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CALLED BACK, Hugh Conway’s most famous novel, was first published in 1883 as a ‘Christmas annual’ by a small Bristol publishing firm. The story rapidly earned such popular acclaim that ‘many prophesied the displacement of Wilkie Collins by the new star’, according to one of Collins’ obituaries. Certainly, the book caused much more of a sensation than the first detective novel of a young Scottish writer four years later, A Study in Scarlet. Yet today, Conway’s name is much less well-known than Wilkie Collins’, let alone Arthur Conan Doyle’s. So it is easy to forget that his reputation endured long after his premature death in 1885. Called Back entertained a later generation of readers when it was republished in the Detective Story Club series in 1929, and was also filmed twice, in 1914 and 1933.

John Sutherland, an academic expert on Victorian fiction, has neatly summarised Called Back as a ‘sensational novel of murder, amnesia, Siberian-exile, political assassination and detection’. Who could possibly resist such a confection? The main events of the story take place in the 1860s; they are recalled later by the narrator, Gilbert Vaughan, a respectable Englishman with a hatred of mysteries ‘who has a romance hidden away beneath an outwardly prosaic life’.

At the age of 25, Vaughan is struck blind. Leaving his house in London one night, he becomes lost, and witnesses a mysterious killing. Confident that they cannot be recognised, the perpetrators allow him to escape with his life. Vaughan later recovers his sight and, on a trip to Italy, encounters a beautiful girl with whom he promptly falls in love. Their romance fails to progress, but he soon comes across her again in London, where he also meets Dr Manuel Ceneri, who claims to be her uncle. Gradually, a dastardly scheme unfolds. Vaughan is not a wholly likeable man, but his persistence in his quest for the truth makes him a worthy protagonist. The long arm of coincidence reaches out time and again during the course of the narrative, prompting Vaughan’s occasional exclamation: ‘It was Fate!’ But the book is written with Victorian verve.

The book rapidly sold more than a quarter of a million copies, making a fortune for its publisher, J. W. Arrowsmith. A paper-covered edition costing one shilling became the most renowned of the so-called ‘shilling shockers’ popular at the time. The story was also widely translated. Together with Joseph Comyns Carr, a prominent drama critic, theatre manager and playwright, Conway adapted the book for the stage, and long runs in both London and the provinces followed. There was even a burlesque version called The Scalded Back! Towards the end of her life, Emily Dickinson enjoyed reading the novel, which she described as ‘a haunting story’; so taken was she with the phrase Called Back that it was added to her tombstone. The Times compared Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Called Back, and while the reviewer admired Stevenson’s story, he expressed doubt as to whether it would enjoy as much popular success as Conway’s.

Conway threw himself into writing, with encouragement from Wilkie Collins himself, and his later books included two more ‘Christmas annuals’, notably the thriller Dark Days, which would also eventually feature in the Detective Story Club. His rise to fame had been meteoric, but sadly, it did not last. Having developed symptoms of TB, he travelled to the French Riviera to recuperate, but was diagnosed with typhoid fever, and died shortly afterwards at Monte Carlo, aged just 37. It is indicative of the literary status that he achieved in a short time that, after his death, Arrowsmiths asked an author as eminent as Wilkie Collins to write their next ‘Christmas annual’; this resulted in The Guilty River, but it sold far less well than Called Back.

Conway’s real name was Frederick John Fargus, and he was born in Bristol in 1848, the son of an auctioneer. Youthful enthusiasm for the novels of Captain Marryat inspired an ambition to become a sailor; his pseudonym came from HMS Conway, a frigate stationed in the river Mersey and used as a school ship for the training of aspiring naval officers, where he spent some of his formative years. An accident suffered on board the Conway damaged his hearing, and led Fargus to pursue a career in the family firm whilst trying to establish himself as an author. In 1879, he published a volume of poetry, and a collection of short stories appeared two years later. He showed signs of developing into an accomplished exponent of supernatural stories as well as thrillers, and after his death, Comyns Carr wrote to The Times extolling his gifts; in his view, Called Back barely hinted at Fargus’ literary potential.

Who knows? It is not impossible that, had he lived and written for another two or three decades, Fargus would have ranked alongside such immortals as Collins, Stevenson, M.R. James and Conan Doyle. As a result of his untimely death, his legacy was less striking. Nonetheless, Called Back deserves to be read again, not merely as a reminder of an unfulfilled talent, but in its own right, as lively entertainment from a bygone age.

MARTIN EDWARDS

February 2015

www.martinedwardsbooks.com