THE
WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE
Part III
The Wold Newton Articles pages contain several types of articles, ranging from pure information about the Wold Newton Universe (such as Lou Mougin's The Continuing Crossovers Affair and Brad Mengel's The Edson Connection), to more speculative pieces (such as Chuck Loridans' The Daughters of Tarzan), to a mixture a both. The presence of an article on these pages does not necessarily constitute an integration of that article's theories and speculation into the history described in The Wold Newton Universe Crossover Chronology. Rather, the purpose of the articles pages is encourage free thinking, theorizing, hypothesizing, and research into the mysteries of the Newtonverse.
Search The Wold Newton Universe
Mark Brown's Wold Newton Chronicles follows the tradition of featuring the very best in scholarship and articles on Wold Newton topics ranging far and wide.
Dennis Power also presents erudite Wold Newton speculative research on his site The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe.
From now on, please forward your articles to Win, to Mark, and to Dennis. We will consider submissions and coordinate for posting on one of our sites.
I recently came across an unusual source of information about certain members of the Rutherford family, who have been so prominently featured in the Wold Newton Universe. This unusual source is a book entitled A Reputation Dies, by Alice Chetwynd Ley, first published in Great Britain by Methuen London Ltd. in 1984 and in the U.S. by Warner Books, Inc. in 1986.
What makes the source unusual is that it was published by Warner Books as a Regency Romance, when it is in fact a murder mystery that takes place in London during the Regency Period. There is no real romance story involved in the plot.
The book opens in London, 1816, at a ton party given by Lady Windlesham. Among her guests are Lucilla (Lucy), Lady Velmond, the new bride of Lord Velmond, and Lady Quainton. During a conversation between the two ladies, Lady Quainton asks Lucy if she has had the opportunity to the younger set, since coming to London for the Season. Lucy responds that she has, and that she has made a particular friend of Anthea Rutherford, the daughter of Viscount Rutherford.
Lady Quainton, happily, tells her that she is well acquainted with the family, as she was a girlhood friend of Viscount Rutherford’s late mother. She tells Lucy that the late Lady Rutherford had six offspring, the youngest of which was her godson, Justin. She also tells her that Justin was up at Oxford with her husband, Lord Velmond.
Lady Quainton describes Justin Rutherford as "quite a scholar" who has written a book on "architectural antiquities of Greece." She also says he likes "poking his nose into trouble."
Later in the evening when Mr. Marmaduke Yarnton, a "ton tattler and scandalmonger," is murdered, events begin to unfold that involve Justin Rutherford in the investigation.
It is my contention that Ms. Ley had access to Rutherford family documents, and that George, Viscount Rutherford is in fact George Edward Rutherford, 11th Baron Tennington. Ms. Ley also refers to George’s wife’s given name as Eliza, which is very similar to the given name of the 11th Baron’s wife, which was Elizabeth. The similarity in given names and the time frame back up the theory that the story involves members of the family of the 11th Baron Tennington.
In the novel, Justin Rutherford’s detective skills proves him to be a worthy antecedent of the many descendents of his brother, Lord Tennington, including, Sherlock Holmes, "Bulldog" Drummond, Lord Peter Wimsey, Lew Archer, Richard Wentworth, and Doc Savage, among others. It also proves that there was a degree of superiority in the Rutherford gene pool, before the 11th Baron's and his wife's exposure to the Wold Newton meteorite.
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Issac Turner. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
The birth name of the man known to scholars of the Wold-Newton Families was Bruce Clarke Wildman. He was the son of Sir Patrick Wildman and his wife, Mavice Blakeney Wildman, and the sibling of Alexander and Patricia Clarke Wildman. He was thus the descendent of such notables as Solomon Kane, Micah Clark and Sir Percy Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel). Although his siblings emigrated to the United States, Bruce was of a more solitary nature, and quite content to remain in England. His experiences during his school years, which earned him the much-detested nickname of "Moses" only confirmed these tendencies in him. He became ever more solitary and bookish.
In the mid-1870's, about two decades before his first travels through time, he purchased a house in which to pursue his studies. His explorations of science and chemistry took on a very different nature when he was given a sample of a mysterious metal by a man who identified himself as "Gottfried Plattner". This metal, which Wildman dubbed "Plattnerite" in honour of his mysterious benefactor, turned out to be the one thing that made time travel possible.
Wildman worked mostly alone at this time, although he did confide in two friends - Sir William Reynolds, a fellow inventor; and Herbert George Wells, a science journalist and author. All three lived in the vicinity of Richmond, and shared ideas and theories about time travel and the design of machines to traverse it. Wildman shared a small amount of his limited supply of Plattnerite with Reynolds and Wells.
The initial voyage of the Time Traveller was related by him to a small circle of friends, but they were sworn to secrecy, and it was widely presumed that he had simply disappeared in some mysterious fashion. This case, the so-called "Richmond Enigma" was investigated by no less a detective than Sherlock Holmes himself, and solved only due to the intervention of Wildman, who assured Holmes that he would destroy the machine. It is an open question as to whether Holmes was truly deceived or simply allowed Wildman to believe that he was.
The story of Wildman's initial voyage was recorded by Wells, a noted writer of fiction and essays. Wells himself was no stranger to travels in time and space, having had a brief but memorable encounter with Doctor Who, some years before the Time Traveller's journeys began. Wells would later publish an account of the Time Traveller's initial voyage, obscuring the identities of all involved. In the course of constructing his account, Wells took care to substitute scientific double-talk for the truth regarding the Machine's means of propulsion, conferring with no less a scientist than Nikola Tesla in the process.
By 1893, Wells had constructed his own version of the Time Machine, using the notes that Wildman had left behind. When one of his friends, Dr John Leslie Stephenson, used the machine to travel through time to 1979, Wells gave pursuit. Stephenson was at that time thought by the London police, and many others, to be Jack the Ripper himself, although it seems rather more likely that Stephenson was merely a copycat killer who sought to steal the evil glamour of the Ripper for his own. Wells pursued him to the year 1979, where he met Amy Catherine Robbins, his future wife, and defeated Stephenson, exiling him forever into the time-stream itself. He returned to 1893 with Amy, and married her soon after.
Also in 1893, Sir William Reynolds completed his own Time Machine. Unlike Wildman's, it was also capable of movement through Space. Reynolds' assistant, Amelia Fitzgibbon, and her paramour, Edward Turnbull, took the machine for a joyride that went tragically wrong. They journeyed a few years forward in time, where they were vouchsafed a horrid vision of the War of the Worlds. Turnbull damaged the spatial controls of the machine, and inadvertently marooned himself and Fitzgibbon on Mars. Through luck and skill, the two succeeded in stowing away on the first of the Martian projectiles, and returned to Earth in time to help defeat the Martian invasion.
Another of the Time Traveller's friends who was privy to his secrets was a young man named Edwin Hocker. He was recruited by a Dr. Ambrose to assist him in a battle against the Morlocks. Dr Ambrose, who claimed to be Merlin, told the young man that he was the reincarnation of King Arthur, although the truth of this claim is uncertain. The Morlocks had used knowledge garnered from the Time Traveller to build their own time machine, and return to 1892 with the intent of subjugating humanity. Hocker rallied a small band of unlikely allies, and successfully defeated this invasion, although at the cost of his own life.
In 1896, Wells was forced to seek the assistance of Sherlock Holmes in solving the mystery of the death of a scientist friend. This incident was recorded by Dr. John Watson as "The Case of the Inertial Adjustor". Later that year, Wells assisted yet another time traveller, Jherek Carnelian, in his quest to reunited with his true love, Amelia Underwood.
The following year, Tesla visited London and met with Wells in person. Although Tesla himself was skeptical as to the practicality of time travel, his assistant, Tatiana Cherenkova was less so. She and Wells became lovers, and she remained in London with him. By 1899 she had succeeded in creating a Time Machine of her own (albeit, one that functioned on very different principles to that of Wildman). She then took off into the time-stream, heading for 1999, and thence to further future. She seems to have made the voyage safely, but an auto-return function sent the machine racing back to 1999, where it was found by David Lambert, a scholar of Wells' work. He followed Tatiana into the future, although it remains unclear as to whether the two ever met, or what either of their final fates was. (Ironically, Tesla himself would later be recruited by a different group of Time Travellers, the so-called Harmonian Conspiracy of Mike and Lady Sally Callahan.)
