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MARGERY ALLINGHAM

Margery Allingham was born on May 20, 1904, in Ealing, a London suburb. She died of a sudden and devouring cancer on June 30, 1966.

Her parents moved within a few months of her birth to a square, white, late-Georgian house which had been the rectory at Layer Breton, near Colchester in Essex. It was here that she grew up, and for the greater period of her life she lived within a few miles of her first home.

Her father was Herbert Allingham who started his career as journalist after leaving Cambridge and who edited The London Journal and The Christian Globe, a non-conformist weekly paper owned by his father, a white-bearded Godlike patriarch whose offices in Fleet Street were on the present side of the Daily Express. In his early thirties, Herbert turned to writing as a full-time profession. He became one of the great and prolifit serialists at the dawn of the Northcliffe era, usually for the Amalgamated Press, now swallowed up by a takeover empkire, and occasionally for the group know in the family as "The North."

It was the heyday of the penny weekly journals pioneered by Answers and the halfpenny comics. Chips, The Funny Wonder, The Butterfly and Comic Cuts all came from the same stable and used the same formula.This consisted of a series of strip cartoons, the best of them drawn by Tom Browne, picturing such favourites as Weary Willy and Tired Tim, Tom the Ticket of Leave Man, the Casey Court Kids and Professor Radium. All these were designed for children, but each issue contained a fairy tale, a detective story, a schoolboy adventure and a family serial aimed at adults, which sometimes ran for several years.

Herbert Allingham wrote any and all of these with donnish precision, but he was at his best in the unending dramas which were the forerunners of TV serials such as Peyton Place or The Fugitive. This taught Margery a great deal not only about writing but about the business of it, for he never parted with a copyright and sold many of his stories six or seven times over, though he was never published in book form. He was a handsome, scholarly man whose appearance suggested an eminent theologian rather than a Grub Street hack, and his stories were worked out with the same academic interest that he gave to a chess problem. To his house came many of the successful journalists of the age. Edith Shackleton and her sister Norah Neald, G.H. Mair, Jimmy Heddle, James Parks, Richard Hearne and many others. William McFee was his protege and most of Casuals of the Sea was written at Layer Breton.

Herbert had married his cousin who was also a writer of women's magazine stories and whose sister Maud Hughes founded The Picture Show and edited it for nearly forty years.Writing had been in the blood for several generations. John TIll Allingham, a playwright of South of the River melodramas, and J.E. Allingham, a pioneer of schoolboy magazines who wrote under the name "Ralph Rollington," were among their forebearers. The latter created "Jimmy Cake," the forerunner of Billy Bunter.

Against this background, Margery had no choice but to join the ranks, for no other occupation was considered orthodox or indeed sane. She has recorded how when she was seven her father gave her, as a matter of normal progress, a room, a desk, a pen, paper, and a plot to enable her to make her own start in life. Her first earnings, seven and sixpence from a story in one of her aunt's papers, made her a professional from the age of eight.

Like most authors she had her setbacks. At her first school in Colchester, an essay was publicly destroyed by the English mistress on the grounds that she could not possibly have written it herself and must, therefore, be exposed as a copyist and a cheat. The Perse School at Cambridge treated her more intelligently and for them she produced and acted in her own costume play.

During the first world war the family moved to London, though they kept a small house on Mersea Island, and when Margery left the Perse at the age of sixteen her father sent her to the School of Drama and Speech Training at the Polytechnic in Regent Street, to cure her equally of stammering and snobbery. He succeeded in both intentions.

In the meantime she had experienced an odd adventure. Her father, who kept an enquiring and open mind on everything from politics to theology, had decided to experiment with table-turning, and this might have been to keep pace with the enterprise of his wife who embraced the beliefs of the Church of England, Christian Science, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, Madam Blavatsky and the Vibrate-to-Colour school with alternate impartiality. At mersea a series of table-turning sessions with several hadns upon an upturned glass produced messages and stories from characters purporting to be seventeenth-century pirates and smugglers, long-dead inhabitants of the little island.

That these personalities, who made themselves extraordinarily vivid and authentic in their period, were entirely the product of Margery's dynamic imagination there is no doubt. This sort of phenomena, conjured by a young woman at the age of puberty, is not uncommon. The case of Bridie Murphy which had all America by the ears a year or two back is very close to it, and Noel Coward used the idea effectively in Blithe Spirit.

Having created the characters from her subconscious mind, Margery proceeded to bring them to life in the only way she knew. She wrote her first novel, Blackerchief Dick, the tragic romantic history which had just emerged, spelled out letter by letter accross the table in the winter of 1920.

One of my earliest memories of her, still vivid as yesterday, is of her return to the flat in Bayswater after her first interview with A.S. Watt, the doyen of literary agents. She was elated with the champagne of success, a big, handsome, bouncing schoolgirl of my own age, bursting with news.

