Letter from Hamish

10/6/09

Metung

Dear Angus,

How are you? I am well. I have been doing some Research. I have been on the trail of Trumbles in literature, inspired by your blog. You know, Angus, I only recently discovered how immense your blog is. I was aware, of course, of the blog entries which you sent me links unto, but it was only a week or two ago that I realized there was more material there that I could access. Wow! I don’t know how you do it, and hold down a job, and write a book! Your blog, Angus, puts me in mind of Thomas de Quincey, who saw the totality of his work in the nature of a Gothic Cathedral, each tiny part a piece of an enormous, colossal, evolving whole, The English Mail Coach—the Nave, etc., anyway, I only saw your Virginia Woolf piece a few days ago, after quite a lot of reading. I had set myself the task of finding the Trumble reference I remembered, indistinctly, from my studies at Cambridge with my modernism tutor. I failed to impress him from an early date with my researches on T. S. Eliot, who, I discovered had exchanged several amiable and charming letters with Groucho Marx, which I drew his reluctant attention to, and later in an informal “symposium”-style tutorial at the pub, I had interjected a remark about April being truly-ruly the cruelest month where I come from (it was because I was fed up with seasonal references being northern-hemispheric-o-centric). Anyway, I decided to re-read V. Woolf. I had a stroke of luck—I quickly found a copy of To The Lighthouse in the op shop. I was sure this was the book—so sure that after I scanned it for Mr. Trumble in vain, I read it properly, to be sure, to no avail. My local library coughed up Mrs. Dalloway which was my next guess, but again, no dice. I had, however, read another of this lesbotic genius’ mistresspieces, and while I agree with your assessment of her Bloomsbury snobbisme, I was getting “into” them, as they say in the classics. But still Mr. Trumble eluded me—no matter, I was sure that The Waves would be the one. My local library network had exhausted itself giving up Mrs. Dalloway, but nowadays we library patrons can borrow from any library across Victoria, and Swan Hill had a copy of The Waves. However, after 2 weeks my library told me that the Swan Hill Waves was “missing”—imagine that, Angus!—but the kind and helpful librarian at Wonthaggi told me—not to worry—he would organise another copy—leave it to him. 2 weeks later I got an email that my “Waves” was ready to collect. Well, I was excited, then deflated because I realized you had found the reference by yourself, but when I collected the book, I got the scent of the chase again, because what I had got was the 1976 Hogarth Press edition of V. W.’s The Waves—the two holograph drafts transcribed and edited by J. W. Graham, who must have been ever so keen on V. W., because he has copied out her notebooks and added all her crossings out, etc. (as you can see). I realized that here was an opportunity for original Trumble research, so I commenced reading. Let me say that, while I cannot identify the Trumble episode in any form in the first draft, and there is a Turnbull/Trumble passage in the second draft (see over), the reading was not unprofitable. Oh no. The first draft contains dozens and dozens of references to Louis, the Australian, son of a banker and his Australian accent, boomerangs, colonial inferiority—that Virginia had a definite idea about Louis and his Australian origin and she made sure she didn’t forget it for subsequent drafts. I thought about that a lot, and it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know many Australians, but as she cast her mind back to the twilight years of Victoria, and the Golden Age of Cricket, in the nostalgic glow of her method, one name might have popped up in the stream of her consciousness—Hugh Trumble, Australian test cricket champion, and, let’s not forget, bank manager. Is it not possible, no no, almost certain, that when casting about for a name for her gentleman on a train, her mind free-associating behind the twin filters of her arch-lesbotic superciliousness, and her disappointing anti-Australian prejudices, her final choice is actually an unintended tribute to a great and noble Trumble,

A mighty tall trundler named Hugh,

Who oft saved the skin of the ’Roo,

The foe thought him dead,

But he popped up his head,

“If you want me, I’ll soon pull you through!”?

Keep up the good work Angus.

Lots of love from Hamish.

