The Hotspur - Hidden

Amongst the barely considered literature of Britain is the parish magazine. These little periodicals, now perhaps largely superseded by online equivalents, typically gave the dates and times of church services, notices of forthcoming events such as fetes, homilies and other messages from the parson, appeals for funds, and other miscellaneous matter such as recipes, funny things overheard, and gardening tips, designed to season the publication with lighter reading.

As a (largely) amiable record of local news and interests they present a slice of social history that ought to be preserved at least in a representative form, and I wonder whether any diligent library has undertaken this task. Moreover, it is not at all impossible that amongst them there are some unnoticed minor delights, literary, antiquarian, topographical, botanical.

We know, for example, that Arthur Machen wrote the church guide for the Parish of Amersham, where he lived in semi-retirement: it is now a rare item in his bibliography. It is quite likely that other literary figures made similar contributions, signed or unsigned. By their ephemeral nature, few of these little publications will have survived, but those that do are certainly worth scrutiny.

A rather unusual contemporary example is the The Hotspur, which began modestly as the parish magazine for Healey, Northumberland, a remote settlement of slightly less than two hundred souls. It has since evolved into a periodical of art, history, myth, landscape and the arcane, edited with flair by Jamie Warde-Aldam. Each (un-numbered) issue is identified and infused by a theme.

In the latest, that theme is ‘Hidden’, inspired by a disused Cold War bunker in the vicinity. Contributors explore the history of Cold War installations, the legend of St Cuthbert's Mist, a Victorian stage magic illusion, the Tiepolo frescoes in the Villa Valmarana, and a journal of local living in rural Ireland. There is also an art plate, 'The Secret Underground Bunkers Do Exist' by Michael Mulvhill, and one of the finest errata slips ever, 'and'.

Enquiries to: thehotspur[at]googlemail[dot]com.
'Like distant cousins,there's a limited supply.'




Mark Valentine

Lost Composers - Phyllis Tate

When they were temporarily out of favour (they are now more sought-for) I used to pick up from charity shops and so on any unusual classical music albums on long-playing records that I saw, particularly those by obscure British composers. I recently re-found among these an old LP of Phyllis Tate’s chamber suite ‘Apparitions’ (1968) for tenor, harmonica, string quartet & piano (she often used unusual combinations of voices and instruments). It is paired with ‘Roman Dream’ by the Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott, together with another piece by each of them, on Argo ZRG 691.

Phyllis Tate’s work arranges four old ghostly songs: ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’; ‘The Suffolk Miracle’; ‘The Unquiet Grave’; and ‘Unfortunate Miss Bailey’. She gives these a fresh treatment, matter-of-factly eerie, recognising that the folk or popular origins of the songs were earthy and unsentimental, yet still have a hard chilling quality. The singer Gerald English’s renditions are done with gusto, and with a goosefleshy thrill that suits the weird material. The harmonica was an inspired choice as lead instrument, for it can be both brittle and mournful, and it also has the informal, profane quality of the songs. The side is completed by ‘Three Gaelic Ballads’.

Her foreword for the score of Apparitions show how she aimed to convey the stark uncanny power of the songs: “These ghost songs are performed for the most part as if through a gauze, the dynamics only occasionally rising to forte”, she noted. She explains the way she tries to invoke the uncanny in each one, before the ‘Envoi’, where “the natural and the supernatural meet on more equal terms”, adding, with a touch of wry humour, “finally the harmonica performs the last rites with a brief reminder of the first ballad”.

The songs have had other striking renditions. ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’ received a lively but still eldritch electronic performance by folk-rock maestros Steeleye Span, while the medievalist rock group Gryphon did a beautifully melancholy version of ‘The Unquiet Grave’, complete with crumhorn solo.

The composer’s work includes a sufficient number of other pieces with a spectral or macabre theme to suggest that this dimension held a certain fascination for her. These include ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (1956), for tenor and instruments, ‘Witches and Spells’ (1959), a choral suite, ‘Dark Pilgrimage’ (1963), a television opera, and ‘Gravestones’ (1966), a vocal score composed for singer Cleo Laine, as well as other folk song arrangements and nocturnes.

