All posts tagged 1931

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie (1931)

The Major blushed like a girl.
(Chapter 1)

There were all the usual laughs, whispers, stereotyped remarks.
(Chapter 2)

‘I think,’ said Inspector Narracott deliberately, ‘that there’s a lot more in this case than meets the eye.’ (Chapter 4)

‘It’s always what you don’t expect in this life that happens, isn’t it, Mr Narracott?’
(The wisdom of Mrs Belling, landlady of the Three Crowns, Chapter 6)

‘That’s a rum go,’ ejaculated the Superintendent.
(Middle class slang, Chapter 10)

‘A lot of chuckleheads the police are, and so I’ve said before now.’
(Working class slang, Mrs Belling, Chapter 12)

Mr Curtis thoughtfully removed an aged pipe from the right side of his mouth to the left side. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘talk a lot.’
(One of the oldest tropes in literature, the hen-pecked husband, Chapter 13)

‘I hate a slobbering female,’ said Miss Percehouse. ‘I like one who gets up and does things.’
(No-nonsense old spinster Miss P, Chapter 17)

She paused, lost in thought. Two very different theories stretched out in opposite directions.
(Emily Trefusis, who emerges as the intellectual heroine of the story, Chapter 17)

‘Brian,’ said Emily thoughtfully, ‘is – well, a person to be reckoned with. He is rather unscrupulous, I should think, and if he wanted anything, I don’t think he would let ordinary conventional standards stand in his way. He’s not plain tame English.’
(Christie’s comic view of her compatriots, Chapter 25)

‘Never part with information unnecessarily. That’s my rule,’ said Inspector Narracott.
(Wise words, Chapter 26)

‘It just shows,’ said Charles, ‘that you never know.’
(Chapter 25)

Freelance detectives

Indeed, you never do know about people’s private lives and secret motivations… except that, in Agatha Christie novels and others of her ilk, in fact you do know. You very much do find out whodunnit, who was jealous of who, who fancied who, as well as a hundred and one other loose ends which by the story’s conclusion are all tied up neatly with a bow.

After a pleasurable day or two of being teased about the mystery, and trying to work it out from the plethora of clues packed into the narrative whodunnit – in the last chapter all is revealed, all is explained, there is closure for everyone, including the reader.

From one point of view, the main thing which distinguishes Christie’s books is who does the revealing and explaining. She is, of course, famous for the series of novels featuring Hercule Poirot as investigator, and the separate series featuring Miss Jane Marple in the same role. But alongside these she published 20 or so novels throughout her career without one of her two star sleuths – detective and crime novels which instead featured freelancers, amateurs, people caught up in a murder situation who find they have a gift for investigation, for interviewing people, for putting evidence together, and developing their own theories.

The Sittaford Mystery is one such ‘freelance’ detective story and the spirited amateur who emerges as its heroine is the wife of the initial suspect, a clever and very determined young woman named Emily Trefusis.

The background

The village of Sittaford is situated on the edge of Dartmoor. It is mid-winter and the moor and village are both deep in snow. The village is dominated by Sittaford House which was built ten years ago by Captain Joseph Trevelyan after he retired from the Royal Navy. He is wealthy and built his big house right on the shoulder of the moor under the shadow of Sittaford Beacon. He had purchased a large tract of land on which he first built the big house with all modern conveniences, then he had built six small bungalows, each in a quarter acre of ground, along the lane leading from the house down to the small village. The cottages are inhabited thus:

  • Number 1 – Major Burnaby, Trevelyan’s oldest friend and sporting partner
  • Number 2 – Captain Wyatt ‘a tall thin man with a very brown complexion, bloodshot eyes and grey hair. He was propped up with a crutch on one side’
    • Wyatt’s miserable-looking native servant, Abdul, ‘a tall Indian in a turban’
  • Number 3 – Mr Rycroft, a dapper little gentleman whose cottage is stuffed with books about ornithology and criminology
  • Number 4 – stern, strict Miss Caroline Percehouse, ‘a spinster of uncertain years and temper who had come down here to die… six years ago’ but has revived in the clear moorland air
    • currently being visited by her empty-headed young nephew, Ronnie Garfield
  • Number 5 – Curtis, retired gardener at Sittaford House, with his garrulous wife Mrs Curtis, who lets rooms to outsiders
  • Number 6 – Mr Duke, a shy retiring man with a military manner that nobody knows anything about

The village itself consists of three picturesque but dilapidated cottages, a forge, and a combined post office and sweet shop. The nearest town is Exhampton, six miles away. The nearest city is Exeter, a train ride away.

The setup

A few months before the story commences Captain Trevelyan was contacted by an estate agent acting on behalf of a colonial widow, one Mrs Willett from South Africa, who was looking for an isolated country house and had always had an interest in mysterious Dartmoor. Through the estate agent she made a very generous offer to Captain Trevelyan, a rather greedy man, and so the deal was done whereby Mrs Willett and her grown-up daughter Violet, leased Sittaford Hall for the winter while the Captain moved into a bungalow into Exhampton, six miles away.

The village is a small place and pretty much everyone gossiped and speculated about Mrs Willett’s real reasons for moving to such an isolated spot.

The séance

Meanwhile Mrs W and her daughter set about trying to make herself popular with the locals, hosting dinners and teas. On the Friday night in question they invite four local middle class characters to tea, being Captain Trevelyan’s long-standing friend, Major Burnaby, Mr Rycroft, Mr Ronnie Garfield and Mr Duke. Afterwards they go to play bridge but six is too many so someone playfully suggests they hold a séance.

So they select a small round table, turn the lights off, sit round it holding hands, amid much joking and irony and scoffing until – as always happens in fictions like this – the table really does begin to move and really indicates that a spirit from the other side wishes to speak to them.

The murder

Long story short, the message that comes through is that Captain Trevelyan is dead, murdered! Someone looks at their watch and sees that the time is precisely 5.25pm.

This breaks up the séance but also upsets his old friend Major Burnaby who, after some fretting, announces that he is setting off the six miles to Exhampton. He insists he will walk there because a) he is fit as a fiddle and despises cars etc b) it’s coming on to snow again and the road is already impassable to vehicles.

A few hours later, about 8pm, in the middle of the blizzard which has arrived as forecast, Major Burnaby arrives at Captain Trevelyan’s rented house, Hazelmoor. When nobody answers the door, he fetches the local police and the local doctor, Dr Warren a doctor and they enter the house through the open study window at the back. Here they find Captain Trevelyan’s dead body on the floor. Dr Warren estimates the time of death at between 5 and 6 pm. the cause of death is a fracture of the base of the skull and the implement is one of the long sand-filled draught excluders used around the house, which is full of sand.

Who murdered Captain Trevelyan, and why, and what on earth has a séance got to do with it? It takes 200 pages for the reader to find out but along the way two notable things happen: 1) the reader is introduced to an extraordinary number of characters who each have complicated backstories, often with secrets and lies of their own; 2) as already stated, although a detective inspector, Inspector Narracott is put on the case, and proceeds with admirable efficiency, his work is paralleled by the rise of the novel’s heroine, tough, committed and clever young Emily Trefusis.

Who she? Well the police quickly find out that on the day of his murder Captain Trevelyan had been visited by the eldest son of his hard-up sister Jennifer, one James Pearson. Soon after the estimated time of the murder this young man packed his bags at the local hotel and hurriedly caught a train out of town. It doesn’t take long to realise that he had a motive (he had come to see his uncle to beg him to help support his mother; plus he [James] was a beneficiary of Trevelyan’s will; plus a few enquiries reveal that he had been embezzling his employer’s money to fund speculations and had recently lost money) and the opportunity (he had gone to see Trevelyan at or very close to the time of the murder).

So the police arrest, charge and imprison James. But they hadn’t counted on James’s fiancée, Emily, who immediately devotes herself to proving her beloved’s innocence. When she arrives in Sittaford she quickly discovers a journalist from a national newspaper is in the town to hand over the prize for winning a national quiz competition to Major Burnaby. This young man, Charles Enderby, is overjoyed to be on the spot of a true-life murder mystery and sets about boosting his profile by cabling his editor back in London that he will get all kinds of exclusives.

