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Allingham, Margery

Page history last edited by Jon 11 years, 11 months ago

Margery AllinghamMargery Louise Allingham (1904-1966) was born in London to a literary family, and attended The Perse High School for Girls in Cambridge, before returning to London and the Polytechnic for Speech-Training. Her father was the author, H. J. Allingham, editor of The New London Journal, to which she contributed articles and Sexton Blake stories.

 

In 1927 she married Philip Youngman Carter, who collaborated with her and designed the jackets for many of her books. They lived on the edge of the Essex Marshes. Her famous fictional detective was the upper-class amateur Albert Campion. 


 

Margery Allingham by Mike Grost

 

Allingham and Bailey

 

Margery Allingham's work shows some affinities to the Bailey school. Allingham sometimes wrote stories about children in trouble: "The Crimson Letters" (a.k.a. "The Longer View") (1938) seems a direct imitation of Bailey, in which a small clue leads to a plot against a child, a conspiracy of chilling, creepy evil in the full Bailey mode. The finale of Death of A Ghost (1934) seems right out of the Bailey approach. Mr. Campion is menaced by a sinister plot, that is directly based on little known scientific/medical facts. The plot is quite chilling, and has affinities with horror fiction. This recalls the lurid medical finales of such writers as Bailey and Wynne, such as "The Cyprian Bees". Ghost's thriller ending is the best part of that novel. Police at the Funeral (1931) also has some medical based murder schemes, treated as thriller/suspense menaces.

 

Allingham also shared some formal traits with Bailey. There is a tendency for small trivial clues to lead to wider scopes of problems. Allingham's short fiction is structurally like Bailey's, in that small incidents lead to the discovery of criminal conspiracies. However, the tone is usually much more light hearted. Allingham's small incidents tend to be personal problems or small mysteries experienced by young lovers. These small mysteries gradually lead to Campion discovering real crimes. These crimes are usually criminal enterprises of Rogues, such as jewel theft or smuggling, not the monstrous conspiracies in Bailey.

 

Her detective Mr. Campion is a genius with unofficial ties to Scotland Yard. While Mr. Campion is not a medical doctor like Mr. Fortune, he does have Fortune's upper class social standing. Both Fortune and Campion are often the protectors of young lovers. Frauds and swindles are common in upper class society in both writers. This may just be a convenient plot generator, but it is a persistent motif in Allingham, far more than in Christie or Marsh. There is a lot of fraud in Bailey. Nice young people often suffer unjust persecution in both authors, often being framed for something they didn't do. Campion's chauffeur, Lug, sometimes splits detective duties with Campion, just like Mr. Fortune's chauffeur Sam, with Lug or Sam researching the lower classes in a town while the detective sleuths among the upper. (Sayers' Bunter does this too.) In both the Bailey and Allingham stories, there is a great deal of emphasis on exploring upper class life, especially its cultural side. Allingham was more systematic about this than Bailey, but there are distinct similarities - see Bailey's "The Violet Farm" or "The Greek Play", for example. Both Bailey and Allingham showed a certain degree of disdain for the formal puzzle plot story popular in the Golden Age; once again, Allingham pushed this tendency to extremes, but the seeds are present in Bailey. Campion's investigations seem painfully unsystematic; they instead involve exploring more or less at random all aspects of a case.

 

Allingham and William Le Queux

 

Allingham's fiction also bears a family resemblance to the pre World War I spy stories of William Le Queux. Le Queux's characters gallivant all over Europe having adventures; so do Allingham's in novels like Sweet Danger (1933). Le Queux' characters are always looking for ingenious ways to communicate secret information - after all they are spies - and so are Allingham's. Such novel communication methods play major roles in many of the short stories in Mr. Campion and Others. Spies in Le Queux are always stealing valuable secret documents at upper class house parties; so are people in Allingham. Le Queux' spy hero in "The Brass Butterfly" finds a way to protect and bring the young lovers together, while solving a detective problem that controls their fate; this is the role played by Mr. Campion in most of his short stories. The young heroine in "The Brass Butterfly" is a brilliantly colorful figure of energy, resourcefulness and charm; her boyfriend, while likable, is little more than a stalwart upper class cipher: this is the same sort of characterization typical in Allingham.