"Daddy Watt said, 'Miss Allingham, I have to tell you that i have arranged towday for Messrs Hodder & Stoughton to publish your work. They will pay you a modest fee in advance but this is subject to a proviso. The phrase which appears on page fourteen, "Blasting wilting swine," must be deleted.' A pity. I don't know any real oaths and pirates ought to be allowed to swear, don't you think?"

It was a triumph in which I shared, for at Margery's insistance the publishers used my design for the book jacket and this was the forerunner of over two thousand which I have produced since. It was indeed the first genuine commercial sale I ever made.

We had met only a few weeks before and in rather peculiar circumstances, for my mother had once had a romantic affair with her father during his Cambridge days when my grandmother's home at Waterbeach was open house to literary-minded students. Despite the breaking of this near-engagement they remained close friends and cooresponded regularly even after both had married elsewhere. The tie was increased by the fact that we both had a courtesy aunt in common, a cousin of my mother's married to an uncle of Margery's. She was a garrulous and regular visitor, travelling much between households prepared to offer hospitality and regailing my sister and myself with tales of the achievements of the "cousin" who was our own age. "Margery is so clever. She has written several stories which have been published and produced a play." My sister and I grew to loathe the sound of this prodigy without realizing that we too were the subject of similary eulogies. "Philip is writing and editing a magazine which is quite brilliant. He does all his own drawings for it in exercise books. Betty is going to be such a clever actress, I feel sure."

When I became an art student in 1921, we met for the first time, at the insistence of my mother, with the greatest mutual misgivings, but I do not think that anyone who ever encountered Margery could be immune to her infectious, exhilarating charm. The following week we went to the galelry of the Old Vic together (Sibyl Thorndyke doubling as the first witch and Lady MacBeth) and before the winter was out we had seen every play of importance in town.

In the meantime Margery had written and produced a heroic verse-drama "Dido and Aeneas," for her fellow students in which she played the lead, and for which she made over forty costumers. My minor role was to design the scenery. This epic, which contains some amazing verse for a girl of seventeen, was performed with some success at the St. George's Hall and the Cripplegate Theatre in London, but by a merciful chance there was no popular demand for student prodigies in those days and though the press gave us a glimpse of glory it was brief as summer lightening.

The following summer we became secretly engaged on an August night at Mersea. It was a curious courtship because we were both naturally shy and completely inexperienced. We neither kissed nor held hands, but walked arm and arm like children; yet between us there was that complete understanding which makes sex of minor importance and mutual interests so paramount that other considerations appear remote and mildly funny.

It was four years before we did in fact become officially betrothed and in the ienterval both of us enjoyed educational romances elsewhere. Margery at her father's bidding wrote a long, unpublishable novel of student life, and I had graduated from art student to struggling commercial artist. We saw each other constantly, even discussing our love affairs, but always from the olympian angle of those whose association is unquestionable and eternal.

In 1927 we married and went to live in a minute flat in Holborn which had once been the caretaker's permises of the old Birkbeck Bank. One room of this was a bookmaker's office and on a memorable day we won a quarter's rent from him, but within the year he went bankrupt and we took over the whole floor space. Margery was earning by translating silent films into short stories for one of her aunt's papers, The Girl's Cinema. Each week a drama, whether it was Nanook of the North, the latest Valentino, or even The Light That Failed, had to be turned into an adolescent romance of ten thousand words. This she dictated to me at a single twelve-hour sitting and on one accasion we produced seventy-thousand words in a week, in order to be free to go to the South of France for the ideal honeymoon which we had not been able to afford the year before.

Like her father, Margery also wrote for "The North" from time to time, including an epic serial dealing with the adventures of The Society Millgirl and the Eight Wicked Millionares. In those comparatively tax-free days, a party for a dozen friends could be paid for by what was called "a splendid long complete," for Sexton Blake or a "special Love Story" for the Christmas number of a film-fan paper.

The Crime at Black Dudley, Mystery Mile, and Look to the Lady were written during this period. The time to produce them had to be won by getting weeks ahead with the film work, which was bread and butter, and the books themselves were written in the country, for we exchanged her father's house for the flat each summer. They are gay because they reflect the mood of the time and into them she crammed every idea, every joke, and every scrap of plot which we had gathered like magpies hoarded for a year. Connoisseurs of the period will find any number of unpublishable contemporary jokes delicately indicated by inference in those pages, and only last year a serious-minded German translator made a special visit to us to enquire about the correct rendering of Miss Fanny Adams.

In 1930, we rented our own house in the country, at Chappel in Essex, and in 1934 we bought D'Arcy House as a permanent home. Tolleshunt D'Arcy is a village on the Blackwater on the Essex coast, five miles from Layer Breton, and Margery felt that this was the background to which she truly belonged. The house itself she had known all her life for it was the home of Dr. Salter, the family physician, the great Essex sportsman and diarist.

