Sherlock Victorian Baker Street

Here is the Victorian Baker Street from the BBC's forthcoming Sherlock Christmas special from the trailer released this week.  Very excited to see how they handle Victorian London.  Looks good so far!

Some walks in the Victorian East End 1: Leman Steet and Shad Thames

Shad Thames from Tower Bridge Road

I have finished my first week at my new job and it is strange to be working in an office again after five years of working from home. Working from home, while much more efficient in that I didn’t have to endure three hours of commuting a day, was slowly sending me around the bend. It is nice to have colleagues again; even if I can’t remember any of their names (except the women, of course).  Anyway, the last few days I have been taking time in my lunch hour to explore my new surroundings in what is a historic area of London with much of interest for someone keen on Victorian gaming of the like of In Her Majesty's Name.

Old warehouses on Horsleydown Lane. A two bedroom flat in one of the blocks here will cost you around a million pounds

My new office is located in the trendy area of Shad Thames, which used to be a field used for grazing horses (as is reflected in the name of one of the streets: Horsleydown Lane) until a huge warehouse complex was built in the area in Victorian times. Despite the attempts by the Lutwaffe to re-landscape the area there are enough of the old buildings left to give an idea of what it must have been like in its late Victorian heyday. 

The street where my office is.  A friend had an apartment in the blue development in the foreground

The last of the warehouses closed in 1972, not quite a hundred years after they were completed. After some years lying derelict, the area was regenerated in the eighties and nineties and is now home to shops, offices, expensive flats, trendy restaurants (some of which overlook the Thames) and the relentlessly hip Design Museum. It is certainly a much nicer environment than Victoria, one of the most pitiful parts of central London, which was my theoretical London base when I went up to have meetings related to my contract over the last three years. 

Tower Bridge from Shad Thames on the south side of the river

On my first day I wandered over Tower Bridge to locate the 4D model shop, which had been suggested to me by Tamsin. This is a shop for people who make models, not a shop that sells model kits, so is full of the sort of stuff that architects use. They had some impressive model palm trees; for the many UK architects firms designing buildings in the Gulf, no doubt. These were about as far as you could get from the plastic jobs you can get from China on eBay. They were 11.95 each, however. Still, they were really, really nice!  4D are located next to Leman Street, a name that was familiar to me but when I got there I had not, as I had imagined, been there before. Then it dawned on me; Leman Street was the location of the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police's H Division, as depicted in the TV series Ripper Street. Leman Street escaped heavy damage in the war, although bombs fell at either end of it but nearly all of the western side of the street, where the H division building was, has been redeveloped since.  However, just opposite the entrance to where 4D models is located, there is a remaining terrace of Victorian houses. 

Leman Street looking north from just outside the 4D model shop.  The Brown Bear at right

H Division were located just past the large redbrick building (the former headquarters of the Co-operative Wholesale Society opened in 1887) visible further down the street but on the other (western) side of the road. 

H Division HQ. 74-78 Leman Street

The Victorian police HQ building, as depicted in Ripper Street (which was built after the Whitechapel murders; having been built in 1891 on the site of the recently demolished Garrick Theatre) has long gone but the building on the site is still a police station.  The houses on the right in the picture above are still there, as you can see from the shot below.

Today's police station

On the far right of the street view, three pictures above, you can just glimpse The Brown Bear, the favourite pub of the H Division coppers in real life and the TV series. In existence from the end of the eighteenth century it was rebuilt in 1838 and remains as a pub today. 

The Brown Bear as depicted in Ripper Street

The Brown Bear today

This pub also features prominently in Ripper Street and although the TV version is much smaller than the real building at least they have recreated it with yellow London Stocks bricks and located it close to the railway bridge, as it is in real life. 

 

Shad Thames

Yesterday, I walked around Shad Thames street itself.  Although I had a lady friend with a flat here once, I remember nothing about the area whatsoever and had not walked down Shad Thames itself, the street after which the area is named. 

Shad Thames in the 1880s

This still has, remarkably, cobbled streets in places and examples of the overhead bridges that served to connect the different warehouses to each other over the street.  It gives a good idea of what the area must have been like a hundred and twenty years ago. Except it is much cleaner of course. The area is now popular with tourists who come to visit nearby Tower Bridge.