 

Allingham's Logical Satires on Detective Fiction

 

By contrast, Allingham is well known for some short tales that ingeniously burlesque detective story conventions, such as "The Border-Line Case" (a 1930's tale), "The Snapdragon and the C.I.D." (1961), and "The Villa Marie Celeste" (1960). These have no parallel in the Bailey school, as far as I know, but do run parallel to such Sayers spoofs as "The Milk Bottles" and "Scrawns". Allingham's works are not Mad Magazine or Carol Burnett style parodies; rather they are apparently solemn mystery tales whose unexpected solutions puncture holes in some detective tale conventions. Later, Borges' "Death and The Compass" (1944) and Carr's The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (1945), will have something of the same effect: logical satires on the formal detective tale. Allingham apparently got into the satire business first, according to the dates of these tales, although G.K.Chesterton's "The White Pillar Murders" (1925) and Arnold Bennett's "Murder!" (1926) are even earlier "logical takeoffs" on the genre. Loel Yeo's "Inquest" (1932), the sole detective story of an apparently pseudonymous writer, also is an assault on a detective story convention, this time The Will. (Allingham included a character called Superintendent Yeo in her "Tall Story".) Allingham's satires, like those of the other authors mentioned here, are targeted at the formal detective story, whereas Sayers' tales are takeoffs on the conventions of thriller fiction. Most of the mystery writers mentioned were noted for their logic; it is not surprising that they would discover some logical "holes" in detective story technique. "The Snapdragon and the C.I.D." intercuts Allingham's satire with a moving nostalgia and evocation of the passage of time. Paradoxically, Allingham's satires on the formal detective tale are among her most ingeniously plotted puzzle stories. When she wrote straightforward detective fiction, (which was most of the time - these satires are only a small fraction of her work) she was usually far less interested in the puzzle plot format.

 

"The Border-Line Case" has a clever puzzle plot. It bears some similarity to a non-satire story, "On Christmas Day in the Morning" (1952). Both deal with mysterious crimes, in which the geography of the crime scene is all important. Both tales have different solutions - Allingham is coming up with different solutions to the same kind of mystery problem.

 

Allingham's Short Stories: Mr. Campion and Others

 

[Mr. Campion and Others] is Allingham's most important collection. It exists in two versions, a hardback from 1939, which mixes Campion and non-Campion tales, and a later, all Campion paperback. I much prefer the all Campion version. All of these Campion stories were published in The Strand magazine in 1936 - 1940. Even the more minor tales in the collection, such as "The Widow" (1937), "The Danger Point" (1937), "The Frenchman's Gloves" (1938) and "The White Elephant" (1936), have their charms, and the collection should probably be read as a whole. Although unfortunately not included in Mr. Campion and Others, such fine Campion Christmas stories as "The Case is Altered" (1938) and "The Man with the Sack" (1936) also belong to this series of Strand tales. They are included in other Allingham collections. The order in which the tales were originally published: "The White Elephant" (1936), "The Case of the Old Man in the Window" (1936), "The Man with the Sack" (1936), "The Widow" (1937), "The Danger Point" (1937), "The Definite Article" (1937), "The Question Mark" (1938), "The Name on the Wrapper" (1938), "The Frenchman's Gloves" (1938), "The Longer View" (1938), "The Hat Trick" (1938), "The Case is Altered" (1938), "The Meaning of the Act" (1939), "Safe As Houses" (1940) and "A Matter of Form" (1940). This last story appeared in the May 1940 issue of the Strand; one sees that it was probably written not too long after war broke out in September 1939. The series, and the happy, comic English life it describes, did not long survive the horrors of World War II.

 

Among Allingham's puzzle plot stories, "The Hat Trick" (1938) and "The Case of the Old Man in the Window" (1936) shows a similar plot complexity to her "logical" tales, and are especially appealing. In both tales, apparently magical situations occur, to which Campion eventually finds logical explanations. These are not quite impossible crimes in the Chesterton-Carr tradition; instead the events seem magical, an eruption of magic or the supernatural into daily life. Such "magic explained" is also an element in "The Villa Marie Celeste" (1960) and "Safe As Houses" (1940). Also outstanding as a pure mystery is "The Meaning of the Act" (1939). This tale, like many of Allingham's 1930's and 40's tales, incorporates elements of the Rogue tradition. Crooks in these stories tend to have a clever, ingenious scheme; unraveling this scheme forms an important element of the puzzle plot.

