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0:33

p I are.com. Welcome

0:40

to All About Agatha the podcast

0:42

dedicated to reading and drinking every

0:44

single mystery novel written by the

0:46

Queen of Crime Dame Agatha Christie.

0:49

I am Camper Donovan and I

0:51

have an interview episode for you.

0:53

I am so excited about this

0:55

interview which has to do with

0:58

a recent find that I think

1:00

it's going to fascinates all of

1:02

you. This is a timely conversation

1:04

that I had here with a

1:07

fellow fan of fictional crime. Much

1:09

as. Could write to the interview where

1:11

all will be explained. My.

1:14

Guess Today is Karen Robinson who

1:16

is a journalist based in London.

1:18

Karen founded and ran the Crime

1:20

Club newsletter for the Times and

1:22

Sunday Times newspapers covering the best

1:24

of contemporary crime fiction, and she

1:26

now serves as a judge for

1:28

the annual John Creasy Dagger, the

1:30

prestigious award given each year by

1:32

the British Crime Writers Association for

1:34

the best first crime novel She

1:36

in the panel have actually just

1:38

chose in this year's winner, but

1:40

she can't tell us what it

1:42

is just yet. I love a

1:44

good mystery of course, and I'm

1:46

looking forward to finding out who

1:48

that winner is, But we have

1:50

something else to discuss today, which

1:52

was the subject of an article

1:54

Care and Roads for the Sunday

1:56

Times recently. it has to do

1:58

with the discovery Me. in the

2:01

archive of the British Psychoanalytical Society,

2:03

and it concerns Agatha Christie, specifically

2:05

Christie's activities during the First World

2:07

War, when, as many of you

2:09

know, she worked as a nurse

2:12

and later as a dispenser in

2:14

her native town of Torquay as

2:16

part of the VAD, the Voluntary

2:18

Aid Detachment. Much

2:20

is made of the fact that this is

2:23

where Agatha Christie became acquainted with poisons, which

2:25

she would go on to use so often

2:27

in her mysteries. Christie actually

2:29

describes this period of her life in

2:31

some detail in her autobiography, and Catherine

2:34

and I have talked about that a lot on

2:36

this podcast in the past, but

2:38

since she tells us so little about

2:41

her writing life in any of her

2:43

autobiographical accounts, we don't have much in

2:45

the way of how this period in

2:47

Christie's life may have contributed to her

2:50

future career as a writer. We also

2:52

don't have very many of her earliest

2:54

writings, and in both regards, the discovery

2:56

made in this archive an absolute gem

2:59

because it gives us a glimpse into Agatha

3:01

Christie's writing endeavors while in the VAD, in

3:04

and around the time she was writing

3:06

her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair

3:08

at Stiles. So I just wanted to

3:10

contextualize this slightly for all of us

3:12

Christie-addled people, and at this point, I

3:14

would love to welcome Karen onto the

3:16

podcast, and Karen, I'm going to ask

3:18

you to take it from here and

3:21

tell us all about this discovery. Well,

3:23

thank you very much, Kemper. It's lovely to

3:25

be here. So I

3:28

was contacted by, well,

3:30

one of my contacts at the

3:33

British Psychological Society who said, we've

3:36

got an Agatha Christie early

3:38

type script, and you

3:41

can imagine currently, be still by beating

3:43

heart. So I

3:45

went off to see it in their

3:47

archive, and rather disappointingly for an archive,

3:49

they didn't make me wear white gloves,

3:51

but very archival, there's a wonderful archivist

3:54

there who's done a lot of work

3:56

on this as well. And

3:58

what he presented, me with

4:01

was a handmade

4:03

magazine, typed

4:06

with all kinds of

4:09

skits, poems, songs, pastiche

4:11

newspaper articles, a

4:14

problem page called Aunt Baggarthon's

4:16

Corner. Very

4:20

jokey, educated,

4:23

very much about the

4:25

world of that VAD hospital

4:28

and the young women who work there. But

4:31

it wasn't

4:33

signed Agatha Christie.

4:37

In fact, some of the items,

4:40

some of the pieces were signed

4:42

AC, and quite

4:44

a few of them had Agatha's name in

4:47

them, Agatha's problem page, Agatha's,

4:49

all this kind of thing, Aunt

4:52

Agatha's Corner. But there were

4:54

other initials. So we

4:57

were thinking, well, there's thought to

4:59

be some kind of issue with

5:02

attribution here. So how did

5:04

this supposed Agatha Christie, but we

5:07

weren't quite sure yet, document

5:10

end up with the esteemed

5:12

Association of British Psychoanalysts.

5:15

It was in the archive of a

5:18

woman who went on to be an extremely

5:20

distinguished psychoanalyst herself, Sylvia

5:23

Payne. And Sylvia

5:25

Payne, Agatha Christie, age 24

5:27

in 1914, sorry,

5:30

I'm digressing here, Agatha Christie, in 1914, age 24,

5:32

a fiancée, at that point she was

5:39

Agatha Miller, but married her

5:41

husband, Arch Christie, in December,

5:43

1914. She was 24. She

5:48

was a gently bred

5:51

young woman, volunteered as so

5:53

many did for the voluntary

5:55

aid detachment to carry out

5:57

nursing duties really quite lowly.

6:00

duties at this hospital that

6:02

had been set up in the town hall

6:04

in Torquay, which has been a very elegant,

6:08

fashionable place to live, seaside resort

6:10

in Devon, and now of course

6:12

the home of the annual Agathroplicity

6:14

Festival. And Sylvia

6:17

Payne was a very interesting woman,

6:19

10 years older than Agatha at that point.

