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Saturday, July 28, 2007
Well, it’s not exactly Harry Potter, but …
Ten days ago I compared Pottermania to the early 20th Century popularity of Edgar Wallace. Truth is: I’ve got a soft spot for the novel that made Wallace’s name, The Four Just Men (1905). Funny story: Wallace offered a §500 prize for solving this serialized mystery, then neglected to limit the number of winners, resulting in the Daily Mail eventually having to pay £5000 in damages. But Wallace got famous.
Anyway, getting to the point. I’m working on an InDesign template to use for a version of Frankenstein I’m making, and I decided to use Four as a test run. Just for fun. So here it is, in PDF form. It’s still a draft, because actually I’m a bit puzzled about the ending. There is an online edition here, which I started with, and which turned out to need lots of work. Well, I’ll say a bit more about that at the end of the post, if anyone wants to help me polish my edition.
The great thing about this novel is one magic passage from chapter 2. The Four, you must understand, are a brotherly band of vigilantes - ancestors of today’s action heroes, but with a bit less action. More of a locked room mystery thing they’ve got going on. Anyway, to establish the atmosphere, we hear a bit about their past cases:
Rightly or wrongly, they consider that justice as meted out here on earth is inadequate, and have set themselves about correcting the law. They were the people who assassinated General Trelovitch, the leader of the Servian Regicides; they hanged the French Army Contractor Conrad in the Place de la Concorde—with a hundred policemen within call. They shot Hermann le Blois, the poet-philosopher, in his study for corrupting the youth of the world with his reasoning.
And that’s all I know about poor Hermann. (’Reason’. Bah.)
It’s all very ’Buck Henderson, Union Buster‘. The novel isn’t quite as goofy as this passage suggests. But it’s pretty goofy. Unless by ‘just’ you customarily understand: severely undermotivated terrorists. They are threatening to kill the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who seems like a perfectly nice fellow, if he doesn’t block passage of an Act that would cause a Carlist leader to be extradited to Spain. (Carlism? That’s something I haven’t heard anyone worked up about in a while.)
I think I will dedicate my edition to the memory of the poet-philosopher, Hermann le Blois. May he rest in peace.
As I was saying: I’m a bit puzzled by the ending. First, the 1905 edition - I’ve got a reprint - differed from all later editions, because the solution wasn’t included yet. There was only a ‘letter’ at the end. Then, starting in 1906 (I presume), the final chapter got added, when the contest was through. But the Gaslight edition has a different ending than some later print editions I’ve seen. Specifically, I haven’t seen the Gaslight final paragraph anywhere but at Gaslight. I’ve checked a couple old copies and not found it. The mystery paragraph is this one:
Falmouth expressed the thought of the whole police department—of all the forces of law and order—not so very long after this when, reviewing all the facts in the case of Sir Philip Ramon in a discussion with his chief, he suddenly burst out, “Think what it would mean if some time we might have these men working with us instead of against us!”
If anyone cares to check whatever old edition your library has and report back, I wouldn’t mind at all. Remember Hermann le Blois!
Comments
My library has the Tallis 1905 edition, which is why I wondered if anyone knew the secret of the locked room scenario when I commented on your last Wallace post. Did it involve an exotic animal, and possibly an exotic animal tube communicating with an adjoining room? Or at the very least an orangutang. Now THAT would be an elegant solution.
On the Carlism thing, from memory aided by some fairly unsatisfactory notes, I think the controversy Wallace is alluding to is Britain’s c19th tradition of harbouring political refugees in general rather than a specific national situation. In 1898 there was a conference in Rome to arrange an international extradition treaty which the UK torpedoed by, well, by not agreeing, I guess. British laxity on this issue was the motive behind the homeopathic bombing in Conrad’s The Secret Agent, published almost simultaneously with 4JM. So whether or not Britain had a duty to accept arguably dangerous political fugitives like Mazzini and Kropotkin was, I gather, something people talked about.
I feel like Wallace never really takes a side on this question. The assassination victim is, as you say, a stand up guy, but the 4 are also noble as all get-out (although hoity-toity). He also seems to fence-sit when it comes to modernity and mass media; newspapers are serious and professional, but also sensational and hostage to a very shallow public.