By now she was accepted by the reviewers of the day first as an important new thriller writer, although the public had made this discovery long since, and later as a major creative author in her chosen field. She had attracted the interest of the best literary agents, Paul Reynolds of New York, later a personal friend, and her sales in the United States began to climb. She had grown in stature and accomplishment and was determined to make the modern adventure story as important and significant a work as any other piece of professional writing. "To Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to figure in a story which is also by any standard a distinguished novel," said Torquemada of the Observer in reviewing The Fashion in Shrouds in 1938, and this was the accolade of which she was most proud.

World War II found her with a half-finished book, Black Plumes, which she completed more quickly than she had intended in order to produce Traitor's Purse with its remarkable warning about the obvious capacity of one nation to forge another's currency.

At the request of her American publishers she wrote The Oaken Heart, a factual account, based originally on her letters to American friends, of wartime life in an English village which is a recognizable classic in its own time. It was written to attract intelligent U.S. opinion to the allied cause. In the States, Eleanor Roosevelt gave it a warm welcome, but the market for sympathy toward England had been saturated by Agnes Dewer Millar's The White Cliffs and America at that moment was self-conscious about its neutrality. It had a modest success in the United States but became a best seller in every part of the world where there were Englishmen who loved their country. Many years before, Margery had written a contemporary play for her fellow students called Without Being Naturally Qualified, based on a quotation from G.B. Shaw's Man and Superman. She sent him a copy and he acknowledged it with a long letter beginnning: "If you sell your audience you won't sell your seats..." After the publication of The Oaken Heart he wrote to her, "Well, well, so you're still alive. I'm reading your book."

Her one "straight" work, The Galantrys, was written between 1942 and 1944. It was to have been her bid for a place among the "serious" novelists of her age, a generation-to-generation history, largely based on her own family story. Sheer fatigue and the necessity for earning enough money to keep the house going (for I was away in the Western Desert) made her finish it at top speed. The first half ahs all the promise of a masterpiece, but it tails off sadly inot a precis of a larger scheme. She had run the billeting and welfare of the evacuees, kept the emergency supplies of food, worked in the Air Raid Precaution Service, and was First Aid Commandant for the area in addition to being the underground liaison and resistance agent in case of invasion. Food was stored in the garage, explosives at the far end of the garden.

Before I returned from overseas she had also written Coroner's Pidgin (Pearls before Swine in the U.S.), the one adventure story in which I had no share, for it was her custom to discuss every move, chapter and even paragraph with me before finishing the draft. With peace and the release of enough paper to print books in quantity she repeated her successes of prewar days and became again what she most loved to be, a hostess with a host of friends. We flew perilously to New York in 1949 to make new contacts and she accomplished one of her cherished ambitions which was to sell to the Saturday Evening Post, at that time regarded by many writers as a hall mark of professionalism.

The Tiger in the Smoke is generally considered her best book, but her own favorite was The Beckoning Lady and indeed it mirrors something of what a summer party could be like at Tolleshunt D'Arcy. The character of Minnie is near to a self portrait, and of necessity, since it has become my nickname, I find echoes of myself in Tonker.

As a craftswoman she had a dedicated conscience, writing, dictating, and rewriting until she had achieved a polish which she considered overbright. She then redictated it at speed to an old friend, Alan Gregory, to bring it back into readable colloquial English. She read most of her contemporaries, admiring Josephine Tey and in particular Agatha Christie whom she considered as owning the liveliest intelligence in the business. She eschewed Dorothy Sayers, though she later became a friend and neighbour, because having come upon her work after both ladies were established, she found that it had too many points in common to make it wise to read her regularly. James Bond she regarded as a consumer-goods figure and Dr. No as being too close a relation to Dr. Fu Manchu. Perhaps the fact that a character in Black Dudley, written in 1928, had the file number 0072 coloured her opinion.

But in all things she was open-hearted and even a critic who consistently vilified her work earned no more than tolerant amusement.

No young author whose proofs were sent to her ever lacked a quotable phrase unless he dealt in cruelty, for she was the kindest and gentlest of women. She was deeply religious, developing her own philosophy through the years, although she was not a churchgoes, for she found the strict tenents of orthodox faith too narrow for her personal brand of Christian theology.

Her house, her garden and her friends: these in ascending order were her abiding interests, and I do not think that anyone who knew her could fail to love her or to take pride in having met her. She was gay, generous, affectionate and, I think, as near to being a saint as no matter.

Philip Youngman Carter

Books by Margery Allingham:

The Allingham Case-Book (1969) With the first Margery Allingham mystery her reputation as a major creative writer in her chosen field became firmly established. In this Case Book, once again Mr. Campion, super-sleuth, is called upon to solve the most intriguing cases of greed and murder, where he himself is an intended victim.

