Detective fiction of the 1860s - 1880s needs smart reading and careful handling

(This is a version of a paper I delivered at the VPFA 10th Anniversary Conference in July 2018)

It is almost universally acknowledged that detective fiction is a conservative genre: “detective fiction offered, and indeed still offers, the illusion of security and safety and continuity in what was becoming a disordered, insecure and disturbing world.” (Heather Worthington.  Key Concepts in Crime Fiction, 2011, p xvii). By solving crimes and making the culprit face justice time after time, the genre formula reconfirms the social status quo and prevailing ideas of law and order. Yet the pleasure of reading detective fiction is in the thrill of the chase, the experience of uncertainty, the slow reveal of criminal cunning and coming face to face with homicidal maniacs.

How do we reconcile the moral value of these two halves of the genre formula: the crime and the resolution? We read detective stories because we like the threat to the social order that crime brings, but really we read them because we like the reconfirmation of that social order that comes in the end. Is detective fiction for timid fuddy-duddies who like the mild frisson of dark mysteries and cunning plots by dastardly villains, only to see a crossword-like puzzle neatly solved and their cosy middle-class world order maintained by heroic detectives?

The usual method of academics is to apply the recognised, unquestioned genre formula to a story and see how it fits, i.e. look for signs of Sherlock Holmes-like detection leading to resolutions with public justice in Victorian popular novels (like The Moonstone) and then label them as detective stories. I want to challenge this approach and the view of all detective fiction as an exclusively re-assuring and conservative genre.

We should first recognize that the 1860s, the  high-Victorian decade when detective fiction emerged in the form we recognize it, was a very different time from the 1890s and the lead-up to the First World War, when the modern genre formula solidified into its present shape. We must be much more sensitive to the aspirations and interests of Victorian authors who dabbled with crime and detection in their novels. They may not have been very interested in the puzzle aspect of a detective story at all; they may not have felt the need to bolster the prevailing social order by meeting out justice at the end. Instead, for them, detective story may have served a different purpose.

As Worthington recognizes: “A significant turning point in the evolution of crime fiction was World War I” (xvii) and “Detective fiction with its implicit promise of the preservation of the social status quo, was ideal for this audience.” (Ibid.) I argue that it is inappropriate and misleading to assume that the genre formula of detective fiction and the ideas and ideals embedded in it leading up to and after the Great War can be unquestioningly applied to stories with detection written and published between the 1860s and 1880s. The world changed radically while detective fiction developed. And we must not shoehorn early detective stories into the straitjacket of a later genre formula and assign the same interests, aims and values to stories separated by half a century and a devastating world war.

James Payn was one of the early authors whose stories often included crime, mystery and detection. His Found Dead is a murder mystery and a detective story, published in 1869, the year that separated The Moonstone from Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, two seminal novels for detective fiction. In many ways, Found Dead is a missing link between them.

Payn’s novel opens with a bucolic country scene in Breakneckshire: It is early morning at Mordan Hall in the village of Allgrove. Squire Frank Blissett is “booted and spurred … [he] sniffs the misty air almost like the hounds he burns to follow.” (2). Frank Blisset is a thoroughly good man, “the more you get to know him, the better you like him.” (3) It is quickly established that Squire Blissett has a devoted, invalid wife Lotty and a fairy-like, charming, 16-year-old daughter Christie, and that should anything happen to the Squire, Mordan Hall will go to his debt-laden, morally dubious, artist brother Fred who recently retired from the army in India. Then Squire Blissett rides off to join the local hunt and to meet his death on a lonely stretch of a country track.

Squire Blissett is found by his groom Robert, lying face down with the back of his head bashed in. The second person on the scene is Doctor Fungus, an eccentric doctor with antiquarian interests and Sherlock Holmes’s methods. Doctor Fungus examines the body and the scene and concludes: “Good God! It is as I suspected – there has been some foul play.” (32) The local magistrate tells Dr Fungus: “For God’s sake, don’t pursue this discussion.” (34) Dr Fungus is told to keep quiet about his findings, for the sake of the Squire’s family and for the peace of the community.

