 First edition | |
| Author | A. E. W. Mason |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bip Pares |
| Country | England and Italy |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton (UK) [1] Doubleday, Doran (US) |
Publication date | 16 April 1942 [2] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 318 [1] |
Musk and Amber is a 1942 adventure novel by A. E. W. Mason, set in Eighteenth-century England and Italy. It was his penultimate work, written at the age of 76, and has been considered his very best. [3]
The opera aficionado James Elliot had been a regular visitor to Grest Park, the English country house owned by his friend the music-loving Lord Scoble, Earl of Linchcombe. After Scoble's death, his title had passed to his young son Julian along with legal ownership of the estate, the latter being administered by the boy's much older half-sister Lady Frances Scoble.
Lady Frances invites Elliot once again to stay at Grest Park, and seeks his opinion on the management of the 12 year-old Julian, who seems disturbed. Julian has an exceptional singing voice and has had lessons from Mr Handel himself. Elliot advises that the musical training started by his father should continue, but Frances and her cousin Henry Scoble are reluctant to take the boy's gift seriously.
A year later, on a visit to Naples, Elliot comes across an appreciative crowd that has gathered to listen to a young singer he recognises immediately as Julian. He overhears Frances and Henry, whom he now realises are lovers, apparently plotting some scheme. That night Julian disappears, and nearly two weeks later a boy's body is dredged from the bay. After a brief period of mourning Frances and Henry marry, and soon a son is born. Henry becomes the new Earl of Linchcombe and is appointed government minister.
Julian, however, had not drowned but had been kidnapped to order, on payment of a fee. He had been taken to a hovel high in the hills where his captors, hoping to make even more money from their prisoner, had persuaded him to sing to them: "But he had sung his sweet song too well. They did not let him go out and two days later the barber came up the hill from Naples." [4]
When Julian reads a report of Henry Scoble's new title, he smells "the musk and amber of revenge" and decides that he must dedicate himself to his singing. He enters a conservatory for young castratos, graduating at the age of eighteen under the stage name of Marelli. A hugely successful opera singer, Marelli's career flourishes and he becomes rich and famous.
Marelli's popularity arouses the jealosy of Maria Baretti, a soprano with whom he is performing in Venice. Her lover is a member of the Council of Ten, a body empowered to impose punishments within the Republic of Venice, and after a public concert Marelli is suddenly arrested and faces the prospect of twelve years imprisonment without trial. Managing to escape from the room is which he is temporarily being held, he makes for the home of James Elliot, now British Minister to the Republic. Afraid that his house is being watched, Elliot arranges to take a few days holiday, travelling publicly by barge in the style expected of a grand English gentleman. He is accompanied by a masked lady – in fact, by Marelli. Marelli escapes to England, and makes his name there. Elliot eventually retires to England also.
Julian appoints lawyers to investigate his kidnapping years earlier. They discover that Henry Scoble had tried to have Julian murdered, but that Frances had intervened. To her, a quick death would have been too easy for the boy, and she had arranged his kidnapping and sale in the expectation that he would fail as a soprano and that he would be forced to live as an outcast before dying in penury.
Elliot is invited to dine with Frances and Henry at Grest, an obligation he attempts to avoid. Coincidently, Julian is also headed to Grest that evening, intending to appear unannounced as Marelli. Julian sings, is recognised as the rightful Earl by the servants, and has his revenge by challenging Henry to a duel and running him through. He considers whether he should publish the evidence he holds, take back his house and title and let the law deal with Frances. But after spending an emotional day out with the keeper on the estate he decides to put Grest itself first. The house needs children whose descendents will grow up amongst its people and farms, loving them and caring for them. This he cannot provide. He returns to Europe and resumes his career as Marelli.