6:21

She was 34 and she was

6:24

married to a GP. She

6:26

had small children and she was living in

6:28

Torquay where his practice was. She

6:31

was a qualified doctor, one of

6:33

very, relatively very, very few at

6:35

that time, one of the women

6:38

qualified as doctors. And she

6:40

was drafted in to run the hospital.

6:42

She was the boss of the hospital.

6:44

She was Agatha's boss. Obviously

6:47

a very female environment. All the men

6:49

were off fighting. The

6:51

patients obviously were all men, wounded

6:54

horribly in body and mind, but

6:57

the whole organization was women

6:59

keeping it going really. So

7:01

Sylvia was Agatha's boss. Now Sylvia's

7:03

not mentioned in this magazine that they're

7:06

not having a go at the boss

7:08

in a satirical way. It's more the

7:10

girls sort of talking, the young women

7:13

talking to each other. So

7:16

the psychoanalysts get this package

7:19

of material from Sylvia

7:22

Payne's son Kenneth, who

7:25

donated her papers to the

7:27

archive. And amongst these

7:29

papers, mostly about psychoanalysis,

7:31

obviously, among the papers

7:34

was a mysterious plain false

7:36

cap manila envelope, Ewan tells

7:38

us, addressed in ink pens

7:40

as Sylvia Payne, the

7:42

address part obscured by a sticker

7:45

and over written in biro with

7:47

the words property of son Kenneth

7:50

Payne and script

7:52

by Agatha Christie, third

7:55

Spencer in talking hospital Devon 1914 to

7:57

18. was

8:00

what was scrawled across it. And

8:02

here was, inside was this handmade

8:05

magazine titled What We

8:07

Did in the Great War. So

8:10

that's where they found it.

8:13

It got nothing to do with psychoanalysis,

8:15

but it was very much for

8:17

Sylvia Payne. Now we're really not sure

8:20

how Sylvia Payne got this, whether

8:23

Agatha sent it to her afterwards. We

8:27

just don't know. You can speculate, but that's, we

8:29

can't, we don't want to speculate. But they obviously

8:31

knew each other. And at a certain point, Agatha

8:35

Christie sent this to Sylvia Payne. Now, as

8:37

I said, you know, I was

8:39

thinking when I was told about

8:43

this, this document, oh my God,

8:45

you know, I've never before seen

8:47

Agatha Christie manuscript. However,

8:51

be still my beating heart, it turned

8:53

out that, and then of course it

8:55

was, well, look, it's not signed. It's

8:57

just AC. How do we know it's

8:59

her? Although the

9:01

clues are obviously there. And

9:04

then I contacted the Agatha

9:06

Christie archive and the

9:08

archivist there, which is run by Agatha Christie's

9:11

grandson, Matthew Pritchard, and

9:14

contains all kinds of wonderful things. And the

9:16

archivist is called Joe. We

9:19

were speaking on the phone and I told him

9:22

what I got. And he said, oh yeah,

9:24

he said, that sounds like the one we've

9:26

got. Imagine my head just kind of

9:28

banging on the table. And

9:32

so I thought, well, okay, so

9:35

attribution is now no longer a

9:37

problem. And in fact, this one in

9:39

their archive, people had seen it and written

9:41

about it a bit. So it's not a

9:44

hundred percent new discovery, but at least

9:46

we know it was something to do

9:49

with Agatha. And she had a big

9:51

hand in it. But I think you

9:53

can tell that from so

9:56

much of the style and the content.

10:00

talk a bit about the B.A.D.s

10:02

and Agatha's world at that point.

10:04

Yes, please. Go ahead. Keep

10:06

it brief. So Agatha, at the

10:08

start of the First World War, her

10:10

family, as people know, had

10:13

had many problems, but they

10:15

still were the genteel household.

10:18

And this is a detail that I'm absolutely

10:20

fascinated with. She was a young unmarried

10:22

woman. She lived at home. And

10:24

her life consisted

10:27

of dress fittings, croquet,

10:29

tea parties, well-behaved,

10:32

well-mannered genteel

10:35

stuff. And young

10:37

women in those days before the war, when

10:40

they went out or in society,

10:42

they wore corsets. And

10:45

what I still... I will find this out

10:47

by the time we do our event next

10:49

year, because I really

10:51

want to know, did the B.A.D.s

10:53

wear corsets? Because all

10:56

these well-watered women, they

10:58

must have had to dispense with

11:00

the corsets while they were mocking

11:02

the wards. And

11:04

the corsets, they stand for

11:06

a kind of real change.

11:09

And it wasn't just Agatha

11:11

Christie, everyone's life in England.

11:13

And Britain was upturned by the

11:15

First World War. The men went off, the

11:17

women had to hold the fort

11:19

and do things. There was tragedy,

11:21

there was violence, there was

11:23

death. It was a huge,

11:26

huge change. And that was

11:29

part of Agatha's upbringing, growing

11:33

up. The B.A.D.s, there were a few other well-known

11:37

writers, actually, who were B.A.D.s. Vera

11:40

Britton, who wrote Testament of Youth,

11:42

she was a B.A.D. there's E.M.

11:45

Delafield, who wrote Dire of a Country

11:47

Lady, she was one. The

11:50

middle-class young women flocked in

11:52

to volunteer to do this

11:56

There isn't any hint of any kind of

11:58

snobbery in the what we did

12:00

in the Great War. It's funny and it's

12:03

teasing of each other, but it's

12:05

been recorded about the B.A.D.s that,

12:08

well, the regular nurses disapproved of

12:11

them because they came in without

12:13

training and they didn't have the

12:15

discipline and the training that the

12:17

regular nurses did. So, as

12:20

in any kind of situation, I suppose,

12:22

where the volunteers arrive, the

12:25

professionals are thinking, oh, really?