During the War of the Worlds, Wells encountered Fitzgibbon and Turnbull, and learned from them the details of Martian society that they had experienced. When the war was won, he left them with great speed, citing a need to return to his wife, although it seems more likely that he intended rather to report to high government officials. He was widely-honoured as the inventor of the time travel story. Still later, Wells would achieve fame for penning the definitive account of the Martian Invasion of the Earth, and his editing of a volume of accounts by others, some factual, some fanciful. In 2070 a group of four time travellers (one of them a distant cousin of Bruce Clarke Wildman) would christen their vehicle the "H.G. Wells 1" in his honour.
Wildman himself had set out to return to the future that he had discovered, only to find himself, again and again, blundering through the tangled web of alternate timelines. Eventually, with the aid of machine intelligences that had been built by his own descendents, he achieved a mastery over time travel, and discovered that it was his later self who had assumed the identity of Gottfried Plattner so many years earlier and set him upon his path and was able to travel quickly and easily upon one determined timeline - that which led to future of his beloved Weena and the other Eloi, as well as the despised Morlocks. Upon his return to the future, the Time Traveller set out to teach the Eloi and the Morlocks to live and work together, and trained them both in agriculture and the keeping of livestock. Eventually, the Morlocks rebelled, and the Time Traveller was forced to flee further into the future. The Morlocks perverted his lessons, and kept the Eloi as livestock thereafter.
After fleeing from the Morlocks, Wildman established a base for himself in an even more distant future epoch, long after the extinction of both Morlock and Eloi. From here, he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits and investigation of the time stream. On one such journey, he chanced to enter the realm known as "the Dreamlands", where he encountered and rescued Allan Quatermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter, all of whom had arrived there from different time periods.
It seems likely that either Wells or Wildman (the latter possibly using Quatermain as a courier), left his notes on Time Travel to those in authority. Certainly by 1999, British Intelligence was quite capable of building a greatly refined Time Machine in order to allow special agent Austin Powers to pursue his nemesis, Dr Evil, into the past.
Bibliography:
Novels -
"An Alien Heat" by Michael Moorcock
"Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life" by Philip Jose Farmer
"The End of All Songs" by Michael Moorcock
"The Hollow Lands" by Michael Moorcock
"Lady Slings the Booze" by Spider Robinson
"Morlock Night" by K.W. Jeter
"A Scientific Romance" by Ronald Wright
"The Space Machine" by Christopher Priest
"Tarzan Alive" by Philip Jose Farmer
"Time's Last Gift" by Phillip Jose Farmer
"The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells
"The Time Ships" by Stephen Baxter
"The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells
"War of the Worlds - Global Despatches" edited by Kevin J. Anderson
Short Stories -
"The Case of the Inertial Adjustor" by Stephen Baxter, in "The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories"
"The Richmond Enigma" by John De Chancie, in "Sherlock Holmes in Orbit"
Comics -
"Eerie"
"The League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen" by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
"The Rook"
Television -
"Timelash" - episode of "Dr Who"
Movies -
"Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me"
"Time After Time"
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Loki Carbis. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
In Tarzan Alive, Phillip José Farmer, reports that Professor Porter’s middle initial, Q. stood for Quintes, indicating that he was the 5th of at least 5 children. Mr. Farmer also say that he was the only one to survive. In my article "The Daughters of Tarzan," I put forth that Professor Archimedes Q. Porter had at least one brother, Prof. Archer S. Porter (called Prof. Archer S. Gray by his biographer Paul Ernst). Mark Brown informed me that the S. in the Professor name stood for Septimus, meaning that he was the 7th child, and I knew that my work was not done.
Why would Mr. Farmer, who has brought so many secrets to light, mislead us about the Porter siblings? Well it seems there was this curse........
1261- Gilbert de la Poer created first Baron Exham.
1307- The de la Poers, are named cursed of God.
1777- Walter de la Poer leaves England, moves to Virginia. To escape the stigma attached to his cursed surname, he changes his name to Delapore (all of these events are recorded in ‘’The Rats in the Walls’’ by H.P. Lovecraft) he has two sons, one keeps the name Delapoer, what happened to his descendents are told by Lovecraft. The other son, wishing to distance him self further from the family curse, changes his surname to Porter. (Speculation)
1796- The first Porter moves to Baltimore. (This is from "Tarzan Alive" by P.J. Farmer and my own speculation.)
1834- The first Porters grandson (let's call him A. Porter) marries.
1835- A. Porters 1st son, Arthur Thorne Porter is born.
1836- A. Porters 2nd and 3rd children (twins) Artemis Juno, (girl) and Artemidos Lobo Porter are born.
1838- A. Porters 4th child, Ariadne Dryad is born.
1839- A. Porters 5th child, Archimedes Quintes is born.
1841- A. Porters 1st wife dies.
1854- A. Porter remarries.
1855- A. Porters 6th child, Armitage Harper is born.
1873- Armitage H. Attends Miskatonic University.
1878- A. Porters 7th child, Archer Septimus, is born.
1880- A. Porter dies under mysterious circumstances, and his wife is committed to a sanitarium. Archer Septimus, still an infant is raised by Archimedes Quintes.
1882- Armitage H. becomes interested in the strange and outré, when he reads of a meteor landing near Arkham, Mass. (From "The Dunwich Horror" by Lovecraft)
1885- Arthur Thorne Porter's 1st child, Elizabeth, is born.
1886- Archimedes Q. becomes professor of History and Theology, teaching at the Women’s College of Baltimore. (from "Tarzan Alive"). Actually, at some point all of the Porter siblings become professors at different universities.
1887- Arthur Thorne Porter's 2nd child, Fitzwilliam Thorne is born. (There is a possibility that he changed his name to Rowley Thorne, later in life, but I haven’t enough facts about the man who was known as Rowley Thorne, at this time to research this further). That same year, Armitage H. marries Maria Van Helsing, daughter of Abraham Van Helsing, and sister of Lawrence Van Helsing,(from "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, and the Dracula films by Hammer.)
1888- Helena, born to Armitage H. and Maria Porter. Archimedes Q. marries Jane Carter Lee.
1890- Jane, born to Archimedes Q. and Jane C. Porter.
1891- Arthur T. Porter's 3rd child, June, is born.
1892- William Harper Littlejohn is born to Ariadne Dryad and her husband, Mr. ....... Littlejohn.
1902- Elizabeth Porter marries Ephraim Carruthers and she moves to his home in Clarkesville, MO.
1909- Arthur T. his brother Archimedes Q. and their daughters, June and Jane, (cousins, who think of each other as sisters) travel together to Africa, once there, they separate. Prof. Arthur T. Porter, (called Prof. Carey by his Biographer, Lee Falk; Carey, or carry, as in what a porter does, is the clue that tipped me to his identity) and his daughter June, go searching for the lost city of Phoenix, in central Africa; Prof. Archimedes Q. Porter, and his daughter Jane, on their quest for treasure in Gabon. Their stories are told in, "The Story of the Phantom" by Lee Falk and "Tarzan of the Apes" by E.R. Burroughs.
1910- Jane Porter marries John Clayton, the 8th Duke of Greystoke.
1911- June Carey (Porter) marries Kit Walker, the 19th Phantom. John and Jane Clayton's 1st child Charlotte is born.
1912- Helena Porter marries Maxwell Summers, a cousin of demon hunter Montague Summers. Birth of John and Jane Clayton's 2nd child, John Paul.
1914- Maria Van Helsing Porter dies, Armitage H. goes to work as Head Librarian, at Miskatonic U.
1915- Kit and June Walker's son Kit, the 20th Phantom, is born.
1918- William Harper Littlejohn is placed in the German prison camp Loki, where he meets the men who he will work with in the future.
1919- John and Jane Clayton's 3rd child, Penelope, is born.
