Edgar Wallace in Essex Street: London #46

 

Edgar Wallace is usually thought of foremost as a crime writer, and perhaps secondly as a journalist. As a large sign on the Edgar Wallace pub in Essex Street notes, Wallace was associated with nearby Fleet Street for a long time: he began at the age of eleven by selling newspapers in Ludgate Circus, where there is a bronze plaque with his likeness, although it escaped my memory on my last visit to London.

 

Almost directly across the street from the pub is a plaque which states:

 

'ESSEX STREET
was laid out in the grounds
of Essex House by
NICHOLAS BARBON in 1675
Among many famous lawyers
who lived here were

Sir ORLANDO BRIDGEMAN c.1606-1674
Lord Keeper.

HENRY FIELDING 1707-1754
Novelist and
BRASS CROSBY 1725-1793
Lord Mayor of London.

JAMES SAVAGE 1779-1852 Architect
has his office here.

PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART
stayed at a house in the street
in 1750.

Rev. THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 1723-1808
Unitarian Minister
founded Essex Street Chapel here
in 1774.

Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON
established an evening club at
the "Essex Head" in 1783.'

Below is a link to a previous blog post I made concerning Wallace:

 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Hannen Swaffer and Edgar Wallace

Hannen Swaffer and Edgar Wallace

I've just come across this wonderful drawing of Hannen Swaffer (1879-1962) by Joseph Simpson. Swaffer was a very prolific British journalist and drama critic who incidentally gave strong journalistic support to Lionel Britton in his early days as a playwright. This sketch is from Hannen Swaffer's Who's Who (London: Hutchinson, [1929]), which contains brief but highly idiosyncratic essays on people Swaffer knew. The book has a Foreword by Edgar Wallace called 'The Plague of Swafferism',  in which Wallace says:

'Usually, Swaffer is right; sometimes, he is ravagingly, madly wrong. His audacity in telling me that I was a bad producer because one of the actors in my play forgot his lines and a light went on when it should have been off, remains with me as an instance of his unparalled nerve.

'With the conclusions he forms in this book, I can neither agree nor disagree, as he didn't take the trouble to send them to me. I shall like all the unpleasant things he says about people I dislike, and hate his reference to my friends. I hope he has written nothing about me because we are, just now, on speaking terms.'

Swaffer of course does include an essay on Wallace - 'The Dictaphone that Churns out Novels' - and it is probably the longest in the book. He continues the pantomime:

'[Wallace] works half his life, and yet you seldom see him doing anything. He boasts he has the fastest typist in the world. Whenever I see this typist, however, he is at Newmarket with Edgar, being sent to the rails to find out what they're backing. The man, Wallace means, I suppose, has the finest typist's job in the world.

'There is only one Edgar Wallace. Thank Heaven there are not two! The present one, when he saw "Too Much Edgar Wallace" in a headline of mine, merely went to his dictaphone and started three more plays!'

 

Below is a later post I made with images of the Edgar Wallace pub:

 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Edgar Wallace in Essex Street