 

Allingham's Campion short stories show real story telling polish. Like Ellery Queen's short stories of the period, they are fully worked up pieces including plot, detection, characters, social atmosphere. One feels that both Queen and Allingham had standards, and they did not release a piece till it reached the full measure of what a short story should be. Allingham's tales have a recurring set of comic characters. There are the strong willed old women, usually social aristocrats. These ladies are never crooks, but they are often innocently embroiled in some criminal scheme. Their enormously forceful personalities sweep all before them. Then there are the young women. While naive, they are remarkably charming, determined and manipulative. These innocent young women often get in trouble with crooks, and need to be bailed out by Campion. However, these young charmers are already formidable personalities, and one can easily imagine them growing up to be the forceful old ladies of the stories. There is a distinct feminist vision to these tales, with the women in the stories showing the most resiliency and bounce. By contrast, their young boyfriends, while cast in the role of noble young heroes and lovers, tend to have little real merits other than youth and social position - and despite the "society" background of these stories, one wonders if there is any real merit in social position. The men in the stories with the most ability are distinctly from the lower classes. These include the charming rogue characters, who serve as anti-heroes in the stories. They also include some more honest lower class characters as well, such as the gifted amateur detective in "The Question Mark" (1938), and the pickpocket in "The Meaning of the Act" (1939).

 

Allingham's Themes

 

A persistent motif in Allingham's work is resurrection. She is particularly interested in characters who come back from the dead. Or who do schemes, like the artist in Death of a Ghost, which give them a certain "immortality" after death. Another common Allingham motif is The Danger of Going Out To Eat and Drink. Scenes in restaurants always lead to some sort of major disaster or threat to her characters, often the start of a major suspense sequence. Other common Allingham attitudes: revisiting old school days or the memories of youth leads to horror. Old people are a dead hand on the young, dominating, corrupt and given to blackmail and extortion. Servants are far more shrewd, observant and intelligent than they are sometimes portrayed by other Golden Age writers. People often have doubles.

 

Like other Golden Age authors, Allingham was interested in architecture. She especially liked urban courtyards. See "The Border-Line Case", "The Lieabout" (a 1930's tale), "Tall Story" (1954), the opening of Police at the Funeral (1931). Allingham also loved hotels, and other places one stays while on the road. Her adventure novel Sweet Danger (1933) opens with depictions of first a luxury hotel in France, then an English pub-inn, then finally a private home in the country that takes in paying guests. Both hotels and English country homes where people are weekend guests frequently occur in Allingham's fiction. Another recurrent image in Allingham: The country home that has been completely torn down: see Sweet Danger, "Safe As Houses" (1940). Chapter 10 of Sweet Danger describes the overdone lobbies of a pretentious business, with considerable comic charm. Allingham clearly shared the snobbish distaste of upper-class Englishmen of her day for "trade". As a more business oriented American, these passages always seem to me to be wrong headed.

 

Although it stars Campion, Sweet Danger is an adventure novel, not a mystery: there is not a central mysterious situation that needs to be explained. The early chapters of the book show much inventive detail, but then it runs out of pep. Many of Allingham's mystery short stories benefit from a touch of adventure material, as well.

 

Traitor's Purse (1940 - 1941) falls into three sections, each with its own style. The opening chapters (Chapters 1 - 6) remind one of the Strand short stories Allingham had just been writing, later collected as Mr. Campion and Others. These stories deal subtly with character relationships among the sophisticated set in Britain, and feature much clever mystery plotting. Here the amnesia motif is very well handled. The middle section of the book (Chapters 7 - 10) is very much in the same style as Allingham's earlier thriller Sweet Danger (1933). Both works are thrillers, and seem a long way from the paradigms of the Golden Age country house mystery. Both stories have an extravagant wealth of bizarre, eccentric invention. Both guest star Campion's love interest, Lady Amanda Fitton. Both take place in very peculiar English towns, steeped in ancient traditions and a powerful sense of menacing activities going on behind the scenes. Both invoke an invented European institution going back to the Renaissance or beyond, Averna in Sweet Danger, the Bridge Institute in Traitor's Purse. Both books are full of large scale, unusual architecture, associated with centers of sinister power. This is partly in the Golden Age tradition of interesting buildings, although Allingham imaginatively takes this right over the top.

