"Kill That Woman on the Spot!" - Mrs Gordon Smythies Spins Sensation Out of Thin Air

As a stylist and a wordsmith Mrs Gordon Smythies is excellent. Give her a death scene, a love scene, a crime scene, and she will squeeze bucket-loads of drama out of it.

Acquitted has some terrifically melodramatic and sensational scenes which show how in order to create sensation you need an event with at least some sensational potential; you also need to find an effective narrative perspective and you need to create an optimal literary composition to fully take advantage of the sensational potential.

At the start of the novel Henry Trelawny finds his daughter Minna on the beach the morning after a shipwreck, just as Dan Devrill is about to rob her, possibly murder her.

(Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 3)

Mr Trelawny approaches the scene and registers individual dramatic details. Like his gaze, short sentences jump from one detail to another: the knife, her scream, the hand on her throat. Then he recognizes his own daughter. The exclamation mark causes us to pause, and the rhythm of the text changes. Trelawny acts in a long paragraph of violence carried out in one breathless sentence. First the power is ramped up with “herculean strength,” “powerful arm,” “excitement of the moment” and then it is released with “dragged” and “dashed” resulting in “stunned and bleeding.”

For other such short sensational scenes in Acquitted, read what happens to Dan Devrill in the end (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 16)  and how the second Lady Altamount discovers her marriage is bigamous and invalid (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 17).

A much longer scene in Volume 1, Chapter 18 shows how Smythies builds up and maintains a sensational incident. On one of her evening walks, Minna is caught out by the descending darkness (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 18):

(Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 18)

The scene is romantic; all the adjectives are sensuous: “round and fair … flooding … trembling, quivering,” words denote richness “glory … silver … queen-like bounty, a silver token .. courtier-like.”

In this setting, Minna wanders into Smuggler’s Cave, where, so the legend tells, a “desperado” smuggler, surrounded by coast guards had “shot himself.” Minna sits on the slab of stone “on which tradition said that blood had been shed, in confirmation of which several dark brown stains appeared.”  In a sensuous moon-lit night, a lonely woman enters a dark place filled with echoes of past violence. The stage is set for something sensational to happen.

A boat approaches, “and on the white moon-lit sands she beheld a tall figure.” Smythies has chosen an effective point of view. We experience this scene entirely through Minna’s perspective and we learn of her every emotion and physical sensation:

(Ibid.)

Minna hides in fright, and with her we lose sight of the man, we only hear sounds of communicating whistles, the mooring of the boat and sounds of footsteps. This limited view of the events increases the narrative tension and creates a dramatic moment of revelation when Minna peeks through a hole into the inner cave and recognizes the form of her husband and face of Dan Devrill lit up by a beam of moonlight. This makes her even more scared: She ...

(Ibid.)

The dramatic sentence “Kill that woman on the spot!” highlighted by the double-quotes is the climax of this moment of revelation. It is also pure frightened supposition on Minna’s part. Her husband has not indicated that he wants Minna dead. Instead, Dan Devrill plans to blackmail him with the knowledge that Minna is alive (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 16). Still, “Kill that woman on the spot!” is, of course, an excellent sentence to include in any sensational scene, if you possibly can. Even if Minna only imagines these words, they almost make her faint:

(Ibid.)

There is continued emphasis on Minna’s weakness and vulnerability. She is a victim spying on her tormentors. She eaves-drops on the men’s conversation. We are invited to stand there in the dark with her, waiting in suspense, what we might learn:

"His back was to the trembling Minna, who still clung to the rusty bars. Luckily she wore black kid gloves, and a double crepe veil over her face, else the light of the fusee [sic.] would have flashed on features as white as marble, and on slender fingers of the same hue."

The narrative paints a very dramatic picture of pale Minna, dressed in black, clinging onto bars while she listens to her enemies. The scene is very black and white; it is night time, filled with dark shadows penetrated by beams and flashes of light from the moon and the men lighting their tobacco. All Minna’s senses are engaged, but her perceptions are fragmented. This sharpens the reader’s attention as we have to piece the scene together from these fragments. First, Minna heard the two men, then she also saw them, and finally, Minna also smells her husband with suitably dramatic effect:

"He passed so close to the half paralysed Minna, that his military cloak brushed her side, and the scent of patchouli - a scent he always wore - and which, as associated with him, had a dead influence over her, filled the air." (Ibid.)

What new information do we and Minna actually learn in this scene? This is the dialogue, pretty much all of the dialogue, the men have (note Lord Derwent is still called Jasper Ardennes, he only becomes Lord Derwent when his older brother dies six chapters latter, in Vol1, Chapter 24):

"I mean that she  lives. She did not go to the bottom in the Golden Bengal. I guessed so when I saw your honour in Calcutta. I knows it now."
"Hang me if I believe a word of it," said the Honourable Jasper Ardennes. "I know you Dan Devrill, and I believe it's a cock-and-bull story, trumped up to terrify me for purposes of your own." (Ibid.)

The whole dramatic scene of moon light, bloody legends of smugglers and, above all, Minna’s paralyzing fear, are all so much sensation spun around this very short exchange of words, which reveals nothing new and does not move the plot one inch forward – (the future) Lord Derwent does not believe Dan Devrill’s revelation and has to be further persuaded that Minna is alive in a later scene of nocturnal stalking (Acquitted, Vol1, Chapter 20).

Minna’s rescue from her dark hiding place is arranged swiftly. Another boat approaches, and the two men move away when they hear it. Minna sees her chance to escape unseen and she “staggers” out of the cave back to the beach. In the second boat are Natt Lynn, with Mary Lynn, Natt and Polly’s second daughter Rosy and Paul Penryn. They haul Minna into the boat:

"She've had a fright of some kind, poor Dear!" saidNatt, as Mary and Rosy hastened to loosen Minna's dress, untie her bonnet, and dash some sea-water in her face.
"She opened her eyes and said -
"Take me away! take me away! I cannot breathe here! They are at hand - they will kill me!" (Ibid.) 

Minna is removed from the dangerous situation by the lucky coincidence of Natt Lynn happening to sail past in the night. Again, Smythies presents Minna as powerless and overcome. She is almost delirious. Again, Smythies inserts a dramatic exclamation: “They are at hand – they will kill me!” There is no evidence in the narrative that Minna is in danger. The two men in the cave remain unaware of her presence. Sensation and melodrama is created solely from the state of mind and perceived threat to life of the heroine and the point of view character. The chapter and the scene does not end here. The narrative point of view leaves Minna and returns to hover in the cave to observe the two men complete their conversation. They plot to “scale the old wall” in the middle of the night to spy on Minna’s bedroom, to verify her identity. Minna, who has been so effective a point of view in the scene, has to be removed to allow a new sensational scene to be prepared. We will now wait for the moment when we can see Minna terrified again by the faces of the two murderous (so she thinks) men appearing at her window.

The scene at the Smuggler’s Cave used a dramatic setting, an effective point of view character with a disturbed mental state, melodramatic exclamations at key points and an emphasis on all senses and physical sensations to create a sensational incident, despite the fact that the actual events in the scene and the information revealed to the reader are not substantial in terms of the plot. At the end the scene also prepares way for a later sensational scene and creates a sense of anticipation. The incident in the Smuggler’s Cave demonstrates how expertly Smythies whips up a whole pile of melodrama and sensation even from meagre plot ingredients.