The Codebreaker Girls – Only 99c!
3 weeks ago
Showing posts with label British Library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Library. Show all posts
First a notice of what promises to be an interesting talk at the British Library about the other Charters. It is called Statutes, Constitutions and a Golden Bull: Early European Parallels to Magna Carta. The Golden Bull has been mentioned on this blog before but the others,the Statute of Pamiers (1212, the Constitutions of Melfi (1231) and the imperial land peace of Mainz (1235) sound very interesting as well. If humanly possible, I shall be there and report on the event.
Meanwhile, I have been reminded by a blog reader of the chapter on King John (An Awful King) and the Magna Charter in that best of all history books, 1066 And All That. (Here is an excellent history quiz published in the Guardian that is taken from the test papers of that fine book; here is the text of the book but I would still recommend that people acquire a paper edition for the illustrations if nothing else.)
Meanwhile, what do the authors say in Chapter 19?
"Magna Charter
There also happened in this reign the memorable Charta, known as Magna Charter on account of the Latin Magna (great) and Charter (a Charter); this was the first of the famous Chartas and Gartas of the Realm and was invented by the Barons on a desert island in the Thames called Ganymede. By congregating there, armed to the teeth, the Barons compelled John to sign the Magna Charter, which said:
- That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason - (except the Common People).
- That everyone should be free - (except the Common People).
- That everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm - (except the Common People).
- That the Courts should be stationary, instead of following a very tiresome mediaeval official known as the King's Person all over the country.
- That 'no person should be fined to his utter ruin' - (except the King's Person).
- That the Barons should not be tried except by a special jury of other Barons who would understand.
After this King John hadn't a leg to stand on and was therefore known as 'John Lackshanks'."
That, I think, makes it all crystal clear. I shall be asking questions later.
Tory Historian has already written about the British Library's excellent idea to reprint little known Victorian detective stories and to do the same for less well known writers of the Golden Age though this might turn out to be a task beyond even that formidable institution. New books are, however, being published with remarkable speed and it is quite a task to keep up with them. A number of them are selling very well both on Amazon and in bookshops, Waterstone's in Piccadilly being a prime example.
Martin Edwards, who has been appointed Series Consultant to the Crime Classics series gives some figures here. They are impressive.
Tory Historian has now read three more books, one of the early ones, Mr Bazalgette's Agent and two of the Golden Age ones, both by Mavis Doriel Hay, Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell.
Leonard Merrick's Mr Bazalgette's Agent is the third book of the Victorian period to have a female detective at its centre (though in this case there are many qualifications) and is usually described as the first actual novel about one such lady but as Mike Ashley explains in his excellent introduction, Miss Miriam Lea, who becomes a Private Agent as she cannot find more "respectable" employment is really the second one, the first being an American, The Lady Detective, Kate Goelet, whose investigation of The Great Bond Robbery was told by "Old Sleuth" alias Harlan Page Halsey (1837 - 1898) was told in 1880. Leonard Merrick's novel appeared in 1888.
Leonard Merrick (1864 - 1939), an unknown figure these days, was according to J. M. Barrie "a novelist's novelist" and was highly regarded in his day. He, on the other hand, disliked Mr Bazalgette's Agent so much that he tried to buy up and pulp every copy of it. Mike Ashley speculates that his dislike may have been based on some feeling of guilt for using Harlan Page Halsey's material.
In Mr Ashley's expert opinion Mr Bazalgette's Agent is a better novel than its predecessor. Undoubtedly, it is well written and extracts some sly enjoyment out of the narrator heroine's diary, which shows her to be strong-minded and determined but also not very good at recognizing certain truths about herself and other people. Miss Lea is not particularly likeable, being insufferably snobbish and supercilious, even towards the other strong-minded female in the book, a professional detective who travels with her as her maid.
The plot is exciting and the ending is amusing as well as unexpected (TH will not even hint at it) but the ease with which Mr Bazalgette's Agency finances Miss Lea's somewhat speculative travels across Europe, back to Britain, then to South Africa and its diamond fields is astonishing. What sort of a budget do they have and how is it that they do not go bust?
The other two books under discussion are of the later and by some definition golden age of the detective story, published respectively in 1934 and 1935. There were a good many writers in that period, many of good and even outstanding quality and the British Library, one hopes, will get round to a number of them so that supposed historians of the genre stop thinking that hardly anyone existed outside the "four queens", Christie, Sayers, Marsh and Allingham.
It is not clear why anyone thought Miss Hay was so good that all three of her novels had to be reprinted though the suggestion that it was easy to negotiate with her estate is one to be taken seriously.
