The Christie Collection: From the Shelf of Ella Suydam

Written by Olivia Samse, Collections Intern

There is no better time than the turn of the season into summer to dive into a juicy book!  Ella Suydam pioneered her life through her love of reading and the expansion of her mind.

Ella was a remarkable, independent, and strong-willed woman. Ella decided to attend Adelphi University for four years. Determined and outspoken, she never limited her potential, graduating with honors and was the captain of the women’s basketball team. And later in life, she traveled the world. Visiting France, Bermuda, Egypt, and notably Oxford, England, Ella gained a worldly inspiration that would enhance her time as the head librarian at Erasmus Hall. A beloved reader throughout her life, Ella was drawn to mystery novels, particularly those of Agatha Christie.

Ella on the Leviathan during her trip to England

Agatha Christie is the best-selling fiction writer and most successful novelist of all time, only being outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible.  She became known as the “Queen of Crime” or the “Queen of Mystery”. The English writer wrote her very first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916. We are lucky to have a 1965 paperback copy within Ella’s collection of titles.  In the book, Captain Arthur Hastings, an invalided soldier from World War I’s Western Front, takes an invitation to spend part of his sick leave at Styles Court, the Essex country estate of his childhood acquaintance John Cavendish. The peaceful stay is disrupted by the murder of Cavendish’s widowed, elderly stepmother, awakening them all during a summer night. Primarily popular during the Golden Age of detective fiction, this debut novel reigned most successful from the 1920s to the 1940s. Referring to the inter-war years, the Golden Age mirrored the horrors seen in the First World War and the Spanish Flu, which sadly killed our Ella’s fiancé. Both British and American women were the primary readers of detective fiction books, spanning a range from young adults to older adults. Christie played a pivotal role in establishing key elements of the genre, such as the fair play rule, intricate plots, and the “clue-puzzle” approach, which dispersed irrelevant clues to purposefully mislead readers and enhance the detective’s solution. She believed detection was not supposed to be an easy feat for readers.

The two Agatha Christie books within Ella’s Collection

Another Christie title in our collection is The Clocks, published in 1964. A typist named Sheila Webb arrives at her afternoon appointment at Wilbraham Crescent in Crowdean, Sussex, when she finds a well-dressed older gentleman stabbed to death, surrounded by six clocks, four of which are stopped at 4:13, while the cuckoo clock strikes 3 o’clock. A blind woman enters the house, almost stepping on the corpse, and Sheila, screaming, runs outside and into the arms of a young man: Special Branch agent Colin “Lamb.” Both books feature the beloved Belgian police detective Hercule Poirot, a retired yet acclaimed figure. The stories also take place in different towns within England. 

Ella’s love for the destination is apparent in her drawing inspiration from Oxford for her own design of the Erasmus Hall library, one of her most pivotal career milestones. She also incorporated crests of the original Dutch families that settled the region into the stained glass. Ella seemed to carry both her worldly destinations and her Dutch heritage, no matter the environment. Ella’s free spirit allowed her to pave the way within libraries and in the design of shared cultural spaces.

Ella was quite a trailblazer, and she found her way to create an authentic collective contribution. She never married nor had children. She was also the last direct descendant of Colonel Johannes H. Lott to live in the house. Bearing witness to astronomical changes within society, such as women gaining the right to vote, Ella was there during all of it. Her class, intellect, style, and drive are just some of the greatest joys that we are lucky to preserve and hold dear here at the Lott House. 

Ella Suydam, Gerritsen’s Creek, early 20th century