Lady Geraldine - a Female Detective with a Side-Kick Husband

Richard Arkwright’s second novel The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery is a carefully plotted murder mystery with a married couple doing the detective work. The first person narrator George Pen Owen begins the story describing his idyllic boyhood days spent with his best friend Harry Collingwood, days seemingly filled with vigorous destruction of the local wildlife: killing crows and sparrows; hunting foxes, rats and moths, ferretting and, fishing (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 1). George displays the odd (to modern eyes) but common Victorian mixture of admiration for the natural world and eagerness to butcher it:

“An enthusiastic collector of nature's treasures, I was thus able to add many a rare and novel specimen to my fernery, my store of butterflies, and my display of stuffed birds. I shall never forget my first sight of the Osmunda Regalis.” (Ibid.)

Osmunda Regalis, Source: Wikipedia

The inspired descriptions of Monmouthshire (George’s home) and the Fenlands (Harry’s home) in the opening chapter may have been inspired by Arkwright’s own life. There are other autobiographical echoes. Arkwright, like George and Harry, was educated at Harrow and Cambridge (Ibid.). Arkwright worked as a barrister in Monmouthshire. Harry Collingwood becomes “a handsome and attractive barrister … on the high road to professional distinction.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 2) The most interesting similarity is George’s aristocratic marriage to “Lady Geraldine St. Pierre, only daughter of the Marquis of Stoneyhurst.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 1). The prominent role Geraldine takes in the murder investigation makes me wonder if Richard Arkwright modelled her character on his own wife, Lady Mary Caroline Charlotte Byng, daughter of the Earl of Stratford.

While George’s marriage to Geraldine is a happy one, Harry Collingwood is not so lucky. Harry marries Jessie Clark, from the neighbourhood of George’s Monmouthshire home. The marriage quickly turns sour. One evening, at a dinner table in front of George, she “threw off all restraint, and conducted herself with a violence of manner and language which was inexpressibly painful to witness.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 3) Harry breaks down and tells George: “that the experience of his married life had been miserable almost beyond endurance.” (Ibid.).

How can George help his best mate Harry to escape this terrible prison of a broken-down marriage? The solution arrives in the very next chapter: George is called back from a fishing trip to the Tweed by a telegram: “He is in custody on a charge of murdering his wife! Come at once!” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 4) George rushes back to London to hear “the main facts of the case … Jessie had been poisoned by strychnine, conveyed in a glass of orangeade, which Harry had given her himself in her bedroom.” (Ibid.) Strychnine particles are found in Harry’s writing desk, and he also left the house for several hours during the night in question, refusing to explain the reason for this (Ibid.).

Lady Geraldine and George are determined to prove Harry’s innocence. They hire a private detective Mr Sleuthson to help them (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol 2, Chapter 2). Arkwright uses the legal process to give structure and a sense of urgency to the plot. To begin the investigation of the murder mystery, an inquest at the “Westminster Police Court” presents us with all the known facts; all the servants of the household, and medical experts are interviewed. Later, at “the Central Criminal Court,” Harry is tried for “wilful murder” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 3). Here Arkwright takes the opportunity to complain about a well-noted phenomenon of the age: the courtroom was

“polluted by the presence of a row of women – women of gentle birth and breeding – who now, in their thirst for ab excitement which must be gratified at any cost, had seated themselves, with their fans and scent-bottles, even with their opera-glasses and refreshments, to watch the proceedings in the Sensational Trial of the season.” (Ibid.)

When the “Guilty!” verdict is pronounced, only one of these women faints with shock. George’s view on this can be seen as a (tongue-in-cheek?) comment on sensation novels like the one in which he himself appears:

“I heard long afterwards that this gracious exception among the group of unmoved spectators was no less a person than Mrs Alldon, the celebrated novelist. She alone, in virtue of her profession, could claim a justification for her presence in court, and she by her conduct demonstrated how far the real tragedies acted among us, in their awful routine, surpass in horror the wildest conceptions of imagination.” (Ibid.)

After the verdict, Harry’s day of execution is set for “the second Monday in May” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 4). Now the clock starts running in earnest and tension grows. Will Geraldine and George be able to save Harry’s life? And if Harry did not kill his wife, who did?

