Bulldog Drummond
By Herman Cyril McNeile
He looked at the mauve envelope doubtfully and examined the postmark. ‘Where is Pudlington, James? And one might almost ask—why is Pudlington? No town has any right to such an offensive name.’ He glanced through the letter and shook his head. ‘Tush! Tush! And the wife of the bank manager, too—the bank manager of Paddington, James! Can you conceive of anything so dreadful? But I’m afraid Mrs. Bank Manager is a distinct puss.
When they get on the soul-mate stunt, the furniture begins to fly.’ Drummond tore up the letter and dropped the pieces into the basket beside him. Then he turned to his servant and handed him the remainder of the envelopes. ‘Go through them, James, while I assault the kidneys, and pick two or three out for me. I see that you will have to become my secretary. No man could tackle that little bunch alone.’ ‘Do you want me to open them, sir?’ asked Denny doubtfully. ‘You’ve hit it, James—hit it in one. Classify them for me in groups. Criminal; sporting; amatory—that means of or about love; stupid and merely boring; and as a last resort, miscellaneous.’
He stirred his coffee thoughtfully. Feel that as a first venture in our new career—ours, I said, James—love appeals to me irresistibly. I was hoping you could find me a damsel in distress, a beautiful girl, helpless in the clutches of knaves. Let me feel I can fly to her assistance, clad in my new grey suiting.’ He finished the last piece of bacon and pushed away his plate. ‘Amongst all that mass of paper, there must surely be one from a lovely maiden, James, at whose disposal I can place my rusty sword. Incidentally, what has become of the damned thing?’ ‘It’s in the lumber room, sir—tied up with the old umbrella and the niblick you don’t like.’
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Herman Cyril McNeile
Herman Cyril McNeile, MC (28 September 1888 – 14 August 1937), commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author.
Biography.
Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their names, he was given the pen name “Sapper” by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers.
After the war, McNeile left the army and continued writing, although he changed from war stories to thrillers. 1920, he published Bulldog Drummond, whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation. The character was based on McNeile, his friend Gerard Fairlie, and English gentlemen generally. McNeill wrote ten Bulldog Drummond novels, three plays, and a screenplay. McNeile interspersed his Drummond work with other books and story collections that included two characters who appeared as protagonists in their own works, Jim Maitland and Ronald Standish.
He was one of the most successful British authors of the inter-war period before he died in 1937 from throat cancer, which has been attributed to damage sustained from a gas attack in the war. McNeile’s stories are either directly about the war or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it. His thrillers continue his war stories, with upper-class Englishmen defending England from foreigners plotting against it. However, he was seen at the time as “simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen.” after the Second World War, his work was criticized as having fascist overtones while also displaying the xenophobia and anti-semitism apparent in some other writers of the period.
Herman Cyril McNeile
