The Joy of Obscure Journals

The Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book 1932, in its bright red covers, was one of those old reference works that I suspected would be full of interest when I chanced upon it, and I was not disappointed.

After the adverts for writing schools (‘The Quill Club’, ‘The Authors’ Aid Service’) and secretarial bureaus (‘The Queen's Secretarial College for Gentlewomen’), there is a directory of over one thousand Journals and Magazines in Britain, with contact details, what they cover and what they pay. I have always been a subscriber to, and collector of, obscure journals, from matchbox-collecting to mazes, island postal services to inn signs, antiquarianism and antinomianism, and much more, so I naturally wondered what periodicals would be on offer in 1932.

The listing starts with the Aberdeen Press and Journal and The Accountant and breezes on for 108 pages until we arrive at The Young Adventurer and Friendship (sixpence; Mrs Ruth Knowles, Ramhurst Manor, near Tonbridge, Kent; ‘personal adventures in all parts of the world, and funny poems’) and Young England (founded 1880, six shillings annually, ‘for boys of the educated class’). I was a bit disappointed not to find any journal beginning with Z. The Zoist? The Zookeeper’s Gazette? Zodiac, for star-gazers everywhere? Zoroastrian Studies? Zounds, for swashbuckling yarns? Surely some gaps in the market there.

The staples of the listing are trade papers, comic papers, sporting, children’s and women’s magazines. Some of the trade magazines may now seem rather specialised. Who would have supposed there would be a Box Maker’s Journal (founded 1898), ‘devoted solely to the Paper Box and Carton Making and the Packing Industries’? But in fact it had a rival: Paper Box and Paper Bag Maker, ed G. Stuart Don, paying one guinea per 1,000 words. It seems a pity neither used the title Boxing Clever, but perhaps it was a serious-minded trade. The India Rubber Journal (1885) edited by W.A. de B. McLaren at Shoe Street, E.C.4, also sounds highly specialised, though admittedly it does stretch to gutta-percha too.

Some of the titles sound most promising. Who could resist The Startler edited by Rex Haydon, for boys aged 9-16 years (and, we might suspect, some quite a lot older)? This cheerfully admits it offers stories that are ‘for the most part far-fetched . . . a boy who starts a private police station of his own; the cowboy who always uses a catapult; the boy who rides the seas on a shark’s back’. It certainly seems to live up to its title, but what became of it? When I searched for it, I was offered instead The Tatler (‘prominent social people’), not at all the same kind of thing.

If The Startler was not exciting enough for you, there was always The Thriller, which asks for stories of 25,000 words ‘dealing with crime, of the variety now known as “Thrillers”’, which implies that the term was fairly recent. It adds: ‘They must be full of quick action, sensational, and dramatic: but horrors or shockers are not wanted.’ Whether there were any magazines that did want horrors or shockers does not appear, though possibly not the Family Herald or Fairyland Tales. And certainly not the Happy Mag (1922): ‘bright, cheerful short stories only wanted. Nothing heavy or gloomy . . .’ Not the place to look for Hardy’s latest, then.

Even The Red Magazine, to which I think some genre writers did contribute, issues a stern warning: ‘Stories which play on the morbid, sex, or brutality, are not wanted . . . Writers should remember that healthy-minded women form the greater part of the magazine-reading public’. Which rather makes you wonder what the unhealthy-minded women read . . .

In searching for esoteric journals I found only three or four. Admittedly, I might have missed some masquerading under an innocuous title. Perhaps the Box-Maker’s Journal had hidden depths. But otherwise the esotericist of 1932 had to make do with The Aryan Path, a theosophy journal; Beyond, a Spiritualist journal; and The Occult Review (‘devoted to the investigation of supra-normal phenomena and the study of the truths underlying all religious beliefs’).

There might, however, be some promise in the Expository Times, edited by A W Hastings M.A. and Rev Edward Hastings M.A. from Edinburgh, or in Proteus edited by W.B. Crow, D.Sc., devoted to ‘osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, physiognomy, dream analysis, astrology, herbalism and physio-philosophy.’ Dr Crow was the author of books on the occult significance of precious stones, and on the science of dreams.