1921- Armitage H. Porter aids Stephan Bates in a supernatural matter. (Told in "The Lurker in the Threshold" by Lovecraft and Derleth, and "The Round Tower" by Robert M. Price. In these stories he is referred to as Prof. Armitage Harper.)
1926- Scott Porter (called Scott Carey by his biographer, Richard Matheson), the grandson of Fitzgerald Thorne Porter, is born. That same year, William Harper Littlejohn will become a Prof. at Miskatonic University. In order avoid questions of nepotism, relating to his uncle, whose middle name he shares, and who also teaches at M.U., Prof. Littlejohn creates a semi-anagram of his mother's middle name, Dryad, and is known as Prof. William Dyer.
1927- Prof. Armitage H. Porter, becomes involved with "The Dunwich Horror." (In this tale by Lovecraft he is called Prof. Henry Armitage.) That same year, Kit Walker, the 20th, travels to live with his Aunt Bessie (Elizabeth) and Uncle Ephraim Carruthers (their own children having grown and moved away) in Clarksville MO.
1929- William H. Littlejohn, under his guise as Prof. Dyer, journeys to the "Mountains of Madness"
1936- Penelope Clayton, wishing to study archaeology, and to protect her true identity, becomes the legal ward of her uncle Archer S. Porter. Kit Walker becomes the 20th Phantom.
1938- Death of Archer S. Porter. Penelope, joins Justice Inc. and changes her name to Nellie Gray.
1942- Prof. Artimedidos Lobo Porter, who is in a displaced persons camp in Kalyros Greece, during world war II, becomes a mentor to an orphan waif. She calls him Lob; he names her Modesty Blaise
1952- Pinky Carruthers, grandson of Ephraim and Elizabeth Carruthers, is born. In the future he will become a comrade of Buckaroo Banzai, and like other member of his family he will "not tolerate rascals and scoundrels."
1955- Scott Carey (Porter) shrinks. (As told in "The Shrinking man" by Richard Mattheson)
1981- Buffy Anne Summers, great granddaughter of Maxwell and Helena Porter Summers, is born.
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Chuck Loridans. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
Please also read Dennis Power's Addendum to The Porters.
Dennis Power has also created graphic family trees of The Porters. Please view them at his site, The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe.
You must visit Chuck Loridans' new website, The Savage Chuck's Lair, featuring artwork and stories by The Savage Chuck! You must! Now!
top
bottom
Recently I have been looking in
the descendants and siblings of various WN family members.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that A. J. Raffles in fact
had a twin brother and two younger sisters and that the four of
them had several remarkable descendants.
The reason for these facts not being known before will be explained in part by a brief summary of the publishing career of A. J. Raffles. It appears that initially that Henry "Bunny" Manders attempted to place his accounts of his exploits with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the literary agent of John H. Watson, who was of course biographer to Sherlock Holmes. Doyle rejected the offer partly because he was busy enough and partly because he felt it was not a good idea to make a thief a hero. However, Doyle's brother-in-law E.W. Hornung, was present and decided to edit these accounts, and thus the first Raffles story was published in 1899. Hornung eventually revealed that Raffles was killed in the Boer War in 1901. After Hornung's death in 1921, the estate had Barry Perowne revive the character from a new batch of "Manders papers" that had been given to the estate. The Raffles in these tales was not the thief of Hornung, but more of an adventurer and these exploits took place in the same time period as the writing in the thirties (1933 -1940). No explanation that I can find at the time explains how Raffles avoided death.
This first series of Raffles stories ended in 1940 and in 1974 Ellery Queen unearthed another batch of Manders papers that were set in the 1890's, and commissioned Perowne to edit these papers which showed Raffles as more of a Robin Hood figure than an out and out thief.
These are of course the official Raffles documents, but others did uncover further Manders papers. The earliest of the four known to me is in R. HOLMES & CO. by R. Kendrick Bangs (1906), in which the first chapter deals with Sherlock Holmes meeting A. J. Raffles in 1883. More on this later.
The second is "The Adventure of Sore Bridge" discovered by Philip José Farmer in 1975.
Thirdly, Jon L. Breen in 1980 uncovered "Ruffles Versus Ruffles", which is an edited version of a meeting between Hornung's Raffles and Perowne's Raffles, which forms the basis of this paper.
The final document so far was discovered by Peter Tremayne. Tremayne is also the discoverer of six Dracula Manuscripts (DRACULA UNBORN, THE REVENGE OF DRACULA, DRACULA, MY LOVE, "Dracula's Chair", "My Name upon The Wind" and "The Son of Dracula") a Frankenstein Manuscript (THE HOUND OF FRANKENSTEIN) and a She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed manuscript (THE VENGEANCE OF SHE). Tremayne uncovered THE RETURN OF RAFFLES which explains how Raffles avoided death in the Boer War, as previously thought.
Through reading these texts, as well as MRS RAFFLES, by John Kendrick Bangs (1905), I have discovered that the Raffles Clan is indeed much larger than originally thought.
In TARZAN ALIVE Philip José Farmer reveals that A. J. Raffles’ mother was Egidnia Rutherford and that his Great Aunt Alice Clark Raffles was cousin to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (discoverer of Singapore). Farmer does not reveal the name of Raffles’ father but we can assume that it was James.
Now, according to my research, James Raffles and Edignia Rutherford had four children, two boys and two girls. Now, according to Breen, the two brothers were called A. J. and R. J. Raffles, and both were highly skilled at both cricket and cracksmanship. Whilst Breen does not state that the brothers were identical twins there is some evidence to suggest that this was the case given the confusion between the two. (It will also be noted below that their sons in fact also looked very similar causing confusion). Adding to the confusion is the fact that both men were aided by cousins. A. J. by Henry "Bunny" Manders. and R. J by Benjamin "Benny" Manders. Indeed it is even possible that the identities may be the other way around as the Hornung Raffles would not be above incriminating his more virtuous brother. But to avoid confusion, I will refer to the brothers by the names accorded them by Breen. It appears that all of the Perowne stories are the exploits of R .J. Raffles and that the A. J exploits were recorded by Hornung, Farmer, Bangs and Tremayne.
The fact that the brothers had a sister was revealed by Perowne in "Raffles on the Riviera". Her name is Dinah. In the story, Benny points out that R. J. is the only relative she has left and, as this takes place in 1910, A. J was believed to be dead. Manders himself had fallen for Dinah but that match was never to be.
A. J., whilst in Australia in his early days, had an affair with an Aborigina woman. Raffles, apparently unaware of a pregnancy, left for England after his first theft and the mother died shortly after the infant birth. The infant was discovered chewing on a book about Napoleon Bonaparte and was given that name at the orphanage. The infant grew up and joined the Queensland Police force and gained great fame as an investigator and was given the nick name "Bony". Bony married a woman by the name of Marie and had three sons. One of his grandsons, David James Bonaparte, also joined the Queensland Police Force, and became known as an investigator as well. (Revealed by Philip José Farmer in his introduction to Arthur Upfield's THE HOUSE OF CAIN. Upfield wrote 29 Bony Adventures. David John was featured in the Australian TV series BONY 1991.)
After returning to England A. J., married a woman known as Henriette Van Troyon. She adopted the name of Henriette Van Raffles and was a crackswoman as well (J. Kendrick Bangs MRS RAFFLES). The couple had one son, Michael, born circa 1888, but by 1893 the marriage had dissolved and Henriette moved to Paris, and returned to her maiden name, dropping the Van. Shortly after This, Henriette disappeared and the boy Michael Troyon has to fend for himself. Michael is caught trying to steal from the Irish master thief Burke. Burke adopts the boy as his student as well as giving a formal education and changes his name to Michael Lanyard. Michael becomes an art connoisseur by day and thief known only as the Lone Wolf by night. Lanyard gets out of the trade when he meets British secret service agent Lucy Shannon. The pair move to Belgium and have two children a boy and a girl but all except Michael are killed by German spy Ekstrom when that country is invaded in WW1. Lanyard then works for the Allies, eventually killing Ekstrom. Lanyard starts aiding the police and continues with his espionage work. Lanyard then married rich widow Eve De Montalais after clearing himself of the theft of her jewels. She dies shortly after and Michael discovers that his son Maurice did not die in WW1, but has survived as a cat burglar for twenty years. Maurice then marries a wealthy woman and becomes the second Lone Wolf. Both Lanyards are tall and slender with dark eyes from Henriette.
