I saw your post in the Thranduil tag, and now I'm curious what are your headcanons for the Elvenqueen??
Oh man, well, first off, I should say that I came up with these in the months after Desolation of Smaug came out back in 2013 or 2014, and mostly they're written out in google docs and I don't remember a lot offhand. But I came up with a lot of ideas about Thranduil's wife being Avari instead of being Silvan, Sindarin, Teleri, or Ñoldorin.
That expanded into a bunch of research and headcanons about the Avari, and a half-written essay about what happened to them. I have no idea if it was ever addressed in any of the ancillary works, I've only read the Simarillion, but even if some of the Avari were captured by Morgoth and turned into the first orcs, did he get all of them? What if he didn't?
So I liked the idea that she was a wanderer from a line of Elves who don't even recognize Aman as a home, and she wandered into the Greenwood and didn't particularly respect his authority beyond acknowledging that it was his territory she was in. I have a weakness for those kinds of relationships, Authority and Challenge Authority. Yes, Thranduil's wife could have been an elegant Silvan of good family and I'm totally fine with that too, but I found it a lot more fun to think of her as the outsider of outsiders, one of the only people who gets into his face about things and pushes back. There's also speculation that Dorwinion is an Avarin land, and Dorwinion wine being popular in Thranduil's court could be a connection, but that's getting into the headcanons, and this is long enough! Thank you for asking, it's been forever since I thought about it!
Note: Over the course of #rafflesweek, I will post five excerpts from my master’s thesis on E.W. Hornung’s Raffles stories. While each part can be read on its own, I recommend reading them in the order they are posted.
This is Part 1.
(Please see the end for footnotes and works cited.)
Introduction: How the English Gentleman Came to Be
[This introduction is a condensed version of a much longer chapter about Victorian roles of masculinity.]
My analysis of A.J. Raffles and Bunny Manders was based on the main concept behind Victorian middle-class masculinity: the gentleman. The original definition of a gentleman (dating back to the late Middle Ages) was a man of aristocratic birth with land ownership. When the feudal system was overturned as a result of the Industrialisation, the emerging middle class not only gained political and economic power but also began to appropriate the gentleman ideal. This appropriation shifted the meaning of what a gentleman ‘is’ from an inherited privilege (one was born into it) to an aim to strive for, thus making it accessible to non-aristocratic members of society.
The middle-class ideal of a ‘true’ gentleman was based on moral virtues (courage, honour, integrity, self-respect, etc.). However, it was still tied to wealth, as the best means of achieving gentlemanly status was through public school education. Apart from instilling moral virtues into its pupils, public school education also fostered athleticism through team sports such as rugby and cricket. The philosophy behind this was called ‘Muscular Christianity’: only in a sound body could a sound mind (and moral character) thrive. Public schools were designed to prepare their pupils for an upper middle-class life: these young men would either pursue a profession (law, military, church) or live off inherited wealth / investments. Both options afforded the gentleman a great amount of leisure: whiling away his days at clubs or house-parties, he was able to display his disinterest in economic matters by eschewing a life of thrift and manual labour.
Victorian middle-class society was strictly divided into a public, ‘male’ sphere and a private, ‘female’ sphere. The men were supposed to display vigour, initiative, moral rectitude and self-restraint, while the women were expected to be tender, nurturing and submissive. In the 1890s, the gentleman ideal was contested by the newly-emerging role of the dandy. The dandy was a fundamentally theatrical being: he combined lower-class bohemian aspects (dress, lifestyle) with aristocratic archetypes (artificiality, posing, masks). This was based on the ideas of Aestheticism (art for art’s sake) and Decadence - the rejection of social institutions (e.g. marriage) and the embrace of hedonistic self-indulgence. For the Decadents, the meaning of life lay in the intense experience of moments through great passions. The dandy’s performative identity and his ridiculing of morality was perceived as a direct attack on the integrity of the gentleman ideal. As the dandy’s aristocratic attitudes were also associated with effeminacy, his presence threatened the gender stability of the middle-class gentleman as well. Indeed, the dandy would soon be associated with homosexuality, the most famous example being Oscar Wilde.
“You Must Not Make the Criminal (Gentleman) the Hero”
By the time the first volume of Raffles stories was published in 1899, the idea of what constituted a ‘gentleman’ was highly contested. Half a century earlier, the concept of a ‘gentleman thief’ would have been anathema to people like Samuel Smiles, who praised moral integrity and truthfulness as the core characteristics of a gentleman (Smiles 1997: 317). At the turn of the century, however, a writer of stories depicting the idea of the gentleman as “essentially weak and vulnerable” (O’Brien 2015: 658) did not have to fear censorship or moral outrage any longer.
While there were some critics of The Amateur Cracksman who voiced moral concerns1, the overall reception of the stories by critics and the public alike was very positive. On one level, Hornung’s stories about a cunning and egotistical, public-school educated gentleman pretending to be a man of leisure while secretly robbing the houses of the upper (middle) class, were merely cashing in on the late-Victorian craze for sensationalist stories (both fictional and non-fictional) (Fox 2007: vii-viii). Accounts about ‘forbidden’, immoral and possibly violent subjects were in huge demand by the late-Victorian reader (Seeber 2012: 335); tales about secret identities, guilty secrets and transgressions of moral and social boundaries abounded in sensational journalism as well as in popular fiction and high-brow literature2 (Freeman 2007: 73). A notable nonfictional example was the nation’s fascination with Jack the Ripper. One major thread running through the public discussion at the time was the assumed respectability of the man: for instance, the skillful removal of organs from his victims led the Illustrated Police News to speculate he was a doctor in everyday life (Godfrey 2011: 116). [Even Raffles voices his own theory about the murderer’s identity at one point: “[…] it’s my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a really eminent public man, whose speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities.” (Hornung 2013: 31).] In a world where a serial killer was believed to be a respected gentleman, the scandalous potential of depicting a fictional gentleman burglar was consequently not that high.
Playing at being a gentleman
While the choice of a criminal gentleman as protagonist may not have been that controversial in itself3, the way in which E. W. Hornung characterises A. J. Raffles challenges the common-held notions about what a gentleman was by blurring the lines between gentleman, dandy and the common criminal. When the reader is first introduced to Raffles in “The Ides of March”, his status as a gentleman is quickly established. As a boy, he attended a public school where he excelled in team sports, especially cricket (Hornung 2013: 6). As the reputation of a public school during this time4 depended in no small part on the quality of its sports teams (Holt 1992: 82), Raffles’ performance of his role as captain of the school cricket team can serve as an indicator of his gentlemanly character. This is pointed out by Bunny when he comments: “Everybody knows how largely the tone of a public school depends on that of the eleven, and on the character of the captain of cricket in particular; and I have never heard it denied that in A. J. Raffles’s time our tone was good, or that such influence as he troubled to exert was on the side of the angels.” (Hornung 2013: 6-7)
After Raffles left public school, he joined the ranks of amateur cricketers, playing in matches both at home and in Australia (Hornung 2013: 47). His being an amateur is another trait that characterises Raffles as a gentleman: “an amateur is as proficient as a professional, but plays the game for its own sake rather than for money” (Green 2003: xxxiv). Spending a great amount of time playing cricket without actually being paid for it implies that Raffles is wealthy enough to not have to pursue actual work. Bunny assumes as much when, desperate for help after signing over worthless checks to the winners of a baccarat game, he visits Raffles hoping to get a loan from him: “[…] I had dared to look for kindness from him now; because I was ruined, and he rich enough to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year […].” (Hornung 2013: 3; emphasis added).
However, the true source of Raffles’ income is soon revealed. Having promised to help Bunny, Raffles drops several hints as to how he will secure the necessary money. When Bunny, overjoyed that Raffles will come to his aid, proclaims that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for a friend, Raffles asks: “Not even […] a crime?” (Hornung 2013: 7). He then proposes to visit a jeweller friend of his in the middle of the night. When Bunny expresses doubts, Raffles assures him he has “the run of [the] place and a latch-key all to [himself]” (Hornung 2013: 8). As naive as Bunny is, it takes him until he is actually standing in a room above the jewellery shop to realise what’s truly going on:
“He had given me a dozen hints, and I had taken none. […] ‘A burglar!’ I gasped.
‘You – you!’
‘I told you I lived by my wits.’” (Hornung 2013: 10-11)
The reason Raffles gives for leading a double life of respectable gentleman by day and skilled burglar by night is quite illuminating: “Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together?” (Hornung 2013: 16). In essence, Raffles wants to enjoy the leisure and privilege a gentlemanly life affords without having to endure a boring profession to finance it. Additionally, he pursues a profession that presents him with countless moments of thrill and excitement, which is reminiscent of the Decadent argument that life should contain as many “pulsations” and moments of ecstasy as possible (Pater 1980: 190). While Raffles loves playing cricket, turning professional would not be an option for him. The earnings of professional cricketers were not nearly substantial enough to finance a life of leisure (Holt 1992: 290-291). A gentleman was expected to dress a certain way and his apartment had to belong to a respected neighbourhood (Waters 1997: 31); both of these requirements were not sustainable on a professional cricketer’s salary. It is precisely because Raffles plays cricket just for fun that the doors of higher society are open to him.
The status of gentleman was only accessible for people with a certain amount of wealth. While burgling houses certainly provided a way to attain the necessary income, it being a crime went straight against the idea of moral integrity that was so engrained in the gentleman ideal. Thus, while Raffles certainly knows how to act like a gentleman (Larance 2014: 106), he doesn’t share the moral convictions commonly associated with the role. While Bunny repeatedly expresses compunction about leading a life of crime, Raffles does not share this view. For him, crime is an exciting game (Hornung 2013: 364). He does pay lip service to it being “wrong”, but he immediately brushes that aside by saying, “we can’t all be moralists” (Hornung 2013: 16). This nonchalant dismissal of moral concerns is also one of several elements in the stories that tie Raffles to the aesthete and the Decadent dandy.
Well isn’t this just Dandy?
