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    The Agony Column
    The Agony Column
    The Agony Column
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    The Agony Column

    By Earl Derr Biggers

    3.5/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1976
    Author

    Earl Derr Biggers

    Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933) was an American novelist and playwright. Born in Ohio, Biggers went on to graduate from Harvard University, where he was a member of The Harvard Lampoon, a humor publication for undergraduates. Following a brief career as a journalist, most significantly for Cleveland-based newspaper The Plain Dealer, Biggers turned to fiction, writing novels and plays for a popular audience. Many of his works have been adapted into film and theater productions, including the novel Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913), which was made into a Broadway stage play the same year it was published. Towards the end of his career, he produced a highly popular series of novels centered on Honolulu police detective Charlie Chan. Beginning with The House Without a Key (1925), Biggers intended his character as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes prominent in the early twentieth century. His series of Charlie Chan novels inspired dozens of films in the United States and China, and has been recognized as an imperfect attempt to use popular media to depict Chinese Americans in a positive light.

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    Reviews for The Agony Column

    3.5/5

    25 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is a piquant romantic mystery.
    • 4/5
      Mystery-romance that takes place in London just before WWI. The story is very clever, and I was dumbfounded by the ending.
    • 1/5
      Not a complete waste of time, but the closest thing to it. I usually like EDB but this was empty air. A guy sees a girl he likes so he tells her a story about his involvement in a murder investigation. Then at the end he admits it's a pack of lies. He did it because he'd do anything to get her attention. Boy, what a prize. "I love you so much I'll lie to get you." Now there's a man you can trust. But she's so empty headed she probably deserves him. There's only one mystery in the story: somehow he manages to get hold of a baked potato while aboard ship. How? He whispers the solution to the girl's father, but we never learn how it was done. That is the only thing that interested me.
    • 5/5
      Biggers is, of course, famous as the creator of detective Charlie Chan. I have had an omnibus volume of those stories on my shelf for at least 20 years and never read it. Not out of any political correctness; I watched all the movies long ago when they used to show them in the middle of the night on WTBS or maybe it was WGN or WOR. Even the Roland Young ones.In any case, I downloaded this a few days ago and it was short, so I plunged right in. It is a marvelous story. Taking place on the eve of World War I in London, it tells the story of an unusual courtship of a young man for a woman he sees at breakfast. Noticing she is also a fan of the personal ads (i.e., the agony column) in the Daily Mail, he places one himself to see if he can make her acquaintance. And from that, things take off into a whirlwind of mystery and suspense that is very well done indeed. This is one of those stories that is a pleasure from beginning to end. I won't give away any plot details; let me just say that Saki's comment that "romance at short notice" was one of his character's specialty.Highly highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This is not a Charlie Chan mystery. It is a romantic mystery, quite thrilling actually, set at the onset of WW I. And here I should add that while most definitions for the genre of historical fiction indicate that the time period needs to be, at least, before the writer was born. However, for the purposes of my challenge - historical is anytime before WW II.The agony column was what we might call the 'personals' and through the use of the column our young man 1) communicates with the young woman he has fallen for after seeing her in a restaurant and 2) relates to her the story and solving of a murder. Excellent twist(s) at the end. I totally enjoyed this short novel.

    Book preview

    The Agony Column - Earl Derr Biggers

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Agony Column, by Earl Derr Biggers

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Agony Column

    Author: Earl Derr Biggers

    Release Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1814]

    Last Updated: January 25, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGONY COLUMN ***

    Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger

    THE AGONY COLUMN

    by Earl Derr Biggers

    CONTENTS

    CHAPTER I

    CHAPTER II

    CHAPTER III

    CHAPTER IV

    CHAPTER V

    CHAPTER VI

    CHAPTER VII

    CHAPTER VIII

    CHAPTER IX

    CHAPTER I

    London that historic summer was almost unbearably hot. It seems, looking back, as though the big baking city in those days was meant to serve as an anteroom of torture—an inadequate bit of preparation for the hell that was soon to break in the guise of the Great War. About the soda-water bar in the drug store near the Hotel Cecil many American tourists found solace in the sirups and creams of home. Through the open windows of the Piccadilly tea shops you might catch glimpses of the English consuming quarts of hot tea in order to become cool. It is a paradox they swear by.

    About nine o'clock on the morning of Friday, July twenty-fourth, in that memorable year nineteen hundred and fourteen, Geoffrey West left his apartments in Adelphi Terrace and set out for breakfast at the Carlton. He had found the breakfast room of that dignified hotel the coolest in London, and through some miracle, for the season had passed, strawberries might still be had there. As he took his way through the crowded Strand, surrounded on all sides by honest British faces wet with honest British perspiration he thought longingly of his rooms in Washington Square, New York. For West, despite the English sound of that Geoffrey, was as American as Kansas, his native state, and only pressing business was at that moment holding him in England, far from the country that glowed unusually rosy because of its remoteness.

