Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 51, Vol. I, December 20, 1884

In Short

This volume of a popular late-nineteenth-century periodical collects essays, poetry, and serialized fiction designed to entertain and instruct the reading public. It blends practical accounts of Mediterranean agriculture and Persian artistry with tales of secret societies, inheritance plots, and Highland winters. Through its varied pages, the journal captures the scientific curiosities, artistic tastes, and moral anxieties of the Victorian era, offering a durable window into how its contemporaries engaged with both their empire and their own folklore.

The Story

The volume opens with a detailed look at the campaign against locusts in Cyprus, examining how government engineers systematically deployed miles of canvas screens and zinc traps to combat agricultural devastation. Shifting from rural pests to urban melodrama, a dramatic narrative unfolds around Madame De Vigne, a pale and resolute woman confronted in her boudoir by the malicious Hector Laroche. Laroche attempts to coerce her with old demands, but she defies him, revealing that he is known to Sir William Ridsdale. Complicating matters further, a humble worker named Jules warns Madame De Vigne that Laroche has been condemned to death as a traitor by a secret European society.

The narrative thread of intrigue connects with a separate concluding tale, "Colonel Redgrave's Legacy," in which a lawyer named Bradbury tempts the housekeeper Martha Jones with a scheme to suppress a later will left by the late Colonel Redgrave. Martha approaches Septimus Redgrave with the news that the inheritance actually belongs to Miss Blanche Fraser. Septimus refuses the illicit bargain because he is engaged to the legatee's mother, ensuring the money stays within the family. Bradbury's plot collapses, leaving him to flee his debts while Miss Fraser's marriage to Frank Lockwood secures their social standing.

Interspersed between these dramatic plots are descriptive excursions into Persian art and craftsmanship. Observers detail the low wages of self-taught Persian artists who replicate traditional motifs for modest daily pay, alongside curiosities like a three-hundred-year-old copper fire-igniter shaped like a duck. The volume then turns toward folklore, examining the cultural taboo of naming dangerous entities—from the avoidance of smallpox and the bear to the dread surrounding death itself. A traveler's winter journey through the Scottish Highlands introduces a moment of nocturnal panic at a haunted bridge where a distorted apparition startles a pony. Finally, the collection closes with pastoral verse celebrating the flora of midsummer fields before providing administrative notices for prospective contributors.

How It Unfolds

• The locust plague — The volume begins with an inspection of agricultural destruction caused by swarming insects and the official engineering reports detailing the immense canvas screens and zinc traps used to eradicate them in Cyprus.
• The boudoir confrontation — Madame De Vigne receives Hector Laroche in the twilight of her hotel room, where she firmly defies his blackmail and prepares him for a reckoning with Sir William Ridsdale.
• The secret sentence — Jules reveals to Madame De Vigne that Laroche is an affiliated member of a continental secret society that has condemned him to death as a traitor.
• The suppressed will — Martha Jones is tempted by a lawyer to conceal a later testament of Colonel Redgrave, setting in motion a confrontation over inheritance that ultimately resolves through family alliance.
• The Persian studio — The narrative eye turns eastward to examine the daily struggles, low remuneration, and meticulous copying techniques of traditional painters and craftsmen in Persia.
• The power of names — An exploration of euphemism and superstition demonstrates how human societies avoid uttering the names of dangerous things, culminating in a winter ride through the haunted landscapes of the Highlands.

The People

• Madame De Vigne — A pale, resolute woman who stands up to her former tormentor, refusing intimidation and maintaining her composure when threatened by scandal.
• Hector Laroche — A malicious and predatory figure who attempts to extort Madame De Vigne and later seeks to exploit a suppressed will, only to find his schemes unraveling.
• Jules — A humble hotel worker and secret society member who risks his own life to warn Madame De Vigne out of a deep sense of gratitude.
• Martha Jones — A housekeeper tempted by financial ambition and a lawyer's persuasion to suppress a vital document, ultimately left in acute despair when her plot fails.
• Septimus Redgrave — The inheritor of a disputed legacy who rejects an illicit bargain because his upcoming marriage keeps the disputed wealth within the family.
• Mr Bradbury — A scheming lawyer who orchestrates the suppression of Colonel Redgrave's true will before abandoning his clients and absconding with entrusted funds.

In Its Own Voice

There was to me something appalling, and at the same time attractive, in the swarms stretching for miles, which obscured the sun, and devoured everything green wherever they settled.

This reflection introduces the overwhelming scale of the locust plagues described in the opening report.

To De Miravel it seemed almost in darkness as he went in; but in a few moments his eyes became more accustomed to the semi-obscurity, and he then perceived his wife standing in the middle of the floor—a tall, black-robed figure, crowned by a face whose extreme pallor... would have seemed like that of a dead woman, but for the two large, intensely glowing eyes which lighted it up.

This description sets the tense, shadowy atmosphere of Madame De Vigne's boudoir during her confrontation with Laroche.

The limner’s art in Persia has few patrons, and the professional draughtsman of the present day in that country must needs be an enthusiast, and an art-lover for art’s sake, as his remuneration is so small as to be a mere pittance; and the man who can live by his brush must be clever indeed.

This observation opens the artistic survey of Persian craftsmanship and the economic realities faced by local painters.

What It's Really About

The volume explores the tension between systemic control and chaotic disruption, whether through engineering solutions applied to natural plagues or legal frameworks designed to regulate human greed and inheritance. It investigates how societies codify their fears, examining the psychological mechanisms of superstition, linguistic euphemism, and the avoidance of taboo subjects like death and malevolent agencies. Furthermore, it reflects on the preservation of tradition—manifested both in the unoriginal reproduction of classical Persian motifs and in the lingering presence of folklore within modern European life. Across its varied contributions, the work questions the stability of human arrangements against the vast, indifferent forces of nature, conspiracy, and time.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate nineteenth-century periodicals, Victorian melodrama, and eclectic cultural essays will find much to enjoy here. Reading this volume feels like opening a time capsule, offering an authentic tactile sense of Victorian intellectual life through its mix of colonial administration, travel writing, and serial fiction. Modern readers must navigate period attitudes and somewhat dense, formal prose styles, yet the rewards are substantial. The vivid accounts of foreign art markets and the crisp psychological sparring in the serialized drama leave a lasting impression of an era intensely curious about the wider world and its own moral boundaries. What stays with you is the sharp juxtaposition between the mundane realities of daily labor—such as the penny-a-day wages of Persian painters—and the grand, eerie scales of natural and supernatural disasters.