Madam Midas by Fergus Hume

      

           Like a suave character from his novels, Fergus Hume at the time he wrote Madam Midas and Mystery of a Hansom Cab

     Madam Midas is an enjoyable read despite being laden with melodrama. Well written and at ease with itself, there’s an effortlessness about Fergus Hume’s style. Melbourne and Ballarat circa 1888 are depicted vividly with plenty of social commentary, especially on the plight of women, rich and poor, who survived at the mercy of men.  Good and bad men, gentlemen and cads and cads disguised as gentlemen, all attempt to control the women in their lives. It’s all here in the seedy streets of the city where if a woman failed to hold on to her virtue, she was a mere step from prostitution.     

     Hume slings arrows across a broad sweep of society and includes sharp commentary on the back-patting philanthropists who built alms houses with their names upon them, but never entered the real slums. 

     “Professional philanthropist…who does his good deeds in a most ostentatious manner, and loudly invites the world to see his generosity, and praise him for it. He never did good by stealth.”  Who knew virtue signalling was a thing in the 1880s.

     

     The reader might expect a work written in 1880s to be bogged down by convoluted prose, but this is not the case. Just as in Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Hume weaves a tale of intrigue and suspense. If you are interested in Australia during the Victorian era, Madam Midas is a for you.