This is John Meade Falkner (1858-1932), best known as the author of Moonfleet (1898), a riproaring tale of smuggling and derring-do.

I remember it being read to us in primary school. Sometimes, when he was tired, Mr Smith, bespectacled and ginger-bearded, would ask me to take his place, reading aloud to the class. It was both an honour and a privilege!

Falkner, the son of a West Country curate, emerged from Marlborough and Oxford with a third class history degree. He was appointed tutor to the children of a wealthy arms manufacturer, eventually joined the company himself and ultimately became its chairman.

After retiring in 1921, he accepted an academic post at the University of Durham and was also appointed Honorary Librarian at Durham Cathedral.

The Nebuly Coat was his third and final novel, published in 1903. The title refers to an heraldic device – an exaggeratedly wavy line, its upper waves supposedly resembling clouds (nebulee).

Arthur Westray, a young architect, is sent to repair Cullerne Minster, a historically important church in the now sleepy town of Cullerne Wharf. He is alarmed by the parlous state of the tower, but his warnings are disregarded by his irritatingly smug boss and the Minster’s self-important rector.

Westray lodges with the genteel but poverty-stricken Miss Joliffe and her beautiful niece, Anastasia.

Miss Joliffe’s brother Martin had been obsessed with the notion that he was the rightful heir to Fording, the nearby seat of the Lords Blandamer. Their coat of arms, bearing the nebuly line in green against silver, tops out the Minster’s largest stained glass window.

Martin had died on the verge of resolving the riddle of his birth, handing over his papers to Sharnall, the Minster’s organist, who has fallen prey to alcoholism, never fulfilling his early promise. Sharnall also lodges with the Joliffes and Westray befriends him.

Sharnall is frightened by movements in the shadows, fearing he is being followed and will be attacked, but are these merely the fancies of a drink-addled mind?

Shockingly, he dies in his own organ loft. But did he fall or was he pushed? Did he hit his head on the organ pedals when he fell, or was he hit first, by a person unknown? There is no investigation. Westray takes over Martin Joliffe’s papers.

Simultaneously, the official Blandamer heir has reappeared after long wanderings abroad. Urbane and charming, he shows great interest in Westray’s work, offering to pay for the repairs to the Minster. Westray has proposed to Anastasia but is rejected in favour of Blandamer. They marry, have a child together and seem happy.

But Westray has come into possession of a strikingly ugly painting, previously Miss Joliffe’s, depicting a vase of flowers and a caterpillar. It was painted by her mother, Sophia, who had arrived on the scene with Martin, already aged three. She subsequently married Miss Joliffe’s father, giving birth to the latter before promptly running away with a soldier.

The picture turns out to be painted over a portrait of Blandamer’s grandfather, the green caterpillar ironically masking the nebuly line on his coat of arms. It also disgorges papers – the missing proofs of Martin Joliffe’s parentage. He was after all the rightful heir of the Blandamer fortune.

Westray heads to Fording to confront Blandamer, realising that he has been trying to retrieve this evidence so that he may continue to hold the title. We never discover whether or not he killed Sharnall.

But, when it comes to the point, Westray proves too weak, or else too cowardly, to press the issue. The wicked Blandamer has seemingly triumphed.

Westray is called back to the Minster as the tower is finally threatening collapse. Having visited his solicitor, Blandamer arrives at the Minster on the point of disaster. The tower is about to disintegrate – just as we always knew it would – but the idiotic Westray has (of course) got himself stuck in the belfry.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Blandamer leaps to the rescue, releasing Westray but killing himself in the process. The novel’s final sentence informs us that he has just added a codicil to his will making the inadequate Westray co-trustee of his estate, alongside Anastasia, and guardian of their child.

We are left to imagine how Westray will respond.

An ending so contrived deserves to mark the final scene of a tragic opera. It is undeniably neat, though such neatness is never encountered in reality. We are required to suspend our disbelief.

Some regard this as an outstanding novel. It is undoubtedly skilful and possesses great charm. The characterisation is excellent; far more realistic than the culmination of the plot, in that most of the principals are flawed, not least the weak-willed and irresolute Westray, who is destined to bring Blandamer to justice but utterly fails to fulfil his destiny.

I would assess it as very good rather than great, a curiosity by a little-remembered author. But both the novelist and his novel deserve to be more widely celebrated.

So do read this one if you can.

TD

February 2025