Alice Askew

Alice Askew in a feather hat (date and photographer unknown)

Alice Askew was an English writer - co-author with her husband Claude Askew of over ninety stories, including a series of supernatural tales featuring the 'occult' investigator "Aylmer Vance". Not long after they were married (10 July, 1900) they began collaborating together on stories and thereafter all their works were published under the name: "Alice and Claude Askew". Alice had already begun to write before her marriage to Claude. Her first published story was 'A Modern Day Saint. A Slight Sketch of a Priest and a Woman', which appeared in Belgravia: A London Magazine, Vol. 85, London, 1894. This was signed: "By A. J. de C. L."

"Alice and Claude Askew (Jane de Courcy, 1874-1917, and Arthur Cary, 1866-1917)"

"This now forgotten husband-and-wife team of collaborators wrote many novels and story cycles. Their one series about the supernatural featured an investigator of the occult named Aylmer Vance. The brisk and rather lightweight stories are narrated by Vance's admiring dogsbody and chronicler, Mr. Dexter, in a Holmes and Watson sort of way. Vance himself, in his attention to the vast gray area beyond the purview of Holmes, is reminiscent of two earlier detectives in this vein, William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence. Vance is not quite up to the level of these two characters, but the stories are fun, as he investigates various apparitions and hauntings, as well as once pursuing a memorable vampire.

The series appeared in The Weekly Tale-Teller during 1914, with 'Aylmer Vance and the Vampire' published in the August I issue. ... Both authors died when their ship was torpedoed by a submarine during World War I." —Michael Sims in Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories, 2010

Alice was born on June 18th, 1874 at her parents' home, No. 3 Westbourne Street, Kensington, London. She was baptised 'Alice Jane de Courcy' at St. Michael and all Angels, Paddington on August 5th, 1874. Her father was - at the time of her birth - Captain Henry Leake, on half pay, late of the 70th Regiment of Foot. Captain Leake had married Jane Dashwood on July 16th, 1873 at the the same St. Michael and All Angels Church in Paddington. Jane was the only child and daughter of Charles James Augustus Dashwood, who had served with the East India Company in its Bengal Cavalry, from which he retired with the rank of Captain in 1822. Henry Leake, whose father John Leake was a merchant from Liverpool, would subsequently serve with the East Yorkshire Regiment and retire in 1882 with the honorary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Alice was the eldest child of three. Her brother was Henry Dashwood Stucley Leake, who was known by his niece Jill Askew, as "Uncle Stucley". And her sister was Francis Beatrice Levine Leake, who sadly died when only six years old in 1884.

There are a few 'sources' online and elsewhere which suggest that her names 'Jane de Courcy' were some kind of pseudonym or nom-de-plume. This is not the case. They are her middle Christian names. 'Jane' she got from her mother, Jane née Dashwood; and 'de Courcy' presumably from the same Dashwood family through the marriage of her great uncle Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Dashwood, K.C.B., G.C.T.S. to the Hon. Elizabeth de Courcy, daughter of John de Courcy, the 26th Baron Kingsale. They named their second son: 'John de Courcy', who in turn named his two sons: 'De Courcy Pitcairn' and 'Francis Dundas de Courcy'. Francis Dundas de Courcy Dashwood continued the use of this now 'family name' with his son: 'Francis (Frank) John de Courcy'; and two daughters: 'Coventry de Courcy' and 'Maud de Courcy'. These last were contemporaries of their cousin Alice Jane de Courcy Leake.

Alice Jane de Courcy Leake was married to Claude Arthur Cary Askew on July 10th, 1900 at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate in Paddington, London.

A PICTURESQUE WEDDING:

"There was a large and fashionable congregation on Tuesday afternoon at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, to witness the marriage of Mr. Claude Arthur Cary Askew, second son of the late Rev. John Askew, M.A., to Miss Alice Jane de Courcey Leake, only surviving daughter of the late Lieut.-Colonel Henry Leake, late 44th and 70th Regiments, and of Mrs. Leake, 3, Westbourne Street, Hyde Park. The bridegroom, who is the proprietor of the Anglo-American Exchange, of London, New York, and Paris, has a host of friends and acquaintances among American visitors now in London, many of whom were present at the ceremony. ...."

