Agatha Christie at Greenway
Famous Sons & Daughter No.14: Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
The best selling author of all time made her home on the banks of the River Dart. Dame Agatha Christie has sold more than two billion books worldwide and has been translated into more than 45 languages - only outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible!
In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote 80 novels and short story collections. She also penned more than 12 plays, including The Mousetrap, the longest running play in theatrical history.
Dubbed the Queen of Crime, thanks to her world famous detective stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie was a Devon girl and as an adult spent her holidays at Greenway, her beloved retreat on the Dart.
This most famous of authors was born Agatha May Clarissa Miller in Torquay on September 15th 1890, the youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. Taught at home by a governess and tutors, as a child Agatha never attended school. From a very young age, she became adept at creating games to keep herself occupied. She was a shy child who turned first to music as a means of expression and, later in life, to writing.
In 1914, at the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I fighter pilot. While he was away in active service, Agatha worked as a nurse. It was while working in a hospital in Torquay during the war that she first came up with the idea of writing a detective novel. Within a year it was completed, but it wasn’t published until 1920, five years later.
The Mysterious Affair At Styles introduced readers to Hercule Poirot, the retired Belgian police officer who was to become one of the most enduring characters in all of fiction. He was to feature in more than 30 of her novels, including the most popular Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile.
In 1926, Agatha’s world was turned upside down when Archie asked for a divorce, and told her he had fallen in love with another, much younger, woman. Agatha, already devastated by the recent death of her mother, vanished from the home she shared with Archie and their daughter in Berkshire. Her abandoned car was discovered near Guildford. By now she was a famous author, and the story of her disappearance was the talk of the country, even making it onto the front page of the New York Times. She was missing for three weeks before she was found in a small hotel in Harrogate, where she’d been living under an assumed name since the day after her disappearance. She told police that she had lost her memory. For the rest of her life she never mentioned it again.
In 1930 Agatha married Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist who she met on a trip to Mesopotamia. She later wrote that an archaeologist was the perfect husband, because the older his wife grew the more interested in her he became.
The same year saw the publication of Murder In The Vicarge, the first of 12 novels to feature spinsterly sleuth Miss Marple. Agatha Christie was a prolific writer and even published a series of romantic novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott.
She worked at home but never wrote when on holiday. Greenway was a place to escape from detectives, murder and mystery. She bought the house with Max in 1938 and became very involved in local life, spending weeks on end at Greenway. She was a frequent visitor to Galmpton School and was often asked to mark children’s essays and stories. She was on the board of governors, and she opened the school assembly hall where a plaque still hangs to commemorate the occasion.
Local people always referred to her as Mrs Mallowan. The couple were keen gardeners and cared for the garden’s collection of magnolias, also taking an interest in the wild flowers found on the site. Max listed them, and in April 1942, his garden book noted the “exceptionally late season,” with camellias, magnolias and even primroses only just flowering.
The family loved to dress up and the house was full of costumes for the shows and plays they put on to entertain each other and their guests. They played indoor and outdoor games and were avid collectors of all sorts of interesting artefacts from around the world.
During the autumn of 1943, Greenway was requisitioned by the Admiralty for the use of the United States Navy. As part of the preparations for D-Day, Greenway became the officers’ mess for the 10th US Patrol Boat Flotilla based in the Dart Estuary. Amongst them was a Lt Marshall Lee, who was to become their unofficial war artist, creating a frieze around the walls of the library which can still be seen today. During the build-up to D-Day, American music could often be heard wafting over the estate. According to local rumour, an abrupt silence foretold another raid by the Luftwaffe!
Agatha Christie became a Dame of the British Empire in 1971, just five years before her death in 1976. The house passed to her daughter, Rosalind Hicks, who, with her husband Anthony, made it her permanent home.
While still living there, the couple gave Greenway to the National Trust in 2000, but it remained closed to the public. Only the gardens were open. Following the deaths of Rosalind and Anthony, the house also passed to the Trust, along with the majority of its contents, donated by Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard. It was painstakingly restored and its collections preserved, and the house and contents went on view to the public for the first time in 2009.
Everything has been cleaned and put back exactly at it was found, so that visitors experience an intimate portrait of Agatha Christie not only as a writer, but as a mother, wife and hostess. The National Trust was always adamant that there would be no gimmicks, no Miss Marple Museum, just a lived-in and much loved family home.
First Published August 2010 By The Dart
