The Cropton Lane Farm Murders - Rosemary Pardoe

The Cropton Lane Farm Murders by Rosemary Pardoe is a new booklet just issued by the eminent editor of the M R James journal Ghosts & Scholars, in a similar format. And it is a James connection that begins this engrossing account of an obscure Victorian mystery.

As Rosemary explains, “In his 1926 memoir, Eton and King’s, M R James, the famous writer of ghost stories, tells of a trip to Yorkshire in the Easter vacation of 1885, when he was aged 22.” Staying at a moorland inn, James noticed a mourning card commemorating the double murder of a father and son at a farm about eighteen miles away to the east, some thirteen years earlier. This included a brief verse about the affair, which James says he memorised, and reproduces in his account.

James was, as he admitted, often “absorbed” by real-life murder mysteries, and it is not surprising this curious memento mori caught his attention. But what was the story behind it? Although it was for a time of some local notoriety, Rosemary discovered that the case is one which is now largely unknown, and so decided to look into it further. Her fascinating study expertly unravels what proves to be a quite peculiar matter, a bleak rustic tragedy that would not be out of place in a Thomas Hardy novel.

This clear and detailed account of a rather bizarre sequence of events covers the initial “disappearance” of the victims, the grisly discovery of (some of) their remains, the inquest, the police investigation, the trial, the verdict and the aftermath. Rosemary also gives her own considered verdict on the case, in a fair and judicious conclusion.

This thorough study of a grim episode will be of great interest not only to those who want to know more about an unusual M R James anecdote, but to all readers who relish Victorian mysteries and macabre history.

Copies are available from Rosemary Pardoe at 36 Hamilton Street, Hoole, Chester, CH2 3JQ for £3.50 including postage (cheques payable to R A Pardoe). For overseas orders, please email dandrpardoe[at]gmail[dot]com, replacing the words in square brackets with the appropriate symbols. The edition is very limited.


Mark Valentine

At the House of Dree - Gordon Gardiner

A few years ago, I noticed a reference in the London Mercury (April 1928) to At the House of Dree by Gordon Gardiner (Sampson Low, 1928), described by the reviewer Edward Shanks as “one of the best “thrillers” I have read for a considerable time”. It is set on the north east coast of Scotland and narrated by a retired Scots policeman, and involves German spies and the Thugee cult.

I sent for a copy (which turned out to be inscribed by the author) but it had a steady start so I didn’t then carry on with it. However, upon trying again later, I found it is indeed an excellent thriller, in the mode of John Buchan, with the thematic influence of Kipling too. The two main characters, the pawky Scottish Inspector Catto, and an insouciant English spycatcher, are well-realised and nicely contrasted, and their working relationship is conveyed adroitly.

The espionage element is overshadowed by an occult dimension. The aged and wizened local laird and his Indian servant are sinister figures, living in a semi-ruinous manor on the coast, the House of Dree of the title, near a secret research station, and practising an elaborate form of ritual sorcery. They win the confidence of a visiting American-German professor, supposedly studying fishing, but suspected of spying, and invite him as a guest to the house. The two threads begin to converge.

This is a colourful, well-paced, enthralling yarn with a strong supernatural element. Gardiner (1874-1937) seems to have written three other novels: The Reconnaissance (1914), The Pattern of Chance (1929), and The Man With a Weak Heart (1932) and appears also to be the author of Notes of A Prison Visitor (1938), a posthumous publication.

Image: ontos blog.

Why the net is not a good guide to book prices

Readers who spend any time in charity bookshops will quite often hear the manager or volunteers explain, when a customer queries a price, that they “value” their collectible books “using the internet”. In practice, this probably means consulting one or more of two or three well-known listing sites.

This is usually presented as if it were a serious, reasonable practice and a clinching argument. And of course it's understandable that busy volunteers will turn to what seems to be a handy ready reckoner. But it always makes me groan inwardly and I've seen or heard other collectors express similar dismay. Because it doesn’t take very much thought to see that this approach doesn’t work at all.