There is a blog called 'Bear Alley' by Steve Holland, "whose interests are old British comics, books and magazines," which has an extensive – though by no means complete – list of their published titles. In his blog he writes:

"Claude Arthur Cary Askew was born in Notting Hill, London, in 1866, the second son of Reverend John Askew, M.A. Educated at Eton and on the continent, Askew married Alice Jane de Courcey Leake (born St. Pancras, London, 1874, the daughter of Colonel Henry Leake) in 1900 and the pair became industrious writers of stories and serials. ... On October 17(sic - should read October 6), 1917, they were aboard a ship in the Mediterranean which was attacked by an enemy submarine. Both were recorded as having drowned at sea. The couple were survived by a son and a daughter. In more peaceful times they had lived in Wivelsfield Green, near Burgess Hill in Sussex."

Alice & Claude Askew – always as co-authors within a few years after their marriage – wrote more than ninety stories, which were published variously in books, novelettes or novellas in popular magazines or ‘weeklies’. In volume 46 of The Review of Reviews, published in 1912, there is a review of a review from another magazine, Annie Swan's, Woman at Home:

'WIVES WHO WORK WITH THEIR HUSBANDS'

"Rudolph de Cordova sketches in Woman at Home the activities of several famous wives and their husbands. Mrs. Ayrton, Lady Huggins, and Madame Curie, together with their husbands, were discoverers in the realms of science. The bulk of the article is, however, devoted to co-workers in the field of literature. Mr. and Mrs. Askew, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle, and Mr. and Mrs. Leighton will be familiar, through their work, to the novel reader. Mr. and Mrs. Askew had only had one story each published before their marriage. They went on working along their own individual lines for about a year:—

Mr. Askew was doing a lot of writing for Household Words, which was then under the proprietorship of Mr. Hall Caine, and naturally Mrs. Askew took a great deal of interest in it. About a year after they had been married it occurred to them that it would be pleasant to work together, since their tastes were so strikingly similar. They began with short stories, in which they have been as successful as they have been prolific, and contributed practically a new story every week to Household Words. A little later they thought they would try their hands at serial stories. The first one they did was accepted and was published in the Evening News under the title of "Gilded London." So great was its success that they received orders for a second.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Askew dream the plots on which many of their stories are founded:—

One of these was "The Baxter Family." So marked is this gift that when they want a plot for a new story it is no unusual thing for Mrs. Askew to say to herself on going to bed: "You will wake up to-morrow with your plot," and she does. It must, however, be told immediately, or it would be forgotten. These plots are always rapidly written down, and it has happened over and over again that the plot for a long serial has been practically set down in one sitting."

Jack Adrian writes in his Introduction to the collection of Alice and Claude Askew's ‘Aylmer Vance’ stories, published all together in one book for the first time in 1998, with the title, Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer, one of the Ash-tree Press Occult Detective Series, all edited by Jack Adrian:

"... Both Claude Askew and his future wife were clearly temperamentally suited not only to each other, but to the literary life itself, since both, as it were dived into it at the first opportunity. The son of a country clergyman, Claude was sent to Eton (1879-1883), and there wrote a play in blank verse. His first paid work was a short story for Jerome K. Jerome’s doomed twopenny weekly To-Day. ... Alice Jane de Courcy Leake (daughter of Colonel Henry Leake of the 44th and 70th Regiments of Foot) wrote solely for her own amusement, before recalling Dr. Johnson's celebrated (to writers) dictum that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money' and joining forces with Askew in the late 1890s. Her one published effort, before they married in 1900, 'A Modern-Day Saint', appeared in Belgravia. ... Their method of collaboration was simple. If Claude thought of a plot, he would write the first half of the story, Alice the second. If she dreamed up the plot, she would start in on the writing, Claude finishing and polishing. In this way they could work on at least two projects at the same time; once the process had been refined, three or four projects. Or more. And in the case of the tirelessly industrious Askews it usually was more...."