Lady Geraldine is the brains of the operation. George is Watson to her Holmes. Throughout their investigation, Lady Geraldine decides what steps to take (for example The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapters 1, 2, 5,12, 14). She examines the evidence, including analysing handwriting with a magnifying glass (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 5). She interviews witnesses from all social classes winning their trust (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 1). Geraldine has all the ideas and theories, and she explains them to George (for example, The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapters 1, 5). She even talks like a detective (or a barrister): “That fact is established as far as human testimony goes. Beyond it, the explanation which I suggested just now rests entirely on circumstancial evidence.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2 Chapter 1)

When it becomes necessary for someone to travel to New York to capture a key witness and possible suspect, George is left home and Geraldine travels across the Atlantic accompanied by her lady’s maid and Mr Sleuthson. She conducts the most delicate part of the murder investigation on her own (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapters 11 and 12). Later, she appears in court to give evidence (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 14).

Lady Geraldine is an unusual character: an aristocratic lady who takes an active lead as an amateur detective breaking a number of social conventions. She is a female detective with a supporting and admiring husband in awe of her intellect and social acumen.

George narrates Lady Geraldine’s adventure. He expresses his admiration for her “determination and confidence” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 7), “the powers of persuasion and discreet investigation with which Geraldine was endowed.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 4) He describes the “rapidity with which she weighed the merits of the various stratagems which instantly occurred to her” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 11). George reveals his inferiority to Geraldine’s detective prowess by his questions and inability to follow her: “George … You don’t understand! … You don’t notice what I mean.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 4, see also Vol. 2, Chapter 5).

Only once (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 12) does Geraldine experience self-doubt. Alone in New York, she has to extract a crucial piece of evidence and thereby potentially incriminate “a sick and helpless woman”: “With her eyes fixed on the goal of her ambition … Geraldine had overlooked the nature of some of the steps which she had taken in the course of her pursuit.” (Ibid.). But the threat of the arrival of the police compels her to proceed: “She fancied the wretched girl already in the custody of the police, and exposed to rough handling and cruel questioning.” (Ibid.)  Despite the opposition of professional men (a medical doctor and a private detective) Geraldine is adamant that the delicate situation is best handled by herself (Ibid.)

George, like the George of Driven Home, is a young gentleman with an interest in sports. He is also “peculiarly sensitive to any mental strain.” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 4). Receiving the news of Harry’s predicaments, George is “in a condition rather to receive than to offer comfort and assistance.” (Ibid.). Falling asleep in Harry’s study, he has a vivid nightmare of Harry performing a magic lantern show of Edgar Allan Poe’s horror stories. This leads him to discover a clue in Harry’s desk: a love-charm written in invisible ink (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 7).

This love-charm becomes the central clue to the mystery. The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery is very much about women's ambitions and desires. Lady Geraldine takes it upon herself to prove Harry’s innocence. Her investigation starts from the doomed marriage of Jessie Clark and Harry Collingwood and leads her to the working-class love story of Sabrina Reed and Handsome Hugh. Lady Geraldine is by far the smartest and most capable of the characters, but beyond her solid belief in Harry’s innocence, she does not have much emotional depth. Instead, the women of the lower social classes, Nanny Price, Sabrina Reed, Bridget O’Hara, Charlotte Sims and, to an extent, even poor Jessie Collingwood née Clark, provide the emotional colour of the narrative. They succumb to hysterics, feel burning jealousy and desperate love; they have ambitions both professional and social. They also provide moments of slightly patronizing humour. Nanny Price, the village witch, gives a lively courtroom performance (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 14). Charlotte Sims, the housemaid elevated to a position of a lady’s maid by Lady Geraldine, dreams of a career as a romantic heroine when she is asked to help in the investigation:

“The chief recreation in Charlotte’s previous existence had been the study of sensational literature; her most cherished aspiration, that she herself might become the leading spirit in some deed of mystery or daring . . now – could the wildest conceptions of the mot imaginative reader of romances have evolved a situation more desirable?” (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 2, Chapter 11)

Geraldine and George’s marriage is in stark contrast to that of Harry and Jessie Collingwood. Jessie shows no regard for her husband and lacks social skills. Geraldine, on the other hand, is obviously intellectually superior to her husband and has great social skills. It is worth noting that Jessie grew up in “the position of a poor relation” in an aristocratic household (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery Vol. 1, Chapter 2), while Lady Geraldine was the only daughter of a Marquis (The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, Vol. 1, Chapter 1). Again, a character from a lower social class provides the emotional turmoil and passion, while the character from the higher social class retains a calm, rational appearance throughout.

In The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, the style of writing is similar to the earlier Driven Home and the protagonists (the two Georges) share characteristics. But there are some marked differences which serve to illustrate the journey from traditional melodrama to modern detective fiction.

