Richard Harding Davis | Charles Felton Pidgin and J. M. Taylor | Christopher Morley | Bliss Austin
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
Gallegher, and Other Stories
In the Fog (1901)
Somewhere in France
The Adventures of Detective Barney (c1915)
The Chronicles of Quincy Adams Sawyer, Detective (c1912)
The Haunted Bookshop (1919)
Dove Dulcet stories
"The Final Problem" (1946)
The authors included here in no sense form a school, but they do have many features in common. All were mainstream writers in pre 1920 America. All wrote some tales that are best described as "adventure" stories, with elements of crime, thrills, and sometimes mystery. Pidgin and Taylor are closest to the pure, traditional mystery; the others are further off. All had certain elements of literary prestige; none were considered ordinary entertainers. Their works stand at the intersection of popular literature, literary prestige, and early private investigator fiction in the Nick Carter tradition. Their works show elements that would later coalesce into the pulp detective tradition founded by Black Mask magazine. Other authors whose works anticipated later pulp fiction were E. Phillips Oppenheim and Frank L. Packard; they are discussed not here, but in the article on Rogue fiction.
These writers are not closely associated with each other. Instead they are popular writers of their day who drew on adventure fiction traditions to create their works. There are probably many other writers of this kind, lurking in the literary archives. They are grouped together here because they form a window into the adventure fiction of an earlier day.
Richard Harding Davis was a famous war correspondent and author of adventure fiction. The son of the distinguished writer Rebecca Harding Davis ("Life In The Iron Mills"), Davis was one of the most famous and idolized men of his time. Most of Davis' fiction is not mysterious, but deals with spies, intrigue in foreign countries, mining engineers on big projects, and other manly men in distant places. One might note that while Richard Harding Davis only wrote a few pieces that are on the borderline of the mystery story proper, yet he is still remembered and widely reprinted when other turn of the century authors languish in obscurity. Davis is included here for two reasons: a few of his stories do have mystery elements in them; and his writing was clearly a precursor to the pulp fiction that appeared in Black Mask and other magazines.
"The Frame-Up" (1915) has a number of elements that look forward to Black Mask, and the hard-boiled stories of the pulp era. It is largely set at a lonely nightclub-roadhouse run by crooks, the sort of underworld entertainment venue that is perhaps the classic hard-boiled location. It deals with a background of urban civic corruption, another basic hard-boiled theme. The police have to surround and penetrate the road house, with the hero probably walking into a trap, also archetypal plot developments in pulp tales. In Black Mask, this police raid would probably erupt into violence, whereas in this earlier, more genteel, tale, violence never actually breaks out, despite all sorts of menacing threats in the roadhouse environment. Still, while reading "The Frame-Up", it is hard for any pulp fan not to believe that one is reading a Black Mask story. The existence of "The Frame-Up", and other early mystery-adventure gambits in Morley's The Haunted Bookshop (1919), suggests that there was perhaps a whole series of such early adventure tales in the era, both in print and in the movies, whose milieu and approach anticipated the pulps.
"In the Fog" is the only piece I know of by Davis that contains a mystery and its solution - actually, multiple proposed solutions, none of which is ever considered by the text as absolutely definitive. There are no "subsidiary mysteries" in Davis' tale, (such as puzzling events or mysterious clues), just the riddle of whodunit, and Davis' tale can be seen as a very late example of the Early Whodunit tradition that stretched from Godwin to Dickens and Mrs. Henry Wood in the period 1794 - 1870. There is even much talk about circumstantial evidence in the story, which is a central aspect of the old Early Whodunit tales. Davis seems to completely ignore the more complex mystery approach of his contemporaries, with such writers as Doyle, Shiel, Meade and Eustace, etc., offering brilliant puzzle plot stories. There is not much use of detectives or detective work either in Davis' tales, ignoring the approach of his other most popular contemporaries, Gaboriau and Anna Katherine Green. Davis seems much more marginal to the history of the puzzle plot mystery than his big reputation would indicate. He is mainly a writer of thrillers and adventure fiction, albeit intricately plotted adventure fiction.
"In the Fog", for all its reputation, is not as good as one would like. The best part of "In the Fog" is the description of the fog itself, in the first section of the story. This shows Davis' view of London as a city where adventure is lurking in every foggy street, a view that is strongly indebted to Stevenson. Robert Louis Stevenson was Davis' favorite author while growing up, and "In the Fog" is a conscious attempt to write a story in the tradition of Stevenson's The New Arabian Nights.
"Somewhere in France", a W.W.I spy tale, shows Davis' skill at complex plotting. This short story is still one of the more enjoyable spy yarns of its era, and it seems vastly less dated as entertainment than E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation (1920), for example. Its intrigue seems very unlike war-like, and is rather close to the mystery-suspense story. By the way, the title has quotes in it; this is apparently how news dispatches from the front were tagged.