Phyllis Tate (1911-87) herself seems to have been a colourful and redoubtable individual with trenchant views and a zest for the unobvious. Born in Gerrard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire, she had to combat the prevailing prejudices about women composers, and about her own unusual and modernistic music. Withal, she seems to have been diffident; when the leading woman composer Dame Ethel Smyth praised her work, she was pleased: but noted that of course the eminent lady was by then quite deaf. She amusingly noted that when Dame Ethel came to support a performances of a piece by her, she sat in the front row, stamping her umbrella “to what she imagined to be the tempo” of the work. Phyllis Tate said she hoped her work would endure, but added it was not for the composer to say.

There is probably scope for more discussion about the influence of folk songs with supernatural themes on British classical music, and also of those composers who used such themes in their work. Certainly the links with fantastic literature are there: John Ireland was a keen enthusiast of the work of Arthur Machen, Peter Warlock influenced the work of Mary Butts, Armstrong Gibbs set songs by Walter de la Mare to music. It would be interesting to hear of any monograph or study that looks into this.

(c) Mark Valentine 2015

Lost Poets - 'Wine and Gall'

Some years ago I found a copy of a book of poems called Wine and Gall, whose authors were given only as ‘L’ and ‘R’: and each poem was attributed to one of these initials. It was published in 1918 by Basil Blackwell in Arts & Crafts style covers with a crimson pattern. This copy had been mutilated: some of the pages were cut out.

The book had interesting associations. On the inside cover was the bookplate of Vivian de Sola Pinto, friend and second-in-command to Siegfried Sassoon in the Great War, and himself a poet, essayist and literary critic. Pasted into the back was a card with a picture of a black cat, the handwritten message ‘Good Luck!’ and inside a manuscript verse sent for Christmas, written as if by a white cat called Kit, but signed ‘Christopher Hewitt’.

The poems are lovers’ verses to their amours, tinged with the imagery and fervour of the Neo-Decadents – those youthful writers who discovered and tried to emulate the fated figures of the Eighteen Nineties, in Edwardian times and after. The volume had a one line notice by John Rodker in the modernist magazine The Egoist No 4 Vol VI (September 1919): “relies on cheap antitheses rather mellifluous”. This was part of a column of reviews of a handful of the publisher’s recent issues, headed “Blackwelliana”, and generally scoffing in tone.

The reviewer ‘E.M.’ in The New Age (No 1443, New Series Vol XXVII, No 1, May 6, 1920) gave L and R more space, but was also unenthusiastic. He begins: “The authors would have been well advised not to mix their drinks. The wine is light and piquant, but the gall would not sell even in a prohibited country. “L” purveys the former, and “R” the latter.” The first, he says, is “obviously influenced by Heine” but the poignancy is “verbal, not real”; “one of the perils of mere cleverness, which has not its roots in reality”. However, it is grudgingly admitted that a few lines (of the loved one’s image stamped on the heart “As on a coin the conqueror’s head”), “have what appears to be an original image, and hence an original feeling”. “R” comes in for greater scorn: “why the verses of “R” should appear in the volume is a mystery”: “the thinnest of gall…in spite of its being copiously mingled with blood”.

There are very few clues as to the identity of authors. But one of the torn out poems in my copy, ‘Item Persicum’ by ‘R’, has the lines: ‘And the truest poet I ever knew, /Whose roses grew in the Syrian dew,/Lies dead at Davos Platz.’ This is a reference to James Elroy Flecker, who served as a Vice-Consul in Beirut (then in Ottoman Syria), and died in 1915 of consumption, in Davos. In this poem ‘R’ is himself marching “on the Persian road” in the army, one of the few specific personal details we are given.

