Edgar Wallace - Second Marriage, Tragedy & Success, 1918-1929

Second Marriage, Tragedy & Success, 1918-1929

With Ivy living in Tunbridge Wells and the children at school, Edgar could finally concentrate on his writing and from 1918 drew closer to the intelligent, ever more capable Violet. He married her in 1921. Violet did not have any intention of disrupting her and Edgar's life much and so was shocked and upset to become pregnant, having her only child, Penelope Wallace, in 1923, though Edgar was delighted. This gradually spurred his second ten-year writing boom, this time because of personal confidence, rather than stress. His output is often compared to that of other prolific authors, such as Isaac Asimov.

There is a famous anecdote in which Sir Patrick Hastings, a visitor to his home, actually observed him dictate the novel The Devil Man in the course of a weekend. It became a standing joke that if someone telephoned Edgar and was told he was writing a novel, they would promptly reply, "I'll wait!". There is a tall tale according to which he invented and patented a "plot wheel". Stephen King features this Edgar Wallace Plot Wheel in his short story "Dolan's Cadillac", included in the volume Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), and in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000). Michael Crichton also describes a similar device in his non-fiction book Electronic Life(1983) and also provides a BASIC program that performs the same function. But Crichton does not refer to Wallace by name, only as a "famous mystery writer."

It is said that Wallace was the first British crime novelist to use policemen as his protagonists, rather than brilliant amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did. However, his heroes were far from ordinary - they were mostly special investigators of some sort who worked outside the normal police force, such as Mr J G Reeder who worked for the obscure Public Prosecutor's Office (then part of the Crown Prosecution Service). Most of his novels are independent stand-alone stories; he seldom used series heroes, and when he did there was little point in maintaining their order as there was not any continuity from book to book.

On 6 June 1923, Edgar Wallace became the first British radio sports reporter, when he made a report on the Epsom Derby for the British Broadcasting Company, the newly founded predecessor of the BBC.

At the beginning of this period of increased output, Edgar experienced one more terrible emotional shock, with the death of Ivy Wallace. Experiencing ill-health, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1923, and wrote a letter to Edgar requesting "a loan for minor surgery" with such successful obfuscation that Edgar did not realise she was seriously ill. Though the tumour's removal was initially successful, it returned terminally by 1925. Aware even in extremis that Edgar was incapable of coping with emotional trauma, Ivy again wrote for a loan and downplayed her condition so well Edgar believed she had a minor chest infection. The frantic summons of a doctor got Bryan to her deathbed so she did not die alone like Polly Richards, but she succumbed to breast cancer during 1926.

It was ironic that only months after Ivy's death, Edgar finally achieved tremendous fame and fortune. Ivy had been his staunchest supporter and loyal helpmate, being a de facto single parent. Even after she divorced him, Ivy kindly never stopped encouraging him - and Violet - to believe in his future success. As well being a prolific novelist, Edgar was also a noted playwright, in fact rather better at dramas than novels. Some of his plays are listed below; but he also kept up his journalistic and columnist work. His route to fame and fortune on an international scale came about by virtue of his play The Gaunt Stranger and a controversial journalistic article he wrote in the mid-1920s named The Canker In Our Midst.

Once alternative lifestyles and sexuality became more accepted, the article led to accusations of homophobia, though Edgar had many friends and colleagues in the show business world who were non-heterosexual. The article was actually about paedophilia: Edgar was trying to make the point that the licentious excess traditionally associated with the show business world, partly what had led to it being treated as synonymous with prostitution and immorality in the 19th century, caused some show business people to unwittingly leave their children vulnerable to predators. However, the article was completely tactless, over-simplistic and almost childishly naive besides being hectoring and scolding in presentation.

Amongst those outraged were theatre mogul Gerald du Maurier, father of the more famous author Daphne du Maurier of Jamaica Inn and Rebecca fame. He telephoned Edgar to deliver a rebuke; when he confirmed his identity as du Maurier, Edgar cheerfully asked, "Oh, you got my letter then?" The two increasingly confused men had a cross-purposes conversation which resulted in du Maurier inviting Edgar for a meal, at which he intended to reprimand him. When Edgar arrived, he thought du Maurier had telephoned about the letter he had sent regarding his play, The Gaunt Stranger (which du Maurier interestingly never did receive).

By the meal's end, du Maurier had accurately realized Edgar's enthusiastic if rather childish personality, and saw that in his own blundering way, Edgar had not been malicious but rather trying to help. He also realised that The Gaunt Stranger was going to be a sure-fire hit to the extent he insisted on only one change - that of the title to The Ringer. As always, Edgar turned the play into a novel, and it has been serialised or made into films several times, unfortunately always with an element of rushed mediocrity. But The Ringer was the catalyst that propelled Edgar from being popular in England to fame and fortune in Hollywood.

The chief protagonist was a typical Wallace anti-hero vigilante, one Henry Arthur Milton, aka The Ringer, a legendary assassin who killed for personal vengeance. The drama's main character was Inspector Wembury of Scotland Yard, who is having a very bad day. It is his first day as the new commander of Deptford Division; his immediate superior, the brutish, inappropriately named Chief Inspector Bliss, is back from America full of ideas like Tommy guns on the streets of London and a British FBI: his fiancee has just taken a job as secretary to a local lawyer Maurice Meister, an outwardly respectable but actually murderous criminal who Wembury knows - but cannot prove - was responsible for his fiancee's impressionable younger brother ending up doing a 4-year jail term for a robbery.

Wembury's day is made miserably complete when the news is received that The Ringer, having been "confirmed" dead in Australia, is back in London and desiring vengeance against Maurice Meister, for Henry Milton left his only sibling, a much younger sister, in Meister's wardship when he left London and after Milton was supposedly confirmed dead her body was found floating in the River Thames. The Ringer was successful with audiences and critics alike and made a great profit for both Edgar and Gerald du Maurier. Shortly before Ivy's death, he had met one Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams, one half of the famous publishing company Hodder-Stoughton Ltd. Recognising Edgar's literary talent, but also his personal flaws, Hodder-Williams quickly signed him to a contract and kept him busy, but introduced Edgar to the concept of royalties. Thanks to Hodder-Williams, Edgar now kept the copyright to his work.

In 1927, famous because of The Ringer, Edgar secured an extraordinary deal - unprecedented for its time - with a cinematic company, British Lion. He was appointed Chairman of the Board (a nominal job for which he had not to do anything) and in return for giving British Lion first option on all his output, Edgar's contract gave him, incredibly, an annual salary, plus a substantial block of stock in the company, plus a large stipend from everything British Lion produced based on his work, plus 10% of British Lion's overall annual profits! Additionally, British Lion employed his elder son Bryan E. Wallace as a film editor, bringing a second strand of income from the company into the family. Thus, by 1929, Edgar's earnings were almost £50,000 per annum, (equivalent to about £2 million in current terms).