The Raffles stories abound with references to Aestheticism and Decadence. Firstly, the stories establish Raffles’ keen interest in art and literature. In “The Ides of March”, the reader learns that Raffles fills his home with exquisite furniture and heaps of books: “It was charmingly furnished and arranged, with the right amount of negligence and the right amount of taste. […] Instead of the conventional rack of war-worn bats, a carved oak bookcase, with every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one wall […]. The man might have been a minor poet instead of an athlete of the first water. But there had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his complex composition […].” (Hornung 2013: 6; emphasis added)
Bunny also points out several Pre-Raphaelite paintings adorning Raffles’ walls, naming works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Hornung 2013: 6) and reproductions of paintings by George Frederic Watts and Edward Burne-Jones (Hornung 2013: 381). That Raffles’ stacks of books aren’t merely decorative is apparent in the amount of quotes he readily intersperses in his conversations. First, the stories are peppered with Shakespeare quotes. To name just one example, Raffles quotes Julius Caesar prior to his and Bunny’s first felonious undertaking: “‘The Ides of March, the Ides of March, remember.’ Eh, Bunny, my boy? You won’t forget them, will you?” (Hornung 2013: 8). Raffles also references the works of John Keats several times, especially his poem “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Hornung 2013: 15). In “The Fate of Faustina”, the story which chronicles his tragic dalliance with a young Italian woman named Faustina, Raffles quotes two poems by Algernon Swinburne. While Shakespeare and Keats can be readily explained by the classical education Raffles enjoyed during his schooldays, his profound knowledge of Swinburne may be seen as indicative of his “streak of aestheticism” (Hornung 2013: 6) – the Pre-Raphaelite poet was much admired in Aestheticist circles (Freeman 2007: 83).
Crime as an art form
Apart from being a consumer of art and literature, Raffles also uses aestheticist ideas to explain his philosophy on crime. In “A Costume Piece”, Bunny doesn’t deem Raffles’ plan of robbing a South African millionaire necessary as they still have enough money at their disposal. Raffles is aghast at this statement: “Necessity, my dear Bunny? Does the writer only write when the wolf is at the door? Does the painter paint for bread alone? […] You pain me, my dear chap; you needn’t laugh, because you do. Art for art’s sake is a vile catchword, but I confess it appeals to me.” (Hornung 2013: 20; emphasis added). Many of Raffles’ schemes are based more on the beauty of the objects he intends to steal than the money he actually gets for them when selling them to a receiver of stolen goods. For instance, after he has stolen a golden cup from the British Museum in “A Jubilee Present”, he doesn’t sell it, but keeps it on his mantlepiece for days. When Bunny suggests he should melt it down to at least get some money in exchange for the gold, Raffles vehemently disagrees with him: “Taking it was an offence against the laws of the land, Bunny. That is nothing. But destroying it would be a crime against God and Art, and may I be spitted on the vane of St. Mary Abbot’s if I commit it!” (Hornung 2013: 139; emphasis added). Whenever Raffles does have to commit a burglary out of pure necessity – which happens more frequently than he would care to admit –, he considers it “a vulgar sort” of crime (Hornung 2013: 35)5.
Raffles’ artistic views are not confined to the objects of his desire but extend to the method of stealing them as well. In “Nine Points of the Law”, Raffles and Bunny are enlisted by a somewhat corrupt lawyer to steal a painting from an Australian legislator. Instead of being content with simply snatching the painting, Raffles scours all over the country for a convincing fake so he can steal the painting without the legislator noticing it (Hornung 2013: 82-83). When a club of criminologists invites him to one of their meetings in a later story, Raffles realises they suspect him to be the gentleman thief, so in order to get them off his scent, he stages an elaborate break-in that looks as if it took place while he was at dinner with the other club members; the only thing he actually steals, though, is a pair of parliamentary robes, which he returns to the owner anonymously at the end of the story (Hornung 2013: 286-288). Finally, Raffles’ sense of artistic flair is also applied to his tools. He keeps his drills and skeleton keys in “a pretty embroidered case” originally meant for razors (Hornung 2013: 12), and a rope ladder designed by him for the heist at the Criminologists’ Club is disguised within a cane with a polished knob (Hornung 2013: 287).
This conflation of art and crime was not a concept that Hornung had invented himself. Rather, it was indebted to Oscar Wilde’s theory on “crime as art” (Freeman 2007: 76). In several of his works6, Wilde had experimented with a new form of criminal protagonist: “the gentleman-about-town, exploring the gulf between appearance and reality” (Freeman 2007: 77). The concept of a gentleman with a dark secret was thus directly indebted to the writings of one of the most eminent Decadent dandies.
The Wilde Card
The link between A. J. Raffles and Oscar Wilde is not restricted to the overall construction of the narrative. In fact, the Raffles stories are riddled with references to Oscar Wilde’s life and his works7. Firstly, there are several parallels between A. J. Raffles and the characters of The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Raffles’ place of residence, the Albany, is also the place where Ernest Worthing lives while he stays in London (Wilde 2000: 16)8. In “Nine Points of the Law”, Raffles excuses himself from a dinner obligation with the Australian legislator by claiming he was “called out of town” due to a “sudden illness of [a] near relative” (Hornung 2013: 79); this is part of his plan to sneak into the apartment and steal the painting. When Bunny is quizzed by the host on what relative that would be, he confesses that he doesn’t know Raffles’ family because he knows Raffles “[o]nly in town” (Hornung 2013: 79). This scene is a nod to the concept of ‘Bunburying’ thought up by Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest: “I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.” (Wilde 2000: 19).
Concerning the character’s personal tastes, Raffles only ever smokes Sullivans, an exquisite brand of Egyptian tobacco (Hornung 2003: 141, note 4). His consumption of this type of cigarette is so well-known that, when he later has to live under an assumed name in London, he is too scared to smoke them for fear of being found out: “I can’t even smoke Sullivans, because no one man was ever so partial to them as I was in my lifetime […]” (Hornung 2013: 122). While Oscar Wilde himself was known to enjoy “consuming large quantities of expensive Egyptian cigarettes” (Freeman 2007: 83), the pleasure Raffles takes in smoking Sullivans is also reminiscent of one of Lord Henry Wotton’s aphorisms in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891): “Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” (Wilde 1994: 93-94).
There is also the parallel between A. J. Raffles and Oscar Wilde being forced to keep parts of their identity hidden from society: “the man-about-town playwright who leads a secret life (one that was at the time, a criminal matter), the man-about-town cricketer who leads a secret (also criminal) life” (O’Brien 2015: 660). Freeman adds another level to this when he points out that, apart from being a gentleman thief, “[…] Raffles is already leading a double life in some respects by alternating between the supposedly antipathetic roles of aesthete and sportsman.” (Freeman 2007: 83).
Finally, the parallels between Raffles’ and Oscar Wilde’s later life, while not exact, are quite startling: In 1895, Oscar Wilde was charged with having committed an “act of gross indecency with another male person”9, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in prison (Rowland 1999: 76). After being discharged in 1897, he was forced to leave England and spend the last three years of his life as a semi-invalid in France (Rowland 1999: 80). During his time there, Wilde had adopted the assumed name of “Sebastian Melmoth”; the name was a reference to Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a Gothic novel written by his great-uncle Charles Maturin (Sedgwick 1985: 94-95). In a striking parallelism of dates and facts, Raffles’ cover is finally blown in 1895. Charged with stealing a priceless pearl aboard the SS Uhlan, he manages to evade capture by leaping overboard; as the ship is at this point ten miles from shore, Raffles is believed to have drowned (Kemp/Mitchell/Trotter 1997: 33). Meanwhile, Bunny is arrested, tried for burglary and sentenced to eighteen months in prison (Hornung 2013: 128). Two years later, Raffles returns to London as an elderly, invalid Australian called “Mr. Maturin” and meets up again with Bunny, who has recently been released from prison (Hornung 2013: 122). Raffles spends the next three years in hiding, with Bunny as his only companion, before he dies on an unnamed battlefield in South Africa in the year 1900 (Hornung 2013: 232).
Performance art of the self
While the references to Oscar Wilde are indeed striking, it would do the stories injustice to reduce A. J. Raffles to a mere fictional amalgamation of Wilde and his characters. Displaying character traits, styles and opinions of both the athletic gentleman and the aesthetic dandy, Raffles cleverly subverts both gender roles by exposing their inherent instability: “In Raffles the effete, passive, superficially charming manner of the dandy clothes-horse is subsumed within a powerful body that is in sly and subversive alignment with contemporary masculine paradigms.” (O’Brien 2015: 661). Once the essentialist notion of a ‘natural’ masculinity is discarded, the character is free to perform his masculinity (and, more generally, his identity of self) in whatever way he wishes.
This makes it notoriously difficult for the reader to get a hold of the ‘real’ A. J. Raffles. While society knows Raffles mainly as amateur cricketer, Bunny’s position as his close friend and partner in crime gives us insight into the more secretive aspects of Raffles’ life. The reader learns that Raffles is incredibly skilled at disguises, an ability essential for balancing his double life: whenever Raffles has to make business with other members of the criminal class, he turns into “the professional Cockney villain who, to reduce the risk of blackmail by his receiver of stolen goods, ‘drives[s] all [his] bargains in the tongue and raiment of Shoreditch’ […].” (Freeman 2007: 84). Raffles’ disguises are so immaculate that he manages to fool Bunny with them every time. In “A Costume Piece”, for instance, Bunny is dumbfounded when “the dark scowl and the dirty clenched fists of a dilapidated tramp” (Hornung 2013: 22) turn out to belong to his friend. Raffles then leads him to the place where he keeps the props necessary for his disguises – an apartment in Chelsea, which he has officially rented as an artist’s studio10. To make his posing as an artist believable, Raffles keeps a canvas in the room: “[…] there’s the canvas I’m always going to make a start upon. I tell [my landlords] I’m looking high and low for my ideal model.” (Hornung 2013: 24). When Bunny first enters the room, Raffles asks him, “Looking for the works of art?” (Hornung 2013: 23). This can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, he is of course referring to the lack of actual paintings in the room; secondly, the question could also be pointing to the disguises Raffles constructs in here. As Raffles sees his criminal exploits as artistic endeavours, the disguise is a crucial part of performing the art of crime. By transforming himself into the perfect image of a London tramp, Raffles essentially becomes a work of art himself.
A. J. Raffles has constructed his life as a web of alternate identities and disguises. His character is made up of conflicting traits: the aesthetic dandy vs. the athletic gentleman, the upstanding citizen vs. the skilled thief, the charming society man vs. the cunning and egotistical criminal. What part of his identity is presented to society, Bunny or the reader is wholly Raffles’ choice. This has led Larance to remark that, “[…] because his entire life is essentially a performance piece, it is frequently difficult to know which Raffles is real and which Raffles is the performer.” (Larance 2014: 107). However, the point of the Raffles stories is that there is no ‘real’ Raffles. The ease with which the character switches between different gender roles exposes that there is no essential, ‘natural’ masculinity or femininity. As gender is a major constituent part of identity, the performativity of gender implies that a person’s identity is also not absolute, but established through the very act of performing it (Butler 2007: 34). This, more than anything else, makes A. J. Raffles a precursor of modern notions of gender and personal identity.
