Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman

Introduction

It has been speculated that E. W. Hornung (1866–1921), Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, created Raffles, the greatest rogue in literature, to tweak the nose of the creator of the greatest detective in literature. Whatever impelled Hornung to turn his pen to the production of these Victorian and Edwardian classics has long been forgotten, but the gentleman cracksman lives on, having given his name to the English language; all successful burglars who bring elegance to their nefarious crimes are likened to Raffles—both in real life and in fiction.

Born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, Hornung suffered from poor health and, at eighteen, moved to Australia in the hope that the climate would be beneficial. He remained there less than three years but absorbed the physical surroundings and atmosphere, using them as the background for many books. When he returned to England, he married Constance Doyle, the sister of Arthur Conan Doyle. He never enjoyed full health but served in World War I anyway, going to France to organize a library and rest hut under the auspices of the YMCA. His combat-zone adventures are described in Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front (1919). Hornung’s only son, called Oscar (his real name was Arthur, for his uncle and godfather), served in France and was killed by a shell. Shortly after the war, Hornung accompanied his wife to Saint-Jean-de-Luz and contracted a fatal chill.

Hornung was an authority on cricket and, despite poor eyesight and health, was an excellent player, as was his most famous creation, Raffles. The exploits of the amateur cracksman, the subjects of Hornung’s best and most famous books, are not, however, his only contribution to the literature of crime and detection.

Because of the circumstances of the colonization of Australia, stories of nineteenth-century life there often deal with crime, convicts, and bushranging, and Hornung’s are some of the best of the kind. The Boss of Taroomba (1894) is the story of a girl who, together with a German piano tuner, defends her ranch against an attack by bushrangers (escaped convicts living in the bush). The Rogue’s March (1896) is a serious novel about convicts in a chain gang in New South Wales. Cole, a gold miner on Black Hill Flats, performs some detective work in Dead Men Tell No Tales (1899). The Belle of Toorak (1900; US title: The Shadow of a Man), describes how a former convict is protected by a young man who believes the felon to be his father. Stingaree (1905) is a collection of ten stories about Tom Erichsen, a cultivated New South Wales bushranger who has some of Raffles’s characteristics. He is a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion for music, and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old World. Other romantic novels of crime and adventure in Australia are A Bride from the Bush (1890), Under Two Skies (1892), Tiny Luttrell (1893), Irralie’s Bushranger (1896), My Lord Duke (1897), Some Persons Unknown (short stories; 1898), and At Large (1902).

In the more civilized setting of England, Hornung’s best-known non-Raffles book is The Crime Doctor (1914), a collection of stories about Dr. John Dollar, one of the first detectives to solve crimes using psychological means. Max Marcin created a psychiatrist-detective for radio in 1940. Also known as the Crime Doctor, Robert Ordway has no connection with Hornung’s Dr. Dollar (see Crime Doctor, The).

The hero of Young Blood (1898) comes into conflict with a villain and a swindler as he tries to live down his father’s disgrace. The English clergyman in Peccavi (1900) has committed a crime and endures a tragic penance. Although a man believes the woman guilty of murdering her first husband, he marries the heroine of The Shadow of the Rope (1902), only to fall under suspicion for the crime. The Camera Fiend (1911) concerns a precocious seventeen-year-old asthmatic schoolboy who discusses psychophotography with the title character (the camera fiend) and is forced to deal with a series of intricate crimes, aided in his solutions by Mr. Eugene Thrush. Old Offenders and a Few Old Scores (1923), a posthumous collection with an introduction by Conan Doyle, contains various kinds of crime tales.

Raffles

There is great affection for Robin Hood and the notion of taking wealth from the rich and redistributing it to the poor (much like a socialistic government). There is an even greater fantasy of the gentleman jewel thief—an urban sophisticate (idealized in evening clothes) who is a handsome, dashing, charming member of society by day and a fearless safecracker at night, ice water in his veins.

No character, living or fictional, has ever fulfilled this role as exquisitely as A. J. Raffles, the greatest cracksman in the literature of roguery. Raffles could have succeeded at any career, but he chose a life of crime. Once, penniless and desperate in Australia, he realized that his only salvation was to steal. He had intended the robbery, forced on him by necessity, to be his only such experience, but he had tasted blood and loved it. Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, he once asks Bunny Manders, his devoted companion, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with.