Although there were several almancs in circulation, including at least three versions of Old Moore's, there was then no specific astrology or fortune-telling periodical: Prediction, which was to become a popular news-stand glossy for horoscopes and star signs, did not start until 1936.

The Beyond listing notes tersely that it wants ‘True psychic experiences but no dreams nor visions induced by hysteria or weak digestion’ and adds, rather wearily: ‘No “inspired” writing, nor spirit messages from Buddha or Napoleon.’ Even so, I think they may still have left themselves open to astral emanations from Cleopatra’s cat.

The year book also lists overseas journals in English, and then offers listings of publishers. Among these are Foulsham of Red Lion Court, publisher of almanacs, and L N Fowler & Co of 7 Imperial Arcade, Ludgate Circus, ‘Works on Phrenology, New Thought, Occultism, etc’. They also produced ceramic phrenology heads, and poster size phrenology charts. I should have thought that by 1932 phrenology was no longer en mode, but evidently Fowler thought otherwise. 

Perhaps there is still a little shop in Imperial Arcade frequented by phrenological diehards. As you enter through the creaking door into a restful gloom, the grey-bearded denizen will look up, start, peer at you carefully through his half-moon glasses, mutter ‘most remarkable’, and ask if he might feel your bumps.

(Mark Valentine)

The Flamboyant Fiction of William Mole

The Hammersmith Maggot (1955) by William Mole is a crime fiction novel prized among the cognoscenti. It introduces a louche series character, Casson, a wine merchant who also enjoys amateur detection: he has a conscientious business partner who looks after things while he is sleuthing.

The Maggot is an unusual novel about an aesthetical blackmailer. At least, he is a would-be aesthete, a lover of rare and beautiful things from a modest background who considers that he has a perfect right to possess what he wishes. He uses blackmail discreetly and with restraint, learning just enough about his victims to exploit ambiguous situations. Usually, his victims are in fact without real fault, but apprehensive, or else have only minor peccadilloes. The blackmailer chooses them with care and plays them deftly. The portrait of this character is cunning, although undoubtedly with a dash of snobbery: how dare this vulgar interloper want the finer things in life?

There is an excellent fuller review of the book at the Pretty Sinister Books blog.

Two further thrillers in the Casson series followed: Goodbye is Not Worthwhile (1956) and Skin Trap (1957). All three of the books tend to rely on what may now seem rather over-confident psychological analysis. The plotting is rather cold-hearted. Nevertheless, they create a morbid interest in their amoral villains and build up a strong feeling of tension. These and the panache of the suave wine merchant hero, who has aspects of Bond to him (he appeared just two years after Casino Royale) give the novels a distinctive flavour.

Mole had earlier written two novels of a different type, Trample An Empire (1952) and The Lobster Guerillas (1953). The first of these is a romping adventure and chase thriller in which two young people pit themselves against a sinister government Minister whose autocratic plans they have uncovered. It was compared with Chesterton’s romances. There is also something of the swift breezy quality of Edmund Crispin’s novels. The Sunday Times called it ‘stylish and civilised’.

The second concerns an attempt by a motley band of partisans, smugglers and insouciant bravadoes to set up an independent enclave in the Camargue in Southern France in the aftermath of WWII. The Daily Telegraph described it as ‘written in the true swashbuckling fashion . . . people with strange picturesque characters.’ A peevish reader might think Mole’s books are a bit too swaggering and archly sophisticated, but on the other hand they certainly have a vivid, vigorous quality. And they linger.

William Mole was in fact the pseudonym of William Anthony Younger (1917-61), the son of Sir William Younger, Bart, of Auchen Castle, Moffat, Scotland: but he was later a step-son of Dennis Wheatley. It was presumably the latter who introduced him to the wine trade, in which Wheatley was keenly interested.

He was educated at Canford, a modern co-educational private school in Dorset, and at Christ Church, Oxford. As Younger he wrote four volumes of poetry, which was romantic and sensuous, rather archaic, but with a certain rich elegance.  He also wrote articles on wine and travel, and with bis wife Elizabeth a book about Portugal. She also wrote her own crime novel, as Elizabeth Hely, I’ll Be Judge I’ll be Jury (1959). William Younger died in Greece in 1961 aged 43 from a fever.

