Why Do I Go On With This?

Robert Audley is not a happy detective. He feels the pangs of guilt and discomfort of every Victorian amateur sleuth. And he struggles with the question that haunts all amateur detectives in fiction: why go on since you are not getting rewarded for it? But Robert Audley has to go on for the plot to progress.

Robert's initial motivation for finding out the fate of George Talboys is his affection for the other man. After the accidental meeting in London, the winter spent together in Russia and their living together at Fig Court the two men are close and very fond of each other. Like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, here are two young men living together like a couple, like lovers. It is unlikely that Braddon is intentionally suggesting this. George Talboys appears very much in love with his wife, Robert falls in love in with a woman in the course of the narrative as well. Homoeroticism is probably unintentional and possibly seen by our modern eyes in places where a Victorian reader would only see a friendship between blokes. The close relationship between the men is needed in the narrative, because it gives Robert Audley his first reason to find out what happened to George Talboys. As Robert Audley says: "Who would have thought that I could have grown so fond of the fellow ... or feel so lonely without him? ... I declare that I would freely give up all and stand penniless in the world to-morrow, if this mystery could be satisfactorily cleared away and George Talboys could stand by my side." (Vol. II, Chapter 2).

Detective work is highly dubious activity. It means prying into other people's secrets, and penetrating their private lives. Detectives have to talk to low-life, often associate with outright criminals and be familiar with the dirty underbelly of society. Muck sticks and criminality rubs off on those who detect it. Detectives' methods are questionable; they lie, deceive and entrap innocent people in order to extract clues and snippets of information from them. Detection is not respectable. It is no wonder that the first police detectives were viewed with mixed feelings (Metropolitan Police Detective Department was established in 1842). Often recruited from the working class, these plodding men could walk rough-shod over decent people's parlour carpets and poke their noses into the private matters of their betters. Inspector Buckett in Bleak House (1858) and Inspector Cuff in The Moonstone (1868) are two famous examples in fiction who illustrate the extraordinary position of the police detective seen as powerful and socially inferior at the same time. It was an intricate manoeuvre for a mid-Victorian author to make a detective the hero of the story. The motivations of amateur detectives had to be impeccable to justify their morally suspect activity.

Braddon's handling of Robert Audley's role as a detective is further complicated because he provides the main point of view in the narrative. Detectives, as the most active characters in plot-driven mystery novels, usually do. As readers follow Robert's investigation, we see the events from his perspective. We, too, get to experience the thrills and agonies of detective work. And while the reading experience is aimed to be titillating and exciting, this is not called sensation fiction for nothing, the reader must not be made to feel dirty or nosy or morally wanting. Braddon has to find a way around these dilemmas for us to enjoy the sensational unravelling of mystery in Lady Audley's Secret with a clear conscience and our sense of propriety intact.

Robert is painfully aware of his bad behaviour. He questions his own need to investigate George's disappearance and he is horrified by the prospect of a family tragedy at the end of it. "Why do I go on with this, ... when I know that it is leading me, step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which of all others I should avoid? ... Should I be justified in doing this?" (Vol II, Chapter 1). "Why should I try to unravel the tangled skein, to fit the pieces of the terrible puzzle, and gather together the stray fragments which when collected may make such a hideous whole?" (Vol II, Chapter 2). Robert Audley bridles against his own compulsion to go on "the loathsome path - the crooked byway of watchfulness and suspicion" (Vol II, Chapter 6) and work his way ever closer to revealing Lady Audley's secret.

Robert's sense of responsibility as the keeper of terrible secrets is almost overwhelming and turns his care-free life into the miserable existence of a detective. He withdraws from his friends: "How could he sit amongst them ... and yet carry in his mind those the horrible burden of those dark terrors and suspicions that were with him day and night? He could not do it! He had shrunk from these men as if he had, indeed, been a detective police officer, stained with vile associations, and unfit company for honest gentlemen." Vol III, Chapter 7)

Braddon's first trick is to turn the whole question on its head: detective work, instead of making Robert morally suspect, makes him morally sound: "The one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature until it had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made him what he had never been before - a Christian; conscious of his own weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point the way which he was to go." (Vol II, Chapter 1). Detection is now a Christian duty, dictated by fate and directed by God. From now on destiny compels him (Vol II, Chapter 2). He is helpless and not in control of his own actions. "Why do I go on with this? ... how pitiless I am, and how relentlessly I am carried on. It is not myself; it is the hand which is beckoning me further and further upon the dark road whose end I dare not dream of." (Vol II, Chapter 3) Robert even sees his task as a punishment from God for his frivolous life: "surely this must be God's judgment upon the purposeless, vacillating life I led up to the seventh day of last September." (Vol III, Chapter 4).