12:28

And also, it's also been reported

12:30

that some of these genteel

12:33

young ladies were rather snobby

12:35

about the regular nurses. So,

12:37

there was, you know, these people were

12:39

mixing in a way and meeting each other

12:41

in a way that hadn't happened before the

12:43

war. So, Agnes and Christie, as

12:46

she was after December of 1940, became,

12:49

you know, it really opened

12:51

up her world, really, which

12:54

for a writer has got to be a good

12:56

thing, hasn't it? All classes, all types of people.

12:59

I say that it was mostly

13:02

women, which indeed, obviously, it was,

13:04

but there were a few chaps

13:06

in the dispensary because the other

13:08

important thing about what Agatha

13:11

did in the war is

13:13

that she moved from the ward

13:15

to the dispensary where

13:18

medicines were mixed up

13:20

and, you know, taken out to

13:22

give to the patients. And

13:25

she learned a lot. In

13:27

the Christie archive run by Matthew

13:30

Pritchard, they have a

13:32

copy of her book of,

13:34

you know, medicines or drugs

13:36

or the pharmacopoeia. It's

13:39

so detailed. Tiny

13:41

print, all these, you know, Latin names,

13:43

what it is, what it does, how

13:45

it's done. You know, she studied that

13:48

and really learned, you know, the

13:50

arts of, well, of

13:53

medicines, well, compounds that can

13:55

heal, but also can

13:57

kill. And there's a famous... example,

14:01

in an interview she gave much later

14:03

on about her time in the war

14:05

where there was she didn't have a

14:07

lot of respect for the old

14:10

boys who were in charge of the dispensary

14:12

who did not have a lot of respect

14:15

for a young woman like her. And

14:17

at one point she, the old

14:20

one of the chats made a

14:23

whole kind of tray of

14:26

doses of medicine to give around the

14:28

ward, painkiller, I'm not sure

14:30

what it was meant to be, but Agnes

14:32

Christie saw him doing this and

14:35

thought he's got that wrong, you know,

14:38

this is not going to do them good,

14:40

it's going

14:42

to do them harm. But she in

14:44

those days couldn't say, I think you've

14:47

made a mistake. So all

14:49

she could do was knock it

14:51

to the ground, to the floor. And

14:53

then of course it was, oh you stupid clumsy

14:55

girl, but at least, you know, she stopped a

14:57

whole ward full of men getting the wrong medicine.

15:00

You've probably heard that story before. Well,

15:02

she recounts it at great length in

15:04

her autobiography actually. And even in the

15:06

autobiography she only will refer to him

15:09

as Mr. P. And she

15:11

tells that story and the way she tells it,

15:13

I mean, it's scary because she's, it

15:16

plays out almost like in a horror movie where she

15:18

says, well, if I say something to

15:20

him, he'll insist that no, he has to be

15:22

correct and all these people are essentially going to

15:24

be poisoned. So she finally, you know,

15:27

she figures out that she's going to drop it.

15:29

And then she even steps on it after she

15:31

drops it and she's like, Oh, I've ruined

15:33

all these. And he picks up the

15:35

one piece of it she hadn't stepped

15:37

on and says, Oh, well this one

15:39

looks okay. And she grabs it from

15:41

him and throws it in the trash

15:43

and says, no, they're dirty. And this

15:46

is the same man who also later

15:48

on tells her about how he keeps

15:50

a lump of curare in his

15:52

pocket because it's so deadly

15:54

and it just makes him feel powerful.

15:56

And she actually used him as a

16:00

a direct inspiration for the murderer in the

16:02

pale horse. I won't get more specific than

16:04

that. Don't want to spoil the pale horse,

16:06

but she brings that up even in the

16:09

autobiography that Mr. P is exactly who she

16:11

was thinking of when she

16:13

crafted that murder. And he's one of the

16:15

most upsetting murderers within the

16:17

canon, which is saying something. So yeah, it's

16:20

a striking story for sure. Yes,

16:22

absolutely. And you can see how her

16:24

world has very much opened up

16:27

in these awful circumstances. The poisons

16:29

is so interesting. So many of

16:32

the novels do revolve around poison.

16:34

And this is on a more

16:36

jokey register. But one of the items

16:39

in what we did in the Great

16:41

War is a

16:44

report on a coroner's interest at

16:46

Torquay. And it informs its

16:48

readers that the deceased

16:50

was supposed to be progressing favorably when

16:53

he died suddenly, immediately

16:55

after swallowing a dose of niacin. Now,

16:58

none of the album's contributors actually

17:00

put their initials to this particular

17:02

item. But I think the resonance

17:04

with the secret literary output is

17:08

kind of unmissable really, isn't it? It

17:11

absolutely is. And I actually wanted to ask you

17:13

a question because it seems as though I

17:15

know toward the end of this

17:18

document as well in this magazine, there's reference made to

17:20

the war is ending and

17:22

this club has to end. So it seems as

17:24

if this document was made when

17:27

Christie was in the dispensary, since she spent approximately

17:29

the first, let's say two years from 1914 to

17:31

1916 as a nurse on the ward. And

17:36

then the second two years from 1916 to 1918 as

17:39

a dispenser. So was this,

17:42

I know this is a little speculative, it's hard

17:44

to say, and I wanna be clear about that,

17:47

but it seems as though this must have been

17:49

put together while she was

17:51

a dispenser. Is that right to say?

17:54

I think so, yes. There are

17:56

nurses and matrons and obviously some

17:58

of the other authors. were

18:01

probably not dispensers.