Another Lone Wolf, an ex cop and Vietnam vet attacking the drug trade after the death of his fiancé, has no relation to the Lanyards.
Finally just prior to his disappearance in the Boer War A. J., had a relationship with a wealthy South African Woman. Their son, Simon Templar was better known as The Saint. (Dennis Power's THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE webpage. Leslie Charteris wrote 51 Saint adventures.) It has been rumoured for a number of years that Simon had a son to Patricia Holm but there has been no evidence of this to date.
R. J. Raffles never married due to being chased by Scotland Yard, but had three children. To a woman with last name Lawrence, he had two sons Gay and Tom. Gay, early on in life adopted the alias Gay Stanhope Falcon, better known as the Falcon. (Gay authorised an account of one of his adventures to be written by Michael Arlen as "The Gay Falcon". Arlen was aware that Gay's real name was not Falcon and refers to him as the man who called himself Gay Falcon. Arlen also revealed that Gay also used the identities of a soldier, Colonel Rock, and a journalist, Spencer Pott. After Gay's death, Tom allowed more of his adventures to be made into films on the condition that his real name be used. After the account Gay's death in the fifth film, Tom then took over as the hero for another ten adventures. (The resemblance between Gay Stanhope and his cousin Simon Templar was so pronounced that RKO studios used the same actor, George Sanders, to play both the Saint and the Falcon in different film series. Also the actor who played Tom Lawrence was George Sanders brother.)
(Another Falcon, Michael Waring, was apparently inspired by the Lawrence brothers. After Tom's retirement, Michael adopted the title of the Falcon. Michael's exploits were recorded in three films, a radio program and a television series.)
R. J. also appears to have traveled to Australia (possibly looking for his brother), had relationship with a woman and had a daughter by her. That daughter married a man by the name of Fisher who, whilst poor, was fourth in line for a wealthy English title. The couple had two daughters, one of whom died of illness when the other daughter, Phryne, was only five. During the Great War, the three cousins of Mr Fisher all died and the family all moved to England to claim the title. In the 1920s Phryne returned to Australia and had several adventures so far recorded in the series of books by Kerry Greenwood.
In "Raffles on the Riviera", Raffles suggested that he wished to get his sister married into a respectable family before he was arrested. It appears that he was successful, as Dinah married into the wealthy Rollison family and had a son, Richard Rollison. Rollison is also known as "The Toff" and his fifty plus adventures were recorded by John Creasy. The Toff is also tall and slender.
Previously, I have mentioned R. HOLMES & CO. In that novel, the first chapter set in 1883 deals with Sherlock Holmes chasing A. J. Raffles. Sherlock then falls in love with Raffles’ daughter Marjorie. Further research by Chris Davies has shown in 1883 it would be impossible for Raffles to have a daughter old enough to marry. So it appears that Raffles, impersonating an elderly gentleman, had his youngest sister Marjorie in this caper. This appears to Marjorie's one exploit in crime and after marrying Holmes she died in childbirth later that year. Sherlock was unaware of the true relationship between Marjorie and A. J., and told the one son from that union, Raffles Holmes, that A. J Raffles was his grandfather.
Raffles Holmes, after World War One, succumbed to drug abuse, but before he left for the war he married a woman by the last name of Mannering. This woman divorced Raffles and returned to her maiden name as she did for their one child, John Mannering. Mannering later adopted the guise of The Baron and became a daring jewel thief (when his reputation spread to the US, for some reason his assumed name was changed to The Blue Mask). After his marriage to Laura Fauntley, he reforms (The Baron was the hero of a series of novels by Anthony Morton (John Creasy). The one child of this union, a daughter, became a noted actress and married an Anglo-Asian former bishop turned high tech entrepreneur. The couple had one son. His parents died in a theatre fire when he was three and he was placed in an orphanage and given the name John Rossi. Later in life he was to adopt the name Simon Templar and the alias of The Saint. In theory, the boy half remember tales of a gentleman adventurer in his family and fixated on the original Saint as this forebear.
Raffles Holmes, from a previous relationship had a son, Creighton Holmes, who was raised by relatives.
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Brad Mengel. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
Dating prehistoric events is an understandably difficult business, especially in a world where immensely powerful beings -- what some might call gods -- can and do intervene in the course of said events. When the events in question also predate the development of humanity as a species, and indeed are concerned with that development, the situation becomes still more complicated.
The exact course of the evolution of the human race to its current state (homo sapiens sapiens) remains controversial. While researching this article, the author discovered four different periods which might represent the beginning of "modern man", ranging from 300,000 to 50,000 years before the current era (BCE). For a number of reasons, a period closer to the current era has been selected as the relevant period -- specifically 52,000 BCE.
Of course, this brings the dating of any stories which would seem to take place before that date into question, if they feature human beings. While earlier examples of homo sapiens, such as "Neanderthal man", were in existence long before then, most fossil evidence suggests clear differences between them and contemporary humans.
In particular, it is unlikely that the man known as Kane, whose adventures were recorded by Karl Edward Wagner and others, was a Neanderthal. Kane is now known to have definitely survived into the twentieth century, and those whom he has encountered have never commented that he seems to be of another sub-species of humanity. Hence, it is clear that he is a "modern" human, and thus was born within the last 300,000 years. Furthermore, evidence (discussed more completely in the Kane Chronology of Dale E. Rippke) suggests that his "prehistoric" adventures took place over less than two thousand years.
But wait, cries the alert reader; what is this talk of birth? After all, the Kane stories claim that Kane and the rest of humanity were created by the whim of a "god", whom Robert Tierney identified with the cosmic entity known as Yog-Sothoth. This creation is most completely described in a poem contained in the story "Reflections for the Winter of My Soul", in the collection Death Angel's Shadow.[1]
However, that poem's portrayal of the "nameless elder god" seems inappropriate for the entity known as Yog-Sothoth, which has lead others to speculate that Kane's actual creator was in fact the elder god Azathoth. On the other hand, the identification of Azathoth with the Valar generally known as Morgoth puts the lie to such theories; during the period when Men were evolving[2], Morgoth was being kept under careful watch in Valinor. Perhaps the best situation is to reject the poem, since as Kane himself said long after, "There's generally more than one side to a story."
Let us now consider the entity Yog-Sothoth. From its description in August Derleth's "The Lurker on the Threshold", it is clear why one of the definitive gazetteers of "Cthulhu Mythos" entities states that "connections between [its] appearance and sightings of so-called flying saucers are obvious."[3] This in turn suggests a further connection to the Annunaki of the "Outlanders" continuum, which also claim to have interfered in human evolution. Since the Annunaki are said to have been masters of interdimensional transportation, it should not be surprising that they have a tie to one who is all the gates between worlds and times. Furthermore, the Annunaki can and should be identified with the Serpent Men encountered by Kull and Conan, and the Dragon Kings of the Thongor epic.
Hopefully, the chronology which follows will tie all these various strands of prehistoric legend together in such a way as to produce a viable fabric. The only apparently human civilizations for which it cannot account are the Icelandic Hyperborea[4] and Mhu Thulan, both of which were destroyed around 750,000 years before the present, and other realms of similar and greater antiquity. It is entirely possible that these realms existed, but unlikely that they were created by contemporary hominids or humans. More likely is the possibility that Julian May's "Saga of the Pliocene Exile" proved prophetic, and some future civilization, after mastering the science of time travel, elected to banish its criminals or dissidents to a place and time where they could not harm or influence law-abiding citizens, or alter the flow of human history in any measurable way.