This enthusiasm, plus the fact that she is very attractive, allows Emily to quickly size him up and realise that the can manipulate and use Charles for her own ends, something he half-consciously collaborates in as he starts to fall in love with her – or so he thinks. Here she is buttering him up something rotten.

‘One can’t do anything without a man. Men know so much, and are able to get information in so many ways that are simply impossible to women.’
‘Well – I – yes, I suppose that is true,’ said Mr Enderby complacently. (Chapter 11)

Cast

Here’s the vast cast list. Following the twists and turns of the backstories of a dozen or more of them become a full-time and quite demanding activity.

  • Captain Joseph Trevelyan – confirmed old bachelor, owner of Sittaford House which he has rented to Mrs Willett and her daughter, while he moves into a cottage (named Hazelmoor) in the nearest town, Exhampton, ‘known as a woman hater’, doesn’t like his habits upset
  • Hazelmoor’s owner Miss Larpent. Middle-aged woman, she’s gone to a boarding house at Cheltenham for the winter
  • Evans – long-term cook and handyman for Captain Trevelyan, ‘retired naval chap. Ugly customer in a scrap’, ‘a short thick-set man. He had very long arms and a habit of standing with his hands half clenched. He was clean shaven with small, rather pig-like eyes, yet he had a look of cheerfulness and efficiency that redeemed his bulldog appearance’. Evans has recently married…
  • Rebecca Belling, now Mrs Evans, daughter of the local pub landlady
  • Major Burnaby – Captain Trevelyan’s old friend and sports partner, nowadays more into crosswords and acrostics, lives at Number 1 the cottages, gruff, bluff, ‘naturally a silent man’, sceptical about the séance which he thinks is stuff and nonsense
  • Mrs Willett – ‘a tall woman with a rather silly manner – but her physiognomy was shrewd rather than foolish. She was inclined to overdress, had a distinct Colonial accent…’ ‘a fashionable sort of woman. Dressed up to the nines’
  • Miss Violet – her daughter, very nervous. In Burnaby’s view ‘Pretty girl – scraggy, of course – they all were nowadays. What was the good of a woman if she didn’t look like a woman? Papers said curves were coming back. About time too’
  • Mr Ryecroft – ‘a little, elderly, dried-up man’, ‘an enthusiast on birds’. Member of the Psychical Research Society, lives in Number 3 the Cottages – ‘You must forgive me, Miss Trefusis, I am deeply interested in the study of crime. A fascinating study. Ornithology and criminology are my two subjects’
  • Mr Ronald Garfield – ‘a fresh-coloured, boyish young man’, according to his bed-ridden Aunt, Mrs Percehouse, ‘a good lad in his way, but pitifully weak’
  • Mr Duke – a recent arrival, just bought the last of the six bungalows, Number 6, in September. He is ‘a big man, very quiet and devoted to gardening’
  • Elmer – ‘the proprietor of the sole car in the place, an aged Ford, hired at a handsome price by those who wished to go into Exhampton’
  • Constable Graves – local policeman
  • Dr Warren – lives almost next door to the police station, first to examine the body and declare time of death
  • Inspector Narracott – ‘a very efficient officer. He had a quiet persistence, a logical mind and a keen attention to detail which brought him success where many another man might have failed’
  • Sergeant Pollock of the Exhampton police
  • Superintendent Maxwell – Narracott’s superior
  • Mrs Belling – proprietor of the Three Crowns. ‘Mrs Belling was fat and excitable, and so voluble that there was nothing to be done but to listen patiently until such time as the stream of conversation should dry up’ (note Christie’s mockery of several gabby old women in this novel, as in its predecessor, The Murder at the Vicarage)
  • James Pearson – down from London on a flying visit, soon to be questioned and arrested
  • Young male estate agent at Messrs. Williamson, ‘You learn never to be surprised at anything in the house business’
  • Mr Kirkwood – partner in Messrs. Walters & Kirkwood, Trevelyan’s solicitors, co-executor of his will, ‘an elderly man with a benign expression’
  • Charles Enderby – reporter for the Daily Wire come down to Exhampton to award Major Burnaby a cheque for £5,000
  • Mrs Jennifer Gardner – Captain Trevelyan’s sister, lives in Exeter at The Laurels – ‘A tall, rather commanding woman came into the room. She had an unusual looking face, broad about the brows, and black hair with a touch of grey at the temples, which she wore combed straight back from her forehead.’.. ‘Character – that was what it was. Aunt Jennifer had about enough character for two and three quarter people instead of one’
  • Captain Robert Gardner – Aunt Jennifer’s husband, was invalided out of the army after the war with shell shock which has paralysed all his limbs (allegedly)
    • Beatrice – her ‘slipshod’ maid
    • Nurse Davis – nurse for bed-ridden Captain Gardner
  • Mary Pearson, Trevelyan’s other sister, mother of three adult children i.e. Trevelyan’s nephews and niece
  • James, 28 – ‘good-looking, indeed handsome, if you took no account of the rather weak mouth and the irresolute slant of the eyes. He had a haggard, worried look and an air of not having had much sleep of late.’ In the opinion of Emily his fiancée: ‘Dear Jim, dear, sweet, boyish, helpless, impractical Jim. So utterly to be depended on to do the wrong thing at the wrong moment.’
  • Emily Trefusis – ‘a very exceptional kind of young woman. She was not strikingly beautiful, but she had a face which was arresting and unusual, a face that having once seen you could not forget. There was about her an atmosphere of common sense, savoir-faire, invincible determination and a most tantalizing fascination’… ‘This business-like and attractive girl.’
  • Sylvia, 25 – ‘small and fair and anaemic looking, with a worried and harassed expression. Her voice had that faintly complaining note in it which is about the most annoying sound a human voice can contain.’ Sylvia is married to:
  • Martin Dering – ‘You may have read his books. He’s a moderately successful author’
  • Brian – out in Australia, in Inspector Narracott’s view ‘a hot-tempered, high-handed young man’
  • Mrs Curtis – occupies Number 5 the Cottages; rents out rooms. ‘A small, thin, grey haired woman, energetic and shrewish in disposition.’
  • Curtis – former gardener at Sittaford House, ‘a rather gruff looking grey-haired old man’
  • Miss Caroline Percehouse – lives at Number 4 The Cottages, ‘a spinster of uncertain years and temper who had come down here to die, according to Mrs Curtis, six years ago’. ‘An elderly lady with a thin wrinkled face and with one of the sharpest and most interrogative noses that Emily had ever seen.’ Despite or because of this, Emily comes to respect her insight and judgement.
    • Ronald Garfield is her useless nincompoop nephew; she is his Aunt Caroline
  • Captain Wyatt – occupant of Number 2 the Cottages with an Indian servant – ‘The Captain’s habit of letting off a revolver at real or imaginary cats was a sore trial to his neighbours.’ ‘The young men of the present day make me sick,’ said Captain Wyatt. ‘What’s the good of them?’ [sounding remarkably like D.H. Lawrence]
  • Amos Parker – greengrocer at Exhampton, supplies Sittaford
  • Mrs Hibbert at the post office
  • Mr Pound, the blacksmith
  • Mr Dacres – Emily’s solicitor, who is undertaking Jim’s defence

Long list isn’t it, and there’s barely a person in it who doesn’t turn out to have their own secrets and backstories which, when either Inspector Narracott or Charles Enderby or Emily Trefusis stumble upon, deduce or discover them doesn’t, for a portion of the narrative, make them seem like a possible suspect.

It’s like a child’s kaleidoscope where the steady arrival of new facts and discoveries continually changes the investigators’ hypotheses, and overturn or modify any the reader might have been devising. In this sense the stories are very dynamic, presenting a constantly shifting landscape of theories and interpretations.

Emily Trefusis

In the Chief Constable’s opinion, ‘a managing young woman’, and ‘a young woman who prided herself on being sharper than other people’, Emily quite quickly emerges as the heroine of the book. She is absolutely determined to clear her fiancé’s name and so throws her impressive intellect and redoubtable willpower into solving the mystery of the murder.

