'indefatigable optimism' and writing power

 

“The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.” – Margery Allingham   Allingham was – as the old saying goes – “born with ink in her blood” writing everything from plays to novels to screenplays, novellas and short stories, over 100 total works in all.   Born in London on this date in 1904, she wrote steadily from age 5 until her death in 1966.  As the daughter of two well-established newspaper columnists, she learned to write early and had her first plays performed on stage before the age of 10.   Although she wrote in almost every genre Allingham ultimately focused on crime and mystery, creating one of the most well-known crime detectives of the mid-20th Century, the sleuth Albert Campion.  Ironically, Campion was put into her novel The Crime at Black Dudley almost as an afterthought, but he was such an optimistic and interesting character that her publishers demanded more stories that would focus on him.     With that encouragement and her creative and imaginative mind, Allingham wrote 18 novels and some three dozen short stories and novellas with Campion (who many thought to be her alter-ego) at the heart of the action.  Among them was one of her most famous novels, The Tiger in the Smoke.   Allingham died from breast cancer at age 62, but ever the optimist she laid out ideas for several more novels “just in case they’re wrong and I’m not really dying,” and bugging everyone around her to keep the faith and help her keep writing.  As she noted just a few days before her death, “If one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities, one can at least be a nuisance.”