6. An Ass in Horn-Rims: Albert Campion

Although horn-rims are so important a part of Albert Campion’s persona that Lugg threatens ‘I’ll ’ave a monument put up to you at the ’ead of the grave. A life-size image of yerself dressed as an angel—’orn-rimmed spectacles done in gold’, Campion’s spectacles are a disguise both literally and metaphorically. With his glasses on Campion can conceal his resemblance to the family from whom he is estranged, and he can also pass for stupid, he cannot see properly through them. This chapter argues that this is a metaphor for the fact that Campion is a detective whose methods of deduction are based on intuition rather than logic. In the final novel Allingham completed, The Mind Readers, telepathy is real; well before that, Campion is already practising it. He succeeds because of the way he looks at things in a moral rather than a literal sense. One of the recurrent ideas in the books is the importance of a sense of proportion, but proportion and perspective entail not distance and detachment but involvement and investment, and those are what Campion develops behind the protective camouflage of his horn-rims.