Pippin’s Journal: A real pip!

Pippin’s Journal by Rohan O’Grady

“A spellbinding Gothic page-tuner,” the folks at Valancourt Books tell us on the back cover of their new edition of Rohan O’Grady’s novel entitled Pippin’s Journal, and happily, this blurb tells it just the way it is. The book was one that I had never even heard of up until a few months ago, and yet it has suddenly and surprisingly become one of my favorite reads of this year. Simply stated, I just loved this one!

Pippin’s Journal was originally released as a Macmillan hardcover in 1962, with a cover and interior drawings by the famed illustrator Edward Gorey. That same year, British publisher Gollancz came out with its own hardback edition, also with the Gorey artwork. In 1964, Panther, another English publisher, released the novel in paperback form, while Ace, here in the U.S., came out with its own paperback incarnation, for some reason retitled as The Master of Montrolfe Hall, and with an inappropriately misleading cover; one of the many Gothic covers that decade depicting a young woman fleeing from a sinister-looking abode … you’ve probably seen the type. The book would then go OOPS (out of prints) for 19 years, till Second Chance Press reissued its own hardcover edition in 1983, retitled again as The Curse of the Montrolfes, and then OOPS again for 41 years, till Valancourt rescued it from oblivion in the spring of 2024. And what a truly inspired choice for a literary revival the book turns out to be! It is a novel that could easily be shoehorned into any one of several sections in your neighborhood bookstore, perhaps the reason for Gollancz putting these words on its 1962 edition: “A ghost-story? A fairy-tale? A novel of wild adventure? Call it what you will: You will anyhow ‘gulp it down’ at a sitting…”

Before getting into this novel’s manifold fine qualities, a quick word on the author herself: Rohan O’Grady was born June Margaret O’Grady in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1922. She is perhaps best remembered today as the creator of five novels. Under her pen name Rohan O’Grady, she wrote O’Houlihan’s Jest (1961), a story of Irish revolt during the 18^th century; the book in question; Let’s Kill Uncle (1963), her most well-known book, perhaps because it was filmed by the great William Castle in 1966; and Bleak November (1970), another Gothic horror affair. Under the pen name A. Carleon, she wrote The May Spoon, a YA novel, in 1981. O’Grady passed away in 2014 at the ripe old age of 91.

The story of “Pippin” is given to the reader in four discrete sections here. In the first, as a framing device in the most Gothically inflected portion of the book, our narrator, John Montrolfe, arrives at his inheritance, Cliff House, in Dorset, fresh from Canada. Montrolfe is a 33-year-old nuclear physicist, of all things, with a twisted neck and two club feet. He is greeted (if that is the correct word) at the front door of the ancestral pile by Nanny Beckett, a 93-year-old, wizened crone who has done service in the house ever since she was 10! Montrolfe soon settles in nicely, but begins to have nightly dreams in which a beautiful young maiden beckons to him, and ultimately collapses into his arms with a broken neck. Montrolfe learns from Nanny Beckett that all the previous generations of Montrolfe men had suffered from a similar dream, beginning with the house’s original builder, Sir Guy Montrolfe, in the middle of the 18^th century. Reportedly, Sir Guy had gone somewhat mad, beseeching the heavens for his Pippin to return to him, before throwing himself off the nearby cliff. And the mystery of the beautiful young maiden is somewhat explained when John Montrolfe discovers Pippin’s hidden diary in his bedside desk.

And so, in the book’s second section, we are made privy to Pippin’s journal; a segment that comprises over one-half of the book’s length. Pippin, we learn, was actually one Catherine Barton, a 15-year-old bastard child who worked in her aunt’s inn on the current site of Cliff House. One evening, in the late spring of 1758, when she’d been tending the inn alone, four thieves had arrived there by prearrangement, after having committed a daring robbery. There was Max Fabian, the handsome, 33-year-old, ruthlessly cunning mastermind of the gang; Edward Yorek, a decent and kindly farmer who’d only been led into a life of crime to help support his family; Jenkin Davy, “a big fair man”; and the brutish animal Thomas Parr, aka “the Dozer.” Each of the four men was in possession of one piece of the getaway plan, and when the Dozer killed Davy, the others soon realized that the precise location of the hidden loot had been lost. But before he died, Davy had whispered the location of the cache to Catherine in the form of a two-part riddle. The trio of thieves burnt down the inn, with Davy’s body along with it, kidnapped Catherine, and took off for the abandoned mill in which the stolen loot had been hidden by Davy … somewhere. As the weeks went by, Fabian began to realize that Catherine – who he had nicknamed Pippin, due to her apple-red cheeks – knew more than she had been letting on. He and the girl even began to fall in love with one another, despite the precarious circumstances. Pippin’s diary ends happily soon after the loot is found and she and Fabian seem set to embark on a new life together. But in the novel’s third section, taken from the diary of the Reverend Mr. Peterson, who Pippin had once suggested might have been her illegitimate father, we learn of the girl’s earliest days, and then of the trial to determine who had murdered the unfortunate lass! And in the book’s fourth section, we get to read the entire transcript of that September 1758 trial, during which Edward Yorek was tried for the murder of the poor girl, despite his desperate pleas of innocence. Taken together, the four sections reveal the reason why the succeeding generations of Montrolfe men have been haunted and cursed for over 200 years and counting…