Next time I will look at the riverfront and St Saviours Dock, which has a Dickensian connection.

Victorian science fiction film location

 New Haw Lock cottage this afternoon

I was on my way to Addlestone model shop today as I had, annoyingly, run out of white paint and the colour I use for shading skin.  Taking a back route I drove past New Haw lock on the Wey Canal.  I decided to stop and take a picture of the lock cottage as it featured in one of my favourite Victorian-set science fiction films: The First Men in the Moon (1964).

It played the part of Cherry Tree Cottage, home of the hero of the film, Arnold Bedford (Edward Judd), who travelled to the moon in 1899 aboard a Cavorite sphere  designed by Professor Cavor (Lionel Jeffries).   The film is based on a novel by HG Wells but adds a modern prologue wherein today's astronauts make the first Moon landing only to discover a Union flag on the moon and a note claiming it for Queen Victoria.  Released five years before the actual Moon landing the film had a multinational United Nations crew undertaking the present day landing.  Back on Earth the UN team track down surviving astronaut Bedford via the local registry office (played by Chertsey Town Hall a few miles from where I lived - the film was shot at Shepperton Studios, a mile from my old home).

Another addition to Wells' story was the presence, on the voyage to the Moon, of a young lady, Kate Callender, played by Martha Hyer (seen above outside the cottage).

Miss Hyer posed in some period underwear for publicity shots for the film but, sadly, this costume didn't actually appear in the film itself.   Here she is on the Moon set at Shepperton with the sphere in the background and holding one of the spacesuits used in the present day sequences.  

As worn by Bossk in The Empire Strikes Back  

This suit was actually an RAF Windak high altitude pressure suit and the same design also made several appearances in the original Star Wars trilogy.  Some of the A-Wing pilots wore them too in the hangar scene in the first Star Wars film which was, coincidentally, also shot at Shepperton.

Martha Hyer's career was already somewhat on the wane by the time she appeared in The First Men in the Moon.  She had been nominated for an Oscar in Some Came Running (1958), playing opposite Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  She appeared in a lot of TV series and foreign productions in the sixties and early seventies. 

She was, surprisingly, thirty nine years old when she appeared in First Men in the Moon (she was actually seven years older older than Edward Judd and two years older than Lionel Jeffries).  Her last screen appearance was in an episode of TV police series McCloud in 1974.  In 1966 she married legendary Hollywood producer Hal B Wallis who was 25 years her senior.  Wallis produced some of the great films of the classic Hollywood era including: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), Now Voyager (1942) and True Grit (1967).  Martha Hyer died last May at the age of eighty nine.

The film itself,  is very enjoyable with a strong cast, Ray Harryhausen effects and a creepily mysterious score by Laurie (The Avengers) Johnson.

Harryhausen's stop motion Selenites certainly gave me the creeps when I was little!

The design of the sphere is also very good with its railway buffer shock absorbers and the interior is classic steampunk.  Some time ago I bought a resin model of it which has been sitting on my desk for some years.  

Unfortunately the top and bottom don't fit together very well and it may be beyond my modelling abilities to get it looking good.  I might have one more go at it as it would fit into a game of In Her Majesty's Name quite well, especially as I have the West Wind Professor Cavor figure somewhere too.

Ripper Street renewed for Series Four and Five

Having just sat through a cliff-hanging dead end for the much improved Atlantis it is good to see that Ripper Street, which escaped from the dead hand of the BBC, had just been renewed for not one but two more series by Amazon.  Fortunately, the BBC must have realised the stupid mistake they made and let Amazon Prime pick it up.  No such deal is possible for Atlantis, which would have had series three featuring a version of the Argonauts story, as the BBC contract forbid the producers putting it on another network for seven years.  

I admit that I haven't watched series three of Ripper Street yet as although I have Amazon Prime I refuse to watch TV on a computer.  I will wait for the DVDs or try to persuade my son to see if he can rig it up to play through the TV.  I know he can do it through his TV so it must be possible for mine. I have a new laptop so I will have to bribe him to see if he can manage it!

A couple of ladies...

