"A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman and the Martin Wallace board game of the same name

Neil Gaiman's "A Story in Emerald" is a particularly well-conceived mashup of Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos, which was originally published in Shadows over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan. I first learned about it last April when Russell came across a Kickstarter campaign for a board game by Martin Wallace inspired by the story. We were sufficiently intrigued to back the campaign and I used Russell's June birthday as an excuse to buy a book in which the story appeared:  New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird.

Our copy of A Study in Emerald (the game) arrived at Chez Morsie sometime around Christmas, but we hadn't gotten around to playing it so when our friend Michael brought his copy to game night last week, I jumped at the chance to learn the game even though I hadn't read Gaiman's story yet. I read the story today.

The story is set in an alternate Victorian London that should seem pretty familiar to readers. The biggest difference between "A Study in Emerald"'s London and that of Doyle is that Victoria is one of the Great Old Ones, who have been ruling the planet for the past 700 years. Like Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet," "A Study in Emerald" introduces the consulting detective and his narrating companion. There is a murder with which Inspector Lestrade and his team need assistance. At the crime scene "RACHE" is spelled out in the victim's blood, though in this case the blood is green. While I am no expert on the Sherlock Holmes canon, it seemed to me that Gaiman admirably maintained the feel of Doyle's/Watson's writing (though this is helped along by the fact the story's introductory passages mirror that of "A Study in Scarlet"). I liked how Gaiman was able to introduce the backstory of the Great Old One's takeover without having it seem like a tangent. While I enjoyed "A Study in Emerald" as I was reading it, when I finished the story I was thrilled. I can't explain why without spoiling it (I even insisted that Russell must read it himself). There's more in "A Study in Emerald" for Sherlockians than there is for Lovecraft aficionados, but I'd recommend it to both (and especially to readers who appreciate both Doyle's and Lovecraft's worlds).

A Study in Emerald (the game) is built upon the political tensions described in Gaiman's story: the Great Old Ones rule the world, but there is a group of "restorationists" plotting to overthrow them. In the game, which plays 2-5, players are randomly and secretly assigned to either the Loyalist or Restorationist factions. Ours was a 4-player game and I was the token Restorationist; I did not win.

Interestingly enough, per Wallace's design notes, the inspiration for A Study in Emerald was not Gaiman's story but The World that Never Was by Alex Butterworth, a history of anarchism.

I felt that there was enough material her for a board game but was note sure about the reception it would receive. I had this feeling that some players might object to a game where your main occupation would be going around blowing up various world leaders. It just so happened that I had recently read "A Study in Emerald" which suggested a solution to my problem--turn the leaders into monsters, thus depriving them of any sympathy they may otherwise garner. (Design notes, A Study in Emerald rule book, 16)

Not to mention the added cache of both Gaiman and the Cthulhu mythos with gamers.  If nothing else, the "A Study in Emerald" overlay was marketing genius.  I don't tend to spend much time reading rule books (preferring to have games taught to me) and I would skip over design notes just as I usually skip over acknowledgments in the books that I read. I had Russell dig out our copy of the rule book when I started writing this post because I wanted to read Wallace's justification of his inclusion of zombies¹ (and vampires) in the game when they don't appear in the story,² and that's how I learned about the real inspiration for the game, which I found particularly interesting.

1. For what it's worth I was holding my own against in the Loyalist faction until the zombies card was in play. When Dan, who had the zombies card in his card, managed to get his hands on a card that allowed his deck to cycle more quickly, I (and the Restorationist cause) was doomed.
2. He justifies zombies because of a real life Dr. Frankenstein-type individual that appears in Butterworth. He has no good excuse for including vampires.

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer

This is a work of fiction inspired by real people. Though I have hewed close to the facts, I have also taken liberties with them. [...] Flaubert and Nightingale did indeed tour Egypt at the same moment with nearly identical itineraries, but as far as we know, they never met. However, the historical record does suggest that they glimpsed each other in November 1849 while being towed through the Mahmoudieh Canal from Alexandria to Cairo. (449)

In her debut novel, Enid Shomer (who has previously published three collections of poetry and two of short stories) imagines what might have happened if a 28 year-old Gustave Flaubert met and became friendly with a 29 year-old Florence Nightingale while each was traveling in Egypt in 1849/1850.