18:03

They put it together, you know, at the

18:05

end, it says the war is over. But

18:07

I think the pieces probably date from, they

18:09

didn't write it all in a rush at

18:11

the end of the war. I think it

18:13

had been something that Agatha and her pals

18:16

had been doing for quite some time and

18:18

all contributing to. And yes, so you're

18:20

right, she would have been a dispenser

18:22

for most of it, but remembering as

18:24

well her nursing. But it was the

18:27

poisons and the dispensary, that

18:30

are medicines, I should call them, I suppose,

18:33

that are the main contributor

18:35

to her work. Just the

18:37

general wartime atmosphere. But anyway, so

18:39

what I'd just like to read out

18:41

is one of the spoof

18:44

job ads for her

18:46

in the magazine. It's one

18:49

of the spoof job ads, job

18:51

wanted ads, in the magazine.

18:53

And it says this, literary

18:55

ladies seek situation,

18:58

dispenser, musical,

19:00

thoroughly domesticated, good

19:03

cook, toilet specialist. Now

19:06

these generally, really, gentlemen have come a long

19:09

way from their children's war lives. And it's

19:11

just, is that her

19:16

other, is that who they're talking

19:18

about? We don't know, but literary

19:20

lady, dispenser. I think that was

19:23

a joke at her expense, wasn't it?

19:25

But the tone here is

19:29

educated and witty. And

19:32

one of the spoof legal queries

19:34

are answered by Pericles.

19:38

And Aunt Agatha's puzzle page,

19:40

another aunt Agatha, who's trending her

19:42

range from problem page to puzzle page,

19:45

includes a dig at

19:47

Cubist art, which back

19:50

then is, it was quite something,

19:52

I think. And the

19:54

writers also, what's really lovely

19:57

is they demonstrate a deep warmth

20:00

affection for each other's

20:02

foibles. There's a running

20:04

joke about trying to keep chickens. I

20:07

think these

20:09

jokes, and there's another running

20:12

joke about pearly Tusco toothpaste,

20:15

some made up silly toothpaste

20:17

brand, and that shows a keen

20:19

sense of the ridiculous. I think this

20:22

was all an essential counterbalance to the

20:25

appalling injuries and the shattered lives that

20:27

they cared for every day on the

20:30

wards. There was that awful darkness, but

20:33

that's how they kept themselves going. And at

20:35

the end, it says, you know,

20:37

the war is over, the club

20:39

must close. They obviously felt themselves

20:41

very much to be, you

20:43

know, a band of sisters. Yeah,

20:46

it's a fascinating document. It sounds like

20:48

a fascinating document. I'm going to include

20:50

a link to this for anyone who's

20:52

interested, but we should mention that this

20:55

handmade magazine is actually

20:58

on exhibition currently at

21:00

the Royal College of Nursing in Cavendish

21:02

Square in London. I believe it's called

21:04

Shining a Light, a history of nursing

21:07

support work, and that's going to be

21:09

available to view from May

21:11

through October of this year. Obviously,

21:13

the focus of the exhibition is

21:15

not Agatha Christie. It's

21:18

not for mystery fans per se, but

21:20

I would 100%, you know,

21:22

be making a pilgrimage there and taking a look

21:25

at everything once I'm there, but also go and

21:28

take an extra close look at

21:30

this document at that point. And then it sounds

21:32

like there may be something in the works for

21:35

next year's Agatha Christie Festival as

21:37

well. Well, what we're

21:39

hoping is nothing's confirmed yet

21:42

is to have an

21:44

event and an exhibition where we'll have

21:46

the document, but of course, you've only

21:48

ever really looked at one page at once, but

21:50

to have some proper photographs taken of

21:52

the other pages so people can really

21:55

have the time to read all these

21:58

funny little jokes and... extraordinary

22:01

skits and parodies. Yeah,

22:04

to pour over them. Yes, not with our fingers,

22:06

paging through obviously. Can't do that, unfortunately. He did

22:08

with white gloves, that was not good. Yeah, yeah.

22:10

Well, I mean, a couple of things also just

22:12

come to mind from from what you were saying,

22:15

Karen, which I'd love to talk about a little

22:17

bit more, which is I've never even really thought

22:19

about the sort of the

22:21

bifurcation of experience that she had in

22:23

the VAD, being a nurse

22:25

and then being a dispenser in that way,

22:28

which is why I did kind of want

22:30

to pinpoint when this was probably happening. And

22:32

you can see that bifurcation in what she

22:34

says in her autobiography. I mean, I

22:36

went back to her autobiography in preparation

22:38

for this conversation because I meant, as

22:40

I mentioned up top, she really does

22:42

talk about this period at

22:45

some length in her autobiography. And I think

22:47

it's really interesting just to note how

22:49

differently she thought about nursing versus dispensing.

22:51

She writes, from the beginning, I enjoyed

22:53

nursing. I took to it easily and

22:55

found it and have always found it

22:57

one of the most rewarding professions that

22:59

anyone can follow. I think

23:02

if I had not married that after

23:04

the war, I should have trained as a real

23:06

hospital nurse. Maybe there is something

23:08

in heredity. My grandfather's first wife, my

23:10

American grandmother, was a hospital nurse, which

23:13

is really interesting. So she seems to

23:15

have taken to nursing. And then this

23:17

is what she said about dispensing. I

23:20

can't say I enjoyed dispensing as much as

23:22

nursing. I think I had a real vocation

23:25

for nursing and would have been happy as

23:27

a hospital nurse. Dispensing was interesting for a

23:29

time, but became monotonous. I should

23:31

never have cared to do it as a

23:33

permanent job. On the other hand, it was

23:35

fun being with my friends. And I think

23:38

that's a little bit of an oblique

23:40

reference, probably, to what she was doing

23:42

when they were putting together this document.

23:44

It seems to me that she had

23:46

more, quote unquote,

23:48

downtime as a dispenser

23:50

than she did as a nurse, which

23:53

is interesting because she credits

23:55

that downtime or that free time

23:57

with why she was able to...

