In this week’s blog, you can get to know the main character from the Clearwater Mysteries, Archer, Lord Clearwater. Here’s a little background, and Archer’s answers to five questions.
This interview with Archer took place before January 1890 and the events depicted in ‘The Clearwater Inheritance.’
Lord Clearwater is Archer to his friends and the 19th Viscount Clearwater of Riverside and Larkspur to everyone else. He was the second son of the 18th viscount, Mathias Riddington and Lady Emily Hapsburg-Bran. He was educated at Millfield prep school from 1868 to 1872 when he was sent to Dartmouth to begin his naval education and training.
In 1877, he became a lieutenant on The Britannia, where he served under his brother, Crispin, during conflicts on the Black Sea. Archer was honourably discharged from the Navy in 1886 following a near-fatal injury inflicted by his own brother.
When Crispin was declared incurably insane, the 18th viscount reluctantly gave into Lady Emily’s wishes and arranged for Archer to succeed the title on his death. Mathias, Lord Clearwater died suddenly from heart failure in 1888, and the title passed to Archer. The inheritance, however, did not.
You have unusual Christian names. Can you explain them, and do you have any nicknames?
I suppose my forenames might be considered unusual, but they are perfectly explainable. My father, you see, was a devotee of the Hundred Years War and the Battle of Agincourt in particular. It was something to do with his sense of hating everything and everyone that was not British. My elder brother was named Crispin because Agincourt was fought on St Crispin’s day, and I was Christened Archer because it was the archers, they say, who won the battle for the British. Camoys, my second name, comes from Baron Thomas Camoys, who led the left flank of the soldiers on that day. I am lucky I was not named after the commander of the archers; otherwise, I would have Erpingham as my second name. Why he could not have just called me Thomas and had done… But there we are. My father never liked me.
As for pet names, my elder brother had various unsavoury words for me, which I shall not repeat here. My mother and some of my close friends call me Archie, which I quite like. My Horse Master, Mr Kolisnychenko, calls me ‘Geroy.’ Apparently, in his village in Ukraine, that was the word they used for someone noble. The Geroys, in his mythology, were fierce warriors and very noble men. Mr Kolisnychenko has such names for everyone, including my friend Tom whom he calls ‘Bolshoidick.’ Bolshoi, of course, means ‘big’, so I rather got off lightly.
The Illustrated Times from the day Archer was born, Saturday, March 26th, 1859. The illustration shows “The Prince of Wales’ balcony on the Corso, Rome, during the carnival.”
Where and when were you born?
I was born on the 26th of March 1859 in Clearwater House, Riverside, in London. What is now the London Borough of Riverside (south and north) was originally family land, my family being Riddington. We… I still own much property and land within what is now the borough and I keep my London house there. *
My mother kept a copy of The Illustrated London News from the day of my birth. You would rather think she had more pressing matters that day, but she was something of a collector. It was a Saturday, and the news was about the threat of war in Europe. Not much has changed.
*The area is now what we know as Knightsbridge, Belgravia, South Kensington and Chelsea. Ed.
How would you describe your childhood?
My first recollection is of being put in a tub of cold water by a large lady in black. This, I later discovered, was our nanny, and it was she who brought me up until the age of eight. My father was often away, managing to be at Larkspur when the family was in London, and in London when my mother took me to Larkspur. At the edge of eight, I was sent to a preparatory school in Kent and only saw my parents on rare occasions. I saw my brother, Crispin, more often, and there were some happy times between us. That changed as he grew older until, when I was twenty-seven, he was incarcerated because he was, by then, a lunatic. I suppose his tendencies had manifested themselves in our childhood, but had gone unnoticed. Because he was also my father’s favourite, they went unpunished. Where I was often birched for things Crispin had done, Crispin was allowed to get away with murder. He very nearly murdered me when he attacked me during a land skirmish when we were both fighting for the Odessians by the Black Sea.
My point here is, my upbringing was traditional; boarding school, elocution lessons, Latin, the classics, a little music, but only because my grandfather encouraged it, and the usual rounds of what the Honourable Master Archer was supposed to do. However, Crispin was the eldest and the heir, while I was just the spare and never meant to take the title. Whereas Crispin’s education leant towards country pursuits, estate management, and so on, I am very pleased to say mine was more towards academia and the arts. My father, of course, put a stop to that with the military academy, and I attended Dartmouth and Greenwich naval training college from the age of thirteen to seventeen when I received my first commission.
Life as the second son of a man with a title is not as pleasant as you might think. When my mother arrived to collect me for my first year at prep school, I didn’t know who she was.