Time Line
c. 52,000 BCE -- The Annunaki have conducted many painful and humiliating experiments on man's immediate ancestors, but now they are shoved aside as Yog-Sothoth takes a personal involvement in the project, creating the first generation of true humans. Elsewhere, Arien and Tillion, the Maiar protectors of the sun and the moon, destroy the semi-permanent cloud cover enshrouding Europe and the Meditteranean.
c. 51,965 BCE -- Kane rebels against Yog-Sothoth, murders Abel and is cursed. Humanity is dispersed by the angry entity.
c. 51,945 BCE -- Carsultyal is founded on the ruins of an ancient city of the Elder Things (or someone).
c. 51,700 BCE -- While living in Carsultyal, Kane meets and kills the barbarian warrior Dragar, who will later reincarnate as Kull of Valusia, Conan the Cimmerian, Cormac mac Art, (ironically) Solomon Kane, Francis X. Gordon and many others. (This occurs in the story dubbed "Undertow" by Wagner. Dragar's later lives are my own invention, expanding on ideas in the Cormac mac Art stories.)
c. 50,000 BCE -- A flood in Mesopotamia nearly wipes out the human race and destroys many of the civilizations which Kane has encountered over the past two millenia. One group of survivors are driven west, into Middle-earth, to become the men who figure in the next millenium's struggle against Morgoth, related in The Silmarillion. Another group, led by the man who will be mythologized as Phondath, ends up on the Pacific continent Lemuria.
c. 49,100 BCE -- Morgoth is expelled from Middle-earth. The Edain migrate to the island of Numenor.
c. 48,000 BCE -- The Lemurians are victorious in battle with the Dragon Kings.
45,659 BCE -- Numenor sinks, becomes known as Atallante.
45,657 BCE -- Arnor and Gondor are founded.
44,048 BCE -- The Shire is founded.
43,018 BCE -- Thongor the Mighty is born at Valkarth in Lemuria's Northlands.
42,993 BCE -- Thongor's adventures begin, as related in Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria.
42,718 BCE -- Bilbo Baggins of the Shire finds the One Ring, as related in The Hobbit.
42,640 BCE -- The War of the Ring.
38,626 BCE -- Lemuria begins to sink into the Pacific, sending refugees fleeing across the world. Many settle in Gondor and aid that land in repelling barbarian invaders and establishing itself as the second Empire of Atlantis.
c.35,000 BCE -- Hobbits intermarry into mainstream humanity and disappear as a distinct race -- except for a remnant which survives as the Satyrs of the Hyborian age (encountered by Conan in Conan the Liberator.)
Footnotes
[1] This story is also the first (and indeed only) time that Kane's brother/victim is referred to by the familiar name Abel.
[2] This term is not technically used in the accounts of the period, but the language of the situation strongly suggests evolution, rather than spontaneous generation.
[3] Petersen et al, Call of Cthulhu: Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, Fifth Edition.
[4] As opposed to the Dragon King Hyperborea, Hyperborea the Elder (northernmost of the Khari realms of post-Cataclysmic Thuria) and Hyperborea the Younger (the Hyborian realm by that name). There may well be other realms to have used this name; it seems remarkably popular.
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, C. Richard Davies. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
For many years now the Maltese Falcon has been a mystery with a legacy of blood. This article is based on the tale told by Caspar Gutman to Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON (p 112 -117) as well as new information from various sources.
It appears that the falcon is far older than was previously thought, as it was forged some 12,000 years ago by Maldiz, the finest blacksmith and goldsmith in Shadizar. Maldiz later remarked on this falcon to Conan (Marvel Comic's CONAN THE BARBARIAN 6). It is also possible that Maldiz also forged a jewel encrusted dagger that was sought by John Steed and Tara King (THE AVENGERS "Legacy of Death") in 1968 and E.L Turner and Lionel Whitney (TENSPEED AND BROWNSHOE "Untitled") in 1980.
What became of the falcon for the next 11,000 years or so must remain as speculation, but if the known history is accurate, then it can be inferred that there must have been a number of bloody struggles over the falcon.
Presumably the falcon ended up in the Holy Lands, where it became loot during the Crusades and eventually fell into the hands of Adrian, a wizard and member of the Knights of the Temple in 1307. Adrian performed certain magics on the falcon, which revealed themselves some years later. It was also rumoured that the secret of transmuting lead into gold was contained in the falcon. The Order of Knights of the Temple was persecuted and sought sanctuary with the Order of Johanniter on Malta. (The Order of Johanniter was also known as Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Order of Rhodes.)
The Order of Johanniter was given the use of Malta on the condition that they pay an annual tribute of a falcon. It is at this point of the narrative that Mr Gutman has drawn some wrong conclusions from the texts he researched and states that the falcon was to be the first tribute and it was stolen by Barbarossa, Redbeard, Khair-ed-Din, a pirate. Certainly Redbeard did steal the treasure of the Order in 1531, but the falcon was not amongst it. That treasure was recovered by the first Phantom who became a member of the Order (Frew Comics PHANTOM 938).
It was not until 1567 that the falcon was to be sent to Spain by the second Phantom (who was confused with his father) to repay King Philip of Spain for helping the Order to fight off a Turkish invasion. The Phantom was tricked by a fake robbery and the grateful "victim" Carmencita later drugged him and stole the falcon. The Phantom then tracked the bandits with the aid of a real falcon. During the ensuring battle there was a landslide and all but The Phantom and Carmencita were killed. The Golden Falcon then came to life as Carmencita attempted to steal it again and a mysterious man warned her to leave and say nothing of these events. All of this happened just before The Phantom passed out.
Another Knight of the Order, Sir Hugh, was lead to the unconscious Phantom by a real falcon. After The Phantom recovered, the pair returned to Malta where he was put on trial for the theft of the falcon. The same mysterious man who warned away Carmencita appeared and gave evidence to clear The Phantom and expose the plot by the Knights of the Temple to steal the falcon for the secret of transmutation. The mysterious man was none other than Adrian (who, it appears, was also in possession of the elixir of life). The leader of the Knights of the Temple, Sir Guy de Grimauld, sought to kill the Phantom and he was himself killed by the alive Golden Falcon. The falcon dropped a single golden feather and disappeared with Adrian. The Feather is still in the possession of the current Phantom (PHANTOM 1121.)
It appears that Adrian went to Algiers and the falcon was stolen either from him or from whoever he left it with, quite possibly by Redbeard or his men. The falcon then stayed there for over a century before it was possibly stolen by Sir Francis Verney. The falcon somehow made its way to Sicily and into the possession of Victor Amedeus, who presented it to his wife as a wedding gift.
Victor and his wife may have taken the falcon to Turin where it ended up in the hands of a Spaniard until the Carlist War of 1840. It was at this time that the falcon was enameled and smuggled into France.
According to Gutman, the bird stayed in Paris until 1911, but my researches have shown otherwise. In 1874, Octavious Xavier Guillemot, the Ox, an associate of Professor Moriarty, went in search of the falcon but it is unclear if he did locate it. (J. T. Edson, THE QUEST FOR BOWIE'S BLADE.)
By 1889, it was in possession of Col. Edward Warburton, who bought it in New York and sent it to Sherlock Holmes. Whilst Warburton thought the falcon valuable, he had no opportunity to examine it. It seems that Holmes also had no chance to examine the falcon, as it was stolen quite soon after, possibly by the Ox. (Carole Bugge, "The Madness Of Colonel Warburton" in RESURRECTED HOLMES.)
It was then placed in the New York residence of Professor Moriarty, who did not use the house until 1901 in his plan to kidnap Sherlock Holmes' son. (SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK.)
Quite likely Moriarty took the Falcon with him when he retreated to Paris, but the statue was lost and made its way into "an obscure shop" where it was found by a Greek antique dealer, Charilaos Konstantinides, in 1911. A year later, his shop was robbed and he was killed. Caspar Gutman was, at that time, negotiating with Charalaos to purchase the bird and for the next 17 years he searched for the Falcon He finally located it in 1929, in the possession of a Russian General Kemidov. The General refused to sell the statue and Gutman arranged to have it stolen. Kemidov, suspecting this, had a copy made of lead and it was stolen. The events of the MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett follow.