The Black Dudley Murder

Black Plumes (1940) While her son is away on business, the Grand Dame of the Ivory Gallery, Gabrielle Ivory, is its titular head. During his absence a valuable painting is slashed and a relative murdered. Who killed Robert? His neurotic wife? His ambitious assistant Lucar? The artist David Field? Or was it the indomitable Gabrielle Ivory herself? To get to the bottom of this murder and mayhem Inspector Bridie has a slew of suspects, and very few clues

The Case of the Late Pig (1937) When Albert Campion is called upon to investigate a murder in a small town, he discovers that the victim is none other than an old schoolmate, R.I. Peters, a.k.a. Pig, whose funeral he'd attended not six months earlier. Then Pig's fiancee shows up, demanding to see the body of her late beloved ...but the corpse has disappeared.

Cargo of Eagles (1968) Once the gathering place of pirates and smugglers, the town of Saltey has now been overrun by motorcycle gangs, ex-convicts and a nasty collection of contemporary cutthroats. But a missing treasure and a resurrecyed local demon entice Albert Campion to the quaint, if troubled, seacoast community - and a mysterious murder that sets the intrepid sleuth sailing toward disaster.

The China Governess (1962) Adopted heir Timothy Kinnit refuses to marry his beloved Julia until he learns the truth about his parentage. But when Albert Campion traces the roots of young Timothy's family tree, he finds them buried in a century-old scandal involving a jilted nanny and a rather nasty murder. When another tragic death occurs, a sinister Victorian blood legacy suddenly threatens the lives of the two young lovers ... and Campion's to boot!

The Crime at the Black Dudley

Dancers in Mourning (1937) Strange pranks are being played on dancer Jimmy Sutane, star of London's Argosy Theatre. When they spread to the Sutane's country estate, it becomes apparent that someone wants Jimmy's famous feet to tap their final dance. Is it the aging actress with a secret past? The muscular lady masseuse? Or the eccentric songwriter? Campion never dreamed the big show-stopper would be murder - and a case that promises to test his mind and break his heart.

Deadly Duo

Death of a Ghost

The Estate of the Beckoning Lady

The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

The Fear Sign {Sweet Dandger} (1933)

Flowers for the Judge (1937) A husband murdered... A rare manuscript stolen ... A man vanished into thin air ... ...were all part of the tangled web of violence and tragedy that lay beneath the seemingly serene surface. The police arrested the obvious suspect - a man in love with the victim's wife. But Campion knew that all the secrets had not yet come to light, and so he set out on the danger-strewn trail to the truth ...

The Gyrth Chalice Mystery

Look to the Lady

The Mind Readers (1965) The "Iggy Tube" was a terrifying toy that could change the course of history - or destroy the world! To the two schoolboys who discovered it, the "iggy" was a handy gadget for reading people's minds. To the group of tycoons who were willing to pay a king's ransom for it, the tube meant possession of the world's wealth. To the world powers whose spies had orders to kill to get the tube, it meant control of mankind.

Mr. Campion and Others

Mr. Campion: Criminologist

More Work for the Undertaker

Mystery Mile () Whether it was due to the killer's bad luck or bad marksmanship, Judge Crowdy Lobbett of New York was still alive. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the four men who had died in his place. Two more attempts on his person, one in the middle of the Atlantic, the other on a bustling London street, are enough to convince Albert Campion that the judge knows something he definately should not ... something about the criminal mastermind Simister. For safety's sake, Campion lures the judge to the quaint village of Mystery Mile and hopefully out of harm's way. But when murder, suicide, and blackmail strike swiftly, Campion knows that the legend of Simister is true: No man ever escapes him - even a man like Campion.

No Love Lost

Pearls Before Swine

Police at the Funeral (1932) No one in the Faraday family particularly mourned the hanger-on called Uncle Andrew, but they all felt his murder was in such horrid taste. And when a mysterious symbol appeared on a mansion window and a preposterously large footprint popped up in the garden, it became clear someone was trying to make monkeys of them all. Nothing is more unwelcome to the proper Cambridge Faradays than a hint of scandal. But Campion shrewdly suspects that the killer plans to do more than just embarrass the Faradays to death. The idea is to really kill them ... one by one.

Teather's End

The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) The police knew how dangerous he was and tried to stop him. But, like a wary animal, he slipped out of all their traps - leaving death behind him. The trail led straight to the woman who knew the secret he had to learn. And now only Campion stood between her and the ruthless killer.

Traitor's Purse

The White Cottage Mystery (1928) Everyone ought to have done it, but by the evidence nobody had. Seven suspects, all with excellent motives for killing the hateful Eric Crowther. He collected their secrets. And he used them. But which of these long-time sufferers had found the courage to pull the trigger? And should this benefactor really be presecuted?

Murder Mystery Monthly #17 Who Killed Chloe? (1943)

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