘Arnold’ who was part of the criminal underworld he must have been inducted into that society in some capacity. In that capacity he would have learned something of criminal ways of which he seems to be fairly familiar and according to Collins he did do some prison time while he went through a bankruptcy just before returning to England from France.
If I am correct, then George benefited by his and ‘Arnold’s’ swindle and absconded to France. Collins also records that he was arrested in Calais for playing with loaded dice. In Mysteries of London, first series, George gives a detailed description with diagrams of how to load dice. Of course, that may have been taken from a manual.
So, at the beginning of 1831 George landed in France where he would remain until 1836. From Calais he went straight to Paris where he remained either residing at Meurice’s Hotel or hanging around the
environs as may be indicated by his book of Pickwick Abroad. When he married he resided in different places as Collins’ research accords.
Evidence indicates that he did explore areas of France. At one point he laments never have been to Belgium, the closest he came was four miles from the border. Since one can only write about what is stored in one’s mind and one’s experience it follows that Reynolds must have been at the places he writes about or had read about them. As he frequently writes about Italy one does question his presence there. In his book Wagner, the Wehr Wolf his descriptions of Florence don’t seem to ring true so he may be working from from written accounts or pure imagination although his descriptions do resonate with the Italian period in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Otherwise he may have traveled about quite a bit.
As a green, but initiated, sixteen year old in 1831, perhaps with money, he would have been prey to various spongers and swindlers. It is difficult to envision a sixteen year old boy brazening his way through a foreign capital but he very obviously did for five years. One imagines his first six months must have been intense orientation. Yet he says that he completed The YI in 1832 and had been able to obtain a copy of Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford, read it and incorporated it in his first novel. We’re talking of a bit of a phenom here. He must have gravitated into journalistic and literary circles, possible theatrical, very quickly in his career, and he is merely a boy not attaining his majority until the year before he left France. I find this fairly astonishing.
He says he wrote The Young Impostor in 1832 so he must have been considering the story from his very landing in France if not before. As an eighteen year old It could only portray his experience up to that year. The novel itself in excellent and precocious for an eighteen year old; nor was it ignored. The copy I have is a reprint of an 1836 US edition published by E. L. Cary and A. Hart of Philadelphia. Thus within a year of its French publication it was published across the Atlantic. Why a Philadelphia company would appropriate an unproven title by an unknown author isn’t clear to me.
According to Collins within these two years he also met, courted and married his wife Susannah Pierson. (Collins say that Pierson is the correct spelling not Pearson.) She was apparently moving in literary circles as Collins describes her as a writer. She would later, in the 1850s, write a novel titled Gretna, which is available. Gretna refers to Gretna Green across the Scottish border where those wishing to elope repaired to. In 1745 a law was passed forbidding underage couples to marry without parental permission so that couples flew to Gretna Green for their nuptials. I was something like going to Las Vegas. It’s a good story.
In The YI A Pearson who was unmarried, while having a fairy like persona, not unlike Huon of Bordeaux, took him under his wing and instructed him in seedy practice. Whether he was related to Susannah isn’t known. So, by eighteen George was married and remained so until his wife died in 1854. He apparently never remarried.
According to all the references to books George makes in his writing he was reading voraciously. Here may be an appropriate time to discuss aspects of the literary situation in England and France during the thirties and forties.
The base for the writers in both England and France was the novels of Walter Scott and the Gothic novelists along with Byron. I would say that all the English and French writers were inspired by Scott. Scott died in 1832 at the young age of 61 thus missing the joy of seeing his influence on succeeding authors, except for William Harrison Ainsworth. Ainsworth who published his Rookwood in 1832. That book is almost an homage to Scott but lacks Scotts consummate style, complexity and depth. Ainsworth followed that up in 1835 with Crichton and then began an outburst of historical novels from 1839 with Jack Sheppard and a dozen more in quick succession through about 1845. At that time Reynolds was quiescent but he read all the titles and they influenced him greatly.
Of course Charles Dickens began his career in the late thirties and turned out a few titles in the forties. Dickens wasn’t that prolific but he made the most lasting impression of the novelists of the era. It is needless to say that he made his impression on Reynolds. George despised Dickens as a lightweight, and Dickens novels are lightweights. For me they are unreadable.
Lastly comes Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He was an important writer for his period and has survived into the present as an occultist. His novel The Coming Race is a must read for any esotericist. The idea of it seized H.G. Wells mind and he used it for his excellent novel The Food of the Gods. Bulwers’ Rienzi and The Last Days Of Pompei may still have a readership. He’s not a particularly good writer however. His opening line for Paul Clifford ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ for some reason is found hilarious by a certain type of reader. A contest is held each year to see if anyone can match this imagined terrible sentence. Reynolds uses it occasionally in his books. Bulwer maintained a fair reputation at least up to the 1950s while Reynolds was heavily influenced by him. And of course Byron. George even attempted ‘A Sequel To Don Juan’ but he was no Byron. He did get it published and it did find readers. Fortunately Byron was dead by that time and unable to the show the umbrage that Dickens did.
And then there are the magnificent French writers of the Forties and into the Fifties. The incomparable Alexander Dumas, pere inspired by Walter Scott began turning out his French historical novels in machine gun style, writing so fast that he had multiple serialized novels being published at one time. And what novels! Few novels can compare to The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. And, of course, Dumas is popular to this day.
At the same time Honore de Balzac was publishing his Human Comedy collection of novels. Strangely compelling, Balzac’s brain had an odd construction. Love him but I always wonder: Why am I reading this? Balzac too is read widely today. My favorite story in the novella The Girl With The Golden Eyes.
Victor Hugo, also widely read today, is not a favorite of mind. I will concede that Notre Dame de Paris – The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the US, is compelling and could possibly be a great book. The US title switches the focus of the book from the architectural edifice of Notre Dame to the character of Quasimodo, the Hunchback. The movies were essential to changing the emphasis from the edifice to the Hunchback. Les Miserables is an OK read but doesn’t impress me. Hugo was a Communist and in his novel 1793 actually advocates murdering all the Royalists because they would never accept the New Order. Don’t go away because you read that; it’s just my opinion.
And then we come to the incredible Eugene Sue. Not quite as prolific as Dumas but a non-stop writer. Not quite as concentrated as Dumas, his style is more diffuse but always interesting. His two key works, neither widely read today are The Mysteries of Paris and the Wandering Jew. Both are terrific books and very long. Both books were models for Reynolds Mysteries of Paris. The Wandering Jew may have resonated especially with him because it takes place in 1830, the year of the July Revolution and the cholera epidemic.
And now I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that another key influence might have been the American Edgar Allen Poe. While Poe didn’t have that many pages to his credit, he was a prolific writer of short stories and the short stories are amazing. Mind boggling. Inventive. Concentrated. They would be very difficult to top. They crossed the Atlantic quickly and were received with open arms in France and England. I may be reaching but I find evidences of Poe in his story of Grand Manoir in his Master Timothy’s Bookcase and we are going to look more closely at that shortly.
And, of course his mind is obsessed with the works of the Marquis de Sade. He must have read De Sade’s two great studies Justine and Juliette shortly after arriving in Paris. De Sade believed that following virtue would lead to an unhappy life while pursuing vice would lead to worldly success. The contrast of vice and virtue then informs almost all his works, but he wishes to reverse De Sade’s conclusions.
To really understand Reynold’s, one must be familiar with these authors. But he was so influenced by his wide reading that I’m sure these authors are just the tip of the iceberg.
In Pickwick Abroad George is familiar with all the sights of Paris. He must have at least visited all the prisons and insane asylums both in France and England. We get tours of many. Of course George was very interested in psychology. While Phrenology and Physiognomy may not be considered psychology, they are. Phrenology, an idea of the German, Franz Gall, was a crude attempt at brain anatomy and if risible today it was more because of the misuse by ununderstanding users than Gall’s idea itself that led to its discreditization. The notion was made on the right idea, different areas of the brain control different functions, it’s a moot point today but Gall deserves more credit that he gets, Reynolds entertains an interest in both ideas, especially physiognomy He was apparently a great reader of facial expressions.
Apropos of that, a very interesting novel is the novel Master Timothy’s bookcase published in 1840.
-III-
Master Timothy’s Bookcase is very serious and it is a major book. Interestingly the book begins in Kent, then follows Reynold’s career to Berkshire and London and then to France while ending with his return to England ending in the shire of Kent.
As Reynolds was only twenty-six in 1840 his mental acuity is actually astonishing. He had what one might call a four octave mind. Reynolds quite often resorts to supernatural or, perhaps, proto-scientific elements. In this book the hero Edmund Mortimer is the seventh son so-to-speak of a family founded six generation earlier. The ‘genius’ of the family appears to each member and offers them the approach to life that they think will make them contented and happy. They choose wealth, success et al. and all end up unhappy. Edmund Mortimer chooses Universal Knowledge. This choice, of course, reflects Reynolds ruling passion. George, himself, seeks Universal Knowledge and does a good job of it. However, even he at only twenty-six, he realizes that universal knowledge does not lead to happiness as knowing all displays mankind at its worst.
The more Mortimer, and we may assume Reynolds, learns about human nature, the more disgusted he becomes and regrets his choice. His peregrinations take him through several adventures and episodes.
The ‘Genius’ then gives Mortimer a supernatural bookcase that only he can see and is always with him. Whenever Mortimer is perplexed by a situation concerning the motivations or activities of the participants he he turns to the bookcase that provides him with a manuscript that explains the true situation all its manifestations he has only to ask. However, his bookcase cannot predict the future.
Mortimer’s uncanny ability to know the complete past history of people he has only just met will have consequences because he can produce no evidence as to how he acquired the knowledge. This becomes clear in the episode of the Marquis Delaroche. Without going into inessential details in this very clever story the Marquis neglects the wife of his dead brother whose fortune had been entrusted to him. Mortimer becomes acquainted with Athalie d’Estival, her name and confronts the Marquis Delaroche, to whom he is a complete stranger, attempting to shame him into supporting his sister-in-law.
The Marquis is old and the epitome of deviousness. When Mortimer butts into the Marquis’ life and proves to him that he has misappropriated his brother’s inheritance the Marquis sets Mortimer up. He opens his safe, leaving the door open, and gives Mortimer a casket containing his wealth refusing to give a proper written authorization for Mortimer to be in possession of the casket and expels Mortimer from his house. Immediately then, with his safe left open the Marquis commits suicide by slashing his throat. His servant accosts Mortimer leaving the house with the casket under his cloak and assumes the Mortimer stole it. The dead body is then discovered and circumstantial evidence indicates Mortimer to be both a murderer and thief.
Reynolds thoroughly dislikes the authority of circumstantial evidence, and with good reason, so this story gives him an opportunity to display its fallaciousness.
Because of his ability to know personal details of other people’s lives Mortimer’s friends consider him not only eccentric but insane. This is confirmed to the judge when he interrogates Mortimer. I will quote a passage because it indicates Reynolds brilliance and knowledge of psychology at only twenty-six years of age.
The Judge of Instruction commenced the usual system of catechizing; and for some time our hero replied with calmness and precision to the various question put to him. But at length, as those questions gradually touched more nearly on the dread event itself, he became confused- his ideas were no longer defined and distributed in their proper cells in his imagination, but were collected into one heterogeneous and unintelligible mass; and, yielding to the impulse of those sentiments which were uppermost in his mind, he commenced a long exculpatory harangue, the principle subject of which was his race. The Judge listened patiently for some time, and at length shrugged up his shoulders to imply his utter ignorance of the meaning of the prisoner’s speech. At length, exhausted by the long flow of verbiage in which he had indulged, Sir Edmund sank upon a seat, almost unconscious of what he had been saying and where he was.
That’s a pretty acute description of a state of mind. Reynolds was deeply interested in psychological studies. One must bear in mind that this period was the beginning of the great opening of the European mind. I doubt if there were many who could have reproduced that analysis. The description of the whole interview is masterful and that at only twenty-six.
In any event Mortimer was convicted of murder, declared insane, and committed to the Bicetre insanity wing. George was familiar with, at least, the outside of the building, this massive Bicetre structure housing criminals, the insane and others.
It seems obvious that George toured all these insane asylums and prisons. He was up on recent developments of the treatment of the insane. He was aware of Dr. Phillippe Pinel who had very recently begun the humane treatment of the mentally afflicted.
The people of the time were placed under unbearable distress and hardship, especially women. One reads of the women that Dr. Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpetriere of Paris in the 1860s, 70s and 80s treated and their mental sufferings were appalling. Their history of abuse was incredible. Nor were all asylums as enlightened as those of Drs. Pinel and Charcot and, remember, these were pioneers.
Whether George’s description of the Bicetre is accurate is beyond me to determine, he does however tell an interesting story of one of the inmates. The story sounds like it may have been true, but, read on: Mortimer has been declared guilty but insane. Committed to the Bicetre insane wing he domiciled with three other monomaniacs. The three stories are actual psychological evaluations of the inmates. The one the interests us most is the first. The story is a Frankenstein type.
The first was an old man of sixty-five with long grey hair flowing from the back part of his head, the crown and regions of the temples being completely bald. He was short in stature, stooping in gait, and possessed of a countenance eminently calculated to afford a high opinion of his intellectual powers, he was however a monomaniac of no uncommon description. Bred to the medical profession, he had given, when at an early age, the most unequivocal proofs of a vigorous and fertile imagination. He first obtained attention towards the singularity of his conceptions by disputing the rights of the Englishman, Dr. Harvey, to the honour of having first discovered the circulation of the blood. He maintained that Harvey merely revived the doctrine, and that it was known to the ancients. This opinion he founded upon the following passage in Plato: – “The heart is the centre or knot of the blood vessels, the spring or fountain of the blood, which is carried impetuously round; the blood is the food of the flesh; and for the process of nourishment the body is laid out in canals, which is like those drawn down through gardens, that the blood may be conveyed as from a fountain, to every part of the previous system.”