Let’s first dismiss any argument that the books should be cheaper because they’ve been donated. No: people gave the books to help the charity and it’s the charity’s job to make as much money as they can from them for their cause. (Conversely however, the charity shouldn’t expect readers to pay more for a book just because they are a charity. If people want to donate, they donate. That’s a separate matter.)

It equally doesn’t work to argue that the books in a charity shop should be cheaper because the charity gets certain privileges—lower business rates, tax relief etc. Again, these policies are designed to make the most of the income for their worthy cause and are entirely separate to the question of book pricing.

We’ll also set aside the question of the condition of books. It is true that many amateur booksellers, and this includes charity shop volunteers, don’t seem to grasp the great difference this makes to the value of a book. They see, for example, a book in Very Good condition priced at £25 and think they can ask the same for it in Good or even Fair or Poor condition. Or they just don’t look closely enough and miss defects, such as missing pages, which make the book virtually valueless.

This is indeed one good reason why some charity bookshop pricing can be what is euphemistically described as “ambitious”, but we will suppose generously for the present that the volunteer “valuer” is indeed comparing a book in front of them and a book on the internet of similar quality.

No, the real reasons that charity bookshops (or indeed anyone else) should not price books using the internet (or at least not without a lot of discernment) are all strictly business-related. We might identify at least four reasons why this approach doesn’t work.

The first is that if I can buy a book from the internet at a similar price to yours, why should I get it from you? Yes, I’ve got to pay postage on an internet book, but I’ve also got costs in coming to your shop – petrol and parking fees, or train or bus fares. So your shop is not offering me any enticement. What’s your added value, your selling point?

The second, and strongest, reason ought to be obvious, but apparently isn’t. Any book listed on the internet is an unsold book. All right, yes, it might have been only recently listed, but that’s a marginal point. The fact is that this is a book that has not sold at that price. So if you want your copy to sell, you’ve got to go below it.

Some might argue that actually you’ve got to go quite a way below it. If no-one will buy a book at £20, will they at £19 or £18? Maybe, but probably not. You might have to go to, say, £16 before you see a difference. The market price of any book listed for a while on the net is, we might reasonably argue, at least 15-20% below that internet price.

A third reason not to rely on internet book prices is that some of them appear to be highly speculative. Indeed, it’s even been suggested (possibly a bit tongue-in-cheek) that some money laundering is done in this way. A book is listed at a ludicrous price: a buyer pays it; shady money is transferred in a seemingly innocuous transaction. Who could possibly suspect second-hand bookselling of involvement with dark money? It’s also been explained that certain algorithms may push book prices up to vast amounts, with some well-publicised examples of not especially collectible works soaring into four figures solely owing to the inner workings of these calculations.

But the fourth reason is a more subtle point that shouldn’t be dismissed because of that. It’s about mood and ambience and customer behaviour. Internet book-buying is largely impersonal. Click, click, click, wait for the book. May never use that bookseller again. Wouldn’t know them if I saw them. But a physical bookshop is a different experience. I might be local, and you might want me to pop in often. Or I might be a visitor and you might want me to tell everyone about the lovely bookshop I found. So, do you want me to think “sheesh, these prices are high, what a rip-off” or “ooh, these are very fair prices”?

And indeed I may not actually spend any less if your prices are lower. Why? Well, if I go into a bookshop and the prices are all quite high, I am straightaway put on my guard and not in a mood to buy. I might grudgingly get one, if I really want it. Whereas if the prices are moderate, I lower my guard and start assembling a pile. I might actually end up spending more than if I’d just bought one expensive book. But even if I spend the same, the point is that I’m happier, and I’ll come back.

The practice, incidentally, is by no means confined to charity bookshops. I've had several experiences in ordinary secondhand bookshops when a book was unpriced (and even once or twice when it was!) when the proprietor has turned to the net to “value” a book.

But for the reasons given above, the net should only be used as the broadest sort of guide for valuing a book, and will never be a substitute for judgement, experience and commercial acumen.

Mark Valentine

The 1919 Proserpine Prize

Readers in obscure byways of outré literature may from time to time bring to mind the Prosperpine Prize founded by Mr Basil Lamport, the proprietor of the Luminous Gamp Company, whose phosphorescent umbrellas played their part in keeping wayfarers safe during murky or foggy conditions.