At “the close of that same day” (39) the scene moves to London, where a tall, gaunt, “coffee-coloured” (44), “anxious and nervous” (41) man with a comb-over (44) rings the bell of a night refuge. Artist Fred Blissett has come in search of picturesque poverty to model for his painting. Instead he finds Charlie Steen, a handsome young man of 17, “his limbs were shapely and well-grown, exhibiting no sign of protracted want and hardship” (54). Charlie is an orphaned son of an army officer who served in India. Fred offers him a job as an artist’s assistant (57). “Be docile, be obedient, that’s all I ask.” (83) Fred tells Charlie and takes him to his bachelor apartments (62), where in the morning “in a gorgeous dressing-gown … [Charlie] … looked as handsome and delicate a young gentleman as ever captivated a landlady.” (65) When the news of Squire Blissett’s death arrives, Fred sends Charlie to Mordan Hall as his representative (96).

At the inquest for Squire Blissett’s death, the community and particularly its leading member Mr Mellish expect the verdict of accidental death, “unless that little Fungus, who has certainly a maggot in his brain, should make himself obnoxious.” (135) Dr Fungus duly does and, following his evidence for murder, the open verdict of “found dead” is returned (141).

By now Charlie has fallen in love with Christie Blissett and finds himself at home at Mordan Hall. Mrs Blissett does not accept the open verdict: “He was murdered, Sir.”(148) She declares to Charlie “His blood calls from the earth to you, Charlie Steen, and you must see justice done upon his slayer.” (Ibid.) The reward, Mrs Blissett hints, might be Christie’s hand in marriage (154).

There are various, quite clumsy clues of red stains on a suit (73), Fred’s sketch of the location of the murder (158) that he then quickly erases (166), railway timetables (172, 180) and, this is the clincher, an ancient coin known to have been carried by the Squire at the time of his death (14, 213). Through his detective work Charlie discovers that Fred murdered Squire Blissett. We are only halfway through the story.

In the second half of the novel, narrative interest centres on the relationship between Fred and Charlie, the murderer and the detective. The nature of these individual characters, with their past experiences shaping their present reaction, now guides the events. The choices they make shape the story.

Charlie Steen has found a welcoming and supportive community in Allgrove: “For the first time in his life, he was living among friends.” (193). He is offered support to go to Oxford (185-6). Mr Mellish helps him to retrieve a small inheritance (200). He is in love with Christie and buys her a piano (202). Charlie, with his colonial background and orphan status is an outsider longing for a home, but with a debt of gratitude towards Fred who first rescued him from destitution. Charlie pursues Fred as the amateur detective but he also provides an alibi for Fred (222) and later lies to protect him (297).

Fred, who shares Charlie’s Indian connection, is also an outsider exiled from the Allgrove idyll. With his financial worries and artistic lifestyle he is a lonely and restless creature haunting the edges of the Blissett family circle. Fred’s feelings towards Charlie are ambivalent throughout; he offers to support the young man, but also desires to exploit him and his good looks.

Fred’s sanity keeps being questioned (98, 104, 172, 182, 227): “he is touched in upper decks,” (104) “there was always a screw loose in Master Frederick” (128). When his guilt becomes apparent, it becomes the source of his madness: “He has something on his mind which is wearing him to thread, which is hurrying him into the grave.” (227). In Fred Blissett’s, as in Lady Audley’s case, middle-class criminality must be linked to mental illness.

Charlie holds Fred’s fate in his hands. The detective has solved the case, but only the detective and the reader know this. How do you think the tale will end? Charlie and Christie will obviously marry. Fred Blissett clearly has to vanish and remain childless in order for Christie and Charlie to take over Mordan Hall in a happy ending. If this is a sensation novel, Charlie will call Mr Mellish and Doctor Fungus and together they will bundle Fred off to a lunatic asylum (possibly in Belgium). If this is a detective story, Charlie will call in the law and bring Fred to justice. What happens in Found Dead is more disturbing and more radical than either of these scenarios.

Charlie does two things: first he forces a confession from Fred and demands he stays away from Allgrove (309). He also demands that Fred remains single (Ibid.). The impact of this ‘punishment’ are significant for both Charlie and Fred. Secondly, Charlie does what Dr Fungus refused to do: he keeps quiet: “that dread secret … was left a secret to the end.” (323) Charlie marries Christie and becomes the ideal country Squire (324). Charlie keeps the ancient coin that Squire Blissett was carrying when he was murdered. He locks it in a cabinet. Sometimes when he is alone he takes it out to remind himself of the past and, the novel ends, “in that coin lies the secret of his own success in life.” (326) The implications of these understated final words of the novel are jaw-dropping: the detective reaps the reward for murder. For personal gain (to get the girl and the estate) and to avoid scandal, Charlie keeps the murder a secret and forces the reader into complicity. The murder is kept under lock and key in the country house library, to be taken out and contemplated at leisure, just like this novel might be. The social order is not restored to robust health after disruption by crime, instead social order is revealed to be a fiction maintained by the detective and the reader sharing a criminal secret.