‘We shall find something,’ said Emily. ‘I always find something.’
Mr Enderby could well believe that. Emily had the kind of personality that soars triumphantly over all obstacles. (Chapter 11)

‘We’ll assume that it is true,’ said Emily firmly. ‘I am sure that in detection of crime you mustn’t be afraid to assume things.’ (Chapter 15)

Bonding with Miss Percehouse.

‘Here is someone,’ thought Emily, ‘who goes straight to the point and means to have her own way and bosses everybody she can. Just like me only I happen to be rather good-looking and she has to do it all by force of character.’ (Chapter 17)

Mrs Curtis’s view:

‘A deep one – and one that can twist all the men round her little finger.’ (Chapter 21)

And, as I’ve mentioned, Emily does twist poor Charles Enderby entirely round her little finger in order to get him onto her team and working to free her fiancé.

Emily’s theory of ‘angle of attack’

I didn’t entirely understand this but the phrase is repeated and Emily herself uses it to describe her approach.

She wished with all her heart that she had met the dead man even if only once. It was so hard to get an idea of people you had never seen. You had to rely on other people’s judgment, and Emily had never yet acknowledged that any other person’s judgment was superior to her own. Other people’s impressions were no good to you. They might be just as true as yours but you couldn’t act on them. You couldn’t, as it were, use another person’s angle of attack. (Chapter 16)

She had no intention of allowing any angle of attack to remain unexplored. (Chapter 16)

As she investigates more i.e. sets out to meet and interview everyone in the village, everyone who knew the captain, and his extended family, Emily develops a ‘system’ not a million miles from Hercule Poirot’s similar systematicness (except Poirot keeps everything in his head):

At the moment she felt disinclined for anything but solitude. She wanted to sort out and arrange her own ideas. She went up to her own room, and taking pencil and notepaper she set to work on a system of her own. (Chapter 17)

And:

And then deliberately she set herself to think out things from the beginning, going over every detail that she knew herself or had learned by hearsay from other people. She considered every actor in the drama and outside the drama. (Chapter 26)

Elsewhere she justifies her freelance approach to Charles.

‘All public things are much better done by the police. It’s private and personal things like listening to Mrs Curtis and picking up a hint from Miss Percehouse and watching the Willetts – that’s where we score.’ (Chapter 25)

The ‘relying on’ stunt

‘Stunt’ occurs a lot in the 1920s, indicating a scam or schtick or technique or method. A little way into the novel Emily stumbles on a clever way to manipulate the men around her. This is to tell them that she is only a helpless lickle ickle girly and she is so grateful that she’s found a big strong man like them to rely on – at which point no self-respecting man can fail to ruffle up his chest feathers, feeling flattered that he is coming to the rescue of this damsel in distress. Works every time. And gets funnier with every repetition.

To Charles Enderby:

‘That’s just what I mean to do,’ said Emily with a complete lack of truth, ‘It’s so wonderful to have someone you can really rely on.’ (Chapter 11)

To Mr Ryecroft:

‘It’s so wonderful,’ she said, using the phrase that in the course of her short life she had found so effectual, ‘to feel that there’s someone on whom one can really rely.’ (Chapter 16)

To Inspector Narracott:

‘How men do stick together,’ went on Emily looking over the telegrams. ‘Poor Sylvia. In some ways I really think that men are beasts. That’s why,’ she added, ‘it’s so nice when one finds a man on whom one can really rely.’ (Chapter 27)

And not just on men. here she is buttering up bed-ridden Captain Gardner’s nurse:

‘How splendid,’ said Emily. ‘It must be wonderful for Aunt Jennifer to feel she has somebody upon whom she can rely.’
‘Oh, really,’ said the Nurse simpering, ‘you are too kind.’
(Chapter 20)

Ronnie Garfield’s theory

Ronnie is an impecunious Bertie Wooster type of upper-class twit. At one point he is given his own dim-witted ‘theory’, regarding the third cousin, Brian Pearson, who everyone thinks disappeared off to Australia years earlier.

‘Fellows that go off to the Colonies are usually bad hats. Their relations don’t like them and push them out there for that reason. Very well then – there you are. The bad hat comes back, short of money, visits wealthy uncle in the neighbourhood of Christmas time, wealthy relative won’t cough up to impecunious nephew – and impecunious nephew bats him one. That’s what I call a theory. (Chapter 23)

Bookish

Here, as in all her novels, I’m getting used to Christie regularly having her characters describe how they feel as if they’re living in a detective novel, or how things resemble (or don’t) similar scenes you read about in books.

‘What a scoop it would be,’ said Mr Enderby, ‘if you and I discovered the real murderer. The crime expert of the Daily Wire – that’s the way I should be described. But it’s too good to be true,’ he added despondently. ‘That sort of thing only happens in books.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Emily, ‘it happens with me.’
(Chapter 11)

‘Just like a sixpenny [crime novel] I got at Woolworth’s the other day, ‘The Syringa Murders’ it was called. And do you know what led them to find the real murderer, Miss? Just a bit of common sealing wax.’
(The chambermaid at the Three Crowns, Chapter 12)

‘I know what you’re thinking. Like in books there ought to be some little incident that I should remember that would be a clue. Well, I’m sorry, but there isn’t any such thing.’
(Chapter 15)

They went up the small path and entered the cottage. The interior was charming. Bookcases lined the walls. Emily went from one to the other glancing curiously at the titles of the books. One section dealt with occult phenomena, another with modern detective fiction, but by far the greater part of the bookcases was given up to criminology and to the world’s famous trials.
(Chapter 16)

‘Yes, Miss Trefusis, I see exactly what you mean. You’ll understand that contrary to the popular belief in novels it is extremely difficult to fix the time of death accurately.’
(Dr Warren, Chapter 18)

‘But then you know what the police are – always butting in on the wrong tack. At least that’s what it says in detective novels.’
(Ronnie again, Chapter 21)

‘Of course,’ said Emily, ‘the person it ought to be is Abdul. It would be in a book. He’d be a Lascar really, and Captain Trevelyan would have thrown his favourite brother overboard in a mutiny – something like that.’
(Chapter 25)

‘It’s generally understood in books, he said, ‘that the police are intent on having a victim and don’t in the least care if that victim is innocent or not as long as they have enough evidence to convict him. That’s not the truth, Miss Trefusis, it’s only the guilty man we want.’
(Inspector Narracott, Chapter 26)

She took each drawer out and felt behind it. In detective stories there was always an obliging scrap of paper. But evidently in real life one could not expect such fortunate accidents…
(Chapter 28)

Plus what I’ve come to realise is the obligatory reference to Sherlock Holmes which crops up in pretty much every Agatha Christie novel.

‘I say, are you doing any sleuthing? If so, can I help? Be the Watson to your Sherlock, or anything of that kind?’
(Upper-class twit Ronnie Garfield, Chapter 21)

Stereotypes

As discussed in earlier reviews, there’s not a lot of point picking out stereotypical and (nowadays insulting) generalisations about gender and ethnicity because detective stories like these are made out of stereotypes. Every character is a type as broad and recognisable as the types in Pilgrim’s Progress or Restoration comedy or Sheridan – the crusty old Royal Navy bachelor, the keen-as-mustard newspaper reporter, the worried mother and nervous daughter, the solid dependable doctor, and so on and so on.

It’s the familiarity of these types which is such a large part of the enjoyment. It’s like the types you meet in pantomime or sitcoms, utterly predictable and therefore reassuring and amusing. It’s so relaxing not having to cope with the complexities and unreadability of real life, and instead slip into a smooth and totally understandable world of reassuringly familiar caricatures. Obviously lots of them harbour secrets and one of them is a murderer but it really doesn’t matter, because everything will be revealed and explained and competently put to rest.

