Verifiable Proof of Englishness: my Citizenship ‘Associative Reaction’ Test Probes an Allusive Incomplete V.R.

As a Sussex-bred child, I’m sure I never imagined that – when we used to walk along the Weald ridgeway from the little village of Streat, past Plumpton Racecourse, to East Chiltington churchyard – I’d be entering a future where memories of that splendid grandstand view of the South Downs would prompt sombre ruminations on the values of cultural identity.

As it was, any apprehensions of today’s polarising debates on what it means to be English I’m sure were far from my mind because what entranced me most was the thought that the massive sylvan hanger that clung to the escarpment above Streat was the very embodiment of the Victorian mystery fiction I nightly devoured, thanks to a number of my grandfather’s bound volumes of the Strand Magazine I had made my own.

Explain? The massive ‘V’ on the Downs above Streat was planted in 1887 to mark Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee. Composed of Scotch pine, spruce, larch, beech, sycamore and lime, this living monument to a queen regnant raised by a loyal yeoman farmer required 3060 plants at a cost of 12 pounds, 10 shillings and four pence, not including 38 pounds for labour. The outside measurement of each arm is 165 yards in length.  The width of each arm is 22 yards – that time-honoured distance, the twentieth of a quarter of a mile, the length of a cricket pitch (Sussex is the birthplace of adult cricket, cited in the early 1600s). The ‘V’ is one of the most loved landmarks within the South Downs National Park.

Local legend, I recall, had it that such were the fears of ever mounting expenditure the farmer abandoned his intention to complete the V.R. (Victoria Regina) of his original scheme, and settled for the pure symmetry of a commanding ‘V’, for which a future generation of austere minimalists is profoundly grateful.

Writ large.

It’s easy to guess why I was entranced. The incomplete ‘V’ reminded me of nothing so much as that characteristic passage in the case book of Sherlock Holmes I’d read so eagerly in the Strand Magazine for 1893, published six years after the farmer’s celebrations yet sharing the impulse towards the expression of an unquestioning monarchial devotion writ large with the means closest to hand . . . saplings in the farmer’s case, and in the case of Sherlock Holmes  . . .
  

[Watson deplores Holmes’s marksmanship.] I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.

The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

(The Strand Magazine 1893)

Yet, in my maturity, I begin to wonder whether my loyal citizenship test of Englishness does not require, after all, the further validation of an ‘Enhanced Positive Vetting’*, because I must confess my knee-high view of classic Victorian crime literature is now revealed to me to be simply the fancy of a purblind innocent who, unlike the jingoistic Holmes, hadn’t completely joined up the dots . . . . . .

Toffs as Drifters: Holmes and Raffles in the Strand.

The fog-cloaked London of the Strand Magazine’s crime fiction in the 1890s, as Sherlockians will be aware, harboured both the exploits of the private detective, Holmes, and the escapades of the notorious (yet also jingoistic) Raffles, gentleman thief, the incomparable protagonists created respectively by brothers-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle and E. W. Hornung. Yet, now with 20/20 hindsight, as I have hinted, isn’t it about time we took to task these two fictive toffs for masquerading as members of the Deserving Poor – ‘hansom cab-runners’, to be precise – to thus deny indigent workers their honest wage? 

The flippancy of their offence is all the more egregious when you consider that an unflinching social realist of the same decade, George Gissing, was also a stablemate of these feted authors at the Strand and, by contrast, had an entirely clear-eyed and empathetic view of the penniless drifters who followed cabs. A cab-runner** in those days was regarded as roughly identical with a criminal of the worst sort.  

As to the cold-blooded cynicism of Holmes and Raffles, I invite you to consider these extracts from their adventures in the guise of ‘horsey men out of work’, a subterfuge that exploited the advantages of cabmen as confidants. First, Holmes reveals to Watson his ‘amazing powers in the use of disguises’:   

‘I left the house a little after eight o’clock this morning in the character of a groom out of work. There is a wonderful sympathy and freemasonry among horsey men. Be one of them, and you will know all that there is to know . . . I then lounged down the street . . . and lent the ostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses, and received in exchange tuppence . . . I was still balancing the matter in my mind . . .  when up the lane came a neat little landau . . . It hadn’t pulled up before she [Irene Adler] shot out of the hall door and into it. I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for . . . “The Church of St. Monica, John,” she cried, “and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.” This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing whether I should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her landau when a cab came through the street.’ 

