One Book Leading to Another

I must admit to being an inveterate reader, in most cases, of all parts of a book, including the apparatus, the ‘by the same author’, the footnotes and end-notes, the marginalia and, especially those enticing publishers’ catalogues sometimes printed at the back. Browsing through these, in particular, has led me to some interesting, unsuspected titles. There is something in the description, or in the press opinions, that suggests a glimmer of the fantastical or mystical which must be investigated.

In this way, for example, I was led to Bernadette Murphy’s An Unexpected Guest (1934), a timeslip haunting, to Ivo Pakenham’s Fanfaronade (1934), another enjoyable timeslip tale, and to Herbert Asquith’s Wind’s End (1924), where the description of uncanny happenings in the English countryside didn’t quite work out as I supposed, but was nonetheless of interest.

On the same principle of serendipity, I also look out for any bookish memoirs that might have mentions of otherwise forgotten titles: and recently the £1 shelves outside the Cinema Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye yielded just such a book. I usually browse through these rapidly, picking up anything of potential interest without pausing to deliberate too much, given the asking price. Admittedly, considerations of space ought to enter into my calculations too, but this is a matter no keen book-collector allows to intrude itself.

Here I picked up, among, well, several other things, a publisher’s memoir, Adventures with Authors by S C Roberts (1966), an urbane and ambitious gentleman who made a career in the Cambridge University Press and in due course became its head. He was, in fact, appointed to one of his posts at the press by M R James, who, in his university administrative role, was also on the governing body of the imprint. He reproduces James’ letter offering him the job, which rather sternly reminds him that he is expected to make the press his life’s vocation. Later, on James’ departure from the role, Roberts wrote him a valedictory sonnet, which he also reproduces.

The book was of considerable interest for its discussion of life and business at a great university press, complementing, for example, accounts of Charles Williams and colleagues at Oxford. I wrote about a fictional press at a smaller university in my ‘Masque and Anti-Masque’ (Possessions and Pursuits, a shared volume with John Howard, Sarob Press, 2023).

But I also hoped Roberts' book would have allusions to little-known authors, and so it proved. Two in particular caught my interest. Roberts discusses Susan Hicks-Beach (nee Emily Susan Christian), who sent the press her 200,000 words long A Cardinal of the Medici: being the memoirs of the nameless mother of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici (1937), an immensely learned work written in the form of a novel, a somewhat awkward mix: too imaginary for the scholars, too dense for the general reader. But it was impressive, and Roberts took a chance on it. So far as I can see, it remains little-known. Under her maiden name of Susan Christian, she had contributed a story to The Yellow Book in 1895. She was later the model for Britannia on the Edward VII silver florin.

I was sufficiently interested to seek out a copy, and it turns out her book is a highly convincing, picturesque chronicle somewhat reminiscent of Baron Corvo’s historical romances, though without his exotic phraseology. Presented as a memoir of a lady in waiting at the court of an ill-omened Italian duke, it is richly fascinating, a lost romance of the Italian Renaissance, a remarkable achievement, possibly rather long and leisured for current taste, but absorbing and beguiling. The author was evidently steeped in the culture, politics and society of the period, but conveys this through vivid and convincing incidental detail.

Roberts also gives a brief account of the parson and psychic A F Webling, who offered him Something Beyond: A Life Story, an autobiography telling of his journey from his job as a warehouse clerk in London to taking Holy Orders and becoming an Anglo-Catholic priest, then discovering psychic research. He had been Rector at Risby, Suffolk, and later had a success with a historical novel, The Last Abbot, set in nearby Bury St Edmunds. He writes lyrically in his memoir of his childhood apprehension of wonder and mystery in the landscape, and this I think may be more to modern taste than the rather archaic history yarn.

Now admittedly this is an example of one book leading to only two others, or possibly more if I decide to explore the authors’ other works too, but it does not take too much arithmetic to work out that such a proceeding is certain to be cumulative. Indeed, it is the sort of sum that used to be taught in schools, albeit with less interesting objects such as apples. If Mark has one book, and that book leads him to two or more books, and those books in turn each lead him to a further two or more, how many books has Mark now? It is a problem to which the answer is not, and never can be, ‘too many’. Perhaps, on reflection, it would be better taught under the Higher Metaphysics.  

(Mark Valentine)