P.S. What about Trumbles in art? I think we can by now consider Trumble and Trumbull to be interchangeable, especially in the distant past. Have you considered the case of John Trumbull (1756-1843), the American artist who fought in the War of Independence, after which he traveled to London and paris (as many Trumbles before and since) and worked with West the Quaker neoclassicist; apparently Trumbull is well represented in your American museums and he wrote his “Autobiography” (1841, repr. 1953). I got this out of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists—is there no field in which Penguins do not cover all aspects of life and learning? Must go now and scour the op shops of South Gippsland for hidden treasure.

x x x Hamish

Trumbles in Fiction II

Ever since great-grandfather J. W. Trumble established his first legal practice at Nhill in the Wimmera, successive generations of Trumble descendants have practiced law in Victoria and elsewhere, and show no sign of letting up. However, there does seem to be some curious predisposition on the part of minor novelists to cast in the role of barrister and solicitor fictional persons who happen to be called Trumble.

As far as I can see, there is no evidence to suggest that Trumble and Palmer; Trumble and Hamilton; Mallesons, nor indeed latterly Donaldson Trumble Lawyers in Melbourne ever offered themselves as direct models for those few fictional Trumble legal practitioners whom I have painstakingly unearthed thus far, but certain resonances in the name certainly seem to be unequivocally “legal.”

It is possible that the influence of our kinsman Jonathan Trumble, sometime Governor of Connecticut (1769 to 1784), may have been a factor, although his rash and inexplicable change of spelling (well before the Declaration of Independence, to “Trumbull”) makes this seem rather unlikely. Nor were he or his son and namesake (the American soldier, patriot, professional artist, and second Speaker of the United States House of Representatives) qualified attorneys.

In a long article entitled “Murder of Late” in The Saturday Review (February 2, 1929, p. 137), H. C. Harwood offered a stern critique of Superintendent Wilson’s Holiday, an anthology of short stories by G. D. H. Cole and M. Cole (London: Collins, 1900), as failing to satisfy certain basic rules of detective fiction. These may be summarized as follows:

A crime, almost always murder, is committed in an early chapter. Suspicion rests on several persons. The chief investigator makes known the facts (or a great majority of them), but conceals his opinions. In the end the identity of the criminal comes as a surprise to the reader. Now, the criminal must have both motive and opportunity. To divert the reader’s attention it is necessary (a) to ascribe to some one or more persons a greater motive or opportunity, (b) to conceal the criminal’s motive, (c) to conceal the criminal’s opportunity, or (d) to conceal the criminal’s identity. The success of the author is to be estimated by the extent to which he does one or more of these four things without refusing to the reader information available to the chief investigator. That is all that matters. Wit, humour, elegance, sensationalism may make a good detective story better, but cannot make a weak one good.

The Coles are amusing but slight; the short story is not their medium. “‘That,’ Wilson added to Kingdon, ‘I discovered from a paper in the possession of Hirst and Trumble, and it was that which put me on the true trail.’” In other words, an essential piece of evidence has been kept from the reader but given to the detective and that will not do. The same vicious reticence recurs in other of the stories; where it does not, the culprit is obvious.

Trumbles in Fiction I

A cursory survey of Victorian and Edwardian short fiction yields many characters named Trumble.

Charles de Cresseron’s peculiar historical novel The House By the Church-Yard—A Souvenir of Chapelizod was serialized in the Dublin University Magazine in 1862. In the middle of chapter XLVIII (Vol. 59, No. 353, May, p. 572), after Captain Cluffe goes missing, presumed drowned whilst attempting to punt across the river, upstream from the salmon leap, under cover of darkness, his breathless, lisping companion Lieutenant Puddock raises the alarm, and bursts into the clubrooms of the Phoenix:

There were assembled old Arthur Slowe, Tom Trimmer from Lucan, old Trumble, Jack Collop, Colonel Stafford, and half-a-dozen more members, including some of the
officers—O’Flaherty among the number, a little “flashy with liquor,” as the phrase then was. Puddock stood in the wide opened door, with the handle in his hand. He was disheveled, soused with water, bespattered with mud, his round face very pale, and he fixed a wild stare on the company…

“Gentlemen, I’m thorry to tell you, Captain Cluffe ith, I fear, drowned!”

“Cluffe?” “Drowned?” “By Jupiter!” “You don’t say so?” and a round of such ejaculations followed this announcement.