Footnotes:
1For example, a review in the Bookman reproached Hornung for having written “‘the greatest incentive ever penned to spirited youth to make a brilliant living by the burglar’s art’”.
2Both Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) explored the destructive potential of secret identities and the fragmentation of self.
3A view apparently not shared by Arthur Conan Doyle, who commented on the “rather dangerous” suggestions of the Raffles stories in his memoirs (Haining 1984: 16). He also claimed to have cautioned his brother-in-law: “You must not make the criminal the hero.” (qtd. in Larance 2014: 100). This runs counter to Hornung’s claim that Doyle actively encouraged him to pick a public-school villain as the protagonist for a new series (Green 2003: xxi).
4Assuming that Raffles was about 28 years old in “The Ides of March”, which is set in 1891, he probably would have attended public school between 1876 and 1881, a time when the importance of high-quality team sports for the reputation of a public school had already been firmly established (Waters 1997: 74).
5It is only during his life in hiding, when stealing for money has become a necessity after all, that Raffles changes his mind: “The older I grow, Bunny, the less I think of your so-called precious stones. When did they ever bring in half their market value in L. s. d.” (Hornung 2013: 131).
6Most notably in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where the painting enables Dorian to indulge in ever more baser exploits while retaining his innocent and beautiful looks.
7A possible explanation for these references can be found in the personal connection that existed between Oscar Wilde and E. W. Hornung. They were friends and close neighbours in the early 1890s, and Hornung christened his only son ‘Oscar’ in May 1895 – at exactly the same time as Wilde was being tried for homosexuality (Rowland 1999: 76).
8The Albany was also the place where Hornung’s acquaintance George Cecil Ives, a cricketer and criminologist, lived (Green 2003: xxiv).
9The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 had made sodomy punishable by two years’ hard labour. This was actually an improvement on the former legal status of homosexuality: up until 1861, homosexual acts had been considered a capital offence (Purchase 2006: 126).
10Chelsea was one of several parts of London where dandies and artists tended to mingle in coffee-houses and restaurants (MacLeod 2006: 33-34).
Works cited:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Fox, Paul. “No Respecter of Class: The Ubiquitous Appeal of Late-Victorian Crime Fiction.” Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction. Ed. Paul Fox and Koray Melikoğlu. Studies in English Literature 4. Stuttgart: ibidem, 2007. vii-x.
Freeman, Nick. “Double Lives, Terrible Pleasures: Oscar Wilde and Crime Fiction in the Fin de Siècle.” Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction. Ed. Paul Fox and Koray Melikoğlu. Studies in English Literature 4. Stuttgart: ibidem, 2007. 71-96.
Godfrey, Emelyne. Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature. Crime Files. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Green, Richard Lancelyn. “Introduction.” Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman. E.W. Hornung. Ed. Richard Lancelyn Green. London: Penguin, 2003. xvii-xlvii.
Holt, Richard. Sport and the British: A Modern History. 1989. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
Hornung, E.W. A.J. Raffles – The Gentleman Thief Series: The Amateur Cracksman; The Black Mask; A Thief in the Night; Mr. Justice Raffles. Leipzig: Amazon Distribution GmbH, 2013.
Kemp, Sandra, Charlotte Mitchell, and David Trotter, eds. Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Larance, Jeremy. “The A.J. Raffles Stories Reconsidered: Fall of the Gentleman Ideal.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 57.1 (2014): 99-125.
MacLeod, Kirsten. Fictions of British Decadence: High Art, Popular Writing, and the Fin de Siècle. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
O’Brien, Lee. “Wilde Words: The Aesthetics of Crime and the Play of Genre in E.W. Hornung’s Raffles Stories.” English Studies, 96.6 (2015): 654-669.
Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. 1893. Ed. Donald L. Hill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Rowland, Peter. Raffles and His Creator: The Life and Works of E.W. Hornung. London: Nekta, 1999.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Gender and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Seeber, Hans Ulrich. “Vormoderne und Moderne.” Englische Literaturgeschichte. Ed. Hans Ulrich Seeber. 5th, updated, and expanded ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. 327-388.
Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help; With Illustrations of Character and Conduct. 1859. The Collected Works of Samuel Smiles 24. London: Routledge, 1997.
Waters, Karen Volland. The Perfect Gentleman: Masculine Control in Victorian Men’s Fiction, 1870-1901. Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature 3. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. London: Penguin Books, 1994.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. 1895. Ed. John Lancaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Effeminate submission vs. narrative control: Harry ‘Bunny’ Manders
Note: Over the course of #rafflesweek, I will post five excerpts from my master’s thesis on E.W. Hornung’s Raffles stories. While each part can be read on its own, I recommend reading them in the order they are posted.
This is Part 2.
(Please see the end for footnotes and works cited.)
Bunny as the “New Man”
A. J. Raffles subverts the gentleman ideal by blurring the lines between gentleman, dandy, and common criminal. In contrast, Bunny’s1 subversion of the concepts of late-Victorian masculinity is markedly different. Firstly, Bunny falls short of many of the character traits traditionally considered ‘manly’ by his contemporaries. Contrary to Raffles, Bunny is not an athlete: he is terrible at sports in general and cricket in particular. In “Gentleman and Players”, Bunny is aghast when Raffles presents him as a skilled cricketer to Lord Amersteth: “‘What are you thinking of?’ I whispered savagely. ‘I was nowhere near the eleven [during my time at school]. I’m no sort of cricketer.” (Hornung 2013: 34). Bunny’s nickname, bestowed on him by Raffles, expresses this as well: in cricket terminology, a ‘bunny’ (or ‘rabbit’) is a team member who bats poorly (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/the-ides-of-march/>)2.
Bunny’s poor sportsmanship is accompanied by a general lack of physical strength. In “To Catch a Thief”, he tries to threaten Lord Ernest Belville with a revolver, but is soon overpowered by him: “His hand was on the top of mine, bending it down, and the revolver with it. The strength of it was as the strength of ten of mine […].” (Hornung 2013: 181). Just two pages earlier, Raffles had actually picked Bunny up because he wasn’t moving quick enough to hide himself: “[…] he picked me off my feet and swung me bodily but silently into the bedroom […].” (Hornung 2013: 179). Raffles repeats this act in “Out of Paradise”; in the story, Bunny’s shoes make too much noise on a gravel path, so Raffles decides that he must carry him across: “[…] Raffles, with me in his arms, crossed the zone of peril softly as the [leo]pard.” (Hornung 2013: 240).
The act of carrying a person across a threshold – the bedroom in “To Catch a Thief”, the entrance to the house in “Out of Paradise” – strongly suggests the image of a groom carrying his bride across the threshold on their honeymoon. The feminisation of Bunny by the narrative doesn’t end here, though. In fact, Bunny’s appearance, character and general demeanour are rife with traditionally ‘feminine’ traits. Fair-haired, slim and rather young-looking for his age3, he is repeatedly perceived as being ‘innocent’ or ‘naive’ – a feature Raffles considers indispensable for the safety of “the firm” (Hornung 2013: 45). Bunny also expresses disappointment at being unable to grow a proper moustache: “My straw-colored moustache, grown in the flat after a protracted holiday, again preserved the most disappointing dimensions, and was still invisible in certain lights without wax.” (Hornung 2013: 200)4. While Raffles tends to show a remarkable amount of self-confidence and bravado even in the face of danger, Bunny tends to doubt himself and is prone to emotional outbursts (Green 2003: xlv). One of these outpourings of emotion occurs in “The Chest of Silver”; when Bunny realises he has been duped by Raffles yet again, he says: “I could have rent my garments in mortification and annoyance with myself and Raffles.” (Hornung 2013: 251). The most striking example of Bunny’s effeminacy, however, is his temporary transformation into a woman in “The Rest Cure”.
In the story, Raffles and Bunny pursue a curious sort of holiday by squatting in the house of Colonel Crutchley, who is spending the summer months with his family in Switzerland. Raffles calls it his own version of a ‘rest cure’5: he spends his days working on perfecting his disguises and his nights reading huge tomes of history books (Hornung 2013: 264-266). While Raffles manages to grow a “flourishing beard” within just two weeks (Hornung 2013: 267), Bunny’s own facial hair remains stubbornly thin; consequently, to prove to Raffles he can pull off a disguise just as well as him, Bunny engages in a painstaking act of cross-dressing. He curls his rather long hair into “an almost immodest fringe”, puts on a skirt and a feather boa, dons a “big black hat with a wintry feather”, and even applies a layer of powder to his face (Hornung 2013: 267). His disguise as a woman is so convincing that, when Bunny is unexpectedly confronted by the owner of the house, the man actually believes Bunny to be a woman: “A woman, begad! […] [W]here’s the man, you scarlet hussy?” (Hornung 2013: 268). On the one hand, the success of Bunny’s cross-dressing further enforces the effeminacy of his outward appearance. On the other hand, Hornung’s use of this trope also recalls the New Woman writings of the early 1890s, where cross-dressing was a common plot element (Kucich 1994: 262-264). The “New Woman” transgressed gender boundaries by claiming access to the ‘male’ sphere of society, which turned her into the threatening spectre of the homme-femme for her male contemporaries (Rance 1990: 8). As Bunny transgresses gender boundaries into the opposite direction, he forms the counterpart of the mannish woman – the femme-homme –, which has led O’Brien to identify him as an example of a “New Man” (O’Brien 2015: 663).
The other side of the coin
Additionally to his being a metatextual foil to the concept of the New Woman, within the narrative Bunny more directly functions as a foil to Raffles. Some of their antithetical character traits – for instance, manly vigour vs. effeminacy – have already been pointed out. Regarding their outward appearance, Bunny’s straw-coloured hair contrasts nicely with Raffles’ black locks, and Bunny’s innocent looks are set against Raffles’ more inscrutable features: “Again I see him, leaning back in one of the luxurious chairs […]. I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, clean-shaven features; his curly black hair; his strong, unscrupulous mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my brain – sifting the very secrets of my heart.” (Hornung 2013: 6; emphasis added)
Another difference between Bunny and Raffles is based on their relative strength of character: while Raffles has found a method to balance the financial demands of a life of leisure with the secret thrill of criminal exploits, Bunny has not been so successful. In “The Ides of March”, the reader is introduced to Bunny as a dissipated young man who has squandered his inheritance on an extravagant lifestyle, horse-racing, and gambling. After he has lost a considerable amount of money at a baccarat game and signed over worthless checks to the winners, Bunny is desperate. Terrified of losing face, he would rather commit suicide than own up to his mistakes: “The barrel [of the pistol] touched my temple, and my thumb the trigger. Mad with excitement as I was, ruined, dishonored, and now finally determined to make an end of my misspent life, my only surprise to this day is that I did not do so then and there.” (Hornung 2013: 4). Bunny’s inability to manage his finances persists even after he has “joined felonious forces” (Hornung 2013: 17) with Raffles. In “The Rest Cure”, Bunny still hasn’t paid off his creditors, and he again looks to Raffles for getting him out of these dire straits: “[…] my balance at the bank was sorely in need of another lift from Raffles.” (Hornung 2013: 260). Raffles, on the other hand, is never shown having to struggle with debts or creditors6.
