The Interloper by E Phillips Oppenheim
aka The Ex-Duke
published1927
For clarity: I would say that I am the Queen of writing about
Tosh, leaving room for others to take their own Royal roles.
E Phillips Oppenheim has a pretty good claim.
He has featured
on the blog before. He was a hugely successful author in the
first half of the 20th Century, writing dozens of racy adventure or
romantic thriller books. When I read a few I could see exactly why they were so
successful: they keep you reading because you want to know how they pan out.
His work reminds me of another of my favourites from the era, Michael
Arlen. I just tried to decide what it was about Arlen: he has a
kind of twistedness, and an admiration for his own daringness, and that
hilariously wonderful air of telling readers that they, too, are in his secret
club. Oppenheim’s stories are on similar plotlines, but he kind of doesn’t
bother with his relations with his readers.
The story here is as follows: A wealthy titled family, enjoying their sybaritic lifestyle to the full, are suddenly given shocking news. Henry, the Duke of Chatfield, inherited the title when his brother died. But now it turns out there is a lost heir: the previous Duke was married to an Italian woman and had a fully legitimate child. This son lived in Italy and had entered a monastery, but now he is coming out to claim his inheritance. [Several of his books that I had read were about impersonators, so when I saw this one was called The Interloper I fully expected the new heir to be an impostor – but that is not the plot.]
The family are very much concerned, as well they might be.
There are questions about the huge amounts of money they have spent on the
reasonable assumption it was theirs (presumably there are some legal rules on
this), and about their future – might he cut them off without a penny?
There is also an issue that the incorrectly assigned Duke,
Lord Henry, has voted many times in the House of Lords – are his votes now null
and void? But nobody bothers to follow up on that.
Francis, the true heir, is a strange and intriguing
character, not particularly nice, and he has all kinds of ideas about his new
family. The first thing he does is to send them all off to live in the Dower
House – aha, you see this does all connect up with all those earlier posts,
that’s why I read it. ‘The Dower House is a very comfortable little place —
very comfortable, indeed.’
He gives them a generous allowance, knowing they will overspend it. There is gambling, racehorses and wild times – see picture above. And he himself spends money in an outrageous way, digging into his capital which (as we all know from these kind of books) is the thing you must never do. Whatever is he up to?
There is a daughter, Lady Monica, who is rather wild, but
basically good. She is a social success:
Lord Henry…found time now and
then to watch his amazing daughter and join in the general tribute of
admiration which she excited. Comparative strangers, as well as her own
intimates, were raving about her. Her dress of white satin, although it was the
creation of a great artist, was simplicity itself. She wore no ornament save
the single rope of pearls which was one of the heirlooms of the family. Her
hair was arranged without any trace of the coiffeur’s art. It was Monica
herself who was so amazing.
The son is charming but no solidity. The best character is
the mother, Lady Susan who placidly knits a lot and is quite set on opening a
little shop on Bond St if they run out of money: she can make goods to sell. You’d
put money on her to succeed in fact.
I enjoyed the book hugely, though I thought that the ending
did not have enough detail, it jumped around a bit. But the description of the
high life was good, with some extremely affected descriptions of Modern Dance,
a la Isidora Duncan one imagines.
Felicia was dancing even
before they knew that she had entered the room. She danced in the gown she had
worn all the evening, her eyes always far away, her face a gleam of white. She
danced with feet which seemed never raised; which seemed never to leave the
floor. Now and then in her pauses she appeared to lean upon the air without
support or the need of it. ‘Dancing is not meant to be understood. It is meant
to be felt.’
There is always a Denishawn picture for these purposes –
though Felicia’s gown should be black
Ruth
St. Denis in Radha. | Digital ID: DEN_0035V. Hartwig, A… | Flickr
A point in EPO’s favour: he at no point suggests that the
problem with Francis (and to be fair, he is a problem) comes about because he
didn’t go to a good English public school. Many of EPO’s contemporaries would
not have been able to resist that.
The Dower House doesn’t honestly feature that much (they spend all their time in London gambling and going to wild parties) but it was still well worth reading the book.
Red dress, white dress, tan suit, and riding outfit, 1920s - NYPL Digital Collections
Création
Molyneux. - NYPL Digital Collections
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