The Camera Fiend by E. W. Hornung
Nov. 24th, 2020 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeAfter leaving Raffles for good, E. W. Hornung managed another five books before the outbreak of war, after which he seems to have stopped writing fiction.
By publication date we left the Victorian period a while ago, but I thought The Camera Fiend (1911) was the first one to have a real sense of being set later in time than the earlier books—probably because, between the ten-years-ago settings of the Raffles stories and Hornung's 1905-09 hiatus, there is actually a pretty significant time skip between this one and the next most recent. There are motor-cars, increasingly advanced cameras and an up-to-date political and social context (Hornung is often unkind to foreigners, of course, but it's possibly significant that the villain of this one is a German).
However, there's also a lot that calls back to the past. The main character, sixteen-year-old Tony 'Pocket' Upton, seems to be another thinly-disguised portrayal of Hornung's own youth: the son of a provincial industrialist, attending a public school, a sufferer from asthma. Hornung was sent away from school on a voyage to Australia for the sake of his health: interestingly, this possibility has been raised and rejected by his family for Pocket, so I suppose he's a kind of 'what if...' self-insert. Instead, we meet Pocket travelling alone to London to see the doctor who's treating his asthma. He's intending to stay with his friends' family, but they turn out not to have room for him (or 'not to have room for him' when they see him shooting the revolver he impulse-bought earlier that day in their garden). Turned away from hotels, Pocket is forced to resort to sleeping out in Hyde Park... and then things get weird.
I'd somehow managed to mis-osmose that this book was a light-hearted adventure about photography enthusiasts, so the actual plot was a bit of a shock. It's a particularly twisty one, and starts twisting early on, so I won't go into details, but overall it is one of the more disturbing of Hornung's books I've read so far, for several reasons. There are several murders, a situation that's a bit like Ewen's 'betrayal' of Lochiel in Flight of the Heron only much, much worse, spiritualism, ghost photography, a kidnapping that's not immediately obvious as such and leads to a sense of creeping dread as we realise just how bad the situation Pocket has got himself into is... well, anyway, it's quite the adventure.
I think an implicit (if not particularly well-developed) criticism of eugenics is something I've noted in Hornung's writing before, and it comes up again here—the villain has more or less explicitly eugenicist-type views which, while they're not exactly a motive, provide an excuse for his villainous activities, and become more horrifying and more transparently self-serving as we learn more about him. That was the most frightening thing about the book, I think, how plausible the portrayal of those views was—at the beginning the reader still thinks this character is sympathetic, and he introduces the ideas in what looks like quite a benign context, and then more is gradually revealed. It's all pretty chilling stuff.
Another interesting feature of this book is the appearance of a detective character, the memorable Eugene Thrush with his manservant/sidekick Mullins—not very much of a Sherlock Holmes, although the comparison is inevitable and there is one cheeky reference! (I have to wonder if the distinctly unsympathetic take on spiritualist beliefs here had anything to do with Doyle, actually—I don't know what Hornung thought about spiritualism in general, but he's clearly not that keen on it). There are also a couple of Hornung's classic plucky and spirited female characters—I thought the relationship between Pocket and Phyllida was lovely, and Lettice's sisterly loyalty (which ends up providing a key to the mystery for our detective) was great.
By publication date we left the Victorian period a while ago, but I thought The Camera Fiend (1911) was the first one to have a real sense of being set later in time than the earlier books—probably because, between the ten-years-ago settings of the Raffles stories and Hornung's 1905-09 hiatus, there is actually a pretty significant time skip between this one and the next most recent. There are motor-cars, increasingly advanced cameras and an up-to-date political and social context (Hornung is often unkind to foreigners, of course, but it's possibly significant that the villain of this one is a German).
However, there's also a lot that calls back to the past. The main character, sixteen-year-old Tony 'Pocket' Upton, seems to be another thinly-disguised portrayal of Hornung's own youth: the son of a provincial industrialist, attending a public school, a sufferer from asthma. Hornung was sent away from school on a voyage to Australia for the sake of his health: interestingly, this possibility has been raised and rejected by his family for Pocket, so I suppose he's a kind of 'what if...' self-insert. Instead, we meet Pocket travelling alone to London to see the doctor who's treating his asthma. He's intending to stay with his friends' family, but they turn out not to have room for him (or 'not to have room for him' when they see him shooting the revolver he impulse-bought earlier that day in their garden). Turned away from hotels, Pocket is forced to resort to sleeping out in Hyde Park... and then things get weird.