"I say! Girl!  Goodness, where are your clothes?" gasped Agnes O'Brien as she rounded the strangely sinister statue in Sir Lawrence Swann's garden in the Meon Valley.  The poor girl was practically naked except for a few barbaric trinkets and a very immodest loin cloth.  The girl looked back at her evenly, seemingly unashamed by her state of nakedness.  "Do you speak English?  Where is Sir Lawrence?"  The girl must be some sort of primitive savage who Swann had brought back from Egypt.  "Are you one of Sir Lawrence's dusky acolytes from Darkest Africa?  Are you, perhaps, a Hottentot?"  It was bad enough having to address a woman with no clothes on but one who just stood there and stared at you, as if you were the one prancing about in your natural state, was even worse.

"Nah, love.  I'm from Rovver'ive.  You ain't got a ciggie ave ya?" said the girl.

"What impertinence!" said Agnes, swatting the girl's rear with her parasol.  

"Ooh!  Do vat again!" grinned the girl.

Agnes retreated towards the house in some haste, wondering what else she was going to discover in Sir Lawrence's house.

*****

Mark Copplestone sculpted Foundry Darkest Africa lady and Egyptian Slave girl from new firm Dark Fable Miniatures completed last weekend.  The slave girl will serve double duty back in the Bronze Age.  The Sphinx was an unexpected present from the Old Bat who saw it in the aquarium section of the local garden centre.

Ripper Street Series Three begins filming in Manchester

Ripper Street began filming its third series last week in Manchester; the first time the production crew has moved outside Dublin.  They were shooting outside the old Town Hall.  Interestingly, given the announcement of the new Gothic incarnation of IHMN, part of Daniel Radcliffe's new Frankenstein film was shot there recently too.

The crew is moving onto Loughborough and then back to Dublin for the eight episodes of Series 3.

Filming continues until August for an Autumn premiere on Amazon's online film service and then on the BBC a few months afterwards (I would guess in its usual winter slot).

Some useful costume colour reference material here.

Nineteenth Century Street Scene in colour

I was very taken by this recently released colour postcard of a New York Street in the nineteenth century.  Alright, it isn't London but it gives a very good idea of the hustle and bustle of streets at the time, with market stalls along the edge of the road. Worth remembering.

I have always been fascinated by the United States as a Lost World where a natural wilderness was tamed (some would say ruined) in less than a couple of centuries.    I will have to pick up the exorbitantly priced (£135) book of these colour postcards of past America when it is published.

The Prince of Wales' Extraordinary Company

Well, I am keeping up with the release of new North Star IHMN companies even if I am not painting them!  I had forgotten I had pre-ordered the new PoWEC until they turned up at home last week.  A nice surprise!

This is a particularly nice set for someone like me who enjoys painting Sudan and Zulu War British.  Basically the set consists of six figures in standard home service uniform (i.e. the helmet has the spike on which wasn't used in the field).  There is a  sergeant in a bearskin, a medic in a patrol jacket, a character with some sort of large support weapon (I can't be bothered to get up and have a look at the rules as I have hurt my leg so am trying not to walk unless I have to) and the company leader, Captain Napier.  The official version of Captain Napier has him, oddly, in infantry uniform but with a lifeguard's cuirass.  Or, at least an approximation of one.  The one on the model is too short and finishes above the infantry belt whereas the actual ones worn at the time would have finished lower down with the belt over the cuirass.  I shouldn't be worrying about this sort of thing!  However, because I pre-ordered I also got a version of Captain Napier without the cuirass too, which is much better.  He will become Captain Jonty Smalme in my company!

Anyway, it's very tempting to get on with these straight away (as you can see I have already mounted them on washers) although I do want to finish a company of Confederation of the Rhine first.  Maybe I'll just paint one!

I am thinking about combining some figures from this unit with some of my Naval Brigade to check out Sir Lawrence Swann's house in Hampshire, given Scotland Yard were repelled from the area lately. 

In Her Majesty's Name - my first game: The Servants of Ra vs Scotland Yard

Somewhere in Hampshire: my forces lurk in the hamlet while innocent bystanders mill about unconcernedly

Alastair at Guildford Wargames Club very kindly offered me my first game of In Her Majesty's Name, which we played at the club night yesterday.  Now, I have very many sets of rules, most of which I have never played, so it is particularly satisfying to christen a new set.  Fortunately, Alastair is well aware that as a wargamer I am very much a painter and was very patient with me as I stumbled through these rules for the first time.  

Brontosaurus (1897) by Charles R Knight (1874-1953) One of my favourite dinosaur pictures when I was a child and nothing to do with IHMN - yet!