William Harvey published his treatise on the circulation of the blood in Frankfurt Germany in 1628. He did not come out of the blue as others were working on the same problem. Even he was assailed by skeptics and for a time lost reputation. I have no doubt that Harvey had read Plato and unless his memory was defective he probably retained an impression of Plato’s statements.
But to the point, Plato’s description is prescient. He understood the matter which he explained in literary, not scientific, terms so the imprisoned doctor was essentially right that Harvey could not claim to be the first to understand the role of the heart in the circulation of the blood. He was the first known physician to describe the issue completely in scientific detail or nearly completely.
The young physician was laughed at for venturing to contradict a popular belief, and was assailed by the English press for attempting to deprive an Englishman of the initiative honour of the discovery. He was looked upon as an enthusiast, and lost all the patronage he had first obtained by his abilities. Being possessed of a competency, he did not regret this circumstance in a pecuniary point of view; but his pride was deeply wounded, and he resolved to accomplish some great feat which should compel the world to accord him those laurels which had hitherto been refused. He was deeply skilled in the science of anatomy; and his intimate acquaintance with the human frame led him to fashion two beautiful anatomical bodies in wax. The one was a perfect representation of the form of man, with all the muscles and nerves laid bare; and the second; which took to pieces, was the image of a female in the last stages of gestation. These models were applauded as specimens of art, but obtained no praise as evidences of Anatomical skill. Again disappointed and disgusted at the coldness of a world that knew not how to appreciate the merits of his labours, the physician urged by the perpetual contemplation of his wax models and considering himself to be sufficiently practiced in the minutiae of the human frame by the manufacture of these representations of life, resolved in attempting a more sublime task. His elevated imagination aimed at nothing less than the fabrication of an animate being! For weeks- for months- for years in the solemn silence of a chamber fitted up for the purpose, and into which he never permitted a soul to enter, did the enthusiast study his project, without being fully aware of the way in which he should commence it. At length his intellect became so far affected by his strange meditations, that he felt convinced in his own mind that his experience could never be sufficient to encompass his lofty aim, unless he examined the fountains of life in the bosom of an expiring human being. Dead to all other feeling save the morbid one which urged him on to this study, he calmly resolved to choose some victim as a model for his projected work. He one night issued forth into the streets of Paris, in the midst of a horrible winter and accosted a young man whom, by his condition he supposed to be homeless and starving. He was right in his conjecture, and with kind words he enticed the unsuspecting mendicant home. He gave him food, and then caused him to imbibe a cup of generous wine, in which he had previously infused a powerful narcotic. The mendicant fell into a deep stupor; and the physician without a single sentiment of compunction hastened to perform his diabolical operation upon the lethargic victim. He bled him in the jugular vein; and, while the poor young man’s life was ebbing away, the anatomical speculator proceeded to hack away, with his unsparing knife, at those parts which he wished to lay open and examine at his own brutal leisure. In his hurry to accomplish his mysterious designs, he had forgotten to make fast the door to his study; and the curiosity of his old housekeeper led to the detection of his crime. The woman excited an alarm in the house; and his atrocious deed, with all its circumstances, was exposed. He was tried for the murder, and was condemned as a monomaniac to perpetual imprisonment in the Bicetre. At that time Mortimer became acquainted with this singular individual, he had been an inmate of the prison for upwards of thirty years, and never lost an opportunity of declaring that, if he were provided with the proper implements and materials, he would form a human being, far more complete, and less liable to organic derangement than man.
I consider that quote quite astounding writing and the template for numerous horror films in the twentieth century. One wonders if Reynolds had experienced this situation while he could not possibly have. His residence in France doesn’t leave time, however this story must be based on real events that he either read about or was told. Throughout his way to 1851 which is all I can attest to at this time Reynolds returns frequently to stories of physicians of which he seems to have intimate knowledge of his various descriptions. Of course, his namesake, Duncan McArthur was a physician and if Dick Collins was right did operate on cadavers as fresh as he could get. It is a small step from that to imagine a doctor working on live specimens but still the psychological description of the man in Bicetre is so complete and convincing that Reynolds was a very accomplished at the age of twenty-six.
He wrote circles around Bulwer-Lytton, Ainsworth and Dickens, his contemporaries while being far more accomplished than writers who followed him like Trollope and Willkie Collins as accomplished as these writers and their fellows were. They all must have been influenced by him to some degree.
Certainly Dickens and Ainsworth were, as he by them, but the quality of his mind is much deeper and more highly developed. Ainsworth who began an amazing sequence of historical novels in the early forties when Reynolds was quiescent tried to explore historical topics in a deep way but his mind was a little light, he takes a more academic style. A comparison between the two can be found in Reynolds 1854 novel The Rye House Plot.
Both Ainsworth and Dickens gravitated toward George’s style in their later works. Reading Ainsworth’s South Sea Bubble written in the 1860s is very close to his style.
George, of course was influenced by all three writers, among many, Bulwer-Lytton, Ainsworth and Dickens. Ainsworth who had a literary salon in the late forties and through the fifties excluded Reynolds from his coterie. He and Dickens were tight and getting Dickens and Reynolds into the same room would have been hazardous.
While Ainsworth’s Rookwood and Jack Sheppard were favorites of George and Dickens interestingly all three were in decline. The social conditions that had produced them had disappeared and a new crop of writers responding to new conditions replaced them. For my own tastes I prefer these Late Georgian to early Victorian authors to what followed.
There is a charm in the three and the sporting novels of R.S Surtees and Captain Marryat and the rest, William Makepeace Thackery, who can forget him, that is lacking as the epoch changed. Still we see a certain loss of innocence as advancing knowledge turned the world more serious and complex. The greatest of historians and histories, Edward Gibbons and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire couldn’t have been written in the same way after Darwin’s Origin of Species. Maybe the big change occurred even earlier in Prince Albert’s Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition of all those machines and advance screamed: Hello to the Brave New World, as brave or maybe even braver than Aldous Huxley’s. Exhibitions became the rage until the great Columbian Expo of Chicago crowned the whole movement. What could ever top that? Nothing. Fade to modernity.
To return to George Reynolds. As I say, it was almost a tragedy that Reynold’s titled Master Timothy’s Bookcase after Dickens’ Master Humphrey’s Clock. The Magic Lantern Of The World, the subtitle, would have been much better. The Bookcase is very readable both as a novel and as a collection of stories with a great deal of philosophical matter pertinent to understanding the mind of Reynolds himself. As Dick Collins say, there is much autobiographical material in the novels and Bookcase is full of it.
End of Part XIa, Part XIb follows.
A Review
The Low Brow And The High Brow
An In Depth Study Of Edgar Rice Burroughs’
The Mucker And Marcia Of The Doortstep
by
R.E. Prindle
Part II
Background Of The Second Decade- Personal
Erwin Porges’ ground breaking biography Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Invented Tarzan is the basic source for the course of ERB’s life. John Taliaferro’s Tarzan Forever is heavily indebted to Porges adding little new. Robert Fenton’s excellent The Big Swinger is a brilliant extrapolation of Burroughs’ life taken from the evidence of the Tarzan series.
Porges, the first to pore though the unorganized Tarzana archives, is limited by the inadequacies of his method and his deference for his subject. His is an ideal Burroughs rather than a flesh and blood one. Matt Cohen’s Brother Men: The Correspondene Of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston has provided much fresh material concerning ERB’s character.
Bearing in mind always that Weston’s evaluation of Burroughs in his August 1934 letter in reply to Charles Rosenberg, whoever he was, about ERB’s divorce is one man’s opinion nevertheless his statements can be corroborated by ERB’s behavior over this decade as well as throughout his life. My intent is not to diminish ERB in any way. Nothing can take away the fact that Burroughs created Tarezan, but like anyone else he was subjected to glacial pressures that distorted and metamorphosed his character.
During the Second Decade as he experienced a realization of who he was, or who he had always thought he should be, or in other words as he evolved back from a pauper to a prince, he was subjected to excruciatingly difficult changes.
A key to his character in this period is his relationship to his marriage. It seems clear that he probably would never have married, stringing Emma along until she entered spinsterhood while never marrying her. He seemingly married her to keep her away from Frank Martin. As he later said of Tarzan, the ape man should never have married.
Rosenberg in his letter to Weston (p.234, Brother Men) said that ‘…Ed says he has always wanted to get rid of Emma….’ The evidence seems to indicate this. After ERB lost Emma’s confidence in Idaho, gambling away the couple’s only financial resources, his marriage must have become extremely abhorrent to him. I’m sure that after the humiliations of Salt Lake City this marriage had ended for him in his mind. That it was his own fault changes nothing. He may simply have transferred his self-loathing to Emma.
That Emma loved and stood by Burroughs is evident. that he was unable to regain her confidence is clear from his writing. The final Tarzan novels of the decade in one of which, Tarzan The Untamed, Burroughs burns Jane into a charred mess identifiable only by her jewelry show a developing breach. Probably the jewelry was that which ERB hocked as the first decade of the century turned. Now, this is a fairly violent reaction.
ERB states that he walked out on Emma several times over the years. In Fenton’s extrapolation of Burroughs’ life from his Tarzan novels this period was undoubtedly one of those times. There seems to have been a reconciliation attempt between Tarzan and Jane between Tarzan The Untamed and Tarzan The Terrible. Then between Tarzan And The Golden Lion and Tarzan And The Ant Men ERB’s attempt to regain Emma’s confidence seems to have failed as Jane chooses the clown Tarzan- Esteban Miranda-, one of my favorite characters- over the heroic Tarzan -ERB – in Tarzan And The Ant Men.
This undoubtedly began ERB’s search for a Flapper wife which took form in the person of Florence Gilbert beginning in 1927.
b.
Weston says of ERB in his disappointment and rage over ERB’s divorce of Emma that ‘…the fact that Ed always has been unusual, erratic and perhaps queer, has been his great charm and attraction for me…’ (p.223, Brother Men) There’s a remote possibility that ‘queer’ may mean homosexual but I suppose he means ‘odd’ or imcomprehensible in his actions. The evidence for this aspect of ERB’s character is overwhelming while being well evidenced by his strange, spectacular and wonderful antics during the second decade. When Weston says of him that ‘…there is no woman on earth that would have lived with him, and put up with him, except Emma…’ there is plenty of reason to accept Weston’s opinion.
Part of ERB’s glacial overburden came from his father, George T. who died on February 13, 1913. Burroughs always professed great love for his father, celebrating his birthday every year of his life, although one wonders why.
Apparently George T. broadcast to the world that he thought ERB was ‘no good.’ His opinion could have been no secret to Burroughs. Weston who says that he always maintained cordial relations with George T., still thought him a difficult man, always dropping in to visit him on trips through Chicago said that George T. complained to him, ERB’s best friend, that his son was no good. While without disagreeing with George T. up to that point, Weston said that he thought there was plenty of good in ERB but that he just hadn’t shown it yet. Kind of a back handed compliment, reminds me of Clarence Darrow’s defense of Big Bill Haywood: Yeah, he did it, but who wouldn’t?’
Such an opinion held by one’s father is sure to have a scarring effect on one’s character. How exactly the effect of this scarring worked itself out during this decade isn’t clear to me. Perhaps Burroughs’ mid year flight to California shortly after his father’s death was ERB’s attempt to escape his father’s influence. Perhaps his 1916 flight was the same while his move to California in 1919 was the culmination of his distancing himself from his father. That is mere conjecture at this point.
Now, what appears erratic from outside follows an inner logic in the subject’s mind unifying his actions. What’s important to the subject is not what obsevers think should be important.
c.
The scholars of the Burroughs Bulletin, ERBzine and ERBList have also added much with additional niggardly releases of material by Danton Burroughs at the Tarzana archives. One of the more valuable additions to our knowledge has been Bill Hillman’s monumental compilation of the books in ERB’s library.
Let’s take a look at the library. It was important to ERB; a key to his identity. Books do furnish a mind, as has been said, so in that light in examining his library we examine the furnishing of his mind. The shelves formed an important backdrop to his office with his desk squarely in front of the shelves. ERB is seated proudly at the desk with his books behind him.
How much of the library survived and how much was lost isn’t known at this time. Hillman lists over a thousand titles. Not that many, really. The library seems to be a working library. There are no the long rows of matching sets by standard authors. The evidence is that Burroughs actually read each and every one of these books. They found their way into the pages of his books in one fictionalized form or another. Oddly authors who we know influenced him greatly like London, Wells, Haggard and Doyle are not represented.
Most of the works of these authors were released before 1911 when Burroughs was short of the ready. Unless those books were lost he never filled in his favorites of those years. That strikes me as a little odd.
It is generally assumed that he picked up his Martian information from Lowell, yet in Skelton Men Of Jupiter he says: ‘…I believed with Flammarion that Mars was habitable and inhabited; then a newer and more reputable school of scientists convinced me it was neither….’ The statement shows that Camille Flammarion’s nineteenth century book was the basis for Burroughs’ vision of Mars while Lowell was not. Further having committed himself to Flammarion’s vision he was compelled to stick to it after he had been convinced otherwise. When that understanding was obtained by him we don’t know but at sometime he realized that the early Martian stories were based on a false premiss.
