Agatha often took this train, as did her famous Poirot.

It is not surprising that her imagination was so alive and vivid with this scenery being the backdrop of her childhood.

The Ashfield Estate

Shy little Agatha

What Agatha woke up to

Aggie's Disappearing Act

“The years 1926 to 1929 were the most painful and arduous in Agatha Christie’s life.”

 

Even though there was extensive research done on the topic of her disappearance, no one really knows exactly what happened. Agatha’s friends and family were quite tight lipped about the whole matter, and remained so throughout her life, leaving the press with no other option but to draw their own conclusions.  “On the Dictaphone recordings from which the first drafts of Christie’s autobiography were composed, Christie’s voice, we are told, is almost inaudible when she deals with the events of 1926.  Christie never filled in the eleven missing days in her life.”  Really, the only person who was vocal at all about the matter was Rosalind.  She commissioned Janet Morgan to write a biography, and gave her unlimited access to papers, photographs, and other memorabilia.   She also related what Agatha had told her of the missing eleven days- memories that Christie had very clearly left out in her own autobiography.  Even so, there were huge gaps and inconsistencies with the story.  When considering Agatha’s case, it is useful to learn the lessons Christie has taught us in her detective fiction, just as her own Poirot might do.  Why did she drive away in her car late at night?  What did she do in the next five or six hours?  Why did she abandon her car and other possessions?  Why was it so close to where Archie and Nancy were staying?  ETC. ETC. ETC.

 

Despite all of the speculation, one unifying fact makes Agatha’s acts make sense.  Agatha was deeply depressed throughout much of 1926, so depressed that she had been unable to complete a novel.  Her deep depression was caused by two events:  the unexpected death of Agatha’s mother and the even less expected request by Archie Christie that Agatha give him a divorce so that he could marry a mutual friend, Nancy Neele.  Archie dropped the bomb when visiting his family at Ashfield to celebrate Rosalind’s August birthday.  This is all detailed very specifically in Unfinished Portrait.  Companionship, or the lack of it, was a thorny issue between the Christie’s.  “Women always want to do things with men- and a man would always rather have another man.”

 

In Agatha’s opinion, Archie had turned from her most intimate companion to a hostile stranger, intent on separation, and willing to destroy his wife if it was the price of his freedom to marry another woman.  The nightmare of Agatha’s childhood had become a reality.  Archie was the Gunman.  Archie said, “Everybody can’t be happy- somebody has to be unhappy.”

 

When Archie requested a divorce, he expected her to be upset, but did not expect Agatha to flat out refuse.  She tried this for a long while, using her daughter’s need for a father as her main weapon.  She was driving herself completely insane during this period, not being able to remember her own name at points. 

 

Now that her perilous emotional state has been established, let us now return to the actual events of 1926.  The week before, Agatha was acting normally, only going into town to buy an extravagant white negligee.  On the morning of the event, Agatha and Archie were said to have had a violent fight.  She then took Rosalind to her mother-in-law’s house, and when she commented that Agatha wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, Agatha “sat perfectly still for a time, gazing into space, and giving an hysterical laugh, turned away and patted Rosalind’s head.”  Agatha then went home to dine alone around five.  Between 9 and 11 o’clock that night it is believed that she left the house saying she going out on a ‘drive.’  The period between her departure and her arrival at Waterloo is a mystery.  At 8 AM Saturday morning, her car was found unharmed and abandoned at Newlands Corner.  This was very close to the house that Archie and Nancy were occupying at the moment.  She was discovered eleven days later checked into a hotel under Neele’s name, and Agatha said that she suffered from amnesia and remembered nothing of the events of the previous days.  Apparently, after registering at the Harrogate spa under Mrs. Teresa Neele of Cape town, she lived a quite life of breakfasting in bed, shopping, reading the newspapers, doing crosswords, and playing bridge in the evenings before retiring early.  She apparently had concealed several hundred pounds in a money belt around her waist. 

 

She was said to have a concussion-fugue.  A fugue is an extreme unconscious reaction to a situation someone cannot cope with consciously.  And whether or not this was her intent, she put Archie through hell in several ways because of the disappearance.  He was probably very worried about Agatha’s whereabouts, and more importantly it brought he and Nancy’s name into the forefront of the press… something he had been trying to avoid.

 

When she returned, she and Archie hardly spoke and eventually divorced.  The years 1927-28 were years of reconstruction for her.  She had a band of loyal friends she affectionately called the “Order of the Faithful Dogs” and a psychiatrist who were most helpful to her.  Rosalind also remained with her.  To further clear her mind, she decided to embark on a solo journey to the Middle East, This would be her first journey alone, and she would be free to indulge her taste for travel and learning. 