‘R’ could have known Flecker as an undergraduate at Oxford, where he was notorious for his fervid verses and boisterous behaviour. Alternatively, he might have encountered him in the Middle East while both were stationed there, the one in the Levant Consular Service, the other in the forces. Another of the torn out poems, ‘Aegrotat’, by ‘L’, has a startling Great War metaphor: ‘It hurts my eyes to look in yours, /And like a splintered shell /Their dark beam in the brain endures,- /Ah how can I be well ?’, suggesting that this poet too was or had been away at war.

It is a curious volume, in which the verses are often forceful and ardent, as in ‘If there is any power above…’ by ‘R’, in which the poet has the role of Judith and his lover that of the tyrant Holofernes: ‘Haply you will rejoice one day/ To win me to your silken bed /But dawn shall see me bear away/The crimson trophy of your head.’ This violence of imagery and Babylonian allusion indeed suggests the influence of Flecker. The New Age review recoiled from this verse, with the prim remark, complete with italics: “One need quote no further.”

Who ‘L and ‘R’ were, and why they published together, which must surely imply some close friendship or affinity, remains a mystery. Their verses have a certain sardonic polish and, if they are not quite distinctive enough to really force the reader’s admiration, they are sufficiently odd and out of the usual run of things to merit some attention. Possibly their authorship was known amongst a certain circle of friends in Bloomsburyish and Oxford regions. The addressee and the author of the manuscript poem are likewise lost. But the final mystery is why certain poems were excised from the copy I found - were they kept when the book was discarded, or discarded while the book was kept?

Mark Valentine

(With thanks to R B Russell for the photographs).

Lost Artists - Edgar Wilson

After the energy and earthiness of the earlier satirical illustrators (Rowlandson, Gilpin, Hogarth), Victorian illustration became mostly demure, with the fantastic and grotesque found chiefly in books of children’s fairy tales. It took the genius of Aubrey Beardsley to revive the art, with his boldness both of line, and of theme: and his angular figure leans over all the black and white drawings of the late 19th century like an audacious lamppost.

It is hard for other artists to stand out under his light. But one of these who was almost as highly thought of at the time was Edgar Wilson (1861-1918), who drew mostly for the lively and comic periodicals (The Butterfly, The Idler, Pick Me Up – their titles convey their frivolous contents) but is now completely overlooked.

The journal The Poster, Volume 6, No 31, February 1901, had a Note On The Work of Edgar Wilson, which still remains one of the few discussions about him. The following is an edited extract:

“To the most casual student of Mr. Wilson's work it will be obvious that he has been strongly influenced by Japanese art. There is probably no designer in England who is more learned than he in the productions of the great masters of Japan. It is precisely the reality and profundity of Mr. Wilson's knowledge which prevent him from making imitations of Japanese drawings. Many a designer, in the excitement born of his introduction to the colour-prints of Hokusai, Otamaro, and the rest, has given us occidental adaptations of them….

“It is the familiarity of Mr. Wilson with Japanese work which has enabled him to retain his own individuality while taking from the eastern convention much that is beautiful. His gift of decoration is quite Japanese in its ingenuity and luxuriance. From the most unpromising subjects he evolves delightful patterns. The drawings of the very prosaic exteriors of the London theatres and music-halls which some time back he contributed to Pick-Me-Up, were charming by reason of their graceful fantasy. We rubbed our eyes and asked if these were indeed among the realities of our town; if the façade of the Empire or Terry's was in fact a beautiful thing which somehow we had passed a thousand times and overlooked. Beautiful they undoubtedly are when reduced into decoration by Mr. Edgar Wilson…

"Mr. Wilson sees things with his own eyes; and records what he sees in his own manner. His etchings are among the very best which are being produced by the younger Englishmen of the day, and their popularity can only be a question of time. To me it is a surprising thing that people should buy reproductive etchings of pictures, when for the same money they can have original ones which artistically are of far higher value….