Not long after the outbreak of the First World War on July 28th, 1914, both Alice Askew and her husband Claude were found visiting the front in Belgium, where they wrote:

"Around the trenches — the long battle front that extends for over thirty miles — the country wears a sombre and melancholy aspect, a grey, sickly pallor. The fields are bare — there is nothing left in them to ravage and rend; war — fierce, thundering war — is master and god of the soil; the trees are gaunt and leafless; the entire countryside is pockmarked with shells; the roads have become roads of ruts and furrows; there are rows on rows of graves."

And an anonymous War Nurse's diary would later record:

"...At that time Furnes was the Headquarters of the Belgian Army, and the quaint Hôtel de Ville, dating from 1582, was King Albert's Army Quarters. ... We lived in Furnes from October 18th to January 15th. All the time we were in Belgium we were never out of hearing of the constant boom and thunder of artillery, and at night the sky was afire with the battle going on to the east of us, about three miles away. Our life was a complex thing to describe; there was a constant coming and going of outsiders. People came to Furnes to see things---great people. The college being large and other accommodation in the town nil, we put them up, and they were our guests for the time being.

Attached to us was a most interesting body of people, "The Munro Ambulance Corps." Dr. Munro was its chief. He is now Sir Hector Munro. With him, driving ambulances, were many well. known people; just a few names I remember---Lady Dorothy Feilding, the eldest son of General Melisse, head of the Belgian R. A. M. C., Dr. Jellett, the Dublin gynæcologist; Claude and Alice Askew, the novelists (since drowned in a submarine attack); Miss McNaughton, authoress; Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholme; Mr. Hunt of Yokohama and Mr. Sekkar, a great sport and our good friend. All their ambulances were stored in our front yard, numbering over twenty. With them were four jolly young gentlemen-amateur chauffeurs who soon became our friends. These people worked mostly at night, gathering the wounded and removing them under cover of darkness. We received all those who could not travel further into France...."

But this was just the beginning of the Askews' contribution to the allied war effort. Later on in 1915 they had travelled to the Kingdom of Serbia, where they were both with 'The First British Field Hospital for Serbia' attached to the Serbian Army. In their book, The Stricken Land: Serbia As We Saw It, Claude describes their role:

"As for Alice and myself, we went out essentially as writers, though we were prepared to turn our hands to odd jobs if called upon to do so. We had assisted Dr. Hartnell Beavis in London with the formation of the unit, the raising of funds, and the collection of stores. It was the reports in the English Press of the terrible state into which Serbia had fallen during the winter of 1914-1915 that first inspired us to work for that gallant little country. ... We were already definitely attached to the Second Serbian Army, admitting no other jurisdiction than that of the Serbian military authorities. ... It is to General Popovitch that I am indebted for my commission in the Serbian army—an honorary commission, of course, but I am proud to be able to wear the Serbian uniform, and would not exchange it during retreat, in spite of strong representations as to the advisability of doing so. As a matter of fact, other considerations apart, I found the uniform of great service to me...."

Alice Askew in Serbian nurse's uniform c.1916 (photographer unknown)

Alice Askew too would have her own uniform – that of a nurse. However there is no indication that she had any training as such. Claude had taken some studies in medicine at Guy’s Hospital in the early 1890s – while never qualifying as a doctor. It is more likely that their main role there was as writers. They were also working as special correspondents for the Daily Express. And they were both happy to be propagandists for the Serbian cause. They described their experiences of accompanying the Serbian army on its "Great Retreat" across the mountains of Kossovo and Albania in the aforementioned book, The Stricken Land: Serbia As We Saw It, which they published while back in London after the Serbian army had been evacuated to Corfu in 1916.