God's hand or the hand of destiny, however, is not enough to keep Robert going after all. He decides to let George's family determine whether he should continue his investigation. Robert gives "a minutely-detailed account of all that has happened" (Vol II, Chapter 4) to George's estranged father Harcourt Talboys. Harcourt refuses to provide Robert with a legitimate motive to detect: "If you go on, you go on for your own satisfaction." (Vol II, Chapter 4). Robert leaves the Talboys' home with a sense of "an unutterable relief." "The crisis is past and I am free!" He is released from his despicable role as a detective: "His generous nature revolted at the office into which it had found himself drawn - the office of a spy, the collector of damning facts that led on to horrible deductions." (Vol II, Chapter 4).

If Robert hangs up his deer-stalker, we will never find out Lady Audley's secret. Fortunately, the handsome and smart Clara Talboys, the sister who so reminds Robert of his lost friend, runs after him. Clara injects a whole new level of passion into the investigation: "I shall go mad unless I can do something - something towards avenging his death." This lady is serious: "Choose between the two alternatives, Mr Audley. Shall you or I find my brother's murderer?" (Vol II, Chapter 5)

Clara Talboys finally clears all doubt from Robert's mind and the resolution to his crisis of motivation comes in a nice moment of textual self-awareness: "He was on the spot at which all record of his friend's life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not with the accents of hat earnest appeal ringing on his ear." (Vol II, Chapter 7)

Clara's role as Robert's motivator is left intriguingly ambiguous. Robert's reaction seems at first glance romantic: he will do battle for Clara and protect her from soiling her own delicate hands in detective work. However, Clara's vehemence and self-assurance are so convincing that she appears as a capable adversary to Lady Audley. Robert Audley will be her tool and her weapon.

Now that he has a strong, insistent woman behind him spurring him on, Robert can crack on with the detective work and all qualms about the moral justification of his investigation are removed. He is fully motivated.

The Normal Detective of a Sensation Novel

After his friend George Talboys vanishes into thin air, Robert Audley turns into an amateur detective. He travels first to Southampton to interview Captain Maldon, where he picks up a half-burnt telegram and puts it in his pocket (Vol I, chapter 12). Then he journeys to Liverpool to inquire about passenger lists for ships to Australia (Vol I, chapter 13). He demonstrates the use of "inductive evidence" (Vol I, chapter 16). He writes down the known facts in bullet points (Vol I, chapter 13). He gives Lady Audley a lecture on the "theory of circumstantial evidence":

"that wonderful fabric which is built of straws collected at every point of the compass, and which is yet strong enough to hang a man. Upon which infinitesimal trifles may sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable heretofore to the wisest upon the earth! A scrap of paper; a shred of some torn garment; the button off a coat; a word dropped incautiously from the over-cautious lips of guilt; the fragment of a letter; the shutting or opening of a door; a shadow on a window-blind; the accuracy of a moment; a thousand circumstances so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of steel in the wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective officer; and lo! the gallows is built up; the solemn bell tolls through the dismal grey of the early morning; the drop creaks under the guilty feet; and the penalty of crime is paid." (Vol I, chapter 15).

No wonder Lady Audley feels a little poorly after hearing this. Later she tells Robert Audley: "you ought to have been a detective police officer." Robert Audley replies: "I should have been a good one. ... Because I am patient." (Vol I, chapter 18)

In December 1861 Lady Audley's Secret had been started and partly published. It had been serialized in Robin Goodfellow from July till September. It would be continued in Sixpenny Magazine from January to December 1862. Just before the publication of the novel was continued, on 28 December 1861, Spectator published an article entitled "The Enigma Novel" which stated: "We are threatened with a new variety of sensation novel, a host of cleverly complicated stories, the whole interest of which consists of the gradual unveiling of some carefully prepared enigma."

This is a pretty good definition of a detective story. Detection is finding out; OED defines it as "exposure, revelation of what is concealed" and "as the finding out what tends to elude notice." My view is that a detective story is a story which has detection, as defined by the OED as a major theme or interest in the narrative. And a detective is a character who engages in detection. The detective does not have to be successful to be a detective, but she or he has to put in the effort to detect.