To be perfectly honest, the wonderfully Gothic atmosphere engendered in the first section of O’Grady’s novel (i.e., Montrolfe’s arrival at Cliff House) is soon dissipated, as Nanny Beckett becomes less harsh and more comedic, as the mansion is cleaned up and modernized, and when Nanny’s great-granddaughter Beatrice and her fiancé, a very normal couple, start to visit. Still, those early scenes will be a treat for all fans of Gothic fare, even in a modern setting. O’Grady also impresses us by incorporating four different writing styles in the book’s four sections: a rational adult style in Montrolfe’s narration, a simpler style in Catherine’s journal, a guilt-ridden evangelical style in Reverend Peterson’s diary, and finally, a completely convincing, court-clerk style for the judicial transcript. And she manages to ace all four of them. Of the four, Pippin’s journal will probably be the favorite of most readers, but they are all exceptionally well done. The book presents us with any number of intriguing mysteries: What precisely is the origin of the Montrolfe curse? Why does the ghost of Pippin seemingly haunt all the men in that family? How exactly did Catherine meet her untimely end? What is the answer to that two-part riddle? Who was Pippin’s father? How did the quartet of thieves first meet and then perpetrate their heist? Fortunately, the answers to all these questions are revealed by the book’s final pages, and very ingeniously, too.

Now, as to that riddle itself, I must say that it perplexed me at first. But then, to my amazement, I awoke at around 4 AM the morning after starting the book, and in the first moment of consciousness, without even thinking about it, the answer was in my head! How bizarre! I was so excited at my solution to this mystery that I felt like jumping up and starting to read Pippin’s journal some more. (Wisely, I turned over and went back to sleep!) Even Catherine, who is obviously a very intelligent teenager (as shown by her great pains in the making of ink and quills for her journal, in her manipulation of the three thieves, in her clandestine acquisition of poison), fails to see the significance of the riddle, although Fabian, when he finally hears it, figures it out with ease. As he truthfully tells Catherine, “It is not difficult.” Still, difficult or not, I was very impressed that my unconscious brain somehow supplied me with the answer!

In a book that is so relentlessly gripping all the way through, several sequences manage to stand out: Nanny Beckett’s recitation of the accursed Montrolfe family history; the Dozer’s attempt to torture Pippin; Fabian’s attempt to kill the Dozer using a heavy wooden beam; the killing of the Dozer by Fabian and Pippin; and the revelation of the two-part riddle and subsequent discovery of the cache. The killing of the Dozer is an especially harrowing sequence, and I don’t think I’ll be spoiling much of the fun by revealing that it ultimately requires a heavy dose of poison, seven stabbings, and a white-hot poker to the neck to bring the monstrous brute down!

For the rest of it, O’Grady’s book is a nonstop delight to read, with numerous instances of authentic-sounding 18^th century dialogue (“Keep your hands off me, you whoreson, or I’ll tickle your slats with my knife,” Fabian at one point tells the Dozer) and finely expressed ideas (as Pippin says of herself and Max, “…we had both grown like the trees of my own wild coast, twisted by the wind into strange shapes never intended by nature.”). And if the central romance of a 33-year-old man with a 15-year-old woman strikes the modern-day reader as a tad, well, icky, please know that yes, it is indeed, but that it remains a fascinating one, nevertheless. Ultimately, Pippin’s Journal tells a very sad, even tragic story – even John Montrolfe is reduced to tears after reading Peterson’s diary and the trial transcript – but one that still ends well for our narrator, the deformed and twisted scientist who brings the 200-year-old “cold case” to light. To be clear, the book is absolutely unputdownable, and the Pittsburgh Press was quite correct in its assertion that this is “A story that should be read at a sitting, preferably when the wind whistles like a demon around the house and curtains are drawn against rain-splashed windows.” I cannot imagine any fan of supernatural, thriller, historical, mystery or Gothic fare not loving it.

I have practically no complaints to levy against Rohan O’Grady’s remarkable work here. Oh, the Gothic element might have been sustained a bit longer, but that would have resulted in a different book. And in that court transcript, it is mentioned that Yorek attempted to sell the thieves’ stolen horses on June 13^th; a little later, we are told that it was on the 12^th. But other than this one inconsistency, this is a virtually flawless exercise, and a hugely entertaining one, as well. It is a book that will surely make any reader want to experience more of the author’s work, and happily, Valancourt has just announced the imminent publication of Rohan O’Grady’s other Gothic novel, Bleak November. It is a book that I look forward to purchasing very soon…