Author Wallace Edgar

n 1843, Liverpool, to an Irish Catholic family, Mary's family had been in show business for some years, and she grew up to be a theatrical "Jane of All Trades" - stagehand, usherette, bit-part actress. Though pretty and talented, Mary was not a great success. During 1867 she ended her theatrical career and married. Also born in Liverpool during 1838, Captain Joseph Richards of the Merchant Navy was likewise from an Irish Catholic family - his father John Richards was also a Merchant Navy Captain, and his mother Catherine Richards came from a mariner family. Mary soon became pregnant - but during January 1868, when she was eight months pregnant, Joseph Richards died at sea aged 30 years, from a sudden illness. By the time his posthumous daughter Josephine Catherine Richards was born a few weeks later, during the spring of 1868, Mary was destitute. Assuming the stage name "Polly" Richards, Mary began theatre work again to support herself and her daughter. In 1872, Polly met and joined the "Marriott" family theatre troupe, becoming part of the "family" due to the great affection that developed between her and the "Marriott" women - the troupe was managed by Mrs. Alice Edgar (who continued to use the stage name Alice Marriott), her husband Richard Edgar and their three adult children, Grace Edgar, Adeline Edgar and Richard Horatio Edgar. Intelligent, shrewd and dominating, Alice's great worry was her only son. Usually playing the "romantic lead" due to his tall, dark, handsome looks and physique, Richard had a charming personality, but was indolent. Alice wanted to marry him to a sensible young woman and produce grandchildren. Seeing a way to demonstrate her gratitude for the warmth and kindness bestowed upon her and her little daughter, Polly actively sought to locate a suitable bride for the languid Richard. In 1873, she met a suitable young woman in Dundee named Jennifer Taylor, and hastened to introduce her to the Edgar family. Jenny was a willing nominee and after intense match-making by Polly, Alice, Grace and Adeline, Richard was encouraged accordingly and he and Jenny were betrothed during the spring of 1874. In July 1874, the "Marriott" troupe experienced its greatest commercial success ever and so a "come one come all" back-stage party was held at which everyone drank "not wisely but too well". As a result of this extreme intoxication, Richard Horatio Edgar and Polly ended up having a "Boris Becker broom cupboard" style sexual encounter, which everyone was too drunk fortunately to notice. The following morning Polly was mortified and deeply ashamed, but Richard Horatio Edgar was apparently so inebriated he did not even remember the incident. A few weeks later in August 1874, Polly realised she was pregnant. Since she had been celibate since the death of her beloved husband Joseph in 1868, Richard had to be the father. She was horrified, realising that when the truth was revealed it would destroy the troupe and tear the Edgar family, "her" family, apart. Polly acted decisively. During the autumn of 1874, she invented a fictitious obligation in Greenwich that would last at least half a year, and obtained a room in a boarding house where she lived by her meagre savings through until Edgar's birth on April 1, 1875. During her confinement she had asked her midwife to locate a couple of sufficient kindness and generosity to entrust with her child's upbringing for the pittance Polly could afford to contribute. The midwife introduced Polly to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a stout, jolly mother of ten children ranging from their early twenties downwards, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fish porter (fishmonger). The Freemans were a loving couple and excellent parents. On April 9, 1875, Polly took Edgar to the Freeman family and made arrangements to visit as often as she was able without eliciting interest/suspicion by the Marriotts, since by the time she returned to London during April 1875 Jenny Taylor and Richard Horatio Edgar, oblivious to the existence of his son, had been married a month. Known as Richard Freeman, Edgar had a happy childhood, forming an especially close bond with 20-year-old Clara Freeman who became like a second mother to him. His foster-father George Freeman was an honourable and kind man and determined to ensure Richard received a good education, the family being influenced perhaps by the unfortunate circumstances of Edgar's conception. From 1875-8 Polly visited as often as she was able, bringing her contribution, but maintained a certain emotional distance. By 1878, Polly was faced with a serious