As we approach the close of The Mark Steyn Club's seventh birthday observances, I want to thank all those First Week Founding Members who've signed up for an eighth year. I'm absolutely delighted. In celebration of the occasion, I've launched a new weekly audio show and produced an extended edition of our traditional cavalcade of Non-Stop Number Ones. And, of course, Tales for Our Time is back in business.
So welcome to Part Twenty-Two of our current Tale - a vernal diversion by Agatha Christie that looks like becoming one of the all-time most popular entries to the series. In tonight's episode of The Secret Adversary, the mysterious and elusive Jane Finn has suddenly recovered her memory:
At ten o'clock, the two young men were at the appointed spot. Sir James had joined them on the doorstep. He alone appeared unexcited. He introduced them to the doctor.
"Mr Hersheimmer—Mr Beresford—Dr Roylance. How's the patient?"
"Going on well. Evidently no idea of the flight of time. Asked this morning how many had been saved from the Lusitania. Was it in the papers yet? That, of course, was only what was to be expected. She seems to have something on her mind, though."
To listen to the twenty-second episode of The Secret Adversary, please click here and log-in. If you're late getting started on this current Tale, you'll find the story so far here.
There is always a bit of necessary annotating along the way, and a couple of nights back one of the many restaurant scenes in The Secret Adversary caused me to reflect on the preference among Christie protagonists for a dish called sole à la Jeanette, a delicacy I have never seen on any menu anywhere and whose thin pickings on Google suggest that it exists only in Dame Agatha's oeuvre. Veronica, the doyenne of our Kiwi Clubbers, begs to differ:
The general consensus in the Christieverse re 'Sole a la Jeanette' seems to be that Dame Agatha gave a real dish from Provence, called 'Filet de Sole Sauce Estragon' (fish in a tarragon sauce), a fictional name for the purposes of two of her novels, and possibly one short story. No idea why she did that.
'Filet de Sole Sauce Estragon' involves lots of butter and olive oil, according to a blogger who tried it, so no wonder a stray 'morceau' of it left a greasy mark upon the fastidious Poirot's waistcoat. Thank goodness the ever-reliable George was on hand to put things right!
By contrast Tommy, who appears to jump at the chance to eat anything and everything, wouldn't care a whit about greasy stains on his waistcoat I'm sure. Just keep the 'Sole a la Jeanette' coming :)
I read that initially as Filet de Sole Sauce Estrogen. I don't rule out Bill Gates putting that in the food supply (see Swedish manginas), but I'd be surprised if they were doing it in the 1920s. Elisa Angel, a First Fortnight Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, has a different theory:
Perhaps Christie's Sole à la Jeanette is Sole a la Meuniere. Jeanette may have been the Dame Agatha's flour miller's wife.
I'm not sure why you'd need to create a pseudonym for a dish as familiar around Piccadilly as a sole meunière. The Ritz does a fairly credible version, and the last time I dined Eva and Raisa round the corner in Jermyn Street I ordered one. It's a staple of clubland (St James's, not - yet - the MSC), so it's what Boris and his fellow Cabinet ministers were all scoffing at the Carlton between the bottom-gropings.
Still, I can't see why you'd have to invent an alternative name for it. On a personal note: I know it wasn't one of the greatest catastrophes of lockdown - not compared to economic devastation, a generation of ruined children, etc - but, when they closed the US/Canadian border and trapped me on the southern side, I had to forego my occasional treat of a quick tootle up to Montreal for a sole meunière. It got to me after a while. Usually, my pre-dawn dream as I drift in and out of my slumbers to face another day of litigation-without-end is of a bikini-clad lovely emerging from the surf like Ursula Andress in Dr No. But, as the months wore on, Miss Andress was supplanted by the Dover sole coming in just behind her.
It was so disruptive to my sleep that, when the lone doctor in my broken-down New Hampshire town noticed how exhausted I appeared, I told her, "I'm dreaming of sole meunière every night." In a community of North Country Yankees spanning the traditional activities from hardworking loggers to dissolute methheads, I am not perhaps the most typical of her clientele, but she put on a very concerned facial expression and replied solemnly, "You're the twelfth patient today who's said that."
Oh, well. So much for my problems. Veronica adds, very perceptively:
On the subject of Tommy, can't believe that I've only just tumbled to the fact that he is clearly modelled upon Archie Christie, Dame Agatha's charming, bold and very handsome first husband whom she married entirely for love (an excess of sentiment!) and who later left her for another woman, precipitating the heartbroken Agatha's famous 'disappearance' and nervous breakdown.
I feel like this whole story is a love letter to him, a reminder of their initial attraction and exciting early days together, perhaps at a time when the marriage was in trouble, and she was trying to paper over the cracks. If so, it didn't work, and no wonder Dame Agatha didn't write many 'Tommy and Tuppence' adventures after their divorce, if Tommy really was Archie.
Too sad for her to look back and contemplate what might've been.
That's my take on it anyway :)
Bingo! Tuppence is, at least CV-wise, fairly autobiographical, so why would Tuppence's great love not be?
Tales for Our Time began as an experimental feature we introduced as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members, and, as you know, I said if it was a total stinkeroo, we'd eighty-six the thing and speak no more of it. But I'm thrilled to say it's proved very popular, and is now embarking on its eighth season. If you're a Club member and you incline more to the stinkeroo side of things, give it your best in the comments section below. But, either way, do join me tomorrow evening, a few hours after Saturday's Mark Steyn on the Town at Serenade Radio, for Part Twenty-Three of The Secret Adversary.