The term 'detective story' was first used in print to describe a novel (as far as I have been able to determine) by Anna Katharine Green as a subtitle to her 7 to 12 and X. Y. Z. in 1883. Some critics maintain it was used in Green's first novel The Leavenworth Case published in 1878, but that is not the case. By the 1880s, the concept of detective fiction was quite established, and what was meant by the term 'detective story' was pretty much what we mean by it today. In December 1886, a year before the first Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Saturday Review published an article entitled "Detective Fiction" about the growing popularity of "the detective novel." This shows that by now detective fiction was a recognized genre.

Detectives and detection were already familiar concepts to readers of sensation fiction. "Amateur Detectives" in Saturday Review in February 1868 (at a time when two installments of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, the celebrated "first" English detective novel, had appeared in All the Year Round) criticized the deductive method "generally accepted in constructing the well-known detective in fiction." The article further claims that it is "absurd" to think that "given any fragment of the universe ... a person of sufficient knowledge and ability might construct the rest." Two decades later in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would make Sherlock Holmes think exactly this in A Study in Scarlet.

In June 1863, six months after Lady Audley's Secret  completed its serialization, "Detective in Fiction and in Real Life" in Saturday Review said that "Of all forms of sensation-novel writing, none is so common as what may be called the romance of the detective." and talks about "the normal detective of a sensation novel."

There is reason to think that what started all this excitement about detective fiction was Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White which appeared in 1860, a year before Lady Audley's Secret. The quote above from "The Enigma Novel" continues: "Mr. Wilkie Collins set the fashion, and now every novel writer who can construct a plot, thinks if he only makes it a little more mysterious and unnatural, he may obtain a success rivaling that of "The Woman in White."

M. E. Braddon certainly had a go at that.

Coincidences, Near Misses and Disappointments

The plot of Lady Audley's Secret is set in motion in chapter four of Volume I when two coincidences happen. First, Robert Audley and George Talboys bump into each other. Secondly, George happens to pick up yesterday's "greasy" copy of The Times "from a heap of journals on the table" in a coffee shop and see a death notice for Mrs Helen Talboys (Vol I, chapter 4).

George Talboys faints:

"The hot August sunshine; the dusty widow panes and shabby painted blinds; a file of fly-brown play-bills fastened to the wall; the blank and empty fire-place; the bald-headed old man nodding over the Morning Advertiser; the slipshod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and Robert Audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm. He knew that all these things took on gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots that swam before his eyes. He knew that there was a great noise as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more, except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground." (Vol I, chapter 5)

In a novel where every detail is pregnant with possible significance and dripping with sensational potential, the details of the coffee house seen through George Talboys' eyes come across as a nugget of realism in a highly romanticized and stylized narrative. It is also interesting that we get to experience the sensations of fainting with George Talboys in such detail. Later, when it is Lady Audley's turn to faint, we observe it from a distance (Vol I, chapter 15). Perhaps there is something particularly potent about the sturdy, manly George Talboys swooning, or the detail is included just to make the scene more dramatic. This moment brings a radical and lasting change in the character of George Talboys. From now in he is described in terms of a child: "The big dragoon was as helpless as a baby" (Vol I, Chapter 5), he was "as submissive as a child" (Vol I, Chapter 7). This is significant, because removing George Talboys as the dashing hero returning with a fortune from the colonies and reducing him into a helpless, tragic figure, prepares the way for Robert Audley to take a more prominent role in the novel.

The death notice in the paper is also the first significant twist in the plot. We have been led to think that Helen Talboys and Lucy, Lady Audley are the same person. Now we learn that Helen Talboys is dead. Do we believe what we read in The Times or do we trust the heavy hints given in the narrative? The matter must be investigated. And luckily, that is exactly what the two heroes do next.

In Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, the landlady tells George of Helen's final hours in a scene full of pathos and melancholy. "Many of her lodgers came to her to die" (Vol I, chapter 5) and we were supposed to  understand that she had died of an illness like TB as soon as we learned where she died. George gets to pray at Helen's death bed and kiss her pillow tenderly while the landlady stands by crying. We also meet Helen's father Captain Maldon and the Talboys' little boy Georgey. It all seems perfectly clear: Helen is dead and buried and Lady Audley cannot be Helen Talboys, if only we could ignore the couple of discordant details which suggest that something is fishy in this sea-side resort.