Davis' mystery technique shows a common pattern in the three tales, as well. Davis is very interested in lying stories. In all of these tales, people enmesh other people in a web of deception. There is almost an absurdist element to the tales - eventually everything in them is seen to be simply illusion. It reminds one of Chesterton's early tale, "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (1903). Chesterton, like Davis, was deeply influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, and perhaps there is some common literary antecedent for this approach in Stevenson with which I am not familiar. In Davis, both the sympathetic and villainous characters lie. It is simply a way of life, and viewed as the "normal" way to deal with dangerous, thriller-like situations.
Davis' two real crime stories, "In the Fog" (1901), and "The Frame-Up" (1915), have much in common. Both deal with the horrifying consequences, in Davis' view, of having a love affair with a scarlet woman. There is family rejection and disinheritance, public career ruining scandal, and finally, in both stories, death by suicide pact. Yikes! Davis lived at a time when Vamps were the rage - a little later, Theda Bara would become a star in movies like A Fool There Was - but Davis' take on cheap flirtation by single men goes far beyond this into personal obsession. Even talking to a loose woman on a train, as the foolish hero does in the mid section of "In the Fog", can lead to career ruining disaster. In contrast, Davis glamorizes the act of male bonding. The DA's young detective assistant in "The Frame-Up", the Army officers in "Somewhere in France", and the police chief in the mid section of "In the Fog", are all a glamorized alternative harbor for his beleaguered heroes. Establishing ties with these people offers the hero support in a cold, cruel and difficult world.
Davis wrote a number of other stories whose thriller like properties put them on the border of the mystery world. One of the best is "Gallegher", a story about a young boy working on a newspaper who achieves a remarkable feat for the paper one night. "Gallegher" was the story that made Davis' literary reputation, and at one time it was a famous story that "everyone" had read. There was even a series of Gallegher TV films during the 1960's, now forgotten, shown on "The Wonderful World of Disney" - a rare example of contemporary filmmakers remembering our American detective heritage. I have also seen a rare silent film adaptation of a Davis story, The Scarlet Car (1916), directed by the otherwise obscure Joseph DeGrasse (I wonder if he was the brother of the much better known cinematographer, Robert DeGrasse.) The Scarlet Car is stiffly directed, but still fascinating. I have seen only a few movies from the teens, and hardly any mystery thrillers, so this is an interesting take on a neglected genre. The many silent mystery films mentioned in mystery reference books are never shown today or made available, despite being adapted from some of the best known writers in mystery history.
The Chronicles of Quincy Adams Sawyer, Detective (collected 1912) are charming early American detective stories. They place an emphasis on deductions from evidence at crime scenes. In this they vaguely recall R. Austin Freeman, although they are much simpler than Freeman's tales. The stories are mildly but pleasantly plotted. The authors like double crimes: two crimes whose details surrealistically echo each other. They also like to bring out surprising new perspectives on subsidiary characters half way through the stories; these new developments are often more ingenious that the finales of the tales.
Pidgin was an inventor as well as a writer; most of his other books are mainstream fiction. Charles and Ray Eames' wonderful history of scientific computing, A Computer Perspective (1973), has a picture of Pidgin. He was one of the rivals of Herman Hollerith in the development of statistical tabulating machines.
Like many American writers of their era, Pidgin and Taylor recognize crooked city government and Tamany Hall style politics as part of their world. There are also crooked businessmen with illegal financial schemes. Such villains are prominent in the American Scientific school of the era, as well as Mary Roberts Rinehart and Jacques Futrelle. Pidgin and Taylor duly include a nice story involving theft from a bank, "The Affair of the Trimountain Bank"; such a tale is de rigeur for all early 1900's American authors with any ties to the scientific detective story!
"The Affair of William Baird, P. B." is an impossible crime tale. Like many of the tales, this one's solution is easily guessed. Still, it is a good idea. The story is also close to the Rogue tales then popular, dealing with Sawyer's attempt to catch a clever thief.
The first and most interesting of the tales, "The Affair of the Double Thumb Print", is an antecedent of the hard-boiled pulp detective tales to come. Sawyer is a Boston area private eye. This case pits him against professional, low life crooks, robbers who hang out in cheap saloons. It also requires plenty of two-fisted action on his part against said crooks, in a variety of cheap dives. All of this is strongly reminiscent of future pulp stories, such as Frank L. Packard's The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1914-1915) and the Black Mask tales of the 1920's.
Other features of the story hearken back to the Sherlock Holmes tales. The story titles all begin with "The Affair of". Sawyer is a master of disguise, and like Holmes, he frequently disguises himself as a tough. Sawyer has friends from all classes of society - like Holmes, he is a democratically oriented, middle class man outside of the framework of the class structure. The weakest of the stories, "The Affair of the Golden Belt", pits Sawyer against a sinister cult group with an elaborate history, reminiscent of the many such groups in Doyle's fiction.