Gabby old women

The book before this, ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ and in this one, Christie makes a big deal out of several older female characters who can’t stop talking, namely Mrs Curtis:

Left to his own devices Charles Enderby did not relax his efforts. To familiarize himself with life as lived in Sittaford village he had only to turn on Mrs Curtis much as you would turn on the tap of a hydrant. Listening slightly dazed to a stream of anecdote, reminiscence, rumours, surmise and meticulous detail he endeavoured valiantly to sift the grain from the chaff. He then mentioned another name and immediately the force of the water was directed in that direction. (Chapter 21)

‘It’s almost a disease the way that woman talks,’ said [Mrs Willett]. (Chapter 21)

‘That chattering magpie of a woman, Mrs Curtis. She’s clean and she’s honest, but her tongue never stops, and she pays no attention to whether you listen or whether you don’t.’ (Chapter 28)

All complemented by Mrs Curtis’s pantomime lack of self awareness:

‘Curtis will be wanting his tea and that’s a fact,’ said Mrs Curtis without moving. ‘I was never one to stand about gossiping.’ (Chapter 21)

Pushing back

But sometimes Christie enjoys pushing back against expectations. Thus in ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ Miss Marple is a rebuttal of all the tired clichés the pompous male policemen spout against a) women and b) old women, in particular.

And so Emily Trefusis feels similarly unexpected. To me she feels like she’s kicking back against clichés about ‘young women today’ etc. In this she is linked to and Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent in the wonderfully entertaining The Secret of Chimneys and its sequel, The Seven Dials Mystery. This is why Mrs Percehouse’s opinion seems more than usually important:

‘I hate a slobbering female,’ said Miss Percehouse. ‘I like one who gets up and does things.’ (Chapter 17)

In their different ways, Bundle, Marple and Emily are just such women.

He-man

Crops up in various texts from the period. Was obviously a newish slogan or catchphrase in the 1920s.

‘I think path digging will be your only sport.’
‘I’ve been at it all the morning.’
‘Oh! you he-man!’
‘Don’t laugh at me. I’ve got blisters all over my hands.’
(Miss Violet teasing Ronnie Garfield, Chapter 1)

Woman hater

Trevelyan is described by several characters as a ‘woman hater’. Mrs Willett has no time for this description.

‘I’ve known dozens of men like it. They are called women haters and all sorts of silly things, and really all the time it’s only shyness. If I could have got at him,’ said Mrs Willett with determination, ‘I’d soon have got over all that nonsense. That sort of man only wants bringing out.’ (Chapter 14)

I’d like to see her have a go at Andrew Tate.

The press

In a deceptively comic way Christie shows how mendacious and distorting the English press are. All the complexity of human life has to be cramped and chopped up to fit newspaper stereotypes. Thus young Charles Enderby is comically open with Emily about how he’s rewritten their conversations to suit the medium’s requirements.

‘Er – I hope you don’t mind, I have just posted off an interview with you?’
‘Oh! that’s all right,’ said Emily mechanically. ‘What have you made me say?’
‘Oh, the usual sort of things people like to hear,’ said Mr Enderby. ‘Our special representative records his interview with Miss Emily Trefusis, the fiancée of Mr James Pearson who has been arrested by the police and charged with the murder of Captain Trevelyan – Then my impression of you as a high-spirited, beautiful girl.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emily.
‘Shingled,’ went on Charles.
‘What do you mean by shingled?’
‘You are,’ said Charles.
‘Well, of course I am,’ said Emily. ‘But why mention it?’
‘Women readers always like to know,’ said Charles Enderby. ‘It was a splendid interview. You’ve no idea what fine womanly touching things you said about standing by your man, no matter if the whole world was against him… I put in a very good bit about Captain Trevelyan’s sea career and just a hint at foreign idols looted and a possibility of a strange priest’s revenge – only a hint you know.’
(Chapter 17)

Christie had had personal experience of the Press’s commitment to lying and distorting people’s actions and words in order to produce copy that sells newspapers during the famous incident of her disappearance in 1928. All things considered, it’s striking how mild her satire on the Press is. Later she has her cops give a more considered view:

‘What was he doing there? Enderby, I mean?’
‘You know what journalists are,’ said Narracott, ‘always nosing round. They’re uncanny.’
‘They are a darned nuisance very often,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Though they have their uses too.’ (Chapter 24)

Height

Christie doesn’t like gabbing women but she has a penchant for tall characters. Tall is good.

Mrs Willett covertly, that she did not look a fool. She was a tall woman with a rather silly manner – but her physiognomy was shrewd rather than foolish… (Chapter 1)

Inspector Narracott was a very efficient officer. He had a quiet persistence, a logical mind and a keen attention to detail which brought him success where many another man might have failed.
He was a tall man with a quiet manner, rather far away grey eyes, and a slow soft Devonshire voice. (Chapter 4)

‘Violet.’ He had hardly noticed the girl who had followed her in, and yet, she was a very pretty girl, tall and fair with big blue eyes. (Chapter 14)

This was a young man not more than twenty-four or five years of age. Tall, good-looking and determined, with none of the hunted criminal about him. (Chapter 22)

Premise

I’ll sign off with another version of that cliché quoted at the top.

‘But one never knows. He’s no fool, that fellow, whatever else he is.’
‘No, he’s an intelligent sort of chap.’
‘His story seems straightforward enough,’ went on the Inspector.
‘Perfectly clear and above board. Still, as I say, one never knows…’ (Chapter 5)

You never know, you never know… until the final chapters of the novel where all is revealed and then… we all know, light is shed in all the dark corners, the culprit is arrested, all the other anomalies and mysteries are cleared up, and we all achieve complete closure, all in time for bed.

Credit

‘The Sittaford Mystery’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in 1931.

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‘Always dropping in – dropping in – too much dropping in. If I don’t choose to see anyone for a week, or a month, or a year, that’s my business.’ (Captain Wyatt)

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by Simon on July 21, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on July 21, 2025

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Brecht: fragments @ Raven Row

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking exhibition, in a lovely setting, I’m just kicking myself that I found out about it too late to see the theatrical performances (see below).

Raven Row

Raven Row is a secret treasure of a gallery tucked away in Spitalfields. It’s adapted from the domestic rooms of a tall thin eighteenth century building at the eastern end of Artillery Lane (nearest tube station Liverpool Street station). Raven Row is a charity committed to displaying art which is diverse and unusual, sometimes by established international artists, sometimes more out-of-the-way figures, united by having escaped the notice of the big name London art galleries. Their programme aims to be ‘improvisatory and undogmatic.’

This photo of the interior of one of the rooms immediately gives you a feel for how they’ve retained most of the original Georgian features and decoration.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row (photograph by Marcus J Leith)

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898 to 1956) has a claim to be the greatest German writer of the twentieth century, certainly the most famous. He had a first burst of fame when his musical, The Threepenny Opera, became a hit, and its signature tune, ‘Die Moritat von Mackie Messer’ was covered by American performers as ‘Mack the Knife’.

But it was after the Second World War when the radically innovative approach of his so-called ‘epic theatre’, as performed by his touring theatre company The Berliner Ensemble, revolutionised the possibilities of theatre. The spread of his technique was also helped by the fact that he wrote some of the great plays of the period such as ‘Mother Courage’, ‘The Chalk Circle’, ‘Galileo’ and many others.

But Brecht wasn’t just a world class playwright, he was also a noted poet, he wrote many essays in support of his theatre theory and, as this exhibition sets out to show, he could also be considered an artist of a particular type.

brecht: fragments

In the late 1930s Brecht came under attack from Soviet administrators of the new doctrine of Socialist Realism, most notably the powerful critic Gyorgy Lukács, who criticised him for using elitist, avant-garde techniques which were difficult for ‘the masses’ to understand. In one of his replies defending the use of modernist aesthetics for revolutionary communist purposes, Brecht mentions that, even though he was now in exile in Denmark, he was currently working on a surprising number of projects and goes on to mention 2 novels, a play and a book of poetry, not including the essay in which he describes all this (Aesthetics and Politics, Verso Books, 1977, p.70).

In other words, it was Brecht’s working practice throughout his career to be working on a multitude of projects, and to be surrounded by fragments of works in progress, across a range of genres and forms.