Thus, his Mars became a true fiction when his restless, searching mind was compelled by judicious reasoning of new material to alter his opinion. That he could change his mind so late in life is an important fact. It means that behind his fantasy was a knowledge of solid current fact. The results of his pen came from a superior mind. It was not the maundering of an illiterate but amusing boob.
Organizing the books of his library into a coherent pattern is difficult. I haven’t and I Imagine few if any have read all his list. Based on my preliminary examination certain patterns can be found. He appeared to follow the Chicago novel by whomever, Edna Ferber’s So Big is a case in point. Seemingly unrelated titles can be grouped aorund certain Burroughs’ titles as infuences.
In 1924 when Marcia Of The Doorstep was written ERB had already formed his intention of leaving, or getting rid, of Emma. He began a fascination with Flappers that would result in his liaison with Florence.
After the move to Hollywood in 1919 a number of sex and Flapper potboilers find their way into his library. The tenor of literature changed greatly after the War showing a sexual explicitness that was not there prior to the Big Event. To be sure the graphic descriptions of the sex act current in contemporary literature was not permissible but the yearning to do so was certainly there. Language was retrained but ‘damn’ began to replace ‘d–n’ and a daring goddamn became less a rarity.
Perhaps the vanguard of the change came in 1919 when an event of great literary and cultural import took place. Bernarr Macfadden whose health and fitness regimes had very likely influenced Burroughs during the first couple decades decided to publish a magazine called “True Story.” The magazine was the forerunner of the Romance pulp genre while certainly being in the van of what would become the Romance genre of current literature.
The advance was definitely low brow, not to say vulgar, indicating the direction of subsequent societal development including the lifting of pornographic censorship. Pornography followed from “True Store” as night follows day.
The magazine coincided with the emergence of the Flapper as the feminine ideal of the twenties. In literature this was abetted by the emergence in literary fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. His Beautiful And Damned is a key volume in Burroughs’ library forming an essential part of Marcia. To my taste Fitzgerald is little more than a high quality pulp writer like Burroughs. I can’t see the fuss about him. He riminds me of Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend and vice versa. In fact, I think Jackson mined the Beautiful And Damned. Plagiarize would be too strong a word.
“True Story” caught on like a flash. By 1923 the magazine was selling 300,000 copies an issue; by 1926, 2,000,000. Low brow was on the way in. Vulgarity wouldn’t be too strong a word. Macfadden had added titles such as “True Romances” and “Dream World” to his stable. His magazine sales pushed him far ahead of the previous leader, Hearst Publications, and other publishers. Pulpdom had arrived in a big way.
Where Macfadden rushed in others were sure to follow. The sex thriller, the stories of willful and wayward women, which weren’t possible before, became a staple of the twenties in both books and movies.
ERB’s own The Girl From Hollywood published in magazine form in 1922, book form in 1923, might be considered his attempt at entering the genre. Perhaps if he had thrown in a few Flapper references and changed the appearance and character of his female leads he mgiht have created a seamless transition from the nineteenth century to the twenties. A few Flapper terms might have boomed his ales much as when Carl Perkins subsititued ‘Go, cat, go’ for go, man, go’ in his Blue Suede Shoes and made sonversts of all us fifties types.
Certainly ERB’s library shows a decided interest in the genre from 1920 to 1930. Whether the interest was purely professional, an attempt to keep up with times, or personal in the sense of his unhappiness in his marriage may be open to question. I would have to reread his production of these years with the New Woman in mind to seek a balance.
Still, during the period that led up to his affair with Forence ERB seems to have been an avid reader of Flapper and New Woman novels.
He had a number of novels by Elinor Glyn who was the model of the early sex romance. He had a copy of E.M. Hull’s The Sheik, that shortly became the movie starring Rudolph Valentine with its passionate sex scenes. A ‘Sheik’ became the male synonym for Elinor Glyn’s ‘It’ girl.
Of course, the influence of Warner Fabian’s Flaming youth of 1923, both book and movie, on ERB is quite obvious.
Just prior to this relationship with Florence he read a number of novels by Beatrice Burton with such sexy titles as The Flapper wife-The Story Of A Jazz Bride, Footloose, Her Man, Love Bound and Easy published from 1925 to 1930.
I would like to concentrate on Burton’s novels for a couple reasons; not least because of the number of her novels in ERB’s library but that when Burroughs sought publication for his low brow Tarzan in 1913-14 he was coldly rebuffed even after the success of his newspaper serializations. The disdain of the entire publishing industry was undoubtedly because Burroughs was the pioneer of a new form of literature. In its way the publication of Tarzan was the prototype on which Macfadden could base “True Story.” Not that he might not have done it anyway but the trail was already trampled down for him. In 1914 Burroughs violated all the canons of ‘polite’ or high brow literature.
A.L. Burt accepted Tarzan Of The Apes for mass market publication reluctantly and only after guarantees for indemnification against loss. Now at the time of Beatrice Burton’s low brow Romance genre novels, which were previously serialized in newspapers, Grosset and Dunlap sought out Burton’s stories publishing them in cheap editions without having been first published as full priced books much like Gold Seal in the fifties would publish paperback ‘originals’ which had never been in hard cover. Writers like Burton benefited from the pioneering efforts of Burroughs. G& D wasn’t going to be left behind again. Apparently by the mid-twenties profits were more important than cultural correctness.
As ERB had several Burton volumes in his library it might not hurt to give a thumbnail of who she was. needless to say I had never read or even heard of her before getting interested in Burroughs and his Flapper fixation. One must also believe that Elinor Glyn volumes in ERB’s library dating as early as 1902 were purchased in the twenites as I can’t believe ERB was reading this soft sort of thing as a young man. Turns out that our Man’s acumen was as usual sharp. Not that Burton’s novels are literary masterpieces but she has a following amongst those interested in the Romance genre. The novels have a crude literary vigor which are extremely focused and to the point. This is no frills story telling. The woman could pop them out at the rate or two or three a year too.
Her books are apparently sought after; fine firsts with dust jackets go for a hundred dollars or more. While that isn’t particularly high it is more than the casual reader wants to pay. Might be a good investment though. The copies I bought ran from fifteen to twenty dollars, which is high for what is usually filed in the nostalgia section. Love Bound was forty dollars. I bought the last but it was more than I wanted to pay just for research purposes.
There is little biographical information about Burton available. I have been able to piece together that she was born in 1894. No death date has been recorded as of postings to the internet so she must have been alive at the last posting which woud have made her a hundred at least.
She is also known as Beatrice Burton Morgan. She was an actress who signed a contract with David Belasco in 1909 which would have made her fifteen or sixteen. Her stage name may have been Beatrice Morgan. The New York Public Library has several contracts c. 1919 in her papers.
One conjectures that her stage and film career was going nowhere. In The Flapper Wife she disparages Ziegfeld as Ginfeld the producer of the famous follies.
Casting about for alternatives in the arts she very likely noticed the opening in sex novels created by Macfadden and the Roaring Twenties. The Flapper Wife seems to have been her first novel in 1925. The book may possibly have been in response to Warner Fabian/Samuel Hopkins Adams’ Flaming Youth.
As the motto for his book he had “those who know, don’t tell, those who tell, don’t know.’ The motto refers to the true state of mind of women. Burton seems to have taken up the challenge- knows all and tells all. Flapper Wife was an immediate popular success when taken from the newspapers by G&D. Critics don’t sign checks so while their opinion is noted it is irrelevant.
Burton apparently hit it big as the movies came afer her, Flapper Wife was made into a movie in 1925 entitled His Jazz Bride. Burton now had a place in Hollywood. Burroughs undoubtedly also saw the movie. What success Burton’s later life held awaits further research. As there is no record of her death on the internet it is safe to assume that when her copyrights were renewed in the fifties it was by herself.
There are a number of titles in the library having to do with the Flapper. The library, then gives a sense of direction to ERB’s mental changes. There are, of course, the Indian and Western volumes that prepared his way for novels in those genres. As always his off the top of his head style is backed by sound scholarship.
The uses of the various travel volumes, African and Southeast Asian titles are self-evident. I have already reviewed certain titles as they applied to Burroughs’ work; this essay involves more titles and I hope to relate other titles in the future. So the library can be a guide to Burroughs’ inner changes as he develops and matures over the years.
The amont of material available to interpret ERB’s life has expanded greatly since Porges’ groundbreaking biography. Much more work remains to be done.
The second decade is especially important for ERB’s mental changes as his first couple dozen stories were written beginnng in 1911. Moreso than most writers, and perhaps more obviously Burroughs work was autobiographical in method. As he put it in 1931’s Tarzan, The Invincible, he ‘highly fictionalized’ his details. For instance, the Great War exercised him greatly. From 1914 to the end of the War five published novels incorporate war details into the narrative: Mad King II, Beyond Thirty, Land That Time Forgot, Tarzan The Untamed, and Tarzan The Terrible as well as unpublished works like The Little Door. Yet I don’t think the extent that the War troubled him is recognized. The man was a serious political writer.
Thus between the known facts and his stories a fairly coherent life of Burroughs can be written. My essays here on the ERBzine can be arranged in chronological order to give a rough idea of what my finished biography will be like.
Burroughs was a complex man with a couple fixed ideas. One was his desire to be a successful businessman. This fixed obsession almost ruined him. He was essentially a self-obsessed artist and as such had no business skills although he squandered untold amounts of time and energy which might better have been applied to his art than in attempts to be a business success.
In many ways he was trying to justify his failure to be a business success by the time he was thirty rather than making the change to his new status as an artist.
As a successful artist he was presented with challenges that had nothing to do with his former life. These were all new challenges for which he had no experience to guide him while he was too impetuous to nsit down and thnk them out properly. Not all that many in his situation do. Between magazine sales, book publishing and the movies he really should have had a business manager as an intermdiary. Perhaps Emma might have been able to function in that capacity much as H.G. Well’s wife jane did for him. At any rate book and movie negotiations diverted time and energy from his true purpose of writing.
His attempt to single handedly run a five hundred plus acre farm and ranch while writing after leaving Chicago ended in a dismal failure. Even his later investments in an airplane engine and airport ended in a complete disaster. Thank god he didn’t get caught up in stock speculations of the twenties. As a businessman he was doomed to failure; he never became successful. It if hadn’t been for the movie adaptations of Tarzan he would have died flat broke.
Still his need was such that he apparently thought of his writing as a business even going so far as to rent office space and, at least in 1918, according to a letter to Weston, keeping hours from 9:00 to 5:30. Strikes me as strange. Damned if I would.
At the end of the decade he informed Weston that he intended to move to Los Angeles, abandon writing and, if he was serious, go into the commercial raising of swine. The incredulousness of Weston’s reply as he answered ERB’s questions on hog feed comes through the correspondence.
Think about it. Can one take such flakiness on ERB’s part seriously? Did he really think his income as a novice pig raiser would equal his success as a writer with an intellectual property like Tarzan? Weston certainly took him seriously and I think we must also. There was the element of the airhead about him.
A second major problem was his attitude toward his marriage and his relationship with Emma.
He appears to have been dissatisfied with both at the beginning and decade and ready to leave both at the end. According to the key letter of Weston ERB was an extremely difficult husbnad with whom Emma had to be patient. As Weston put it, no other woman would have put up with his antics. Unfortunately he doesn’t give details of those antics but the indications are that Emma was a long suffering wife.
ERB’s resentment of her apparently became an abiding hatred. Danton Burroughs released information about ERB’s third great romance with a woman named Dorothy Dahlberg during the war years of WWII through Robert Barrett the BB staff writer in issue #64.
After having been estranged from her husband for about a decade Emma died on 11-05-44, probably of a broken heart. ERB returned to Los Angeles from Hawaii to dispose of her effects. Arriving on 11/19/44 after visiting his daughter he met with Ralph Rothmund in Tarzana where he proceeded to get soused, apparently in celebration of Emma’s death.
To quote Barrett, p. 25, Burroughs Bulletin #64.
After Ed met with Ralph Rothmund, he opened a case of Scotch and took out a bottle after which he drove to Emma’s home in Bel-Air- where he and Jack “sampled” the Scotch a couple times.” From Bel-Air Jack drove Ed to the Oldknows, some friends also in Bel-Air, where they continued to sample the Scotch. After this visit Ed and Jack returned to Emma’s home at 10452 Bellagio Road, where Jack brought out a nearly full bottle of bourbon. Jack asked the maids to postpone dinner for 30 minutes, while they waited for Joan and Joan II. This evidently irritated the two maids as they both quit and walked out on them! Ed reported in his diary that after the two maids walked out, ‘we had a lovely dinner and a grand time.”
That sort of strikes me as dancing on the grave of Emma which indicates a deep hatred for her on the part of ERB. We are all familiar with the storyof ERB’s pouring the liquor in the swimming pool humiliating Emma in front of guests which she stood so Weston must have known what he was talking about.
There is a certain hypocrisy in Burroughs now getting blotto in celebration of Emma’s death. Between the two of them in the space of a couple hours ERB and his son, John Coleman, finished a fifth of Scotch and went ripping through a bottle of bourbon. I don’t know how rough and tough you are but that would put me under the pool table.
In this inebriated and hostile state they apparently had words with what I assume to have been Emma’s long time maids. Maids don’t walk out because you ask them to hold dinner for a few minutes. Being a maid is a job; they don’t respond that way to reasonable requests. So in his drunken state ERB must have been offensive about Emma or the maids causing their reaction.