 

She managed with her own strength and with the help of her friends to come out without much anger, resentment, and regret towards Archie.  She accepted wholeheartedly her burning desire she once felt for Archie, and also its sad outcome. 

 

“It’s never a mistake to marry a man you want to marry- even if you regret it.”

 

“Agatha regretted not her love for Archie, but what Archie had done with her love, and ultimately his actions were his own to answer for and live with, not hers.”

 

Insights into Complicated Relationship with Rosalind

This is a quote from Agatha’s book Unfinished Portrait written under the Mary Westmacott novel.  This deals with her feeling towards her daughter, and it seems that the characters in this novel parallel the characters in Agatha’s own life.

 

The relationship between she and her daughter is very complicated.  She tried to form a close relationship with her daughter, but they seemed to never be able to connect.  Agatha felt that her temperament and interests lined up with Archie’s.  Agatha couldn’t understand why her daughter didn’t enjoy playing imaginative little games growing up.  Rosalind’s severe practicality and her lack of artistic curiosity made it difficult for Agatha to relate to her as Agatha had related to her mother, Clara.

 

 

“I don’t know whether I’ve failed with Judy or succeeded. I don’t know whether she loves me or doesn’t love me.  I’ve given her material things. I haven’t been able to give her the other things- the things that matter to me- because she doesn’t want them.  I’ve done the only one thing I could.  Because I love her, I’ve let her alone.  I haven’t tried to force my views and my beliefs upon her.  I’ve tried to make her feel I’m there if she wants me.  But you see she didn’t want me.”

 

 

Aggie's Politics

“Had Archie Christie not had the soul of a stockbroker in the body of a romantic hero, had he not become addicted to golf and the City, had he been a more responsive and understanding partner, had he not been given the opportunity to fall in love with another woman, had he and Agatha had more children, or at least one other child more in Agatha’s own image- had any or some of these possibilities been realized, Agatha might perhaps have devoted herself to husband and family, repeating the family career of her mother.”

 

As pertaining to her daughter, it did not seem to occur to her that leaving her quite frequently with the help, nanny, governess, etc. would do any harm.  Agatha and Archie were planning a ten-month world tour, which would prove to be the high spot of the Christie marriage.  Agatha, during the trip found a few moments to go off alone, and was absolutely a social success.  She had great success doing comedy skits in an amateur show.  She was an outgoing, independent woman, taking center stage with confidence and charming all those she met. 

 

Back home, Archie was so consumed with golf and social conventions, and Agatha did not especially enjoy the company of the golfers or their wives.  He stopped Agatha in her tracks when she suggested that they have another child, but did try to make her happy by splurging on a car and teaching her how to drive.  As far as their conversations went, he was either discouraging or indifferent when Agatha tried to discuss ideas for a book with him, and did not enjoy the London literary world to which she was being introduced. 

 

“Idea? I’ve got any amount of ideas.  In fact, that’s just the difficulty.  I can never think of even one plot at a time.  I always think of at least five, and it’s agony to decide between them... One actually has to think, you know.  And thinking is always a bore.”

 

Christie is seen as politically conservative and socially conventional, but her attitude toward the New Woman is radically different from Mrs. Lynn Linton’s or from Waugh’s.  Christie is a strict sexual egalitarian in that she is able to imagine a cold heart beating under a soft young feminine breast, a calculating mind working behind the brown curls and dancing blue eyes.  Throughout her work, Agatha reveals a certain disregard for politicians.  She distrusts politics as indifferent or even hostile to the important spheres of life, religion, and interpersonal relationships.  However, Christie keeps herself and her work out of the political arena.  Her novels are relatively free from political references and/or slang. 

 

One category, though, Agatha did not avoid and that is the issue of anti-Semitism.  A very bold kind of anti-Semitism colors the Jewish characters in many of her early novels, and Christie reveals herself to be as unreflective and conventional as the majority of her compatriots.  We can laugh with her as she pokes fun at some of her characters, but specifically the portrayal of the Jewish financier in the Secret of Chimneys is hard to understand and forgive.  However, as she and other authors grew to understand what Nazism really meant for Jewish people, Christie abandoned her previous ways.  Agatha even corrects herself in Westmacott’s novel Giant’s Bread published in 1930.  Christie makes one of her five protagonists Jewish, and addresses head-on the Anti-Semitic prejudice present in England. 

 

“Agatha Christie had moved into the forefront of British detective-story writers.  Ironically, her very fame and success were to make the next, and most dramatic episode in her life, even more traumatic.”

