Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: HE PATRONIZES PAMELA

 "He Patronizes Pamela" by "Sax Rohmer" (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (first published in The London Magazine, April 1913; reprinted as "Episode the First.  He Patronizes Pamela" in Rohmer's collection The Exploits of Captain O'Hagan, 1916; reprinted as "The Exploits of Captain Trouble I.   The Episode of the Reluctant Publisher" in The Illustrated Detective Magazine, December 1930)


"A very wilderness is Bernard O'Hagan, which no man could hope thoroughly to explore; a most picturesque figure in the satin-lined cloak which he loves to wear in defiance of fashion, singularly resembling the Merry Monarch whom a lady of his race once entertained right regally at the ancestral home of the O'Hagans.  The unexpectedness of the man is one of the most marked features of his character -- the one that makes his society at once delightful and alarming."  O'Hagan comes across to some as a "polished kind of bully."


This is how he first encountered Pamela, a more than ordinarily pretty young woman of animation and beauty.  She was making her way to the roof of a moving motor bus.  At the side of the road were two men.  One, an elderly man, took off his hat and waved it at her; she turned and wave her handkerchief. the other man, younger, smiled sourly but did not wave.  O'Hagan seldom wore hats, and, indeed, started the fashion of going hatless.  O'Hagan grabbed the young man's hat and waved it at the pretty girl as she rode out of sight.  The young man objected and threw a powerful punch at the taker-of-his-hat.  O'Hagan, who had studied under the learned ShaksuMyuki of Ngasaki, warded off the blow and threw the young man to the ground.  Then, for good measure, he tossed the hat into the street, where a brewer's engine ran over it.  The elderly man was a newsagent named Crichton and O'Hagan unceremoniously swept him back into his shop.

Crichton tells O'Hagan that the man he had just trounced was Jem Parkins, current owner of the Blue Dragon and a former heavyweight champion, and not a man to be fooled with.  The girl is Crichton's daughter Pamela. [ O'Hagan said, " ' She takes after her mother.'  Mr. Crichton stared.  'Did you know Polly -- Mrs. Crichton, sir/'   'No.  I was referring to your daughter's good looks. ' "]  Parkins has designs on Pamela, which, although she objects to them, her father doe not because Parkins has money and influence.  Parkins, meanwhile, had gathered himself up, entered the newsagency, locked the door, and went after O'Hagan once more.  With a twirl of his monocle, O'Hagan dispatches him a second time.  When the late Polly married Crichton she wed far below her social standing, but Crichton had been supporting her father, an impoverished "lit'r'y gentleman." .Pamela did not inherit her maternal grandfather's literary talents; instead, her interests were in composing music.  alas, the music publishers will give her a chance and publish her compositions.

Needless to say, O'Hagan is an accomplished pianist.  He plays one of Pamela's pieces -- "a delicate, feminine morsel; individual, charming; upon an elusive melody, which haunted the ear, which spelled Popularity."

And so O'Hagan has to confront an unscrupulous music publisher and secure a talented composer's future...


Capt. the Hon, Bernard O'Hagan, V.C., D.S.O., is an impulsive rogue, one born three hundred years after his time.  He appeared in only early stories by Sax Rohmer, three of which appeared in periodicals before all six were published in the Exploits of Captain O'Hagan.  The O'Hagan stories began the same year that Rohmer published the first Fu Manchu stories and the first tale of Morris Klaw, the "Dream Detective."  Of the three, Fu Manchu was the character who had legs and Rohmer would continue writing about him throughout his life.  (as we have seen, the last O'Hagan story was published in 1916; Morris Klaw lasted until 1914 (a collection of Klaw stories was published in 1920).  Other short-lived and minor characters created by Rohmer included Paul Hartley (two novels and five short stories, 1919-1933),  Gaston Max (four novels, 1915-1943), Drake Roscoe (twelve short stories, 1927-28, most, if not all, of which formed the novel The Emperor of America), Edmond O'Shea (seven stories. 1926-27; most, if not all, of which formed the novel Moon of Madness); Major Bernard de Treville, the Crime Magnet (fourteen short stories, 1937-1944), Bazarada (six short stories, 1937-38), Bimbashi Baruk (seven short stories, 1941-43), Abu Tabah (six short stories, 1917-18), Daniel 'Red" Kerry (one novel and two short stories, 1921-25), Narky (four short stories, 1911), Severac Bablon (one short story and one novel, 1913-14), and (of course) Rohmer's "female Fu Manchu," Sumuru (five novels, 1950-56).  It should also be mentioned that Sir Dennis Nayland Smith, Fu Manchu's arch enemy, appeared in an additional non-Fu Manchu stories, 1920-1932).

The Exploits of Captain O'Hagan is available online and is of interest, n part, because it provides a link between Rohmer's music hall career and his later writings.

2 comments:

  1. Not having been a Rohmer fan to any great degree, I am amused and mildly interested in his earlier career...it does throw a certain light on his work.

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  2. In the 1960s, Pyramid Books brought out a bunch of Sax Rohmer paperbacks that I read in Study Halls instead of doing my homework. Loved the Fu Manchu series!

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