Thus sitting totally soused in the ‘alcoholic’ Emma’s home they ‘had a lovely dinner and a grand time.’ The woman was both good to him and good for him but it isn’t incumbent on any man to see his best interests. There was a crtain dignity lacking in ERB’s behavior at this good woman’s death, not to mention the hypocrisy of getting thoroughly jazzed.
d.
The decade also witnesses the unfolding of ERB’s psyche from the repressed state of 1910 to an expanded and partially liberated state at the end of the decade when he fled Chicago. Pyschologically ERB was always a dependent personality. He let his editors both magazine and book bully him and take advantage of his good will. He also needed a strong role model which is one reason his literary role models are so obvious.
From 1911 to 1916 he seemed to lean on Jack London as his role model. The problem with London is that we can’t be sure which of his books ERB read as he had none of his books in his library. It seems certain that he read London’s early Gold Rush books. ERB’s hobo information is probably based on London’s The Road and then he may possibly have read The Abyssmal Brute which is concerned with the results of the Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries fight and a preliminary to The Valley Of The Moon.
It is difficult to understand how Burroughs could have read much during this decade what with his writing schedule and hectic life style. Yet we know for a fact that between 1913-15 he found time to read Edward Gibbon’s massive The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.
At the same time additions to his library from this decade are rather sparse, the bulk of the library seems to have been purchased from 1920 on. Still, if one assumes that he read all the books of London including 1913’s Valley Of The Moon, then it is possible that his cross=country drive of 1916 may have been partially inspired by Billy and Saxon Roberts’ walking tour of Northern California and Southern Oregon in that book as well as on ERB’s hobo fixation. Certainly London must have been his main influence along with H.H. Knibbs and Robert W. Service. He may have wished to emulate London by owning a large ranch.
I suspect he meant to call on London in Sonoma during his 1916 stay in California but London died in the fall of that year which prevented the possible meeting. With the loss of London Burroughs had to find another role model which he did in Booth Tarkington. He does have a large number of Tarkington’s novels in his library, most of which were purchased in this decade. Tarkington was also closely associated with Harry Leon Wilson who also influenced ERB with a couple two or three novels in his library, not least of which is Wison’s Hollywood novel, Merton Of The Movies. Just as a point of interest Harry Leon Wilson was also a friend of Jack London.
ERB’s writing in the last years of the decade seems to be heavily influenced by Tarkington as in Bridge And The Oskaloosa Kid, The Efficiency Expert and The Girl From Hollywood.
Burroughs was an avid reader and exceptionally well informed with a penetrating mind so that his ‘highly fictionalized’ writing which seems so casual and off hand is actually accurate beneath his fantastic use of his material. While he used speculations of Camille Flammarion and possibly Lowell on the nature of Mars he was so mentally agile that when better information appeared which made his previous speculations untenable he had no difficulty in adjusting to the new reality. Not everyone can do that.
I have already mentioned his attention to the ongoing friction between the US and Japan that appeared in the Samurai of Byrne’s Pacific island. In this connection Abner Perry of the Pellucidar series is probably named after Commodore Matthew Perry who opened Japan in 1853. After all Abner Perry does build the fleet that opened the Lural Az. Admiral Peary who reached the North Pole about this time is another possible influence. The identical pronunciation of both names would have serendipitous for Burroughs.
As no man writes in a vacuum, the political and social developments of his time had a profound influence on both himself and his writing.
The effects of unlimited and unrestricted immigration which had been decried by a small but vocal minority for some time came to fruition in the Second Decade as the Great War showed how fragile the assumed Americanization and loyalty of the immigrants was. The restriction of immigration from 1920 to 1924 must have been gratifying to Burroughs.
I have already indicated the profound reaction that Burroughs, London and White America in general had to the success of the Black Jack Johnson in the pursuit of the heavyweight crown. The clouded restoration of the crown through Jess Willard did little to alleviate the gloom. Combined with the sinking of the Ttitanic and the course of the suicidal Great War White confidence was irrevocably shaken.
Burroughs shared with London the apprehension that the old stock was losiing its place of preeminence to the immigrants. This fear woud find its place in Burroughs writing where he could from time to time make a nasty comment. His characterization of the Irish is consistently negative while his dislike of the Germans first conceived when he saw them as a young man marching through the streets of Chicago under the Red flag was intense. Their participation in the Haymarket Riot combined with the horrendous reports of German atrocities during the War reinforced his dislike almost to the point of fanaticism. While the post-war German reaction in his writing was too belated he had been given cause for misinterpretation.
Always politically conservative he was a devoted admirer of Teddy Roosevelt while equally detesting Woodrow Wilson who was President eight of the ten years of the Second Decade. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 polarizing public opinion into the Right and Left ERB was definitely on the Right.
By the end of the decade the world he had known from 1875 to 1920 had completely disappeared buried by a world of scientific and technological advances as well and social and political changes that would have been unimaginable in his earlier life. The changes in sexual attitudes caused by among others Krafft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis and Margaret Sanger would have been astounding.
The horse had been displaced by the auto. Planes were overhead. The movies already ruled over the stage, vaudeville and burlesque. Cities had displaced the country. The Jazz Age which was the antithesis of the manners and customs of 1875-1920 realized the new sexual mores so that the Flapper and Red Hot Mama displaced the demure Gibson Girl as the model of the New Woman.
When ERB moved from Chicago to LA in 1919 he, like Alice, virtually stepped through the looking glass into a world he never made and never imagined. A Stranger In A Strange Land not different in many ways from the Mars of his imagination.
Go to Part III- Background Of The Second Decade Social And Political
A Review: The Mucker And Marcia Of The Doorstep By Edgar Rice Burroughs
September 6, 2008
A Review
The Low Brow And The High Brow
And In Depth Study Of The Edgar Rice Burroughs Novels
The Mucker And Marcia Of The Doorstep
by
R.E. Prindle
Part One
1.
By the time Burroughs took up his pen to write at the age of 36 he had a lifetime of frustration and humiliation behind him. Born into an affluent family, their means had petered out by the time young Burroughs reached manhood. Thus he who had been born a prince had become a pauper. ERB felt this keenly. His problem became how to regain his position, his exalted destiny.
The most direct and possible approach was to become an officer in the Army. Burroughs closed that avenue early in life by botching his relationship with Colonel Rogers and Charles King of the Michigan Military Academ.
He began a promising career at Sears, Roebuck but he found success there would be of a very anonymous sort as the member of the team. Fearing to disappear into mercantile obscurity he aborted that career abruptly quitting his job with no prospects.
In what may have been one of the most important decisions of his career he joined up with a patent medicine manufacturer named Dr. Stace. This phase of his career has not been properly investigated. Reasoning from inferences in the Corpus it seems reasonable that he and Stace ran afoul of the law.
A Pure Food And Drug Act had been passed in 1906 which temporarily at any rate made the sale of patent medicines illegal. A few years later the Supreme Court would once again legitimize their sale provided the contents were properly labeled. For the time being there was a problem with the law. Erwin Porges’ Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Invented Tarzan briefly discusses the relationship in this manner. p. 105:
Stace, whom Ed found very likable, had grown ashamed of the patent medicine business and was casting about for a more reputable type of livelihood. His qualms may have been reinforced by the dubious attitude of the United States Government: “Alcola cured alcoholism all right, but the Federal Pure Food And Drug people tooke the position that there were worse things than alcoholism and forbade the sale of Alcola.”
The portion in quotes is presumabley from Burroughs although Porges fails to properly identify it if so.
Since the Pure Food And Drug people acted against Dr. Stace it is only fair to assume the police were involved and depending on how far Dr. Stace fought it, probably a Grand Jury. It is probable then that Burroughs’ seeming intimate knowledge of police methods and Grand Juries was learned at this time.
As Stace’s office manager it is possible that ERB bought into the company and was therefore more intimately involved. Certainly he did not sever his relationship with Dr. Stace as a result of these legal actions, but instead formed a corporation or partnership with him immediately after to sell courses in salesmanship. Hardly more respectable than patent medicines.
As one usually found advertisements for such courses in the back of pulp magazines one can conjecture the status of the enterprise and also its chances of success. The company bearing the name Burroughs-Stace did fail quickly. Notice that Burroughs name came before that of Stace.
Now, Alcola being an illegal product it could not have done ERB’s reputation much good to be associated with it. Continuing his relationship with Dr. Stace in another questionable business would only confirm ERB’s rputation for operating on the legal borderline. In later years Burroughs, while not denying that he had been associated with Stace, claimed to have never seen those people since the time thus attempting to dissociate himself from them.
Thus ERB’s prospects loomed shakily. As these events occurred in 1909-10 he was facing a lifetime of marginal jobs leading ever downward or taking the million to one chance of becoming a successful author. Not too long after terminating his relationship with Dr. Stace he took up his pen. Fate began to blow a strong wind into his sails, so to speak.
However, if I am correct, he was now looked at askance by ‘polite’ society.
His first writing efforts were a success. So successful that he could get anything he wrote into print. this began to bear fruit in 1913, two years after he began writing, when he could throw over his day job and become a self-supporting writer.
Thus he was able to realize his ambition to regain his status of a prince after an interim of nearly thirty years.
He still had to explain himself to himself and Emma as well as to Chicago in general. Much of his output of 1913 would attempt to do just that; especially the first of the two works under consideration here: The Mucker.
2.
The psychological baggage Burroughs brings to his writing to exorcise is considerable. When H.G. Wells portrayed ERB as insane in Mr Blettsworthy Of Rampole Island there was an element of truth while the case was overstated. ERB was apparently able to disappear into himself whiie he was writing thus living an alternate reality which is what Wells was talking about.
The ability to do so is probably why Burroughs’ writing has such immediacy, why his improbabiities are so believable. One wonders what would have become of his mind if he hadn’t become a successful writer. Perhaps the pseudonym he adopted for his first book, Normal Bean, was more to convince himself than others. Bean as slang for head or mind. Certainly his reaction to his success appears to border on the irrational.
His psychological compression was so great that he nearly went off the rails in 1913 in his first blush of success. It is impossible that he wasn’t being observed by others. It is impossible that others didn’t consider him a phenom. The Mars Trilogy and Tarzan were such strange creations for the times that he had to be viewed with wonder. While one can never be sure when he is being referred to in the fiction of other writers it seems to me that there are resonances of Burroughs in such writers as John Dos Passos and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
If he had designed his actions to get talked about he couldn’t have come up with anything more spectacular than his trip to California mid-1913 after a successful half year. For the full year he would earn over ten thousand dollars. This sum in 1913 was reaching the lower limits of super affluence. You couldn’t add much to your comfort with more than ten a year, the rest was conspicuous consumption. It all depends on which multiplier you use but the one I use brings the income out in today’s dollars as between three and five hundred thousand dollars.
Sudden affluence after years of scrabbling for a living can do strange things to your mind. ERB’s was rocked to its foundations. He went crazy in his rush to spend his money. A clothes horse like his wife Emma came into her own. In his rush to spend ERB spent his income before it was earned. He was literally broke between checks from his publishers.
Then in mid-1913 an event occurred which might have triggered his flight from Chicago to California. The Black boxer, Jack Johnson was conceded his title in 1910 when he defeated the White favorite, Jim Jeffries. He had actually won the title in 1908 when he defeated then champion Tommy Burns. Whites were reluctant to acknowledge his claim to the title until he had fought Jeffries who the Whites thought was the ‘real’ champion because he had retired undefeated.
Having disappointed White hopes by defeating Jeffries, Johnson was then set up on a morals charge and convicted in what amounted to a kangaroo court. About to lose his appeal Johnson skipped the country in July of ’13 rather than go to jail as an innocent man.
The Affair Jack Johnson had had a tremendous effect on Burroughs who was an ardent boxing fan. Thus his novel The Mucker deals extensively with the Johnson Affair. I believe that since his assocition with Dr. Stace Burroughs was considered quasi-legit at best and hence in the same boat with a Johnson.
When Johnson split it seemed to cause an equal reaction in Burroughs. Johnson went East to Europe while ERB went West to California. In july of ’13 ERB began work on his realistic Chicago novel The Girl From Farris’s. This work was undoubtedly intended to explain his actions between 1899 and 1911. Once he got started he immediately ran into writer’s block being unable to continue the novel. Before he could continue he had to work out several issues. Thus he did what was for him a very unusual thing. He began the book in July of ’13 only finishing it in March of ’14. In between he wrote five other novels in his usual rapid fashion. the were, in order The Mucker, The Mad King Pt. 1, The Eternal Lover Ptl 1, Beasts Of Tarzan and The Lad And The Lion. The entire set of six stories then are all closely related and should properly be understood only as aspects of the same novel- The Girl From Faris’s.
We are going to consider only the first of the inner five, The Mucker, here. Thus the trip to California begins to work out the redemption or Salvation of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The whole set might be titled: Edgar Rice Burrougs In Search Of Himself.
One must not underestimate the influence of the two or possibly three central events in Burroughs’ life; his confrontatin with John The Bully in 1884-85, the 1899 trip to New york with the Martins and his dramatic relationship with Dr. Stace. One cannot devalue his relationship with his father or Charles King, nor the very influential visit to Idaho where he came under the influence of Lew Sweetser, but his first three seem to dominate his life and work.