The death of Helen Talboys is also the first near miss in the narrative, where by a whisker we miss finding out the truth. She died "within a week of" George Talboys' touching land (Vol I, chapter 6). As readers have been led to suspect that there is something odd about Helen Talboys' conveniently timed death, we are happy that the men next travel to Audley. They may be going fishing, but the reader is after something else: finding out once and for all if Lady Audley is Helen Talboys. Through a series of further near misses the narrative keeps reeling us along on its hook. George never catches sight of Lady Audley. This is blatantly and unashamedly contrived by the narrative. There is even a moment when Alicia hands a letter by Lady Audley to Robert, who admires Lady Audley's hand writing, while George Talboys stands nearby without showing any interest. If only George would get a good look at Lady Audley or even her hand writing, the truth would surely be revealed. Despite the elaborate near misses, the reader keeps reading, the narrative at this point is a comedy of errors, we know we are being teased.

One evening a storm is brooding over Audley Court. The weather creates an expectation of something dramatic about to happen. While the storm clouds gather, Alicia shows George Talboys and Robert Audley a secret passage to Lady Audley's chambers. The lady herself has escaped to London on a sudden errand and has locked up her rooms which have the best paintings in the house on their walls. Like adventurers penetrating an exotic cave, carrying a candle the two men enter this treasure trove of intoxicating, feminine scents and soft, velvety surfaces. There among other treasures, like the picture of Dorian Gray (a story only published thirty years after Lady Audley's Secret), is a pre-Raphaelite portrait of Lady Audley. Pre-Raphaelites were considered quite avant garde, daring and disturbing. The narrative suggests that this portrait may be telling the private truth about Lady Audley, unlike her simpering, golden-haloed, public face. Alternatively the effect of the painting is just a result of pre-Raphaelite affectation. Wearing a red dress which makes her appear like a Phoenix rising from the flames (an apt image), there is "something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend" in her portrait (Vol I, chapter 8). Now, we cannot wait for the moment when George Talboys sees this painting of the woman, we still suspect, who is actually the wife he thinks dead:

"But strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great impression on George Talboys, for he sat before it for about a quarter of an hour without uttering a word - only staring blankly at the painted canvas, with the candle stick grasped in his strong right hand, and his left arm hanging loosely by his side. He sat so long in this attitude, that Robert turned round at last.

            "Why George, I thought you had gone to sleep."

            "I had almost." (Vol I, chapter 8)

This is such a disappointment. The narrative very deliberately ignores this moment of opportunity for a sensational revelation. The men leave Lady Audley's room and Robert leads a passive George Talboys away from Audley Court just as the storm is about to break. Back at the inn, George stares out the window "white and haggard, with your great hollow eyes staring out at the sky as if they were fixed upon a ghost." (Vol I, chapter 9) Again the reader's expectations are raised. With the violent storm raging outside in the darkness of the night and George Talboys clearly shaken to the core, perhaps by Lady Audley's portrait, something momentous must be about to happen. Robert goes to his bedroom where "the lightning [was] fitfully playing round the razors in his open dressing case (Vol I, chapter 9) and wakes up to a sunny, peaceful morning to have breakfast with George Talboys. Disappointment again. Everyone seems cheerful all of a sudden. Lady Audley prattles on merrily at Audley Court, even after she learns about the men's visit to her rooms. She was petrified with fear during the storm, but now she is "restless from very joyousness of spirit." (Vol I, chapter 9) The two men laze by the river with their fishing rods. Robert Audley falls asleep and George Talboys goes for a walk ... to Audley Court ... and disappears. He is last heard mumbling something about "wishing to see my lady" and head off towards the Lime Walk where Lady Audley is thought to be. After a while Lady Audley returns from her walk from quite the opposite direction. She says that she never came across George Talboys.

The Inconvenient Necessity of Bigamy

Lady Audley's Secret is set a few years before it was published, around 1858. That was an important year for all would-be bigamists. Up until that year, divorce was not realistically an option, and bigamy was sometimes the only practical solution.

In Victorian times many left their husbands and wives and took up with new partners. George Eliot and M. E. Braddon were not unique in establishing households with married men. Some men, like Wilkie Collins, supported two families. Madame Rachel, the infamous queen of cosmetics was abandoned with a small daughter by her husband Joseph Moses, who went prospecting to Australia. She moved in with Philip Levison, started a second family and took his name, although there is no record of her ever marrying Levison. Madame Rachel was eventually tried for fraud in 1868. Her shop would have been at 47a New Bond Street for Lady Audley to visit, and perhaps it was her advertisements Lady Audley had seen in the paper in Volume 1, chapter 7 (Madame Rachel advertised her products frequently).