Driven Home derives much of its drama from the supernatural – the appearance of ghosts, an “irresistible power” (Driven Home, Chapter 7) that guides the hero’s actions and his “unreasoning horror” (Driven Home, Chapter 9) for the villain. The suspense and drama in The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery is derived from the suspicions of guilt (who committed the murder) and Lady Geraldine and George’s desperate race against time to save their friend from the gallows. There is no villain in The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, instead there is a circle of suspects. The experience of both the protagonist and the reader is changed by this. Feelings of suspicion and uncertainty fluctuate between characters because there is no clear, stable target for animosity and pursuit.

The plot of Driven Home progresses through coincidences, the plot The Queen Anne’s Gate progresses to a large extent through logical steps taken by the detectives in their investigation. While George’s motivations in Driven Home are often irrational (blind fear, supernatural persuasion), the actions of the amateur detectives in The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery are based on rational reasoning.

Driven Home offers a series of revelations that unveil the mystery. In The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery the early chapters are littered with clues whose significance becomes clear towards the end of the story. Driven Home is a series of more or less sensational surprises: each revelation is a new piece of information. The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery is a series of more or less sensational realizations when each clue falls into place to reveal the truth. In both novels, as typically in sensation novels, details are pregnant with meaning. In Driven Home, that meaning is exposed at the moment the detail is discovered, in The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery, the meaning is delayed; there is space for the reader to wonder and hypothesize. The reading of Driven Home can proceed linearly, each revelation being a new little burst of energy to propel the plot forward. The reading of The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery is more demanding, because each clue, provided it is spotted by the reader in the first place, complicates the story and adds ‘narrative drag’ as the reader has to consider all the potential meanings of the clue within the framework of the continuing story.

Although written only three years apart (1886 and 1889) Driven Home and The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery offer distinctly different reading experiences. They are both engaging and full of sensation.

The Importance of an Impressionable Hero

After the dramatic scene at the end of chapter six in Driven Home, George succumbs to brain-fever. He recovers, but although he can remember everything up to the moment when he and Carlos set of for Longman’s Drift, he cannot recall the events that took place there:

“Then utter forgetfulness, and not only forgetfulness; for with it came that painful sensation that I have experienced when endeavouring to grasp the idea of Eternity— a conception of vast space that has no beginning and no end. Superadded to this was a persuasion that some horror lurked underneath the partial and temporary veil which had clouded my memory, and which it would be folly to uplift.” (Driven Home, Chapter 7)

For the sake of the plot as much as for his own peace of mind, George does not seek to find out what happened that fateful night. Instead, “I became an enthusiastic farmer. … drinking and high play were completely abandoned.” (Ibid.). Time passes, but one day George again feels the irresistible power of some supernatural agent in his life: “it was absolutely necessary for me to return to London. … ” (Ibid.):

“Day and night, waking or sleeping, this irresistible power drove me on. No occupation, however absorbing, could at last, even for a moment, enable me to withdraw my mind from this one subject. The pressure on my brain became intolerable; and at last, perforce, I was obliged to subordinate my own volition to that of the unseen power, and I determined to start for England as soon as I could make the necessary arrangements.” (Ibid.)

An attentive reader will have an idea what might be driving George home. George might have an idea too, if he did not suffer from amnesia. Because he has already experienced the force of the supernatural agency in his life twice before (Driven Home, Chapters 4 and 6), he does not question the reason for experiencing it once more or link it to the events at Longman’s Drift (Driven Home, Chapter 7). The two earlier occasions are a pair of red herrings to mask the significance of the third experience, which now has some kind of a logical explanation.

George’s amnesia is a good example of the awkward tricks Victorian authors had to use in order to deal with the gradual unravelling of a mystery. In order for the following events to appear mysterious and frightening to George, in order for him to slowly make sense of them and piece the solution together, George has to start in a state of cluelessness. George’s amnesia is a distant (poor?) relative to Franklin Blake’s somnambulism in The Moonstone or John Jasper’s opium dream in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Once back in England, George continues to be haunted by strange spirits and the plot advances through a series of fortuitous coincidences. George meets Mrs Blythswood on the train. When he then suffers from nightmares, the doctor diagnoses “over-excited nerves” and sends him to the seaside town of Shelterbourne to recover (Driven Home, Chapter 8). This town is by coincidence where Mrs Blythswood resides, as well as the villain of the story, and the villain’s victim and her son. It is handy that Shelterbourne should be so popular.

