Three volumes in 20 years! Indeed, it may be said that the detective story was born with Poe and almost died with him.
In London the seed of Poe’s noble experiment took firmer root, sprouted, and bore more abundant fruit, Jolted by the appearance in 1830 of four police articles in “Household Words,” a magazine edited by Charles Dickens, English writers heard the knock of Opportunity on their door; for nearly half a century (1850–1896), they spewed forth a spate of detective “reminiscences” As John Carter has pointed out, most of these so-called real-life “diaries” were thinly disguised fiction, written by anonymous and pseudonymous hacks of the day. Immensely popular and literally read to death, these “revelations” vanished into limbo: less than half a hundred different titles remain with us. The survivors include the work of “Waters” (Thomas Russell), Andrew Forrester, Jr., Charles Martel (Thomas Delf), Alfred Hughes, and a few others. Rare today and extremely desirable for historical and collectival reasons, they are nevertheless a purple patch on the CORPUS DETECTIVUS.
But during the 50s and 60s in the United States there was no corresponding flood of pseudo “memoirs,” Over here the “revelations” were to come later — in our lush Dime Novel Era; the first Dime Novel detective, Old Sleuth, did not appear until 1872. From 1845 to 1862 the American detective story lapsed (to coin a word) into biblivion. In all those seventeen years not a single book of detective stories achieved the immortality of cloth, wrappers, or pictorial boards. But what about the many “household” magazines that flourished so romantically in this period? Surely there must have been at least occasional appearances of the detective story in these embryonic “Females’ Home Companions”?
Working on this theory, your Editor determined to unearth a sample of the detective story as it was written between 1845 and 1862 — and at long last we found one! Here, with an appropriate ta-ra, is a slightly condensed version of “The Garnet Ring,” by one M. Lindsay. It comes, foxed by the years, from Ballou’s “Dollar Monthly Magazine” (slogan: The Cheapest Magazine in the World), published in Boston, issue of May 1861.
Reader, peruse and compare. Compare this detective short story, vintage 1861, with the highly developed modern form which we take so much for granted these days that we are indifferent to its remarkable excellences. Only by going back into the past, into those vaunted “good old days,” can we realize fully how superb in technique, how rich in imagination, are the offerings of our Hammetts, our Carrs, our Chestertons, our Christies, our Sayerses, in these “the good new days.”
Poe, the Great Father of us all, died in 1849. He could not have read “The Garnet Ring.” Had he lived long enough to stumble on it, he would have wept melancholy tears. But if in some celestial cottage Poe has been following the careers of Uncle Abner, Father Brown, Sam Spade, Dr. Gideon Fell, and all the others we take too much for granted, he will not regret having invented what is now the most fabulous literary form in the history of man’s eternal search for les mots justes.
During the first year of my practice as an attorney, clients and cases were so few with me, that I found it an agreeable change from the dullness of an almost unfurnished and unfrequented back office, to visit the court rooms, where I not only became familiar with the usages, arts and means of success employed by skilful lawyers, but where I could see human nature in its perplexities and struggles, its feebleness and power, exciting in me an interest and sympathy that the drama has never equalled.
One freezing morning during the first week of December, my office having been wholly innocent for the season of all artificial warmth, was too cold and cheerless to be endured any longer. It was enough to quench the light of hope and fire of courage in the most hot-headed and enthusiastic young man, so I determined to leave it for a while. I took down from its hook my old overcoat, the ever ready and unflinching friend of two or three winters, which, regardless of its dignity as an outsider, had never shrunk from the duties of frock-coat, dressing-gown, sick-gown and bedclothes. But alas! on this fireless cold morning, when it would have been so grateful to my poor heart and poorer purse to have found it transformed into one of the thickest beavers, fur-lined and fur trimmed, invincible to the fiercest northwester, it looked to me, spite of my old attachment to it, and my gratitude for its services, it looked quite used up, brown and rusty, thin and threadbare; its collar sadly soiled, its button-holes rent, its buttons lonesome, no two standing together.
I hurried away to the police courtroom, where the hopeless and frantic agony of crime makes us feel ourselves fortunate in innocence, however else unfortunate.
As I entered, a girl was put on trial for larceny; a common case, as that stated: yet I saw something in my first glance at her that made me forget lack of clients, cheerless office and telltale overcoat. She was about eighteen; fair and fresh-looking; with soft light hair brushed neatly over her ears; large blue eyes, the lids very much swollen by crying; and small, unmarked features. She was clad in a dark blue merino dress and a plain white collar. I felt that there was undoubtedly something wrong in the case; that decent looking young person, so neat and proper in dress, did not belong in a prisoner’s dock.
I watched her and watched the trial. The clerk read the indictment. The girl stood up and heard herself, Selina White, charged with stealing a shawl and dress, the property of one Mary Wilson. The tears rolling in streams down her cheeks, and her voice scarcely audible from emotion, she pleaded “not guilty.”
The first witness was the policeman who arrested her. His testimony amounted to nothing more than that he had found the clothes alleged to have been stolen in a carpet-bag marked with the prisoner’s name, and claimed by her. The prisoner was told by the judge, whose sympathy she had evidently enlisted, that it was proper for her to ask any questions bearing on the case, and I now perceived that she had no one to defend her, or give her special advice and aid. She availed herself of the privilege with which the judge had made her acquainted, and endeavored to draw from the officer the admission that she had shown more surprise when the stolen articles were found in her carpet-bag than any one else present, but in this she failed. He was altogether incommunicative and evasive in his answers to her.
One Mary Wilson testified to the loss of some clothes which she described; some garments were shown her which she identified. In answer to questions she stated that they had been lying in a trunk; that she had not laid eyes on them for three months or more till she found them in the prisoner’s carpet-bag, and that one Mary Murray had suggested her looking there for them.
Mary Murray was now called. She was a very bold girl, showy in dress and airy in manners. Her fingers were loaded with cheap rings, the most conspicuous of which was a large garnet. While the stolen garments were being shown, I had observed a young man crowd as far forward as he could get to look at them. My eyes happened to be on him when he first caught sight of the witness’s rings, and the expression which then covered his face excited my interest scarcely less than that of the prisoner had done. I approached him and inquired, “Do you know anything of this case?”
“Not much,” he answered, coloring deeply.
“If you know anything that can be brought to bear in favor of the prisoner tell me forthwith,” I said, “for she is innocent looking and I am afraid things will go hard with her.”