Changing life partners was sometimes scandalous but mostly it was commonplace. Bigamy, however, was a step too far because it smacked of being mercenary. A bigamist might have many reasons to hide his or her past from the second spouse and they were not all based on morals or religion. An important reason for such deception was financial: the desire to get your hands on your new spouse's fortune. Men, as soon as they married, became owners of their wives' property. Bigamy could be lucrative. Women had a strong motivation to hide their previous marriages since few men were willing to invest in a woman knowing that at any moment some other chap could come along and demand his share.

For centuries marriage and divorce had been matters for the church. When marrying, a woman lost all her rights, her property became her husband's, her children belonged to him. He could abuse her; beat her, lock her up, starve her, as it took his fancy. There was no redress for the wife, and no authority that she could appeal to when the marriage went badly wrong. Legally women were on the same page with children, the mentally ill and criminals.

Only the Church of England could create or end a marriage. You could ask for annulment arguing that true marriage never took place because it has not been consummated or because your spouse is insane and therefore incapable of understanding the holy sacrament of marriage. You could also ask for annulment based on possible incest. John Ruskin's wife Euphemia Ruskin gained an annulment of their 6-year-long marriage in 1854 by proving she was a virgin. After an annulment you could marry again, but all children of a null marriage were illegitimate.

You could also ask the Church of England to grant you a separation a mensa et thoro (from bed and board) by petitioning the Consistory Court in Doctors' Commons. This meant that the spouses could live apart without risking being blamed for desertion. You could not remarry again, and the husband continued to have control of all finances and children.

If you  were wealthy enough you could go the whole hog. This option was only open to husbands. After gaining a separation granted by the Church, you could sue your wife's lover, termed 'co-respondent,' in the Court of King's Bench for what was effectively the theft of your wife as your property. If your case was successful, and you were granted damages for your loss, the parliament could pass a private Act of Parliament giving you a divorce. The cost of this process ran into thousands of pounds, but afterwards you were both free to marry again, and your children were not declared illegitimate.

Caroline Norton was famously the woman who set the ball rolling to change this with her indefatigable work for improving the rights of women in marriage and divorce. She had a personal incentive being married to a violent bully who appropriated all her property and kept her children from her. The full story is told in A Scandalous Woman: the Story of Caroline Norton (1992) by Alan Chedzoy. Norton was a well-educated and well-connected woman whose marriage became a public scandal when her husband George Norton, disappointed by his own lack of progress in politics, lashed out in 1836 and accused the Home Secretary and future Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne of "criminal knowledge" of his wife. Although Melbourne was judged not guilty, George Norton's hostility towards his wife continued. In the middle of their marital troubles their three sons were ruthlessly used as bargaining chips and Caroline Norton grew desperate when her husband barred her access to them. Since the law of the land gave her no support, Norton had little choice but to try and change the law. She was in the fortunate position of having a social standing and connections in the world of politics to achieve this through lobbying and campaigning.

Her first victory was the Infant Custody Bill passed in 1839, which gave regular access rights to both parents for children of twelve years old or younger. The next one came in 1857, when she was forty-nine years old. After years of campaigning and hundreds of pages of pamphlets by her, the parliament passed the Divorce Act. According to her biographer, four important clauses in this act, granting divorced women power over their own property and financial transactions, were taken almost word for word from her writings.

Following the passing of the Matrimonial Causes (or Divorce) Act 1857, The Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes opened in 1858 with Sir Creswell Creswell as the Judge Ordinary in charge. He presided with two other judges. One of the early cases of the court was one submitted by Henry Robinson who was determined to rid himself of his adulterous, diary-writing wife. This story is told by Kate Summerscale in Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: the Private Diary of a Victorian Lady (2012). Caroline Norton never got divorced, and married again in 1877 only after George Norton had died.

In the new secular divorce court, as in the ecclesiastical court before, it was sufficient for men to prove one indiscretion, one false step of adultery by their wives, as grounds for divorce. Wives, on the other hand, had to prove their husband's adultery and another reason for divorce. They had a list to choose from: bigamy, incest, rape, sodomy, bestiality, grievous bodily harm or two years' desertion. There was always a guilty party in a divorce. And divorce always required proof of adultery. In addition, no husband would be given a divorce, if the wife could prove that he too had committed adultery, or that he had condoned her adultery by being aware of it but not doing anything about it. The lapse of time was an important factor.

The 1857 act was followed by several other laws that modified woman's position in marriage and divorce proceedings. Further Infant Custody Acts in 1873 and 1886 extended mothers' rights to keep custody of their children. Married Women's Property Acts in 1870 and 1882 gave married women the same property rights as unmarried women.