24:00

to start writing a detective story, why she was

24:02

able to start writing the mysterious affair at Stiles.

24:05

And I think that if she had stayed

24:07

on as a nurse for that entire time,

24:10

she probably wouldn't have had quite frankly, the

24:12

leisure. You know, I don't want to say

24:14

leisure. She's still working and she's doing very,

24:16

very hard work, but just to be the

24:18

room to be able to think

24:20

about and even work on what

24:23

would become the mysterious affair at Stiles.

24:26

And I think we can see that she was sort

24:28

of airing those creative pursuits,

24:30

you know, perhaps in a little bit more

24:32

of a fun and frivolous and collective way

24:35

in this document, but it seems like she

24:37

was exercising the same muscle there. And that

24:39

it's something that she was able to do

24:41

once she had transitioned to her

24:43

dispensing work. And I just want to quote

24:46

from her one more time in the autobiography.

24:49

It was while I was working in the dispensary that

24:51

I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.

24:54

Unlike nursing, where there always was

24:56

something to do, dispensing consisted of

24:58

slack or busy periods. Sometimes

25:00

I would be on duty alone in the afternoon with hardly

25:02

anything to do but sit about. Having

25:04

seen that the stock bottles were full and

25:06

attended to, one was at liberty to do

25:09

anything one pleased except leave the dispensary. And

25:12

I just love the idea that we can imagine

25:14

her, yes, sitting there and thinking about what would

25:16

become the mysterious affair at Stiles, but also turning

25:19

to this project that she was

25:21

doing in a similarly creative spirit with her

25:23

friends. And it just makes looking

25:25

at that document, I think reading through it,

25:27

that much more fascinating because it places you

25:29

within that creatively fertile

25:31

period and in her young life.

25:34

Oh yes, it was the start of

25:36

everything really, wasn't it? And of course,

25:39

Captain Hastings, because Poirot

25:41

and Hastings appear for the

25:43

first time in the mysterious

25:45

styles, her first novel. And

25:48

Hastings was a

25:51

wounded soldier. He'd been sent

25:53

back, in related back to

25:55

Britain from the war. She saw so many of

25:58

them in her daily life. life

26:00

in the hospital. And the

26:02

court war was a war refugee from

26:04

Belgium. So it seeped

26:07

into everything. I think it's

26:09

interesting that maybe Ewie, she did have

26:11

more time to write it, but the

26:14

poison plot, I think, and the subsequent

26:16

poison plots in so many, well, a

26:19

good handful of the other novels, definitely

26:22

had their birth there. And I

26:24

do wonder what Agatha

26:26

Christie's books would have been like if she

26:28

never had the chance to

26:30

work in a dispensary. Absolutely.

26:32

I mean, I think that it's, and

26:35

it's not even just the exposure to

26:37

these poisons, slash medicines that

26:39

she was working with. It was just, I think, opening

26:41

the opening up of her life, like you said, seemingly

26:43

not wearing a corset mixing with lots of

26:46

different people. We will get to the question

26:48

is that the, the, Yes, it

26:50

would absolutely. I want to know for myself

26:52

as well. But just all of the,

26:55

all of the different people she was meeting,

26:57

both in terms of the nurses, the doctors,

27:00

the chemists, and of course the soldiers, the

27:02

people who were coming in and she

27:04

talks in her autobiography about speaking with all

27:06

of them, it was opening, I think her

27:08

experience up in a way that very much

27:10

affected her writing and probably spurred her on

27:12

to write. And then once she moved on

27:14

to the dispensary, giving her a little bit

27:16

of the leisure time that she always had

27:18

before the war. Right. I mean, it's not

27:21

like she didn't have that before, but that

27:23

experience combined with some of the free time

27:25

is what allowed her to do it. And

27:28

of course she had young

27:30

Agatha Miller had always written

27:32

poems and created soul. She

27:34

was always doing something, but

27:36

yeah, this, this certainly focused

27:39

her in a very particular

27:41

way. Yeah. Well, and I also

27:43

just wanted to highlight what I believe is

27:45

the final item in this magazine, at least

27:47

from the article in the Sunday Times that

27:50

I read, which was this spoofy pharmaceutical

27:52

style Harlequinon. Okay. Let's talk

27:54

about that for a second because

27:56

we know I've talked a lot about it on the podcast about

27:59

how Christie was fast. by the Harlequinade

28:01

from a young age. She actually wrote a long

28:03

poem about the characters within the Harlequinade.

28:05

It's one of the first things she wrote. It's

28:07

featured in her first Poirot short story, The Affair

28:10

at the Victory Ball, which you can tell from

28:12

the title is placed just at the end of

28:14

the First World War. And

28:16

she would of course go on to write a

28:18

series of short stories that would be collected as

28:20

the mysterious Mr. Quinn, which plays with various aspects

28:22

of the Harlequinade. So this one

28:24

features the characters that

28:26

use the pharmaciello, chemisthen, and dispensella.

28:31

Could you talk a little bit more about that? Well,

28:34

yes. Well, I think you you've always said

28:36

it all really. You

28:39

know, the traditional story of, you know,

28:41

Harlequin, and the- Hallebein.

28:45

Hallebein, Hallebein. I think the most moving

28:47

thing though is that

28:49

last line, the war is o'er

28:51

the club must close. And

28:54

that's the end. And they recognize

28:56

that they've had this very intense

28:58

experience, and now onto

29:00

whatever the piece is going to

29:02

bring. Yeah, and that's actually a

29:05

perfect segue because the other thing I want you

29:07

to talk about is this tone, this sort of

29:09

witty, airy tone that the

29:11

pieces seem to have. I

29:14

would love to compare that a little bit or

29:16

contrast it really with what

29:18

her, you know, real experience

29:21

was in the VAD to

29:24

the extent that we can even access it,

29:26

right? And again, I'll just go direct to

29:28

the source, which is her autobiography. She's

29:31

mainly sunny, I think in the same

29:33

way about her wartime experience when she

29:35

writes about it from a great distance.

