Stanley John Weyman was an English writer of historical romance. His most popular works were written in 1890–1895 and set in late 16th and early 17th-century France. While very successful at the time, they are now largely forgotten.
Biography
Stanley John Weyman was born on 7 August 1855 in Ludlow, Shropshire, the second son of a solicitor. He attended Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford, leaving in 1877 with a degree in Modern History. After a year's teaching at the King's School, Chester, he returned to Ludlow in December 1879 to live with his widowed mother. Weyman was called to the bar in 1881, but had little success as a barrister, as he was shy, nervous and soft-spoken. However, his shortage of briefs gave him time to write. His short story "King Pippin and Sweet Clive" appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, although its editor, James Payn, himself a novelist, told Weyman it would be easier to make a living writing novels. Weyman viewed himself as a historian and so he was particularly encouraged by positive notices for an article he wrote on Oliver Cromwell that was published in the English Historical Review. Weyman's ill-health prompted him in 1885 to spend several months in the South of France with his younger brother Arthur. In December of that year the brothers were arrested on suspicion of espionage at Aramits. A 24-page critical biography of Weyman published as an annex to an edition of his novel Ovington's Bank suggests that this ordeal galvanised the thirty-year-old Weyman, who until then had scraped a meagre income writing short stories. His first novel, The House of the Wolf, was published in 1889. Like many of his successful works, it is set in the French religious wars of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He became a full-time writer in 1891. Four years later he married Charlotte Panting at Great Fransham, Norfolk and moved with her to Ruthin in Wales where he lived for the rest of his life. Weyman died on 10 April 1928, his wife surviving him by four years; they had no children.
Reputation
Weyman in his day was immensely popular and admired by Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde. In a 1970 BBC interview, Graham Greene said, "The key books in my life included Anthony Hope, Rider Haggard, Captain Gilson and I do occasionally re-read them. Stanley Weyman in particular." Works like The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas had established a market for popular historical fiction and it was a crowded field. Contemporary rivals included Baroness Orczy, A. E. W. Mason, John Buchan and Rafael Sabatini. The biographer Reginald Pound grouped Weyman with Arnold Bennett, Anthony Hope, Aldous Huxley, Dorothy L. Sayers and Somerset Maugham as Strand writers. He is now perhaps the least familiar of all these. His greatest success came before 1895 and he stopped writing entirely between 1908 and 1919. His style and focus are more typical of Victorian writers, as are his faults. With odd exceptions such as Gil de Berault in Under the Red Robe, his characters are fairly uniform, his women caricatures, and his dialogue wooden to modern ears. Weyman's strength lies in historical detail, often in less familiar areas. The Long Night is based on the Duke of Savoy's attempt to storm Geneva in December 1602, an event still celebrated annually in a festival called L'Escalade. Weyman received an award from the city for his research. The financial security of early success allowed him to choose subjects of personal interest. Some had less general appeal, such as the 1832 Reform Bill, post-1815 industrialisation or the 1825 financial crisis. Luck also plays a part. The reputation of many of his contemporaries now rests on one book, e. g. The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Four Feathers, or The Prisoner of Zenda. His close friend and equally successful author Hugh Stowell, who wrote as H. Seton Merriman, has also been largely forgotten. Weyman called his own books "pleasant fables" and was aware of their modest literary value.