Sawyer had two years of college, and studied science, chemistry, psychology and sociology preparatory to his career as a private eye - like Holmes, he has a scientific background. Sawyer is an all-knowing detective in the Holmes tradition, who mystifies everyone around him till the final solution. This is typical of many Golden Age detectives too, but not of the typical later private eye. All in all, Sawyer is a hybrid of the Holmes era detective, and the private investigator to come.
Sawyer has many close friends on the Boston police, including young Inspector Gates, the other main continuing character in the series. Both Sawyer and Gates are the sort of frank young manly men whom people in 1912 regarded as an ideal hero. Neither has the ostentatious seediness or hard-boiledness of later pulp heroes. On the other hand, both are muscular and skilled fighters. Neither Sawyer nor Gates seem alienated: both enjoy the society around them, unlike many later hard-boiled crime fighters. The two men express their fondness for each other repeatedly in the stories. They also enjoy working with each other as a team. There are quite a few other examples of faithful male pals in the stories, notably in "The Affair of the Plymouth Recluse". Sawyer nor Gates seem to live in a world with a gift for male friendship. The authors also like tough older women. These strong women actually get involved in the physical action in some of the stories, notably "The Affair of the Double Thumb Print" and "The Affair of Unreachable Island"; such involvement is very unusual in any pre-1970 detective story. Partly this reflects an egalitarian Yankee tradition celebrating strong, independent women: see Jewett's mainstream classic The Country of the Pointed Firs.
Christopher Morley's 1919 novel The Haunted Bookshop is an early example of a genre of story found constantly in later books and films: ordinary people who become amateur investigators of strange events that just happen to surround them. There were amateur investigators galore in novels by Green, Arnold Bennett, and Rinehart, and Christie was soon to create Tommy and Tuppence (1922), not to mention The Man in the Brown Suit (1924). Still, Morley's book anticipates future examples of the genre with uncanny accuracy. His settings are far more bourgeois, cheery, and commonplace, and his characters are far more like completely ordinary American types, not being rich members of Society. Such "everyday" characters will be more typical of future amateur detectives.
Morley's novel contains that archetypal scene of the pulps to come, the attempt to penetrate a house full of crooks. First sleuthing alerts the protagonists that something is going on in a mysterious house. Then there is sneaking up to the windows, and spying. Finally, someone goes into the house... In what is usually cited as the first hard-boiled private eye story, Carroll John Daly's "Three Gun Terry" (1923), there is a raid on a house full of crooks. It is more violent than Morley's story, but its is the same kind of tale.
Morley cites not other writers as sources for his characters and plot, but rather the movies. His hero is always being compared with the protagonists of films, and so are the plot developments. In 1918, when his story was set, feature films were only 6 years old, having emerged in 1912. Today, these early feature films are even more obscure than the mystery novels of the era, being either tragically lost, or buried in archives. It is very hard to compare the period's films with Morley's book. Also, while the novel cites many books and authors by name, film is generally just cited collectively as "the movies". ("This situation is just like the movies", his characters are always saying.) So if Morley had specific mystery films in mind, it is going to be hard to trace them now, because there are few explicit references. He does like and mention Dorothy Gish, and Charlie Chaplin, however.
Still, whether Morley pioneered this genre, or simply adapted it from other writers and filmmakers, the novel crystallizes the genre at an early date, and gives a reference point for comparisons with later books and films in a similar style.
Morley's literary style is very impressive. His abilities to describe thought processes is especially wonderful. These passages should be quoted in books on cognitive psychology. And in literary textbooks. The descriptions of personal encounters, nature and Brooklyn are also good.
Morley's sincere pacifism, and his desire that the realities of W.W.I not be glossed over in literature, are also impressive. His judgments of art are less entirely reliable. I didn't like the badmouthing of Fatty Arbuckle's films. Nor does the unfortunately racist Conrad seem so entirely admirable today as he perhaps did in 1919, when Morley treated him as one of his heroes.
Morley clearly loved domesticity. Here there are scenes of eating meals and doing the dishes. Morley once set a whole one act play, "Thursday Evening" (1922), in a kitchen. The set of the play is supposed to be a realistic kitchen, complete with sink, etc.
"The Final Problem" (1946) is included here, not because it is a pre-pulp story, but because one of its central characters is Christopher Morley. Austin was a Baker Street Irregular, and this tale uses Sherlock Holmes material to spoof Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's first Detective Short-Story Contest. The judges in that real life 1946 contest were Morley, Howard Haycraft, and Ellery Queen, and Austin uses them as the detective protagonists of his story. The tale is a delightful little detective story, with a good deal of tongue in cheek humor, and a nice spoof of both Holmes and the Ellery Queen short stories.