The preface to my edition hails Wallace as without a doubt the most _prolific_ author of popular fiction ever known, which strikes me as not the best stab ever taken at saying something nice.
Ch XII: “The burn on his hand! the dead sparrows! By Heavens - it’s clear as daylight!” Of course!
So, I guess the letter might have been ripped out of my library’s Tallis edition. But going on my notes, the narrative ends with ch XI, and is followed by an Appendix which mentions the contest (I can’t remember how exactly) and oddly describes Wallace as “in the forefront of living impressionist writer.”
Thanks for putting the pdf edition together - very handsome.
Glad to be of assistance, John.
My Great Pan 1950 edition doesn’t have that paragraph in it.
Hmmm. I left a comment here yesterday about two editions but it seems to have disappeared. Let’s try this again.
My library has three one of which is the Attridge’s Tallis edition. The Small, Maynard & Company 1920 edition has the mysterious Gaslight paragraph. It also seems to be a kind of omnibus edition as there are two parts, the first of which is your PDF. I’ve forgotten the names of each section but would be willing to look it up, if necessary, as I’m back in the library today.
There are other differences. “Thery’s Trade” is the first chapter rather than a prologue. (This one has no prologue.) It is also missing about four or so paragraphs in the first couple of pages and has a paraphrased version of at least one. (I have not compared them thoroughly.) Things don’t start to match until the dialogue starts.
A 1973 White Lion reprint of (what I think was) a 1904 edition matches your PDF with the exception of the letter which wasn’t included.
Thanks, Imani, that’s rather interesting. And puzzling. It sounds as though the Gaslight version is the 1920 version (which fits.) If it’s convenient, could you check your omnibus against theirs. They, too, appear to have a two novels in one. (But they only ever got around to putting the first one online.)
There were other changes between the editions I’ve got and the Gaslight. Example: there’s a pro-German MP in chap. 2 who keeps talking about how efficient and modern Germany is. In the Gaslight edition, he gets cut. (He only has a few lines.) I suspect maybe that was something that happened during W.W. I.
Also, the Gaslight has the weird table of contents you describe, with “Thery’s Trade” as chapter 1.
Most handsome indeed! Any chance you could whip up the same thing formatted for A4 paper? (I sense a handbound edition coming on...)
Thank you, thank you.
I should probably settle what the optimal format is, if the expectation is that people will be printing it out themselves (or reading onscreen.) I am partial to relatively little print in the middle of a blank white sheet. But I have probably erred on the side of imitating 6’ by 9’ paperback in this instance.
Thoughts?
I’m probably in a minority here: I rearrange to booklet 2up, print on a4 paper and bind into a booklet. (I’ve done it a few times with Project Gutenberg texts run through LaTeX, but never something as nice-looking as this one.)
But actually I just tried a couple of test pages, and it works out fine as is. The text block is a bit lost and lonely with the larger margins but it’s perfectly readable. (It would be truly lovely if I could trim the margins a bit closer, to something like a pocket edition. Wanting my own guillotine, that’s a new experience...)
Nice work!
I tried reading just a little, got to the pictures of Thery’s batlike ears and the bit about how meaningful that was, and decided no thanks—it’s like Chesterton’s stuff about anarchists without his manic energy, or indeed without his not-so-hidden identification with the anarchists. It’s good layout work, but the source text itself is indeed no Harry Potter.
In the SM&C edition the pro-German chap is also cut out. But the two “Thery’s trade” still start out differently until the dialogue. The Gaslight matches all of the other editions.
First paragraph: Four men sat about a table on the sidewalk in front of the Cafe of the Nations in the Hight Street of Cadiz and talked business.
The PDF’s fourth paragraph is the SM&C’s second with an extended last sentence: As Thery, alias Saimont, he is registered and to all students of Criminology and Physiognomy, he must need no introduction. Which I now see was lifted from the 2nd paragraph on the 2nd page of the PDF.
The third paragraph is “He sat at the little table...” and things go smoothly from there.