“As a book decorator, Mr. Wilson takes a very high place, and it is a remarkable thing that no publisher has secured his services for the entire production of an elaborate volume. Perhaps his work is best seen in the pages of The Butterfly. The failure of this little publication to obtain the support of the comparatively limited audience to which it appealed is, from the point of view of art, one of the most disappointing things of which I know. The literary contents were admirable, and when we remember that the artists included, besides Edgar Wilson, such men as Joseph Pennell, Raven Hill, Maurice, Greiffenhagen, O. Eckhardt, Paul Renouard , E. J. Sullivan, S. H. Sime, and J. F. Sullivan, its failure is somewhat inexplicable.

"For The Butterfly was a bazaar of smiling and alluring fancies. It is obvious that it stood no chance of appealing to that vast army of magazine buyers who delight in portraits of celebrities at various periods of their life, in personal articles written by ladies of title for the bourgeoisie, and in big instalments of portentously long serials by the authors of such masterpieces of fiction as The Sorrows of Satan and The Christian.

“Still The Butterfly really should have found five thousand righteous persons willing to achieve its salvation by spending sixpence a month on it. To The Butterfly, Mr. Wilson contributed not a few of his most delightful drawings. Not less important than these are the decorations with which he made scores of its pages distinguished. It is the air of distinction about Mr. Wilson's work which is especially welcome…. For many reasons is the file of The Butterfly a desirable possession; by no means the least of these is the brilliant series of head and tail pieces with which Mr. Wilson has adorned it. Fortunately some of the best of his work of this kind may be seen from time to time in the pages of The Pall Mall Magazine, but the scope for his gift is of necessity narrower in that publication than in The Butterfly.

“If Mr. Wilson is obviously fascinated by Japanese methods, he is evidently warmly attached to subjects which are essentially English. With pen and needle he delights to glorify our incomparable river at the points where the dome of St. Paul's and the bastions of the Tower loom over the houses on its banks. Sometimes he gives the Thames when it was crossed by old London Bridge and bore on its broad breast of waters the infinitely picturesque shipping of the spacious days of great Elizabeth….”

Lafcadio Hearn mentions Wilson in his essay 'About Faces in Japanese Art' which cites a paper given by the connoisseur Edward F Strange to the Japan Society: "He tried to explain the nature of the advantage likely to be gained in the art of book illustration from the careful study of Japanese methods; and he indicated the influence of those methods in the work of such artists as Aubrey Beardsley, Edgar Wilson, Steinlen, Ibels, Whistler...".

And indeed Strange, in his study The Colour-Prints of Hiroshige (1925) confirms Wilson’s devotion to Japanese art in his acknowledgements: "I would pay a tribute to the work of other students of the subject, and particularly to the late Edgar Wilson and to Mr. Arthur Morrison, who shared my early investigations into the question...".

One of the few recent mentions of Edgar Wilson's work occurs in Simon Houfe's Fin de Siecle, The illustrators of the Nineties (1992). In discussing The Butterfly he says: "But what captures the imagination is the work of Edgar Wilson, a marvellous decorative artist whose head and tailpieces (aptly named because they are often of fish) reveal an unending power of invention in a broadly Japanese idiom."

There seems to be very little biographical information about Wilson, other than his dates and the fact that he mixed with the other artists illustrating for the periodicals. The two illustrations here are from a bound volume of The Butterfly, and have not reproduced well, but give some hint of Edgar Wilson's exotic and elusive work.

William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land

One of the many pleasures of book hunting is that it's still possible to flush out a decent title in a charity shop.  So at lunch time I was at the Salvation Army store and found the above book hidden away on a lower shelf - a colonial edition of William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.  Price: $2.  There are two sets of advertisements at the back, dated November 1911.  The publisher is Bell & Co and it has the standard Bell's decorated covers.  My understanding, which could well be wrong, is that colonial editions were made from the 1st edition sheets, cheaply bound by the publisher (not necessarily the 1st edition publisher, as not all publishers had colonial libraries), and sent off to the colonies. Some colonial editions are rarer than others and it would be interesting to know how many copies were printed - was there a set print run for each book in a colonial library, or did it vary for each book, for example a proportion of the first edition run?

