Irralie's Bushranger by E. W. Hornung
Feb. 17th, 2019 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeHis best so far, in my opinion—and certainly the first one that really made me sit up and go 'oh yes, this is by the author of the Raffles stories'.
Irralie's Bushranger (1896) opens in the Australian bush, where the manager of a sheep station is awaiting the arrival of the station's new owner from England, Greville Fullarton. Irralie Villiers, the manager's daughter, is out hunting and meets a man who introduces himself as Fullarton... but something's not quite right. Why are his clothes so shabby, when he's supposed to be a respectable gentleman? Why does he claim to have lost the papers that would have proved his identity? And why was he wandering around the bush carrying a loaded revolver...?
Hornung really seems to be in his element here. The sentence-level writing style is more elegant and assured than anything else I've read so far in this read-through, with the characteristic clarity, brevity and perfectly placed phrase that he does so well. The best thing about this book, however, is the characters and their interactions. The early chapters, in which Irralie's suspicions of the self-proclaimed Fullarton develop and Fullarton begins to become aware of them, contain some absolutely beautiful bits of I-know-you-know-I-know fencing, tempered by Irralie's genuine doubt and shame over suspicions that are never quite stated outright. Later on, when things get more dramatic, the pacing and excitement of the writing pick up perfectly. The ending is again fairly abrupt, but it's the abruptness of saying a lot in very few words, and it doesn't feel unbalanced; the final line is very touching.
In Stingaree, the gentleman bushranger (as you might say), we have for the first time an outright villainous criminal character being portrayed in a way that, while not exactly sympathetic, is certainly something more than straightforwardly unsympathetic; and as a Raffles fan I was delighted. More on this below, because it gets spoilery, but there is plenty here of relevance to the Raffles stories, which Hornung began writing about two years after this book. One passage in particular, describing Irralie's reaction to learning that the man she has fallen in love with is a bushranger, will certainly strike a note of recognition for readers familiar with The Ides of March:
They were the words of a villain, and yet they cut her to the heart. They cut her so cruelly, and in such open and prolonged defiance of her reason, that the shameful truth came home to her at last. They were the words of a villain whom she loved. (...) But trust and doubt were now two things of the past. Certainty took their place; and yet the love remained. It was monstrous, it was grotesque, but it was nevertheless a fact to be faced.
This, however, all comes before the Big Plot Twist.
So, the Big Plot Twist: Irralie's suspicions are finally confirmed when the real Greville Fullarton arrives at the station and identifies the imposter as the feared outlaw Stingaree... but shortly afterwards we discover that 'the real Greville Fullarton' is in fact Stingaree, and the man who was first introduced as Greville Fullarton actually is himself after all, and was trying to outwit Stingaree after being ambushed by him before his arrival at the station. This was great fun: unlike My Lord Duke, the plot twists enough to make things exciting and dramatic but not so much that it becomes silly. However, the way things work out after the twist is, in a way, far less interesting than what went before. The moral conflict and ambivalence of the early part of the book, Irralie's horror at loving a villain and helping him even as she is perfectly aware of his villainy, are resolved nice and neatly and it's suddenly perfectly clear who's a goodie and who's a baddie. And Stingaree, as he eventually works out, is a far more straightforward villain than Raffles ever is—Raffles would not shoot at an innocent woman trying to flee from him!
And yet, for all that things do work out neatly in the end, the ambivalent fascination of the early chapters—and the mood and tension that are far more reminiscent of what would come later with Raffles—is still there. I think we see things here progressing towards the Raffles stories: Hornung introduces the theme of the perhaps-not-entirely-unsympathetic villain and the fascination of criminality in this book, and finally gains the courage not to step back from it at the end in The Amateur Cracksman. (I should probably wait and see what happens in the three intervening books before I make that judgement too precise, however!)
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would highly recommend it, especially if you've read the Raffles stories and are looking for a place to start with Hornung's other work. And Stingaree, I gather, returns later on, which I'm now greatly looking forward to!
Irralie's Bushranger (1896) opens in the Australian bush, where the manager of a sheep station is awaiting the arrival of the station's new owner from England, Greville Fullarton. Irralie Villiers, the manager's daughter, is out hunting and meets a man who introduces himself as Fullarton... but something's not quite right. Why are his clothes so shabby, when he's supposed to be a respectable gentleman? Why does he claim to have lost the papers that would have proved his identity? And why was he wandering around the bush carrying a loaded revolver...?
Hornung really seems to be in his element here. The sentence-level writing style is more elegant and assured than anything else I've read so far in this read-through, with the characteristic clarity, brevity and perfectly placed phrase that he does so well. The best thing about this book, however, is the characters and their interactions. The early chapters, in which Irralie's suspicions of the self-proclaimed Fullarton develop and Fullarton begins to become aware of them, contain some absolutely beautiful bits of I-know-you-know-I-know fencing, tempered by Irralie's genuine doubt and shame over suspicions that are never quite stated outright. Later on, when things get more dramatic, the pacing and excitement of the writing pick up perfectly. The ending is again fairly abrupt, but it's the abruptness of saying a lot in very few words, and it doesn't feel unbalanced; the final line is very touching.
In Stingaree, the gentleman bushranger (as you might say), we have for the first time an outright villainous criminal character being portrayed in a way that, while not exactly sympathetic, is certainly something more than straightforwardly unsympathetic; and as a Raffles fan I was delighted. More on this below, because it gets spoilery, but there is plenty here of relevance to the Raffles stories, which Hornung began writing about two years after this book. One passage in particular, describing Irralie's reaction to learning that the man she has fallen in love with is a bushranger, will certainly strike a note of recognition for readers familiar with The Ides of March:
They were the words of a villain, and yet they cut her to the heart. They cut her so cruelly, and in such open and prolonged defiance of her reason, that the shameful truth came home to her at last. They were the words of a villain whom she loved. (...) But trust and doubt were now two things of the past. Certainty took their place; and yet the love remained. It was monstrous, it was grotesque, but it was nevertheless a fact to be faced.
This, however, all comes before the Big Plot Twist.
So, the Big Plot Twist: Irralie's suspicions are finally confirmed when the real Greville Fullarton arrives at the station and identifies the imposter as the feared outlaw Stingaree... but shortly afterwards we discover that 'the real Greville Fullarton' is in fact Stingaree, and the man who was first introduced as Greville Fullarton actually is himself after all, and was trying to outwit Stingaree after being ambushed by him before his arrival at the station. This was great fun: unlike My Lord Duke, the plot twists enough to make things exciting and dramatic but not so much that it becomes silly. However, the way things work out after the twist is, in a way, far less interesting than what went before. The moral conflict and ambivalence of the early part of the book, Irralie's horror at loving a villain and helping him even as she is perfectly aware of his villainy, are resolved nice and neatly and it's suddenly perfectly clear who's a goodie and who's a baddie. And Stingaree, as he eventually works out, is a far more straightforward villain than Raffles ever is—Raffles would not shoot at an innocent woman trying to flee from him!
And yet, for all that things do work out neatly in the end, the ambivalent fascination of the early chapters—and the mood and tension that are far more reminiscent of what would come later with Raffles—is still there. I think we see things here progressing towards the Raffles stories: Hornung introduces the theme of the perhaps-not-entirely-unsympathetic villain and the fascination of criminality in this book, and finally gains the courage not to step back from it at the end in The Amateur Cracksman. (I should probably wait and see what happens in the three intervening books before I make that judgement too precise, however!)
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would highly recommend it, especially if you've read the Raffles stories and are looking for a place to start with Hornung's other work. And Stingaree, I gather, returns later on, which I'm now greatly looking forward to!
