An unopened powder canister bearing the stamp “Dupont Rifle Powder, 1852″ embedded in a tree branch is just one of the curious mysteries the reader will confront in this chapter. There are also alligators and snakes—lots of snakes; and as well, young girls smoking cigarettes. Louise, our courageous […]
Following Louise’s outburst at Harry’s suggestion she spy for him, emotions are still up in the air. She remains stalwart, and Harry is flummoxed by her behavior. Following a request from the captain, Harry gets to strut his stuff once more with another young lady, much to the […]
Chance is the key word, and those readers who have been following the story will quickly relate to the proverb ‘two times lucky, three times a charm’. If Harry’s uncle hadn’t required a stenographer and collapsed mid-sentence, if in the course of the Great White Hurricane, Louise had […]
A refreshing and dramatic change in the narrative treatment. Our narrator has disappeared into the history he has related for readers. Now Gunter uses the form of diary extracts as a literary device to introduce a new pivotal character: Miss Louise Minturn. Rather than the story continuing to […]
In her letter Jesse does not describe or elaborate on her dire predicament. It is only following the arrival of Larchmont’s brother, Harry, back in Paris for all to be revealed in personal dialogue between the two. Given the generous insights of our narrator, our good readers may […]
Although this chapter begins in 1880, it spans the years to 1887. The Baron Montez, Larchmont and his ward, Jessie, arrive in Paris at the centre of a glorious time which in the future will be known as the ‘Belle Epoque’. Imagine wide boulevards where bunches of flowers […]
Twenty-five years after the closing events of the last chapter, Panama is still our setting, though the focus has shifted from the Panama Railroad to a new major engineering challenge: The Panama Canal. The year is 1880 and Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and developer of the Suez […]
This is the last chapter of Book One, dealing with the climax of events on the evening 15th April, 1856, for which the narrator has been preparing the reader. There is a thin line between author and narrator, and in some novels the narrator is distinct, is known, […]
Archibald Clavering Gunter’s life exhibits the marks of a new breed of author—one that in turn exemplifies an emerging species of individual. Homo Economicus, or ‘economic man’: a term coined initially in reaction to John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianist theory and the eminently sensible-sounding principle that “actions are right […]
A brief reflection on the theme of eugenics that Brian Armour identifies in Baron Montez, in his preface to Chapter One. Gunter was himself probably of “mixed race” to a modest degree. Legacies of British Slave-ownership, a web site of University College London, reports that his father, Henry […]
Furin Chime 