 

Traitor's Purse falls apart in its final section, when Campion goes On The Run from the authorities. His fugitive status starts mid way through Chapter 10, and lasts for most of the rest of the novel. The inventiveness disappears.

 

The Family Stories

 

Police at the Funeral (1931) and "One Morning They'll Hang Him" (1950) are both in the same genre of Allingham stories. Both deal with a large house, filled with an extended family, and dominated by an elderly woman. Both houses are full of elaborately described furniture, mainly wooden, antique and valuable. There is a quality of concreteness to everything Allingham has visualized, at once lively and unpretentious. The house itself tends to become a character in these stories. The mail and letters play a role in both works. Both works are genuine, puzzle plot detective stories, of a kind Allingham did not always write. "One Morning They'll Hang Him" is a pretty good detective story, while Police at the Funeral is marred by its ugly racial stereotypes. Another short story in the same mode is "Safe As Houses" (1940). Here the eccentric family is presented as Campion's own. The old lady in the tale is just as concerned with her furniture, being horrified by a ring on a table again. And once again, letter writing plays a role in the tale. Campion's comically whiny Cousin Monmouth in the story is similar to Uncle William in Police, Uncle William being one of Allingham's richest creations.

 

Allingham's characters always tend to be members of families. They rarely stand on their own, or are unattached people with romantic relationships, but no blood ties. Sometimes they are young men from "the best families", like Campion himself, and many of Allingham's romantic leads. Other times, they are members of middle class families. One thinks of the unhappy family in Police at the Funeral, and the Fittons in Sweet Danger. While the Fittons are as happy and nice as the family in Police are warped, both families actually resemble each other a lot. Both families are eccentric. Both have money trouble. Both seem to stick very close to the large home where they all live together, and seem to have little interests beyond this house. None seem to have jobs that take them outside the home. Both families contain a large number of siblings, and an older woman who serves as matriarch. Both families have an ancient home, both have a lot of old furniture, both are keeping up traditions of the past that have nearly died out elsewhere. In both cases, being a member of this family marks one as a special person, sharing in traditions and attitudes that completely cut one off from the outside world. Both families virtually have a "culture" in the anthropological sense, a set of values, beliefs and life styles separate from the rest of society.

 

Allingham's work is uneven. The novella "The Case of the Late Pig" (1937) has an excellent first chapter, with an intriguing situation. It is also interesting in that it is narrated by Campion himself. However, the novella degenerates into extreme blandness after this. I didn't like Allingham's most prestigious book, The Fashion in Shrouds (1938). Its fashion designer characters are so arch and affected, and depicted with such unfriendly malice, that the work has a smothering quality.

 

Bibliography

 

From Christian Henriksson's site

 

This is Allingham's output, with year of publication, alternate titles (if any), Swedish titles, and the detective of the story. Quite a few short story collections only appeared after Allingham's death.

 

AC = Albert Campion

 

Shorter works by Margery Allingham

 

The White Cottage Mystery 1928

The Crime At Black Dudley 1929 (The Black Dudley Murder) (AC)

Mystery Mile 1930 (AC)

Look To The Lady 1931 (The Gyrth Chalice Mystery) (AC)

Police at the Funeral 1931 (AC)

Sweet Danger 1933 (Kingdom Of Death/The Fear Sign) (AC)

Death of a Ghost 1934 (AC)

Flowers for the Judge 1936 (Legacy In Blood) (AC)

Dancers in Mourning 1937 (Who Killed Chloe?) (AC)

The Fashion in Shrouds 1938 (AC)

Mr Campion And Others 1939 *

  • It Didn't Work Out
  • The Mistress In The House

Black Plumes 1940

Traitors Purse 1941 (The Sabotage Murder Mystery) (AC)

Coroner's Pidgin 1945 (Pearls Before Swine) (AC)

More Work For The Undertaker 1949 (AC)

Deadly Duo 1949 (Take Two At Bedtime)