Not unmindful of the possibilities for drawing attention to his excellent wares, Mr Lamport endowed an annual award for the British novel that most skilfully went into the dark and emerged with something of the light. The founder recalled fondly his youthful reading of the romances of Lord Lytton. Beginning in 1901, the prize is reported to have been won by such eminent titles as Mr Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and Dr Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

It is true that a certain notoriety has attached to the title chosen in at least one year, as recounted in an episode (“The 1909 Proserpine Prize”) in Seventeen Stories (The Swan River Press, 2013). Nevertheless, it is evident that the prize continued to be awarded and there has recently come to light a manuscript note which appears to be the shortlist compiled for the year 1919.

Ten years after the 1909 award, matters seem to have been restored to a more regular footing and the year was propitious for good literature in the field. Some of those chosen were evidently intended to commend solid literary worth, while other titles suggest it was hoped to arouse a certain amount of controversy. There was thus strong competition for the 1919 shortlist, but the seven selected seem to have been:

E F Benson, Across the Stream. A young man with psychic gifts who comes into contact with an evil spirit.

Stella Benson, Living Alone. A modern young witch with magical powers which bring confusion to those she meets. Told lightly but with an undertow of melancholy.

Gerald Biss, The Door of the Unreal. A thrilling yarn about a werewolf prowling the London-Brighton road, told with all the author’s accustomed gusto and brisk style.

Leda Burke, Dope Darling. The startling story of the drug culture among bohemians and artists in the more sordid quarters of London. (It is curious that the judges preferred this to Mr Sax Rohmer's Dope, similar in theme.)

Clemence Dane, Legend. A poetic account of an author who dies young but pervades her friends’ memories: there is a brief apparition, which may be illusion.

William De Morgan, The Old Madhouse. The last novel of the respected Victorian author, a mystery of a sinister house, and peculiar characters haunted in more ways than one.

H. Rider Haggard, When the World Shook. Ancient worship on a South Seas Island, reincarnation, sorcery and a struggle to prevent apocalypse.

Research continues to discover which of the shortlisted titles secured the favour of the anonymous judges. But did they overlook any which should have been on their list? And which of the seven should they have chosen for the 1919 Proserpine Prize?

Mark Valentine

Wormwood 31

Wormwood 31 (Autumn 2018) has just been published.

Reggie Oliver on Robert Aickman:

“Aickman might be said to be exploring not so much Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” as the evil of banality.”

Doug Anderson on Phyllis Paul:

“What does keep the reader going is the eccentric cast of minor characters . . .”

John Howard on Mack Reynolds:

“In Reynolds’ utopias an element of subversion—revolution—is also necessary . . .”

Colin Insole on Hope Mirrlees:

“The ghosts parade and strut on the streets and bridges”

Ibrahim Ineke on book-collecting in Den Haag:

“My passion has a slight resemblance to the rawer and aesthetically less satisfying habit of gambling”

Paul M Chapman on the Decadent Conan Doyle:

“His work often echoed Poe's ‘love for the grotesque and the terrible’”

Tony Mileman on the golden age of Czech fantasy:

“What if reading were a dangerous activity? What if you could, literally, disappear into a text?”

Mat Joiner on Jocelyn Brooke:

“And who are the other lot? ‘I only wish I knew’”

Cricket in Babylon - W W Masters' Murder in the Mirror

In W W Masters’ Murder in the Mirror (Longmans, 1931), a young man finds himself at the wicket in a village cricket match, suffering from a complete memory loss. He is bewildered, but plays on (as if he had been trained to such a priority, he notices), says nothing to anyone else, and begins to piece together a few fragments.

After his innings finishes, he finds out the date by looking over the scorer’s shoulder (9 July – the birthday of Mervyn Peake, Barbara Cartland and Thomas Ligotti, amongst others).

He hopes also to discover his name, but it emerges that he is a passing stranger, who had been roped in to the side to take the place of a missing player. He is therefore shown in the scorebook, as is the usual practice in cricket, under the name of A N Other. Yet when he finds his clothes, a tobacco pouch also has the initials ‘A.N.O.’