Firstly, I had to assemble my force and work out their mystical powers which I did while simultaneously watching the addictive Revenge of the Egghead on TV.  I am shocked at the low level of general knowledge that most people display on this.  Why enter a quiz show if you have no general knowledge?  If they'd all read Look & Learn when they were young, as I did, they would know a lot more stuff.  Of course, it does mean that my scientific knowledge, for example, doesn't really cover anything that has happened since 1974.  That's why they are still brontosauri in my mind.  

Anyway, we had agreed 250 points, which meant I could take most of the North Star company with the exception of the mummified priest.  Instead I took my newly painted (the kiss of death) Nubian as a Nubian guard for 25 points and a good investment he turned out to be.  I was a bit worried about this company because of the seemingly fragile nature of the cultists, of which I had seven, so I wanted the Nubian guard with his shotgun to give a ranged attack.  I had to quickly choose some mystical powers for Akhenaton, Sir Lawrence Swann and Zairah Al-Ghais.  Not knowing how they worked in practice I chose largely defensive powers such as clouding men's minds to try to ward off the long range weapons of the Scotland Yard men.  This was, indeed, effective and forced them into having to close into hand to hand combat; perhaps more than they would have liked.

Alastair's civilians mill around some crates of produce.  Probably rhubarb, rhubarb

We had an English rural set-up with a lot of well dressed civilians wandering around, thanks to Alastair's random direction dice, and generally getting in the way.  I deployed in the hamlet while Alastair's Scotland Yard men advanced through the fields, in two groups, with military precision. 

Pig alert!  Scotland yard advance in the distance as Akhenaton prepares to take cover.

Akhenaton took some of his cultists (all members of the Worshipful Company of Bankers -so no one cares if they die) over to protect his flank by the barn.  Alastair, who provided all the scenery and civilians had placed some livestock on the board too.  There was some discussion as to whether this should have been a steam powered pig.

Sir Lawrence urges Shabaka on behind the barn which would become the epicentre of the battle

After several turns of movement, where I sent more men to boost the right flank, Scotland Yard's redoubtable sergeant and Shabaka the Nubian faced off and exchanged the first fire of the game.  Alastair has played a few games of this and I had only had a quick read through the rules but it was very easy to pick up the basics.  The only thing we couldn't find (and I am sure it is in there somewhere) was what effect difficult terrain has on movement.  It is stated that there is a movement penalty for each of the three types of difficult terrain in the rules but while the shooting penalty is clear the movement penalty wasn't.

The inspector leads his men into the high street

On my left flank the Scotland Yard chaps soon shot most of my cultists and volley fire by the Special Branch put paid to one in the centre.  Akhenaton was safe because of his clouding men's minds power, which meant he could only be shot if in base to base contact, but he decided to retreat to the back of the barn anyway.  Shabaka successfully downed the sergeant but Dr Watson was on hand to use his medic's talent to revive him on the next move, annoyingly.  Things were not going well for the Servants of Ra.  I had lost four out of my eleven figures in two turns!

Brains vs brawn: Sherlock and Shabaka face off

Then I had a surprise!  One of the random civilian ladies turned out to be the consulting detective in disguise!  And he was right in the middle of my force which I had consolidated around the back of the barn.  He attacked Shabaka from the rear which was a bigger shock than holding off the assault from the constabulary with their electro-truncheons.  At this point I was down to just five figures while Alastair had eight still in action.  An enormous hand to hand brawl ensued with multiple attacks, shooting from melee and all sorts of other shenanigans.  This was where I discovered the almost invincible strength of Akhenaton.  He started to cleave through the opposition with his mighty Khopesh while the lovely Zairah did for Dr Watson.  Sir Lawrence, as all good cult leaders should, ran away and hid for most of this. 

Gradually, the tables turned and Scotland Yard started to lose more and more men as Zairah sliced through them like a Whirling Dervish and Akhenaton fended off the constables.  Holmes and Shabaka got involved in a massive slugfest which went on for turns while two Special Branch men went after the cowardly Sir Lawrence.  Outnumbered two to one he unexpectedly put one of his attackers down with a very unpainterly roundhouse punch.