Bunny also displays a weakness of character in his attitude towards drinking alcohol. Raffles has a strict rule of having only one drink at night, a rule he very rarely violates7; when he is about to commit a burglary, he doesn’t drink at all. He expresses this principle in “The Ides of March”, where he refuses a drink offered to him by Bunny with the words: “When we come back […]. Work first, play afterward.” (Hornung 2013: 8). Raffles repeatedly advises Bunny to follow his lead, for instance in “A Costume Piece”: “Mind, only one drink to-night, Bunny. Two at the outside – as you value your life – and mine!” (Hornung 2013: 25). Far from heeding Raffles’ advice, however, Bunny is frequently shown to abuse alcohol, a behaviour that was highly suspect at the time as alcoholism was believed to facilitate mental illness (Taylor 2007: 15). Bunny constantly ignores Raffles’ example of abstinence when committing a crime. During his dinner with the Australian legislator in “Nine Points of the Law”, Bunny drinks several glasses of wine while, at the same time, Raffles is stealing a painting next door (Hornung 2013: 80). In “A Trap to Catch a Cracksman”, Bunny is forced to come to Raffles’ aid after having spent the night out drinking with another friend; his being drunk seriously impedes his ability to get Raffles out of the eponymous trap he has been caught in (Hornung 2013: 326). At one point, Raffles even comments on Bunny’s unhealthy drinking habits. In Mr. Justice Raffles (1909), he tells Bunny about his taking the waters at Carlsbad spa8: “[…] mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in between […]. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it […].” (Hornung 2013: 371; emphasis added). While some of these instances may be excused as social drinking, Bunny himself admits that there are times when he drinks to ease emotional pain. In “The Raffles Relics”, Bunny drinks copiously to try and deal with his worries over Raffles, who he fears has been caught by the police: “There was a bottle at my elbow, and that night I say deliberately that it was not my enemy but my friend.” (Hornung 2013: 357).
While it is important for Bunny that their burglaries turn out successful, his role in them is usually quite passive. The idea for a coup almost always originates with Raffles9, and Bunny rarely gets the chance to take an active part in their planning. Raffles persistently sidelines him by withholding important information, thus sending him blind into their adventures more often than not (O’Brien 2015: 661). More than once, Bunny’s ignorance actively endangers Raffles’ safety. In “A Costume Piece”, for example, Bunny nearly blows Raffles’ cover because he doesn’t know his plans (Hornung 2013: 23). Still, Raffles insists on keeping important facts from his partner in crime. Bunny deeply resents this secrecy and complains about it frequently, but it changes nothing: the asymmetry in their partnership remains10.
“I fagged for you at school”
Part of the reason for this power imbalance lies in their shared history: when Bunny and Raffles first met at school, Bunny acted as a fag for Raffles.
‘Fagging’ was an important part of the public school system. Put simply, a ‘fag’ was a junior boy who had to perform various tasks of servitude for a senior boy; these included domestic tasks such as cleaning the senior boy’s room or helping him with his studies (Hornung 2003: 141, note 3). In Raffles’ case, Bunny obviously had to prepare (at least part of) his homework: “[…] I recollect fagging you to do my verses […].” (Hornung 2013: 3). The philosophy behind this master-servant relationship was that, “by first serving and then being served, a young man who was likely as an adult to command subordinates learned about the relationship from both sides” (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/the-ides-of-march/>). This history of subservience, coupled with Raffles’ superior knowledge and skills regarding crime, certainly explains the power imbalance early on in their adult relationship (O’Brien 2015: 656). One might argue that the experience Bunny gains from their criminal exploits should be enough to undo this asymmetry as the years progress. However, this is where Raffles’ tendency for secrecy comes in: by excluding Bunny from most of the planning stage, Raffles denies him the self-confidence he might have otherwise gained from a shared responsibility in executing their felonious deeds. The division of their criminal partnership into a proactive, planning part (Raffles) and a more passive part expected to follow blindly and obey instructions (Bunny) also recreates the power imbalance of the traditional patriarchal family unit (Purchase 2006: 64-66), with Bunny taking the part of the woman.
Even though Raffles does the bulk of the work for their exploits, he always insists on dividing the loot equally between himself and Bunny, even when Bunny has had no actual part in the burglary itself. This makes Bunny desperate to prove his worth to him: “It was my passionate desire […] to ‘keep up my end’ with Raffles in every department of the game felonious. He would insist upon an equal division of all proceeds; it was for me to earn my share.” (Hornung 2013: 334-335). Yet when Bunny actually tries to take the lead for once, it ends in disaster. His plan to rob his childhood home in “The Spoils of Sacrilege” leads to them being cornered in a turret, with the only way out being a possibly fatal climb down a lightning conductor. They survive the climb, but Bunny is so ashamed of his poorly thought-out plan he never dares suggest another one (Hornung 2013: 334).
An unlikely Boswell: Bunny’s struggle for narrative control
While Bunny’s role in his relationship with Raffles is clearly a subservient one, his position as narrator is more complex. Firstly, there is Bunny’s self-characterisation as a “most unworthy Boswell” (Hornung 1984: 179), which is a reference to the actual James Boswell, who was the friend and biographer of English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. More importantly, though, the term brings to mind the relationship between John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891), Sherlock Holmes famously says to Watson: “Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.” (Doyle 2003: 243). By providing Bunny with the same epithet Watson is awarded, Hornung subtly draws attention to the similar modes of narration: both the Sherlock Holmes and the Raffles stories are told in the first person by one of the two protagonists, and both Watson and Bunny fulfil the role of narrator as well as focaliser (O’Brien 2015: 657).
While the function of Watson and Bunny as biographer to their respective friends may be similar, the outcome is markedly different. Holmes may not reveal every deduction he makes at once, but he always ends up explaining them to his audience in plausible enough detail (Symons 1985: 67). Raffles, on the other hand, conceals so much from Bunny that he isn’t just hampered in his role as partner in crime, but also in his role as Raffles’ biographer. There are several instances in the stories where Bunny is forced to speculate on Raffles’ true motives. More often than not, the result is a case of wishful thinking on Bunny’s side. In “Wilful Murder”, for example, Angus Baird – one of the receivers of stolen goods Raffles has dealings with – has discovered Raffles’ true identity. To keep his cover, Raffles decides to kill the man but is beaten to it by another of Baird’s victims. When Raffles keeps looking at the corpse without saying a word, Bunny interprets his stare “as a man might stare into an abyss after striding blindly to its brink” (Hornung 2013: 66), implying that the confrontation with an actual murder victim has shook Raffles to the core and cured him of his murderous impulses. This interpretation is disproven later in the story, when Raffles is shown to envy the murderer for his experience: “[…] I should have endeavored to [enjoy the situation] in his place […].”(Hornung 2013: 70)11. Raffles himself is quite aware of Bunny’s tendency to turn him into a hero, both in his mind and in his writings about their experiences:
“’I know what I am,’ said he, ‘but I’m afraid you’re getting a hopeless villain-worshipper!’
‘It’s not the villain I care about,’ I answered, meaning every word. ‘It’s the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well.’
‘I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better,’ replied Raffles, laughing when I least expected it. ‘But you’re by way of forgetting his existence altogether. I shouldn’t wonder if some day you wrote me up into a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime!’”
(Hornung 2013: 484; emphasis added)
Bunny’s deliberate attempt to paint Raffles in a more positive light is directly referenced by him in the opening to A Thief in the Night (1905). The Black Mask (1901) had ended with Raffles’ death in South Africa, so in the third book, Bunny’s only resource of more stories is their shared past: “[…] I can but go back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals.” (Hornung 2013: 234). Since Raffles is dead, Bunny feels free to reveal their more heinous episodes: “The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles was a villain, when all is written […]. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side. And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant glamour that made my villain more to me than any hero.” (Hornung 2013: 234)
Despite Bunny’s claim to “paint in every wart”, A Thief in the Night contains even more of Bunny’s and Raffles’ more light-hearted exploits than the previous volumes. Stories like “The Criminologists’ Club”, where Raffles’ break-in is merely intended to put Lord Thornaby in his place, or “The Field of Philippi”, where Raffles steals money from a former schoolmate only to then donate it in his name, depict Bunny and Raffles more like “gentleman pranksters out on a spree” (Rowland 1999: 177) than hardened criminals.
O’Brien has pointed out that, as the stories progress, “[…] it becomes increasingly clear the whole series is, in effect, Bunny’s fictional ordering and reconstruction of events.” (O’Brien 2015: 664). While Bunny may not have had much control over the events as they transpired, as narrator he does have the power to reconstruct them as he pleases. By depicting Raffles as a somewhat heroic figure, Bunny attempts to make his loyalty to Raffles seem less perplexing. The less villainous and amoral Raffles appears, the more opportunity is awarded to Bunny to paint himself in a better light. Thus, as a narrator, Bunny has finally turned the power imbalance in his relationship with Raffles in his favour. As O’Brien puts it so succinctly: “Inside the stories Raffles is master; at the level of narration Bunny rules.” (O’Brien 2015: 664).
Footnotes:
1‘Bunny’ is merely a nickname, but it is the only name the reader is given for 25 of the 27 stories. His full name is not revealed until the very last of the Raffles stories: in Mr. Justice Raffles (1909), the reader learns that Bunny’s last name is actually Manders (Hornung 2013: 406). His first name had been established in the story directly preceding the novel – the ultimate story in the collection A Thief in the Night (1905) –, where a letter written to Bunny addresses him as “Harry” (Hornung 2013: 362).
2Bunny’s poor performance as a cricketer is based in part on E. W. Hornung’s own lack of sportsmanship. Due to his ill health, Hornung’s nickname at Uppingham School was ‘Dodo’ (as in, “as dead as a Dodo”) (Green 2003: xviii).