29:37

She tells this really amusing story about

29:39

having to transcribe a love letter for

29:41

a soldier who could neither read nor

29:43

write. And then after she did, he

29:45

said, okay, now I want you to

29:47

write that in triplicate for

29:49

the three different women who he was willing at

29:51

the same time. And she was even

29:53

like, don't you want me to make it a little different? And he

29:55

was like, no, you don't have to. And

29:58

she has a bunch of amusing stories. stories like

30:00

that. But she does also recount

30:03

fainting during her first surgery, which was

30:05

an abdominal surgery and quite bloody, and

30:08

how she always had to turn her head

30:10

away when the first incision would be made

30:12

with the surgeon's scalpel. And

30:15

at that point as well,

30:17

the fainting, there was a

30:19

reaction in the

30:21

operating theatre, not surprisingly, really.

30:24

But we were talking

30:26

about the slight edge

30:28

between the professional nurses

30:30

and the volunteers. And

30:33

she described in an interview how she

30:36

attended her first operation and she was

30:39

shaking all over. And

30:42

a sister Anderson didn't

30:44

say, Oh, come along, Cynthia, come and sit

30:46

down. She just told her

30:49

off, really, and told her to start

30:51

together. There

30:53

was no cruelty given for this

30:55

sheltered young woman suddenly seeing surgery

30:58

on a very wounded person. Yeah,

31:00

absolutely. I mean, she also references,

31:03

and this is somewhat of a

31:05

notorious reference, or I think one

31:07

that gets a lot of play

31:09

among Christie enthusiasts or Christie scholars

31:11

having to do with the disposal

31:13

of an amputated limb. Oh,

31:15

yeah. Yeah, she writes in the autobiography,

31:17

it is all somewhat of a haze

31:19

now. Yet one recalls odd instances standing

31:22

out in one's memory. I remember

31:24

a young probationer who had been assisting in the theatre

31:26

and had been left behind to clean up. And

31:29

I had helped her take an amputated leg down to

31:31

throw into the furnace. It was almost

31:33

too much for the child. Then we cleared up all

31:35

the mess and blood together. She was, I

31:37

think, too young and too new to it to

31:39

have been given that task to do alone so

31:41

soon. And I think how

31:44

like Christie to put this memory in the

31:46

context of someone else not being

31:48

able to handle this grim task, obviously,

31:50

it's something that stuck with her all

31:52

this time for a reason. And understandably,

31:54

she was putting a limb

31:56

into a furnace. But I think you can

31:58

get a sense of that. sort of the

32:00

stiff upper lip to be cliched about it,

32:03

which sort of resonates throughout

32:06

her accounts in the autobiography and seems

32:08

to resonate in what we did in

32:10

the Great War in this collection. It

32:13

was a hard time, but they had a lot

32:15

of good laughs and they're going to choose to

32:17

focus on the laughs. And that's the exact attitude

32:19

that ushers us into the good times

32:22

of the 1920s, right? Which

32:24

could sometimes be a brittle sort of a good

32:26

humor. There's a lot of lightness

32:28

and laughter on the surface, but perhaps a

32:30

lot of trauma directly behind it. I don't

32:32

know. Do you think that's fair? I

32:34

think that's entirely right. So yeah,

32:37

the tone of this wonderful

32:39

magazine is, it

32:41

just shows you the resilient, good

32:44

humor, common sense camaraderie.

32:46

That's what those women had with

32:49

and before each other, very much

32:51

the stiff upper lip. The incident

32:53

with the amputated limb. I think

32:55

that young person there was about

32:57

11, really

32:59

young, a child really. And that gives you

33:02

suddenly a little insight into

33:04

how things, what was going on

33:06

during the First World War. It

33:08

was literally all hands to the

33:10

pump. Everybody do what they could. And if

33:12

they had to have children helping out in the

33:15

hospital, so be it. And that's

33:17

almost an incidental fact that you

33:19

get there and think, my God,

33:21

you know, imagine 11 year olds

33:23

now suddenly having to do that. I

33:25

didn't realize that, but that's, I mean, I think

33:27

there was a lot of that sort of a

33:29

thing. And the one other reference I just want

33:32

to make here, I think it's a really interesting

33:34

one and one that we should never forget with

33:36

Christy. It has to do

33:38

with her Mary Westmacott books because we

33:40

always get a lot of autobiographical detail

33:43

in the Mary Westmacott books. And because I

33:45

think she was, you know,

33:47

a somewhat reticent person, we sometimes

33:49

get more of the emotional truth.

33:52

I think this is of course my theorizing

33:54

here as a reader, but I think sometimes

33:57

we get more emotional truth as to her

33:59

personal experience. experiences in

34:01

the Mary Westmaquot novels. You know, it's

34:03

something I've only gotten to talk about

34:06

on the podcast's Patreon account, where we

34:08

cover Mary Westmaquot novels, but the

34:10

Mary Westmaquot novel, Unfinished Portrait, for example,

34:13

practically has line for line recreations of

34:15

her stories in her autobiography, but often

34:17

with a lot of emotional context added.

34:20

And I think we get something similar

34:22

in Christie's first Mary Westmaquot novel, which

34:24

is Giant's Bread. And there's

34:26

a young woman in that novel named Nell, who becomes a

34:29

nurse during the Great War. And I just

34:31

want to, it's not a long quote, but I

34:33

just want to read out this little description of

34:35

her experience as a nurse in what feels very,

34:37

very similar to what Christie did during the war.

