Seven from the Attic

 

Seven books from a box in the attic. How many must be retained? Well, here is a duplicate of Patrick Leigh-Fermor’s Between the Woods and the Water (1986), about the middle part of his youthful journey from the Hook of Holland towards Istanbul. It is a Book Club Edition and I already have an earlier copy. That can go.

Now, what's this? The Albatross by David Langstone Bolt (1954) in a slightly battered Biro dustjacket. This was Bolt’s first book: he was 26. It has an epigraph from Baudelaire. The publisher, Peter Davies, was discerning: it was just before this that he had issued three books by Sarban.

‘To the artist,’ loftily remarks the flap, ‘nothing ultimately matters except his art’. Aesthete alert! Christopher Howard (a writer), is, we are assured, ‘an entirely convincing figure’ who is ‘profoundly studied’. He does look rather studied, it is true, sporting a floppy white collar and cravat at his typewriter. Advice to Aspiring Authors: Always Look Dapper At Your Tapper. Flaunt Chic Clothes to Compose Your Prose.  A Floppy Collar Suggests a Scholar.

The pencilled sigil on the front free endpaper encircling a price of £2.50 tells me that this book came from the Old Dispensation at Richard Booth’s, Hay-on-Wye. At that price I would have scooped it up on the off-chance. Mr Howard proves to be a somewhat louche individual who mingles with post-war Forties bohemians but is not quite unusual enough. The book is betrayed by a brusque, melodramatic ending.

Even so, I like the look of his second book, also from Peter Davies, A Cry Ascending (1955), because its dustjacket features a young woman in a churchyard beneath a looming tower, clutching at the curtilage fence and gazing beyond. Looks atmospheric, might there be a hint of the eerie? Worth a try.

The next item from the box is a mimeographed pamphlet, Holt Junction (1966), produced locally to commemorate the closure of the railway station, with anecdotes from villagers. Mr Earl, for example, remembers the bitter winter of 1940, with the icy rain so hard that it tore his umbrella to shreds before he reached the yard gates. It took him three-quarters of an hour to struggle to his nearby home, protected, as he said, only by the spokes. There are several such vivid vignettes.

I got it because I thought it was about Holt, Norfolk, a town I like, where I once found a rare book of mystical essays by G R S Mead (the author of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, about the Gnostics). This, unfortunately, is one of those Books I Have Moved On That I Ought Not to Have Done. They will keep haunting one. However, the Junction in question is in Wiltshire. This village was (incidentally) the home of Esme Wynne-Tyson and J D Beresford, co -authors of half a dozen mystical novels. There is no copy of Holt Junction in the British Library: so, of course, it must be preserved.

Here now is a slim volume issued by the Golden Head Press of Cambridge, who sound like they must have some connection with alchemy or possess a gilded talking skull. It is A Railway Rubaiyyat by Henry Maxwell (1968), an elegy in rhyming quatrains to the days of steam trains. The verses are highly atmospheric.

In one scene our narrator comes unexpectedly at dusk to a lonely level crossing in the West Country. There are distant lights glowing up and down the line, and he hears the faint thrum of the rails. But no train passes, and he feels as if he is caught in an enchantment. Crossing-places (fords, footbridges, toll-bridges) are often mysterious in folklore: why not level crossings too? For this scene alone the book must be kept.

The next book from the box is Liars and Fakers by Philip W Sergeant (1925). ‘Who are you going to leave out?’ asked his rather jaundiced publisher. But only four such are discussed because the author found they all needed ample room. Sergeant was a friend and neighbour of Arthur Machen in St John’s Wood: Machen later introduced his Witches and Warlocks (1936). And to my delight Machen proved to have some hand in Liars and Fakers too, because it was he, Sergeant explains, who suggested one of the four subjects: Psalmanazar, the faux Formosan prince befriended by Dr Johnson. This minor Machen link must be treated with respect.

Now, the next to hand, a stout red Routledge volume entitled A Legal Practitioner, by Christian Tearle (1907), I picked up because I wondered if it had any early crime fiction interest. It does, in a mild-mannered sort of way. The five short stories about a London solicitor’s clients also involve liars and fakers, but this is light comedy and they are picturesque impostors. Tearle was the pseudonym of Edward Tyrell Jacques. He had a minor success with his series of travel sketches Rambles With An American (1910) and sequels. 

But probably his most interesting book now, under his own name, is Charles Dickens in Chancery, being an account of his proceedings in respect of the “Christmas Carol” with some gossip in relation to the old Law Courts of Westminster (1914) which sounds worth it for the title alone. He tells of Dickens’ case against several pirates of his celebrated Christmas story, one of whom put up a lively defence. That had better be looked into.

The seventh from the box is A Soldier’s Tale (1976), a war romance. I got it because it is by the New Zealand author M K Joseph, who wrote an SF novel, The Hole in the Zero (1967), which starts like a typical space opera but soon becomes highly speculative. However, this is not SF: could it be Moved On? Hmmm. I now see that Joseph also wrote a time travel novel called The Time of Achamoth (1977) about a plot to thwart the apocalyptic power of a Gnostic demiurge. That ought to be investigated, but all copies seem to be in NZ. In the meantime, better not be Too Rash.   

Well, one book out of seven isn’t too bad.  What’s that? But I’ve also bought another one? And I also seem to have added two more to my Wants list?  Ah, well, yes, but, you see . . .

(Mark Valentine)