Here is a contemporary Australian review of the Bell's edition, published in the Western Mail, a West Australian newspaper, in June 1912:

A NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 

"The Night Land," by William Hope Hodgson. (G. Bell and Sons Ltd., London.) "The Night Land," a love romance by William Hope Hodgson, contains close on 600 pages of mysticism pure and unadulterated. If the patient reader can manage to survive the first 150 pages, with their frequent and irritating references to such obscure and occult things as Monstruwacans (not a tribe of North American Indians, be it said), Mighty Pyramids, Lesser Redoubts, Earth Currents, Home-calls, Diskos, Brain Elements, Master Words, Hour Slips, Thrilling Aether, and the rest of the remarkable quasi-transcendental jargon the author indulges in, and if the semi-archaic phraseology of the whole lengthy narrative does not hopelessly pall, the patient reader aforesaid may find some entertainment in the surprising Baron Munchausen-cum-Gulliver adventures which befall the hero of the book in his perilous quest after Naani, his lost love, who wanders forlorn and solitary in the mysterious Night Land. Finally, if the reader perseveres to the bitter end, he will doubtless be gratified to learn that the nameless hero does verily and indeed bring Naani back to the security of the Mighty Pyramid, and the paternal guardianship of the Master Monstruwacan, despite desperate and sanguinary encounters with ghostly silent ones, horrible yellow things, ferocious night hounds, huge and hairy humpt men, enormous and malodorous slugs, as big as small hills, and other dreadful nightmare monsters, all of which loathly beasts he successfully combats in his journey through the difficult and direful country of Plains of Blue Fire, of a House of Everlasting Silence, of Fire Holes and Hills, and mighty slopes and gores, and a great many more unpleasantly dangerous obstacles to safe travel, which in these glad days of Cook's universal tourist tickets would very properly be looked upon as Exceedingly Bad Management. However, all this happened in the early morning of the world, although, by the by, an obsolete airship is mentioned. There may be some subtle and occult meaning in Mr. Hodgson's ingenious chronicle, but if this is the case it is so carefully hidden away as to be beyond the capacity of the average intellect. Possibly, if one may hazard a guess, it seeks to extol the triumphs of True Love over all opposition, even including a descent into the shadowy Night Land of Death, and we offer this tentative suggestion for the problematic benefit of those as unskilled in such arcana as ourself. Despite its grotesque setting, the story of the name less hero's tender love passages with the winsome Naani in the wilderness is very attractively told, indeed it is quite the best part of a singularly prolix and perplexing book. The hero’s lament when he supposes Naani to be dead after winning safe through so many perils is one of those felicitous little touches which go far towards making the whole wide world kin.

"And lo! in that moment when I neav to be in mine armour, I to mind sudden again that I never to have waked to discover mine own maid kissing me in my sleep. And the pain gat me in the breast, so that I had surely ended then, but that the Master Doctor set somewhat to my breath, that eased me, and gave something of dullness unto my senses for a while."

Our copy is from the London publishers. 

REX RYAN, THE BLACK TRIANGLE

I mentioned in a previous post that we can’t really understand the R.R. Ryan novels without understanding the milieu in which they were written: the popular provincial theatre of the day.  One would reasonably expect traces of Rex Ryan’s plays to be found in the series of excessive thrillers he wrote for Herbert Jenkins in the 1930s.  One of his plays, written in 1927 and licensed at the Hippodrome in Mexborough, was The Black Triangle.  We know it was written by Rex Ryan because he advertised it for sale along with other plays of his in the Stage Directory in 1929.  I acquired a copy of the play from the Lord Chamberlain’s archive at the British Library, and it makes entertaining if typically crude reading.