A major consequence of his confrontation with John The Bully is that it declassed him. ERB’s Animus became part prince, part pauper; part outlaw, part orthodox as demonstrated in The Outlaw Of Torn. The trip in the private rail car showed him how far down the economic scale he was and how far he had to climb. Although he won the hand of Emma from Martin I think it very likely that when he and Emma returned from Idaho Martin renewed his attentions to Emma. He undoubtedly drove one of the big new automobiles with which the impoverished ERB could not compete. About all he could do if he thought Emma’s affection were wobbling was to get her pregnant. In 1908 and 1909 the couple had two children in rapid succession although they could afford them no more than in their first eight years of marriage.
Thus ten years after had taken Emma to Idaho, for reasons that are unclear to us, he took her to California. Always the wastrel he made the trip in the most expensive way possible. The family went first class.
As Porges quotes him ERB says: “I had decided I was too rich to spend my winters in Chicago so I packed my family, all my furniture, my second hand automobile and bought transportation to Los Angeles.
This was not the most rational move for a man who had written an “Ode To Poverty” not too long before. He had no assurance of being able to write or sell stories, without the sale of which he would be stranded, broke twenty-five hundred miles from his home. Of course he still had all his furniture. There was no one who could help him financially. It is interesting to speculate on what sort of job he would have applied for.
Why would a man do this? ERB had apparently bought his used car, a Velie, at the beginning of 1913 when for all practical acounts he was still broke. Why the urgent need to hop a train? I think the reason can be traced back to Frank Martin. The humiliation of the trip East in a private railcar in 1899 and the subsequent stay in the Bowery while the Martins lived on Riverside Drive had to be compensated. While ERB couldn’t afford a new car he rushed out to buy a used one which was apparently as much as he thought he could afford at the time. On the other hand as his characters always say of themselves: For me. to think is to act. if the Martins among other ‘plutocrats’ wintered in Florida then as ERB could still not compete with them financially he went West.
Arriving in LA he and family drove the second hand Velie down to San Diego with the furniture apparently entrained for the same destination.
During this period ERB’s behavior is absolutely zany. Unable to stay put in LA he moved to Coronado which is a sand spit on the west side of San Diego Bay. North Island Naval Air would be built on the North end of it. The Carriers used to be docked on the ocean side as their draft was too great for the Bay. Disliking Coronado he moved back across the bay to the first low ridge of hills that separates the city proper from the Bay. He apparently was near the crest as he said he could look over it to the East. When I was in the Navy in San Diego I thought this small ridge only a couple miles in length had the most deligthful climate on Earth. I still think it does. So, in 1913-14 before 101 became a major noisy highway at the base of the hill ERB was living in as close to paradise as anyone in this world can ever get.
It was here he explored his psychological problems.
3.
Burroughs because of his encounter with John The Bully, had been rendered susceptible to ‘low brow’ influences. His subsequent life with its constant moving from school to school, from Illinois to Idaho, to Connecticut, to Michigan, to Arizona and back to Illinois had not put into contact with too many ‘high brow’ influences.
In constrast, his wife Emma Hulbert, had been trained to high brow avocations from childhood. I’m sure that one of the objections of her parents to ERB was that he was so detestably low brow. Emma, afer all, had been trained to the opera which is the epitome of high brow. Emma often referred to ERB as a low brow during their marriage which can be somewhat trying. If one contrasts The Mucker with Marcia Of The Doorstep it will become immediately apparent that the former is low brow and the latter is intended to be high brow. So the dominating theme of The Mucker is between the low brow Billy Byrne and the high brow Barbara Harding. The problem as it surfaces when the two come into contact is how Barbara is to turn the low brow mucker into a high brow or at least into a low brow with good speech and mannerisms. This may have been a daily conflict between ERB and Emma in real life.
The first question is how far ERB identifies with Billy Byrne. It is my contention that Billy is an alter ego conditioned by ERB’s confrontation with John The Bully.
I have explained elsewhere that terror may be used to introduce a hypnotic suggestion. Terror opens the mind to suggestion. In ERB’s case when he was in terror of John he accepted the suggestion that because John was terrorizing him he was an admirable person to be emulated. Of course this went against the teaching of his family so that ERB now divided his Animus nearly equally between his father/family and John. Even though his family training commanded his first allegiance, John declassed him so that he mentally assumed the traits of this hoodlum Irish boy. In a sense ERB split his personality.
As would be expected the assumption of John’s characteristics caused a personality conflict which it was necessary to resolve. One must assume that by 1913’s Mucker ERB was aware of his peronality conflict and began the attempt to write it out.
For those new to the term a mucker was one who wallowed in the muck of society, a low class person with very little or no redeeming social value. Thus Burroughs is dealing very harshly with both himself and Byrne/John.
It may be assumed beyond doubt that John was first generation immigrant. As he was twelve when he confronted ERB in 1884-85 he must have been born in 1872. He may actually have been born in Ireland or was at least the son of immigrants hence his Irish prejudices against the English would be very strong while the Irish at the time were considered on a social and racial par with the Negro or perhaps even below. Combining these social disadvantages he was raised in Chicago’s great West Side which ERB with undisguised horror describes.
He also very carefully indicates that Byrne was not an inherently bad person but was strictly a product of his environment. He could have been anything raised in a different social setting. Nurture over nature. An interesting liberal opinion in an age when heredity was accredited to a criminal type. By explaining Byrne as a product of his environment Burroughs was also justifying himself. Indeed, how could he have learned the social graces to which he was entitled by birth having been brought up viewing the underbelly of society. Probably ERB did not become acquainted with the social graces or high brow point of view until he married Emma.
If his social education began with his marriage to Emma then Byrne’s begins when he and Barbara Harding are brought into close contact on ‘Manhattan Island’ in the river of their Pacific island locale where they ‘play house.’ Thus there is more than sufficient evidence to indicate that Byrne and Burroughs are similar. Both names even begin with a B.
As he is part of Burroughs’ psyche ERB has to exonerate Byrne as well as rehabilitate him into someone at least that Burroughs can respect. This is the burden of the book.
After a youthful life in which Byrne makes the best of a bad situation, during which he became competent to survive and dominate in a difficult environment, Byrne takes a step up by becoming involved in boxing. Thus he goes from a no brow to a low brow. Already a fearsome street brawler Byrne becomes a formidable scientific boxer as well. He is good enough to be a sparring partner with the Big Smoke himself. This must have been before July 1913 but no earlier than say 1911.
Sometime in 1912 or early 1913 Byrne is falsely accused of murder by one Sheehan who Byrne had defeated in a fight when they were twelve. Billy had earlier saved a policeman’s life who was being savagely beaten by a rival gang on Byrne’s turf. The policeman now returns the favor by advising Byrne to get out of town which advice Billy take seriously not unlike Jack Johnson. Thus Johnson goes East, Byrne goes West at exactly the same time. Coincidence?
Billy bobs up in San Francisco about the same time that ERB shows up in the sunny Southland. They both reach California at the same time. Another coincidence?
Unfortunately for Billy he gets shanghaied by the guy he intends to roll. He is taken aboard the Half Moon. The ship on which Henry Hudson explored New York’s Hudson River was named the Half Moon so there is a little joke here as Barbara and Byrne reside on a Manhattan Island in their Pacific location.
Being shanghaied wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to Byrne for while he is aboard he is forced to learn discipline- putting a little organization into his chaotic mind. The Half Moon might also stand for the MMA in ERB’s memory. He was more or less shanghaied into attendance when his father made him return after he had run away from the school. Then, under the tutelage of Charles King who he respected he learned the rudiments of self-discipline.
Even though Byrne is a sort of wildman Burroughs shows the greatest respect for him.
Byrne’s next civilizing lesson comes when the Half Moon pretending distress captures the Harding yacht aboard which Byrne is transferred.
The yacht named the Lotus, perhaps after Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lotus Eaters.’ The Lotus Eaters sat around all day in idle forgetfulness which was a pretty good description of the Harding party and another joke. Burroughs had a copy of Tennyson’s poems in his library so the association is probable, besides which as Burroughs had a strong grounding in Greek mythology he would have been familiar with the Lotus Eaters from his Homer.
Burroughs, who had never been to sea, knew nothing of the ocean. His source for sea matters most probably was Jack London. ERB was a great admirer of London but as he had nothing in his library one can only guess at what he had read. There’s pretty good evidence for The Call Of The Wild and The Sea Wolf. He may have picked up his South Seas lore from London’s Son Of The Son (The Adventures of Captain David Grief in my edition). The last book was published in 1911 but Burroughs probably had read it. As he would project the making of Melville’s Typee into a movie in the ’30s it is possible that he was already familiar with that book and Melville’s other South Sea romance, Omoo at least as early as 1913.
Both myself and other researchers are pretty liberal about ERB’s reading list but as I have cautioned before the bulk of his reading for these early stories had to be done between 1900 and 1911 when he was a very busy man with troubles in mind not to mention excruciating headaches. Along with newspapers and magazines he surely couldn’t have read more than two or three hundred books if that many. He may have read a number of sea stories in various magazines at any rate, but his sea lore is second hand, unreliable and unknowledeable.
He has the Lotus tending Southwest toward the Philippines having begun in Hawaii. The Philippines is a large archipelago blending into the massive archipelago just South of it, the Lotus should have been in Equatorial waters where the trade winds blow. Most of your monster storms are further North or South. I was in the Navy making one tour from California in the East to China in the West, South to Australia and North to Japan. I had the terrifying experience of passing through a typhoon off Japan which if it wasn’t the storm of the millenium I can’t imagine a greater. Quite seriously, we all thought we were going to die. My only thought was that the water was going to be awfully cold when I hit it.
I do not jest when I say the waves were seventy-five feet high, you’re right, why not make them a hundred, maybe they were a hundred, two would be stretching it. I was standing on the bridge twenty-five feet above the water line looking straight up at the crest of the waves when we were in the trough. OK. A hundred twenty-five then. We were so far down in the trough there was no wind, nor did the waves break over us, they just slid under the ship raising us to the crests and then we slid down the other side. I kid you not.
Then, as we came down from the crest, way up there, at the bottom of the trough the ship slammed into a current bringing it to a complete halt left and right and fore and aft. These troughs were not rows of waves and troughs, no no, but huge bowls perhaps a mile or more long. Our ship was three hundred six feet long so there we were a speck, an atom, a proton sitting quietly in the midst of this huge bowl waiting for the swatter of fate to fall.
I had been thrown across the deck from port to starboard when we slammed into the current. I scrambled to my feet, noticed that the starboard watch, Engelhardt, was on the way over the side for a tete a tete with Davy Jones. I knew that Jones didn’t have the time for an ordinary Seaman like Engelhardt or me so I grabbed his belt and pulled him back aboard, then ran over to port to wait to die.
Now that was a storm. I don’t know how we rode it out, I thought the end had come, was past. So, why did I tell that? Because ERB’s storms are ludicrous and in the wrong place. A cloud appears, the next thing you know a few indeterminate big waves show up and the ship sinks but the lifeboats survive. All this in equatorial waters. Well, if you’ve never been in it, it might sound alright.
It doesn’t matter because those sudden squalls in ERB’s stories represent his confrontation with John The Bully. Within the twinkling of an eye ERB’s whole direction of life changed.
His had been for the worse but Byrne’s was for the better. This then reflected the change in Burroughs’ own fortunes.
Byrne and the crew are thrown up on an unidentified island somewhere in the South seas but a fairly large one. In those years one could believe that there were islands yet to be discovered. This one has a river big enough to allow for a largish island in the middle. It is here that Byrne will get his introduction to the finer side of life. However not before some very exciting and exotic adventures showing Burroughs at his best.
Apart from Jules Verne, who might also be an influence on this book through his The Mysterious Island that had a tremendous influence on Burroughs though the book was not in his library. ERB seems to be familiar with a number of French authors. He had The Mysteries Of Paris by the incredible Eugene Sue in his Library, while it is fairly obvious he had been suitably impressed by Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The sewer scene in his next book, The Mad King, is indicative of that while Theriere in this book may be a variation on Thenardier. He was also familiar with Dumas’ The Three Musketeers as there are several references to that one including the sequel to The Mucker, Out There Somewhere, when he indicates an intent to create his own three Musketeers in Byrne, Bridge and Burke.
As indicated in my Only A Hobo, ERB was probably immersed in US-Japanese relations that were fairly hot at this time as well as remembering the Japanese exhibit at the Columbian Expo of 1893. He gets his facts right too.
In this case the island is populated by an indigenous population that has been blended with a group of Samurai warriors from Japan. Burroughs correctly indicates that the Samurai had come to the island just before Japan was closed to the world in the early seventeenth century. From about 1620 to about 1860- Perry opened Japan in 1853- no one had been allowed to enter or leave Japan so ERB has been doing his homework. Over the three hundred years a degenerate society of militant Samurai had combined with the indigenes to create a culture of savages. An interesting anthropological notion not too unlike The Lord Of The Flies that has been a literary staple for the last sixty years.
Byrne and Theriere engage in a terrific conflict to rescue Barbara Harding from the Samurai during which Theriere is killed and Byrne seriously wounded. Barbara Harding nurses him back to health in an idyllic glen by a babbling brook.
At this point Byrne is reunited with his Anima ideal. Barbara is going to rehabilitate this guy. He has made some few steps toward his own redemption but the following is the quality Barabara had to work with as described by ERB p. 17:
…Billy was mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. When he fought he would have brought a flush of shame to the face of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than before. He had always taken every advantage of his size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training (conditioning) and environment. He knew no other methods, no other code.
