THE RAYLEIGH SET

by Richard Banks

[Written in 2017, a year after the publication of Essex Tales V, this spoof history mentions present and past members of the Group but, regretfully, not those who have joined us in the last eight years.]

 

Article from The Times Literary Supplement, published on 15^th July 2124        

         At a hastily convened press conference the British Library yesterday stunned the literary world by announcing that a small blood stain on their copy of Essex Tales, Volume V, is that of Richard Banks, a founder member of the legendary Rayleigh Set.

         The book, which is one of only three surviving copies, has the further distinction of being signed by Banks and W.R. French, the First World War novelist. Their signatures appear below a brief dedication to someone called Linda to whom the book was presumably sold. Judging by its pristine condition the book appears to have been little read by Linda, or anyone else. Remarkably there are no finger prints on the inside pages beyond page eleven.

         Discovered five years ago by a second hand book dealer in the loft of a terraced house awaiting demolition, it was purchased by the British Library for a fee believed to be in the region of £25m. Now worth over £40m the blood stain, previously regarded as a minor blemish, is likely to double or treble the book’s value.

         The suggestion, first mooted by art historian Julian Gray, that the blood may once have flowed through the veins of one of its authors prompted the RSS (Rayleigh Set Society) to oversee DNA tests on two of W.R. French’s descendants. When these failed to match his blood with that on the book a worldwide search ensued for descendents of Banks which eventually located his two times great grandson, Wang Hai Lei, on a tea plantation in the Chinese protectorate of Sri Lanka. Blood samples taken from him confirmed beyond doubt that the blood stain was that of the author. Although the copyright on the stories and poems of the Rayleigh Set expired in 2097 Wang’s new found fame should soon enable him to develop revenue streams that in the case of Tobias Lewis- Woodgate, the 2x great grandson of Peter Woodgate (Poet Laureate In Aeternum) has earned Lewis over thirty million pounds from endorsements and public appearances.

         Sadly none of the original authors benefitted financially from the five volumes of Essex Tales produced in the first two decades of the last century. Published by the Rayleigh Set in print runs totalling no more than 600 copies, the authors sold their books at fairs and bazaars, donating their profits to charity. This might have been the extent of their fame had it not been for an employee of Penguin Books who, coming across a copy of Volume III at a jumble sale, persuaded her employers to publish. Its instant success in the early years of this century sparked a nationwide search for other volumes which so far has failed to uncover the first book in the series.

         Credited with reawakening public interest in the short story the books have now been published in over eighty countries selling 200 million copies. Their success has spawned a commercial bandwagon which at the present time includes seven major films as well as theme parks in London, San Francisco and Tokyo. Further parks in Paris and Beijing are scheduled to open in 2127.

         In less than twenty years the literary creations of the authors have sometimes blurred the line between fact and fiction. In a recent poll to identify the ten most famous Britons, Pitsea Pete, the comic creation of Bob Watson, was voted into third place narrowly behind Elizabeth I and Sir Winston Churchill. Had there been a poll for the most famous dog this would almost certainly have been won by Jack, Jane Scoggins’ WWI messenger dog, the number one visitor attraction at the London franchise in Battersea Park. The recent escape of one of the three Labradors trained to impersonate Jack triggered a nationwide search for the dog, real name Scoggy, which was eventually found trying to deliver a letter to the Battersea Dogs’ Home.

         Another animal creation of Essex Tales, the injured fox of Leonard Morgan’s story ‘Foxy Magic,’ is commemorated in the fox sanctuary at Hullbridge, Essex on the banks of the river Crouch. Yearly enactments of the classic story attract more visitors than the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge. A further two million persons regularly log on to the sanctuary’s web site of which a select one hundred viewers are allowed to sponsor individual foxes for annual fees that only the super rich can afford.

         Undoubtedly the place profiting most from the tales of the Rayleigh Set is Rayleigh itself which in recent years has doubled in size with the building of over twenty high-rise hotels. The flood of visitors, which during the summer months threatens to gridlock the pedestrianised streets of the town centre, have no shortage of attractions to visit. The High Street now mainly given over to souvenir shops and cafes still contains a number of buildings with known connections to the authors. The library where they met is probably the most photographed building in the world, while the branch of Iceland’s where Banks did his food shopping now sells only the beef curry convenience meal to which he was allegedly addicted. Purchasers of these are allowed a single perambulation of the perimeter aisle before exiting the building close to the British Heart Foundation shop that will forever be associated with W.R. French.

         Further attractions include the Post Office which issues commemorative stamps bearing the heads of individual authors, and the former home of Dorothy Chiverrell, now at the centre of the ‘Sitting Tennant’ visitor attraction featuring interactive 3D images of Jan and Betty and other characters from the eight stories she is known to have written. The recent opening of Unsworth Boulevard (formerly Cheapside East) is another major attraction that will only increase visitor numbers. Dedicated to the memory of Sis Unsworth, the ‘Downhall Bard’, it contains her house and garden, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and six other buildings dedicated to her much loved poems.

         As we draw close to the one hundredth anniversary of Banks’ death we may well reflect on the moment in time when a drop of his blood splashed down onto the book purchased by Linda. How this happened is an Essex Tale that may never be told. Should it appear in a yet to be discovered copy of the fabled volume VI it will have no shortage of readers. The world waits and hopes.   

Copyright Richard Banks