Found images

What this many-sided exhibition at Raven Row shows is how this concept, or category, of ‘fragments’ can be seen as not just a side effect of Brecht’s work-in-progress, but a fundamental principle which applies to them at every level. For, as this exhibition shows, Brecht was a compulsive collector of found images, often from newspapers and magazines. He pasted these into notebooks where he collected them by theme. He strewed his manuscripts with them where they obviously acted as inspiration or captured ideas, sometimes literal, sometimes tangential.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing a typical page from his notebook from the mid-1920s (photo by the author)

For example, why paste a postcard image by Pieter Breughel onto the front page of the manuscript of his great play ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ except that it, in some sense, crystallised or captured the mood, or a mood, which the work was designed to present?

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing the cover page of the manuscript of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, showing the cut and pasted letters and a postcard of a painting by Breughel (photo by the author)

Photomontage

Photos could be used in another way, to create photomontages, cutting out images from one context and pasting them into others, in the style of the radical photomontage artist John Heartfield. In actual fact, there isn’t much here in that style. For the most part, Brecht didn’t interfere with, cut and paste together, his images. They tended to go into his albums and notebooks and be pasted into play manuscripts unaltered. The artistry was in the initial selection.

The War Primer

Another use of news photos was when Brecht began collecting images during the Second World War and writing one four-line quatrains underneath them, producing what he came to call ‘photo-epigrams’. Over time this developed into a book which, after the war, came to be called the ‘War Primer’, containing 75 photo-epigrams.

A bunch of the original paste-ups for the book (actually created by Ruth Berlau, one of Brecht’s long-term collaborators) are hung across one wall. The quatrains, like most of Brecht’s poetry, consist of direct statement, unadorned by similes and metaphors, blunt and political. For example, under a photo of a bombardier in uniform inside a bomber:

You’re looking at a bastard, and a poor one!
‘I laugh at news of other men’s distress,
A corset salesman, formerly from Nürnberg,
A dealer now in death and wretchedness.’

Here’s an example, a striking magazine image of men in a steelworks which inspired Brecht to write the quatrain you can see, typed out, cut and pasted beneath it.

Paste-up for a page of War Primer (1940 to 1949) by Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Ruth Berlau. Courtesy the Bertolt Brecht Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (BBA 2096/38)

The quatrain for this one reads (in English translation):

‘What are you making, brothers?’ ‘A car of steel.
‘And what about these plates here, lying on the side?’
‘For shells that slice through sheer armoured walls.’
‘Why all this, brothers?’ ‘That we stay alive.’

Encyclopedia of gestures

Yet another use for images was that, heavily involved as he was in the staging of  his plays, he was very interested in the actors’ gestures. What happens if you get an actor to stand on a stage so? Or hold his arms just so? And now in this position? And now in that? How much can be achieved without words, without even action, just by posture and gesture? And then what happens if you add words to gestures, is it possible to make the words and gestures contradict each other or at least play off each other.

Dictatorial poses

Which explains why there’s a room of sheets from his numerous notebooks, which consists of newspaper photos of generally eminent men of the time (the obvious tyrants – Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin – with other lesser known politicians such as Daladier, Laval et al). Anyway, Brecht managed to get hold of photos them making speeches and it’s genuinely fascinating to study how they held themselves and what they did with their arms and hands. Thus prompted I adopted some of the poses of Hitler in full flow (hold two clenched fists up, palms towards you, in front of your chest – and instantly felt some of the coiled rage at the world. Elsewhere, Brecht picked up this improbable series of snaps of the Führer throwing a few shapes.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing the sheet of photos of Hitler posing and prancing (terrible photo by the author)

And, in the next glass case, copied a series of poses of Comrade Stalin addressing a meeting, which have him leaning forward and pointing an accusing finger, – and you immediately feel yourself dominating a room full of people petrified that there going to be the next one accused of some crime and hauled off to the gulag.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing the sheet of photos of Stalin, smiling, playing the affable good fellow, and pointing a finger at people he’s about to send to the gulag. Copy the poses for yourself and see how they make you feel (photo by the author)

Collaboration

Back to the plays, the wall labels tell us that it was Brecht’s common practice to be highly collaborative, to sit round a table with other writers, director, actors, to discuss parts and action and dialogue. Lines of dialogue or action were typed on strips of paper and often moved around in a process of continual shuffling and improvement.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing a typical Brecht manuscript showing how sections of dialogue were created as blocks before being moved around, all accompanied by a typical contemporary news photo (photo by the author)

Pictures for plays

Once you grasp the centrality of collaboration in Brecht’s practice then it makes perfect sense that so many of his manuscripts are not neatly typed out finished products, but highly fragmented texts made out of typed lines pasted onto notebook pages, often with lines of commentary scrawled around then and, as mentioned, often with a photo from a newspaper pasted in. Now you can see how the use of images like this 1) helps everyone involved understand the directly political context of a piece 2) captures the mood of discussions and decisions without needing to be put into words. ‘Yes, that’s it.’

Hence the examples here of work notebooks, and ‘finished’ manuscripts, which are festooned with cut out lines of dialogue or text, crystallised in newspaper photos.

Many scenes

In his conversations with Walter Benjamin, Brecht explained how he conceived of his plays less as made from ACTS, in the traditional way, but more as collections of lots of freestanding scenes. In the reply to Lukács mentioned above, he describes how the play he’s working on, describing life under the Nazis, consists of 27 short scenes with no overarching narrative arc. In other words, Brecht constructed many of his plays as if they were a series of snapshots.

Development and flux

Because another key part of Brecht’s practice is that the plays were never really finished. They always changed and developed in production as the actors and director discovered what worked, and from production to production as Brecht changed lines, or action or moved about the scenes. Narrative ideas, situations and segments of dialogue were subject to continuous cutting and rearrangement, often literally, using scissors and glue.

Recap

So from the smallest photo cut out from a magazine and pasted into a notebook, to the large scale of his three-hour-long plays, this sense of flux and fragments was foundational to Brecht’s conception of his works and his practice in assembling them.

The Brecht Archive

That’s probably enough to give you a feel for the exhibition and the light it sheds on the practice and process of Brecht’s imagination, and an indication of the kind of visual material you see (lots of pages from his notebooks and scrapbooks, lots of news and magazine photos from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s).

Just a note that the entire thing hails from the Brecht Archive now, of course, housed in Berlin and this is the first time most of this (largely unknown) material has ever been shown in the UK. It is, as I hope I’ve indicated, a fascinating treasure trove of ideas, images, documentary background to not only Brecht’s numerous works, finished and unfinished, along with glimpses of the social history of the period (1930s to the early 1950s) all combined.

Performances

A major part of the exhibition was the theatrical performances which took place twice a day during most of its run. Because I only stumbled across this so late, like a fool I missed them. The idea was that twice a day a bunch of actors led visitors through the gallery spaces, performing dramatic fragments from four of Brecht’s unfinished plays from the 1920s, showing how montage and snapshot techniques played a crucial part in his conception of playwriting.

Unfinished

Because that’s another aspect of the show I’ve forgotten to mention, which was that not only a lot of his plays changed and evolved during production, but a sizeable number never even made it that far. In short, Brecht left behind lots and lots of unfinished works. So four of the galleries contain props and production notes, including photos and visual materials relating to four plays which were never completed, but are here summarised and explained, namely:

Performance 1: The Breadshop

A 1930 collaboration addressing issues of poverty and hunger after the Wall Street Crash, which eventually ran to 245 pages but was never completed or performed. For some reason the conception began to focus on the role of the Salvation Army (SA), with a surprising number of accompanying images and biographies of SA notables.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing the performance space for The Breadshop (note the production notes and accompanying photos pasted to the wall) (photo by the author)

Performance 2: The Flood

An unfinished draft for a radio play, written 1927 to 1928, about a man-made apocalypse, inspired by a hurricane which devastated Miami in 1926.

Performance 3: Fleischhacker

A collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, worked on till 1931, this told the story of Jae Fleischhacker, a futures trader in Chicago, as he plays the wheat market. This is interwoven with the story of a ‘Family from the Savannah’, who move to Chicago to try their luck following crop failure in the wheat district.