Sir Lawrence goes on the attack 

Surprised by the eminent painter's aggressiveness the Special Branch man disengaged, only to have Sir Lawrence pursue him.  Meanwhile Akhenaton and Zairah attacked Holmes.  After a fight Holmes succumbed, as did Sir Lawrence.  The cowardly (sensible) Special Branch man fled the field leaving the hamlet to Akhenaton and Zairah.  A very rare wargames win for the Legatus!

Zairah rushes over to the fallen artist.  Can she revive him?  Will he ever paint a naked Egyptian slave girl again?  We'll have to see in the next game!

There is a reason that In Her Majesty's Name is selling like hot cakes and that is because it is an excellent, well thought-out game that even an idiot like me can pick up very quickly!  Although I thought the Servants of Ra would have no hope against Scotland Yard their key characters are tremendously strong and the game was very close.  A lot of thought has gone into the composition of the companies and all credit to Messrs Cartmell and Murton for this.  During the game, Alastair and I were thinking of all sorts of other scenarios and periods we could play with these rules and he is currently working on some African cannibals against which I could try to devise a Belgian Force Publique company.  So it could be IHMN in Africa next!  I have the new supplement Heroes, Villains and Fiends but haven't read it yet; something I will remedy shortly!

There is an interesting, recent YouTube video of Mr Cartmell discussing some possible directions the game might take, which is well worth a look.  Pulp and swashbucklers, possibly.  I'd be in for both of those!

Now I am enthused to get on and paint my next company.  I have started Scotland Yard so that will be next I think!  I don't think, from what he said during his video interview, that Mr Cartmell will be too pleased with the figures for an unofficial company I am working on.  Too many corsets and goggles!  

Thanks to Alastair for putting this game on and providing all the scenery.  It was actually a game that didn't get me stressed!  He is a very calming and convivial opponent!

Excellent fun and a highly recommended set of rules!

The Servants of Ra: Zairah

Here is Zairah from the Servants of Ra company.  This is a lovely, animated figure but her slim ankle is a weak point and she needs careful handling.

She was discovered by Sir Lawrence Swann during his two year stay in Cairo,  He introduces her, in London, as his draughtswoman and explains that she is someone who would copy Egyptian inscriptions, sculptures and paintings as source material for his magnum opus The Pharaoh Akhenaten and his court inspect candidates for the role of temple dancing girls purchased from an Akkadian slave trader.  A painting he is producing for the Worshipful Company of Bankers livery hall in Threadneedle Street.

"Just make sure there are lots of naked slave girls in it. And heaps of gold!" demanded Sir Paul Fudgge ("that's two gs, old man"), one of the richest but most unpopular aldermen in the City of London, who had commissioned the painting.

Although she is, indeed, a talented artist, Swann actually discovered Zairah dancing virtually naked in a brothel just a few streets behind his hotel, Shepheard's, in Cairo.  Sir Lawrence was surprised at the number of such establishments so close to Shepheard's and the recently renovated Grand Hotel.  He supposed the proximity of the Greek Consulate had something to do with it.  He needed a dancer who could be the centrepiece of his painting.  In  truth, he was looking for a Circassian dancing girl, as he supposed that they might be more likely to happily dispense with their clothes than the local lovelies.  When he saw Zairah, however, he knew he had found his model.  She had the most beautiful back he had ever seen and, indeed, her entire rear aspect was one of the great sights of Egypt. Or so he told himself as Zairah went through a series of artistic contortions for him in his room at Shepheard's, while he tried to capture her sinuous form on paper.  

He discovered both her extraordinary gymnastic ability and her skill with a blade when a trio of unsavoury locals tried to relieve him of his Breguet pocket watch in the narrow alleys behind the Khan el-Khalili souk.  Zairah, in a sudden flash of movement, disarmed one robber with a swift blow to his wrist and flicked the knife into the air with her foot before it hit the ground. She caught it, deftly, in her dainty hand and supporting herself on the shoulder of the astounded knifeman ran up the side of a wall to land a solid kick on the head of the thief behind.  A quick slash of the next man's cheek, with her recently acquired blade, sent the low life scum scuttling back into the shadows. 

Shortly afterwards, recovering over a strong Turkish coffee in Fishawi's coffee house, Sir Lawrence offered to employ Zairah full time as draughtswoman, model and bodyguard.  He took a room for her adjoining his, for the sake of propriety, although it had an interconnecting door which was never locked. 