As Burroughs says, up to this time Byrne had been an insulter of women, abusive to the whole female sex, probably including his mother. It is only now that his eyes begin to open to what Jack London would call the wonder of woman. How far Byrne reflects ERB’s general attitude toward women isn’t clear although by the end of his life his misogyny was becoming pronounced. He was certainly no ladies man prior to is marriage to Emma. I am not certain he would have married if it hadn’t been for the competition with Martin. The suddenness of his marriage after the Toronto incident indicates a Martin influence or else he was bonkers after the blow. When he later said Tarzan should never have married he was undoubtedly talking about himself. He certainly never placed Emma first, being always ready to accept an army commission, fight in Central America, seek a commission in the Chinese army or become a war correspondent all of which would have left Emma and the kids at home.
At the same time Barbara who had detested Byrne becomes softened to him preparing her to love him once they moved downstream to Manhattan Island. This may be some romanticized version of ERB’s relationship with Emma after Toronto although she seems to have been fixed on Burroughs from childhood. At any rate the relationship comes to fruition downstream where the high brow Barbara attempts so raise the brow level of Byrne.
If one takes high brow, low brow seriously being thought of as a low brow, that is inferior, can be annoying. Since Burroughs has chosen in his first novel within the cocoon of Girl From Faris‘s to write around the theme of a low brow hero I think it fair to believe it irritated him to be thought of as a low brow; especially so as in most instances he was much better educated than those who so named him. Chief among these was his wife Emma. Whereas she had been trained ot operatic arias ERB played the hillbilly tune Are You From Dixie? over and over again on his phonograph. Hillbilly music really irritates the operatic type. There must have been constant conflict in the household.
Emma especially looked down on boxing as low brow. ERB was an ardent boxing fan, while here he chooses a low brow boxer as hero. ERB could have some startling opinions on what was high brow. He thought auto races were high brow. I don’t know what the crowds were like back then but I’ve been to the stock car races where I found high brows conspicuous only by their absence.
But, to the Mucker. Moving downsteam after his recovery on this rather large river coming closer to the estuary they hit an island. Being bounded as it were by a Hudson on one side and East River on the other they named the island Manhattan. There’s a nice Expo twist and joke here as in Chicago on the Wooded Island one came upon a Japanese settlement in the middle of the city; here on a Samurai Island in the Pacific one comes upon a Manhattan Island of Americans. Kind of cute reversal, don’t you think?
As Billy has to know some details about Manhattan to keep the story moving, Burroughs rather lamely invents a couple trips Billy had made to New York with the Goose Island Kid. As the boxing scene Burroughs describes, with the exception of the Big Smoke is entirely Irish one might note the origin of the name of The Goose Island Kid. Goose Island was an area in the Chicago River inhabited by the poorest of the Irish, so the Kid comes from the bottom of the social scale even below Byrne’s origins. One should contrast this with Burroughs prized English ancestry.
Burroughs is writing from experience either psychological or real. Thus one asks when was ERB in New York to acquire his knowledge of the city. Well, let’s see: He had an extended stay in 1899. That was the trip when he got bashed in Toronto. Then he had a short stay at the the invitation of Munsey. Most of what he knew must have come from the 1899 trip.
On their desert Manhattan Island Barbara, who up to this time had been repelled by Byrne makes an attempt at deconditioning Byrne from a Mucker and reconditioning him as an upper class New Yorker. the conditioning consists of ridding him of the horrific characteristics attributed to him by ERB while teaching him to speak in an educated manner. As there was no tableware she couldn’t teach him which fork to use.
Possibly this scene may reflect on the first couple years of Burroughs’ married life. Remember that ERB hadn’t been much around polite society from the years of twelve to twenty-five during which he was conditioned to his low brow attitudes. Emma had been brought up in a high brow environment so that she may have felt the need to isntruct her new husband in some of the finer points of good manners.
When Frank Martin (see my Four Crucial Years) asked ERB to go to New York with him in 1899 he did so with a heart full of malice. He was competeing with Burroughs for Emma Hulbert’s favors and, as is commonly believed, he felt all’s fair in love and war.
The evidence points to the fact that he intended to have ERB murdered in Toronto to clear his path to the woman. Along the way he must have done his best to humiliate his rival- the mucker Ed Burroughs.
ERB was moving in much faster company than he was used to. While coming from a once affluent family his people had fallen on hard times. ERB’s income was little more than sixty dollars a month while Frank Martin the son of a millionaire could blow that much on dinner every night of the week.
Riding in Martin’s father’s private railcar one imagines that ERB’s suit compared to the fabulous duds of Martin was laughable. The contrasts between their two stations must have been even more laughable and very satisfying to Martin. Martin would have considered himself a high brow to Burroughs’ low brow.
Once in New York Martin’s hospitality didn’t extend to living quarters. ERB gives no indication of how much money he took along or where he got it. I should be surprised if he had so much as two hundred dollars, certainly no more. However much he had there was no way he could have kept up with the Martins.
His address while in New York was down on the Bowery while the Martin’s was in a better part of town, perhaps Riverside Drive. Danton Burroughs has a picture of the three of them- Burroughs, Martin and Martin’s other companion, R.H. Patchin, on Coney Island. One hopes Danton will release the photo to ERBzine along with any other information he may have. Coney Island would be good low brow entertainment to offer Burroughs, something he could afford.
A possible account of how Burroughs felt during his dependency on Martin can be found in one of the volumes in ERB’s library: The House Of Mirth by Edith Wharton. The reading of it must have brought pangs of recognition to ERB.
In The Mucker Billy Byrne speaks of Riverside Drive and the Bowery in this way:
“Number one, Riverside Drive,” said the Mucker with a grin, when the work was completed: “an’ now I’ll go down on the river front and build the Bowery.”
“Oh, are you from New York?” asked the girl.
“Not on your life,” replied Billy Byrne. “I’m from good old Chi but I been to Noo York twict with the Goose Island Kid, so I knows all about it. De roughnecks belong on de Bowery, so dat’s what we’ll call my dump down by de river. You’re a high brow, so youse gotta live on Riverside Drive, see?’ and the mucker laughed at his little pleasantry.
In 1913 the only real experience Burroughs had with New York was the 1899 trip so that one can guess that when the Martin party detrained Burroughs as a ‘roughneck’ went to the Bowery while Martin and his group went to Riverside Drive or its equivalent. Surely Burroughs realized he had been duped at this point and felt it keenly. Or, perhaps, he didn’t catch on until much later having thought about it for a while. Referring to the Irish Martin as The Goose Island Kid who took him to New York may be a belated disguised slap in the face. If Martin read the book I’m sure he would have understood.
At this point is the novel Barbara begins Byrne’s deconditioning teaching him the Riverside patois thus giving him true English as a second language to his native Muckerese. Thus Byrne is to some extent rehabilitated as a human being; this follows fairly close that of Jean Val Jean of Les Miserables, however as Billy ruefully learned there is more to reconditioning than language.
At this point Byrne has a dual personality. He is the low brow mucker and a high brow mucker in that he has learned certain mannerisms and he can speak both forms of English.
If the scene on Manhattan Island to some extent reflected the relationship between ERB and Emma then the seeds of his discontent which will result in divorce have already been sown. The parting from Barbara at the end of the story may be the first prefiguration of his divorce.
On the other hand Byrne has been temporarily reunited with his Anima figure somewhat in the manner of Eros and Psyche in Greek mytholotgy which makes him a complete being, his X and Y chromosomes being reconciled. They are soon split apart again as he and Barbara find their separate ways to NYC.
4.
Upon Byrne’s return to NYC Burroughs begins to wrestle with the problem of the displacement of a White heavyweight boxing champ with a Black one. In our age when boxing has become a totally Black sport it is difficult to see the real significance of Jack Johnson’s assumption of the championship for both Whites and Blacks. The success of Johnson also came at a time when in competition with immigrants the Anglo ‘old stock’ was being displaced from a feeling of rightful preeminence in a country it had made.
This displacement by immigrant’s also occured at the time when the ranks of the European conquerors of the world had reached their limitations and the conquered began to roll them back. Thus one has such volumes of the period as Madison Grant’s The Passing Of The Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide Of Color. The world was mysteriously changing slipping from beneath the White Man’s feet.
Complementary to the works of Grant and Stoddard, but not influenced by them, was the world of such writers as Zane Grey, Jack London and Burroughs. A common thread in the world of all three is the displacement of the ‘old stock’ by immigrants. London has a telling phrase in his excellent and highly recommended Valley Of The Moon when his character Billy Roberts is told that the ‘old stock’ had been sleeping and that now like Rip Van Winkle they were awakening to a new world that had changed while they slept. This theme would reappear in such works as Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Amerberson’s and Burroughs’ own The Girl From Hollywood of the next decade.
The social conflicts are treated almost identically by all three authors.
Richard Slotkin in his Gunslinger Nation attempts an exhaustive treatment of the problem from the Gustavus Myers’ immigrant/unskilled labor point of view which may be contrasted with that of our three masters. I will discuss this a little later.
Great changes were in progress. To try to characterize them from a single point of view as the Myers’ school does is both foolhardy and pernicious. While the immigrants and unskilled labor have their story it is only their story, a small part of the whole. While one can sympathize with anyone, anywhere, one cannot necessarily accept their point of view as definitve on which point they do insist. My heart goes out to everyone but does not rule my head.
The argument then breaks down broadly between the Liberal Coalition and what name is appropriate for the other side? -the rational? the realistic?, the conservative?. Why not settle for the Conservative with all its limitations. Yes, I am unapologetically conservative. No more limitating actually than calling the irresponsibility of the Coalition liberal. I fail to see the liberality.
The argument devolves into the two factions of the ‘old stock’ with the convervative wing being hopelessly outnumbered when the liberal wing aligned themselves along national and racial lines with the immigrants and Blacks and along poltical and religious lines with the Judaeo-Communists or more conveniently- the Reds. Reds is shorter.
That writers of the bent of Burroughs, London and Grey have survived at all, let alone remained popular, in such an environment is remarkable indeed.
From 1910 to 1919 major events that affected our writers occurred and typified the decline of Euroamerica from its pinnacle of self-satisfaction. The Great War which ran from 1914 to 1918 shattered the image of Euroamerica before the rest of the world Successful resistance not only appeared possible to the defeated peoples but probable. Note the advantage Japan took of the debacle.
A second event almost prefiguring the Great War was the sinking of the great ship RMS Titanic in 1912. Billed as unsinkable it represented the peak of Euroamerican scientific and technological skill. When that Grat Ship went down on its maiden voyage it took a great deal of the West’s confidence down with it. While the West watched in dismay and horror the rest of the world cheered the West’s discomfiture. Unsinkable indeed!
But perhaps the single most disastrous blow to the pride of Euroamericans was when the Black Jack Johnson laid the pride of the Whites, Jim Jeffries, down in the fourteenth on July 4, 1910. The might Casey, Jim Jeffries, had struck out. The much despised Negro, Jack Johnson, walked away wearing the world heavyweight championship belt.
The Whites howled, they rioted but they had shot their best shot and there was no backup. No contender. No hope.
Jack London actually reported the fight. He was there. Ringside. Nor was he charitable toward Jack Johnson. He said things that might better have remained unsaid. We have no indication as to what Burroughs thought at the time. By the time he spoke publicly in The Mucker he had had time to mature his thoughts.
The effect on London was traumatic. In 1911 he published his book The Abyssmal Brute, his first thoughts on the fight. The fight not yet out of his system London expressed himself still further in his 1913 novel The Valley Of The Moon. I’ve said it before. I’m no Jack London fan. I’ve only read him more or less at the insistence of ERBzine’s Bill Hillman. If I had gone to the grave without reading The Call Of The Wild or The Sea Wolf I wouldn’t have considered it a loss. Not the same with Valley Of The Moon. This book along with ERB’s Bridge And The Oskaloosa Kid is one of the neglected masterpieces of twentieth century American literature. It alone justifies London’s excellent reputation.
The story is that of two Oakland, California young people, Billy Roberts and his sweetheart Saxon Brown. While lamenting the displacement of the ‘old stock’ by the immigrants London also makes this a boxing story along the same lines as The Mucker.
In fact the stories are quite similar in conception. If one didn’t know that the authors were writing at the same time 2500 miles from each other one would think they may have written on the same theme as a bet. London, too, must have been influenced by the midnight flight of Johnson from Chicago. London makes Roberts an outstanding boxer in the Bay Area. Roberts gives up boxing because of the fate of boxers and because of the low brow fans. Later in the book London says that Roberts sparred with both Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson.
After a long period of unemployment in an attempt to win a hundred dollar prize to relieve his and Saxon’s poverty he agrees to go back in the ring, the squared circle, as Burroughs always refers to it. The fight with the Chicago Terror is very reminiscent of the Jeffries-Johnson battle. Like Jeffries Roberts hadn’t fought for a long time. Like Jeffries he was out of condition. After retiring in 1905 Jeffries had taken up farming, blossoming out to three hundred pounds. When the call came to redeem the honor of the White species sometime after 1908 Jeffries had to quickly get into condition losing all the extra tonnage.
He had certainly not regained his top form, timing and mental focus when he climbed into the ring to face Johnson. I make no excuses for him but as Jeffries said he saw his openings but his unconditioned reflexes didn’t allow him to take advantage of them. His failure broke the hearts of his followers.
The battle between Roberts and the Chicago Terror, johnson must have been intended, is probably a replay of the 1910 fight as seen by London. Out of condition and rusty Roberts gets mauled from start to finish. In an attempt to salvage special pride London has Roberts at least stay on his feet till the twentieth unlike the fourteenth round fall of Jeffries.