I'd somehow managed to mis-osmose that this book was a light-hearted adventure about photography enthusiasts, so the actual plot was a bit of a shock. It's a particularly twisty one, and starts twisting early on, so I won't go into details, but overall it is one of the more disturbing of Hornung's books I've read so far, for several reasons. There are several murders, a situation that's a bit like Ewen's 'betrayal' of Lochiel in Flight of the Heron only much, much worse, spiritualism, ghost photography, a kidnapping that's not immediately obvious as such and leads to a sense of creeping dread as we realise just how bad the situation Pocket has got himself into is... well, anyway, it's quite the adventure.
I think an implicit (if not particularly well-developed) criticism of eugenics is something I've noted in Hornung's writing before, and it comes up again here—the villain has more or less explicitly eugenicist-type views which, while they're not exactly a motive, provide an excuse for his villainous activities, and become more horrifying and more transparently self-serving as we learn more about him. That was the most frightening thing about the book, I think, how plausible the portrayal of those views was—at the beginning the reader still thinks this character is sympathetic, and he introduces the ideas in what looks like quite a benign context, and then more is gradually revealed. It's all pretty chilling stuff.
Another interesting feature of this book is the appearance of a detective character, the memorable Eugene Thrush with his manservant/sidekick Mullins—not very much of a Sherlock Holmes, although the comparison is inevitable and there is one cheeky reference! (I have to wonder if the distinctly unsympathetic take on spiritualist beliefs here had anything to do with Doyle, actually—I don't know what Hornung thought about spiritualism in general, but he's clearly not that keen on it). There are also a couple of Hornung's classic plucky and spirited female characters—I thought the relationship between Pocket and Phyllida was lovely, and Lettice's sisterly loyalty (which ends up providing a key to the mystery for our detective) was great.
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Date: Nov. 24th, 2020 08:21 pm (UTC)I read Flight of the Heron over the weekend, and have been looking through your posts about it: your blog is fantastic resource!
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Date: Nov. 25th, 2020 06:27 am (UTC)I read Flight of the Heron over the weekend, and have been looking through your posts about it: your blog is fantastic resource!
Oh, yay :D I hope you enjoyed the book, and I'm glad you're finding my posts interesting! Of course I highly recommend taking a look through the AO3 tag, there's lots of good stuff there—especially this one, a beautiful post-canon fix-it.
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Date: Nov. 25th, 2020 08:06 pm (UTC)I did enjoy the book. I found it very well written and characterised, and it's very interesting the way it has all the beats of a romance. Tragic love isn't especially my jam, but the characterisations were so charming that I do want to read fic!
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Date: Nov. 25th, 2020 08:19 pm (UTC)it's very interesting the way it has all the beats of a romance.
Hahaha, yes, indeed... well, as for the tragedy, I suppose that's the good thing about fic, you can make things less tragic! (I always seem to be drawn to the sort of pairings that end badly, even when I don't want them to—fix-it fic is a great thing).
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Date: Dec. 2nd, 2020 11:16 am (UTC)I'm looking forward to reading some Heron fix-its. I can't stop thinking about that ending! ;____; I long for them to have some more hurt-comfort times.
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Date: Dec. 2nd, 2020 05:18 pm (UTC)For a Raffles fan, I'd definitely recommend Irralie's Bushranger and Stingaree, for more criminal adventures—the 'gentleman bushranger' Stingaree is not exactly an Australian Raffles but there are some very interesting parallels, perhaps especially with Raffles/Bunny in Irralie's Bushranger. Peccavi, about a disgraced clergyman working to redeem himself from his sin, is I think one of the best of his books, but it's very different from Raffles—much more serious and solemn, and difficult to approach in some ways. I'd recommend it if it sounds like the sort of thing you might like, independent of Raffles. And then you can't go wrong just starting at the beginning with A Bride from the Bush, which is a great, fun read about a spirited Australian lady facing culture clash in England.
I can't stop thinking about that ending! ;____; I long for them to have some more hurt-comfort times.
Aww, I know—it is the sort of ending that haunts you... Well, I'm glad to say there's plenty more hurt/comfort in the fic—I think it is a common interest amongst the fandom :P
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Date: Dec. 3rd, 2020 09:26 pm (UTC)