    At the Carlton news stand West bought two morning papers—the Times for study and the Mail for entertainment and then passed on into the restaurant. His waiter—a tall soldierly Prussian, more blond than West himself—saw him coming and, with a nod and a mechanical German smile, set out for the plate of strawberries which he knew would be the first thing desired by the American. West seated himself at his usual table and, spreading out the Daily Mail, sought his favorite column. The first item in that column brought a delighted smile to his face:

    The one who calls me Dearest is not genuine or they would write to me.

    Any one at all familiar with English journalism will recognize at once what department it was that appealed most to West. During his three weeks in London he had been following, with the keenest joy, the daily grist of Personal Notices in the Mail. This string of intimate messages, popularly known as the Agony Column, has long been an honored institution in the English press. In the days of Sherlock Holmes it was in the Times that it flourished, and many a criminal was tracked to earth after he had inserted some alluring mysterious message in it. Later the Telegraph gave it room; but, with the advent of halfpenny journalism, the simple souls moved en masse to the Mail.

    Tragedy and comedy mingle in the Agony Column. Erring ones are urged to return for forgiveness; unwelcome suitors are warned that Father has warrant prepared; fly, Dearest One! Loves that would shame by their ardor Abelard and Heloise are frankly published—at ten cents a word—for all the town to smile at. The gentleman in the brown derby states with fervor that the blonde governess who got off the tram at Shepherd's Bush has quite won his heart. Will she permit his addresses? Answer; this department. For three weeks West had found this sort of thing delicious reading. Best of all, he could detect in these messages nothing that was not open and innocent. At their worst they were merely an effort to side-step old Lady Convention; this inclination was so rare in the British, he felt it should be encouraged. Besides, he was inordinately fond of mystery and romance, and these engaging twins hovered always about that column.

    So, while waiting for his strawberries, he smiled over the ungrammatical outburst of the young lady who had come to doubt the genuineness of him who called her Dearest. He passed on to the second item of the morning. Spoke one whose heart had been completely conquered:

    MY LADY sleeps. She of raven tresses. Corner seat from Victoria, Wednesday night. Carried program. Gentleman answering inquiry desires acquaintance. Reply here. —LE ROI.

    West made a mental note to watch for the reply of raven tresses. The next message proved to be one of Aye's lyrics—now almost a daily feature of the column:

    DEAREST: Tender loving wishes to my dear one. Only to be with you now and always. None fairer in my eyes. Your name is music to me. I love you more than life itself, my own beautiful darling, my proud sweetheart, my joy, my all! Jealous of everybody. Kiss your dear hands for me. Love you only. Thine ever. —AYE.

    Which, reflected West, was generous of Aye—at ten cents a word—and in striking contrast to the penurious lover who wrote, farther along in the column:

         —loveu dearly; wantocu; longing; missu—

    But those extremely personal notices ran not alone to love. Mystery, too, was present, especially in the aquatic utterance:

    DEFIANT MERMAID: Not mine. Alligators bitingu now. 'Tis well; delighted. —FIRST FISH.

    And the rather sanguinary suggestion:

    DE Box: First round; tooth gone. Finale. You will FORGET ME NOT.

    At this point West's strawberries arrived and even the Agony Column could not hold his interest. When the last red berry was eaten he turned back to read:

    WATERLOO: Wed. 11:53 train. Lady who left in taxi and waved, care to know gent, gray coat? —SINCERE.

    Also the more dignified request put forward in:

    GREAT CENTRAL: Gentleman who saw lady in bonnet 9 Monday morning in Great Central Hotel lift would greatly value opportunity of obtaining introduction.

    This exhausted the joys of the Agony Column for the day, and West, like the solid citizen he really was, took up the Times to discover what might be the morning's news. A great deal of space was given to the appointment of a new principal for Dulwich College. The affairs of the heart, in which that charming creature, Gabrielle Ray, was at the moment involved, likewise claimed attention. And in a quite unimportant corner, in a most unimportant manner, it was related that Austria had sent an ultimatum to Serbia. West had read part way through this stupid little piece of news, when suddenly the Thunderer and all its works became an uninteresting blur.

    A girl stood just inside the door of the Carlton breakfast room.

    Yes; he should have pondered that despatch from Vienna. But such a girl! It adds nothing at all to say that her hair was a dull sort of gold; her eyes violet. Many girls have been similarly blessed. It was her manner; the sweet way she looked with those violet eyes through a battalion of head waiters and resplendent managers; her air of being at home here in the Carlton or anywhere else that fate might drop her down. Unquestionably she came from oversea—from the States.

    She stepped forward into the restaurant. And now slipped also into view, as part of the background for her, a middle-aged man, who wore the conventional black of the statesman. He, too, bore the American label unmistakably. Nearer and nearer to West she drew, and he saw that in her hand she carried a copy of the Daily Mail.

    West's waiter was a master of the art of suggesting that no table in the room was worth sitting at save that at which he held ready a chair. Thus he lured the girl and her companion to repose not five feet from where West sat. This accomplished, he whipped out his order

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