Toward the end of Valley Of The Moon London has Roberts climb nto the ring again, this time against a Big Swede, sort of polar to the Big Smoke. In the second of two bouts Roberts has difficulty putting the Big Swede away until the fourteenth. Also a replay of the Jeffries-Johnson fight with Roberts/Jeffries winning this one, if only in Jack’s dreams.
Thus the anguish of the loss surfaces three years after. Now, that the two events, the Titanic and fight get confused in this shuddering defeat of Euroamerica is interestingly made evident in the song Jack Johnson and the Titanic. In the song Jack Johnson goes down to the steamship line in England to buy passage for his White wife and himself. He is told that no Black Folks are allowed on the Titanic. As some sort of divine punishment for refusing him the Great Ship sinks.
Obviously Jack Johnson couldn’t have been refused as in 1912 he was still in Chicago fighting to stay out of jail. But the two White disasters became mingled in imagination.
While London was wrestling with the Johnson Affair in Valley Of The Moon, Burroughs was doing the same in his Mucker. One wonders what a further seach of popular literature would reveal.
In The Mucker Burroughs has gotten Byrne back in New York City. Broke and with no means of a livelihood the big man-beast turns to the only thing he can do which is boxing. While London, who had witnessed the fight essentially retold it in Valley Of The Moon, Burroughs who didn’t prepares Byrne to redeem the Whites by fighting and defeating the Big Smoke. Burroughs doesn’t mention Johnson by name. He uses Big Smoke, big dinge.
Burroughs immediately places Byrne in the role of the next hope. At the time these Whtie boxers were known only as hopes, the term Great White Hope in the completely derogatory sense evolved later. Like London Burroughs minces no words about Jim Jeffries being his favoirte. Not only does Byrne imitate Jeffries by fighting from a crouch but ‘Professor’ Cassidy his trainer says:
For a few minutes Billy Byrne played with his man, hitting him when and where he would. He fought, crouching, just as Jeffries used to fight, and in his size and strength, was much that reminded Cassidy of the fallen idol that in his heart of hearts he still worshipped.
Winning the fight Byrne went on to meet the #1 contender who he handily defeated. Having evoked the ghost of Jim Jeffries Burroughs brings in his other hero, Gentleman Jim Corbett.
The following morning the sporting sheets hailed “Sailor Byrne” ( tribute to Jack London whose hobo moniker was Sailor Jack) as the greatest white hope of them all. Flashlights of him filled a quarter of a page. There were interviews with him. Interviews of the man he had defeated. Interviews with Cassidy. Interviews with the referee. interviews with everybody, and all were agreed that he was the most likely heavy since Jeffries. Corbett admitted that, while in his prime, he could doubtless have bested the new wonder, he would have found him a tough customer.
Jeffries, Corbett, Byrne, a combination with so much magic in the names couldn’t help but win back the title to salve the wounded pride of the White species.
Cassidy wired a challenge to the Negro’s manager, and received an answer that was most favorable. The terms were, as usual, rather one sided but Cassidy accepted them, and it seemed before noon that the fight was assured.
Assured in dreams, of course, as this is only a novel.
It would be quite easy to pass over this part of the tale without realizing its significance but it shows the pain and suffering, the loss of pride that occurred when the championship went Black. While Burroughs has no difficulty invoking the names of the fallen idol, Jeffries and Corbett, he cannot bring himself to name Johnson referring to him only as The Big Smoke, the big dinge, or the Negro. The White world was in a deal of pain.
One can only guess how Burroughs intended to resolve his dilemma of having the fictional Byrne fight the living Johnson or perhaps the story was only a magic incantation to arouse the true hope. At any event when Byrne next appears in story in 1916’s Out There Somewhere, Jess Willard had already taken the championship back although under dubious circumstances. By 1916 Byrne’s boxing career is forgotten; there is no mention of it in the sequel.
Having solved the problem of the championship Burroughs returns to his Anima problem in the romance with Barbara Harding. Billy remembers she lives in New York City and decides to call on her. But…
…a single lifetime is far too short for a man to cover the distance from Grand Avenue to Riverside Drive…
While the above words were spoken about Billy, Byrne too came to the same conclusion:
But some strange influence had seemed suddenly to come to work upon him. Even in the brief moment of his entrance into the magnificence of Anthony Harding’s home he had felt a strange little stricture in the throat- a choking, a half-suffocating sensation.
The attitude of the servant, the spendor of the furniture, the stateliness of the great hall and the apartments opening upon it- all had whispered to him that he did not “belong.”
So Byrne feeling his inability to fit in walks away in bitter pride forswearing his love for Barbara Harding. Still, he could remember her saying back on that other Manhattan Island:
I love you Billy for what you are.
Thus the epic of the low brow Billy ends as he walks down the street a study of dejection with Barbara’s words ringing through his mind.
The question here is how much the relationship between Byrne and Barbara is a ‘highly fictionalized’ account of ERB’s own relationship with Emma. We can’t know for sure how hurt Burroughs may have been by Emma’s calling him a low brow. Perhaps he longed to hear her say: I love you, Ed, just the way you are.
Certainly the stories enveloped by The Girl From Faris’s all deal with his relationship with Emma as his Anima ideal. The Mad King which follows this story details the problems of the hero getting on the same wave length with the Princess Emma. He even uses his wife’s real name. The following title – The Eternal Lover – speaks for itself, Beasts Of Tarzan features a wild chase with Tarzan trying to find Jane who is lost in the jungle, while the last of the series, The Lad And The Lion, details the troubles of the Lad finding his desert princess. After the Lad he got past his mental block being able to close The Girl From Faris’s.
So if these stories are read consecutively they record the struggle going on in ERB’s mind to reconcile Emma to his Anima ideal and his Anima to his Animus. This is a task for not any but the most dedicated Burroughs scholar but I would interested in learning the opinion of any who might attempt it.
Read only Book One of Mad King and the first part, Nu Of The Neocene, of Eternal Lover in this context.
Ten years later ERB tackled the problem from the high brow point of view in Marcia Of The Doorstep.
Go To Part Two
Background Of The Second Decade- Personal
Something Of Value I
October 1, 2007
Something Of Value I
by
R.E. Prindle
If a man does away
With his traditional way of living
And throws away his good customs,
He had better first make certain
That he has something of value to replace them.
–Basuto proverb as quoted by Robert Ruark
Dedicated to
Greil Marcus
Part One
One Hundred Years In The Sewers Of Paris
With Jean Valjean.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sigmund Freud
And The Myth Of The Twentieth Century
1.
The Concepts Of The Unconscious And Emasculation
It has been truly said that man does not live by bread alone. He also requires a mythic foundation on which to base his actions. In the neolithic era his mythology was governed by a Matriarchal vision of reality. In the subsequent Egypto-Greco-Mesopotamian mythology the Matriarchal series went through a revision being replaced by an advanced Patriarchal mythological consciousness. This system was followed by the Judaeo-Christian mythological system which endured as the basis of mythological belief until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the belief system was subverted by the emergence of the Scientific Consciousness.
Unlike the mythopoeic consciousness which preceded it the Scientific Consciousness left no place for supernatural explanations; all had to be explained within a rational scientific framework. This placed a great strain on a significant portion of the population which did not have the intellectual equipment to evolve. Thus the basis of psychological comfort provided by religion was destroyed. The code of behavior seemingly sent down from the sky had lost its validity.
In place of an apparent unified consciousness it now became noticeable that EuroAmerican man had an unconscious or subconscious mind as well as a conscious mind. Thus another evolutionary degree of differentiation unfolded that separated the advanced Scientific Consciousness from the anterior Religious Conciousness. A struggle has ensued in which advanced people are compelled to reintegrate their conscious and subconscious minds while the Religious Consciousness divided into the two camps of the Devout and the Reds resist.
The discovery of what was known as the Unconscious began with the emergence from the Religious Consciousness during and after the Enlightenment. Anton Mesmer with his discovery of Animal Magnetism or hypnotism may have been the first stage. Goethe and others carried the discussion forward until the Englishman FWH Myers isolated or identified the subconscious by the name of the unconscius in 1886.
The notion of the unconscious as known during the twentieth century was formulated by Sigmund Freud during the twentieth century’s first decade. Both Myers and Freud misconceived the nature of the sub or unconscious. Myers’ conception was more generous than Freud’s and more in accordance with proto-scientific Patriarchal Greek mythological conceptions which were also mistaken but visionary.
In Myers’ vision of the unconscious it had two aspects: the destructive aspect which he gave the Greek name of Ate and the constructive aspect he termed Menos. Thus he recognized that the unconcious could be good or bad.
Myers’ vision may have been based in Greek mythology. It will be remembered that the creative god, Hephaestus, was married to the emotional goddess, Aphrodite. Hephaestus and Aphrodite had their digs at the bottom of the sea which is to say the symbol of the unconscious which corresponds to the seeming location of the unconscious at the bottom of the mind or, in other words, the brain stem.
Thus it is said that Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which is to say irrationality, emerged from the sea on the half shell.
So, I suppose, love, being never rational is a subconscious decision which is one sided or a half shell. Love may be either constructive or destructive.
Thus also good ideas, a la Hephaestus, seem to rise unbidden from the subconscious or the depths.
Hephaestus and Aphrodite were ancient gods dating back to the Matriarchy. The incoming Patriarchal god, Zeus, had no part in their creation; they were solely a part of Hera the great goddess of the Matriarchy. She was much older than Zeus but the youthful Zeus united with her in the form of a cuckoo bird who as she clutched it to her breast slipped down her dress and ravaged her. So the Patriachy subsumed the Matriarchy.
When Hephaestus later sided with his mother against Zeus, the great Olympian threw him from heaven laming him. Then Aphrodite was given to him to wife. Unbridled lust combined with creative activity, Ate and Menos.
Aphrodite was not happy with the lamed god. While Hephaestus was on trips to Olympus she dallied with another Matriarchal god, Ares, the symbol of uncontrollable desire or rage. Hephaestus having been informed of Aphrodite’s infidelity set a trap for her and Ares. He constructed a finely meshed net of gold which he suspended over his bed.
Aphrodite, unbridled lust, and Ares, uncontrollable rage, were literally caught in the act being unable to disengage. Thus we have two aspects of Ate, lust and rage, caught by the efforts of creativity in the depths of the sea or the unconscious
Hephaestus called the other gods to witness. Athene, a new Patriarchal goddess who was the counterpart and antithesis of Ares and Aphrodite turned away in disgust. Apollo, another new Patriarchal god and the antithesis of Hermes just laughed. Hermes, the patron god of thieves, a Matriarchal god, said he would change places with Ares in a second. Thus, lust, rage and dishonesty are combined in one figure of Ate in the subconscious.
The image of Ate and Menos is what Myers meant by his idea of the unconscious. Freud, on the other hand, understood the unconscious as pure Ate.
Both the Greeks and Myers attempted scientific explanations while Freud gave the unconscious a religious and supernatural twist. He seemed to believe that the unconscious has an independent existence outside the mind of man which is beyond man’s control while being wholly evil.
Opposed to morality, Freud then wished to unleash this conception of the unconscious on the world. He was uniquely prepared to do so. All he had to do was manipulate the symbols of psychoanalysis of which he had full control. The question then is did Freud have deeper understandings that he concealed in order to bring about his desired ends?
Such is the case with his conceptions of sexuality. There is no need for him to have had deeper understanding, after all he was a pioneer opening a new field of inquiry. On the other hand…
Defining the unconscious was done by many men preceding Freud so that his is only one of many understandings, not necessarily the best, although today in common belief he invented the concept of the unconscious.
Next he chose to define the concepts of sex. He was equally successful in this field as far as the public was concerned, although I differ in understanding the matter as I do with the unconscious.
In analyses with patients Freud discovered that there was a fear of castration out of all proportion to actual incidents of sexual mutilation. It follows then that castration symbolizes something other than the removal of the genitals. I contend that it was impossible for Freud to have missed the signficance of castration as a symbol.
Castration as a symbol represents the broader concept of Emasculation, in this case psychological emasculation. This does occur in everyone’s life in many different manifestations while being something to really fear or avoid. Unless I am mistaken all neuroses and psychoses depend from it.
Understanding Emasculation is as much a ‘royal road to the unconscious’ as dreams.
I do not accept Freud’s map of the mind but we both agree that the Ego or Animus is the key to identity. Freud fully understood the significance of the Ego. Thus when the Ego is challenged with an affront or insult to which it is either unable or doesn’t know how to respond to successfully emascualtion to some degree takes place. There is no unconscious, just as there are no instincts so that a fixation is suppressed in the subconscious as a result of the affront. These fixations produce effects, which can be grouped in categories such as hysteria, paranoia, obsessive-compulsiveness and the whole panoply of general affects. The affects then find expression physically and psychologically, or in another word, psychosomatically. The mind and the body is one unit. These affects answer to what Freud called neuroses and psychoses.
When the Ego or Animus is denied its right to assertion the denial is frequently espressed in a hysterically sexual manner corresponding to the the insult. If the victim feels he has been taken from behind he will undoubtedly resort to anal intercourse as one type of underhanded response in an attempt to get back his own as in the case with homosexuality. Homosexuality is Emasculation par excellence.
The human mind is very limited in its inventiveness so all these affects can be catalogued and matched with the insult so that, absent resistance under analysis, they can easily be addressed and exorcised. The problem is not as complicated as it has been made out.
Freud understood so much more than he was willing to tell the goys but then he was not a scientist but a Jewish prophet. In his Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego to which we will return he gave the game away.