The novels are introduced by Stephen Booth who is more interesting on Miss Hay's life than on her writing. The introduction to Murder Underground gives a general outline and the one to Death on the Cherwell fills in some details. It seems that Miss Hay was at St Hilda's about the same time as Sayers was at Somerville 1913 - 1916 so one can, perhaps speculate about them meeting at some tea party or literary discussion though Sayers does not mention her in her letters. Hay does not seem to have gone back in 1920 or subsequently to collect her degree when women were finally allowed to have them. Sayers did. Another interesting parallel between the two is them both publishing novels about Oxford in 1935, the year of Gaudy Night as well as Death on the Cherwell.
Stephen Booth speculates briefly why there were no more detective stories from Mavis Doriel Hay after 1937 (the year Sayers also stopped writing them with the unfinished Thrones Dominations) and comes to the conclusion that the general situation that eventually led to the war was too serious for her to produce frivolous novels. Given how many Golden Age writers went on working in that field, this does not sound adequate. It has to be said, though that Miss Hay lost one brother in the First World War and two brothers as well as her husband in the Second one. A higher than average rate.
Murder Underground is described by Curtis Evans as being underwhelming and TH has to agree with that. There are some good aspects to the book: the description of life in London in the early thirties, of the various people in Frampton Guest House (a genteel boarding house) as well as of its owner are amusing and probably accurate. The description of servants and a good time girl one of the Bright Young Things picks up and then uses to cover up his stupidity is less successful though there is some indication that the author is not altogether enamoured of the BYTs' attitude to the rest of the world.
What is particularly problematic about the book is its laughing attitude to a gruesome crime (an old woman is strangled with a dog leash, causing suffocation by falling forward on the stairs of Belsize Park station). Stephen Booth, whose understanding of Golden Age Detective (GAD) novels is of the superficial and dismissive kind, quotes P. D. James on the subject:
The detective stories of the interwar years were paradoxical. They might deal with violent death, but essentially they were novels of escape. We feel no real pity for the victim, no empathy for the murderer, no sympathy for the falsely accused.Actually, this is wrong but Baroness James has never shown herself to be especially knowledgeable about the history of detective stories despite writing a slim volume on the subject. A good many books of the period show real pity, empathy and sympathy but, alas, not Murder Underground.
Even the detection is limited: the police appear briefly at the beginning and reappear "unobtrusively" towards the end, having not solved anything; the Bright Young Things who usurp the action (if one can call it that) behave with unparalleled stupidity; and the solution both of the method and the motive is almost accidental.
There are two maps to gladden Tory Historian's heart and a very simple and pointless family tree. Are the maps useful? Passing Tramp (a.k.a. Curt Evans) thinks not. Well, they are not completely useless either.
There is a map of the Cherwell, real with imaginary additions in Death on the Cherwell but that does little except confuses the issue. In fact all the various descriptions of the river do just that. However, people who know it, North Oxford and Marston now will be astonished to read of farmland extending all the way to the Cherwell in the mid-thirties.This is a better novel than its predecessor: the plot is tighter and though there is an attempt at silly facetiousness about the death of an unloved college bursar, Miss Denning, that quickly disappears and the Bright Young Things, in this case undergraduates of Persephone College (St Hilda's) are brought under control by the police who investigate the crime, using old-fashioned methods of working out time tables and geographic locations. (Somewhat more irritating is the slang used by the various undergraduates, also mercifully absent from modern Oxford.)
Oddly enough, two of the BYTs of the previous novel appear but behave like responsible adults. Amazing what marriage and writing success can do for one.
The questionable part is Stephen Booth's introduction though further details of Miss Hay's biography are fascinating as mentioned above. But did Mr Booth actually read the novel before writing his introduction? This is what he says:
Hay seems to have been pleased with the police inspector who made an unobtrusive entrance in her previous novel, because here we meet Inspector Wythe, a sympathetic and intelligent character, not the typical clodhopping local bobby. He is not quite quick enough to beat the amateur sleuths to the solution, but he gives them a run for their money. The sleuthing becomes a competition between rival groups of male and female students from Persephone and St Simeon's. In the end, it seems none of the people concerned may be capable of crime, though moral guilt turns out to be a powerful thing in Mavis Doriel Hay's world.This is almost entirely incorrect. Inspector Wythe does appear at the beginning and continues to play a secondary role when Detective-Inspector Braydon of Scotland Yard comes to his assistance and "moral guilt" is, indeed, mentioned at the end. The rest, the bulk of the book and of the summary is completely different.