Alice also gave birth there on July 26th, 1916 to her second and youngest daughter, Gillian (Jill) Margaret Askew. Almost all other sources have ignored this last child – only mentioning their son Geoffrey (born April 12th, 1901) and eldest daughter Joan (born July 5th, 1903). Perhaps this is because the news reports of their deaths (October 6th, 1917) failed to mention a third child born just fourteen months earlier - and whom Alice had left in the care of others when she left England in October of 1916 to rejoin her husband and the Serbian army - by then headquartered in Salonica. In early March of 1917 she went to Corfu to work under Colonel Borissavljevitch of the Serbian Red Cross. In a letter from Corfu, dated July 19th, 1917, she wrote to her dear friend Mildred Watson (Mildred Musgrave Watson, M.B.E., who had been secretary of the Serbian Relief Fund in London from 1914 to 1916 – and who would later become the guardian and adoptive mother of Jill Askew):

"... I am hoping to see Geoffrey & Joan, last October makes it nearly nine months since I saw the children & I am longing to have them with me for a month. I have been given a month’s leave to go to Rome in the hope of meeting them there. I’ll write again next week, is baby keeping well?"

She must have met up with Claude there too as it was from Italy that they both set sail for Corfu on the ill-fated steamer Città di Bàri, which was torpedoed by a submarine and sank at around 4’oclock on the morning of October 6th, 1917. His body was never recovered. But hers was washed ashore on October 29th in the Bay of Porto Carboni (Karboni) on the island of Curzola (Korčula) – not far from the mainland port city of Dubrovnik. At a spot nearby there is a stone cross bearing the following inscription:

"Alice Askew – englezka spisateljica – donesena morem 29. – a pokopana – komissionalno – 30. oktobra 1917" (roughly translated: "Alice Askew – English writer – delivered by the sea 29th – and buried – komissionalno(?) – 30th October 1917")

Previously – on Sunday, October 23rd, 1917:

"A Reuter message states that a memorial service for Major Claude Askew, honorary commandant in the Serbian army, and Mrs. Askew was held at the Serbian Church, Corfu, on Sunday. The Archbishop of Serbia paid an eloquent tribute to the benevolent work of Major and Mrs. Askew, to whom, he said, the Serbian people owed eternal gratitude." —Daily Express

And in a letter to the editor of the Daily Express under the heading:

DEATH AT THEIR POSTS. – Serbian Tribute to Major and Mrs. Claude Askew

"Sir,—Knowing that one of the best articles on Serbia by Mr. and Mrs. Claude Askew—the Kossovo-day article of last year—appeared in your newspaper, allow me to express through you our great sympathy with those noble British authors and our deepest regret for the sad fate which has overtaken them during their devoted service to our country.

Great as their loss is to the British world of literature, we Serbs feel it especially strongly, for we counted Mr. and Mrs. Askew among our best friends. They have been, so to say, with the Serbian army since the beginning of this war, and shared all its hardships and dangers. They were just on their way to Corfu when the enemy torpedo found the ship in which they sailed.

We shall keep them ever in grateful remembrance, with Mrs. Dearmer, Mrs. Harley, and, I am sorry to say, many, many more British people who came to help our country in its dire need and found their death at their posts, like soldiers on the battlefield.

I shall be much obliged to you if you would convey my sympathy to the members of Mr. and Mrs. Askew’s family." —Signed: Yov. M. Yovanovitch, Serbian Minister. Royal Serbian Legation, 195 Queen’s-gate, S.W.

Bibliography

Bibliography sourced from Steve Holland's blog.

