Lord Ernest William Hamilton (1858-1939), Mystery Writer

Lord Ernest William Hamilton (1858-1939) certainly came from one of the more elite backgrounds among British mystery writers.  His father was James Hamilton, first Duke of Abercorn (earlier he had been merely Marquess of Abercorn--and before that there had been nine Earls of Abercorn, going back to 1606).  During the reign of Queen Victoria, the Duke served in the Privy Council and was twice Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

James Hamilton,
1st Duke of Abercorn, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland,
and, last but surely not least, father of a mystery writer

Ernest Hamilton was the youngest of fourteen children of the Duke of Abercorn and his wife, Louisa, daughter of John Russell, the sixth Duke of Bedford.  Like four of his brothers, he served for a time as a Conservative member of parliament, but he was also known in his day as an accomplished man of letters, publishing several volumes of memoirs, as well as theological studies and novels.

John Russell,
6th Duke of Bedford,
Lord Ernest Hamilton's maternal grandfather

Among Lord Ernest's novels, which include several works of historical fiction (such as The Outlaws of the March, 1897 and The Mawkin of the Flow, 1898) are at least two books that clearly fall with the mystery genre: a thriller, The Perils of Josephine (1899), and a much later detective novel, published when Lord Ernest was seventy years old, The Four Tragedies of Memworth (1928).

Both Perils of Josephine and Tragedies of Memworth (particularly the former tale) bear resemblance to the Victorian triple-decker sensation novel associated with Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, among others.  A contemporary review of Perils of Josephine, in which rather bored reference is made to Lord Ernest leading the title character, Josephine ("that unhappy young person"), "through a series of experiences with bolting horses, sliding panels, crazed cousins, wicked priests, and burning houses," gives some idea of the style in which it was written (yes, it even draws on traditional English anti-Catholicism).

Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Queen of the Victorian Sensation Novel

Wilkie Collins
King of the Victorian Sensation Novel

The admittedly jaded reviewer went on to dismiss, in rather amusing fashion, the whole sensation or Gothic fiction genre as hopelessly outmoded and old-fashioned at the dawning of a new century (the twentieth):

"A strong impression remains with the [modern] readers that 'these things are not done.'  In our well-policed days, the most malevolent of wicked uncles whom our father's will is keeping out of his rights is hardly the cloaked and sinister figure that he was.  Our rival in love is not so likely to drop poison into our tea as to pity us for our unfortunate taste in collars.  Our athletic young women, with their inches and their biceps, cannot be counted upon to swoon when the panel slides back, but would probably make things unpleasant for the slider."

The athletic, bicycling young women of the 1890s
could not be expected to swoon at the sight of a sliding panel

When, nearly three decades later, Lord Ernest published The Four Tragedies of Memworth, it was at the height of the Golden Age of detective fiction, with its rules (one of the most famous sets propounded by Ronald Knox) designed to mark a clear aesthetic boundary between the detective novel and the thriller (or shocker, as it was sometimes called).  The novel was grabbed by the up and coming firm of Victor Gollancz, who also would publish such prominent Golden Age names in the English mystery writing field as Dorothy L. Sayers, E. R. Punshon and J. J. Connington.

Gollancz was one of the prestige publishers of Golden Age English detective fiction

For his part, Lord Ernest dutifully attempted in Tragedies of Memworth to move away from the tad lurid style of Perils of Josephine toward the more purely cerebral pleasures of the modern, 1920s detective novel; yet some affinity with the sensation style clearly remains.  As I indicated in Part One of this review essay, there is in the novel, for example, the lurking presence of a certain Asian gentleman with a vengeful agenda.  Yet Ronald Knox proclaimed Memworth an honorable exception to his anti-Chinaman, anti-thriller rule for the writing of detective fiction.  In Part Three of this review essay, I will assess just how successful a detective novel The Four Tragedies of Memworth really is.

Though it may have fallen out of critical fashion after 1900,
Victorian melodrama lived on in England--
in the 1930s, for example, in the films of Tod Slaughter--
and full scale critical revival lurked just around the (dark) corner!

Note: I do not have a photo of the actual Lord Ernest Hamilton.  If anyone finds or has one I would love to add it to the blog.  And for more on Lord Ernest Hamilton, see
http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2011/12/ronald-knox-his-detective-fiction.html

Ronald Knox, his Detective Fiction Decalogue and "The Four Tragedies of Memworth" (1928), by Lord Ernest Hamilton

Father Ronald Knox: Best known in mystery genre history
for the ten rules (the "decalogue") that he laid down
for the writing of detective fiction

In Father Ronald Knox's celebrated Golden Age detective fiction "decalogue" the Catholic priest and author of mystery tales propounded ten rules for writing in the genre.  One of the more famous (or infamous) of his rules is number five:

"No Chinaman must figure in the story.  Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming  that the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals.  I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of 'the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down at once; it is bad.  The only exception which occurs to my mind--there are probably others--is Lord Ernest Hamilton's 'Four Tragedies of Memworth.' "

Ronald Knox's droll humor is not always appreciated by his critics

Father Knox has been rapped over the knuckles, figuratively speaking, for formulating this rule, by critics who have failed to understand that Knox in his droll fashion was attempting to make a serious point: that the mystery thriller or shocker tale and the detective novel were two very different things. Knox himself distinguished between the two mystery forms earlier in his decalogue:

"A detective story must have as its main interest the unraveling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end.

And here, for my own part, I would draw a very clear line of demarcation between detective stories and 'shockers.'  Shockers are not in the true sense mystery stories at all; they do not arouse a human instinct of curiosity....

We know at once that the woman is an adventuress, probably a quite innocent adventuress who is being compelled by a threat of blackmail to subserve the purposes of villains; that there is a gang of international crooks at work, determined to put an end to the peace of Europe by giving away English state secrets to an unknown foreign power.  We are certain beforehand that the motives of the villains will be entirely inhuman, the actions of the hero and heroine rash to the verge of idiocy; that the complications to which we are introduced at the beginning will not be explained at the end, because by that time the reader will have forgotten all about them, and probably the author as well.  All this is not a detective story."

In advocating banishing the "Chinaman" from the true detective novel, Ronald Knox had in mind the silly and offensive racist caricatures most prominently associated with the novels of Sax Rohmer (creator of the "fiendish Oriental mastermind," Dr. Fu Manchu), but also figuring in numerous other English and American mystery thrillers throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including some by thriller king Edgar Wallace, the bestselling novelist in England in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Fright film star Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu,
in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932),
one of the most notorious thriller genre films of the 1930s

Though most associated with the Fu Manchu novels
of Sax Rohmer, the sinister "Chinaman" figured in
numerous other Golden Age thrillers as well

Father Knox's Chinaman rule has been much discussed over the decades, but, interestingly, little or perhaps even no mention has been made of Knox's clearly stated exception to the Chinaman rule: Lord Ernest Hamilton's 1928 mystery novel, The Four Tragedies of Memworth.  What is this novel and why is its prominent Asian character an acceptable violation of Knox's rule?  All will be revealed by the Passing Tramp in Parts Two and Three of this review essay! (for more on Ronald Knox, see ronaldknoxsociety.com/index.html )

Special note from the Passing Tramp: It's been a month now with this blog and it has had nearly 4000 visits, from around the world.  Thanks very much for those visits.  I hope my posts have been of interest and I will try to keep it that way.