One afternoon, as she stood on the small balcony overlooking the delightful garden at the rear of the hotel, she began to speak of a lost tomb discovered by a Turkish archaeologist.  An intact, possibly royal, tomb containing an extraordinary device covered in hieroglyphs linking it to Akhenaten himself. 

Having become fascinated by the pharaoh in the research for his painting, Swann was intrigued but sceptical.

"I would bet ten thousand pounds that there are no intact royal tombs in the whole of Egypt.  No one will ever find one. They have all been plundered by filthy Egyptians; either in antiquity or more recently, since Egyptology has become so fashionable!" he declared. "No offence about the "filthy Egyptian" comment, of course, young Zairah!"

"No offence taken.  The sponge bath you gave me this morning saw to that, anyway!" she giggled.

"How do you know this Turkish chap?" asked Swann.  Zairah raised one elegant eyebrow and looked at the floor.

"I see.  Best not to ask.  Perhaps I should meet the fellow!"

"Perhaps you should.   I will arrange it!"

The Servants of Ra: Rumblings in Hampshire

A gentleman with the hideously foreign name of Laurens van Zwaan would never have been completely acceptable in the more rarefied strata of English society. As Sir Lawrence Swann, however, the famous painter was welcome at every society occasion, with the embarrassing exception of Court, where her Majesty the Queen lately refused to receive him because of an increasingly dubious reputation.  She had knighted him only last year, on his return from two years painting in Egypt.  Now, however, the Queen Empress believed that an unmarried man such as Sir Lawrence should not be seen to be consorting with quite so many young, unaccompanied women at his Egyptian-decorated home in Hampshire.  Arguments that a famous painter of scenes of Ancient Egypt would need a multiplicity of young female models, to help him replicate the court of the pharaohs for the vast painting commissioned by one of the City livery companies, fell on haughtily deaf royal ears.  The word harem had been mentioned on more than one occasion.   Sir Lawrence's recent affectation of wearing a tarboosh, since his return from Cairo, did little to allay the Queen's suspicions of what might be termed "Ottoman" tendencies.

In the smoking room of the United Services Club in Pall Mall, Lt. Colonel "Eggy" Newman, who lived not far from Sir Lawrence in the Meon Valley, was telling of strange comings and goings, odd lights in the middle of the night and unearthly shrieks at the painter's house.  "The general feeling locally is that odd rites are taking place there. Arcane rites.  Heathen rites.  All to do with the chap's fascination with the Pharaohs.  Half naked slave girls and what have you."  He took an appreciative sip of his Taylor's 1868, from a vintage before the phylloxera blight ravaged the Douro a few years later.

"I say!" said Captain Jonty Smalme.  "How do you know all this?  Met the fellow in the Castle at Cowes this summer.  Seemed a perfectly decent chap for a foreigner, apart from not liking Stilton.  Thought the Dutch ate cheese all the time, what? Although I never quite know with the Dutch whether they are our friends or enemies.  Not like the French, of course.  Know where you are with the French. Fire on the uproll eh, Admiral?"  He glanced across at Admiral Troutbridge who was puffing on a large cigar and gazing into the middle distance. "But the Dutch?" Smalme continued.  "I know they gave us a king and what have you but didn't they give your chaps a good pasting a couple of hundred years ago?"  Smalme, who was very much the junior officer sat around the table and not eligible to be a member of the club, looked at Admiral Troutbridge realising that he might have just gone too far.  Too much port. Again.

"Dashed good chaps in a sea fight," replied the Admiral. "Strapping milk-fed gels.  Good at dykes.  Overrated cheese. Talk too loudly!"  He looked at Smalme pointedly.

"I think," said Newman, "that someone should come down to Hampshire and investigate his house.  Do a bit of a recce.  After all, Holland is right next door to Germany and he could be up to things a lot more sinister than having a few half naked bints running about."

"Perhaps some of the bints need rescuing..." ventured Smalme.

"Well done, Smalme.  I'll leave it to you to put a small force together. Strictly informal. I'm sure the Admiral can supply a couple of chaps from the Senior Service."

"You can count on it!" confirmed Troutbridge. "I'll get some fellows up from Pompey!"

"What?" said Smalme, realising he had been outmanoeuvred.  What had he let himself in for?