It has been suggested that Dickens, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was following Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone in writing a detective story, further developing Collins’s character-based approach, as Collins wrote in his Preface, “to trace the influence of character on circumstances.” But Edwin Drood is much closer in some aspects to Found Dead: John Jasper is a man battling with his own demons, just like Fred Blissett. The narrative interest is not only centred on solving the crime, but on the psychological impact of the crime on the individual. Where Found Dead is much more radical than The Moonstone (we do not know this about Edwin Drood) is in the way it leaves the fictional detective and reader as the only ones who know the truth, and who must keep it a secret to maintain respectability and prosperity.

At the start we asked the question: how can detective fiction be morally subversive and ultra-conservative at the same time? Found Dead suggests that the question is false: the detective genre format did not come about as a short thrill of crime ending in the triumphant re-confirmation of the existing social order. Detective fiction developed as a natural extension of sensation fiction as a genre that questioned the moral foundations of society and explored the moral character of individuals. There is no conservative respectable status quo without a subversive underside of crime. Each is required to define and give substance to the other. They are two sides of the same coin (an ancient coin locked up in a country house cabinet, in this case). James Payn’s 1869 detective story Found Dead shows us, how crime is an essential part of the social order and cannot be excluded from it, and how our heroes, even detective heroes, are driven by selfish impulses as well as noble ones, like all of us.

"Sublime Constancy" vs Internal Conflict - Smythies's Characterization

Victorian popular fiction, plot-driven and fast-moving, is not celebrated for its deep characters with meaningful internal lives. Instead it seeks to use short-cuts to quickly establish serviceable characters. Acquitted utilizes a couple of these shortcuts.

Singular and stereotypical names give characters individuality, not only to separate them from other characters but also to remind the reader about the nature or role of the character in the narrative. Dickens, of course, does this extremely well. Mrs Gordon Smythies, too, is quite good with names. Mary Lynn is an unpretentious name for a heroine, with clear links to virginal purity and goodness. It is also socially ambiguous: fisherman’s daughter Mary can secretly be Lady Mary – her foster-mother would find it harder to convince us she could transform herself effortlessly into ‘Lady Polly,’ with a name associated more strongly with working class. The names of the male characters Paul Penryn and Jasper Ardennes, too, reflect the characters’ social standing. It is not difficult to guess which one of these characters is a reliable, honest land-owner’s son and which one is a young, consumptive, other-worldly aristocrat. The villains have suitable names too: Dan Devrill is close to the Devil in name and in nature, while Sligo Downy has a name that sounds smooth and elusive like the con-man’s character, with a blatantly racist Irish connection added in.

Throughout Acquitted, Smythies uses memorable and dramatic introductory portraits to establish her characters;. Smythies introduces Dan Devrill by telling us what kind of a man he is:

"This fellow, Dan Devrill by name, was a wife-beating, Sabbath-breaking, drunken wretch, more than suspected of being both a burglar and a wrecker."  (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 3)

This is a typical character description by Smythies: she often throws a volley of adjectives and a list of descriptors to make sure the reader gets a strong flavour of the character she is introducing. Another example is her introduction of young Lord Derwent, when he was still known as Jasper Ardennes (a name shared by his consumptive son):

"Jasper was a singularly handsome; elegant in his dress and manners, quick, clever, and eloquent; but he was cruel, crafty, and resolute. He pretended to be religious; but at heart he was a scoffer, a doubter, a free-thinker."  (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 3).

A special feature cam be used to single out the character, whether psychological or physical Smythies first describes the teenage Mary in terms of her outward appearance:

(Acquitted,Vol 1, Chapter 15)

Mary appears exotically Gothic with her thinness, pale skin and dark hair.  (Note the full brow – we have a hairy heroine). Smythies does not make a gender distinction in her descriptions. Male and female characters are equally introduced using either their appearance or their habits. (See portraits of Henry Trelawny in Vol 1, Chapter 3), Rhoda Cottrell in Vol. 2, Chapter 9 and Lady Derwent in Vol.3, Chapter 8).