There is no competition between the male and female students, only the latter being interested in sleuthing and they are induced to tell all and to hand over their find to the police very swiftly. The amateurs do not get a look in this time and the case is solved by DI Braydon.
It has to be said that just as in the first novel there is no multitude of serious suspects. In fact, the killer in each one is very obvious. It must also be added that there is a good deal of genuine emotion in the second novel and an understanding of sorrow and waste. This might surprise Baroness James.
The British Library is, as everyone knows or should know, one of the finest institutions in the world with a wonderful collection of books and helpful staff in the reading rooms, fascinating exhibitions, a superlatice collection of stamps for those who find the subject interesting (alas, TH seems to have got over that particular obsession some years ago) and a publishing arm of some distinction.
In particular, Tory Historian has been overjoyed by the Library's decision to reprint detective stories from the Victorian period and, more recently, from what is known as the Golden Age that have been forgotten by all except a few historians of the genre. It may be added that not a few of the better known "historians" who are constantly interviewed and commissioned to write articles on the subject know very little beyond the best known authors. But that is another and more painful story that requires at least one separate article.
In the circumstances, the British Library is doing us all a favour by publishing books that are of importance in the history of the genre but have fallen into a literary memory hole.
The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams is, contrary to popular assumptions about Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone the first detective novel, having been serialized in Once A Week in 1862 - 3. In other words it predates both The Moonstone and Emile Gaboriau's first M. Lecoq novel, published in 1869 in two volumes, though Gaboriau's L'Affaire Lerouge was serialized in 1863. Anyway, the British Library has now republished The Notting Hill Mystery and everyone can start making comparisons with the better known novels.Structurally it is not dissimilar from The Moonstone in that it is a collection of depositions from various people who were involved in greater or lesser degree in the nefarious dealings of the sinister Baron R ___, who is suspected of murdering his wife. The story starts some years before with the birth in particularly shocking and tragic circumstances of twin girls. The evidence is collected painstakingly by Ralph Henderson, an insurance investigator, the very personification, one might say, of the genre and of the investigating detective, being a middle class professional gentleman who is used to collecting evidence in a painstaking manner.
Sadly, Tory Historian, a great fan of Wilkie Collins's works and not only of the best known two novels and one story (The Biter Bit, which is frequently anthologized), did not find Charles Warren Adams's book fascinating though it ws, quite as good as either The Moonstone or The Woman in White, perhaps because the story was a little too obvious and too sensational (very much of its time) and, more to the point, the characters did not shine the way Collins's do. For all of that, The Notting Hill Mystery is very well worth reading by anyone who has the slightest interest in the history of detective novels or sensational literature and by anyone who might be interested in the history of that area of West London.
The British Library has also reprinted the three earliest collections of adventures by women detectives, who are employed as such, sometimes privately as in Mr Bazalgette's Agent, sometimes by the police or in a private capacity as in The Female Detective and the one TH has read, Revelations of a Lady Detective.This collection of adventures belongs more to the Victorian sensational novels than to the detective fiction as developed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his rivals and successors of the Golden Age but Mrs Paschal, the heroine/narrator does display great abilities of ratiocination as well as a determined attitude towards the catching of criminals and the claiming of whatever reward might be offered. In the first story she resolutely discards her crinoline (described by her as hateful) in order to pursue the criminal; in others she unhesitatingly disguises herself even as a possible novice in a nunnery run by a very sinister Abbess.
Of the available Golden Age detective fiction Tory Historian has read two by John Bude (pseudonym of Ernest Carpenter Elmore), both introduced by a present-day practitioner of the art and highly knowledgeable historian of the genre, Martin Edwards, The Lake District Murder and The Cornish Coast Murder.
The latter of these was, in fact, published first though both came out in 1935. They were slightly unusual for the period in that they took place in very precisely described English locations, which was not London and not an imaginary county somewhere in the Midlands or the Home Counties. Both are very much of the Golden Age with clever mysteries and painstaking deduction, following up of clues and of various time tables. In fact, they belong to what might be called the Freeman Wills Crofts school of detective fiction but in Tory Historian's opinion John Bude was a better writer.
The Cornish Coast Murder is a mixture of police and amateur investigation, with Inspector Bigswell, a fairly intelligent police officer together with his subordinates and superiors representing officialdom and the Reverend Dodd, the local vicar and detective story addict together with his friend and fellow addict, the local doctor, representing the amateurs. On the whole, the amateurs win but the officials do not come out too badly. 