The phrase "The musk and amber of revenge", used throughout the novel, derives from Thomas Browne's Christian Morals . Mason quotes as an epigraph, "Too many there be to whom a dead Enemy smells well, and who find Musk and Amber in Revenge." [5]
Mason considered the book to have been his best work, [3] an opinion with which later critics have agreed. It was enthusiastically received by the critics on its appearance in 1942 and was made The Book Club society's book of the month, although sales were affected by the paper shortages of the war. [6] Mason's biographer Roger Lancelyn Green, writing ten years later, considered Musk and Amber to have been the very highest point of Mason's literary career, "on the very snow line of great literature." [7]
Alfred Edward Woodley Mason was an English author and politician. He is best remembered for his 1902 novel of courage and cowardice in wartime, The Four Feathers and is also known as the creator of Inspector Hanaud, a French detective who was an early template for Agatha Christie's famous Hercule Poirot.
Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. He had a positive influence on his friend, C.S. Lewis, by encouraging him to publish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
CHERUB is a series of teenage spy novels written by English author Robert Muchamore, focusing around a fictional division of the British Security Service called CHERUB, which employs children, predominantly orphans, 17 or younger as intelligence agents.
Eric Earle Shipton, CBE, was an English Himalayan mountaineer.
Stewart Henry Perowne OBE, KStJ, FSA, FRSA was a British diplomat, archaeologist, explorer and historian who wrote books on the history and antiquities of the Mediterranean. Despite his homosexuality, in 1947 he married the explorer and travel writer Freya Stark. The marriage was dissolved in 1952.
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.
Roy Webber was a British cricket scorer and statistician. After World War II, in which he served with the Royal Air Force, he decided to turn what had been his hobby into his profession. He had the necessary proficiency with figures, having previously been an accountant. He was the scorer for BBC Television's Test coverage for many years. He edited The Cricket Annual in 1961 and 1962. He was joint editor of the magazine Playfair Cricket Monthly and wrote a number of cricket books. He also wrote for the News Chronicle and the Daily Mail.
The House of the Arrow is a 1924 mystery novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, the third full-length novel featuring his recurring character Inspector Hanaud. It has inspired several films of the same title.
The Prisoner in the Opal is a British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason, serialised in The Pall Mall Magazine and published in book form in 1928. It is the third full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series, and the only one to feature the occult as a significant plot point.
They Wouldn't Be Chessmen is a 1935 British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason. It is the fourth full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series.
The House in Lordship Lane is a 1946 British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason. It is the fifth and final full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series, published when the author was eighty-one. Unlike the others in the series the story is largely set in England, the Lordship Lane of the title being a thoroughfare in East Dulwich, South London.
Inspector Gabriel Hanaud is a fictional French detective depicted in a series of five novels and one novella by the British writer A. E. W. Mason. He has been described as the "first major fiction police detective of the Twentieth Century".
The Witness for the Defence is a 1913 mystery and adventure novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Considered one of Mason's best, it was adapted by the author from his 1911 stage play of the same name. In 1919 it was made into an American silent film The Witness for the Defense directed by George Fitzmaurice.
Miranda of the Balcony is a novel by the British writer A.E.W. Mason, first published 6 October 1899. It has been called a modern re-telling of Homer's Odyssey and was one of the sources used by James Joyce for his 1922 novel Ulysses.
The Turnstile is a 1912 political novel by the English author A. E. W. Mason. The novel's fictional hero was based party upon the author's own experiences as a Member of parliament, and partly upon his friend Robert Falcon Scott, who at that time had yet to start out on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel is a 1917 detective novella by the British writer A. E. W. Mason featuring his character Inspector Hanaud. Mason had originally written many of the plot elements for an abortive silent film, to be called The Carnival Ball. The novella appeared between Mason's first full-length Hanaud novel, At the Villa Rose (1910), and his second, The House of the Arrow (1934).
The Summons is a 1920 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Set just before and during the Great War, the novel recounts the adventures of Martin Hillyard, a secret service agent, and his army officer friend Harry Luttrell who aims to restore the battered reputation of his regiment.
The Sapphire is a 1933 novel of mystery and adventure by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton.
The Three Gentlemen is a 1932 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. It follows the story of a young couple in ancient Roman times whose love spans the centuries as they are reincarnated in the Elizabethan era, and finally in the early 20th century.
The Dean's Elbow is a 1930 novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, first serialised in Harper's Bazaar from October 1929.