The General, soon after this, had to flee from the wrath of Stalin and never had a good chance to examine the statue. He remained on the run until 1938, when he was eventually able to place the falcon into the hands of Professor Indiana Jones, where it was seen on his desk awaiting valuation (INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE computer game). After the Last Crusade, Jones started the valuation and discovered that the falcon was solid gold and jewel-encrusted. He cleaned off all the enamel and attempted to contact Kemidov, but Kemidov and family had fled again. So Indy decided to donate the statue to the Museum.
A year later, in 1939, the falcon was lent to Gotham City museum where it was put on display and was spotted during BATMAN AND TARZAN: CLAWS OF THE CATWOMAN.
What happened next is speculation, but it appears that in 1940, Brigid O'Shaughnessy escaped from jail, possibly with the assistance of one of her jailers who became besotted with her. Brigid then stole the falcon from where it was currently touring and managed to have it re-enameled. On the run and desperate, she returned to San Francisco -- and Sam Spade. Quite likely she told Spade that she had been pardoned or something similar. Spade most likely accepted the story and the couple resumed their relationship. At some point, the real statue was swapped for the fake that had been there since 1929. Spade, being the detective, began to wonder if Brigid's story was true or not and began to investigate. Much to his dismay, he discovered that Brigid was lying and still wanted. Reluctantly, he turned her over to the police, little realizing that she was carrying his child. The statue stayed in Sam's office until 1975.
It appears that Brigid had a son, Sam Spade Jnr, who was raised by foster parents. It was not until the early seventies that Sam Jnr met his father. Shortly after this meeting, Spade died (possibly at the hands of the first Professor Moriarty's granddaughter, Francine, as seen in THE STRANGE CASE OF THE END OF CIVILISATION AS WE KNOW IT (TV Movie 1977)) and left everything to his son. Sam Jnr reluctantly took over his father's office. To his surprise, a number of people, including Caspar Gutman, Wilmer Cook, and General Kemidov's daughter, Anna Kemidov, all attempted to purchase his father's fake bird from him. Attempting make as much money as possible from this, he began to make deals with a number of people. The bird was eventually dumped in the San Francisco Bay. Spade Jnr hired a diving suit and attempted retrieve it, but he was knocked over by a shark, who swam off with the bird in its teeth.
What happened to the bird after that, I can't tell you. It is possible that detectives Sam Penny and Rick and A.J. Simon or Jon Sable might be able to give more information. The fake bird, which was taken from Brigid when she was captured, and used in the 1940 movie, can now be seen at John's Grill in San Francisco where Dashiell Hammett used to eat. The real bird remains lost but it is still the stuff Dreams are made of.
Many thanks to Win Eckert for his helpful advice and information (especially for Conan and The Black Bird) and for posting this.
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Brad Mengel. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
(With many thanks to Matthew Baugh, Lisa Eckert, Dennis Power, and especially Rick Lai, for their input, feedback, and encouragement, and contributions)
The Notorious Noels
The saga of the malevolent Moriartys and their various criminal offspring begins with the Wold Newton meteor event in 1795. Among others, present was Sebastian Noel, a young medical student accompanying Siger Holmes and the third Duke of Greystoke.
The prolific Sir William Clayton was the son of the third Duke. Dr. James Noel was the son of Sebastian Noel, which brings us to the 1830s and the beginning of our story. For a full genealogical account of how this point was attained please see Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life; Rick Lai’s The Secret History of Captain Nemo; and Mark Brown’s online recounting of the Farmer and Lai genealogies, The Claytons, The Descendants of Sir William Clayton, and The Noels.
Dr. James Noel, the father of Professor James Moriarty, traveled to Germany under the alias of Von Herder. While there, he fathered a son, Julius Von Herder. This son was brilliant but also blind. He became a mechanic and designed weapons, such as air-guns, for the Moriarty gang. [1] After the breakup of the first Professor Moriarty's gang in 1891, Julius Von Herder joined German Intelligence. In the late 1890s, Von Herder was eventually posted to China, under the guise of a missionary, where he came into contact with Dr. Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu cured Von Herder's blindness.
Julius Von Herder eventually became a member of a trio of spies known as the Black Stone. During 1907-1909, several members of the Kaiser's court, including one Graf Otto Von Schwabing, were accused of being homosexuals. Forced to flee, Von Schwabing was recruited into German Intelligence by Von Herder. The third member of the Black Stone was an unknown third German. In 1914, the Blank Stone discovered that the Serbian Black Hand planned to start the Great War by killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Rather than warn their German superiors, the Black Stone kept this knowledge to themselves as part of a scheme to steal British naval plans. The tale of the Black Stone's defeat by Richard Hannay was told in John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, Buchan altered the facts slightly to make it appear that the Black Stone caused the war by assassinating a Greek politician, Constantine Karolides. In any event, Von Herder was executed by a British firing squad. Von Schwabing escaped, but met his end in 1918, as told in John Buchan's Mr. Standfast.
Throughout the years, Julius Von Herder had maintained contact with Fu Manchu. In gratitude for his cured blindness, Von Herder fed Fu Manchu intelligence, including information regarding the impending Great War. [2] There is also another explanation for the continued relationship between Von Herder and Fu Manchu. During his time in China, Von Herder had fathered a son by one of Fu Manchu's female operatives, Madame de Medici. Madame de Medici (b. 1883) was the daughter of Fo-Hi, from Sax Rohmer's The Golden Scorpion, and Princess Sonia Omanoff. [3]
The son of Von Herder and Madame de Medici was born in 1899 and became involved in the Tongs in Shanghai at a very young age. He was eventually smuggled to the United States, where he took up residence in New York. By 1929, he was the treasurer of the Hip Sing Tong. He was involved in the great Tong Wars of New York City, and ultimately went to ground with one million dollars in Tong gold. When the Tong killers caught up with him, they tortured and maimed him, cutting off his hands, and then shot him through the heart. Or so they thought. His heart was on the right side of his body, rather than the left.
The child disappeared. He changed his name to Julius No: the "Julius" after his father and the "No" for rejection of the father and all authority. It is also possible that he knew of his paternal grandfather: "No" is part of the name "Noel." In 1943, after years of cosmetic surgery and the study of medicine, Doctor Julius No resurfaced long enough to purchase the Caribbean island called Crab Key, .
Doctor No certainly lived up to the Noel penchant for criminality. In 1956, he made a move to extend his power base beyond Crab Key. The story of the titanic struggle between Doctor No and British agent James Bond was told by Ian Fleming in Doctor No, at the conclusion of which it appeared that No had died, buried in a pile of his own bird guano. However, he somehow survived and resurfaced in 1971 to again plague Bond, as told in Hot Shot. [4]
There is another likely candidate for the Noel family. Dorus Noel was also descended from Sebastian Noel. [5] Dorus Noel's yellowed skin was supposedly acquired from years of living in China. In fact he was part Chinese. As will be seen below, twins ran strong in the Noel lineage.
Dorus Noel, as the twin brother of Doctor Julius No, was also the son of Julius von Herder and Madame de Medici. Dorus Noel chose to establish a career as a police detective. In order to distance himself from the name Von Herder, he reverted to the Noel name. However, he was unfamiliar with his grandfather's role as a master criminal, or else he probably would also have avoided the Noel name. He also spread the cover story that he was born in New York City, but had spent considerable time in the Far East. He did this in order to conceal his Chinese heritage. If his mixed heritage was known, it would have been impossible for him to get a high post as the secret officer charged with maintaining the peace in New York's Chinatown in the 1930s. Noel's arch-enemy was the Chinese called Chu Chul, also known as the Cricket, but one cannot help but wonder if Noel also encountered his twin brother while policing New York's Chinatown.
The Three Moriartys
The world knows by now that there were three brothers named James Moriarty. The first son, Colonel James Moriarty, was the son of Sir William Clayton and Morcar Moriarty. He was born in 1835.
The second son was the first Professor James Moriarty. He was the son of the master criminal and genius, Dr. James Noel, and Morcar Moriarty. He was born in 1836.
The third son was also called James Moriarty, although his full name was James Noel Moriarty. He was born of Dr. James Noel and Morcar Moriarty in 1840. He was the "station-master" referred to by Dr. Watson in The Valley of Fear, and went on to become the second Professor Moriarty, as seen in John Gardner’s semi-accurate accounts, The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty.