34:40

And here is how she puts it. Little

34:43

by little, she sank into the hospital rut.

34:46

At first, she had suffered a heart-rending pain at

34:48

the sight of the wounded. The

34:50

first dressing of wounds at which she assisted was

34:52

almost more than she could bear. Those

34:55

who long to nurse, that's put in quotation

34:57

marks, usually brought a certain

34:59

amount of emotionalism to the task, but

35:01

they were soon purged of it. Blood,

35:04

wounds, suffering, or

35:06

everyday matters. And

35:09

we even get a recreation of the

35:11

amputated leg with that young nurse who

35:13

was forced to do it in Giant's

35:16

Bread. My thought on it is

35:18

that Christie felt like she could air those

35:20

sorts of grievances and the grim side

35:23

of things in a fictional account like

35:25

that. But when it came to the

35:27

way that one conducted oneself in one's

35:29

own life, you put

35:31

a good face on things and

35:35

you focused on the camaraderie and the

35:37

way that we were going to get

35:39

through this together. And I just think

35:42

it's a really interesting contrast in shows

35:45

Christie, the person versus Christie, the writer, and

35:47

how she used her writing sometimes, I think,

35:49

to be able to express

35:51

herself differently. And I just love the idea that

35:53

this too is a creative document, but it's being

35:56

used in a very different way. And part of

35:58

that, obviously, is the fact that it's- is

36:00

collaborative, but it's just fascinating to

36:02

me to contrast the two. Yes,

36:04

absolutely. I think what you said

36:06

about the atmosphere of the 1920s

36:09

being somewhat febrile

36:12

in its joy brings us

36:14

back to Sylvia Payne, because

36:16

Sylvia Payne was a qualified

36:18

doctor at the start of the

36:21

war and when she ran the

36:23

VAD hospital in Torquay Town Hall.

36:26

And after the war, she went

36:29

to work in something called the

36:31

Medico Psychological Clinic in Brunswick

36:33

Square in London, which had

36:35

been founded in 1913. It was mainly for psychological help

36:40

and as the war went on,

36:43

increasingly they treated men

36:45

with, well, they didn't call

36:47

it PTSD then, did they? But what they

36:49

called war shock. And psychoanalyst

36:52

Ken Robinson, who was

36:55

formerly the honorary archivist of the Institute

36:58

of Psychoanalysis and has been

37:00

very helpful explaining about Sylvia

37:02

Payne to me, said that

37:04

her decision to seek psychoanalytic

37:06

training and then become

37:08

a preeminent and

37:10

pioneering psychoanalyst grew

37:13

out of her experience of war shock

37:15

and she wasn't alone

37:17

in that. So that was all

37:19

part of the tenor of the times. Yeah.

37:22

Oh, that's fascinating. And I think that's an

37:24

important point just to emphasize she was a

37:27

medical doctor when she was working at

37:30

the hospital in Torquay during the

37:32

war. She had her medical degree.

37:35

Oh, yes. Yeah. It was one of, I

37:37

think, something like 3% of

37:40

the qualified doctors in the UK at

37:42

that time were women. Well,

37:44

it wasn't a thing that women did.

37:46

So she was pioneering on many fronts.

37:49

But yes, we don't

37:52

really know what Agatha

37:56

and Sylvia, how, you know,

37:58

what their life, if... they

38:00

had any contact after the war.

38:02

At some point, they had some

38:05

contact and Sylvia was had

38:11

two copies and sent

38:14

her one. Don't know if there are any

38:16

other copies around in other people's archives

38:18

or family papers. But

38:21

you know, we really did. Agatha Christie had,

38:24

not surprisingly, as a very

38:27

accomplished, distinguished woman

38:29

herself. A lot of equally

38:32

distinguished women friends in

38:34

different fields of endeavor.

38:36

But there's nothing so far

38:38

come up to show the two of them together

38:42

after the war. That they

38:44

had any significant interaction? Never know.

38:46

Yeah, you never know. Well, it

38:49

seems that she did send it,

38:51

even the address, right, is on

38:53

the envelope that this came in

38:55

that Christie herself, perhaps, sent

38:58

it to her that the address is written out

39:00

in her hand. The Christie

39:03

handwriting experts have had a look

39:06

at that. It's very possible.

39:08

But, you know, we can

39:10

speculate, but we really

39:12

don't know. Although, of course, there

39:15

are other writers and contributors

39:17

to this document. We

39:21

know there are two of them, so it's

39:23

not unique. Although each of the two,

39:25

the one the Christie archive has

39:27

and the psychoanalyst

39:29

one, they are

39:31

unique because the hand watercolored

39:34

portraits of dispensers and

39:36

matrons and nurses and that

39:39

are part of this

39:41

project are all hand done. And

39:43

so each one is different. There

39:46

are slight differences between the two because

39:49

they're not carbon copies. They were

39:51

typed and

39:54

then typed again. How long is it,

39:56

by the way? It's about 50 pages

39:58

long. with

40:00

the text and the

40:02

illustrations. Oh wow, that's great. That's

40:06

a nice substantial magazine

40:08

there. Oh yes, and it contains

40:10

this musical notation. They were very

40:12

cultured and educated, the women who

40:14

wrote this. There was musical notation

40:17

to songs they'd made up themselves.

40:20

And Dr. Michael Parsons,

40:23

who brought the document in with

40:25

Sylvia Payne's analysis, he

40:27

looked at the musical notation and

40:30

started to hum it. And he knew,

40:32

obviously he could very educated man, he

40:34

could read music as

40:37

well as being psychoanalyst. And he

40:39

recognized first world war

40:41

popular tunes that his

40:43

own father used to

40:46

hump when he was a little boy.