Mrs Blythswood is a young widow; she was an abused wife: “the malignity and ingenuity of the persecution to which she had been subjected at the hands of her husband were almost incredible.” (Driven Home, Chapter 9) This abominable abuse took the somewhat suspect form of forbidding her to dress in mourning when her mother died on her way to America, or “to receive any newspapers which could have given her any details of the event.” (Ibid.)

In Shelterbourne, George joins a pleasant “whist coterie” at a club (Ibid.). Here, one afternoon, Doctor Erbach, the villain of the piece makes his appearance:

“Arriving at the club one afternoon, I observed among the intending players a stranger, whose appearance exercised at once an extraordinary effect over me. ... There was nothing really repulsive or alarming in the tall and active figure, and dark and somewhat handsome face, to account for the horror and repugnance which his presence caused me. It was the expression of his dark and deep-set eyes that so instantly and peremptorily commanded attention. There was a look of power, of unscrupulousness, in them,— a look which seemed to say, "No pity can restrain me in the pursuit of any object I may have in view,"— a look such as a successful necromancer might have worn, who, by the sacrifice of human victims, had acquired a familiarity with the secrets and powers of an unseen and supernatural world ; and yet, with this expression there seemed mingled a look of terror and anxiety, such as a commonplace murderer might have worn in the interval between the deed of blood and apprehended moment of discovery." (Driven Home, Chapter 9)

George assigns Dr Erbach typical qualities of a sensational villain. The first quality is the stranger’s immediate “extraordinary effect.” He does not impress with his physique or bodily strength; there is “nothing really repulsive or alarming” in his figure. Instead, his uncanny power is psychological and it is concentrated in his “dark and deep-set eyes.” The portrait of the villain is built up from the impression he makes on George. George imagines him to be an evil master of supernatural forces like “a successful necromancer.” He is also like “a commonplace murderer” on the run. The first image is magnificent and frightening, the second is despicable and doomed. This villain, by first impressions, is both a formidable opponent and one that can, and will, be vanquished.

At the whist table, partnered with Dr Erbach, George has the most horrifying experiences yet of the ghosts that haunt him. There are now two of them: a man and a child; and they are pointing a finger at the doctor. George is overwhelmed with terror:

“A sudden unreasoning horror of the doctor, who seemed to be the centre of such mysterious revelations, took possession of me, and I resolved that I would not lose consciousness in his presence, if by any effort I could retain it.” (Ibid.)

But as soon as the doctor leaves the club, George’s nerves get the better of him: “I heard his footsteps on the pavement outside, I fell fainting to the floor.” (Ibid.)

George Wardour is no Bruce Willis. Much could be said about the masculinity of sensational heroes. They are young, professional or at least educated men (like Robert Audley, Franklin Blake, Walter Hartright or even John Jasper) well in touch with their feminine sides. They may be athletic and fond of field sports, but they are not strangers to tingling nerves, palpitations and fainting. Much has been written about heroines of sensation fiction, but so far less of heroes. In “Sensation Fiction, Gender, Identity,” Tara McDonald first identifies flamboyant villains and easily duped husbands as typical men featured in sensation novels, but she goes on to suggest “Yet perhaps the most significant development in male characterization in the sensation genre is a third type: the amateur detective.” (in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction, Ed . by Andrew Mangham. [2013], p136).

MacDonald argues that “Playing detective, then, offers these characters tools that are vital for personal and professional fulfilment.” (Ibid.). Men who take on the role of detective in sensational narratives, do not just get the girl and, often, the country house, but they come of age through the process of detection. Sensation novels, then, can be seen as a kind of Bildungsroman for their young male protagonists.

It is essential that George faints. Throughout Driven Home, it is imperative that the hero goes through states of emotional turmoil: brain-fever, fainting, incapacitating fear, hallucinations or hauntings (depending on whether you believe in ghosts). George, like a good sensational hero, is teetering on the verge of madness. First, it is essential for the narrative that its protagonist experiences all the horror and excitement of the events vividly in order to transmit the same sensations to the reader more effectively through sympathetic osmosis. Secondly, it is also essential for the plot, so that information can be withheld (here through selective amnesia) or given (here through ghostly visitation); or to enable events to take place (here George can be moved unconscious to the mysterious doctor’s house in order to wake up to experience new horrors there).

