Agatha Christie

 

Ren adores Agatha Christie. She's grown up on a diet of various Marples or Poirots on TV and turned to the books in her early twenties. They're a source of comfort to her and to be honest she jumped at the chance to re-read them for this years new instalment for the blog- Lauren's Literary Corner of the Internet. Nothing special, just what she's reading in relation to our blog posts, and of course the inspiration for the Christie books was going to visit the grave of the Lady herself.

Now the life of this famed author has always been intriguing due to the spell where she went missing. We have our own suspicions (one of us have taken the Doctor Who episode on it too seriously, the other reckons it was a moment spiralling from an acute mental break and she wanted time away from the spotlight), but we'll look into the mystery surrounding her disappearance another time. It has become a legend so perhaps it'll be part of Folklore Fridays? Watch this space.

Dame Agatha Christie is most known for being a novelist. She wrote 66 detective stories, 14 short story collections, poems, plays, and the odd thing that wasn't crime related. She is aptly known as the Queen of Crime and it is a title which is deserving as her work gets rolled out over here every Christmas and there is people fighting over parts wihin a Christie drama. It is a long running joke over here in the Uk that you haven't made it as an actor unless you've started in a Christie adaptation or a Midsomer Murders.

Born on the 15th September 1890 in Torquay, Agatha Miller was part of an upper middle class family. This meant they had wealth and were accustomed to a better life in this era, but you can see from the characters within her novels that she was heavily inspired from her own upbringing. Young Agatha was already displaying quite the imagination, as the youngest of three children with quite the age gap, Agatha was often left to play on her own and used her pets for companionship along with imaginary companions. She later made some friends and they starred in am-drams together, so from what we can see already, Agatha was a bright, strong minded girl with the ability to create worlds and people and then learn through theatre the acts in which they can live. This early life and her interests very clearly formed what she would end up being known for most as her novels very clearly were in acts like on a stage. This is why The Mousetrap was so easily converted to the stage.

On top of her love for amateur dramatics and a vivid imagination, Agatha was also an avid reader. She began reading from the age of four and as a child her favourites were Edith Nesbit and Mary Louisa Molesworth. As she grew she moved on to Lewis Carroll and then as a teenager it was Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and Walter Scott. All off which Lauren is exploring and will eventually feature in her Thursday posts.

It was clear that these authors had inspired Agatha as she wrote her first poem at the age of 10, The Cow Slip. Later that same year, 1901, her father died, she'd not long turned 11 and later said that this event marked the end of her childhood, a decade of happiness as she fondly recalled. In 1905 she was sent to Paris to a series of boarding schools to focus on voice training and piano. But during this time Agatha found these not for her and gave up of her dream of performing professionally in this sector. When she finished her schooling she returned to England to find her mother in ill health. They opted to spend the cold winter of 1907/08 in Egypt which was the chosen hotspot for wealthy British folk due to the warmer climate. They stayed in Cairo for three months and Agatha soaked in the culture and history but had not yet formed the interested in archaeology and Egyptology that would come later.

Agatha wrote her first short story at 18. The House of Beauty was written while she recovered from an illness and focussed on madness and dreams which fascinated her. This early attempt slater became The House of Dreams. During this time of her youth, Agatha explored her interest in the paranormal and spiritualism which can be seen in other stories from this time in her life. To be fair, what young girl hasn't had these interests at some point. It was at this time she started submitting her works to magazines under male pseudonyms, but these were rejected. She revised some of these and then published them under her own name with new titles later on.

She then began working on her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert which she set in Cairo and drew upon her time there. She attempted to publish this under the pseudonym Monosyllaba but the six publishers she sent this to all rejected the novel. Likely disheartened by the rejections, her mother, Clara, suggested that she contact Eden Phillpotts (a rather successful author) who was a family friend. Agatha asked for advice and Eden encouraged her to continue with her writing and sent an introduction to his own agent who also rejected her novel but suggested a second.