Fiction

• The Shulamite. London, Chapman & Hall, 1904. (first publication)
• Eve – and the Law. London, Chapman & Hall, 1905.
• The Premier’s Daughter. London, F. V. White & Co., 1905.
• Anna of the Plains. London, F. V. White & Co., 1906 [1905].
• The Etonian. London, F. V. White & Co., 1906.
• Jennifer Pontefract. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1906.
• The Baxter Family. London, F. V. White & Co., 1907 [1906].
• The Love-Stone. London, Sisley’s, 1907.
• Lucy Gort. A study in temperament. London, F. V. White & Co., 1907.
• Out of the Running. London, Everett & Co., 1907.
• The Plains of Silence. London, Cassell & Co., 1907.
• The Sword of Peace. The story of a secret society. London, Everett & Co., 1907.
• Not Proven. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1908.
• The Orchard Close. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1908.
• The Path of Lies. London, F. V. White & Co., 1908.
• The Tempting of Paul Chester. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1908.
• The Blue Diamond. London, C. H. White, 1909.
• The Devil and the Crusader. London, F. V. White, 1909.
• Felix Stone. London, Everett & Co., 1909.
• John Heriot’s Wife. London, F. V. White & Co., 1909.
• Testimony. London, Chapman & Hall, 1909; abridged, London, George Newnes (Sevenpenny Novels 24), 1921.
• Behind Shuttered Windows. London. C. H. White, 1910.
• Fate – and Drusilla. London, Everett & Co., 1910.
• The Quest of El Dorado. London, Cassell & Co., 1910.
• The Rod of Justice. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1910.
• Scarlet Town. London, C. H. White, 1910.
• The Sporting Chance. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1910.
• Destiny. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1911.
• Helen of the Moor. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1911.
• The House Next Door. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1911.
• Kitty Shafton – Swindler. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1911.
• The Pearl of Great Price. London, F. V. White & Co., 1911.
• A Society Marriage. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1911.
• The Stolen Lady. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1911.
• The Woman Deborah. London, Eveleigh Nash, 1911.
• The Apache. London, Everett & Co., 1912.
• Barbara. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
• Bess of Bentley’s. A true shop-girl story. London, F. V. White & Co., 1912.
• The Dream Daughter. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1912.
• The Englishwoman. London, Cassell & Co., 1912.
• In Lovers’ Lane. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1912.
• The King’s Signature. London, Chapman & Hall, 1912.
• The Lily and the Devil. London, Everett & Co., 1912.
• Outlaw Jess. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1912.
• The Actor Manager. London, George Newnes, 1913.
• God’s Clay. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1913.
• The Golden Girl. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1913.
• Milly the Actress. London, Aldine Publishing Co. (Mascot Novels 2), 1913.
• The Mystery of Helmsley Grange. London, C. A. Pearson, 1913.
• Poison. London, Everleigh Nash, 1913.
• A Preacher of the Lord. London, Cassell & Co., 1913.
• A Scarlet Sin. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1913.
• Souls Adrift. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1913.
• Araby’s Husband. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1914.
• By Order of the King. London, Aldine Publishing Co. (Goodship Sixpennies), 1914.
• Freedom. London, Hurst & Blackett, 1914.
• Gilded London. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1914.
• In Strange Shoes. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1914.
• The Legacy. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1914.
• Love the Jester. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1914.
• Through Folly’s Mill. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1914.
• The Golden Quest. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915; abridged, London, Aldine (Novels 8), 1924.
• Her Mother’s Child. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
• The Lurking Shadow. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
• Master and Man. London, Aldine Publishing Co. (Mascot Novels 22), 1915
• The Missing Million. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
• The Tocsin. A romance of the Great War. London, John Long, 1915.
• Trespass. London, Chapman & Hall, 1915.
• The Weavers. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
• Wild Sheba. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1915.
• The Footlight Glare. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1916.
• Her Father’s Daughter. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1916.
• Nurse. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1916.
• The Garment of Immortality. London, John Long, 1917.
• The Inscrutable Miss Stone. London, John Long, 1917.
• The Lost Idol. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1917.
• The Paignton Honour. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1917.
• Salvation. London, Chapman & Hall, 1917.
• The Bride in Black. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1918.
• Lady Borradale’s Ordeal. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1918.
• The Ordeal of Ann Curtis. London, Jarrolds, 1918.
• The Telephone Girl. London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1918.
• The Work of Herr Hands. London, Chapman & Hall, 1918.
• The Secret Pathway. London & Glasgow, Collins, 1919.
• The Yellow Yoke. London, Aldine Publishing Co. (Goodship Sixpennies), 1919.
• The Grip of Sin. London, Lloyds, 1920.
• Lavender’s Inheritance. London, United Press, 1922.
• Evelyn. London, John Long, 1923.
• Her Empty Triumph. London, J. Leng & Co. (People’s Friend Library 162), 1926.
• A Woman’s World. London, J. Leng & Co. (People’s Friend Library 170), 1926.
• A Deadly Revenge. London & Dublin, Mellifont Press, 1934.

Non-fiction

• The Stricken Land. Serbia as we saw it. London, Everleigh Nash Co., 1916.

References

• Steve Holland, Alice and Claude Askew, "Bear Alley" (2007 Aug. 25)