40:48

So, you know, it's terribly

40:50

resonant of that time.

40:54

Yeah, and also the other interesting

40:57

thing we were talking about, you

40:59

know, there are two copies now

41:01

we know, not exactly copies, but

41:03

not exactly identical. But

41:05

there were of course other writers

41:08

and one of whose features

41:10

a lot is called EM. Well,

41:12

that's her initials. And

41:16

I'm just wondering, you know, do

41:18

EM's family have her copy? Did

41:20

she keep the copy? Are

41:22

there others? Yeah, well, I mean, isn't

41:25

she identified as the third dispenser? I mean,

41:27

I would think there has to be first

41:29

and second dispenser copies too. Well,

41:32

yes, very possibly. Maybe

41:34

they'll start flooding in

41:37

now. Right, right. Well, then,

41:39

you know, even the musical notation and the

41:41

musicality of it, that's so Christie as well.

41:43

She composed her own waltz when

41:46

she was younger and she studied in Paris.

41:48

She wanted to be a singer

41:50

or a concert pianist. She ultimately

41:52

decided she did not have the

41:55

Constitution for performing because her nerves

41:58

would get the better of her. She talks about that. in

42:00

her autobiography as well, that she says it was

42:02

as though her body would rebel against her

42:04

and she wouldn't be able to do what

42:07

she wanted it to do, which is why

42:09

writing suits her so much more since there's

42:11

nothing performative about that. But, you

42:13

know, not that I'm saying she did all

42:15

of the, you know, the musical notation

42:18

in there, but I'm sure she would have

42:20

very much appreciated it and taken part in

42:22

it and just sort of taken joy in

42:24

that aspect of the creative process

42:26

as well. Exactly. As you

42:28

say, we don't know if she did, but

42:30

she certainly could have. No, no,

42:33

I cannot wait at some point,

42:36

however it happens, either by visiting the

42:38

Royal College of Nursing in Cavendish Square,

42:40

where this is currently on exhibition, or

42:42

perhaps if it works out, potentially this

42:44

will be something that we can all

42:46

see at the Agatha Christie

42:48

Festival next year, maybe even with a

42:50

panel about it. But I think this

42:53

is just a fascinating document

42:55

that I had never heard of before,

42:57

even though another version of it existed

42:59

in the archive. There's so much, there's

43:01

always something new to discover, I think,

43:03

when it comes to Agatha Christie, and

43:05

this is just really,

43:07

really, I think, fascinating entry into a

43:10

part of her life that we don't

43:12

necessarily talk about all that much because

43:14

we don't often have a way of

43:17

accessing it, but we really do with this

43:19

document. So I really appreciate being able to

43:21

talk about it at some length

43:23

with you, Karen. Thank you so much for

43:25

taking the time today. Thank you, Kemper.

43:27

It's been fascinating, and I've

43:29

learned a lot from your expertise. Hopefully,

43:32

I will see you at the Agatha Christie Festival,

43:34

if not this year, the next year. Hope

43:37

so, yeah. Thank

43:43

you so much to Karen Robinson. What

43:45

a great conversation we had, and I

43:48

am definitely going to try to look up

43:50

that exhibition when I am in England in

43:53

September. As I said I would, I am

43:55

providing a link in the show notes to

43:57

that exhibition for anyone who would like to

43:59

attend. For next week's episode,

44:01

I'm doing a little bit of a different theme.

44:03

It is Pride Month in

44:07

June here in the United States. Every

44:09

June is Pride Month. And

44:11

I thought that was a great opportunity to

44:14

do an episode focusing on the

44:16

quote unquote gay characters of Agatha

44:18

Christie. Are they gay? Are they

44:20

queer? What do we even mean

44:22

by those words? I will

44:24

get into it on the episode. And

44:26

I will also be rerunning one of

44:28

my very favorite interview episodes that Catherine

44:31

and I did with a long time

44:33

friend of the podcast, Jamie Bernthal, whose

44:36

book Queering Agatha Christie has

44:38

been essential reading for

44:40

this podcast. We did that interview some time

44:43

ago, so I'm sure the audio quality is

44:45

really bad. But I

44:47

think it's worth revisiting. And I

44:49

always love being able to showcase

44:51

Catherine here on this podcast whenever

44:53

I can. So that is

44:55

what I'll be doing for my next

44:58

episode, a pride filled episode. You,

45:00

of course, can always check out the podcast's

45:02

bonus content over on Patreon. I have put

45:04

a link in the show notes. For

45:07

June, I will be comparing Agatha

45:09

Christie's theatrical play The Stranger and

45:12

Frank Vosper slash Agatha Christie's

45:14

play Love from a Stranger.

45:16

It's going to be one of my

45:18

All About Agatha in the theater episodes. So

45:21

going over to Patreon, if that wets

45:23

your appetite, you can always

45:25

email me at allaboutthedameatgmail.com. You can find

45:28

the podcast on Twitter at All About

45:30

the Dame and on Instagram at All

45:32

About Agatha. You can

45:35

find me on Facebook at Kemper

45:37

Donovan Books. And you can

45:39

buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy

45:41

Body in the United States, the United

45:43

Kingdom and Australia and New Zealand.

45:45

I have provided links for all of those

45:47

territories. Check it out in the show notes.

45:50

I believe that we are up to 999 ratings

45:52

in Apple podcast listeners. Please

45:58

be the one. to put

46:00

us over the edge into 1,000 reviews.

46:05

It will make me so very happy. Thank

46:07

you to everyone who has already provided a

46:09

rating and or review, very, very appreciated. And

46:11

I'll see you next time, bye. Have

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