A Victorian comedy reviewed: "Aunt Jane's Jalap" by Richard Marsh

Richard Marsh is mainly remembered, today, for his gothic horror novel, “The Beatle“. However, he wrote many entertaining short stories in addition to his longer more surreal tales. One of my favourites is “Aunt Jane’s Jalap”.


I have to admit that when I began reading this story I would not have known a jalap if it had slapped me round the face, bowed and formally introduced itself. A quick perusal of the Oxford dictionary informed me that a jalap was a purgative made from a Mexican vine of the genus Ipomoea purga. So there you are. I am a little better informed about the flora of central America than before I started to read the book.

Quack medicines, of course, were very popular in the Victorian age. There were virtually no controls on the claims that could be made for “medicines” of even the most dubious provenance. Into this questionable market, Mr Hughes and the narrator, George Lucas, decide to launch their own restorative, “Aunt Jane’s Jalap”.

The name, “Aunt Jane’s Jalap” was dreamt up by our two would be entrepreneurs. Hughes decided to use the name of his old nurse as such a title was likely to be trusted by elderly nineteenth ladies. It was questionable if anyone would buy a product bearing the name of the gentlemen to whom we are introduced.

Mr Hughes and Mr Lucas decide they need testimonials for their new cure-all. They decide to introduce “Aunt Jane’s Jalap” at a dinner party to be held with George’s lady friend, Margaret, her aunt Mrs Chalmers and a mutual friend, Mr Pybus. Pybus rapidly proves himself a most sarcastic character and a good judge of the merits of the new concoction.

During the course of the dinner, George raises the subject of the jalap and its supposed virtues. Pybus makes a series of entertaining and disparaging comments about the effectiveness of the remedy. After a while, a bottle of the jalap is produced and measures poured for the four people present. Despite the serious reservations of Mrs Chalmers and Mr Pybus, a full glassful is imbibed by all. The effects are immediate and unfortunate for the assembled party as discomfort and illness rapidly take hold.

The unpleasant effects of drinking the jalap rapidly become more pronounced. George asks Mrs Chalmers if there is anything he can do for her in her discomfort. Pybus mischievously suggests that he fetches another bottle of the remedy.

At this unfortunate juncture, Hughes re-enters the story. He accosts George and informs him that he may have given him a bottle of laudanum by mistake instead of the jalap. Both become very alarmed, as one might expect, at the prospect of a wine glass of poison being quaffed by everyone present. Doctors are called and in the meantime George tries to get the ladies to dance to maintain their circulation and to keep their spirits up. This ruse meets with only limited success.

Various doctors make their appearance and after adding to the comedy, they eventually cure the patients. George coolly observes that the servant charged with seeking a doctor had “fetched as many as he could. There were not one or two, but several. I have their bills.”

At the end of the story, the doctors inspect the offending bottle and rapidly notice that it does not smell of laudanum. Hughes realises that he has made another mistake and has inflicted a horrendous regime of Victorian treatment on everyone for no reason at all. The bottle did contain jalap but it was one of Hughes’s incorrectly measured test samples of jalap rather than the final product that he had given to George by mistake.

There is no record of whether the assembled party gives “Aunt Jane’s Jalap” a positive testimonial but it would seem unlikely.

I have attempted to outline the main details of the story in this article but have probably failed to convey the humour that Richard Marsh manages to write into the tale. I would thoroughly recommend “Aunt Jane’s Delap” as an entertaining short story written by a very underrated author. The tale is one of a collection of stories entitled “Amusement Only” and can be found on Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38188