Happy Independence Day to all our American listeners, whether in the original thirteen colonies, across the fruited plain, or scattered around the world. It may be the Glorious Fourth and a federal holiday, but here at Tales for Our Time the lights stay on. So, if you're in the mood for a break from parades and fireworks, welcome to Part Twenty-One of our latest audio entertainment: The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers' pioneer spy novel set against the long road to the Great War.
That name Childers rang a bell with New South Wales Steyn Club member Rob Mort:
Mark, some useless trivia. Had a few hours in the tractor today, so started listening to The Riddle.
Childers! That piqued my interest. There's a town in Queensland by the name of Childers! It came to notoriety some years ago after the old pub caught fire and several young backpackers who pick fruit in the area, were tragically killed... The town was established in 1885, reportedly named after Hugh Childers, British statesman, who was the Auditor-General of Victoria in the 1850s.
That's right, Rob. As I mentioned in my introduction to Riddle, Hugh Childers was Erskine's cousin: Hugh's father, the Reverend Eardley Childers, and Erskine's father, Robert Caesar Childers (private secretary to the Governor of Ceylon and a distinguished orientalist), were brothers. In 1853 Hugh helped found the University of Melbourne and served as its first vice-chancellor; he was Victoria's Collector of Customs and was elected to the first Legislative Assembly in the state, as the member for Portland. He then returned to England, was elected as the member for Pontefract (in Yorkshire) and held high office in the ministries of Lord Palmerston and Mr Gladstone - Secretary of War, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary - and, which is most relevant to the theme of Riddle of the Sands, a reforming First Lord of the Admiralty.
Hugh Childers was older than his cousin, but even so you could hardly find a man of more different temperament. H C E Childers was a Liberal, and thus supported the party's policy of home rule for Ireland. Erskine liked his famous cousin, but, as a Cambridge undergraduate raised in the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy, he vigorously denounced home rule in many varsity debates. By the early years of the twentieth century, he'd come round to the policy and was actively seeking to follow Hugh and sit in the House of Commons as a Liberal member. Another half-decade on, and he'd quit the Liberals because Irish home rule was no longer sufficient: he was a hardcore Sinn Féin republican revolutionary. Who knows where he'd be had he lived another twenty or thirty years. Hugh Childers is a useful fixed point by which to measure the pendulum swings of his cousin.
One final bit of what Rob calls "useless trivia": H C E Childers put on a lot of weight in later life, and became known as "Here Comes Everybody", which James Joyce used as a character's name in Finnegans Wake - "Here Comes Everybody" or Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, just to tie all this Aussie-Anglo-Irish "useless trivia" together. Tell you what, let's make it Aussie-Anglo-Irish-Canadian trivia: The original illustrations to Finnegans Wake were by my Aunt Stella, who became friends with Joyce in Paris. So I'm the great-nephew of the illustrator of a fictional character based on the nickname of a man commemorated by a town in Queensland. Thanks, Rob! You win today's round of Six Degrees of Erskine Childers.
And on to tonight's episode, which finds Carruthers and Davies battling against time and tide to reach a remote outpost of German intrigue at Memmert:
For an hour we were at the extreme strain, I of physical exertion, he of mental. I could not get into a steady swing, for little checks were constant. My right scull was for ever skidding on mud or weeds, and the backward suck of shoal water clogged our progress. Once we were both of us out in the slime tugging at the dinghy's sides; then in again, blundering on. I found the fog bemusing, lost all idea of time and space, and felt like a senseless marionette kicking and jerking to a mad music without tune or time. The misty form of Davies as he sat with his right arm swinging rhythmically forward and back, was a clockwork figure as mad as myself, but didactic and gibbering in his madness. Then the boathook he wielded with a circular sweep began to take grotesque shapes in my heated fancy; now it was the antenna of a groping insect, now the crank of a cripple's self-propelled perambulator, now the alpenstock of a lunatic mountaineer, who sits in his chair and climbs and climbs to some phantom 'watershed'. At the back of such mind as was left me lodged two insistent thoughts: 'we must hurry on,' 'we are going wrong.' As to the latter, take a link-boy through a London fog and you will experience the same thing: he always goes the way you think is wrong. 'We're rowing back!' I remember shouting to Davies once, having become aware that it was now my left scull which splashed against obstructions. 'Rubbish,' said Davies.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Twenty-One of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
Here's the route of Carruthers and Davies' frenzied race, from Nordeney west to Memmert:
We'll be right back here on Post-Independence Day, Friday evening, with Part Twenty-Two of The Riddle of the Sands. If you're minded to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, you're more than welcome. You can find more information here. And, if you have a chum you think might enjoy Tales for Our Time (so far, we've covered Conan Doyle, H G Wells, Dickens, Conrad, Kipling, Kafka, Gogol, Jack London, Baroness Orczy, Victor Hugo, O Henry, John Buchan, Scott Fitzgerald and more), we have a special Gift Membership.