The scene shifts to a parson in the East End, who is being threatened by a mysterious oriental figure somewhat in the tradition of Dr Fu Manchu and Dr Nikola: and we then follow the priest to a holiday with three friends in Dorset. Some of them are strangely drawn to a book of Babylonian legends in the library. And then, one by one, they begin to disappear. Clues seem to lead to a sinister figure living in a caravan parked inconspicuously in the downs.

Allen J. Hubin in ‘The Golden Age of British Mystery Fiction’ notes: “W. W. Masters and his only work Murder in the Mirror . . . are about as obscure as they come. But the story is not without merit. The theme is psychic or supernatural menace, with which battle must be waged; I was reminded of the later books by Jack Mann. And quite a nice surprise climaxes the story . . . Babylon, magic, mind control and murder are all effectively worked into the story.”

The tone is quite like Buchan’s, as is the framework: the style is brisk and forceful. The surprise ending delivers a fundamental twist , subverting much of what has gone before: this will appear clever and audacious to some, or a bit too contrived for others, depending on taste. Charles Williams, in one of his detective fiction reviews (21 January 1931), says, “The actual method of the mystery ought, I think, to have been explained a little more; it is hardly intelligible as it stands.” I think that is a little severe, but it is true that the reader is left at the end to infer quite a lot.

Nevetheless, Williams goes on: “The book, I want to make clear, is a good idea, which just fails to get across.” That, I think, is a fair summation. It is original and clever, but a bit too much so; some subtle preparation for what is to come would have been better.

This was not, as Hubin thought, Masters’ only book. His first publication seems to have been Air-Ways, A Story for Boys and Girls, issued by the subsidy publisher Stockwell of Ilfracombe, Devon, in 1927. But more interestingly he was also the author of an earlier occult thriller, Eleven (Chapman & Hall, 1929).

In this, a group of bored young men are interrupted one evening by a stranger who steps into the room from the garden, bearing in his hand a vial of poison. He challenges them to a deadly game. His task is to eliminate them all, one by one: theirs is to outwit him and avoid extinction. The general idea might have been suggested by aspects of Stevenson’s The Suicide Club, although the atmosphere is again more like Buchan’s chase thrillers.

I have been unable to find out anything about W W Masters. When I was looking for his books, the only other copy of Murder in the Mirror I discovered was in a bookshop in Kathmandu, which seemed strangely appropriate for so elusive a figure. It isn't there now.

Mark Valentine

A Lost Art Deco Author: Geoffrey Moss

Little Green Apples: the Chronicle of a Fallen Man (1930) by Geoffrey Moss, with art deco illustrations signed ‘Lapthorn’, is the story of an undergraduate with the unlikely nickname of the title. He becomes unexpectedly attracted to strange beauty when, helping a gang of hearties to ransack an aesthete’s room in college, he catches sight of an Aubrey Beardsley print and is at once captivated by it.

Alas, this promising premise isn’t fully pursued. After university, a job as a golf course manager in the South of France proves illusory, part of a faintly shady set-up run by a rather louche character. Marooned and out of funds, the protagonist drifts among the margins of Riviera high life as a gigolo, but finds that this career subsequently deprives him from securing his real love. In a fairly perfunctory denouement, he and an artist friend join a travelling circus.

Geoffrey Moss was the pen-name of Major Geoffrey Cecil Gilbert McNeill-Moss (11 December 1885 – 13 August 1954) of Ford Place, Ford, Sussex. Moss went to Rugby and Sandhurst and was an officer in the Grenadier Guards from 1905 until he left in 1919. He retired in order to write full time. While in the army he wrote on aspects of military training.

He had some success in the interwar period with Jazz Age romances somewhat after the manner of Michael Arlen and Evelyn Waugh. His first work of fiction, Sweet Pepper, however, was set in the decaying Austria-Hungarian Empire, and his second, Defeat, a collection of stories, sympathetically portrayed post-WW1 Germany. This was filmed as Isn’t Life Wonderful? by D W Griffith in 1924.

Of his other novels, Whipped Cream (1926) has been described as a “romance of an intensely modern girl struggling in the vortex of unconquerable passions and strange desires", while New Wine (1927) chronicles the somewhat hectic life of a cabaret dancer in Bucharest.