Jerrold Moriarty, Morcar’s brother, has sometimes been mistakenly identified as their father. [6] In fact he was a beloved uncle and father figure to the three boys.
One Brother Moriarty
Little is known of Colonel James Moriarty, except that in 1872 he was assisting in the schemes of his younger half-brother (the first Professor Moriarty, aka the second Captain Nemo) in the ongoing Eridanean-Capellean conflict. [7] He was also seen in 1878, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Suicide Club. Colonel Moriarty’s life and possible descendants have not been fully explored and provide an avenue for future research.
Two Brothers Moriarty
Of the three James Moriartys,
the second James Moriarty (the first Professor) has been the
subject of the greatest amount of genealogical research.
His first sons, twins, were born in 1858 to Emily Caber. Throughout his extended life, one was known by various identities, such as "Wolf Larsen," "Baron Karl von Hessel," and simply "Baron Karl." [8] The other was known as "Death Larsen." We shall return to the Larsens later.
James Moriarty and Emily Caber had three additional children. The third and fourth children were also twins, James and Emile Caber. (As we now know, twins ran in the family.) The fifth child was named Urania Caber Moriarty and was born in 1862. In 1863, Emily Caber and the twins, James and Emile, were killed, setting in motion Moriarty’s scheme of revenge. This eventually lead to his theft of one submarine Nautilus and his masquerade as Captain Nemo. [9] His sons, "Wolf Larsen" and "Death Larsen," served as cabin boys on this Nautilus, before it was finally sunk in 1868 by Phileas Fogg. [10]
It could have been during his travels and masquerade as "Captain Nemo" that Moriarty fathered the child known later as Rasputin, as revealed in John T. Lescroart's Rasputin's Revenge.
Although Urania Moriarty was the youngest child, she was the first to reproduce. She had become known as Patricia Donleavy in 1872, after her father had married a woman named Donleavy. Surely, however, this was but one of a host of aliases. Urania’s first son was born in 1883, of a liaison with John Clay. [11] This son was later known as Dr. Caber, and would become the nemesis of Wold Newton family member Joseph Jorkens. Lord Dunsany related their tales in three stories: The Invention of Dr. Caber (found in Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey), and The Strange Drug of Dr. Caber and The Cleverness of Dr. Caber (both in The Fourth Book of Jorkens). [12]
In 1889, the second grandson of Professor Moriarty was born. Again, he was a child of Urania Moriarty and John Clay. He later went by the name Carl Peterson and was the arch-nemesis of Bulldog Drummond. Peterson was an archfiend and criminal who could present himself as of any nationality or as of none. His constant companion was the sinisterly beautiful Irma, who was originally presented as Peterson's "daughter." Irma Peterson lived on to seek revenge on Drummond after Carl Peterson died in his fourth meeting with Drummond in 1926, as told by H.C. "Sapper" McNeile in The Final Count.
Peterson came back to life in The Return of the Black Gang, in 1954. Mr. Farmer writes in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life:
Carl Peterson was the greatest villain Drummond ever encountered. Peterson was about five times as intelligent as Drummond, but he kept tripping himself up because he expected Drummond to do the sneaky and the devious. Drummond wasn't bright enough for this; he always did the obvious. Beside, they had a mutual, if unconscious, liking for each other, which may explain why they didn't kill each other when each had so many opportunities.
We readers were saddened when Carl Peterson seemed to have perished in a flaming dirigible, caught in his own trap. But Gerard Fairlie, who continued the Drummond series, revealed in the last one, The Return of the Black Gang, that Peterson was alive and well, though not good. Peterson failed once again to kill Drummond but escaped once again. What happened thereafter has not been recorded. But both Bulldog Drummond and Carl Peterson were getting old and tired. It may be that both just decided to retire.
However, Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond’s biological brother was John "Korak" Drummond-Clayton, the adopted son of Tarzan. The whole Tarzan family had access to an immortality treatment. [13] It is doubtful that Korak would have withheld this treatment from his brother.
Mr. Farmer continues:
Irma, Carl's wife or mistress, was every bit as villainous and innovative as Carl. It was she who kept the feud going while Carl was convalescing from the dirigible disaster or just engaged in his rotten, but colossal, projects elsewhere. Irma seems a fit candidate for inclusion in the Wold Newton family. Carl posed as Irma's father during some of their nefarious activities, so I wouldn't be surprised if she really was his daughter. Incest certainly would not have been below them; they tackled with enthusiasm anything wicked.
However, Rick Lai, in his A Brief Biography of Dr. Caber (1883-1945?), persuasively theorizes that Irma was actually the daughter of Dr. Caber, making Carl Peterson Irma's uncle, and for our purposes we accept this theory as true.
It has been postulated elsewhere that the Drummond-Peterson battle continued to a new generation, with Hugh Drummond, Jr., battling Carl Peterson, Jr., as seen in the films Deadlier Than the Male [14] and Some Girls Do. [15] Although I agree that the Hugh Drummond seen in Deadlier Than the Male is of a different character, and thus must be Hugh, Jr., I still maintain Hugh, Sr., and wife Phyllis did have access to the immortality treatment. They most probably went underground, changing their identities in order to conceal their rather unnatural longevity.
The Carl Peterson seen in Deadlier Than the Male was also a junior. And he was the son of Irma Peterson, giving him the rather dubious distinction of having the same father and great-uncle.
Turning our attention back to Carl Peterson's and Dr. Caber’s mother, Urania Moriarty, we find that during the latter part of 1918 and well into the year 1919, she, as Patricia Donleavy, gave Sherlock Holmes and his student, Mary Russell, quite a run for their money before her death. [16]
And now we shall deal with the first Professor Moriarty’s other surviving children, "Wolf Larsen" and "Death Larsen." Wolf Larsen was born in 1858, as established in Farmer’s Escape From Loki, and Larsen’s other identity as Baron Karl von Hessel has been well documented elsewhere. [17] The twin relationship between Wolf and Death is my own conjecture, although they are described as brothers in Jack London's The Sea Wolf. Thus, I theorize that Death Larsen was also born in 1858.
Death Larsen had a daughter, Lorelei Larsen. Lorelei's mother was Zarmi of the Hashishin. Lorelei was the mistress of Emmanuel Dumas. They had a daughter, Lola Dumas. Both Emmanuel and Lola Dumas were seen in Sax Rohmer's President Fu Manchu. Lorelei then became the priestess of a sinister octopus cult and married a Si-Fan leader, Fo-Hi. [18] Lorelei Larsen and Fo-Hi had a daughter, Zarmi. Zarmi was also known by the nickname Lo Lar. Zarmi apparently was killed, as related by Dr. Petrie in The Hand of Fu Manchu. However, it has been demonstrated that she actually survived. As Lo Lar, she later came in to conflict with her cousin, Doc Savage, as related in Lester Dent's The Feathered Octopus. [19]
Meanwhile, as Mr. Farmer has demonstrated, in 1884 Wolf Larsen married and then deserted Arronaxe Land, the daughter of Ned Land from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A daughter, Arronaxe Larsen, was born in 1885. At a very young age Arronaxe Larsen married James Clarke Wildman, Sr. (Clark Savage, Sr.), the illegitimate son of the sixth Duke of Greystoke. Their son, Clark Savage, Jr., was born on November 12, 1901. Thus, Doc Savage is the grandson of the notorious Wolf Larsen and the great-grandson of the infamously evil Professor Moriarty.
Wold Larsen, during despicable events that occurred in 1893, which were recounted by Jack London in The Sea Wolf, begat another child, Mister Moto. Moto was born in 1894 and his adventures were told by John P. Marquand.
Doc Savage and Mister Moto are certainly aberrations in the annals of the incredible Moriarty family. In any event, as Farmer said, "Every family barrel has its rotten apples."