Installation view of ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row showing the performance space and props for the performance of Fleischhacker (photo by the author)

Performance 4: Fatzer

Title of a dramatic fragment that Brecht worked on intensively for four years, from 1926 to 1930, and returned to throughout his creative life. It tells the story of a four-man tank crew, led by Johann Fatzer,  who desert their post during the First World War. Amazingly, the manuscript ended up running to 500 pages but remained fragmented and unresolved and unperformable – until, that is, some scenes were reshaped and performed here, for this show.

Concluding scene from the performance of Fatzer in ‘brecht: fragments’ at Raven Row (2024) photograph by Anne Tetzlaff

Two films

And there are two films.

1. On a small TV monitor an experimental contemporary filming of a production of Mann ist Mann (Man Equals Man) from 1931. Set in British colonial India, the play concerns the brainwashing of an ordinary civilian, Galy Gay, into the perfect soldier. This film documents the 1931 production of the play at the Berlin State Theatre, for which Brecht was director, Peter Lorre played Galy Gay, and stage design was by Brecht’s long-time collaborator Caspar Neher. It was made using the experimental procedure of shooting film at a slowed rate of around one frame per second.

2. And in a darkened room, projected on a larger screen, are excerpts from the 1932 German feature film ‘Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?’ about unemployment, homelessness and left-wing politics in the Weimar Republic. Brecht conceived and wrote the script, and directed the final debate scene, while the music was written by his long-term collaborator Hanns Eisler.

Gallery

Here’s the star performer of the era, Herr Adolf Hitler, cut out and pasted on the back of a manuscript page from ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’. There are many photos of him, the most fascinating ones being the series depicting him in the full flood of his impassioned speeches.

Manuscript page from ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ (1941) courtesy the Bertolt Brecht

This one is a highly political photo showing Spanish peasants marching off to seize land owned by exploitative landlords.

From an album compiled by Brecht in the late-1940s, courtesy the Bertolt Brecht Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (BBA 1198/058)

Here’s a vivid snapshot of Berlin men, the guy at the back giving it a particularly thuggish, threatening tone.

Image from research for Fatzer (1926 to 1930) by Bertolt Brecht. Courtesy the Bertolt Brecht Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (BBA 0111/062)

The booklet

Usually galleries produce coffee-table catalogues to accompany their exhibitions, large-format, heavy books full of colour reproductions, which cost anything from £20 to £50.

Rather amazingly, the brecht: fragments exhibition at Raven Row is accompanied by an impressive 113-page pamphlet, consisting of five high quality essays by experts in the field, along with a chronology and bibliography, and it is COMPLETELY FREE. I can’t remember a comparably generous gesture by any gallery I’ve ever visited.

Envoi

One of the things that made Brecht such an interesting, innovative and powerful poet was his commitment to direct statement undeformed by the needs of scansion or rhyme. The power derives from the fundamental gestus, a word he coined to mean attitude or opinion but indicating more than that, evoking the pose and gestures of an actor onstage, a kind of mental image of how you would stand and move as you declaim the words. It’s a style epitomised by the plain but powerful final poem in the huge volume, ‘Poems 1913 to 1956’, edited by John Willett and Ralph Mannheim (1976):

And I always thought

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.

Although most of us disagree with his doctrinaire Marxism and foolish faith in Soviet communism, it’s hard not to be impressed by Brecht’s unflinching commitment to the victims of tyranny and exploitation everywhere, captured in so many of these photos, and in the texts and poems and fragments he derived from them.

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by Simon on August 17, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on August 17, 2024

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/08/17/brecht-fragments-raven-row/

China’s War with Japan 1937 to 1945 by Rana Mitter (2013)

The aim of the book

Mitter is an eminent historian of twentieth century China and of the period leading up to World War II in particular. In his introduction he points out that the Sino-Japanese War – which lasted from 1937 and then became subsumed in the wider World War – is often neglected in Western historiography which, perhaps understandably, focuses on the war in Europe/Russia and on the American War in the Pacific: both perspectives tend to overlook the fact that the Chinese were fighting the Japanese for four long years before the Americans joined the struggle. By providing one continuous narrative of the entire Sino-Japanese War, as seen from the Chinese point of view, Mitter aims to redress this imbalance and tell this generally ‘untold story’.

The second main point, which emerges increasingly as the wider World War progresses, is that China – as the four-year adversary of the Japanese, and as the country responsible right to the end of the war for tying down some 500,000 Japanese troops as well as supplying men to fight alongside the British in Burma – deserved much greater representation in the meetings of the Big Three – Russia, America, Britain – which decided the fate of the post-war world. China was only invited to one, minor, Allied conference – held in Cairo – and was not invited to Yalta, Tehran, Potsdam. To this day, Mitter claims, the lack of recognition of China’s part in the wider anti-fascist struggle, and then her deliberate omission from the meetings of the Big Three – which they think should have been a Big Four – rankle in the memory of educated Chinese.

It contributes to the smouldering Chinese sense that for a long, long time, for some 150 years, first the British and then the Americans assumed control and sway over the Pacific and all its peoples, and that Chinese interests and contributions were consistently ignored or trampled on.

Now, at last, in the 21st century, China is confident enough and powerful enough to begin to flex her muscles and assert her rights in the region. Which is why, Mitter argues, educated people in the West need to be aware of the often harrowing events of this brutal eight-year war, and of the emotional significance it still has for many Chinese, and how it still informs modern China’s attitudes and worldview.

The Sino-Japanese War

1. 1937 to Pearl Harbour (1941)

Having annexed neighbouring Korea (1910) and the huge northern province of China known as Manchuria (1931), the aggressively militarist Japanese Empire took the opportunity of a trivial border incident (at the so-called Marco Polo Bridge) to launch a full-scale armed invasion of China in July 1937.

When Japan attacked there were broadly three forces in China: the Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-Shek (also known as the Kuomintang) which claimed to be the official government of the whole country; the smaller Chinese Communist Party – whose leaders included the up-and-coming demagogue Mao Zedong – and a number of regional warlords.

China was divided like this:

a) Because the latter part of the 19th century was marked in China by decades of civil war and administrative weakness. The biggest of these disruptions was the Taiping Rebellion, a vast civil war which dominated the 1860s and in which anything up to 100 million Chinese might have killed each other, and which people in the West have little awareness of. The rebellion had only been put down at the cost of giving autonomy to regional military leaders and it was this which established the pattern of ‘warlord’ control of some regions. A growing body of politicians, modernisers and revolutionaries all realised that the old imperial structures just couldn’t rule this huge country, and the turmoil eventually led to the overthrow of the Qing imperial dynasty in 1912 and the establishment of a republican government.

b) However, the nationalist revolutionaries proved incapable of preventing the country falling apart into a patchwork of regions controlled by local military leaders or ‘warlords’. Hence the complex geography and politics of the ‘Warlord Era’, 1916 – 1928.

Japan’s advance was swift not only because of China’s political, administrative and economic divisions but for the more basic reason that, under successive 19th century rulers, China had failed to modernise and keep up with the industrialised world. Convinced of their cultural superiority, of their lofty position as ‘the Heavenly Kingdom’, China’s rulers looked down on the big-nosed Europeans with their crude manners and obvious greed. Which turned out to be a mistake because the foreign devils (one of many discriminatory terms the Chinese use for non-Chinese) came armed with the benefits of the Industrial Revolution – steamships, guns, cannon, trains.

In the 1840s Chinese rulers found themselves forced at gun point to agree to treaties with Western imperialist powers – Britain, France, America – who secured for themselves coastal entrepôts (Hong Kong, Shanghai), exemption for Western citizens from Chinese law, but who (wisely) never made any attempt to colonise the vast peasant interior.

China’s economic and social backwardness contrasted with Imperial Japan, whose government realised in the 1860s that they had to keep up with the farangs by importing the best of Western know-how. The Japanese gave Westerners limited rights at certain specific trading ports but, more importantly, embarked on a wholesale reform and modernising of their technology and industry. By the turn of the twentieth century Japan combined an ongoing level of rural Asian poverty with surprising levels of urbanisation and industrialisation. This was brought forcefully home to everyone when Japan defeated Russia – itself arguably a vast, backward nation but still, in theory, European – in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Bolstered by this victory, Japan’s well-organised, well-equipped and well-managed army and navy went on to seize control of all Korea in 1910.