dilemma. After their marriage, Richard and Jenny had relocated to Scotland, where their children were born, including Edgar's paternal half-brother, George Marriott Edgar (1880-1951), who was renowned under his stage name of Marriott Edgar as a poet, comedian, and scriptwriter for Stanley Holloway, for whom he wrote the famous Holloway Monologues, including The Lion & Albert. But the Marriott troupe was slowly dispersing, as Grace and Adeline married and Alice Marriott's health necessitated retirement. Polly took up new employment with the Hamilton troupe but now in her late 30s was increasingly limited as to the roles and backstage work she could do, forcing a commensurate decrease of earnings. In short, she could no longer afford even the small sum she had been paying the Freemans to care for Edgar. Arriving with the news and a distraught offer to place Edgar in a workhouse, Polly found the Freemans fiercely opposed to any such action, doting on the boy. Polly left abruptly, perhaps overwhelmed by emotion. She never visited again, perhaps because of shame. Her actions led to tragic consequences for her and Edgar decades later. Edgar had inherited his father's swarthy handsomeness and was extroverted. However, his usual response to any problem seems to have been to withdraw from it, either literally, mentally or emotionally. By his early teens he had held down numerous jobs and was an ardent if not very good racehorse follower. In 1894 he had rashly become engaged to a local Deptford girl, Edith Anstree, and typically sought to escape, without facing the problem properly but not wishing to hurt her feelings. In 1885, when she was sixteen, Josephine Catherine Richards had become engaged to William Henry Donovan, and Polly felt honour-bound to inform her of the half-brother living in Deptford. Considering the "Marriott" family's welfare, Josephine agreed the secret must not be revealed and apparently felt it too dangerous to arrange a meeting between her and Edgar. She married Donovan during 1886 and had their only child, named Alice Grace Adeline Donovan in honour of her foster-grandmother and aunts, in 1887. Like her father, Joseph Richards, Josephine died young of a sudden illness in 1894 at the age of 25 years. Unaware that the half-sister he did not know existed had just died, Edgar enlisted in the Infantry preparatory to leaving for South Africa. However Edgar found Army life unappealing. Soldiering was hard on his feet and ears, and indeed by the time he died was well-known for never partaking in any physical exercise (which probably contributed to his early death). He wangled a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, where at last he found his metier. By 1898, he was a war correspondent for the Daily Mail in the Boer War, as well as a poet/columnist for various periodicals - a similar sequence to that which P G Wodehouse would experience a couple of years later. He also met the author and poet Rudyard Kipling whom he greatly admired. With Edith Anstree out of sight and out of mind, he met one of his avid readers, a girl of similar age, Ivy Maude Caldecott, whose father was a Methodist minister, Reverend William Shaw Caldecott. He forbade any contact between the two. For some years Reverend Caldecott had desired to return to England unencumbered by his family and fondly imagined them unaware of this. His wife Marion Caldecott knew he would eventually seize upon an excuse to desert them. So, when Ivy defied her father's wishes and married Edgar Wallace, Marion sided with her daughter. Infuriated, Caldecott did indeed book passage back to England, but was further outraged by the lack of penitently weeping family on the Cape Town docks, the realisation they were gladder to get rid of him than he was to go an unpalatable epiphany. Many years later, Ivy would bear the brunt of his vindictiveness. In 1900 Edgar moved to a large, comfortable house at 6 Tressillian Cresent,Brockley S E London, only a mile from the house where he was born in Greenwich. He was to live in the same house for the next 30 years. It is said that he liked the house as the garden had a rear gate which allowed him to make a rapid escape from debt collectors. In 1900, Ivy had their first child, Eleanor Clare Hellier Wallace, and Edgar met one Harry F. Cohen, a financier. With Cohen's complicity, Edgar came up with an ingenious way of scooping the press-hating General Kitchener in 1902 with the signing of the Treaty ending the Boer War[2] Impressed, Cohen appointed Edgar editor of the Rand Daily Mail with a £2,000 per annum salary. Edgar had become successful, but it was all about to go horribly wrong.