No one would claim that Agatha Christie is the greatest writer in the world, but she is undoubtedly the best known. Her books have been translated into one hundred and three languages. Her sales figures run into tens of millions, and are still increasing. Over fifteen years after her death, all her seventy-seven mystery novels and collections of stories are still in print.
They were written over a period of more than fifty years. The first was published in 1920, and from that time onwards she wrote one, two or even three every year until a couple of years before her death in 1976. She also wrote six romantic novels, under the name of Mary Westmacott, which had only a limited success, though they attracted more attention later, when it was discovered who the author really was. There was nothing limited about the success of her plays. She wrote dramatized versions of several of her own novels and stories, which were all successfully performed in London. One of them, the Mousetrap, has become the longest-running play in the history of the theatre. A volume of poems, a travel book and her autobiography complete her literary output.
Agatha Christie’s autobiography is long and rather untidily put together, but highly readable. It does not go very far to explain the nature of her peculiar talent, but it does help us to understand a lot of other things about her books. A clear picture of the author’s personality and attitudes emerges, and of the kind of world which formed the setting of her earlier books.
Agatha Miller, as she was then, was born in 1891, ten years
before the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. Her father
Frederick Miller, was actually American, but he settled in
England in the early years of his marriage. He and his English
wife bought a house on the edge of Torquay, a large and
fashionable seaside town in the southwest of England. It was a
very comfortable life in those days, in the upper-middle-class
society to which the Millers belonged. Fred Miller did not work;
having a private income, he was not expected to. His wife had
servants to look after the household a cook to prepare the meals,
including weekly and a housemaid for the housework. Of course,
there was a nurse to look after Agatha.
It was a well-ordered household, in which everyone knew their place and was satisfied with it. This feeling of order and stability was very important to Agatha. The house, Ashfield, was spacious and comfortable, with a large garden than formed an ideal setting for a child’s games. Ashfield remained important to Agatha throughout her life, first in fact and then in memory. The large houses in which many of her stories are set often owe a good deal to Ashfield.
Agatha was an imaginative child. This was just as well since she spent most of her time playing alone; her elder sister and brother were away at boarding school, and there were no children living near. But she did not need real playmates since she had imaginary ones. From an early age she began creating sets of imaginary characters and telling herself endless stories about them. She went on doing this until she was nearly grown up, but she did not write any of the stories down.
One thing that Agatha had very little of was education. Her mother, a woman of strong and eccentric ideas, had decided that girls did not need a formal education. So little Agatha did not go to school and did not have a governess to teach her. Her mother also believed that children should not be taught to read before they were eight. However, at the age of four Agatha taught herself to read. In her autobiography she relates how one day her nurse came to her mother and said, "I’m afraid, Ma’am, Miss Agatha can read." After that she was taught to write, and her father gave her some lessons in arithmetic, but otherwise her education seems to have been left in her own hands. She read large numbers of books - there were plenty of them in the house - but they were mostly works of fiction rather than fact. Mrs Miller did believe that girls should be taught French. From a visit to France she brought back a young French girl, a dressmaker, to do the family sewing and speak French to Agatha. And so Agatha learnt to speak French fluently and naturally. She made good use of this accomplishment later, in writing about Poirot, her Belgian detective.
When Agatha was eleven her father died of pneumonia. It seemed that his health had been weakened by financial worries: his large American fortune had been badly managed, and there was hardly any money left. His widow decided to keep on the house, Ashfield, because the children loved it so much, but strict economies were necessary. From this period until the time, over twenty years later, when her books became profitable, Agatha was always short of money.
Money difficulties did not prevent Mrs Miller from doing what she wanted. She decided when Agatha was fifteen that she ought to go to a finishing school in Paris. To finance this, she let Ashfield for a good rent. So in the end Agatha did receive some education, directed mainly towards music, art and literature.
In her family Agatha was always considered as "the slow one". She was certainly less quick and lively than her sister, and always found difficulty in expressing herself. She says that it was probably because she was such a bad talker that she became a writer.
Agatha grew up into a pretty girl. In spite of her shyness, she was popular at parties and dances. Her mother could not afford to give her the London "coming-out" tradition among the upper classes, which she had given her elder daughter, but Agatha had plenty of friends with an upper class background, and was invited to house parties in different parts of the country. A "house party", a group of perhaps six to ten people gathered together in a large country house, was to form the setting of many of her mystery stories.
It was at this sage of her life that Agatha began to write. Perhaps she would never have started at all if her mother had not suggest it as an occupation for convalescence. "I was in bed with a bad cold," Agatha relates, "and my mother said, ‘You’d better write a short story. (Nonsense, don’t say you can’t! Of course you can!’ ") Her mother produced an exercise book, and the story was soon written.
