King of Tosh: E Phillips Oppenheim

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 20^th 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