  • Wanted: Someone Innocent
  • Last Act

Mr Campion And Others 1950 * (AC)

  • The Widow (The Case Of The Widow)
  • The Name On The Wrapper (The Case Of The Name On The Wrapper)
  • The Hat Trick (The Magic Hat)
  • The Question Mark
  • The Old Man In The Window (The Case Of The Old Man In The Window)
  • The White Elephant (The Case Of The White Elephant)
  • The Frenchman's Gloves (The Case Of The Frenchman's Gloves/Frenchmen Wear Gloves)
  • The Longer View (The Crimson Letters)
  • Safe As Houses
  • The Definite Article
  • The Meaning Of The Act
  • A Matter Of Form
  • The Danger Point

The Tiger in the Smoke 1952 (AC)

No Love Lost 1954

  • The Patient At Peacocks Hall
  • Safer Than Love

The Beckoning Lady 1955 (The Estate Of The Beckoning Lady) (AC)

Hide My Eyes 1958 (Tether's End/Ten Were Missing)

The China Governess 1962 (AC)

The Mysterious Mr Campion 1963 (AC)

  • On Christmas Day In The Morning

The Mind Readers 1965 (AC)

Cargo Of Eagles 1968 (AC)

The Allingham Case-Book 1969

  • Tall Story (AC)
  • Three Is A Lucky Number (Bluebeard's Bath-Tub/Bubble Bath No 3)
  • The Villa Marie Celeste (Family Affair) (AC)
  • The Psychologist (Money To Burn)
  • Little Miss Know-It-All (The Neatest Trick Of The Month) (AC)
  • One Morning They'll Hang Him (AC)
  • The Lieabout
  • Face Value (AC)
  • Evidence In Camera
  • Joke Over (The Man Who Utterly Vanished) (AC)
  • The Lying-In-State (The Lying-In-State Affair/It's All Part Of The Service)
  • The Pro And The Con (The Case Of The Pro And The Con)
  • Is There A Doctor In The House? (The Great London Jewel Robbery/Felony At Mr Mevagissy's/The Doctor And The Silver Plate)
  • Macfalls Fall
  • The Border-Line Case
  • They Never Get Caught
  • The Mind's Eye Mystery (Catching At Straws)
  • Mum Knows Best (Mother Knows Best) (AC)
  • The Snapdragon And The CID (Murder Under The Mistletoe) (AC)

The Allingham Minibus 1973 (Mr Campion's Lucky Day)

  • He Was Asking After You
  • Publicity
  • Sir Geoffrey
  • The Perfect Butler
  • The Barbarian
  • Mr Campion's Lucky Day (Dead Man's Evidence) (AC)
  • 'Tis Nor Hereafter
  • The Correspondents
  • He Preferred Them Sad
  • The Unseen Door (AC)
  • Bird Thou Never Wert
  • The Same To Us
  • She Heard It On The Radio
  • The Man With The Sack (The Case Of The Man With The Sack)
  • The Secret
  • A Quarter Of A Million (The Mystery Man Of Soho)
  • The Pioneers
  • The Sexton's Wife
  • The Wink

The Return Of Mr Campion 1989

  • The Case Is Altered (AC)
  • The Dog Day (The Chocolate Dog) (AC)
  • The Wind Glass
  • The Beauty King
  • The Black Tent (AC)
  • Sweet And Low
  • Once In A Lifetime
  • The Kernel Of Truth
  • Happy Christmas
  • The Wisdom Of Esdras
  • The Curious Affair In Nut Row (The Man With The Cuckoo Clock) (AC)
  • What To Do With An Ageing Detective (AC)

 

The Darings Of The Red Rose 1995

  • The Darings Of The Red Rose, Part 1
  • The Darings Of The Red Rose, Part 2
  • The Darings Of The Red Rose, Part 3
  • The Lady At The Cross Roads
  • The Girl On The Fire-Escape
  • The Watcher Behind The Curtain
  • The Whisper On The Phone
  • Her Day Of Reckoning

 

Uncollected short stories

 

 

Published as Maxwell Marsh

 

Other Man's Danger 1933 (The Man Of Dangerous Secrets)

Rogues' Holiday 1935

The Shadow In The House 1936

 

(*) These two are obviously not the same book, although they share the same name.

 

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