We continue our Swashbuckling theme with a look at a story by a swashbuckling fictioneer, H. Bedford-Jones.
Someone recently posted a note to the PulpMags group on Yahoo a question about whether H. Bedford-Jones wrote so much historical fiction because of the popularity of Raphael Sabatini’s fiction. My notion is that Bedford-Jones wrote so much historical fiction because he liked it intensely, his strengths as a writer were best shown in historical adventures (rather than in contemporary action stories), and he demonstrated a great fondness for the work of Alexandre Dumas. And so he styled his efforts as a follower of Dumas, not of Sabatini.
One can see this in HBJ’s references throughout his work to, in particular, the characters from The Three Musketeers, including his obvious sequels to that story, such as D’Artgnan (1928) and D’Artagnan’s Letter (1931). The Dumas influence is even clear in novels not featuring d’Artagnan, such as Rodomont, A Romance of Mont St. Michel (in the days of Louis XIV), serialized in Adventure in three parts during 1925 and published in book form in 1926 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. (An overview of popular fiction published in the March 29, 1926, issue of Time Magazine included, "If you have not chosen yet, ask that newsdealer to hand you Rodomont (Putnam) by H. Bedford-Jones. Therein two shrewd and muscular sons of American forests swash and buckle about the craggy slopes of Mont St. Michel in the days of Louis XIV.")
“The Cardinal Smiles,” an entry in HBJ’s loosely connected series of “Arms and Men” stories for Blue Book, obviously demonstrates the author’s affinity for Dumas’ work by featuring Richelieu himself -- the Cardinal of the story’s title. A story of loyalty, of revenge, of assassination conspiracies.
Bedford-Jones exercises his storytelling powers quite well here, deftly moving from the first-person narration that marks the story’s beginning to the third person as his tale slips back into time (one almost waits to hear Walter Cronkite intone, “And you are there . . .”):
Almost the first sentence that caught my eye was this, written in the abominable crabbed soldier’s fist of Sieur de Pontis, that scribbling captain of the guards who went halfway to fame and never finished the route:
In this summer of 1636 the King and the Cardinal were both at Chantilly, where I found them.
Chantilly! Not the elegant parked and turfed ghost of the present day, a lovely shell stuffed with mementoes of the great dead, but the sturdy turreted chateau all alive with action, where lived the Montmorencies, the greatest nobles of France.
A somewhat grim pile then, surrounded by a moat that was a small sea and stocked with the finest fish; beyond that, a forest primeval where the little roe-deer scampered, and great stags wandered deep, and savage wild boars crashed their careless way.
No Montmorency here now, in this summer; but instead, Louis Xiii. Four years ago the last Montmorency, shot down and captured in open war against his king, had been quickly beheaded—first peer and marshal of France, greatest gentleman of his age, sadly betrayed and swiftly killed by the envy of Richelieu. And the King, to whom hunting was as the breath of life, took Chantilly for himself.
Not only does the author flow smoothly from the present to the narrative past in this passage, he quickly sketches the character of Cardinal Richelieu -- clearly relying on the schemer Dumas presents in The Three Musketeers -- and the background of intrigues and plots that so define the tapestry Dumas weaves for his historical France. As the author writes later in the story, Richelieu “moved like a gaunt wraith amid the throng that surged into the courtyard, took his leave of the King, and so disappeared into his own quarters -- to universal relief. None breathed freely when that man was present.”
Dumas’ portrait of Louis XIII also is evident in HBJ’s description of the king: “Weakly handsome, weakly stubborn and suspicious, the King was now in royal mood, as usual after a hunt. . . Louis the Just, he liked to call himself.”
Another character from history and from The Three Musketeers is present in this story, Treville, Captain of the Musketeers at the time Dumas’ d’Artagnan comes to Paris.
This reliance on Dumas -- or on a Wold Newtonish twisting of reality and fiction -- comes clearer when Bedford-Jones shows Pontis discussing German mercenaries with “Batz-Castlemore, a Gascon twenty-five years in the guards, who had taken the name of Artaignan after a distant relative in the royal household.” Dumas based his Gascon d’Artagnan on a real person -- Charles de Batz-Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan. Batz-Castelmore served Louis XIV as captain of the and died at the Siege of Maastricht in 1673 during the Franco-Dutch War. A fictionalized account of his life by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras provided the inspirational spark for Dumas’ Musketeer romances.
But this literary three-card Monte distracts the reader from the plot, for HBJ performs some narrative legerdemain as he marches colorful characters from history and fiction across the stage as McGuffins, while Pontis worries about an attempt on King Louis’ life. Even here, Bedford-Jones builds tension and creates mystery and inserts doubt in the mind of the reader, for Soudeilles -- described as an honorable man -- claims he is not in the area to kill the king, but he admits he is “here on a bitter errand, my friend, yet a very honorable errand. I regret that I cannot disclose it to you.”
By the story’s end, all comes clear, and those characters who are truly honorable shine against the tarnished images of those who are less honorable. In this historical vignette, Bedford-Jones provides ample evidence of his mastery of historical fiction.
Posted by ds at July 31, 2009 06:21 AM
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