Early Married Life/Nurse Life/First Book

The Christies had a one-day honeymoon, and then he had to return to his unit and Agatha went back to live with mother and Aunti-Grannie at Ashfield.  She continued to live there until September 1918, reunited with her husband for only rare and brief leaves.  The Christies spent only a matter of weeks together in the next few years due to the war.  While Archie served in the Royal Flying Corps unit, Agatha worked first as a volunteer nurse at the local hospital and then, as a hospital dispensing pharmacist.  It was hard, grueling, uncertain work.  The hours were long, and there was never enough food to go around for the staff.  Archie didn’t approve of this type of work.  He wanted a wife who was carefree and beautiful, untroubled by the woes of the world.  Clara shared this same view, and for once Archie and Clara were both working on the same side.  What is important for the history of detective fiction is that working in the dispensary gave her a working knowledge of poisons. 

 

Agatha eventually, because of Archie’s feelings about the work, quit her job as a nurse.  She was talking to her sister one day about a mystery novel, and Agatha said that she didn’t care for the book that her sister was reading.  Madge then dared Agatha to write something better… and she did.  She wrote her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, while at Ashfield.  However, when she would hit writing blocks, her mother would tell her to take some time off from being there and go stay in a hotel for a couple of two weeks to have complete concentration.  She would walk on the moors, and act all the scenes out loud and go back to the hotel and finish writing the scenes. 

 

 

“The reader who wants to discover the solution to an Agatha Christie mystery can learn three valuable lessons from studying the solution to The Mysterious Affair at Styles.  First, give careful consideration to every mention of a written document, and analyze any text included in the novel with special care.  Second, be suspicious of material clues, especially if they appear in the textual equivalent of neon lights.  Third, place more reliance on your knowledge of novels, particularly detective novels, than of science.”

 

 

Perhaps the best example of Agatha Christie’s ability to use elements from existing tradition of detective fiction and forge something new and original is her creation of Hercule Poirot, the second most famous fictional detective after Sherlock Holmes.  The Great Detective is described like this:  Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity.  His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side.  His moustache was very stiff and military.  The neatness of his attire was incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.”

Red Herrings

I may be the only one who didn't know what this song meant, but in case I wasn't...

Red Herrings is an observation that draws attention away from the central issue in an argument or discussion; an informal logical fallacy. 

Its etymology:  from the practice of distracting hunting dogs by dragging a smelly, salt cured herring (fish) across the trail or the animal they were pursuing.  

*It is usually irrelevant and emotionally charged.

***Random Fun Fact...  Agatha wrote her first book on a dare from her sister.

Randoms

Demure Agatha and Dashing Young Archie

Archie and Agatha's courtship

Excerpt from Agatha's biography:

 

“They met at a dance, both were excellent dancers, there was an immediate attraction.  A few days later, he borrowed a friend’s motorbike and called unexpectedly at Ashfield.  Agatha was at the house of a friend, but she quickly responded to Clara’s anxious summons to come home at once.  From the first moment, Clara was not to feel at ease with Archie, never wholly to like him or trust him.  Archie was certainly good looking, and not doubt brave, but he had absolutely no money of his own and no immediate prospects of earning much.  The bluntness, directness, and impetuosity, the sheer machismo of Archie, did nothing to reassure Clara, who feared for the happiness of her shy, introverted, romantic daughter as the wife of such a man.  Clara was clear sighted about Archie in a way Agatha could not be.  Agatha fell in love with Archie because he was different, other, a stranger whose mind she could not read.  Clara, no doubt, did everything she could to prevent the marriage.  But Agatha persisted in seeing the relationship between Archie and herself as a romance.  They had no money.  They had almost nothing in common.  She was already engaged to someone else.  He was very likely to be killed in the war then raging.  Agatha’s beloved mother deeply distrusted Archie.  Two years of tears, struggle, and separation followed, but at last passion prevailed and Archie and Agatha went out and were married on a day’s notice on Christmas Eve, 1914. "

 

 

 

 

 

The Gunman Dream- referred to in Vanishing Point

Agatha Christie’s childhood was extremely happy and peaceful for the most part, but she did have a childhood dream that would haunt her into adulthood.  In its early stages, the dream was of an eighteenth century soldier, with blue eyes, a three cornered hat, and a queue, carrying a musket, the kind of soldier a Victorian child might have seen illustrated in a book by Hans Christian Anderson.  Agatha says she was not afraid of the gun or of it being shot.  But what frightened her was the fact that the gunman was able to enter any ordinary occasion: tea, picnic, or a walk.  He was able to transform into anyone with only his blue eyes identifying him.  He turned into her mother, her sister, her brother, a friend, etc.