A Scandal in Bohemia
(The Strand 1891) 

A cab-runner in those days was regarded as
roughly identical with a criminal of the worst sort. 

‘Whip behind!’ 

Had Sherlock Holmes perched behind Irene’s landau, we wonder, would a street urchin have cried, ‘Whip behind!’ This, after all, was the customary exposure of free rides by stowaways on horse cabs. In the event, Holmes reverted to toff, flourished half a sovereign, and followed Irene in a cab. 

The rather more athletic A. J. Raffles, on the other hand, demonstrates, an even deeper immersion in the character of a ‘cab follower’, according to faithful sidekick, Bunny Manders:   

‘But surely you get some exercise? ’ I asked; for he was leading me at a good rate through the leafy byways of Campden Hill; and his step was as springy and as light as ever.                                                                                       ‘The best exercise I ever had in my life,’ said Raffles; ‘and you would never live to guess what it is. It’s one of the reasons why I went in for this seedy kit. I follow cabs. Yes, Bunny, I turn out about dusk and meet the expresses at Euston or King’s Cross; that is, of course, I loaf outside and pick my cab, and often run my three or four miles for a bob or less.  And it not only keeps you in the very pink: if you’re good they let you carry the trunks upstairs; and I’ve taken notes from the inside of more than one commodious residence which will come in useful in the autumn.’ 

The Rest Cure
(1905) 

‘V’ for le vice anglais?

A shilling or less!  Well, before you dismiss my notion of a certain blinkered condescension on the part of celebrated toffs playing at charades with the livelihoods of a desperate underclass, please consider the intriguing fact that Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle and Hornung were close acquaintances, and Wilde was the reviled Accused at the centre of a cause célèbre of a notoriety that saw ‘illiterate boys’ called as witnesses in a trial in which Wilde was prosecuted on charges of gross indecency, mostly procured sexual encounters with young grooms and valets. From the witness-box the court heard the nature of Wilde’s inducements to those ‘illiterate boys’ to share debauches that indulged his taste for ‘feasting with panthers’, reportedly: ‘Bring your friends; they are my friends; I will not enquire too closely whether they come from the stables or the kitchen.’ 

Does the ‘V’ of my meditation on Englishness of this sort, then, stand for le vice anglais?

In fact, the often epigrammatic wit of both Holmes and Raffles is said to be founded by their authors on the quick tongue of Wilde yet, despite this brilliance, the unconscionable exploitation of London’s underclass in the fictions of Conan Doyle and Hornung casts a dismal shadow to remind us how fin-de-siècle decadence can pervade popular literature when a prosperous middle class readership conspires in suspending disbelief. As I have pointed out elsewhere, is not A Study in in Scarlet, 1886 (the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes), a title par excellence for the Decadent Movement, never mind the Whistlerian connotations?

Conversely, George Gissing, writing in his characteristic vein of socio-cultural observation of the poor, owed much, I suspect, to the findings of that guiding spirit of his youth, the social researcher and reformer, Henry Mayhew. 

So I must conclude that the measure of my Englishness is now most likely reduced to this: In the case of the Holmesian Übermensch versus the Mayhevian Untermenschen whose side do I take?  The Infallible Polymath or the Ruined Boys?

Just to earn a few pence. 

There were 1.2 million poor living in extreme squalor in the London of the 1890s, with malnutrition a scourge condemning nearly 500 of London’s poorest to starve to death in the capital annually . . .  so, when I think of the Baker Street Irregulars, those ragged, hungering, lice-ridden, barefoot street urchins (‘like so many rats’) engaged for a few pence by Holmes as his snitches, I believe I know the answer: 

‘V’ = Vanquished

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*For an account of the rigours of ‘Enhanced Positive Vetting’, see A Singular Answer: Memories of an Interview with the Grey Men . . .  
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/a-singular-answer-memories-of-interview.html

**For a character sketch of cab-runners from George Gissing’s socio-cultural perspective, see . . . 
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-theory-of-literary-reincarnation.html

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 
and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

A Theory of Literary Reincarnation : George Gissing and Patrick Hamilton. More Palimpsestic Texts? (Part 4.)