A number of others followed it, and Agatha began sending them to magazines, but they were all rejected. (They were not detective stories.) Then she wrote a novel, with an excessive complex plot, which she was also unable to publish. After this failure she gave up, discouraged. In any case, she had never imagined herself as a professional writer. At school in Paris, she had thought of a career as a concert pianist, or an opera singer, but her musical talent was not strong enough, and she was too much of a realist to hold on to these ambitions for long. There was only one future which she seriously considered: a happy marriage.
The man whom she eventually fell in love with was Archie Christie, a young officer in the newly formed Royal Flying Corps, which was the predecessor of the RAF. He had no money, apart from his pay, but they got married in 191, after the First World War had broken out.
Agatha continued to live with her mother at Ashfield; she was working as a nurse in the local hospital. The medical knowledge she acquired by this experience was to be very useful to her in her crime stories. It also enabled her to write convincingly about doctor and nurses. When she began working in the hospital dispensary she acquired something even more useful: a detailed knowledge of poisons.
In the dispensary there were often long periods with nothing to do. It was during these periods that she began writing her first detective story. Poison, of course, was the instrument of murder; the setting, a country house; and the detective a funny little Belgian called Hercule Poirot. The novel was completed and named The Mysterious Affair at Styles. It was refused by four publishers before being accepted by the firm of John Lane, who published it in 1920. It the author had had her wish, the name Agatha Christie would never have become world famous: she wanted to use the pen name of "Martin West". It was John Lane who persuaded her that her own name was more memorable. In another way, however, he was not so helpful to a young and inexperienced author: the contract he made with her, covering her first for books, was not to her advantage. Agatha received nothing from the publishers for this first novel, although it sold nearly 2,000 copies, which was considered was quite good at that time. But she did get 25 pounds from a newspaper that serialized it.
By this time the war had ended, and the Christies were living in London on very little money, Archie having managed to get a job in a small financial business. Agatha’s mother had even less to live on, and was considering selling Ashfield. It was in the hope of making some money to help with the unkeep of Ashfield that Agatha decided to write another book, a thriller time. She made 50 pounds from this, and was encouraged to go on to a third another detective story featuring Poirot.
The next few years of Agatha’s life with Archie Christie were very happy. They had a daughter, Rosalind; they made a trip round the world, on business; Archie became more prosperous, and they were able to buy a house in the country, twenty miles or so outside London. And then in 1926 the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - by Collins, who remained her publishers throughout her career - firmly established Agatha Christie’s reputation. But then everything went wrong. Agatha’s mother died, and she went down to Ashfield to clear the place up. When Archie joined her two months later, he informed her that he had fallen in love with another woman and wanted a divorce.
It was during the next unhappy months that the only sensational event in Agatha’s life occurred. She disappeared. Her car was found abandoned, some distance from her house. Suicide was suspected, or murder, and thousands of people helped the police to search the countryside for her body. But ten days later she was discovered staying in a hotel in the north of England, under an assumed name. She appeared to have lost her memory.
The mystery of her disappearance has never been solved. She was accused of having planned the whole thing in order to gain publicity for her books. This seems most unlikely, as she had a real horror of publicity. It was more probably a desperate attempt to frighten her husband, in order to re-awaken his love. It certainly did not achieve this result, as Archie Christie insisted on getting divorced.
Agatha had always had a taste for adventure. After her divorce she decided to visit the Middle East and set off by train, alone, for Baghdad. (The train was the Orient Express, which she later used as the scene for a novel.) In Iraq she met some famous British archaeologists. One member of the group was a young man called Max Mallowan, who was instructed to act as her guide. The two became good friends and although he was considerably younger than she was, they got married a year or two later.
This marriage
was a thoroughly happy one. Agatha accompanied her husband on
numerous archaeological trips in the Middle East, though she
continued to produced a steady stream of books and stories. Death
on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia, Appointment with Death and a
handful of short stories have a Middle Eastern setting. This
decade, the thirties, can be considered as the
"classic" period in Christie’s writing.
When the Second World War Came, the Mallowans had to move out of the large country house they had bought near Torquay, as it was wanted by the government. Max Mallowan went into the army, and Agatha lived in London, undismayed by the bombing. Once again she worked as a hospital dispenser, which enabled her to learn something about the new drugs now in use.
After the war Agatha Mallowan’s life continued to be happy, successful and well-ordered. There were houses to do up, there were more archaeological trips, there was her grandson to play with. And when she began writing plays, the theatre became an important part of her life. Finishing her autobiography in 1965, she declared herself amazed by the extraordinary success of her play The Mousetrap, which had been running for thirteen years. Twenty years later, the play is still on in London!
In spite of her ever-growing fame, Agatha Christie remained to the end of her life a modest and essentially private person. The books and the plays were public property, but she herself never allowed the media to turn her into a "personality".