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11 Member Comments
Just a quick note: If you're following the reading and consulting the chart illustration the best one to use (and the one Childers refers to in this episode) is from Episode Twenty, "The King of Breakfasts."
"Never go anywhere without a knife." Amen to that.
I was thinking the exactly the same! I just have to remember to remove them from the bottom of the handbag before going through airport security.
Love the 'useless trivia' - including aspects of Mark's Irish ancestry. Please include links for the Clubman's Notes to all the Tales!
PS. "Six Degrees of Steyn" would be a great next-book title.
That was the best part of the background notes. How many people can say their Great Aunt illustrated a work by James Joyce and became friends with him in Paris? I'm impressed, too, with the variety of ways the Childers' family distinguished themselves, even Milly, the daughter who clearly was an accomplished painter.
Agree, Fran. The real-life tales of artistic and political/ legal figures (Mark also has a distinguished great uncle, as I recall) are fascinating.
The painting by Milly Childers is really beautiful.
No kidding? Can you share the story, Kate? I love hearing what club members and our honorable host have in their ancestral line-ups; just sort of fun to know, not going to change lives, or anything, just fun.
What about this painting I love is it's very dignified, and everything seems to sit just right, not anything out of proportion, nothing floats. the angles all seem correct, the lights look right, the darks, the medium tones. It also has a sense of realism, more than the obvious way, in that you can almost expect the figure to turn and perhaps say a word to the painter at any minute. It's very well-done. I can really appreciate the skill required to make this look quite finished and professional.
See this densely-packed, "shamrock-hued" (+ Stars-and-Stripes) link. Fascinating! And this should remind every reader that one would be ill-advised to get into a dispute with the host about *anything*: you will LOSE. (Especially if you are a womble, it turns out.)
https://www.steynonline.com/6193/when-irish-ayes-are-dailing
You've described the painting perfectly, Fran.
Kate, thank you! That was very interesting about Mark's Great Uncle and was without a doubt one of the most densely packed links I ever read. I need to go now and do another few searches for the various items that only seemed vaguely familiar. I'm not planning to get into any dispute with our host, especially over an allegiance to any country. I said it before more than once, but it's worth repeating, that membership here to SteynOnline is like enrolling in a superior level Continuing Education class in a multitude of disciplines. There's nothing better we can do for ourselves as we grow older but to keep expanding our knowledge and awareness of what histories and cultures preceded us.
I believe Sol once said SteynOnline was like having a kind of Hubble Space Telescope that went exploring and sent us images and stories from the past. It was an astute analogy.
Fran , nice chunk of writing. When you peel back Marks onion and get into his dna, every reveal is consistent with this breed of young men we meet in "Tales". They don't make them like that anymore, we are fortunate
To have Mark perform them.
Doug, much thanks! Don't you find the easiest things to write about are the people and things we love and admire the most? You just want to burst to tell others who might be reading comments here and passing through, "want to know what you're missing"? We have art, music, film, stories about adventure, danger, espionage, and intrigue, both futuristic and fantastic tales, and for downtime we get to talk about whatever is on the mind of our terrific host and hear what's on the minds of his devoted fans around the globe. Can it get better than this?