A Checklist of Books by William Younger

As William Younger

Madonna and Other Poems (Boar's Head Press, 1935)

Inconstant Conqueror. Poems (Hutchinson & Co., [1938])

The Dreaming Falcons. Poems (Hutchinson & Co., [1944])

The Singing Vision [poems] (1946)

Blue Moon in Portugal by W & E Younger (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956)

Gods, Men and Wine (Wine and Food Society; Michael Joseph, [1966])

Orpheus. Selected Poems 1939 – 1960 (Flixton Press, 1985)

As William Mole

Trample an Empire (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952)

The Lobster Guerillas (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953)

The Hammersmith Maggot (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955). Also in Penguin (1963)

Goodbye is Not Worthwhile (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956)

Skin Trap (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957)

(Mark Valentine)

Image: Temple Bar Bookshop, Dublin

'Still She Wished for Company' by Margaret Irwin - Centenary

Still She Wished for Company (1924), Margaret Irwin’s novel of a timeslip between the late Georgian period and the contemporary Nineteen Twenties, is another novel that celebrates its centenary in February. It tells of a modern London office worker, Jan, and an 18^th century country house daughter, Juliana. Seemingly they could have nothing in common: except that they sense each other’s presence.

The author is appreciated by supernatural fiction enthusiasts for some subtle ghost stories, most notably ‘The Earlier Service’, an anthology favourite. Her stories in this vein were gathered in Madame Fears the Dark (1935). However, her wider acclaim was as a historical novelist, particularly with her portrayal of the early life of Elizabeth I, Young Bess (1944), and its sequels.

Irwin had used phrases from children’s rhymes for two earlier novels, How Many Miles to Babylon (1913) and Come Out to Play (1914), and Still She Wished for Company takes its title from an eerie children’s story and rhyme, usually known as ‘The Strange Visitor’. It was collected in late Victorian fairy tale books but probably has older origins.

A lonely woman is spinning at her wheel: ‘and still she sat, and still she span, and still she wished for company.’ Then, as if in answer to her wish, a figure appears, in stages, starting with the feet. She remains unperturbed throughout, with the refrain as each part appears, ‘and still she sat, and still she span’ (etc). But when the head appears she puts a series of questions about each of the limbs, until the last question of all: ‘Why have you come here?’ ‘For you,’ is the reply and then the whole scene vanishes.

Irwin’s novel uses several echoes from this chilling tale. Her two young women protagonists are also lonely and longing for a richer life: and their glimpses across time are elusive, so that they have to gradually build up a picture of each other (though not in the literal way of the rhyme). It is also a dark stranger, Juliana’s long-exiled brother Lucian, who adds a sense of menace to the story. Even so, Irwin’s novel is a steadier and gentler work than its brisk, bizarre source, notable instead for its restraint and sustained air of mystery: wisely, Irwin never exactly explains the timeslips.

It is well-known that full length ghost stories are very hard to achieve, but Irwin tells most of the story in the 18^th century scenes, thus adding the period interest of her historical novels to the attractions. Another attraction is the sustained visionary quality. Although there are hints of Lucian’s diabolism and dabbling in seances, the novel is not inspired by any specific spiritualistic or esoteric background. Instead, her characters move in a half-lit world of dreams, reveries and visions, alongside their everyday preoccupations. The author creates a wistful, melancholy, poetic atmosphere that takes the book beyond the conventions of the form. I was reminded in some ways of the atmosphere of J Meade Falkner’s The Lost Stradivarius (1895), both books having for their time a slightly old-fashioned feel.

There is an excellent longer discussion of Still She Wished for Company at the blog The City of Lost Books, written in 2019 by Rob Maslen, formerly co-director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at Glasgow University. This notices in particular how the book conveys the changing roles of women, and the things that do not change. This is another important element of the novel that gives it a continuing resonance today.

Still She Wished for Company is a well-liked book. There was a Fifties reprint (the easiest hardback edition to find), a Penguin paperback and an edition in the Peacock paperback series for young adults. It was also reprinted in the Chatto & Windus Landmark Library (1968), alongside such as titles as Widdershins by Oliver Onions and Don Tarquino by Baron Corvo. It is a thoughtful, enduring work that has lasted its hundred years well.

(Mark Valentine)