It is not unusual these days for a novel to become popular all over the world. That is really remarkable about Christie is the fact that her books written fifty or sixty years ago are still popular. Of course they have dated to some extent: they belong to a world which we only know at second hand. But they are still very enjoyed, and for just the same reasons that they were originally enjoyed.
Naturally the work of any author writing over a long period changed an develops. But in fact, Agatha Christie’s work changed remarkably little during fifty years of writing; though two or three books written right at the end of her life show a dad decline, and are best left aside.
Her first detective novel does show some signs of inexperience, but already the essential qualities were there. The most important of these is her skill in the invention and construction of a plot. In the same way as the child had told herself complicated stories, the adult author worked out her elaborate plots. Generally she started with one simple idea on which the solution of the mystery depended, then invented suitable characters, who soon seemed to their creator to take on a life of their own. Then she worked out patiently all the details of the story, and finally began to write. Throughout her long career she showed herself to be marvellously inventive, hardly ever repeating an idea. Perhaps only a handle of the novels and stories could be called outstandingly original, but the general level of interest is remarkably high.
Of the sixty-six full-length
novels, twelve can be described as thrillers rather than
detective stories. They have a strong element of the mystery, and
a criminal whose identity is revealed at the end, but the
emphasis is on adventure rather than detection. Agatha Christie
says that she found these books easier and more enjoyable to
write. They are enjoyable to read, too, but are generally
considered inferior to the detective novels. This is partly
because they are concerned with political situations which seem
to belong to a world of fantasy.
In her detective stories, Christie writes almost entirely about the world she knows, and the kinds of people she knows. And she has the numerous threads of her plot well under control. The stories begin briskly, and proceed at steady pace. We are not confused by too much incident, but at the same time we feel there is always something happening: the author knows just when it is time to introduce a new surprise. We keep ion reading quickly because we want to know what is going to happen next. But afterwards, if we analyse the plot, we will see that it has a clear and defined shape. Christie knows what she wants to do, and achieves it smoothly. The detective-story reader starting one of her books confidently expects to be gripped, puzzled, entertained and surprised; he will not be frightened, shocked, disgusted - or deeply moved.
A detective story stands or falls by its solution. Most readers of detective stories have experienced all too many disappointments at the end: the solution is too obvious, or too difficult; it is impossible to believe in, or it fails to explain all the facts. But not when the story is a Christie. It is her masterly control of the solution that has earned her the title of "the Queen of Crime". She goes on surprising even intelligent and experienced readers most of the time, and the solution, when it comes, is usually completely satisfying, both logically and psychologically.
The creation of Hercule Poirot was certainly another major reason for Christie’s success: I will return to him later. As regards her characters in general, the author has been accused of creating figures of cardboard, of presenting types rather than real people. It is true that she does not give us fully-rounded individuals, people who seem to have a life outside the book in which they figure. But if she did, the balance of the book would be destroyed. Our feelings would be too closely engaged. In order for us to enjoy reading about murderers and their victims, we must be kept at a certain distance from them.
At their own level, Christie’s characters are convincing enough. "Types" they may be, but they are recognizable types. And they come alive through their conversation.
The stories are told very largely by means of dialogue, and this is another factor which makes them easy to read. Agatha Christie had always had a good ear for dialogue. Her conversations are not realistic, as those of some modern novels are, but they sound natural and convincing when we read them.
In the books written some time ago the characters - and the author herself - use some words and phrases which are no longer in common use today. In spite of this, her style has dated surprisingly little, compared to that of most detective stories and other popular novels of the same period. It is on the whole plain and workmanlike, lacking in elegance but still serviceable fifty years later.
One might say that Christie’s books have succeeded so
widely, and for so long, not only because of what is in them, but
because of what is not in them. No fine language, not tricks of
style - and no unnecessary detail. There are no boring
descriptions to hold up the story: if, for instance, a room is
described, it is because some of feature of it is important to
the story.
In general, the stories have remarkably little background. The author does not try to bring a scene, in all its lively detail, before our eyes: it is only the narrative that counts. Even the few novels and stories that are set in the Middle, or the South of France, (which the author knew very well) have hardly any "local colour". We are not given unnecessary information, either. Even when a story relates to some subject where the author has specialized knowledge, such as archaeology or music, she does not attempt to pass it on to the reader. As she said herself, she was not an intellectual and this has no doubt made her appeal wider.
The stories, then, are all foreground. They deal with people and their feelings - groups of people interacting with each other. The group may be based on a family, a house party of guests, a village, or people brought together by chance in a hotel or vehicle. Not often does a work-situation provide a setting: they were few which Christie knew well enough to wish to write about, and in any case she probably considered them too specialized. The action in her stories springs from the operation of basic human emotions: love, greed, fear, hatred, jealousy, desire for power. Details of time and place are not important. This also has helped to make the appeal of her books so general.