Two minds with a single thought could almost be the definition of my theory of literary reincarnation, particularly when the inspiriting spark of a disciple’s conception occurs in the same year of his master’s death. 
           This was the case surely for the begetting of English novelist-playwright Patrick Hamilton, who existed in the first trimester of foetal growth when the spirit of George Gissing descended on him (according to arcane Catherinian divinations) following Gissing’s death in December 1903. 
           The transmigration of a literary soul? Well, before you dismiss such a notion, why not compare two – not dissimilar – texts from these writers, published half a century apart. Both are written in their characteristic vein of Mayhevian socio-cultural observation of the poor (though Hamilton’s empathic concern for the half-world of the underclass, admittedly, owes more to Marx than Mayhew).

A cab-runner in those days was roughly identical
with a criminal of the worst sort.

The cab was piled with luggage, and within sat a young matron, her cheeks fresh as the meadows she had quitted but a few hours ago. Long Bill, lurking on the limits of the railway station, caught a significant nod from the cabdriver, and at once started in pursuit.
            Long Bill was not very tall, but had limbs so excessively slender, and so meagre a trunk, that his acquaintances naturally thought of him in terms of length. When unoccupied, which was generally the case, he let his arms hang straight, and close to his sides, as though trying to occupy as little room in the world as possible. He walked on his toes, rather quickly, and almost without a bend of the knee; his back was straight, and the collar of his filthy coat always turned up, to shield the scraggy, collarless neck. Observe him in motion at a distance, and you were reminded of a red Indian on the trail. Catch sight of him suddenly close at hand, and his sliding, furtive carriage made you anxious about your pockets or watch-guard. By his own account, Bill was nineteen years old, but he had the wizened face of senility: his hairless cheeks hollow over tooth-gaps, his nose mere cartilage, his small eyes a-blink, yet eager as those of a hungry animal.
            For more than a mile he ran along by the laden cab, and seemingly without much effort: when it drew up in front of a comfortable house, Bill sprang to the door of the vehicle.
            ‘You’ll let a pore young feller help with the luggage, lydy? I’ve ran all the w’y from Victoria.’
            He panted his mendicant humility, and with a grimy paw shook drops from a scarce visible forehead. The fair young matron regarded him with pained, compassionate look.
            ‘You have run all the way from Victoria? Certainly you may help; of course you may!’
             She alighted, entered the house, and stood there in the hall watching Long Bill as, with feverish energy, he assisted a servant to transfer trunks and parcels. Relatives pressed about the lady, but she could not give them due attention.
             ‘Look at that poor creature. He has followed my cab all the way from Victoria, just to earn a few pence! Oh, these things are too dreadful!’  

[Later, the cab-runner  is revealed to be a consumptive] . . . who lay helpless by the roadside. ‘Severe hæmorrhage from the lungs,’ said a doctor.’ 

Transplanted by George Gissing
(Stories and Sketches 1898). 

Mr. Downes’ father had also been connected with Brighton Station — but not in any official capacity. Mr. Downes’ father had worn no uniform — he had worn rags, and he had not worn shoes. He was not allowed on to the platforms : instead of this he hung about the horse-cabs outside the Station.
             When a train of any importance came into the Station, Mr. Downes’ father would eagerly watch these cabs as they were loaded with luggage by the uniformed porters, and, with a discrimination learned from long experience, would choose a cab, which he would follow, running, to its destination. He did this because he hoped that when it reached its destination, wherever that might be, he might be permitted to help with the unloading of the luggage, and be given a copper for doing so.
             Mr. Downes senior — who was, by the way, a consumptive — was not obliged to move at a great speed while his cab was moving along thoroughfares in which the traffic was thick, but when the emptier streets or roads were reached he had to run like mad. And, if he was unlucky, he had to run like this for a matter of three or four miles.
             Was the hopeful Mr. Downes senior, at the end of the pursuit, rewarded with the copper he had sought?
            The answer is that nine times out of ten he was not. On the contrary he was ordinarily threatened and shooed away with the greatest violence. Policemen were mentioned menacingly, and, if one happened to be present, used.
             In extenuation of this cruelty on the part of the users of the cabs it should be mentioned that the consumptive Mr. Downes senior, small as he was, at the end of his run presented an appalling sight — a frightening sight. The users of the cabs were frightened, and did what they did largely in panic. It must also be remembered that the man was looked upon as a beggar, and a beggar in those days was roughly identical with a criminal of the worst sort.

