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The Thousandth Woman by E. W. Hornung
May. 19th, 2021 04:48 pmE. W. Hornung's last novel! After nearly three years, the read-through is drawing towards its close...
And The Thousandth Woman (1913) is a fitting one to go last, because it's absolutely typical of E. W. Hornung in several of the best ways. We have crime, adventure, romance, Australia, the Thames Valley, a plucky and dauntless heroine, a twisting plot, gorgeous prose and plenty else besides.
The book opens upon a scene familiar to Raffles readers: a German liner sailing from Italy to England. Our hero, Walter 'Sweep' Cazalet, has been out in Australia for ten years after a disastrous crash ruined his family's stockbroking firm, and we meet him telling the story to a colourful yet shrewd American named Hilton Toye. We hear about Henry Craven, the unscrupulous partner who caused the crash for his own gain; Scruton, his instrument, who went to prison for his part in the affair while Craven walked free; and Blanche Macnair, the childhood friend of Cazalet whom Toye also knows and admires. But Cazalet returns to England to discover that Craven, who lived in Cazalet's old family home up the Thames, has just been murdered. Toye, intrigued by the affair, decides to play detective—but all is not quite what it seems...
The title is a reference to the Kipling poem The Thousandth Man; in a pivotal scene Cazalet and Blanche read the poem, and he declares that she is the thousandth woman. The exact reason for this is a spoiler, so I won't go into detail, but rest assured that she's as good a leading lady as Hornung ever wrote, and although the het 'childhood best friends to lovers' story is not really my thing, I nevertheless liked the relationship between Blanche and Cazalet. Hornung does his restrained emotional meaning thing very well in their reunion after Cazalet's ten years in Australia, and there's an amazing sequence later on where they have 'the week of their lives' travelling round London and the country in a motor-car together under rather fraught circumstances. It's also (perhaps, in light of Hornung's mixture of conventional romances and, well, *gestures at Raffles stories* not) interesting how often their relationship is explicitly compared to one between two men—besides the gender-swapped title reference, Cazalet's behaviour towards Blanche is several times described as being the same as how he'd treat a man.
Cazalet's return to England after ten years in Australia also provides a great opportunity for something I've mentioned before in reviewing Hornung's later books: conveying a sense of time passing and historical change. When Cazalet first arrives, there's a brilliant sequence describing all the changes in London since he left, particularly the superseding of horses by motor-cars; new technology, fashions and social trends are all conspicuous in the setting, and there are multiple references to 'Victorian' things as belonging to a specific and past historical period. (The emphasis on Cazalet's unpatriotism for sailing on a German liner also seemed rather significant for a book published in 1913—although there is a similar line in one of the Raffles stories). Suffice it to say that Hornung, when it comes to Progress and the Future, is not, e.g., E. M. Forster... It's a fascinating little bit of historical perspective—and made me feel quite wistful for what might have been if Hornung had lived longer and been able to write in even later periods.
Then there's the twisty and dramatic plot, also as much fun as Hornung's plots usually are. I did think—it's a fairly short book—there were a few things that could have done with a bit more time spent on them, and I don't think I was supposed to find Toye quite as off-putting as I did find him, but on the whole I enjoyed the swerves and complications as the mystery of the murder is unravelled. The themes of crime and punishment, revenge, loyalty and friendship will be familiar to fans of the Raffles stories, certainly.
And now there are just three short story collections left to go! I'm especially looking forward to the next one, Witching Hill, which seems to be one of the more popular non-Raffles books by Hornung, and an interesting departure from his usual style...
And The Thousandth Woman (1913) is a fitting one to go last, because it's absolutely typical of E. W. Hornung in several of the best ways. We have crime, adventure, romance, Australia, the Thames Valley, a plucky and dauntless heroine, a twisting plot, gorgeous prose and plenty else besides.
The book opens upon a scene familiar to Raffles readers: a German liner sailing from Italy to England. Our hero, Walter 'Sweep' Cazalet, has been out in Australia for ten years after a disastrous crash ruined his family's stockbroking firm, and we meet him telling the story to a colourful yet shrewd American named Hilton Toye. We hear about Henry Craven, the unscrupulous partner who caused the crash for his own gain; Scruton, his instrument, who went to prison for his part in the affair while Craven walked free; and Blanche Macnair, the childhood friend of Cazalet whom Toye also knows and admires. But Cazalet returns to England to discover that Craven, who lived in Cazalet's old family home up the Thames, has just been murdered. Toye, intrigued by the affair, decides to play detective—but all is not quite what it seems...
The title is a reference to the Kipling poem The Thousandth Man; in a pivotal scene Cazalet and Blanche read the poem, and he declares that she is the thousandth woman. The exact reason for this is a spoiler, so I won't go into detail, but rest assured that she's as good a leading lady as Hornung ever wrote, and although the het 'childhood best friends to lovers' story is not really my thing, I nevertheless liked the relationship between Blanche and Cazalet. Hornung does his restrained emotional meaning thing very well in their reunion after Cazalet's ten years in Australia, and there's an amazing sequence later on where they have 'the week of their lives' travelling round London and the country in a motor-car together under rather fraught circumstances. It's also (perhaps, in light of Hornung's mixture of conventional romances and, well, *gestures at Raffles stories* not) interesting how often their relationship is explicitly compared to one between two men—besides the gender-swapped title reference, Cazalet's behaviour towards Blanche is several times described as being the same as how he'd treat a man.
Cazalet's return to England after ten years in Australia also provides a great opportunity for something I've mentioned before in reviewing Hornung's later books: conveying a sense of time passing and historical change. When Cazalet first arrives, there's a brilliant sequence describing all the changes in London since he left, particularly the superseding of horses by motor-cars; new technology, fashions and social trends are all conspicuous in the setting, and there are multiple references to 'Victorian' things as belonging to a specific and past historical period. (The emphasis on Cazalet's unpatriotism for sailing on a German liner also seemed rather significant for a book published in 1913—although there is a similar line in one of the Raffles stories). Suffice it to say that Hornung, when it comes to Progress and the Future, is not, e.g., E. M. Forster... It's a fascinating little bit of historical perspective—and made me feel quite wistful for what might have been if Hornung had lived longer and been able to write in even later periods.
Then there's the twisty and dramatic plot, also as much fun as Hornung's plots usually are. I did think—it's a fairly short book—there were a few things that could have done with a bit more time spent on them, and I don't think I was supposed to find Toye quite as off-putting as I did find him, but on the whole I enjoyed the swerves and complications as the mystery of the murder is unravelled. The themes of crime and punishment, revenge, loyalty and friendship will be familiar to fans of the Raffles stories, certainly.
And now there are just three short story collections left to go! I'm especially looking forward to the next one, Witching Hill, which seems to be one of the more popular non-Raffles books by Hornung, and an interesting departure from his usual style...