But one aspect of the book is quite particular, and that is the moral framework, laid down by the author’s Victorian childhood. When reading a Christie one knows quite well that the wrongdoer will be punished in the end - if not by the law, then by Fate. And the innocent (unless they have already been murdered) will be cleared from suspicion, and free to live happily. There are no uncertainties: the Truth is sacred, and Murder is always wrong, whatever the circumstances, however unpleasant the victim. Poirot in particular upholds these principles very firmly. The modern reader may not always be quite so sure; but there is something restful in a book where one is no asked to make any moral choices. With a Christie we know exactly where we stand.
When Agatha Christie was planning her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, she realized the importance of inventing a detective who would appeal to the imagination. She was a great reader of detective stories herself. The fictional detective whom she most admired was Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. He was an extraordinary man: her detective must also be extraordinary, though of course in an entirely different way.
The idea of making him a Belgian occurred to her because at that time, during the First World War, there was a group of Belgian refugees in Torquay. He would be a retired Belgian police inspector, evacuated to England. She planned out his appearance and his characteristics: a very small man, with a large, egg-shaped head, hair dyed black and carefully pointed moustaches. He had a passion for order, in his own appearance, in his surroundings and in his ways of thought. He was vain, as an Englishman could never allow himself to be. To his English acquaintances, indeed, he appeared somewhat ridiculous. It was only gradually that they came to realize the brilliance of his mind and the power of his "little grey cells" as he called the brain.
It was a striking character, and an amusing one. Right from the beginning, it worked. Poirot was an immediate success.
But in creating him, Agatha Christie had made one terrible mistake: she had made him too old. It never entered her had that she would still be writing about him ten years later - let alone fifty years! Being retired, he started out at least sixty-five. And it was not really suitable to let him grow much order than that.
In one respect, Poirot did change over the years: his English improved. His creator had a lot of fun over his French way of speaking English, using unsuitable words, and putting them in the wrong order, in a manner that was amusing to the English reader. But as the years passed, his mistakes were restricted.
Poirot is certainly a character who seems to exist beyond the books in which he appears. People who have never read the books (or seen the films) may be familiar with his charactersitics.
In fact, there is more to Poirot than his creator tells us. If we look at how he behaves and what he says in the stories, we realize that he is also humorous, kind and cheerful (all qualities obviously possessed by his creator). Perhaps that is what makes him such agreeable company.
Agatha Christie was also influenced by Conan Doyle when she gave Poirot a friend any companion, like Holme’s Dr Watson. Arthur Hastings, the narrator of the first three detective novels and a number of stories, is a young Englishman who met Poirot in Belgium as a soldier during the war. After the war, when Poirot set up in London as a private detective, Hastings became his partner, and shared a flat with him. Hastings is one of those people who always seem to miss the point - of a joke, or of a clue - and the reader may have a few smiles at his expense. Agatha Christie soon became bored with Hastings, and sent him off to South America. After that Poirot lived on his own,and the stories about him were usually told in the third person.
She says that she got tired
of Poirot, too, but his enormous popularity made it difficult to
abandon him. In the early 1940s she wrote a book, Curtain, in
which Poirot, now a very old and sick man, dies, after
investigating his last case; but this was not published until
1975, shortly before her own death. In fact she continued to
write occasional books about Poirot until almost the end.
When, in 1929, Agatha Christie introduced another detective, she wanted a complete contrast to Poirot. But she repeated the same dreadful mistake: Miss Marple, or her first appearance, is an old lady with snowy white hair! She is a typical English spinster, living in a typical English village. Her life is taken up with gardening, village affairs and village gossip. She is gentle, fussy and conventional, and has little knowledge of the world beyond the village. The point about Miss Marple is that she seems such an unlikely person to take on the role of detective, or to have anything to do with violent crime. The comic possibilities of this unsuitability are exploited to the full.
Miss Marple does not usually
play an active part in the investigation of a crime - that is
done by the police. But she collects information, through the
regular village channels: servants, boys delivering food and
friends bringing her their news. From this she uses her knowledge
of human nature, gained by studying the behaviour of people in
the village, to work out a solution to the mystery. "Human
nature is the same everywhere," says Jane Marple. To Agatha
Christie the village is a miniature society, reflecting the
outside world.
Miss Marple never achieved quite the same popularity as Poirot. She does not catch the imagination in the same way. But Agatha Christie went on writing about her for over forty years; by this time she was an old lady herself, and wrote feelingly about the difficulties of arthritis and poor eyesight.
extracted from Best Detective Stories of Agatha Christie, Longman 1986