Any particular childhood memories that stand out?
Apart from constant bullying by my deranged brother, whippings from my father, fierce nannies and cold dormitories, you mean?
Yes, actually, and it was something that happened when I was about thirteen and preparing to be shipped off to the military academy. I was at Larkspur, it was summer, and involved my, then, one and only friend, Tom Payne, who was then a hall boy. When my father was absent, my mother encouraged me to go below stairs. This was for two reasons. I firmly believe she wanted me to understand the servants’ lives so I would appreciate how lucky I was. I also think she knew I was a lonely child who craved to be loved, but she was unable to provide that love. As a result, I was able to spend much time with Tom, and we got ourselves into all manner of scrapes, much to the annoyance of Mr Tripp, my father’s butler, and to the amusement of the housekeeper, Mrs Baker.
One summer afternoon, there was some function or other taking place in the Hall and Tom and I escaped the clutches of Nanny and Tripp and set off on an adventure on the moors. (Larkspur Hall is on Bodmin Moor.) I can’t remember how it came about, but we ended up near what we called the Frog Pond, rolling down a hill and ending up on top of each other, me pressing down on him. I shan’t say more for fear of embarrassing Tom, who is now the Larkspur Steward, but I will drop a clue and say that was my first kiss. The joy and consequent confusion of that afternoon are offset by the horror and fear of an incident that had happened a few years earlier. Again, I had extracted Tom from below stairs (we were nine and eleven then) and persuaded him to slide down the marble bannisters on the grand staircase. It’s a horseshoe, you see, so we had one bannister each and would race from top to bottom. On this day, Mr Tripp caught us, and Tom fell. He could have died, but luckily, he only broke his arm. I was more scared that I’d hurt my friend than I was at the whipping I knew would come when Tripp told Father.
With good, there is always bad.
Thomas Payne, Archer’s lifelong friend, later his butler and estate steward. Through his life, Tom has gone from being the son of a dairy farmer to a hall boy, footman, butler, steward and gentleman. There has been something between Tom and Archer since book one of the mysteries, ‘Deviant Desire’, and we’re never too sure if they have or haven’t… you know. Then, there is that thing that happened in Paris in ‘Negative Exposure’ which can only set us wondering…
What do you measure success in? (Money, career, husband/wife, children, happiness, etc.)
I measure my success by the happiness and well-being of others. In other words, by the success of my charities and businesses. I don’t mean that to sound overly grand; as far as I am concerned, I do not do enough to help those who cannot help themselves, but I do what I can. Sometimes that’s in the Lords, lobbying parliament members to amend bills favouring the poor. Sometimes, and for me, principally, it is in the administration of my charities: A women’s refuge, St Mary’s Hospital, a relief fund for the out of work, and one for sailors unable to work because of injury while in service. Now, I also have the Cheap Street Mission for young men who, rather than prostitute themselves, want to better themselves. We give them the chance to start again. My secretary and lover, Silas Hawkins and I set it up following the Ripper incidents in 1888. Silas still oversees it from a distance, but it is now run by a young man who, like Silas, was a renter, thereby proving that my ‘system’ works.
As we speak, I am in the process of establishing what we must call an ‘Academy.’ It’s called that so we can secure funding and permission, my legal man tells me, but learning is only part of what we will do. The ‘House’ as I call it, is on the Larkspur estate and will be a place where young men (and one day, women, I hope), will be able to come to develop their talents in… Well, in anything. My aim is to find a man to be the overseer, bring in mentors for the young men as and when required, and have a place where they can simply be and develop themselves. These young men will be from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those we help at Cheap Street. Mainly, I hope, they will be men who have fallen foul of the hideous Labouchere amendment. Men who have been deemed criminals because of their ‘unspeakable acts’, their ‘deviant desire’ to love other men, or who have in some other way fallen foul of laws that forbid men from loving men. I believe the German doctor of the mind, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, coined the word ‘Homosexual’, but that sounds far too clinical for me. I refer to such men as ‘members of the crew’, mainly for their own protection.
So, to finally answer your question, I measure my success in the happiness of others. After all, there is no greater gift than to bestow joy.
You can start the adventure with ‘Deviant Desire’ and follow the lives of Archer, Silas (pictured with him on the cover), Tom and the rest of the Clearwater Crew right through 10 Clearwater Mysteries (and the prequel, ‘Banyak & Fecks’), and on into the seven Larkspur Mysteries. Who knows, soon, there may be another series featuring these popular characters.