Only in 1923 the law was changed so that men and women both could claim for divorce on equal grounds. From 1937 divorce did not require proof of adultery; cruelty and desertion were also made sufficient grounds. And it took until 1969 for the concept of a guilty party to be removed and "irretrievable breakdown" could be quoted as the grounds for divorce.

In Lady Audley's Secret, what should Lucy Graham have done when Sir Michael proposed? Her first husband disappeared leaving her with a babe in arms in the house of a father who could not support them. In the three and a half years since her husband left, she slowly built a life for herself and was managing to earn a living in a respectable fashion as a governess. She had not fallen into prostitution, destitution or the world of theatre. There was no way on earth she would have been able to legally divorce George Talboys. Even after the 1857 Divorce Act, Lucy Graham (aka Helen Talboys, as the narrative strongly suggests) would have needed money to bring a court case in front of Sir Creswell Creswell and his fellow-judges. Although she would have been able to claim desertion, she would have had to prove her husband's adultery as well. And there is probably no chance of that, with Talboys constantly expressing his devotion and love for his wife.

Should Lucy Graham have declined the offer of life-long luxury and pampering by Sir Michael, just because her first husband was still possibly alive somewhere? The temptation was great, the risk seemed minimal. Lady Audley's bigamy is naughty and selfish, yes, but it is hardly evil. Bigamy was a practical solution and sometimes quite necessary if you wanted to get on with your life.

There is an ironic twist at the tail end of Lady Audleys Secret when Robert Audley makes his name as a lawyer in a dispute over a broken engagement: "the great breach of promise case of Hobbs vs Nobbs"  (Vol III, Chapter 10).

A Setting Ripe for Sensation

Lady Audley's Secret opens with a lengthy description of Audley Court. The house is 'very old, and very irregular and rambling.' It used to be a convent: the house is 'a refectory that had been standing since the Conquest [and] had contrived, in some eleven centuries, to run up such a mansion as was not elsewhere to be met with throughout the county of Essex.' (Lady Audley is an Essex girl.) The house is described in romantic and Gothic terms. It is not quite the Castle of Udolpho, but nevertheless a place where we can expect to find dark secrets and mysteries as common as fixtures and fittings. The 'still fish ponds' in the moat and particularly the shaded lime tree walk that 'seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews' are drawn to our attention. At the end of the lime walk 'half buried amongst the tangled branches and neglected weeds' there is an old, rusted well. When 'a fierce and crimson sunset' colours the old iron wheel and broken woodwork of the well 'as if they were flecked with blood,' you can be pretty sure that something or more likely someone will come to a nasty end here. To make sure that we get the message that Audley Court is a setting ripe for evil deeds and misfortune, the atmosphere is described as one of 'intense stillness' like 'a corpse must be lying somewhere.' By now we are all straining our necks to spot that corpse, and our bets are on the well. Or maybe the fish pond? Or is that a red herring? Although the description of Audley Court is painted with heavy tints of melodrama, it works. It has all the clues readers need to expect something exciting, possibly gory, definitely sexy.

As soon as our imaginations are tickled with tension, the narrative undercuts our expectations by showing us that extremely boring people live in Audley Court. We see Sir Michael Audley 'with his pretty young wife dawdling by his side' strolling along the romantic lime tree avenue, of which the narrator says: 'I very much doubt if it was ever put to any romantic uses.' Soon Sir Michael strolls back to the drawing room and falls asleep in his chair while his wife plays melodies on the piano. We have an interesting picture of a humdrum life being led in a very dramatic setting.

Sir Michael Audley is a long-term widow in his mid-fifties with an 18-year-old, spoilt-rotten daughter Alicia. He falls in love with a pretty little thing working locally as a governess. Enter Miss Lucy Graham, our Lady Audley. She is 'the sweetest girl ever lived' that brings light and happiness to the lives of all those she meets. She charms the socks off everyone with her golden ringlets and blue eyes. She is clearly a woman with a past, for the simple reason that nobody knows about her past, even her age is not known. She arrived with one glowing reference. She carries a ring hanging from a black ribbon around her neck under her clothes. Lady Audley's secret is clearly her mysterious past. We are still in chapter one, and already we are picking up the first clues.

