The posts on Georgiana Chatterton, popular 19th century novelist, reminded me of Fergus Hume. I picked up a book of his, The Mystery of the Hansom Cab, in our library and on its blurb it said the most popular mystery books of the 19th century weren’t those about Sherlock Holmes but were by Fergus Hume. Who wrote 130 novels.

He was born in England, but his parents came out to New Zealand where his father James and aunt Janet fergusson did some wonderful work in the mental asylum in Dunedin in the mid-19th century till new legislation required a doctor in charge. He then set up his own private asylum which used enlightened methods of diet, work, leisure pursuits, purifying the water, cleanliness, fresh air, etc and had very good results (according to how long people were held in there). Near retirement an inmate was killed by another and the resulting enquiry was very damaging despite expert witnesses supporting him and he died not long after. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h56/1

Fergusson Hume, known as Fergus at least in his writings, left for Melbourne and wanted to write drama scripts but they weren’t accepted for publication, so he checked the local bookstore to see what did sell and found the one that disappeared off the shelves most quickly was a French novelist, Emile Gaboriau, who wrote detective books. He studied those and wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. It was self-published but then he sold the rights for £50. Didn’t make much on that, but he did on the stage productions of it. He spent most of the rest of his life back in England.

He differs from Miss Chatterton in that, on a sample of one, his writing is pretty good and certainly entertaining. One site (online literature.com) called it “a worthy contribution to the genre. It is full of literary references and quotations; finely crafted complex characters and their sometimes ambiguous seeming interrelationships with the other suspects, deepening the whodunit angle.” [This had a bit underneath saying the site was copyright, but surely that little bit will be all right. Fair reviewing etc.] It was considered something of an exposé of the darker side of Melbourne and caused a bit of controversy because of that. (Though mostly it was concerned with the wealthy people of the town.)

It's light and its plot and easy style are quite modern in feel, but other bits are quite out of kilter with modern writing.  It begins with a newspaper account and then with one detective trying to work out the murder, after that the rest of the book is taken up with the investigation by a different detective and lawyer.  I don’t think he bothers much about ‘show, don’t tell’ but that never seems as important to me as people say it is. (And anyway, writing is always about telling.) References to popular songs and books are interesting, and he has passages, quite long ones, about classical mythology, using it as an analogy.  This quite long passage gives a flavour of bits of the book:

Moore, sweetest of bards, sings -

Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream.

But he evidently made this assertion in his callow days, and before he had learned the value of a good digestion. To a young and fervid youth, love's young dream is no doubt very charming, lovers, as a rule, having a small appetite; but, to a man who has seen the world, and drunk deeply of the wine of life, there is nothing half so sweet in the whole of his existence as a good dinner. 'A hard heart and a good digestion will make any man happy.' This remark was made by Talleyrand, a cynic if you like, but a man who knew the temper of his day and generation. Ovid wrote about the art of love - Brillat-Savarin, of the art of dining, yet, ten to one, the gastronomical treatise of the brilliant Frenchman is more widely read than the passionate songs of the Roman poet. Who does not value that hour as the sweetest in the whole twenty-four, when, seated at an artistically laid table, with delicately cooked viands, good wines, and pleasant company, all the cares and worries of the day give place to a delightful sense of absolute enjoyment. Dinner with the English is generally a very dreary affair, and there is an heaviness about the whole thing which communicates itself to the guests who eat and drink with a solemn persistence, as though they were occupied in a fulfilling some sacred rite. But there are men - alas, few and far between - who possess the rare art of giving good dinners - good in the sense of sociality as well as of cookery." I like that sort of writing but it’s not really what you get nowadays. He is not above using coincidence and sometimes stretching credibility a little far, but it was good story.  I wonder whether he kept up this standard or if he become more casual or repetitive in his 130th book. He wanted to write more theatrical stuff but the publishers only wanted more of the same.

Websites tell me he died in Thundersley, Essex in 1932, but they say little is known of his life and I don’t know if he married or not. You’d think if you wrote that many books some reporters would follow up on you, wouldn’t you?

Caro wrote:

Fergusson Hume, known as Fergus at least in his writings, left for Melbourne and wanted to write drama scripts but they weren’t accepted for publication, so he checked the local bookstore to see what did sell and found the one that disappeared off the shelves most quickly was a French novelist, Emile Gaboriau, who wrote detective books.

Gaboriau in turn drew inspiration from the real-life character of Eugène-François Vidocq from Picardy. Vidocq was the poacher-turned-gamekeeper (or rather habitual criminal turned chief of police) who was also the inspiration for Victor Hugo’s character of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. Vidocq (in his earlier incarnation as habitual criminal) is also said to have inspired Honoré de Balzac’s character Vautrin in his 1835 novel Le Père Goriot. Vautrin is a malevolent influence on his fellow residents of a Paris boarding house. Loosely based on the King Lear story, one of the other residents is Jean-Joachim Goriot a retired vermicelli merchant whose 2 daughters have selfishly reduced him to penury by their constant demands on his purse despite both having made comfortable marriages. What is fascinating is Balzac's description of Goriot’s previous career:

'S’agissait-il de blés, de farines, de grenailles, de reconnaître leurs qualités, les provenances, de veiller à leur conservation, de prévoir les cours, de prophétiser l’abondance ou la pénurie des récoltes, de se procurer les céréales à bon marché, de s’en approvisionner en Sicile, en Ukraine, Goriot n’avait pas son second.'

'In dealing in wheat, flour and grain, assessing their quality and provenance, managing their storage, predicting prices, anticipating bumper crops or poor harvests and in sourcing cheap cereals and importing them from Sicily and the Ukraine, Goriot was second to none.'

Balzac goes on to comment how:

'avant la Révolution … de 1789 … Le peuple se tuait à la porte des boulangers, tandis que certaines personnes allaient chercher sans émeute des pâtes d’Italie chez les épiciers.'

'before the Revolution … of 1789 … people were killing each other at the doors of bakeries, whereas some people without rioting went and sought Italian pasta from the grocers.'  

It seems that Queen Marie-Antoinette’s apocryphal comment that the peasants who had no bread should “mangent de la brioche" might actually have had something to it. Had she, perhaps, said "Qu'ils mangent du spaghetti" then the history of France could have been completely different.