The Lake District Murder introduces Inspector Meredith, who becomes Superintendent by the end of the book, largely in recognition of the way he solves the case in question. There are no amateurs and the work is done entirely by the police team, which appears to have a remarkably large manpower at its disposal.Inspector Meredith is a likeable and hard-working chap with a long-suffering wife and an eager-beaver son who is apprenticed to a photographer but would probably like to go into the force himself. He has a good relationship both with his superiors and his underlings. In fact, there is a clear indication of police work requiring a team to achieve the desired result. It is, for instance, the Superintendent who understands how the murder was done though Meredith had worked out, following up clues and information provided by his staff, who had done it and why.
Having read The Lake District Murder, Tory Historian decided to try another novel by John Bude while waiting for The Cornish Coast Murder to make its way back to London Library. Such is the influence of the British Library reprints that only one Bude book could be found on the shelves, Death in Ambush, published in 1945 but one that clearly belongs to the inter-war period.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be greatly inferior. The writing is still witty and attractive (still better than Freeman Wills Crofts's) but the plot is considerably sillier than the one in the Lake District or, as it turned out, the one on the Cornish Coast. One murder method is very clever but the second one is complicated to the point of ridiculousness. The only reason nobody understands it to the very end is because there is no autopsy despite death being highly violent.
Superintendent Meredith is now in Scotland Yard and back to being Inspector; his wife has effaced herself almost as much as Inspector French's does in the Crofts series and there is no mention of the son at all.
He investigates the two crimes almost accidentally as he happens to be staying with his friend, the Watson of the book, a successful detective story writer, Aldous Barnet, who finds most of the clues and manages to elucidate the cause of the second murder. Meredith rushes around, accusing first one person then another of the crime and demanding an alibi from the accused. Otherwise, he says darkly over and over again, the prosecutor will make hay. The notion that it is he who has to produce the evidence does not seem to occur to anyone.
Eventually, the last person standing, so to speak, turns out to be Second Murderer (the first murder is sort of solved earlier in the book) and a couple of vital clues are discovered not to be revealed to the reader until the last explanation to Meredith's superiors.
In fact, something of a mess. Fortunately, The Cornish Coast Murder turned up and made up for Death in Ambush. The British Library is planning to reprint at least one more novel by John Bude. Let us hope it is more like the first two and not like the later one.
There will be further reports on the British Library Classic Crimes series.
The British Library is bringing together all four existing versions of that great document but, it seems, only for one day. There is a ballot for 1,215 people "to be part of history" and to take advantage of "the unique opportunity to see all four Magna Carta documents at the British Library in London". Despite those words I considered taking part in the ballot but abandoned that idea when I read about the circus I would have to submit to, should I win (an unlikely event but one must consider all possibilities.
On arrival, winners will be welcomed to the British Library by historian and TV presenter Dan Jones, who will explain the history and significance of Magna Carta. To the sound of live medieval music in the British Library’s entrance hall, winners will then be taken by costumed characters from the 13th century to view the four original Magna Carta manuscripts on display together for the first time.One can only hope that there will be other exhibitions and events without the faux mediaeval atmosphere.
In the meantime, this blog will indulge in some random thoughts on the subject of the Great Charter and related events. The first random thought came to me as I considered other countries in which similar documents were produced, one of them, Hungary, then a great kingdom, where the magnates forced King Andrew II to sign The Golden Bull in 1222. (Here is a somewhat more romantic view of the event that reminds one of many a comment about the Magna Carta.) The notion of The Golden Bull being Hungary's Magna Carta is not particularly odd as anyone who compares the Articles of the two documents can see. Of course, what with the Mongol invasion, subsequent wars and the Ottoman occupation, Hungary's history turned out to be somewhat different from England's though even the latter saw the imposition of authoritarian government under the Tudors as well as a civil war or two. Here is what the historian László Kontler says on the subject in his carefully argued book, A History of Hungary.
