Summary
Summary of Historical Mysteries
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Every mystery begins with the evidence
A servant girl disappears, a secretary is murdered, and a boy arrives from nowhere. Andrew Lang approaches these historical puzzles through trial reports, letters and memoirs, asking what they establish and what remains unknown. The cases are real, but their surviving records do not always agree.
Lang is not a detached guide. He takes sides, explains his reasons and sometimes leaves a puzzle standing. His judgments matter less than the distinction he keeps drawing between a convincing story and something the evidence can actually support.
Key idea 2
A missing girl divides London
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Key idea 3
A known murder hides its motive
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Key idea 4
Suspicion cannot establish a murder
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Key idea 5
A forged friendship endangers a queen
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Key idea 6
A mysterious boy invites romantic explanations
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Key idea 7
A king's danger demands careful reconstruction
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Key idea 8
Strange claims need records made promptly
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Key idea 9
Keep evidence separate from confident stories
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Read the rest freeWho it’s for
Readers who enjoy true crime, courtroom puzzles, Jacobite intrigue and royal scandal, and who like a witty guide that weighs the evidence and says what it thinks. Fans of Thackeray and Stevenson will feel at home.
What this book is
Historical Mysteries is a collection of fourteen essays by the Scottish writer Andrew Lang, who died in 1912 and wrote these pieces in the early 1900s. Each takes a real case that baffled its own age: a vanished servant girl, a murdered secretary, a steward who walks out of his village, a diamond necklace, a boy who appears from nowhere. Lang reads the trial reports, letters and memoirs for himself and tells you what they prove and what they leave open.
He is a lively guide. He mixes legal detail with jokes, and he compares his cases to scenes in Thackeray, Stevenson and Dumas. He takes sides and says why. He stands with a poor girl in one case, with a king in another, and with a deceived queen in a third. Some puzzles he solves to his own satisfaction, others he leaves standing, and in one he says he has heard a Highland secret but keeps it from his readers.
In this summary you will visit London in 1753, Madrid under Philip II, the glens of Appin, Paris before the Revolution, and a Scottish court in 1600. We begin with a quiet girl, a farthing, and a month in a loft.
In this summary
- 1A girl's strange tale divides LondonFree
- 2A king orders a murder and hesitates
- 3Hanged without proof of any victim
- 4A Highland murder and a hidden second man
- 5A swindler ruins a queen's name
- 6A boy from nowhere, or a clever pretender
- 7Who plotted at Gowrie House in Perth
- 8Marvels in drawing rooms, never exposed
- 9Hidden hands behind kings and churches
Key point 1 of 9
A girl's strange tale divides London
Lang opens with a modern echo. A Cheshire governess goes skating alone, vanishes for days, and is found starving with a fractured skull and a story of a kidnapper nobody can trace. Then he turns to January 1753 and Elizabeth Canning, a seventeen-year-old carpenter's daughter from Aldermanbury. Her employers, the publican Wintlebury and the carpenter Lyon, praise her honesty. A small kindness over a farthing and a mince pie wins Lang to her side.
On New Year's Day she visits her aunt near the London Dock and sets out for home after nine at night. She never arrives. Her widowed mother advertises in the newspapers, has prayers said in several churches, and consults a cheap wise man. On January 29, just as her mother kneels to pray, Elizabeth knocks at the door, bleeding, ragged and close to death.
Her story is that two men robbed and struck her near Moorfields, and that she was carried to a house on the Hertford road. An old woman cut her stays and pushed her upstairs into a room with hay, a pitcher of water and scraps of bread. She lived there for almost four weeks and escaped through a window. Lang warns that most neighbors gave their versions fifteen months later, when the town was split into believers and doubters.
On February 1 a noisy crowd takes her to Mother Wells's house at Enfield. She picks out a tall, swarthy gypsy named Mary Squires as the woman who cut her stays. Squires answers that she was in Dorset all that time. The magistrate Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones, believes Elizabeth, and Squires is sentenced to death. Then the Lord Mayor, Sir Crispin Gascoyne, gathers sworn statements that the gypsy was far away, and she is pardoned.
In April 1754 Elizabeth herself is tried for perjury. Thirty-six witnesses place the gypsies in Dorset or on the road, while twenty-seven at Enfield swear just as firmly that they saw them near Mother Wells's. Lang calls the clash inexplicable. The jury finds her guilty of perjury but not wilful perjury, meant as mercy, and the court forces the harsher verdict. She is banished to New England, marries a Connecticut farmer, and dies in 1773. Lang thinks common sense judged her tale too strange to be true, yet nobody ever found where else she had been.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
Which explanation does Lang favor for Philip's decision to have Escovedo killed?
Right. “He leans toward political fear, with Perez perhaps pushing a reluctant master.”Not quite. “He leans toward political fear, with Perez perhaps pushing a reluctant master.”
How does Jeanne persuade Rohan to trust her?
Right. “Jeanne persuades him that she is the Queen's close friend.”Not quite. “Jeanne persuades him that she is the Queen's close friend.”
What does Lang examine when testing a historical explanation?
Right. “He weighs when each witness first spoke, notes what papers are missing, and asks how many coincidences a story needs.”Not quite. “He weighs when each witness first spoke, notes what papers are missing, and asks how many coincidences a story needs.”
Questions about Historical Mysteries
What is Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang about?
It is a collection of fourteen essays, each on a real puzzle from history, such as the case of Elizabeth Canning, the murder of Escovedo, the Gowrie conspiracy and the Diamond Necklace. Lang weighs the evidence and gives his own verdict.
Are the cases in Historical Mysteries true stories?
Yes, they are real events drawn from trials, letters and memoirs, ranging from the 1500s to the early 1900s. Lang names his sources and says when he is guessing, so you can follow his reasoning.
Which mysteries does Lang cover in this book?
They include Elizabeth Canning, Escovedo, the Campden steward, Allan Breck, the Cardinal's necklace, Kaspar Hauser, the Gowrie plot, D. D. Home, Captain Green, the Oglethorpe sisters, the Chevalier d'Éon, Saint-Germain, the Scottish Kirks and Jeanne de la Motte.
Does Andrew Lang solve the mysteries?
He gives a firm opinion in most cases, such as the guilt of Gowrie's party or the fraud of Kaspar Hauser. In others, like Saint-Germain or the Highland second man, he shows how far the evidence goes and then leaves the question open.
Is Historical Mysteries easy to read?
Each essay stands alone and reads like a short detective story, with clear scenes, a lively voice and plenty of humor. You can start with any case, and Lang explains the people and places as he goes.
