'The Mystery of Angelina Frood' by R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman’s The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924), which celebrates its centenary this month, is a playful homage to one of the greatest mysteries of English literature as well as an atmospheric and ingenious thriller.

As I have suggested before, Freeman has a good claim to be the perennial vice-captain to Conan Doyle in the Victorian and Edwardian detective story. His main investigator, Dr John Thorndyke, is both a doctor and a barrister, useful attributes in the crime field. He is assisted by his own Watson, Jervis, and by a factotum, Mr Polton, who is a dab hand in the laboratory with forensic experiments.

Like Arthur Machen, Freeman seems to have known the byways and backwaters of London well and these often feature in his fiction. And like Conan Doyle, he sometimes seems to be enjoying stretching the reader’s credulity with high-spirited plots, which, however, may be enjoyed for their audacity and verve.

I have discussed in a note on the ‘Strange Case of JohnJasper’ the numerous attempts to solve Charles Dickens’ famously unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), including both literary discussion and fictional continuations, and at least one example of a conclusion said to have been received from Dickens’ spirit: alas, the great writer’s faculties appear to have deteriorated somewhat on the astral plane.

M. R. James was also a keen Droodian and was part of an informal group, The Drood Syndicate, who went on an excursion to the scene of the story, the Kent cathedral city of Rochester, where Freeman’s story is also mostly set. Freeman also has scenes in the neighbouring coastal town of Chatham, evoking its many dim narrow passages down to the wharves.

Freeman evidently enjoyed the Drood Game, and in The Mystery of Angelina Frood,  he devised a lively and mischievous pastiche. The names Drood and Frood no doubt derive from Strood, a a town adjacent to the cathedral city. There are many sly allusions throughout to the Dickens novel. One of the plot elements in Dickens’ book involves the action of quicklime upon an interred body, where the science has in fact moved on since his time. Thorndike, of course, who is well-informed about the latest forensic advances, and also adept at methodical experiments, is able to demonstrate that the results cannot quite be as they are often assumed to be in speculations about Dickens’ book.

Freeman’s tribute is an excellent if somewhat far-fetched tale of a night-time summons to the doctor, a shifty-looking stranger, a missing person and a concealed identity, told with the brazen gusto often found in this author – as I’ve remarked before, I sometimes think he concocted some of his more bizarre plots for a bet, if only with himself.

Among the theories explored by Drood savants are some involving shadowy figures, apparent conspiracies, impersonation, and cross-dressing, and it would be fair to say, without giving too much away, that Freeman makes use of all of these possibilities. And although in this case he is evidently relishing recasting Dickens’ Drood, playing with its themes, refashioning some of its characters in a more modern dress, nevertheless this is still his tale, with his own inventiveness, and I think the book still works on its own account, even for any reader unfamiliar with the Drood aspects.

My copy is an October 1936 reprint: five earlier reprints are listed after the first printing. It contains the remains of a Sunday School presentation sticker to a recipient whose name is scribbled out ‘For regular attendance during the year 194[?]’. I must say this was a more imaginative, and unusual, gift than the pious and improving tales usually offered.

Freeman’s tale also led me, incidentally, to an interesting byway. There is a reference in the book to ‘sermon paper’: the protagonist buys it at a stationer to write a long report to Dr Thorndyke. I wondered what exactly it was.  I found someone else had asked the same question because of an allusion to it by George Orwell in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. The answer, from the British Association of Paper Historians, was: ‘Sermon paper is actually Foolscap Quarto, nominally 8 x 6 1/2 inches (but there were slight variations between batches). The paper was sold 'ruled feint', i.e. lined with the thinnest line a nib could produce. In the 19th century these were produced by lining machines with adjustable nibs. During the 20th century the lines were printed using lithography.’

An old advertisement of Partridge and Cooper, Manufacturing Stationers, of 192 Fleet Street (Corner of Chancery Lane) offers it plain 4s a ream, ruled 4s 6d. One can imagine Victorian churchgoers groaning inwardly as the parson flourished in the pulpit a closely-written sheaf of the ecclesiastical foolscap. Does anyone produce—or use— sermon paper today?

(Mark Valentine)