 Once awake, the unknown power leads George to open the doctor’s notebook and discover a whole career of evil in them. He comes across a series of hideous images of medical experimentation on animals. It concludes with a picture of a child, hinting at a possible continuation of the series (Driven Home, Chapter 9). In a state of terror, George flees from Doctor Erbach’s house, which “now seemed to me a den of murder and mystery.” (Driven Home, Chapter 10). At this point in the narrative, the mystery it at its most entangled: George is labouring under some supernatural curse, Doctor Erbach is clearly evil and up to no good, the identity of Mrs Blythswood’s abusive husband is still in question, and there is a child in danger somewhere. How will George resolve all these questions? He listens to an old wife’s tale. Mrs Trewalney, whom George meets by coincidence in the woods after his mad flight (Driven Home, Chapter 10), has all the answers, it seems. In chapters eleven and twelve, we hear Mrs Trelawney’s story. Now George is certain that Doctor Erbach is evil and must be stopped. When George finds unidentified (possibly human) remains near the doctor’s house, he is convinced a crime has taken place.

The police are of no assistance to George. They laugh at him. George has no other way but to try to catch the villain himself and he sets off in pursuit. On a train he encounters an agitated young man, who tells him a story that could have come from “one of the sensational periodicals of the day” (Driven Home, Chapter 14): Doctor Erbach has had a most abrupt and brutal end. It is unexpected but, in a way, quite modern.  George experiences a great sense of relief, his ghosts depart and leave him to marry Mrs Blythswood. The remains of Doctor Erbach’s (assumed) victim disappear when a building site is cleared for a new housing estate. Sensational crimes by monstrous villains are hidden beneath modern domestic life.

Despite the clumsy supernatural elements and the bundle coincidences that provide the plot, Arkwright’s novel is clever. It remains true to its initial proclamation: in the end, there is no actual evidence to support George’s story. He cannot prove that the ghosts ever existed. Neither is there any evidence of Dr Erbach’s crime – the remains George discovers are never examined by anyone else than George. This is the metafictional twist at the end of the tale: Arkwright, the barrister, has constructed his novel in a way that all the sensational events, except for the incident at Longman’s Drift, which does have witnesses, may be wild, mad imaginings resulting from brain fever brought on by a traumatic experience. The sensational story of Driven Home may have taken place only in the narrator’s fevered imagination.

Sensation Novel as a Model for Story-Telling

Driven Home: A Tale of Destiny (1886) is neatly packaged into a single volume of fourteen chapters. This reflects the emergence of a new, tighter novel format and a move away from the rambling three-deckers. Single volume novels were much more practical. When you borrowed a book from Mudie’s Circulating Library or purchased it from W. H Smith’s railway bookstall, you got the whole story in a single wrapping. There was no need to go hunting for further installments (as I will have to do with the second volume of The Queen Anne’s Gate Mystery).

There were also aesthetic and artistic influences at work in the changing format of the novel. By the 1880s, one can discern the idea of a novel as a coherent piece of literary art. Questions of narrative structure and narrative techniques had become matters of literary theory. Novel as an art form was developing its own methodology and critical vocabulary. More and more novels were published in book-form from the start and no longer as re-prints of serialized originals. Readers now had an appetite for entire novels, rather than reading by installment. This had as much to do with the changing taste (and education levels) of the public, as the developing market for literature. For a detailed analysis of the social history of the novel format, see Peter Keating’s The Haunted Study (1989).

Arkwright’s Driven Home, then, is a sensation novel in a ‘modern,’ single-volume format. Chapters one and two introduce the protagonist and set the scene. Chapters three to seven give us an exotic adventure in a foreign land which leads unexpectedly to the main mystery. Right in the middle of the novel, in chapter six, comes the critical crunch point, which propels the story to a new direction. The unravelling of the mystery takes place through chapters eight to fourteen. The novel has a clear plot arc. It follows to an almost ridiculous degree the ‘archetypal’ story structure put forward by John Yorke in Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them (Penguin, 2013). In the first half of the novel, protagonist George journeys out to an alien world. A critical event takes place there, he is changed as a result. In the second half of the story, George journeys back home, he is ‘driven home,’ and finds resolution and closure only when he is able to reconcile and integrate the consequences of the critical event into his life and self. Into this simple and straightforward structural framework, Arkwright builds his sensation story.

George is brought up by his mirthless aunt in a gloomy, old house in Chiswick. From the start, George suspects that his origins are tragic: “I must have had in my veins the blood of some wild and reckless being, perhaps some cruel and pitiless criminal.” (Driven Home, Chapter 1) As expected in a sensation novel, these turn out to be not just romantic musings of a lonely child with too much energy and imagination. On her deathbed, George’s aunt makes the revelation: “You are George Wardour, the only child of Geroge Wardour, the poisoner.” (Driven Home, Chapter, 1) The family tragedy is dispensed with in a couple of sentences: “His wretched wife, who stole him from me, deserted him …” (Ibid.) This sounds promising, but nothing comes of it. The whole purpose of George’s sensational parentage is, it would seem, to establish his flawed nature: he is a fundamentally good man with a wild streak and a moral weakness. His failings are explained as hereditary traits. George has an internal demon, like all good tragic heroes. Arkwright is here creating a promising protagonist, even if with great haste and clumsiness.