The West Pier by Patrick Hamilton
(First published 1951). 

A lineage to continue each predecessor’s unfinished work.

Since my teens, I confess, I have continued to believe the points of resemblance in these two troubled literary lives to be convincingly evidential: A shared veneration of Dickens* as the classic exemplar to emulate in their fictions? Check. A shared reckless callow infatuation with young prostitutes? Check. A shared literary taste for the milieu of seedy boarding houses, paying guests, and shabby hotels that reflects the desperate lives of London’s rootless masses? Check.

The same combination of sociocultural grit and nacreous sentiment? Check.

But the question remains. Did the mantle of Dickens fall on Gissing in the same manner as the mantle of Gissing on Hamilton? Gissing was twelve years old when Dickens died but that blip in chronology, in my own view, does not discount a belief in the transmigration of literary souls, since the lineage of the Dalai Lama, for example, owes its survival to the reincarnation of the Sage in boys as young as eight, recognised as the Chosen to continue each reincarnated predecessor’s unfinished work. 

However, these conjectures aside, maybe the shared motif of the broken winded Have Nots carrying the baggage of the Haves has moral weight . . . the moral weight of a cautionary tale . . .

. . . and points to the dangers for any writer who is fated to be a colporteur of another man’s tracts**.

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See, also,  A Girl Alone : Scenario of a Screenplay in Homage to George Gissing. A Treatment in Sixty Scenes from Four Acts of a Screenplay prompted by the stories of George Gissing (freely adapted from, notably, A Daughter of the Lodge and The House of Cobwebs). 
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-girl-alone-scenario-of-screenplay-in.html

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* There is, indeed, a spiritual connection with Dickens of some significance concerning Hamilton’s death (in 1962). Hamilton, the Dickens devotee, died aged fifty-eight, and geranium petals from a wreath (‘Patrick’s favourite flower’) were scattered on his coffin. Charles Dickens also died in his fifty-eighth year, entombed in Westminster Abbey, with his coffin covered with his favourite flower, scarlet geraniums.
See:
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/no-geraniums-wrong-wreath-for-dickenss.html

** 04.11.2017 : Have I been unfair to Hamilton’s memory? Is my theory in ashes? You must judge the merits of the case for I learned only today of a memoir by Patrick’s brother Bruce in which he states, ‘It was years afterwards that he told me how once he had been coming from Brighton Station with Mummie in a “fly” [cab]. She must have been returning from some visit, because there was luggage. And, all the way from the station to Number Three, the cab was pursued by a “runner”; one of those pitiful creatures, unemployed and unemployable, who sought a subsistence by chasing after horse-drawn cabs in the hope of earning a few pence by helping with luggage at the end of the journey. Patrick, sitting with his back to the cabman, watched the man in fascinated horror; but I am sorry to have to tell that Mummie ordered him away peremptorily on reaching home, without giving him a halfpenny. Patrick was appalled. He was never to forget the poor fellow’s sweating face, laboured breath, and consumptive look. It was perhaps his introduction to the world’s suffering.’

Englishness and its Disproof of Theory of Reincarnation.

[Selina] ‘I don’t want to be a spirit and return to the earth as someone else. I could never like anyone else enough for that.’ 
[Lavinia] ‘And we are irritated by other people. Suppose we were irritated by the people we were! As we never are it seems to disprove the theory.’

Ivy Compton-Burnett

The Mighty and Their Fall (1961)

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html