 

At the heart of this nightmare is the idea that people are not what they seem, that the most consistent and beloved person can turn suddenly into a negative and threatening force in a person’s life.  In theory she could have had this dream because she was unusually aware from her early childhood that there was a split between her body and her observing consciousness and knew that she herself was not what she seemed.  In the Burden written by Agatha as Westmacott, she paints a picture of a little girl who was so withdrawn that seemed actually a little slow, yet who was so in love with her parents that she violently hated her little sister who she believed stole love from her parents.  It is unclear as to whether or not she felt like that toward her siblings, but seeing how much she loved her mother, it is possible that she could have been driven to a point of extreme jealousy.  But what is certain is that when her husband, Archie Christie suddenly came home to tell her that he was in love with someone else, Agatha who was 36 at the time became overwhelmed with anger and grief, and had a very childlike panic attack sort of response to the whole matter.  Archie, the real life lover, friend, and husband had become the Gunman of her fantasy.  That is actually something that I think is the same between she and I in our chemical make-up.  There are certain things that I can be very level headed and mature about, and other things like dealing with betrayal or loss where I deal with it and go through the emotional journey of lets say an eight year old.  This sounds a lot like how Agatha dealt with big changes in her life. 

 

But some might say that the Gunman nightmare, although it haunted her, gave her the greatest writing tool of her life.  A great strength in Agatha’s books is that any person in the story can be the killer:  the child, the sweet young miss, the charming major, the doctor, the maid, etc. 

 

“The Gunman dream indicates that this view of life was not an intellectual conceit or a literary game for Christie, but an elemental structuring fact of her creative unconscious.”

 

Younger Aggie

Aggie Pics

The Early Years

Agatha: the early years.

 

Agatha Christie, born Agatha Miller, was born in Ashfield, the house where she was born- a large Italian-style stucco villo on the outskirts of Torquay, an English seaside town in Devon.  Agatha loved this house almost as much as she loved her mother, Clara Miller.  Clara would prove to be the most influential person in both Agatha’s personal and professional life.  At the base of Agatha’s feelings for her mother was a deep sense of poignant sympathy for her childhood.  Clara wasn’t raised by her biological parents, but was adopted and given materially most everything a girl could want. Maureen Summerhayes, a character in Christie’s 1952 detective novel Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, expresses the author’s doubts about the benevolent adoption:

 

“My mother parted with me and I had every advantage, as they call it.  And it’s always hurt –always- always-to know that you weren’t wanted, that your mother could let you go.”

 

Clara married Fredrick, Agatha’s father, and according to Agatha their relationship was a real-life version of a romantic women’s novel.  It had great significance for Agatha’s own adult attitudes to men and marriage.  Agatha describes her father, Frederick Miller, as an easy going, affectionate man who lived the life of a gentleman.  Even with his good nature, he wasn’t totally able to read Agatha.  Agatha as a child and even into adulthood was incredibly shy and inward.  Only Clara, who knew what it was to lack self-confidence and the ability to express the inner self, understood her daughter, and acted almost as her translator to the world. 

 

One incident in Agatha’s youth is a perfect illustration of how she could be so easily be misunderstood by the world, but how Clara understood at once.  Agatha was about six and living in the South of France.  Agatha’s father and sister planned a daylong muleback excursion into the Pyrenees.  Agatha was pleased with the mule, which proved to be the most dangerous mule of the bunch, walking on the edge of perilous spots.  After the ride, the family’s kind French guide thinking to amuse a young girl, pinned a live butterfly to Agatha’s hat.  Tormented by the flutterings of the dying insect yet not wiling to seem ungrateful to the guide, Agatha could only collapse into a heap of tears.  Her father, irritated by the lack of explanation of this sudden disturbance of emotion, called them stupid tears.  Clara Miller heard the story, and looked at her long and hard.  After a few moments, diagnosed the situation correctly and removed the butterfly from her hat.  Agatha remembered the “glorious… wonderful relief” she felt at that moment, as she as released from “that long bondage of silence.”

 

*Agatha also had many private imaginary friends called Kittens, and when they were discovered Agatha swore…”The Kittens were my Kittens and only mine.  No one must know.”

 

 

 

 

 

Quotes

Aggie Quotes:

 

I think these show her wit and her scheming that goes into many of her books, and some of how she behaved in her own life.  She was very much ahead of her time and progressive, and these quotes also show her sarcasm that oozes out of everything she says.  Also, some of them like the first one, for example, show a softer more delicate side.

 

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.

 

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

 

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

 

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

 

 

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.

 

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

 

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

 

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

 

Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

 

Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.

 

It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.