Lady Audley is not evil, but seemingly honest and open. When Sir Michael proposes to her, they recognize the disparity in their wealth and Lucy's lowly position as a governess. Sir Michael confesses his love, but Lucy makes it clear she cannot return the same ardour. In this scene we see Sir Michael trapped by the twin twines of his own desire for the woman and his sense of propriety Once the offer of marriage has fallen out of his mouth, there is no going back, even if Lucy explains that, quite frankly, she is marrying him for his money and position. Sir Michael staggers away heavy with unsatisfied longing and disappointment 'as if he carried a corpse in his bosom.' This is clearly not a good start. The Audleys do not stand a chance and we expect to see their marriage go up in a ball of flames.

In chapter II we are transported to a completely different place: the deck of The Argus sailing to England on her voyage from Australia. On the deck stands a handsome live-wire George Talboys. He is not very learned, or even very smart - he does not play chess - but is otherwise described as a decent, young man. With another governess, Miss Morley as a clumsy narrative device, we are told the story of Talboys: three and a half years earlier he abandoned his wife and baby to go to Australia to make his fortune. He was driven there by poverty and desire to provide for his family. Not once during this time has it entered into his head, that his wife might not want him back, might not even be alive any more. See: he cannot be very smart. Only when he is returning with his fortune made expecting a warm welcome, his conversation with Miss Morley makes him see things differently and get "that sick, sinking, dread at [his] heart.'

In chapter III we are back at Audley Court and get another dose of heavy foreshadowing with a description of a crimson red sunset over the fish pond, lime walk and the well. Lady Audley's maid Phoebe, who is another woman who has been lifted above her station, from a house maid to lady's maid, has seen Lady Audley's rise to riches. She is jealous and longs for a similar meteoric rise through the social ladder. The opportunity arises, possibly, when she takes her 'clod-hopper' childhood sweetheart Luke to see Lady Audley's chambers. Phoebe opens Lady Audley's jewellery chest to show the treasures to Luke, he contemplates stealing a little something to finance a public house for himself and Phoebe. She is horrified by the idea. But then they stumble upon a secret compartment in the chest and discover a baby's shoe and a lock of hair. Phoebe smiles slyly and pockets them. 'You shall have the public house, Luke' she says.

Next we are in London with Robert Audley, Sir Michael's lazy and amiable nephew who is making a career out of avoiding work as a barrister. He reads French novels and smokes a German pipe. That either makes him doubly romantic, both in the racy French and tragic young Werther (note his blue necktie) ways, or it makes him both romantic and rational. In any case, Robert is fashionable and has continental tastes. Alicia, Sir Michael's daughter, has written to him about the news of her father's marriage. Her letter is scathing about her new step-mother: Lady Audley is 'a wax-dollish young person, no older than Alicia herself, with flaxen-ringlets and a perpetual giggle.' It is 'an angry, crossed and re-crossed letter." It is clear that Alicia has no sympathy for Lady Audley.

By the beginning of chapter IV, we can see the storm clouds gathering over Audley Court. We have a marriage based on great inequality in terms of wealth, age and feelings. We have a first husband arriving back in the country, because let us not kid ourselves: no reader would fail to think that Talboys' sweet, little wife and sweet, little Lady Audley are the same person. We have Phoebe contemplating a career as a blackmailer. There is a baby somewhere: Talboys' child he abandoned with his wife. And finally we have a furious step-daughter

Braddon writes with a lively but heavy pen. Her phrases and language are colourful and flow well. She is an easy read. But she insults the reader's intelligence and lacks subtlety. Someone will end up in the well and Phoebe really is not a nice country lass. We are left in no doubt about what we should be thinking. The characters are stereotypical and not much lumbered with internal life. Structurally however, the start of the novel is effective if a little contrived. We are given the setting and we are given the main characters. We see small character sketches of Sir Michael, Lady Audley, George Talboys, Phoebe and Robert Audley. Each character is distinct if not deep. We can easily tell them apart.

Braddon quite economically sets up a complicated starting position for the plot. Lady Audley is surrounded by threats to her newly won social position and happy prosperity. We are put in a state of anticipation - which bombshell will land on her first, and what will she do? The source of tension and suspense is not in the reader's attempts to discover Lady Audley's secret, it is in finding if and how Lady Audley will get away with it.

Tough Cookie - Part 1: M. E. Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837 - 1915) was the absolute mistress of sensation fiction. She was a literary super-star and constantly near the top of Victorian best-seller lists. Braddon's private life was famously almost as sensational as her plots. Different sources give slightly varying details of her life, but Robert Lee Wolff's biography Sensational Victorian: The Life and Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1979) is perhaps the best source to get the facts reasonably right.

