HE’S NO 007, BUT…. PART 2

YESTERDAY, THOMAS JONES’ REVIEW “Lives of Reilly,” London Review of Books, August 10, 2023, introduced us to a fellow known as “Ace of Spies,” not to say more than this. Today in Part 2, we begin with one of several of his life’s tête-à-têtes.  

A Timely Will. Wikipedia amplifies on Rosenblum/Reilly’s affair with Margaret Thomas: “Rosenblum met Rev. Thomas in London through his Ozone Preparations Company because Thomas had a kidney inflammation and was intrigued by the miracle cures peddled by Rosenblum. Rev. Thomas introduced Rosenblum to his wife at his manor house, and they began having an affair.”

A bit terse, even for Wikipedia. It probably took longer to develop.

A Mysterious Doctor. “On 4 March 1898,” Wikipedia continues, “Hugh Thomas altered his will and appointed Margaret as an executrix; he was found dead in his room on 12 March 1898, just a week after the new will was made. A mysterious Dr. T. W. Andrew, whose physical description matched that of Rosenblum, appeared to certify Thomas’s death as generic influenza and proclaimed that there was no need for an inquest. Records indicate that there was no one by the name of Dr. T.W. Andrew in Great Britain circa 1897.”

Hmm….

Wikipedia recounts, “Margaret Thomas inherited roughly £800,000. The Metropolitan Police did not investigate Dr. T. W. Andrew, nor did they investigate the nurse whom Margaret had hired, who was previously linked to the arsenic poisoning of a former employer. Four months later, on 22 August 1898, Rosenblum married Margaret Thomas at Holborn Registry Office in London.”

A New Name, a Renewed Career. This was when Odesa-born Sigmund Rosenblum became Sidney George Reilly, with witnesses at the ceremony, Wikipedia notes, eventually to “marry daughters of Henry Freeman Pannett, an associate of William Melville,” first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.

This reminds me of Thoreau’s line, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find trout in the milk.” 

Wikipedia observes, “The marriage not only brought the wealth which Rosenblum desired but provided a pretext to discard his identity of Sigmund Rosenblum; with Melville’s assistance, he crafted a new identity.… key to achieving his desire to return to the Russian Empire and voyage to the Far East.” 

Other Er… Friends. In his LRB review, Thomas Jones mentions Reilly’s friend “Anne (surname unknown, possibly a colleague). He left Port Arthur at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Anne may have gone with him (they may even have got married) but she soon drops out of view and he’s making his peripatetic, priapic way back to Paris, via Shanghai, Manila and Rio de Janeiro, with an American woman called Irene Dawson—or so her husband complained when he filed for divorce a few years later.” 

Jones recounts, “His love life didn’t get any less complicated, either: he began an affair with Nadine Petrovna, whose husband was a staff officer at the Ministry of the Navy. Meanwhile, Margaret—who briefly joined Reilly in St Petersburg, ‘against his wishes’—refused to divorce him.” 

Well, isn’t that the way. 

Jones cites a ‘string of affairs’ with dancers and actresses. Geez, when did Reilly find the time for any spy stuff? 

Settling Down. What with World War I complications and the Russian Revolution, Jones notes, “Released from his obligations to the British government, Reilly went freelance, with a series of unsuccessful money-making schemes (tobacco, radium, patent medicines again), a new wife (the actress Pepita Bobadilla, born Nelly Louise Burton) and a renewed commitment to helping Savinkov overthrow the Russian government.”

Alas, Reilly got caught up with “the Trust,” a false-flag operation set up by the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ secret police. Jones writes, “But there seems little reason not to believe the OGPU [successor to Cheka] files, according to which Reilly was executed by counterintelligence agents in a park in Moscow on the evening of 5 November 1925.”

Jones summarizes, “To the extent that Reilly resembles a figure in a spy novel, he’s less like Fleming’s creation—his promiscuity and enjoyment of the high life aside—than one of Eric Ambler’s characters: occupying the murky hinterland between espionage, diplomacy and business; crossing and recrossing Europe’s borders even as they shifted under his feet, adopting a new name and a new nationality as he went; carried remorselessly along on the currents of history however hard he tried covertly to direct them.” 

It’s still evidently a rattling good tale. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com 2023