As there is not much room wasted on character development in popular novels, it is even more important that characters remain consistent (stay in character) to retain their plausibility. As a small child Paul Penryn shows generosity for those worse off:

  (Acquitted, Volume 1, Chapter 8)

When his fellow clerk Fisk is locked up in debtors’ prison, Paul, at the age of nineteen, displays the same Christian charity:  “I cannot believe you can be so mean as to …”

(Acquitted, Volume 3, Chapter 2)

Too much consistency can backfire. Paul is so invariably upright that he makes a very boring hero. He faces the wonderful dilemma of whether to pursue love (Mary) or money (Rhoda Cottrell). Paul never hesitates and stays true to Mary, despite his desperate need to earn money. In fact he is never tempted to stray from the virtuous path of hard work and loyalty for his father, his sweetheart and his employer. He is quite simply lacking the one critical characteristic all fictional characters should have in order to come alive: internal conflict. Mary Lynn is another flat character. Minna is concerned when Mary is first invited to spend a day at the Castle with Lord Derwent’s children:

"... is it not a perilous thing for her to go wghere captivating, elegant, and heartless men abound?" (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 19).

Despite all the lures and temptations hinted at here (none materialize in the narrative) and of her being lifted above her apparent station as a fisherman’s daughter to be employed as a sub-governess and later as a companion to Lord Derwent’s children, Mary remains pure and humble – not once does she experience a thought unworthy of her virginal namesake. All characters in Acquitted suffer from the same laboured, consistent flatness.  At first, you struggle to find a single internal conflict in the novel’s cast of characters. Mrs Smythies comes closest to success in characterization with Lord Derwent: a thoroughly wicked man with the redeeming feature of love for his son, Jasper.

The most interesting development in Smythies’s characters in Acquitted comes with the apparent conflict between the stated aspirations of the female characters and their actions. This can be termed an internal conflict, although one that the characters themselves remain oblivious to.

Describing Minna’s return to be Lord Derwent’s lawful wife, the narrator talks to us about the supportive submissiveness and endurance of good women:

(Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 17)

Minna becomes to her husband:

“his guiding star, his counsellor, his constant companion and friend – all that woman can be when she fulfils to the uttermost all the duties – the love-prompted duties – of a true wife.” (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 18).

The actions of the female characters reveal something quite different. The timing of Minna’s decision to reclaim her place as Lord Derwent’s wife (mentioned previously) hints at this: the women in Acquitted appear to be a bunch of submissive women, but their actions and reactions reveal a rebellious streak.

Minna, a wild Vicar’s daughter who entered into a secret marriage when still a school-girl and then eloped with her husband to India, at the end of the novel claims the title of Countess of Altamount and regains a weakened, obedient husband after he has gone through a bout of madness brought on by grief for the loss of his son (Ibid.).

Mary, a fisherman’s adopted daughter and sub-governess becomes Lady Mary, without any apparent problems of adjusting to the change. She is able to marry her penniless childhood sweet-heart Paul Penryn, as she can now provide the family wealth. She brushes aside Paul’s protestations about their changed circumstances, refers without hesitations to the noble house of Altamount as “our house” and threatens Paul with legal action if he refuses to marry her: 

"Often, in olden time, the Penryns have wedded members of our house; I have heard you say so yourself. ... Paul, don't compel me to sue you for a breach of promise!" (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 17).

Polly Lynn, a bereaved fisherman’s wife and mother, has throughout the novel coerced her husband to carry on with the deception of bringing up Mary as their own.

Barbara Devrill is Dan Devrill’s abused and abandoned wife (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 13):

(Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 4)

She turns her life around, takes the kids and moves to work at the vicarage to start a new, better life (Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 13). She confronts her husband, brandishing a revolver:

(Acquitted, Vol 1, Chapter 14 – 2^nd – in the Tinsley Brothers’ 1870 edition there are two chapters numbered 14 in Volume 1). 

Lady Derwent, Lord Derwent’s second, bigamous wife, described as a “virago” (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 17) retires to Paris and marries “a young French count,” who turns out to be “one of the worst and most extravagant of the modern French school of fast men” (Ibid.).

Rhoda Cottrell, the spoiled daughter of the self-made businessman, who hoped to marry penniless Paul Penryn for love, marries besotted and rich Lord Snowdon instead and moves up the social scale (Acquitted, Vol 3, Chapter 16).

The narrative explicitly depicts women that conform to the norms; particularly, they are good wives, loyal and subservient. And yet, they make the important decisions, pursue their goals and by doing this stipulate much of the plot in the story. It is almost traditional in studies of sensation fiction to show how a narrative simultaneously illustrates the prevailing Victorian social values and subverts them, especially in relation to gender norms. Acquitted does not disappoint on this score.