While trying to kick start her literary career, Agatha was also expanding socially. She'd attended hunts, parties, roller skating, she'd begun travelling in elite circles and had enjoyed a few relationships during this time as well as a short engagement. However it was in 1912 she met Archie Christie at a dance. He was a Royal Artillery officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps a year later. He prosed to her three months after they met and Agatha accepted as she was in love with him.

1914 brought WWI and Archie was sent off to France to fight, however they married at Emmanuel Church in Bristol on Christmas Eve when he was back on leave. He came back to England in 1918 when he became a colonel to the Air Ministry and was stationed back in the UK. Agatha has also involved herself in the war effort first as an unpaid nurse and then as a paid dispenser following her qualification as an apothecary's assistant in 1917. She ended up giving this all up when Archie was reassigned to London in 1918 and moved with him.

As she grew older Christie enjoyed reading works by Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle, she had become a fan of the detective works she was consuming and so in turn wrote her own in 1916. This was of course the Mysterious Affair at Styles which infuriated Lauren when she first read it as she felt as though it ended mid sentence. Thus Hercule Poirot was born.

Agatha has used her nursing days as inspiration for this book, Belgian refugees had flocked to Torquay after Germany invaded and she had treated a few of their soldiers. The original manuscript was rejected by Hodder & Stoughton and Methuen but John Lane from The Bodley Head agreed to accept it on the condition that she changed how the solution was revealed. So she did and the next five books were promised via contract to them which Agatha wasn't best pleased with. The novel was then published in 1920 the year after she gave birth to her daughter Rosalind.

In 1922 she published her second novel, The Secret Adversary which featured new detectives, the couple Tommy and Tuppence which Ren is not yet familiar with. By this time her husband had left the Air Force and had taken a job within the financial sector for a wage less then they were used to.

She then published a third novel, the second Poirot mystery (Murder on the Links), before joining an around the world exhibition where Agatha took to surfing. When they returned to England Agatha continued to write while Archie returned to his city work, they'd bought a house in Berkshire and named it Styles after the mansion in her first detective novel.

It was in 1926 that we got our first glimpse of Agatha's mental anguish. She fell into a deep depression following the death of her mother and she was reported to have gone away to recuperate from a breakdown. They sited overwork as the cause, but we speculate the truth of it was the overwhelming grief for her mother, the last connection she had to her happy childhood and her confidante. This was also the year where the world learnt of the breakdown of her marriage, which would have contributed to Agatha's mental state. She'd lost both her mother and her husband as in August he asked her for a divorce, admitting that he had fallen in love with Nancy Neele. It is widely known that he had been having an affair with this woman for a while. We don't know if Agatha had suspected this for a while, or if it was a complete shock to her, but in December when Archie stayed with friends, Agatha went missing.

Her car was found in Surrey and it was thought that se might have drowned herself in the nearby beauty spot, Silent Pool. The vultures that were the English newspapers sensationalised the story, eager for scandal and news of her disappearance and speculation on what had happened dominated the news scene. Thousands of people searched for her and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even gave a medium one of her gloves to locate her via the spirit world. Her disappearance even made the news abroad, but despite all the people looking for her she wasn't found until 10 days later.

It is now known that she was in London on the 4th December and had tea and visited Harrods where she admired the Christmas display, ten days later she was in Harrogate using the name Mrs Tressa Neele (the surname of her husbands mistress) and citing her address as Capetown South Africa. Once found Agatha retreated to her sisters home where she was protected from the outside world, the greatest measures taken to keep her privacy.

Now her disappearance is under a lot of scrutiny. Some people believe that this was a Gone Girl-esque situation, while some believe that she genuinely intended to take her own life but didn't go through with it. Some think she just needed to get away in order to grieve unjudged, and some believe that she genuinely lost her memory within this time due to various factors most stemming from depression. Regardless of what is speculated, Agatha herself never referenced the incident .

1927 brought her divorce and once finalised her ex-husband married his mistress within the week. Agatha retained custody of Rosalind as well as her married name which she had established her writing under. A year later she took the Orient Express to Istanbul and then on to Baghdad. She became friends with Leonard Woolley and his wife who invited her to visit their archaeological dig in February 1930. It was here she met Max Mallowan the archaeologist and then later that year her second husband. It was her experiences through this period of her life that she drew on for her novels. The settings flitted between the places she travelled to with Max to her home of Torquay and then of course the Orient Express which has to be her most famed work.