“He went over the thalmon weir—I thaw him—Coyle’s weir—headlong, poor fellow! I shouted after him, but could not anthwer, tho pray let’th be off, and—”

Old Trumble seems not to have risen above the picturesque cast of supernumerary Anglo-Irish clubmen extras in this admittedly exciting tale.

An extended advertisement placed by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. in the Magazine of Art of January 1880, listing “Books for Children and Young People,” meanwhile, was led on page 484 by “Tim Trumble’s ‘Little Mother,’ A New and Original Story. By C. L. Matéaux, Author of Home Chat, &c. With 18 Illustrations by Giacomelli. Fcap, 4to, cloth, gilt edges, 5s.” According to the critic of the Academy (No. 18, July/December 1880, p. 421) this work

is an odd mixture, and is certainly above the comprehension of little folk, though perhaps tolerably big boys and girls may find amusement and pleasure in its pages. “Little Mother,” it would seem is a pet name for Tim Trumble’s motherly daughter, while Tim was a circus-man who revisits the country. Interwoven with the main story is a record of the family life and history of a nest of little finches, who have taken up their abode near Tim Trumble’s country home. A large portion of the book deals with bird-life generally, the views of birds with regard to mortals, &c.

And in “The Watermead Affair: The Story of a Chauffeur-Errant,” by the Scottish-Canadian adventure story writer and historical novelist Robert Barr, which appeared in October 1905 in his own journal The Idler (p. 434), co-edited with Jerome K. Jerome,

John Trumble, seventh Earl of Watermead [above], was notoriously the best driver of a motor in London. The police admitted that, even when giving testimony against him. Watermead Manor is not much more than sixty miles from London, but when the young man did the distance from his park gates to the Marble Arch in fifty-six minutes on his new Brusier-Grolier, a machine of the same make which, to the eternal glory of France, had won the Gordon-Bennett Cup that year, the bench of magistrates universally agreed that his lordship had not only gone too far, but too fast.

The excuse which he gave the bench on this occasion came near to augmenting his fine. He said that he had been a week at Watermead, and suddenly there occurred to him the thought of the dreamy beauty of the Marble Arch. England, he said, was deficient in the artistic sense, and in order that the impression might not pass away from him, and thus be lost for ever, he leaped upon his motor, and came as quickly as he could to view the Marble Arch by moonlight; and his lordship assured the bench, almost with tears in his eyes, that the sight of the grimy marble had filled his mind with poetic thought, which should be encouraged in these days of commercialism. The senior magistrate drily remarked that his position compelled to take the commercial, rather than the poetic, view of his lordship’s action, whereupon he fined him a sum about as near to the maximum as he could get without actually reaching it.

Yet it was but two days later that his lordship gave the Pullman express from Brighton three minutes’ start, overtook it, passed it, and would have beaten it into London had not the authorities, warned by telegraph, placed a barrier across the road south of Croydon, although they allowed the express to pass through, which Lord Watermead held was unfair treatment. He accused the express of furious loitering, to the exasperation of all passengers, and held that he should be commended for consenting to teach that train its duty. Instead of approval he received censure, and was mulcted a fine as heavy as the law allowed. He always referred to this race with the Brighton express as a delightful leisurely episode in an otherwise fast life, and claimed with pride that there had then been applied to him, for the first time in England, the term “Road-hog.”

The story is salutary, because through extravagance and financial prodigality John Trumble, seventh Earl of Watermead, loses everything, his London townhouse, his estate, his possessions, his servants, and his motors. People cut him at his club. Through an ingenious series of twists, however, he finds employment as a chauffeur, incognito; meets and falls in love with Miss Erroll, thrills his future father-in-law, a doctor, by contriving to acquire for and drive him with supreme caution in the finest of his lost Brusier-Grolier motors, and, finally, beats Sir William Dillow, baronet, in a crucial road race to save his Watermead estate.

Kate Erroll had raised her veil, and was looking intently at the chauffeur.

“What does all this ‘my-lord-ing’ mean, Mr. Trumble?”

“It means, my dear, that John Trumble, Seventh Earl of Watermead, has still enough influence here to order tea for his friends. It means that to-day we are taking nobody’s dust. It means that Watermead House hopes to please the future Countess.”