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is a character driven story told alternatively from the perspectives of the novel's two protagonists. It is a bit of a slow read, but that is almost to be expected from a book focused more on the internal lives of its protagonists than on its plot.

Nightingale, Flaubert, and the novel's secondary characters are well-drawn¹ and Shomer plays Nightingale and Flaubert's similarities and dissimilarities against each other to great effect.  The timing of the pair's parallel trips to Egypt, before either of them had begun the work for which they'd become famous, was particularly fortuitous and Shomer deserves much credit for realizing the potential for a double coming-of-age story and for executing it so well.  

1. While I was reading the novel I found Nightingale's maid's backstory unnecessarily odd, but I was happy to learn in "Acknowledgements, Sources, and a Note" that it was based on an actual contemporary relationship, that of Hannah Cullwick (as detailed in The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant), rather than a flight of fancy.

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
by Kate Summerscale

Until the introduction of the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857, divorce was a privilege granted only to England's elite requiring as it did a private act of Parliament. In 1958 the newly created Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes began to grant divorces to couples where adultery (in the case of the wife) or multiple "matrimonial offences" (in the case of the husband) could be verified.

In Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace Summerscale turns her lens to one of the most titillating of the court's early divorce proceedings, the suit of Henry Oliver Robinson against his wife Isabella (and one Dr. Edward Lane) on the grounds of adultery, which began on Monday, June 14, 1858. The chief piece of evidence in the case was Isabella's diary, long passages of which were read during the trial and excerpted in the press to the scandalized public's great delight.

Though the press no doubt loved the fodder provided by the spate of divorce proceedings, it was not necessarily in favor of the new court and the relative ease with which couples were receiving divorces. The Saturday Review insisted that,

in the interests of the greatest happiness of the many, [...] a judicial separation should be granted only in the "gravest emergency": "a married couple should endure a very considerable amount of discomfort, incompatibility, personal suffering, and distress, and yet should continue to live together as man and wife." (217)

Women were expected the bear the brunt of that personal suffering. A custody battle decided in 1858 by the Court of Chancery yielded this insightful comment from Vice-Chancellor Kindersley:

I believe it is the common case that very few wives do consider sufficiently their solemn obligation of obedience and submission to their husbands' wishes, even though they be capricious. However harsh, however cruel the husband may be, it does not justify the wife's want of that due submission to the husband, which is her duty both by the law of God and by the law of man. (196)

These quotes¹ really do show how much times have changed.

Fascinated as I am by Victorian social mores, I was intrigued by the premise of Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace and was thoroughly engrossed while reading it. I heartily recommend it to people interested in the Victorian period, gender studies, legal history, social change, and even archives. While I think that some lovers of historic fiction may enjoy Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, I'm sure others will dislike it simply because it doesn't read like a novel.

Isabella Robinson was trapped in a loveless marriage to a man whose work often took him away from the home for long periods of time.  Profoundly unhappy, she channeled all her energy into remaining composed in front of company, expressing her true feelings and desires only to her diary.

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace is not a simple presentation of Isabella's story as told in her diary (1850-1855). Summerscale uses the diary, the Robinson divorce suit, and the public reaction to each to give a fuller picture of Isabella's life and the world in which she lived. Of course, that's not to say that there is a dearth of juicy, adulturous thought and action, whether real or imagined.

1. And this one, which I couldn't bear to leave out, considering the fact that this blog is facilitating the "culpable neglect" of my "most important [wifely] duties":
   

   She who is faithfully employed in discharging the various duties of a wife and daughter, a mother and friend," according to Thomas Broadhurst's popular manual Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind and Conduct of Life (1810), "is far more usefully occupied than one who, to the culpable neglect of the most important obligations, is daily absorbed by philosophic and literary speculations, or soaring aloft amidst the enchanted regions of fiction and romance. (82-83)

disclosure: I received a review copy of Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace from Bloomsbury via NetGalley.