Francis Dashwood, Portraiture, and the Origins of the Hellfire Club
by Jason Kelly
blog post
The Monks of Medmenham Abbey, more popularly known as the Hellfire Club, were one of thousands of associational groups... more The Monks of Medmenham Abbey, more popularly known as the Hellfire Club, were one of thousands of associational groups that formed in Britain and Ireland during the eighteenth century. During the 1750s and early 1760s, they met at the estate of Sir Francis Dashwood, a baronet whose family derived their wealth from trading silks in the Levant. Dashwood took numerous grand tours in the 1720s and 1730s, travelling to France and Italy, but also to Russia and the Ottoman Empire. He was well known for his interest in architecture and politics, as well as women and wine. And, like many of his fellow Britons, he had a particular fondness for masquerade, which found itself expressed through a penchant for dressing up as priests, monks, and popes.
‘The Other Serpents: Deviance and Contagion in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Speckled Band”’
Victorian Newsletter, 113 (Spring 2008), ISSN: 00425192
According to Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes resolved his mysteries through "rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions... more According to Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes resolved his mysteries through "rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions and yet always founded on a logical basis" (Doyle). Yet, for more than a century after its original publication, the deductions made at the end of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (1892) still sit uneasily with its exotic allusions and unresolved anomalies, so much so that the tale has continued to provoke questions. Here, the story is investigated from an imperialist perspective, examining how such instability relates to the work's insistent and pervasive associations between colonial influence, deviance, and contagion.
‘All in the Mind: the Psychological Realism of Dickensian Solitude’
Dickens Quarterly, 26: 3 (March 2009), ISSN: 07425473
Famously, George Eliot offered Dickens the backhanded compliment that “if he could give us [the] psychological... more Famously, George Eliot offered Dickens the backhanded compliment that “if he could give us [the] psychological character [of the town population] … with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution to Art”. Later, she is joined by Henry James, who in a review of Our Mutual Friend claimed that Dickens “has added nothing to our understanding of human character”. Their scathing condescension is contradicted by the authenticity with which Dickens represents characters in moments of deep sorrow, confusion or disorientation, and nowhere more so than when they are alone. Episodes of solitary, interior wandering regularly punctuate the otherwise busy, peopled novels of Charles Dickens; critically, however, they are moments that have been left relatively unexplored. Their significance lies partly in their unusual quietude and solemnity and also in the authentic and often profound insights into the most private worlds of his characters, insights which in turn reflect aspects of the contemporary world beyond his novels. Focusing on key instances of solitude in Dombey and Son (1846–48), this essay investigates Dickens’s portrayal of the contemporary relationship between interior spaces, individual identity and psychology.
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