The individual can and does submerge his own ego into a, or at various times, many group egos. Prominent among these group egos are ethnic, national and religious group egos.
Just as the individual can be emascualted so can ethnic, national or religious groups be emasculated which the individual will share. I mention the Jews only as the most obvious case although Negroes, American Indians or any defeated people suffer emasculation to one degree or another.
Thus I will discuss the unconscious from a general point of view with Freud’s concept prominent while the concept of Emascultion will be discussed by my understanding based on the studies of Freud on the castration complex and group psychology.
Bear in mind that I think Freud criminally distorted scientific knowledge for ethnic, national and religious ends.
2.
Quo Vadis?
Born with an integrated mind, circumstances soon disintegrate the personality so that the mind must be reintegrated to return to a state of psychic wholeness. A sort of personal mythology is created by one’s early disintegrative experiences which form one’s dreamscape in an attempt to deal with an overwhelming reality. However, when a person gains some control over external reality when the personality is integrated and the initial dreamscape based on early memories is eliminated a sort of distressing vacuum ensues that exists until a new dreamscape is formed which, while sufficient to ease the discomfort lacks the depth and substance of the fully mythologized dreamscape of childhood. One had reached a scientific consciousness. It may not be as satisfying but it fills the space while not controlling one’s behavior.
Western man, Euroamerican man, as the only segment of mankind so differentiated had then to begin to work out a new mythology based on rational scientific ideas. In other words he had to create a comfortable basis from which to understand and interpret the world.
Thus after a couple proto-mythographies in the early nineteenth century a cluster of writers or neo-mythographers began to create a mythology for the Scientific Consciousness.
The destruction of the Religious Consciousness began to become obvious after the eighteenth century Industrial Revolution in England. With the advent of steam the problem began to become acute.
The proto-mythologers may be Walter Scott, Byron, Peacock and the Shelleys. There is a departure in feel and style with these writers. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein posits the scientific problem laying a foundation for the new mythology but does not itself deal with the psychological effects.
The first mythographer to make an attempt to explain the split consciousness from my own researches was the American, Edgar Allan Poe, 1801-49.
Poe began his writing career as a psychologically troubled man ending it insane. Along the way he wrestled with the problem of the void in the subconscious created by the elimination of the supernatural. His message was received by the later group of mythographers who read him without exception all being influenced by his work.
Poe caught the great intellectual change as it emerged. The period from 1830-1880 was the period of the great initial scientific advances that would change the world. From Poe’s death in 1849 to the emergence of the new breed of mythographers beginning in the 1880s was a period of literary quiescence.
Poe began his influential masterpiece The Murders In The Rue Morgue with the paragraph:
Quote:
As the strong man exhibits his physical ability, delighting in such excercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in the moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his intellect into play. He is fond of enigmas, conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension as praeternatural. His results brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have in truth the whole air of intuition.
Unquote.
By analysis Poe didn’t mean the sort of educated guesswork that had passed for analysis in the pre-scientific consciousness. No, this was scientific analysis that disassembled a problem into the component parts revealing the secret than reassembling the problem to its original state.
In doing so Poe revealed himself as a master mythographer as well as a scientist. In C. August Dupin, the initials spell cad, Poe created the archetype of the eccentric madman who would be the here of countless novels. As a projection of Poe’s own mentality Dupin and his unnamed alter ego live in a dilapidated house. The house is the psychological symbol for self which Poe used almost to exhaustion. As the Fall of the House of Usher prefigured Poe’s own descent into insanity as to a number of alter egos representing his sane side figure in the House of Usher, William Wilson, Rue Morgue and most notably in the System of Dr. Tarr And Professor Fether in which his sane alter ego drops his other half off at the door of an insane asylum.
The two Dupins live in a darkened house during the day, creaking not unlike the House Of Usher, going out only into the depressed asylum of the night.
Poe thus presents the separation of the conscious and subconscious modern man in the riddle of the murders in the Rue Morgue. In the Rue Morgue the subconscious is represented by the Orang u tang or animal side of human nature while the conscious is represented by the sailor owner. From Poe to at least Freud the subconscious was popularly considered a dangerous wild side of man.
In Dupin and his alter ego versus the sailor and the Orang, Poe may have perceived the emergence of a new species much as H.G. Wells was to do at the end of the century. Thus both men perceived that the antecedent consciousness and the Scientific Consciousness were not just matters of learning but a genetic difference although they didn’t put it that way that couldn’t be bridged.
Both aspects were brought out brilliantly by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) in his 1880 novel: The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. This book may properly be said to be the first true represention of the scientific myth.
In this case the good Dr. Jekyll is the disciplined, self-controlled scientist committed to doing good in the world. Beneath his intelligent exterior he feels the primitive wild man lurking. The primitive of what is in fact a predecessor Homo Sapiens is very very appealing to him. Unable to bring this aspect of his psychology to the surface by conventional means he resorts to drugs.
Having once freed his wild side, who he names Mr. Hyde, he is unable to put Hyde back into the bottle or syringe, whichever the case may be. Hyde assumes control of the personality which leads both aspects of the personality to destruction. This is not unlike Freud’s notion of the unconscious.
Thus Stevenson brilliantly prefigured the twentieth century future in which the scientist is dragged back to the level of the predecessor species through a psychological inability to take the great leap forward and turn his back on his past.
The same sense of the alienation from a predecessor existence was evidenced in the work of a great transitional figure, H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925). Let me say that Haggard is a much neglected literary figure. As his topics concerned Esoterica and Africa, the former which is scorned and the latter ignored, his literary reputation has been allowed to virtually disappear. Having read a large part of his work in the pursuit of these studies I would rank Haggard very highly, certainly among the top ten authors, possibly as high as number five. one and two are Walter Scott and Balzac, while Dumas holds down third and possibly Trollope in the fourth spot. Haggard is a writer of genius.
He spent his late teens and early twenties in the South African provinces of Natal and Zululand where he acquired a vision of the difference between the first Homo Sapiens, the Negro, and the current scientific man. As the saying goes, there’s something to be lost and something gained when you move up the ladder.
Haggard never made it to scientific man himself being stuck in the Religious Consciousness. He belonged to the Esoteric side rather than the Christian. In the third novel of his great African trilogy, Allan Quatermain, Haggard examined the difference between the African and European in this manner.
Quote:
Ah! this civilization what does it all come to? Full forty years and more I spent among savages, and studied them and their ways; and now for several years I have lived here in England, and in my own stupid manner have done my best to learn the ways of the children of light; and what do I find? A great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one, that a plain man’s thought may spring across. I say that as the savage is, so is the white man, only the latter is more inventive, and possesses a faculty of combination…but in all essential the savage and child of civilization are identical.
Unquote.
In the same book Haggard also put the problem more poetically:
…he dreams of the sight
of Zulu impis
breaking on the foe
like surf upon the rocks
and his heart rises in rebellion
against the strict limits
of the civilized life.
Here Haggard states the central thesis of Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde. In the evolution of the species there is always a small gulf between two adjacent species: nature does not take great leaps, it moves in small increments. Thus it may be a small leap between the two, expecially when the next transition creates not only a new variety but a new species, but the leap is backwards as in Jekyll’s case while it is impossible for Hyde to make the leap forward, nor is he capable of adjusting to the new strict limits. Wasn’t Stevenson precocious?
Haggard who was not of the Scientific Consciousness was left behind while his work formed the basis of the greatest of the scientific mythographers.
Before moving on let us here consider the patron saint of the future Red/Liberal aspect of the Religious Consciousness, the Frenchman, Victor Hugo (1802-85).
Paris Is A Leaky Basket
Paris has another Paris under herself; a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries and its circulation, which is slime minus its human form.
~Victor Hugo- Les Miserables
As Haggard was a transitional figure for the mythographers one might say that Victor Hugo created the literary foundation for the Red/Liberal faction of the Religious Consciousness. His Les Miserables with its tragi-comic format forms the bedrock of Revolutionary beliefs. Hugo was himself a Revolutionary. His novel Les Miserables is the account, so he says, of the apotheosis of Jean Valjean from bestiality to salvation. Along the way to his apotheosis Valjean makes a detour through the sewers of Paris.
Hugo was a poet; his account of the sewers of paris is, shall we say, poetic. In fact a scatalogical masterpiece worthy of our own Lenny Bruce. If Lenny had studied Vic a little he would have been able to say everything he wanted to say while staying out of jail at the same time.
One wonders whether Freud read Hugo. There are certain similarities in style. Certainly they both seem to have had the same notion of the unconscious. Valjean’s trip through the sewers of Paris, he with the bleeding Marius on his back must have been intended as a representation of the unconscious. And a very funny one at that.
Freud would certainly have agreed with Hugo when the latter wrote: The history of men is the history of cloacae. From Hugo’s description of the sewers of Paris it is clear that Paris was not anal retentive.
Freud was no less scatological in his approach to psychology than this astonishing section of Hugo’s book. Who wouldn’t be miserable down in a sewer; miserable enough if only your mind was in the sewer. In Hugo one gets the same macabre, morbid sense of humor Freud exhibits in his own work. Oh yes, read properly Freud tells a lot of jokes. Didn’t he write a book titled: Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious? Sure he did. Knew what he was talking about too.
The first chapter of the section of Hugo’s book, The Intestines Of Leviathan is a series of morbid one liners which are as funny as anything Lenny Bruce came up with. Double entendre? To say Paris is a leaky basket! In the underworld homosexual argot of Jean Genet the term basket refers to a man’s crotch and penis. Undoubtedly the same argot was current in Hugo’s time. He was a student of criminal argot. So Paris being a leaky basket is equivalent to saying Paris was incontinent, pissing all over itself. Don’t you think that’s funny?
And then: “The sewer is the conscience of the city.” Hm? ‘This can be said for the garbage dump, that it is no liar.” I ask you, does Victor Hugo know how to get down and boogie? Let us follow Jean Valjean into the “Conscience of Paris” “which is no liar” from which Hugo says Villon talks to Rabelais. Fabulous funny images, morbid but fabulous and funny.
To be sure, psychology in 1862 when Les Miserables was published, had not been developed, yet notice how closely Hugo’s tongue-in-cheek, laughing in his sleeve, description of Jean Valjean’s journey through the pitch black maze of this subterranean worker’s paradise into which from time to time faint glimmerings of light enter answers to the images of Freudian Depth Psychology. Depth psychology? Was that a pun or play on words?
Just imagine Jean Valjean as he enters the sewer. Take time to construct concrete images in your mind. After this, shall we say, harrowing of hell not unlike that of Theseus and Peirithous, from which Perithous never returned, Valjean receives his apotheosis not unlike Hercules. One might also compare this scene with the temptation of Christ.
Valjean is carrying the bleeding Marius on his back who might or might not be dead. Hugo doesn’t let us know. This might be compared to one’s old self before or during the integration of the personality. In fact Valjean sheds Marius after emerging from the sewer from which the gatekeeper of Hell, Thenardier, allows him to emerge after being paid his obol.
The sewer is certainly a symbol of the unconscious for the scatological Freud who seems to revel in such fecal images. Amidst a chatty history of the sewers of Paris which Hugo keeps up as Valjean plods through the darkness always intuitively heading in the right direction, down. He evades the thought police who are searching for him or someone just like him in the sewers. A shot sent blindly down his gallery grazes his cheek. Jesus! Isn’t a man safe from harassment in the depths of his own mind? If you think Paris is dangerous, try the sewers.
Valjean is exhausted from his long walk carrying Marius on his back, poor suffering humanity, the sign of the cross, nevertheless with the heart of a lion he plods on. He moves forward through deepening fluids as his bare feet sink into fecal matter “which does not lie” while Hugo carries on a charming separate conversation with we readers about little known facts of the Paris sewers. No, the fecal matter, as well as Hugo, tells the truth however hard that may be to decipher from the material at hand as well as underfoot.
As the fluid (also however that may be composed as Hugo is writing scatologically) rises, his feet sink up to his knees into “the conscience of the city.” Get this! Valjean is one of the great strongmen, he lifts the dead weight of Marius above his head on his extended arms still sucking his feet from the muck. Hugo does not reveal whether Valjean lost his shoes during this ordeal or not but surely a while back. Perhaps of all the details Hugo records this particular item which consumes my interest had none for him.
Nevertheless, heedless of the the danger to her shoes, Valjean plods on. Plod, plod.
Now, here’s a detail of interest Hugo does record. Feet and legs deep in the conscience of paris, Marius held above his head visualize this, the fecal fluid had risen above Valjean’s mouth and nose so that he has to tip his head back, I’m not sure this would have been effective, until only a mask can be seen rising eerily above the surface, as well as two arms and Marius. He ain’t heavy, he’s my other self. Seen in Stygian darkness that is.
If we’re all in the same sewer here imagine particles of the conscience of Paris, scatologically know as turds, bumping up against the mask probably trailing behind Our Man Of The Sewer in a wake of fetid glory.
Even in the pitch black Thenardier is watching this spectacle. Fortunately the psychic crisis is past. Valjean leaves the conscience of Paris which does not lie, you can say that about it, behind striking solid, er, ground.
A striking vision of Freud’s and the Revolution’s reality. Had Valjean been given the name Spartacus the Revolutionary vision would have been complete. The Red/Liberals had spent a hundred years or more in the sewers of Paris before they turned this primary text of theirs into the Broadway musical of Les Miserables. Next time you see it put it into this context of the sewers of Paris. The songs will take on new meaning.
Part II of Something Of Value I follows.
I, Dynamo 