3Bunny is about four years younger than Raffles. “The Field of Philippi” reveals that, while Bunny and Raffles did go to the same public school, Bunny was only in the Lower Fourth when Raffles was already in the Upper Sixth (Hornung 2013: 290, 295). Boys in the Lower Fourth were usually about 13 to 14 years old, boys in the Upper Sixth about 17 to 18 (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/the-field-of-philippi/>).
4This passage also contains another reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray: “I had sustained no external hallmark by my term of imprisonment, and I am vain enough to believe that the evil which I did had not a separate existence in my face.” (Hornung 2013: 200; emphasis added).
5At the time, a ‘rest cure’ was a method of therapy involving bed rest, enforced silence, and seclusion (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/the-rest-cure/>). It was predominantly prescribed for women and has been immortalised in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892).
6While Raffles does run into trouble with one of his receivers of stolen goods in “Wilful Murder”, his problem is not based on lack of money but on the man having gleaned his real identity (Hornung 2013: 61).
7One of the exceptions occurs in “Le Premier Pas”: “I tell you what though, this is an occasion in any case, and I’m going to celebrate it by breaking the one good rule of my life. I’m going to have a second drink!” (Hornung 2013: 47).
8Raffles’ idea to take the waters at Carlsbad – a famous spa in Bohemia – also reflects the obsession of the early-twentieth century middle class with health and hygiene (Kemp/Mitchell/Trotter 1997: xii).
9The only exception occurs in “The Spoils of Sacrilege”, when Bunny, desperate to prove himself to Raffles, suggests burgling his own childhood home (Hornung 2013: 334-335).
10The futility of Bunny’s complaints can be gathered from an exchange in “The Return Match”: “‘He wrote to you! And you never told me!’ The old shrug answered the old grievance.” (Hornung 2013: 86).
11Raffles had expressed the very same sentiment in an earlier story, where he commented: “[…] I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great sensations before things get too hot for him.” (Hornung 2013: 16).
Works cited:
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories. Vol. 1. New York: Bantam Classics, 2003.
Green, Richard Lancelyn. “Introduction.” Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman. E.W. Hornung. Ed. Richard Lancelyn Green. London: Penguin, 2003. xvii-xlvii.
Hornung, E.W. A.J. Raffles – The Gentleman Thief Series: The Amateur Cracksman; The Black Mask; A Thief in the Night; Mr. Justice Raffles. Leipzig: Amazon Distribution GmbH, 2013.
Kemp, Sandra, Charlotte Mitchell, and David Trotter, eds. Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Kucich, John. The Power of Lies: Transgression in Victorian Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Morrissey, Genevieve L., and Sarah Morrissey. Raffles Redux. 2014. 16 January 2016. <http://www.rafflesredux.com/>.
O’Brien, Lee. “Wilde Words: The Aesthetics of Crime and the Play of Genre in E.W. Hornung’s Raffles Stories.” English Studies, 96.6 (2015): 654-669.
Rance, Nick. “The Immorally Rich and the Richly Immoral: Raffles and the Plutocracy.” Twentieth-Century Suspense: The Thriller Comes of Age. Ed. Clive Bloom. Insights. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990. 1-21.
Rowland, Peter. Raffles and His Creator: The Life and Works of E.W. Hornung. London: Nekta, 1999.
Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, a History. 1972. Rev. and updated ed. Middlesex: Viking, 1985.
Taylor, Jenny Bourne. “Psychology at the fin de siècle.” The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle. Ed. Gail Marshall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 13-30.
The misnamed protagonist: Amateurism vs. professionalism in the Raffles stories
Note: Over the course of #rafflesweek, I will post five excerpts from my master’s thesis on E.W. Hornung’s Raffles stories. While each part can be read on its own, I recommend reading them in the order they are posted.
This is Part 5.
(Please see the end for footnotes and works cited.)
The Raffles stories offer two distinct theories of crime. First, Raffles’ aesthetic character leads him to view his criminal exploits as just another form of art. While this conflation of crime and art certainly offers an insight into his character – and helps to explain some of his more peculiar choices of loot1 –, crime as an art form is not the major concept behind the depiction of crime in the Raffles stories. Instead, the idea that pervades the stories is that of crime as another and better sport (Rance 1990: 3). This merging of crime with sports (specifically, cricket) is encapsulated in the application of the terms ‘amateurism’ and ‘professionalism’ within the stories. Raffles’ identity as an amateur cricketer is crucial in this regard.
Amateur sports as an expression of class privilege
The opening of “Gentlemen and Players” establishes Raffles to be an excellent cricket player: “[…] as a cricketer I dare swear he was unique. Himself a dangerous bat, a brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade, he took incredibly little interest in the game at large. He never went up to Lord’s without his cricket bag […].” (Hornung 2013: 31). That this isn’t just another instance of Bunny’s blind hero-worship is proven by a conversation between Bunny and young Mr. Medlicott in “A Bad Night”, where the latter enthuses: “Good old Raffles! […] That’s the cricketer for me, sir; by Jove, we must have another drink in his honour!” (Hornung 2013: 310-311).
Officially, amateur sportsmen were not allowed to accept payment: they played for pleasure, not for profit (O’Brien 2015: 655). Thus, being an amateur cricketer implies that Raffles has other means of income which are substantial enough for him to pursue the leisurely life of a gentleman. Even Bunny assumes as much when they first meet again in “The Ides of March”: “[…] he [was] rich enough to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year […].” (Hornung 2013: 3). By making Raffles an amateur cricketer, E. W. Hornung thus provided him with the perfect disguise under which he could pursue his felonious interests while still posing as a gentleman (Haining 1984: 11).
Raffles’ precarious social status is, in fact, mainly upheld through his amateurism: “Raffles, a ‘gentleman’ without a past or any visible source of revenue, is therefore legitimized almost entirely because of his career as a cricketer […]” (Larance 2014: 105). It comes as no surprise, then, that he views accusations of professionalism as the ultimate insult. In “Gentlemen and Players”, the only reason that Lord Amersteth invites Raffles to his estate is because of his skills as a cricketer: “I [Lord Amersteth] have been bold enough […] to ask one of the Gentlemen of England to come down and play some rustic cricket for us next month.” (Hornung 2013: 33). While Raffles accepts Lord Amersteth’s invitation, he is outraged at the true reason behind it: “[…] I felt venomous! Nothing riles me more than being asked about for my cricket as though I were a pro[fessional] myself.” (Hornung 2013: 34). The perceived insult actually leads Raffles to break his criminal code: “As a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest. I’ve never done it, Bunny. But in this case we’re engaged like the waiters and the band, and by heaven we’ll take our toll!” (Hornung 2013: 35). In Raffles’ mind, being invited as a cricketer is synonymous with being engaged like a domestic servant (Larance 2014: 108). Consequently, he has no problem with abusing Lord Amersteth’s hospitality by stealing from one of his fellow guests, Lady Melrose.
“I’d rather have him be a thief than a paid amateur”
There are two characters in the Raffles stories who openly accuse Raffles of being a professional cricketer. In Mr. Justice Raffles, Camilla Belsize reveals to Bunny that many people wonder “how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing any work.” (Hornung 2013: 405). Bunny, secretly fearing that someone has uncovered Raffles’ criminal activities, asks Miss Belsize to tell him what the rumours are, and she answers: “That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and – his cricket!” (Hornung 2013: 406). Instead of being relieved that Raffles’ secret as a thief is safe, Bunny is indignant: “[…] [It’s] the most scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got about […]! Why, a man like A. J. Raffles would rather be any mortal thing than a paid amateur!” (Hornung 2013: 406).
The idea that pretending to be an amateur cricketer is even worse than being a criminal is brought up in “The Field of Philippi”. In the story, Nipper Nasmyth asks Bunny how Raffles earns his money. When Bunny refuses to answer, Nasmyth exclaims: “Really, he might be following some disgraceful calling, by the mystery you make of it […]. And for that matter I call first-class cricket a disgraceful calling, when it’s followed by men who ought to be gentlemen, but are really professionals in gentlemanly clothing. […] Men play for the gentlemen and are paid more than the players [professionals] who walk out of another gate. In my time there was none of that. Amateurs were amateurs and sport was sport; there were no Raffleses in first-class cricket then.” (Hornung 2013: 296; emphasis added). How despicable the idea of a paid amateur is to Nipper Nasmyth is revealed by his next remark, where he proclaims that, rather than seeing his son become a cricketer like Raffles, “[he]’d prefer to see him a thief!” (Hornung 2013: 296).
The “gentlemanly” virtues of amateur cricket
This high degree of moral outrage over a paid amateur cricketer may appear somewhat baffling to modern readers. However, it is easily explained by looking at the changes the game of cricket underwent during the nineteenth century. In the early 1800s, cricket was still a rough game with no fixed rules, and it was primarily played on a village field (Green 1988: 21-23). The moral revaluation of the game began when cricket was introduced alongside other team sports – such as rugby, football or rowing – as a compulsory part of public school education (Holt 1992: 75-76). According to Thomas Arnold’s concept of ‘Muscular Christianity’, athleticism was a vital component of a gentleman’s character (Waters 1997: 75). Thus, sports like cricket were infused “with moral significance and a moral ethic” (Rance 1990: 4). Of central importance in this context was the introduction of the concept of ‘fair play’: “Fair play meant not only respecting the written rules of the game, but abiding by what was generally understood to be the spirit of the game.” (Holt 1992: 98). This formulation of a “games ethic” (Mangan 2003: 18) aimed to set public school cricket apart from its rougher counterpart: the pursuit of amateur sports was not just a source of pleasure anymore, but a moral end in itself (Holt 1992: 103).
Amateur cricket was revalued as the physical expression of a gentleman’s moral character; consequently, it came to symbolise the virtues of a ‘true’ English gentleman. This conflation of cricket with gentlemanliness can be observed in an obituary that Arthur Conan Doyle composed in 1915 for his friend, the amateur cricketer W. G. Grace: “To those of us who knew him he was more than a great cricketer. He had many of the characteristics of a great man … He was, and will remain, the very impersonation of cricket, redolent of fresh air, of good humour, of conflict without malice, of chivalrous strife, of keenness for victory by fair means and utter detestation of all that was foul.” (qtd. in Larance 2014: 101). A skilled amateur cricketer was thus not just a great sportsman but an example of a true English hero (Rance 1990: 5). Consequently, when Nipper Nasmyth accuses Raffles of violating the rules of amateur cricket, he indirectly questions his morality.