Even without much detail Braddon's life offers material for melodrama. She was born 1837 to an apparently useless Cornish solicitor Henry Braddon and an extremely capable Irishwoman Fanny. Henry exited the picture when Braddon was 4 or 5 years old, but Fanny Braddon made sure the girl got a good, middle-class education. Then money ran out. With her mother's support, Braddon made the unusual decision to become an actress and toured the theatres of the north as 'Miss Mary Seyton.' In Yorkshire she caught the eye of John Gilby, a patron, a friend, possibly a lover - no one quite knows what went on there. He encouraged Braddon's literary aspirations by commissioning her to write a poem about Garibaldi. He also helped to get her novel The Trail of the Serpent published in 1860. Around this time Braddon decided to leave the morally dubious career of an actress and move to a more respectable profession of a novelist. She also met publisher John Maxwell. He had five children and a wife in an asylum in Dublin. That did not put Braddon off. Braddon and Maxwell became a couple. This was caused a scandal, but Braddon had no time to worry about this: she now had Maxwell's ailing businesses and his children to support. Any writer's block would risk the bread on the table. Lady Audley's Secret began to appear as a serial in Maxwell's magazine Robin Goodfellow in July 1861, but in September the magazine folded. Braddon moved on to write Aurora Floyd. She was also expecting her first child with Maxwell. Then Sixpenny Magazine decided to pick up Lady Audley in January 1862. Now Braddon was writing two huge novels, juggling a baby and running Maxwell's household on a tight budget at the same time. She was 27. It is quite an achievement that Lady Audley's Secret makes any sense at all. Of course it is all too easy to see Braddon's life experiences reflected in the character of Lady Audley.

After Lady Audley (1862) and Aurora Floyd (1863) came out Braddon was financially secure. She went on to write, depending on who you believe, anything between 70 and 90 novels - many of them published anonymously - ranging from three-deckers to penny dreadfuls. Maxwell started a magazine for her to edit The Belgravia and she also contributed articles and essays to other magazines. There were four more children with Maxwell, and they married in 1874, after his wife died. Despite her career as a writer who spouted out an endless stream of pot-boilers, Braddon has never been considered totally without merit. Her contemporaries recognized that she had some writing talent, and her works, Lady Audley in particular, have remained in print and studied by academics. Perhaps the best-known modern reading of Lady Audley is by Elaine Showalter in her A Literature of Their Own (1977). It gives a feminist view of the story and its heroine. Lady Audley is another tough cookie.

The Drug of Sensation Fiction

In their time, Victorian sensation novels were deemed dangerous, morally poisonous and corrupting to the extent that they would destroy entire lives and drive whole sections of the reading public into perdition. But can they still give a thrill today? Are they still powerful or are they just material for heritage-porn in period dramas? Today we have gritty crime fiction with gruesome violence and we have erotic novels with detailed depictions of all manner of fetishisms. Is the modern reader too jaded, too been-there-done-that-and-have-50-Shades-of-Grey to show it, to get any kind of a kick out Victorian sensation fiction? I will not attempt a scholarly analysis of the merits of Victorian popular fiction. This is a project to assess how Victorian sensation fiction works in the mind of an average 21st-century reader.

The criticism of stories of sensation in the 1860s took on a strangely pharmaceutical terminology. Contemporary critics commented on the large amount of poisons employed in sensational novels and soon this association with drugs was extended to characterize the whole genre. Articles like “The Perils of Sensation” (Saturday Review, 1864), where the name of this blog comes from, and “Novel Reading” (Ibid., 1867) warned of the “most dangerous influence upon the minds of the readers” by sensational stories laced with crime and mystery which were “the medium through which moral poison is frequently administered.” H. L. Mansel’s essay “Sensation Novels” in Quarterly Review (113, April 1863, pp481-514) illustrates the general alarm about the intoxicating and addictive power of mystery stories: they belong “to the morbid phenomena of literature – indications of wide-spread corruption, of which they are both effect and the cause; called into existence to supply the cravings of a diseased appetite, and contributing themselves to foster the disease and to stimulate the want which they supply.” Sensational stories strive “to act as the dram or the dose, rather than as the solid food, because the effect is more immediately perceptible.”

Like those brave Victorian medical men who drank poisons and electrocuted themselves in the name of science, I will conduct a self-experiment and dose myself with sensation fiction to see whether this particular drug still has potency. I will start with that great feminist manifesto, Lady Audley's Secret published in 1862.