His work consists of eight novels, three books of stories, a history book for children, and non-fiction works on military matters, including two accounts of episodes in the Spanish Civil War. He seems to have published nothing more during the fifteen years from 1939 to his death. Though it is not clear why, his fiction may have been out of favour in the new realism of the Forties and Fifties. Since then, his books seem to have been largely forgotten.

Books by Geoffrey Moss

Fiction
Sweet Pepper (Constable, 1923)
Defeat (Constable, 1924). Reprinted as “Isn’t Life Wonderful”: Defeat & Other Stories (Constable, 1925).
Whipped Cream (Hutchinson, 1926)
New Wine, A Nocturne in Tinsel (Hutchinson, 1927)
The Three Cousins: Short Stories (Hutchinson, 1928)
That Other Love (Hutchinson, 1928)
Little Green Apples, The Chronicle of a Fallen Man (Hutchinson, 1930)
Wet Afternoon: Stories (Hutchinson, 1931)
A Modern Melody (Hutchinson, 1932)
I Face the Stars (Hutchinson, 1933)
Thursby (Hutchinson, 1933)

Other
Notes on Elementary Field Training by ‘Grenadier’ (Sifton Praed & Co, 1915), (Hugh.Rees, 1915). Attributed to Moss.
Notes on Outposts (Hugh Rees, 1915). [Extracted from the above].
A Box of Dates for Children (Cobden-Sanderson, 1934)
The Epic of the Alcazar: A History of the Siege of the Toledo Alcazar (Rich & Cowan, 1937) [as Geoffrey McNeill-Moss]
The Legend of Badajoz (Burns, Oates, 1937)
Standing Up to Hitler (Michael Joseph, 1939)

Second-hand Bookshops in Britain, and in Fiction

Last year, I discussed what I described as The Rise in Second-hand Bookshops in Britain. I offered factual, indeed statistical evidence, that their number has grown over the past thirty years. This was contrary to my own expectations: and several readers still found it hard to credit. But I haven’t seen any other figures refuting the analysis.

To recap, in 1984, Driff’s Guide to the Second-hand & Antiquarian Bookshops in Britain listed 942*.

By comparison, thebookguide doughtily run by the Inprint Bookshop, listed 1187 as at August 2017. Of these, 287 were charity bookshops.

Thus, there was a 25% increase in second-hand bookshops in the UK over the 33 years since Driff’s guide.

Even if you decide not to count charity bookshops, in Driff or The Book Guide, there has still been an increase in all other bookshops, though smaller. Either way, the steep decline readers think they have seen simply isn't supported by the numbers.

I can now report, thanks to a kind update from Inprint, that the position this year is broadly unchanged. In August 2018 (after deducting those in the Republic of Ireland), there were 1183 second-hand bookshops listed in the UK, with a similar number to last time run by charities. And within a few weeks, the number opening or newly identified was running slightly higher than those closing.

I sympathise, however, with those who still can’t really believe this continued clear evidence. And I was amused to notice that even as early as 1926 the idea that such bookshops were in decline was already abroad.

In Cynthia Asquith’s excellent anthology The Ghost Book of that year, one of the stories, ‘The Lost Tragedy’ by Denis Mackail, is a gently humorous piece (which was very much his style) set in a London second-hand bookshop. The narrator says: “Mr Bunstable’s book-shop represents a type of establishment which has pretty well disappeared from our modern cities.”

(Incidentally, that might indeed be true today too: the evidence suggests they are now more likely to be found in small towns rather than in high-rent cities).

The piece is also comical for its description both of the dusty, labyrinthine bookshop, with teetering piles of titles everywhere, and for its observations about the proprietors of such places: “As all who have considered the subject must agree, the principal object of any book-seller is to obstruct, as far as possible, the sale of books . . .”

Does anyone have their own favourite fictional descriptions of second-hand bookshops?

(*Note: For reasons best known to himself, Driff did not use numbers 802-824 in his listing. On the other hand, he sometimes throws in a few premises which he doesn’t number, so probably “about 940” is still near enough.)

Mark Valentine