George Wardour the elder’s “victims were two orphans, whom he had induced to insure their lives” (Ibid.). Life insurance featured as a motive in two infamous Victorian murder cases, those of William Palmer the Rugeley Poisoner in 1855 and of Mrs Mary Ann Cotton in 1873. Closer in time to Driven Home, were the trials of Catherine Flanagan and Margaret Higgins in Liverpool in 1884. They appear to have run a whole business of poisoning victims and cashing in their life insurances. The stories of Palmer and Cotton as summarized by Judith Flanders in The Invention of Murder (2011) and there is a book by Angela Brabin dedicated to Flanagan and Higgins: The Black Widows of Liverpool: A Chilling Account of Cold-Blooded Murder in Victorian Liverpool (2003). Many Victorian cases of poisoning remain suspect. Medicines of the period tended to be lethal, toxicological tests were inadequate and the verdicts were often based purely on circumstantial evidence. George Wardour may have been convicted as a poisoner, but his guilt is by no means certain if the reported real Victorian criminal cases are anything to go by. George the younger, however, accepts his father’s guilt without question and decides to leave England never to return (Driven Home, Chapter 1).

George boards a ship heading to San Francisco. He is going to join the gold rush. Gold was discovered in California in 1849. The gold rush peaked in 1852 although the hopeful miners and prospectors kept digging for the rest of the 1850s (the Klondike gold rush came along in the 1890s).

The first part of Driven Home tells of George’s adventures in the California gold fields. On board the ship on the way out there (Driven Home, Chapter 2), we learn more about George’s character. He excels in physical activities, whether it is climbing the rigging of the ship or “the pugilistic art.” He discovers his talent for entertainment by song and story-telling, and notes his “new and insatiable love for notice and appreciation.” (Ibid.). This is in contrast to his lonely and constrained childhood. The image of a young man let loose on the wider world and off on an adventure is believable. We can understand George’s enthusiasm. For him, “Every moment now seemed worth living.” (Ibid.) At the same time, Captain Maitland warns George: “you have three implacable enemies:” Don Carlos, drinking and gambling. (Ibid.)

In America, George teams up with the dubious gold digger and gambler Carlos he befriended on board the ship. They also invite along Mike O’Callaghan, a large Irishman with a sweetheart waiting at home (Driven Home, Chapter 3). After running out of money in San Francisco, they finally head to the Sierra Nevada mountains to look for gold. Here, George begins to experience a strange feeling of “a power other than my own” influencing his choices (Driven Home, Chapter 4).

This early  appearance of a vague supernatural force appears to break the logic of the novel. Later in the narrative, we know why George is haunted by an unknown power and it makes sense. There is no logical explanation for it here. This is significant, because for a reader who expects a narrative of sensational events that nevertheless remain within the limits of plausibility, this inexplicable meddling of supernatural forces in the narrative is dissatisfying. For a reader accustomed to premonitions, spiritual guidance and fingerprints of God all over traditional melodramatic narratives, this is perfectly acceptable. At this point, Arkwright's novel shows up a fault-line between the old and the new in Victorian story-telling. What would be completely out of place in a detective story, can just about be tolerated in a sensation novel, and would be considered quite ordinary in a traditional melodrama.

The first time the supernatural agent makes an appearance, it leads to George's benefit (Driven Home, Chapter 5). "But, for the second time, this same strange, inexplicable sensation that I had formerly experienced came upon me," (Driven Home, Chapter 6) it leads to tragedy.

George’s journey to California reaches a horrific climax at Longman’s Drift in Chapter 6. George is a recipient of a dying speech of a mysterious Englishman and a witness to a lynching. While the first scene is a satisfying development in a sensational plot and points to further drama, the latter scene is truly disturbing in its violence and would not be out of place in a penny dreadful. This is a well-placed, high-octane chapter which both propels the narrative forward and gives the reader a thrilling jolt of sensation. No wonder George says: “On the horror of these moments I dare not dwell” (Driven Home, Chapter 6) and develops an amnesia that is critical to the rest of the plot.