The Moriarty influence reasserted itself with the April 1919 birth of the man known as "John Sunlight." As has been demonstrated elsewhere [20], Sunlight could have been the son of Clark Savage, Jr., and Lily Bugov, the Countess Idivzhopu. Further research indicates that Lily Bugov was in fact the granddaughter of Sir William Clayton and Sir William’s wife, a Russian woman named Natalie, daughter of the Prince of Kiev, who disappeared shortly after their wedding in 1855. Given the double influx of the foul Wold Newton genes, it was inevitable that John Sunlight, the great-great-grandson of the first Professor Moriarty, and the great-grandson of Sir William Clayton (who, after all, had also spawned the insidious Doctor Fu Manchu), would embark upon a career as a super-criminal. Of course, it also helped that John Sunlight was raised by his rather wicked grandfather, Baron Karl von Hessel (Wolf Larsen).
What was Von Hessel doing between the mid-1890s, when he abandoned the Larsen identity, and 1918, when he encountered his grandson Clark Savage at Camp Loki? We can only speculate. However, he does seem to have some connection with Russia, as shown by his close relationship with the Russian woman, Lily Bugov. After the events of Escape From Loki, when he became persona-non-grata with the German High Command, it seems likely that he escaped to Russia. This is evidenced by the fact that when we first meet Von Hessel’s grandson, John Sunlight, he is being sentenced in Russia to a Siberian prison camp, for unspecified crimes. [21]
Based on Von Hessel’s Russian connections, and based on extensive research in the files of MI 6, I have determined that Larsen/von Hessel spent the first decade of the Twentieth Century living under a Polish identity. Poland, at the time, was under Russian control, and remained so up to the end of World War I. During his time in Poland, Von Hessel met a Greek woman and, following pattern, married her. This Greek woman also brought the notoriously befouled genes of Sir William Clayton to the table: she was the granddaughter of Aspasia Clayton, who was the daughter of Sir William and Ermione Khatamagos.
Their child was born in Gdynia on May 28, 1908. By World War II, he was selling information to the Germans, Swedes, and Americans. After the war, with half a million in Swiss banks, he disappeared to South America. He reappeared in 1959, and the world’s intelligence communities first heard of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., The Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. It was not until a while later that intelligence services learned the identity of SPECTRE’s leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
British Double-O agent James Bond foiled Blofeld’s plans on several occasions. The first was related by Ian Fleming under the title Thunderball. When Blofeld and Bond crossed again, in late 1961, Blofeld ruthlessly murdered Bond’s wife, Tracy, as told in Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In 1963, Bond finally tracked Blofeld down in Japan, where Blofeld was hiding under the name Doctor Shatterhand. The story of how Bond killed him was revealed in Fleming's You Only Live Twice.
However, the legacy of Blofeld and SPECTRE lived on. From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, a woman known as Madam Spectra was controlling SPECTRE. [22] It seemed that James Bond had smashed the organization once and for all, but in 1981 it reared its head again. And Blofeld was once again in charge of SPECTRE.
It turns out that Ernst Stavro Blofeld had a daughter, who was born with a particular deformity: she had only one breast, as told in John Gardner’s For Special Services. Though she went by the name Nena Bismaquer, she was really Nena Blofeld. She was truly her father’s daughter, as well as the great-granddaughter of the first Professor James Moriarty.
Three Brothers Moriarty
We now turn to the third James Moriarty, who adopted the identity of his older brother and became Professor Moriarty (the second) in the 1890s. In 1876, James Noel Moriarty started working as an assistant to his brother, the first Professor. He became involved with Katherine Koluchy in the mid 1880s. Koluchy had already begun her evil activities in 1884, as told in The Brotherhood of Seven Kings, by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace. In 1886, Dominick "Medina," the son of James Noel Moriarty and Kathryn Koluchy was born. [23]
The third James Moriarty took over as the second Professor Moriarty in 1894. He was responsible for directing the infrastructure of his "late" brother’s vast criminal empire toward the creation of the Circle of Life cult, contacting Martian Sarmaks residing in a parallel dimension, and attempting to bring Martian destruction to the parallel Earth called Annwn, as recounted in George Smith’s The Second War of the Worlds.
The second Professor Moriarty’s humiliating defeat in that incident lead to the metamorphosis of the Circle of Life into the Krafthaus organization, a "secret nation" bent on world domination. In 1903, Moriarty created a new, respectable identity for himself, Andrew Lumley. When Edward Leithen inadvertently stumbled upon Krafthaus in 1910, and Moriarty’s exposure was inevitable, Moriarty-Lumley killed himself. [24] The Krafthaus organization lived on as the super-criminal empire THRUSH; however, with the death of Moriarty-Lumley, there was a leadership vacuum in THRUSH. [25]
In 1897, Koluchy had been blinded in a fire and became known as "the Blind Spinner." In the years following Lumley-Moriarty’s death, the Blind Spinner and her son, Dominck Medina-Moriarty, had a very tenuous grip on the reins of THRUSH. This was compounded by the fact that during 1914-1918, Medina was in Central Asia studying mesmerism. [26] In an effort to strengthen their power base and reaffirm their leadership role, the Blind Spinner communicated with her son, instructing him to travel to China in order to court the leader of the Si-Fan for the purpose of forging an alliance. This occurred in mid 1914, shortly after the final events of The Hand of Fu Manchu. While it represented the first time that the powers-that-be of THRUSH attempted to win the favor of Doctor Fu Manchu, it was not to be the last. [27]
Fu Manchu had no intention of forging an alliance with this upstart Western criminal organization, and in any event was too busy attempting to maintain his own power base. [28] He gave Dominick over to his daughter, Fah Lo Suee, the Lady of the Si-Fan, for disposal. However, Fah, in what was perhaps the first of many betrayals of her honored father, took an immediate interest in Dominick and proceeded to seduce him, rather than dispose of him. Fortunately for Fah Lo Suee, her father did not learn of this particular indiscretion and the resulting child was placed with an "aunt" in Pekin. Later on, Fah Lo Suee did have further offspring. [29]
The child of Dominick Medina-Moriarty and Fah Lo Suee was born in 1915. She was the granddaughter of the second Professor Moriarty and the granddaughter of Fu Manchu. She was later known by the name "Myra Reldon. The name "Myra" is from a Latin derivation and means "scented oil," which is interesting considering that Fah Lo Suee's name is supposed to mean "sweet perfume."
Myra Reldon, also known as "Ming Dwan," was first encountered Walter Gibson's novel Teeth of the Dragon. The Shadow encountered her in San Francisco and didn't know know for whom she was working, although it later was revealed that she was working for the FBI under the guidance of Vic Marquette. How Myra Reldon came to be recruited as a Special Agent for the FBI, and the details of her assignments in different parts of the country (mostly in the Chinatown areas of San Francisco and New York), is a story that has yet to be told.
Meanwhile, Dominick Medina-Moriarty had escaped from China with Fah Lo Suee’s help, and eventually went back to England – and THRUSH – empty-handed. He and his mother were overthrown in a coup, but managed to escape with their lives. In 1921, Medina-Moriarty and his mother resurfaced with a plan to make Medina the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Sir Richard Hannay defeated the plans of Dominick Medina and his mother, and Medina was killed at the end of this adventure. [30] However, before his death, Dominick Medina-Moriarty had at least two more sons. The identity of their mother is currently unknown.
The first son also had a son, named Edgar Moriarty. The second son of Dominick Medina-Moriarty had a son named Thomas. Edgar Moriarty inherited his family’s evil tendencies, whereas his cousin Thomas seemed relatively undistinguished. Edgar was killed in late 1986, whilst attempting to recreate one of the schemes of his illustrious great-granduncle, the first Professor Moriarty. (However, Edgar seemed to be somewhat confused about the fact that the first Professor was his great-granduncle, while the second Professor was his great-grandfather). Thomas Moriarty married Mary Watson, a great-granddaughter of Doctor John Watson and Nylepthah [31], who in turn was the granddaughter of both Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good. [32]
Footnotes:
Bibliography:
Other Acknowledgments:
All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000-2004 by the author, Win Eckert. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.
top
bottom
Part I: Faster Than a .....
I did some fooling around with numbers on Superman awhile back and thought I'd share them. We know that