“Only gentlemen can know the true spirit of cricket”
The claim that amateur cricket was unique in its pursuit of moral virtues such as ‘fair play’ implied that professional cricketers did not adhere to the same standards. Instead of always trying to play the best possible game – like an amateur claimed to do –, professionals were considered to rate monetary reward over good style or spirit (Holt 1992: 99). That Raffles also holds this view is illustrated by the following scene from “Gentlemen and Players”: “I remember how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead, while one man took £3 with a ball that spreadeagled the wicket. Raffles’s practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns; but he had absolutely first-class bowling all the time; and he made fifty-seven runs next day.” (Hornung 2013: 32; emphasis added).
Raffles’ actions reveal his overall low opinion of professional cricketers. In his mind, professionals will only give their best effort in a game when they can expect to be paid for it, while he – being a true amateur cricketer – always tries to play the best possible game (Larance 2014: 108)2. Consequently, when someone accuses Raffles of playing cricket professionally, it doesn’t just threaten his social status but also his self-perception as a true sportsman.
Cricket and crime: the conceit of the “Amateur Cracksman”
The dichotomy of amateurism and professionalism is also applied to the world of crime in the Raffles stories. The very name of the first book, The Amateur Cracksman3, points towards the importance of the two terms for Raffles’ identity. In the first book, Raffles repeatedly declares that he considers himself to be an amateur criminal, rather than a professional one. He invariably does this by using cricket terminology. In “Gentlemen and Players”, for instance, Raffles compares his and Crawshay’s competition for Lady Melrose’s necklace to a cricket game: “[…] by Jove! – to get to windward of the professors and [Inspector] Mackenzie too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!” (Hornung 2013: 40). When Bunny and Raffles discuss their successful theft of the necklace in “The Return Match”, Raffles remarks: “Well, the Gentlemen scored pretty freely, but the Players were all caught.” (Hornung 2013: 85). In the same story, Raffles also directly refers to Crawshay as a professional criminal: “[…] I don’t think, Bunny, that we’ll take on the professors again!” (Hornung 2013: 97)4. Apart from the figurative conflation of cricket and crime, there is also the literal connection between the talents of an amateur cricketer and those of a burglar. Raffles points this out when he says: “[…] if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s just the kind of mental exercise one wants.” (Hornung 2013: 31).
Bunny’s narration also asserts the connection between Raffles’ cricketing skills and his cracksmanship. In “The Ides of March”, for instance, Bunny compares Raffles picking a lock with his way of bowling a cricket ball: “And there knelt A. J. Raffles, with his black hair tumbled, and the same watchful, quiet, determined half-smile with which I have seen him send down over after over in a country match!” (Hornung 2013: 13; emphasis added). In contrast, when Bunny watches the cricket match in “Gentlemen and Players”, Raffles’ play reminds him of their criminal exploits together: “What I admired […] was the combination of resource and cunning, of patience and precision, of head-work and handiwork, which made every over an artistic whole. It was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew!” (Hornung 2013: 34). On the level of narration, this juxtaposition of cricket and crime manages to reinforce Raffles’ role as a gentleman in the reader’s mind, as it imbues his criminal exploits with the sportsmanship of the gentleman cricketer (Larance 2014: 110).
Social outcasts can’t afford metaphors
As long as Bunny and Raffles are able to maintain their public persona of gentlemen, they manage to ignore the fact that, far from pursuing crime simply as another and better sort of game, they are just as dependent on carrying off lucrative loot as the ‘professional’ criminals are (Larance 2014: 115). Once their cover is blown in “The Gift of the Emperor”, however, Bunny and Raffles don’t have that luxury anymore. Bunny is arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in jail; and while Raffles manages to evade capture, his identity as a burglar is now public knowledge as well (Hornung 2013: 113-114). When they are finally reunited in “No Sinecure”, crime is no longer a game of leisure for Bunny and Raffles, but their sole means of survival (Larance 2014: 117). As social outcasts, they have no access to the gentlemanly concept of amateurism anymore to inform their identities; Bunny acknowledges as much in the “Narrator’s Note” when he says: “But it was no second innings that we played together; it was a new match; and we played no more for love. Take us, then, not as you left but as you find us now, Amateur Cracksmen no longer, but professionals of the deadliest dye […].” (Hornung 1984: 179).
While The Amateur Cracksman chronicles their lives as upper middle class gentlemen enjoying the comforts of high society, The Black Mask shows their literal and figurative casting out of society. When Raffles finally risks returning to London in “No Sinecure”, he is afraid of being recognised: “Can’t you see? I simply dare not show my nose out of doors – by day.” (Hornung 2013: 122). The thrilling excitement of his double life as a gentleman thief has been replaced by “a stark fear of exposure, humiliation, and ruin” (Freeman 2007: 74). Instead of travelling all over the country playing cricket and “carry[ing] off the family jewels” (O’Brien 2015: 658), Raffles’ life is now limited to a small apartment in Earl’s Court where he is hiding under the disguise of a bedridden Australian (Hornung 2013: 131). His assumed identity of a middle-aged invalid reflects how far Raffles has fallen: the young, athletic gentleman-about-town who used to shine at cricket matches and house-parties is now reduced to a white-haired5 recluse whose only constant companion is his fellow social outcast, Bunny Manders (Hornung 2013: 199). The narration also undergoes a noticeable change at this point. With Raffles now unable to play cricket or even show his face at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the narration seems to be just as unable to retain its access to cricket terminology, as The Black Mask makes far less frequent use of the language of cricket than The Amateur Cracksman does (Larance 2014: 117).
The legacy of a gentleman thief
How completely Raffles’ identity as an amateur cricketer has been superseded by that of a professional criminal becomes clear in “To Catch a Thief”. In the story, a string of burglaries attract Raffles’ attention because they seem to mimic his own former methods. The main difference, he soon realises, is that the perpetrator is obviously a member of the upper class: “He’s not only in [society], but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you [Bunny] may lay on the ink! I was asked for my cricket. I haven’t forgotten it yet. But this fellow’s one of themselves, with the right of entrée into the houses which we could only ‘enter’ in a professional sense.“ (Hornung 2013: 171)
The mysterious gentleman thief turns out to be Lord Ernest Belville, an impoverished aristocrat who disguises his criminal deeds by being a prominent representative of the British temperance movement. The similarities to his own former life are not lost on Raffles: “[…] the alternative profession! My cricket – his Rational Drink!” (Hornung 2013: 173). The story ends with a confrontation between Raffles and Lord Belville on the rooftop of Raffles’ flat. (Lord Belville doesn’t know about Raffles’ true identity but assumes him to be merely a fellow criminal.) During their conversation, Lord Belville talks about the inspiration for his burglaries:
‘You follow every move,’ said he; ‘there can be no doubt you are one of the fraternity; and I shouldn’t wonder if we had formed our style upon the same model. Ever know A. J. Raffles?’ […]
‘Intimately,’ said [Raffles].
‘That accounts for you, then,’ laughed Lord Ernest, ‘as it does for me, though I never had the honour of the master’s acquaintance. Nor is it for me to say which is the worthier disciple.’ (Hornung 2013: 184-185; emphasis added)
Once admired for his amateur cricketing skills, the reputation of Raffles is now that of a criminal mastermind. Raffles’ claim back in “The Chest of Silver” that he considers himself “a professor of the professors” (Hornung 2013: 259) has become true at last. In the eyes of his “disciples”, Raffles’ criminal exploits are a master class in amateur cracksmanship and provide the best possible example for other professional criminals to model their crimes on (Larance 2014: 118).
Footnotes:
1In “A Jubilee Present”, for instance, Raffles’ main reason for stealing a golden cup from the British Museum is its beauty: “[…] it’s one of the most beautiful things I ever saw in my life, Bunny. I should like to have it for its own sake, by all my gods!” (Hornung 2013: 134; emphasis added).
2The scene also reveals his privileged social status, as Raffles is able to throw away quite a significant amount of money just to enjoy a good game.
3“Cracksman” is criminal slang for “safe-cracker” or “thief” (O’Brien 2015: 655).
4At one point, Crawshay is even called “the prince of professional cracksmen” (Hornung 2013: 249).
5Although Raffles is only about 34 years old at this point, the events he relates in “The Fate of Faustina” have prematurely turned his hair white (Hornung 2013: 154).
Works cited:
Freeman, Nick. “Double Lives, Terrible Pleasures: Oscar Wilde and Crime Fiction in the Fin de Siècle.” Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction. Ed. Paul Fox and Koray Melikoğlu. Studies in English Literature 4. Stuttgart: ibidem, 2007. 71-96.
Green, Benny. A History of Cricket. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988.
Haining, Peter. “Foreword.” The Complete Short Stories of Raffles – The Amateur Cracksman. E.W. Hornung. London: Souvenir Press, 1984. 9-23.
Holt, Richard. Sport and the British: A Modern History. 1989. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
Hornung, E.W. A.J. Raffles – The Gentleman Thief Series: The Amateur Cracksman; The Black Mask; A Thief in the Night; Mr. Justice Raffles. Leipzig: Amazon Distribution GmbH, 2013.
Larance, Jeremy. “The A.J. Raffles Stories Reconsidered: Fall of the Gentleman Ideal.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 57.1 (2014): 99-125.
Mangan, J.A. The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
O’Brien, Lee. “Wilde Words: The Aesthetics of Crime and the Play of Genre in E.W. Hornung’s Raffles Stories.” English Studies, 96.6 (2015): 654-669.
Rance, Nick. “The Immorally Rich and the Richly Immoral: Raffles and the Plutocracy.” Twentieth-Century Suspense: The Thriller Comes of Age. Ed. Clive Bloom. Insights. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990. 1-21.
Waters, Karen Volland. The Perfect Gentleman: Masculine Control in Victorian Men’s Fiction, 1870-1901. Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature 3. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
The ‘New Woman’ rejected: Women in the Raffles stories
Note: Over the course of #rafflesweek, I will post five excerpts from my master’s thesis on E.W. Hornung’s Raffles stories. While each part can be read on its own, I recommend reading them in the order they are posted.
This is Part 4.
(Please see the end for footnotes and works cited.)
Due to the focus on Bunny’s and Raffles’ homosocial relationship, women do not form a significant part of the main narrative. In fact, women are almost completely absent from the Raffles stories (Freeman 2007: 89). Over the course of 27 stories, only five female characters are represented in some kind of depth, and all of them are primarily defined through their relationship with one of the two male protagonists. These women are: Faustina, Amy Werner, Jacques Saillard, Camilla Belsize (all real or purported love interests of Raffles), and Bunny’s fiancée, who remains unnamed. However small the presence of women in the Raffles stories may overall be, the female characters that do appear are distinctly different from each other and serve as fictional representations of the major concepts of femininity that were available to middle-class women in the late-nineteenth century.