It was also around this time that Agatha opted to publish some very different novels than those she was famed for under the name of Mary Westmacott. It was made known when these books were first published that this was a pen name of a famous author but the identity of whom was kept a secret until 1949. Ironically the Westmacott books were reviewed with a more positive light than her detective novels.

Following her marriage to Max, the couple moved around a little until settling at Winterbrook House where she wrote her novels going forward. She kept a fairly private life in the area despite everyone knowing who she was, and also became president of the local am-dram society showing that she continued her love for it during her adulthood. When she accompanied her husband on annual digs she mucked in with the rest of them and her interest in Egyptology finally flourished. She enjoyed and was rather skilled at recovering and restoring ceramics found on site. They then went on to acquire Greenway in Devon which was given o the National Trust in 2000.

When WWII struck, Agatha moved to London where she took on a flat and worked at the University College Hospital. It was here that she updated her knowledge of poisons and took on the suggestion from Harold Davis that went on to form the basis for The Pale Horse. Thanks to Agatha's in depth knowledge of poisons and her detailed storytelling, a Thallium poisoning case in 1977 was solved.

Hilariously, Agatha was investigated by MI5 due to her character Major Bletchley from N or M? They were worried that she had a spy within Bletchley Park, but it was then revealed that it was nothing more than clever revenge after she was held up on a train from Oxford to London.

Over the next few years various awards, accolades, and achievements flooded in. She was awarded a CBE and her husband an OBE which meant she was now Lady Mallowan should she wish to be referred under her new married name in any circumstance. She continued to write in the years leading up to her death even though she was ill. In 1974 she suffered a fall and a heart attack which meant she could no longer write, her daughter authorised the publishing of Curtain in 1975 which had been gifted to het and sealed in a vault as insurance should anything have happened to her. We feel as thugh the motivations behind this were quite sweet, Poirot's goodbye being published not long before we said goodbye to the author, it was a fitting end as there would have been o more Poirot to come. Agatha had written both Curtain and Sleeping Murder during WWII but had saved them as a gift to her loved ones. Sleeping Murder was published after her death. The last book she actually wrote was Postern of Fate which was a Tommy & Tuppence novel. They were the only of her beloved characters which aged alongside her.

Agatha Christie died 50 years ago today at Winterbrook House, she was 85. She's buried in St Mary's Churchyard, Cholsey in a plot that she'd chosen with Max a decade before she died. We visited her in December and paid our respects to both her and her husband who was laid to rest beside her despite remarrying a year after her death. He died in 1978 aged 74. Despite the speedy remarriage it is not thought that Max betrayed Agatha like Archie had, if anything it was reported that he adored his wife. It is likely that loneliness contributed to his second marriage.

Agatha has always been an inspiration to our Ren who has always aspired to be many different things, but most consistently an author. One day she might get there, but in the meantime she can dream and live within the novels of authors like Christie who have made her who she is today. We found Agatha's life to be full of tragedy but among all else one of love. Love for her family kept her grounded, while love of her husband (Archie) nearly ruined her before Max 'saved' her. We don't think she ever needed saving, she just needed to be safe. Within the narrative we have built around Agatha we believe that Archie was the villain, we'll never know for sure, but we do know that it was his loss and ultimately the making of Agatha. Without such trouble she may never have become the famed writer she is today, she outgrew those who sought to bring her down and she moved on and will live on forever. We can't imagine the pain of being lumbered with a name she surely could no longer stand due to her career, but we commend her for making it her own. 

We, specifically Ren, look forward to exploring a selection of her early works during this coming year as we explore the places she had been. We're going to Torquay for Ren's birthday in February so Agatha is very much the subject of our early adventures this year. As this marks the 50th year since we lost her, we feel as though this is a fitting pilgrimage to one of our literary heroes.