In 1222, the country-wide movement of the servientes compelled Andrew II to issue the famous Golden Bull, sometimes mentioned as a counterpart of the English Magna Carta of 1215. Most of its thirty articles concerned the encroachment of the king and his barons and the unlawfulness of these as well as the alienation of large royal estates, but the ones most important for posterity decreed the uniform rights and privileges of the nobility: the exemption from taxes and from quartering troops, from the jurisdiction of others than the king and thepalatine, the freedom of the servientes from harassment by the barons, the requirement of a legal warrant to detain them, etc. An additional clause invested the secular and ecclesiastical lords with a right of resistance in case the aforementioned were violated by the king; a clause rarely invoked during the rest of the Middle Ages, but all the more often during the long period of Hungary's association with the House of Habsburg. However much of a mere plot the movement of the servientes, and however rudimentary the Golden Bull was, these were the beginnings of a process in which the idea of communitas regni became influential in Hungary and an estates based parliamentarianism developed, and groups outside the royal council had access to policy-making (for the first time at the assembly of 1277).Clearly, a few explanations are needed. Who were the servitas, for instance? Back to László Kontler's book:
Of the many opposition movements [to Andrew II] the most important was that of the so-called royal servientes. "Servants" by name, they were in fact the freest agents in a society where even the relatively independent jobbágy warriors were high-placed subjects within the manorial system; the servientes themselvese were landlords, small or great, and possessed subjects, few or many, and called themselvess "servants of the king" because it was only to the king that they owed service and obedience - not as their landlord but as the ruler of the country.The concepts and ideas are not unfamiliar to those who know English mediaeval history and neither is that of communitas regni: as this dictionary of mediaeval legal terms explains it is "the Community of the Realm; the general representation of the nation in Parliament".
There were some differences, obviously, one of which was the murder of Queen Gertrude, Andrew II's German wife who had brought with her, as was usual, large numbers of courtiers and relatives, whose influence and privileges were resented by the Magyar nobility of whatever status. This story is told (somewhat romantically and patriotically) in József Katona's play Bánk bán (1819) that was performed at the National Theatre on March 15,1848 and in the opera by Ferenc Erkel (1861) that was performed in the Opera House on a crucial day in 1956. The opera has a very fine patriotic aria sung by Bánk bán himself.
None of this aims to diminish the importance of Magna Carta. Indeed, it is possible, as Wikipedia says, that "[i]t may even have been inspired by Magna Carta, as its greatest supporters met with exiled Magna Carta leaders such as Robert Fitzwalter during the Fifth Crusade". And that would make the influence of the Great Charter even more obvious.
... to one of the greatest cultural and educational institutions in the world, the British Museum. It opened its doors to the public on January 15, 1759 with exhibits that had come largely from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane. Since then it has grown and multiplied with new institutions, wonderful exhibitions and some very interesting (and some not so interesting) events. The biggest change came when the British Library broke off and started on an independent existence in St Pancras in 1997. Well, it had to happen but some of us still miss the Round Reading Room. 
And talking of Georgians, the British Library's next big exhibition is going to be about them. The full title will be Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain and it promises to be fascinating. One hopes there will not be too much harping on the various clashes between politesse and riotous behaviour, riches and poverty and more emphasis on this:
From beautifully furnished homes to raucous gambling dens, Georgians Revealed explores the revolution in everyday life that took place between 1714 and 1830. Cities and towns were transformed. Taking tea, reading magazines, gardening and shopping for leisure were commonplace, and conspicuous consumption became the pastime of the emerging middle classes.It will open on November 8 and this blog will report on it.
Popular culture as we know it began, and with it the unstoppable rise of fashion and celebrity. Art galleries, museums and charities were founded. In this time of incredible innovation, ideas were endlessly debated in the new coffee houses and spread via the information highway that was mass print.
In the meantime, there is a smaller and wholly delightful exhibition of illustrations to children's books, tucked away in that odd bit of space to the coffee bar.
Tory Historian finds on Londonist's excellent blog that the British Library will be celebrating the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta in excellent style next year:
the four surviving copies of Magna Carta will be united for the first time, marking the 800th anniversary of the landmark legal document’s signing. During a three-day event at the British Library, visitors and scholars will get to see the quartet in one room. Currently, the Library holds two copies, while the others are at Salisbury and Lincoln Cathedrals.Sadly, it is not clear who and how will be able to view this astonishing exhibition apart from scholars.
The biggest criticism is that too many of the exhibits are modern and unexciting paperbacks even though the British Library must have original copies of first editions of all crime books, which are of greater interest.
The entrance to the exhibition (just above the escalator) has a quotation from Monsignor Knox and his famous Decalogue, which laid down all the rules that good detective writers (especially Agatha Christie) proceeded to break.
The rest of this long posting is on the secondary blog (for long postings)
The rest of this long posting is on the secondary blog (for long postings)
Tory Historian managed to see something like half of the exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination at the British Library. There will have to be at least one more visit though one has to pay to get in. Not only the exhibits are overwhelming in their beauty and fascinating content and details but the curatorship is on the sort of high level one has learnt to expect from this institution.
The British Library, incidentally, has a collection of fascinating blogs, one of which is on the subject of the various manuscripts in its collection. Another one, about maps, has been mentioned by Tory Historian before.
