The Reader’s Gazetteer: I

Ixania, in Eric Ambler’s The Dark Frontier, possibly shouldn’t be included in this gazetteer, because the name is stated to be fictitious. (So is that of the country’s capital, Zovgorod.) This annoys me irrationally. Maybe it still begins with I.

The Dark Frontier is a good deal of fun, however, at the same time sending up and gloriously indulging itself in the tropes of the Ruritanian thriller. The mild-mannered, idealistic, scientist (a stereotype in his own right) gets a knock on the head and becomes convinced that he’s Conway Carruthers, the hero of the pulp novel he was reading before the accident. And there’s a good train journey, all the way from Paris to Bâle and then east from there:

Carruthers watched the mountains of Switzerland and Austria pass in slow review. Then for some hours, they ran across wind-driven plains. On the second night, he again saw the lights of houses gleaming up high as they climbed into the mountain country of Transylvania. They stopped at stations of which he had never heard, but there were some familiar names – Budapest, Cluj, Sinaia, Ploesti…

[they change train at Bucharest]

… The train for Zovgorod proved to be composed mainly of empty cattle trucks with two very dirty coaches and a mail van hitched to the rear. They were not due in Zovgorod until 7 A. M. the following morning and Carruthers did not look forward to the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile journey ahead…

… Leaning on the window-rail he gazed out into the gathering darkness. Far away he could see a line of hills traced delicately against the strip of cold cerulean sky left by a dying sun. The clouds still hung, black and heavy, overhead. The sound of the train seemed to echo across the plain as if in a great waiting silence. He turned his head towards the freshening breeze.

So, whatever Ixania’s really called, we can at least make a guess at where it is.

I came across Annals of the Parish, by John Galt, via the delightful Clothes in Books blog a couple of months ago. It’s presented as a memoir by the parish minister, covering the years from 1760 to 1810. Most of the action takes place in the village of Dalmailing, so I’ll have to add that on to the D blog. The nearest town, however, is Irville, which, we learn over the course of the book, has at one time or another:

• a dancing school
• a chaise
• links with shipping
• and with coal
• New Inns, plural
• a market
• a grocery shop

and generally seems to be where things happen. A footnote tells us that in the real world it’s Irvine. I’m counting it.

Books mentioned in this post

The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler

Annals of the Parish, John Galt

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V