The disparity in cultural attitudes (Japan’s Big Yes to Western know-how compared to China’s lofty rejection), in their respective levels of industrialisation, and in central economic, political and military control, help explain why – when they decided to extend their occupation in 1937, Japan, with a population of just 72 million, managed to subdue China, with a population of about 520 million.

The war was marked early on by the Japanese massacre of the civilian inhabitants of the capital Nanking

and continued to be marked by extreme Japanese brutality and bloodshed, including the indiscriminate bombing of cities crowded with refugees – for example, the bombing campaign against the Nationalists’ temporary capital of Chongqing – which resulted in horrifying casualties.

The Nationalists themselves contributed to the mayhem with a ‘scorched earth’ policy, including burning some of their own cities to the ground before the Japanese could take them and – most notoriously – in 1938 breaking the dikes which held in the massive Yellow River. This created a truly epic flood over a huge area of central China which certainly delayed the Japanese advance but led to a mind-boggling 800,000 deaths from drowning, not to mention further deaths from disease and starvation.

The Communist forces, such as they were, had retreated deep into remote northern China in the long flight which their propaganda machine turned into the legendary ‘Long March’. About 70,000 communist cadres set out on it and maybe as few as 7,000 completed it, the rest dying or giving up along the way. Thus the bulk of the resistance to the Japanese invaders, of the actual fighting, fell to Chiang, his German-trained Nationalist forces, and whatever warlord allies he could press to help him (and who all too often let him down).

The whole story is a panorama of extraordinary chaos, suffering and death on a continental scale.

2. After Pearl Harbour

The story becomes a lot more comprehensible – and therefore interesting and memorable – once the Japanese have their bright idea to attack Pearl Harbour and declare war on the most powerful nation on earth. And Hitler decides – quite unnecessarily – to rally to their support and also declare war on America.

There had been an earlier turning point when the war in Europe broke out in September 1939 and Chiang’s Nationalists suddenly hoped for arms and support from the European democracies (who just happened to be the very same imperialist devils which Chinese nationalist propaganda had been reviling for decades). But, in the event, the supposedly all-powerful British Empire turned out to be weak – in fact, it was shown to be an essentially peacetime operation, able to carry out local police actions and just about manage a huge array of established colonial assets, but in no way ready for a war of aggression – unlike Germany or Japan. Britain herself struggled for survival in 1940 and ’41 and so the last thing on her mind was sending troops to the other side of the planet to fight in someone else’s war.

Pearl Harbour marked the beginning of the war for America, but was only a way station for the Chinese who had, by this stage, been resisting the Japanese for four long years. It would take three more bitter years to defeat them, with mixed results for Chiang’s Nationalists: on the one hand they now found themselves de facto allies of Britain and America in the war against Japan; on the down side, they now found themselves caught up in the very complicated diplomatic and military manoeuvering which took place even between the nominal allies Britain and America, with the added challenge of Stalin’s Russia, as well as coping with Mao’s communists and the Chinese collaborationist regime.

For one of the many untold stories which Mitter brings back into the light is the role of Wang Jingwei, at one time a colleague of Chiang’s, who was persuaded that the patriotic thing to do in order to prevent more loss of Chinese lives and destruction of Chinese land, was to co-operate with the Japanese. After agonising soul-searching – recorded in detail by one of his aides-de-camp, Zhou Fohai, in a diary from which Mitter liberally quotes – Wang agreed to fly back to the occupied former capital of Nanjing and allow himself to be set up as the Japanese-backed puppet leader of Occupied China – an equivalent of the Vichy Regime in France or Quisling in Norway.

The three years of the War in the Pacific are detailed in Max Hasting’s grim history Nemesis. Mitter usefully complements such Anglocentric accounts with his narrative of the ongoing battles – and the complex diplomatic manouevres – taking place in war-torn China.

One of the most interesting themes which emerge in the final part of Mitter’s book is that the various Chinese administrations – as they struggled to keep control of their areas and populations, to properly organise the collection of taxes, the feeding of soldiers, the distribution of the growing amounts of Allied aid – became progressively more centralised and relied increasingly on Terror as a political tool. Each of the three regimes set up secret police forces who used arbitrary arrest, torture and executions to intimidate dissident voices, each one headed by specific individuals – the equivalents of the Nazis’ Heinrich Himmler – who became notorious for their brutality and sadism. For Chiang’s nationalists it was Dai Li, for Wang’s collaborationists it was Li Shiqun, for Mao it was Kang Sheng.

And all three parties despised Westerners as culturally inferior, hated and bitterly resented the shame and humiliation they’d been subject to during the era of Unequal Treaties, and were – accordingly – contemptuous of the hypocrisy of Western ‘liberal, ‘democratic’ societies. None of them really understood the Western notion of democracy from below – the models of all three (as indeed of the conquering Japanese) was of top-down rule by a strong Leader – Generalissimo Chiang or Chairman Mao.

Given the huge political differences between all three factions and given the direct links between the Chinese Communists and Stalin’s Russia – Stalin told the CCP, basically, what to do – on the one hand, and the widespread corruption, brutality and inefficiency of Chiang’s Nationalists (to the many Americans who had experience of Chiang Kai-Shek’s regime, he acquired the nickname ‘Cash My Check’) on the other – it’s no surprise that relations between the Western Allies and the various Chinese factions were fraught with misunderstandings, miscalculations, misgivings and mistakes, which Mitter records in great detail.

3. Conclusion

By the end of World War II, the sustained struggle against the Japanese had exhausted Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist forces. By contrast the war had seen the growth in strength and confidence of the Communists who had been able to send out political cohorts to infiltrate broad areas of unoccupied China to spread their message of a revolution for the peasants, for the poorest of the poor.

It was also during the latter part of the war that Mao began to establish his grip on the Chinese Communist party through a programme of biting criticism and calls for ideological purity – the so-called ‘Rectification Process’ – which was the start of 30 years of intimidating, arresting and executing his opponents. As Mitter points out, the techniques which underlay the catastrophic Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s were first laid down in the early 1940s.

When the War in the Pacific came to an abrupt end in August 1945, the war for control of China still had four more bloody years to go, a ragged civil war in a shattered country which ultimately led to the complete seizure of power by the Communists and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949. The remnants of Chiang’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan, where they rule to this day. As Mitter sums up – Chiang’s Nationalists won the war but lost China.

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Reviews of books about other Asian wars

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by Simon on May 25, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in China, History, Japan, War
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Posted by Simon on May 25, 2017

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/chinas-war-with-japan-1937-1945-rana-mitter/

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (1931)

Ned Beaumont did not say anything. His face was expressionless.
(The Glass Key, page 153)

Narrated in the third person, this feels like a further move away from Dashiell Hammett’s origins in that, yes it involves crime and murder, but it is not focused on a detective solving the crimes and leading us through the maze of misleading information to a clear understanding of events, as were his first three novels.

It’s more an exploration of the world of Ned Beaumont (‘Im a gambler and a politician’s hanger-on’ p.155), a tough fixer for gang-leader-going-straight Paul Madvig, who’s running an election campaign when the son of the Senator they’re supporting is found dead and all his enemies start blaming it on Madvig. Beaumont:

  • follows a crooked bookie who owes him money to New York, gets beaten up before framing the bookie & getting his money
  • tries to get to the bottom of the murder of Senator’s son Taylor Henry
    • finding out who’s sending anonymous letters blaming Paul
    • dealing with the newspaper editor who’s going to print a front page exposé of Paul
    • when the editor commits suicide, going to extreme lengths to get the next day’s revelations canned
  • gets kidnapped and badly beaten by the thugs of rival gangster Shad O’Rory
  • manages the spineless District Attorney’s handling of the case
  • deals with the Senator’s daughter, Janet, who Madvig loves but who hates him
  • goads the psychopath Jeff into strangling O’Rory

Style

Again there’s an odd discrepancy between the street slang of the characters and the sometimes ornate vocabulary and rather mannered style of the narrating voice.