Middle-class femininity in the Victorian era
The traditional concept of Victorian middle-class femininity was based on the philosophical concept of the separate spheres (Moran 2006: 35). ‘Natural’ masculine qualities – among them aggression and the ability for rational thought – were perceived to ideally equip men for the public domain; in contrast, women were believed to be physically and intellectually inferior to men and thus more suited to the domestic sphere (Purchase 2006: 73-74). As guardian of the home, a woman could fulfil her ‘natural’ duties of motherhood and domesticity (Powell 1996: 73). This ideal of middle-class femininity was encapsulated in the phrase ‘angel in the house’, which originated from a poem by Coventry Patmore (Moran 2006: 36).
With this confinement to the domestic sphere, women were all but excluded from the public school system (Purchase 2006: 54). Opponents to education reform often claimed that intellectual pursuits would only distract a woman from her duties as wife and mother (Morgan 2007: 38). Nevertheless, educational opportunities for women gradually increased towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Education Act of 1870 ensured that state-funded primary education was available for all British children (Purchase 2006: 6). By 1890, many private schools offered middle-class women the chance “to enjoy an academic education every bit as rigorous as that undertaken by their male contemporaries” (Powell 1996: 73-74). Still, women’s access to the professions was restricted, and they were usually expected to cease working once they became married (Powell 1996: 70-71)1.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, an emerging feminist movement also began to challenge the social and legal limitations women were faced with. The first campaign was aimed against the laws restricting women’s capability of owning property (Poovey 1995: 173). It was proven successful with the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, which established women as their own economic agents and thus put an end to the claim a husband had previously had over his wife’s property (Purchase 2006: 6). From the turn of the century onwards, the suffragette movement fought with increasing militancy for women’s right to vote (Brooks 1995: 82). Finally, while the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 did contain a section on “gross indecency” between men, its main purpose was to protect young women from prostitution by raising the age of consent from 13 to 16.
The rise of the ‘New Woman’
Concurrent with these campaigns for improved social rights, late-nineteenth century feminists also proclaimed a new ideal of femininity: the New Woman (Moran 2006: 124). Feminists exposed the idea of the Victorian family idyll as a false utopia by openly addressing the double standard inherent in middle-class marriages: “sexual virtue was expected of the wife but not of the husband” (Ledger 2007: 157). These feminists were divided into two groups: one constituted a social purity movement that was fighting against prostitution and decadent male sexuality (Ledger 2007: 153), while the other group regarded the demand for sexual equality as their main concern (Dowling 1979: 438). New Woman writers like Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird and Sarah Grand rejected marriage and maternity as the ‘natural’ route towards fulfillment (Moran 2006: 125). Their frank discussion of women’s sexual desire provoked outrage among conservative reviewers (Miller 1994: 14). In their minds, the demand for female sexual autonomy, coupled with a clear reluctance to enter the patriarchal power structure of the family unit, endangered the stability of traditional Victorian gender roles (Showalter 1991: 38-39). Additionally, the New Woman’s strive for higher education was considered by many men to be a direct threat to society: they feared it would distract women from their domestic duties (Morgan 2007: 38). More significantly, scientists at the time purported that serious study would “‘dissipate [women’s] feminine energies’ […] just as an athletic girl would become ‘spare and thin or overmuscular, but in any case misshapen’” (Horn 1992: 65). Essentially, mental and physical exertion were perceived to render women infertile (Showalter 1991: 40).
In the public perception, the New Woman’s challenges to traditional gender roles tied them to the Decadent movement (Sinfield 1994: 77). The ‘mannish’ New Woman and the effeminate Dandy were perceived as the major driving forces behind the lamented “sexual anarchy” of 1890s England (Showalter 1991: 3). Consequently, the New Woman movement was caught up in the moral panic surrounding Oscar Wilde’s conviction as well. After 1895, the publication of New Woman writings dramatically decreased, to the point where an article in Punch could triumphantly announce “The End of the New Woman” (Ledger 2007: 167). Even though the genre of New Woman fiction had lost its significance by the turn of the century, the figure of the ‘masculine woman’ (Showalter 1991: 174) remained a part of literature in general.
Jacques Saillard
This is exemplified by the depiction of women in the Raffles stories, which has been interpreted as the raising and subsequent exorcism of “the spectre of the New Woman” (Rance 1990: 5). The most obvious representation of a New Woman in the stories is the Spanish artist Jacques Saillard in “An Old Flame”. The story establishes her as a successful painter who lives in a fashionable flat near Piccadilly with her husband. When she is unexpectedly confronted by a burglar2, she doesn’t scream or faint but remains perfectly in control of her emotions: “[…] like marble she stood, or rather like some beautiful pale bronze; for that was her coloring, and she lost none of it that I could see, neither trembled […]. So she stood without flinching before a masked ruffian […].” (Hornung 2013: 189). Once she has recognised Raffles, she doesn’t report him to the police, but simply lets him leave. Back at their flat, Raffles reveals the true nature of his relationship with Jacques Saillard to Bunny:
‘An old flame?’ said I, gently.
‘A married woman,’ he groaned.
‘So I gathered.’
‘But she always was one, Bunny,’ said he, ruefully. ‘That’s the trouble.’ (Hornung 2013: 193)
When Bunny comments that Jacques Saillard seems to be a clever woman, Raffles’ reaction is quite revealing: “I don’t call Jacques Saillard clever outside her art, but neither do I call her a woman at all. She does man’s work over a man’s name, has the will of any ten men I ever knew, and I don’t mind telling you that I fear her more than any person on God’s earth.” (Hornung 2013: 193; emphasis added).
That Raffles’ fear of Jacques Saillard is not unfounded becomes clear soon afterwards when she turns up on his doorstep, having followed him home from her flat. She now starts to actively pursue Raffles, ignoring all sense of propriety: “It was some weeks since the first untimely visitation of Jacques Saillard, but there had been many others at all hours of the day […].” (Hornung 2013: 195; emphasis added). Not only is Raffles clearly uninterested in her advances, her knowledge of his true identity actively endangers his disguise as Mr. Maturin. So, in order to finally get rid of her, Raffles stages his own death: “Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the one escape.” (Hornung 2013: 204).
Thus, Jacques Saillard is established as a threatening “spectre of the New Woman” (Rance 1990: 5). Her profession as a painter allows her a certain amount of financial independence3. Raffles’ admission that he was engaged in an affair with her while she was already married reveals that Jacques Saillard ignores the social norm of a woman having to remain celibate outside the confines of marriage (Showalter 1991: 38)4. Finally, her aggressive pursuit of Raffles shows a blatant disregard for the social conventions of the time: a woman visiting a man’s rooms alone was considered to be engaging in lewd conduct (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/an-old-flame/>). Her open transgression of gender boundaries – exemplified by her adoption of a man’s name (“Jacques”) – threatens Raffles’ own sense of masculinity, which is made clear by his comment, “I fear her more than any person on God’s earth” (Hornung 2013: 193).
The fact that Jacques Saillard is a foreigner is also quite significant. Especially in the first two volumes of the Raffles stories, the New Woman is represented as a ‘foreign’ element endangering the masculinity of the English middle-class man (Rance 1990: 8).
Amy Werner
While Jacques Saillard’s story is featured in The Black Mask, The Amateur Cracksman also contains an example of the ‘foreign’ New Woman. In “The Gift of the Emperor”, the reader is introduced to Amy Werner, an adventurous young woman who has finished her secondary education at a German school and is now on her way back home to Australia alone (Hornung 2013: 101). Amy Werner is doubly foreign: her Australian nationality leads Bunny to disparagingly refer to her as a “Colonial minx” (Hornung 2013: 103), and her German surname and upbringing identify her as distinctly non-English (Rance 1990: 5). Her readiness to openly flirt with two men – Raffles and Captain von Heumann – at the same time reveals her to be a romantically and sexually forthright woman. This frank display of desire again ties the New Woman to the concept of foreignness: non-Europeans were considered to lack the sexual self-control that was hailed as a truly ‘British’ virtue by imperial theorists at the time (Marcus 2012: 425).
Having established the ‘New Woman’ as a foreign danger to an English gentleman’s masculinity, the story then exorcises this spectre through the application of violence. At the end of the story, Raffles and Bunny have been uncovered and are about to be marched off the ship by the police when Raffles asks for a few minutes alone with Amy Werner to say goodbye to her. As Bunny and the inspectors watch, they become witness to one of Raffles’ more violent (certainly his most unchivalrous) acts: “Suddenly – an instant – and the thing was done – a thing I have never known whether to admire or to detest. He caught [Amy Werner] – he kissed her before us all – then flung her from him so that she almost fell.” (Hornung 2013: 113; emphasis added). This physical rejection of the feminine is then immediately followed by a reassertion of the character’s masculinity (Rance 1990: 8). Among the confusion caused by Raffles’ actions, he manages to flee the ship by leaping overboard: “[…] I saw his hands shoot up and his head bob down, and his lithe, spare body cut the sunset as cleanly and precisely as though he had plunged at his leisure from a diver’s board!” (Hornung 2013: 113; emphasis added). Raffles’ elegant dive into the Mediterranean sea serves both to reestablish his masculinity and to reject the threat of foreignness: his “lithe, spare body” reveals his athleticism and thus, as physical strength was considered a key element of gentlemanly masculinity, encapsulates his ‘true’ Englishness (Godfrey 2011: 33).
Faustina
While stories like “An Old Flame” and “The Gift of the Emperor” can be read as outright rejections of the New Woman ideal, “The Fate of Faustina” represents an attempt to claim the superiority of more ‘traditional’ forms of femininity (Rance 1990: 8-9). Following his discovery and subsequent escape in “The Gift of the Emperor”, Raffles spends two years in Italy, where he works as a “tame sailorman and emergency bottle-washer” on a beautiful small island (Hornung 2013: 144). During his time there, he falls in love with a young peasant woman named Faustina. Relating the events to Bunny years later, Raffles evokes the biblical concept of paradise when describing their romance: “[…] it was the oldest story in literature – Eden plus Eve. The place had been a heaven on earth before, but now it was heaven itself.” (Hornung 2013: 147). According to Raffles, Faustina was the only woman he ever seriously considered marrying: “I tell you that she was the one being who ever entirely satisfied my sense of beauty; and I honestly believe I could have chucked the world and been true to Faustina for that alone.” (Hornung 2013: 146). The focus on her physical attractiveness reveals Raffles’ traditional views on women: far from admiring her character or her intellect, Raffles instead merely loves Faustina for her beauty5.