1. Slang terms

  • buzzer = police badge (p.31)
  • licked = beaten (p.31)
  • take a Mickey Finn = leave in the lurch (p.32)
  • unkdray = too much booze, hungover (p.46)
  • drop the shuck on someone = frame them (p.49)
  • keysters = (p.83)
  • ducat = ticket (p.83)
  • smeared = closed, shut down (p.85)
  • iron = car (p.127)
  • it’s a pipe that = it’s a certainty that (p.169)
  • roscoe = gun (p.197)
  • screw = depart (p.198) cf blow

2. Mannered narrator

The oddly formal moments in his prose.

His walnut desk-top was empty except for a telephone and a large desk-set of green onyx whereon a nude metal figure holding aloft an airplane stood on one foot… (p.58)

Farr smote his desk again. (p.63)

Ned Beaumont’s mien had become sympathetic when he transferred his gaze to the shorter man’s china-blue eyes. (p.66) Alarm joined astonishment in her mien. (p.123) Though he was attentive there was no curiosity in his mien. (p.148) The round-faced youth to whom he said it left the outer office, returning a minute later apologetic of mien. (p.163) There was as little of weakness in her voice as in her mien. (p.202)

Silence was between them awhile then. (p.86)

Ned Beaumont looked, with brown eyes wherein hate was a dull glow that came from beneath the surface, at the card players and began to get out of bed. (p.94)

When it became manifest that he was not going to speak she said earnestly… (p.107)

She drew away from his hand and fixed him with severe penetrant eyes again. (p.119)

Her blue eyes wherein age did not show became bright and keen. (p.123)

These are deliberate choices, out-dated vocabulary, Victorian phraseology. It’s odd that a style which goes out of its way to be like this can be considered the father of the hard-boiled style when it is in fact a little ornate and mannered.

What does ‘hard-boiled’ mean?

The plot isn’t particularly violent (to be precise: Ned gets hit in New York, then imprisoned and badly beaten by Shad’s men; Taylor Henry is knocked over, fractures his skull and dies; the newspaper editor Mathews shoots himself; the drunk psychopath Jeff strangles his boss O’Rory; Opal, Paul’s sister, slashes her wrists – it’s nothing compared to the earlier bloodbaths).

It isn’t a formal detective story at all since there are no detectives involved (though the mystery of Taylor Henry’s death does come to dominate more and more).

The style doesn’t have the dazzling panache, the tough guy charisma, of Raymond Chandler.

What Falcon and this one have in common – and what ‘hard-boiled’ may mean in practice – is that they both completely and utterly exclude any insight into the minds of the characters. Everything psychological is rigorously excluded for the text. When I compare it with the hundreds of pages of Graham Greene’s novels devoted to nothing but the characters’ thoughts and memories and feelings and impressions and anxieties and fears – Hammett’s novels seem like fleshless skeletons. There isn’t a flicker of warmth or humanity about them.

Instead of any of the thoughts and feelings you associate with the novel, you get minute and detailed descriptions of the outside of the characters: of the precise movements of every part of their bodies; exactly how they roll a cigarette or open a door; exactly what every part of their body does in a fight, with lecture-hall anatomical precision; and minute descriptions of their faces, especially the changing expressions of their eyes.

Mechanical habits: Thus Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon has a way of pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger (a mannerism portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 movie); in Key Ned is given the habit of brushing his moustache with a thumbnail (for example, p.175, 187).

Robots

The reader is challenged to figure out what is going on in everyone’s minds from this external evidence alone. Initially this is a challenge but quite quickly I relapsed into the odd sensation that I was observing robots. They talk. They move. But they appear to have no insides at all.

Ned Beaumont’s face, after a grimace of rage at the closed door, became heavily thoughtful. Lines came into his forehead. His dark eyes grew narrow and introspective. His lips puckered up under his moustache. Presently he put a finger to his mouth and bit a nail. He breathed regularly, but with more depth than usual. (p.116)

He became thoughtful. But we are not told what he is thinking about. We are never told what he is thinking about. Nowhere in the entire novel do we learn what Ned is thinking about. Instead we are given details of his breathing patterns. This epitomises the No Depth, Only Surfaces modality which Hammett has adopted. Is it this, this deliberate rejection of the humanist tradition of the novel which developed over three centuries to explore people’s feelings and psyches with growing subtlety and insight – this rejection which makes these books ‘hard-boiled’?

Ned Beaumont’s eyes widened a little, but only for a moment. His face lost some of its colour and his breathing became irregular. There was no change in his voice. (p.119)

It could be said that Hammett is more interested in his characters’ physiology than in their thoughts. Their thoughts are concealed within the black box of his prose. All we get is unnecessarily detailed descriptions of their precise physical movements. Sam Spade attacking Joel Cairo or pulling Wilmer’s coat down over his arms to get his guns are good examples from The Maltese Falcon. Here, Janet Henry has just heard her father accused of murder.

For a moment Janet Henry was still as her father. Then a look of utter horror came into her face and she sat down slowly on the floor. She did not fall. She slowly bent her knees and sank down on the floor in a sitting position, leaning to the right, her right hand on the floor for support, her horrified face turned up to her father and Ned Beaumont. (p.211)

Not now or at any other time are we told anything about her feelings at this devastating revelation. We simply see her crumpling like a broken marionette described very precisely.

Nothingness

Again and again and again the narration emphasises that these people acting like robots have no feelings, no emotions, no investment in what they’re saying or doing. Is it this emotional coolness, this nullity of affect, which makes these novels ‘hard-boiled’? It is as if the text is hypnotised, rotates around, gravitates towards, and is continually trying to achieve this state of emptiness. Blankness. Nothingness.

He rose from the sofa and crossed to the fireplace to drop the remainder of his cigar into the fire. When he returned to his seat he crossed his long legs and leaned back at ease. ‘The other side thinks it’s good politics to make people think that,’ he said. There was nothing in his voice, his face, his manner to show that he had any personal interest in what he was talking about. (p.149)

Ned Beaumont was looking with eyes that held no particular expression at the blond man and his voice was matter-of-fact. (p.169)

Ned Beaumont nodded. His face had suddenly become empty of all expression except hard concentration on Madvig’s words. (p.171)

Jack said nothing. His face told nothing of his thoughts. (p.186)

Janet stirred, but did not rise from the floor. Her face was blank. (p.212)

Related links

Hammett’s five novels

  • Red Harvest (February 1, 1929) The unnamed operative of the Continental Detective Agency uncovers a web of corruption in Personville. There’s a lot of violence, shoot-outs on almost every page, plus individual murders. Strangely, the CO himself says the violent atmosphere of Personville has made him go ‘blood-simple’, becoming infatuated with murders and killing.
  • The Dain Curse (July 19, 1929) The Continental Op is dragged into three episodes involving members of the Dain family: first, the French ex-con posing as Dr Leggett is murdered and his wife shot; then the daughter Gabrielle involved in murders at a weird cult; then the husband who has loved her all along is killed and, while the Op is detoxing the morphine addict, the truth of the long sorry saga is revealed.
  • The Maltese Falcon (February 14, 1930) Drastically different in feel from the previous two murder-fests and told in the third person: detective Sam Spade solves the mystery of three murders surrounding a mysterious jewel-encrusted medieval statuette, and deals with the colourful trio of crooks who are prepared to kill for it: Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo and Casper Gutman.
  • The Glass Key (April 24, 1931) The adventures of Ned Beaumont, fixer for reformed gangster Paul Madvig, as he copes with a rival gangster, a corrupt DA, a pliant newspaper editor, and various difficult dames in the run-up to an election Paul must win.
  • The Thin Man (January 8, 1934) A lighter, comic departure from Hammett’s earlier hard-boiled fiction, though still centring on a complex murder mystery: the story follows Nick Charles, a retired detective living a wealthy, idle life with his witty wife Nora. Nick is reluctantly pulled back into investigation when Dorothy Wynant, daughter of a former client, seeks help finding her missing father, an eccentric inventor.
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by Simon on October 11, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in American literature, Books, Noir, Novel
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Posted by Simon on October 11, 2014

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/the-glass-key-dashiell-hammett/