However, the bucolic idyll envisioned by Raffles for Faustina and himself is soon disrupted. When her fiancé, having learned about Faustina’s affair with Raffles, kills her, Raffles in turn shoots Faustina’s murderer and ends up nearly killing the owner of the vineyard, Count Corbucci, who is an eminent member of the Camorra (Rowland 1999: 124). The destruction of Raffles’ version of paradise is answered by him with the enactment of biblical vengeance: “I had taken blood for blood […].” (Hornung 2013: 153).
Ultimately, “The Fate of Faustina” establishes that the ideal of the ‘natural’ moral virtue and submissiveness of women was not only challenged by the middle-class concept of the New Woman, but by a general shift in female identity that pervaded all classes (Powell 1996: 96-97). The portrayal of the working-class Faustina as sweet and innocent is soon revealed to be unfounded. Her willingness to enter into a relationship with Raffles even though she is engaged to another man reveals her to be just as sexually transgressive as Jacques Saillard. Faustina also exhibits an enthusiasm towards violence: “[…] I taught her how to use [a revolver] in the cave down there by the sea, shooting at candles stuck upon the rock. […] So now Faustina was armed with munitions of self-defence, and I knew enough of her character to entertain no doubt as to their spirited use upon occasion.” (Hornung 2013: 149; emphasis added)6. Even though her beauty is praised by Raffles as surpassing that of all the women in London7, her unwomanly interest in guns and her adulterous behaviour ultimately disqualify Faustina as an example of traditional femininity.
Bunny’s fiancée
The three stories discussed so far have approached the New Woman ideal as a direct threat to masculinity and tried to exorcise it by connecting it to foreignness and/or violence. Contrary to this outright rejection of new concepts of femininity that is present in both The Amateur Cracksman and The Black Mask, the two later volumes of Raffles stories paint a more complex picture of femininity at the turn of the century. A Thief in the Night introduces Bunny’s fiancée to the reader, while Mr. Justice Raffles marks the first (and last) appearance of Camilla Belsize, who is arguably the most affirmative representation of New Woman ideals in the Raffles stories.
Bunny’s fiancée first appears in “Out of Paradise”. The reason why she remains unnamed is given by Bunny at the beginning of this story: “The affair was not only too intimately mine […]. One other was involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name shall not even now be sullied by association with ours.” (Hornung 2013: 234)8. The story establishes that, even before Raffles manipulated Bunny into burgling his fiancée’s home, their engagement was already laden with problems. Bunny’s fiancée is an orphan with no inherited fortune, which makes her financially dependent on her uncle, Hector Carruthers (Hornung 2013: 235). As Bunny also has no regular income at his disposal – apart from what little he earns as a journalist and writer9 – they are both dependent on Mr. Carruthers to facilitate their marriage by providing his niece with a significant enough dowry (Morrissey 2014: <http://www.rafflesredux.com/out-of-paradise/>). However, Mr. Carruthers strongly disapproves of Bunny, which is why he restricts his access to his niece and refuses to give his consent to their engagement (Hornung 2013: 234). When Bunny’s fiancée catches him in the act of burgling her uncle’s house, their engagement receives its final blow. Her first reaction on recognising Bunny as the burglar is to faint (Hornung 2013: 242). Soon afterwards, however, she helps Bunny escape safely from her house (Hornung 2013: 243) and subsequently conceals his criminal identity from both her family and the police (Hornung 2013: 246).
While “Out of Paradise” had established Bunny’s fiancée as a dependent woman who was not allowed to make major decisions without consulting her uncle, “The Last Word” shows that this has changed. Set nine years after “Out of Paradise”, the story is unique in that it mainly consists of a letter written to Bunny by his former fiancée (Hornung 2013: 362-366). This makes her the only woman in the Raffles stories who is allowed to directly speak to the reader with her own voice. Her letter reveals that she has since inherited a considerable amount of money from her aunt, Lady Melrose10, which has enabled her to move into a small flat of her own: “[…] I am living my own life now in the one way after my own heart.” (Hornung 2013: 365). Her financial independence also means the end of her uncle’s legal guardianship over her; free now to make her own decisions, she intends to follow in Bunny’s footsteps by becoming a writer (Hornung 2013: 365).
Contrary to Amy Werner and Jacques Saillard, Bunny’s fiancée overall adheres to the social conventions of her time. Instead of defying her uncle and marrying Bunny without his consent, she submits herself to his will. However, as she is still unmarried nine years after the events of “Out of Paradise”, it is not unreasonable to assume that she resisted her uncle’s attempts to find a more suitable husband for her. “The Last Word” portrays her as a young unmarried woman who is eager to participate in the public domain through her writing (be it journalism or fiction) (Hornung 2013: 365). With this, she becomes representative of the many unmarried middle-class women who entered the professions around the turn of the century (Powell 1996: 70). While Bunny’s fiancée is thus not a representation of the New Woman per se, she does embody the gradual opening of the public domain towards women at the turn of the century.
Camilla Belsize
Finally, Mr. Justice Raffles (1909) features the most rounded and the most sympathetic realisation of a New Woman character in the Raffles stories. Miss Camilla Belsize is introduced to the reader as the fiancée of Teddy Garland, an amateur cricketer who is friends with Raffles. She is also the daughter of the impoverished Lady Laura Belsize, which places her in the social context of the genteelly poor (Purchase 2006: 23)11. Despite her limited financial means, Camilla Belsize is invariably well-dressed. Bunny admires her distinguished taste when he first meets her: “She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really was a picture.” (Hornung 2013: 404). More significantly, the novel establishes her as a highly intelligent woman. Early on, Bunny comments on her unusual perceptiveness: “But I was to discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived […].” (Hornung 2013: 406). In fact, Camilla is one of only a few people in the Raffles stories who manage to see through Raffles’ disguises: “He didn’t know I recognised him; he was disguised – absolutely! […] But he couldn’t disguise himself from me […].” (Hornung 2013: 499). At the same time, Camilla is revealed to be quite audacious. During her first conversation with Bunny, Camilla admits to smoking cigarettes in public (Hornung 2013: 407) – a habit that was closely associated with New Women at the time (Ledger 2007: 155). Even more daringly, Camilla repeatedly follows Raffles and Bunny by steering a canoe along the river in the middle of the night. She reveals this to Bunny in a later conversation:
‘I told you I sometimes did weird things that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last night, if it wasn’t early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I have a canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went out unbeknownst after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly – […] You know what I’m going to say?’
Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. […] She had seen us – searched for us – each time. (Hornung 2013: 500)
Camilla reveals here that she is aware of the potentially shocking nature of her nocturnal ventures. At the same time, her ability to steer a boat by herself hints towards her athletic disposition and towards a possible previous training at a women’s college12.
Bunny and Raffles both express their admiration for Camilla Belsize, albeit in different ways. While Bunny openly admits that he became her “admirer on the spot” when she smiled at him during their first conversation (Hornung 2013: 403), Raffles’ demonstration of his respect for her is much more convoluted. Raffles spends the majority of the novel battling Dan Levy, a Jewish moneylender that both Teddy Garland and his father are in considerable debt to (Hornung 2013: 415-416). In the end, Raffles’ scheme proves successful and Teddy’s and his father’s debts are fully dispensed with. The penultimate chapter of the novel reveals Raffles’ true motivation for helping Teddy. In a conversation with Bunny, Raffles expresses his doubts that Teddy’s marriage with Camilla will be a happy one. When Bunny asks why, Raffles answers that he thinks Teddy to be beneath her: “[Gambling and running up debts] was all right in a pal of ours, Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize.” (Hornung 2013: 507).
Far from denouncing Camilla’s audacity and intelligence, the novel hails her as a supreme representative of her sex. This is exemplified in Bunny’s remark to Raffles: “She was the only woman I ever met […] who was your mate at heart – in pluck – in temperament!” (Hornung 2013: 507). And yet, even Camilla Belsize isn’t allowed to freely pursue her romantic and sexual desires. The novel clearly establishes that both Camilla and Raffles are attracted to each other (Hornung 2013: 507), yet Camilla Belsize still ends up marrying Teddy Garland, who has been established as being morally inferior to her. In the last chapter, which is set ten years after the main narrative, Camilla does not appear at all, and when Bunny and Teddy refer to her, it is only in the form of “Mrs. Garland” (Hornung 2013: 516). Thus, the novel ultimately upholds the patriarchal ideal of society that New Women tried to work against: by marrying Teddy Garland, Camilla’s identity as a free-spirited young woman has been subsumed by that of a domestic wife, and she is no longer a person of her own.
Footnotes:
1This was obviously not true for working-class women, who were often required to supplement their husband’s wage with one of their own (Poovey 1995: 124-125).
2At this point in the story, Jacques Saillard doesn’t know yet that it is Raffles who has broken into her home.
3Saillard’s artistic success is illustrated by Raffles’ evaluation of her room: “See the festive picture over the sideboard? Looks to me like a Jacques Saillard. But that silver-table would be good enough for me.” (Hornung 2013: 189). What Raffles implies here is that her paintings are valuable enough to fetch a good price on the black market.
4The fact that Bunny doesn’t comment on Raffles’ adulterous behaviour also reveals the double standard inherent in the Victorian perception of sexual virtue (Ledger 2007: 157).
5Raffles’ claim that perfect beauty would be the only thing that could possibly induce him to marry someone is yet another example of his “streak of aestheticism” (Hornung 2013: 6).
6The story reveals its racist undertones here, as Faustina’s readiness to practice shooting is explained by Raffles with her “racial tolerance for cold steel” (Hornung 2013: 247).
7“It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this life. […] I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad about a girl like that.” (Hornung 2013: 146).
8The omission of his fiancée’s name is another example of Bunny’s narrative control.
9Shortly after Bunny and Raffles have become partners in crime, Bunny picks up journalism as a cover profession (Hornung 2013: 96).
10This is the very same Lady Melrose whose necklace Raffles steals in “Gentlemen and Players” (Hornung 2013: 365).
11Bunny’s description of the Belsizes’ home in chapter 17 reveals their financial straits: “The wooden gate had not swung home behind me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell.” (Hornung 2013: 496; emphasis added).
12This women’s college would probably have been at Cambridge, as those were among the first colleges that introduced rowing as part of their curriculum (Holt 1992: 121).
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