It is a crime thriller reminiscent of his later books with bizarre goings on and a plot that stretches the imagination.  The play is mostly set in a country house belonging to James Sullivan.  There is a crowded household consisting of Sullivan, his son, Colin, Sullivan’s sister, Mrs Temperley, and her two daughters, Estelle and Nadine, and a cousin, Carlyle.  On top of this, Sullivan and Nadine like to take in unfortunate types in the neighbourhood, including a blind and deaf cripple named Paul who acts more like an animal than a man (but who responds to Morse code being tapped on his arm!), and most recently, an escaped freak from a passing circus called the Lion-Faced Man who horrifies all who see him. 

There are various love interests happening, with Nadine at the centre of it all – she is courted by both Colin and Carlyle, whom she despises.  Paul and the Lion-Faced man don’t like each other and after a fierce fight the Lion-Faced man says that they knew each other in the circus.  James Sullivan then reveals that today is the 20th anniversary of his escape from the clutches of a Chinese secret organisation called the Brotherhood of Black Triangle, controlled by arch-criminal Soo Ki.  Evidently, when Sullivan was in China 20 years earlier he fell in love with a beautiful Chines woman who was betrothed to Soo Ki – when Soo Ki found out about the affair Sullivan was only able to escape death by joining the Black Triangle.  He obtained government protection and managed to escape, but Sullivan has been expecting retribution ever since.

It quickly arrives with the appearance of a black triangle painted on a canvas that Colin, a budding artist, was about to use.  And shortly afterwards THE TERROR (in upper case, as is THE INEXPLICABLE in Echo of a Curse) appears at the window during a violent storm: “THE TERROR appears at the window, clad in black, with a black veil falling over his face on which is a death’s head.  On his breast and on a background of white is a black triangle.  His hands are the hands of a skeleton, and the fingers end in terrible claws.  The veil rises, apparently by no agency of his own, and a ghastly Chinese face is seen.  He fixes his huge eyes on Sullivan and they never waver in their gaze.”

Sullivan is murdered and Colin makes the awful discovery of his father’s head in a trunk with a black triangle painted on his forehead.  The police are called in and a bumbling investigation ensues until Kit Temple, a Melbourne detective investigating the Brotherhood of the Black Triangle, arrives.

Nadine is kidnapped and there’s a nice scene where she apparently wakes up in an underground laboratory in Marsh Retreat strapped to a slab with a huge vat of acid nearby: “Above her is a dull green light, which just reveals her.  At the back hang huge black curtains.  Otherwise the place is rough stone, with a door L.C. at back.  After the curtain has been up a little, the light above Nadine goes out. An illuminated scull (sic), and the upper structure of a skeleton is seen, with arms extended.  It is about 6 feet above the floor, but slowly descends and moves back, then forward to Nadine.  She screams.  The face fades. Scream after scream is heard…”

Sadly, the skeleton turns out to be dream, though the underground laboratory and vat of acid are real – no doubt an excuse to use a prized prop.  A black, hooded figure appears and orders Nadine to yield her body to him: “When I have done with that the devil can have your soul.  Strip off those clothes.  Surrender to me, and then you shall go in peace.”

Feisty Nadine declares, “I choose the vat rather than you.”  However, The Figure won’t take no for an answer: “The figure springs upon her and tears off a large portion of her dress.  A tremendous fight ensues, in which her clothes are torn to rags.  She fights the figure like a man.  They wrestle, roll over and over. But he gets her.  Raises her in his arms.”

THE TERROR arrives in the nick of time and forces the Figure into the vat of acid.  He then picks up Nadine and races off with her just as Colin and the others arrive.  Colin sees that there’s something in the vat: “Besides the vat are two huge pincers.  Silently Temple takes them up and hands one to Colin indicating their use.  Together from the vat they raise a complete skeleton.”  So the prized skeleton prop gets a reprise.  Needless to say the Figure turns out to be Carlyle.

After more shenanigans, Nadine is rescued and THE TERROR is revealed to be Paul, the deaf and blind cripple, who is in fact Soo Ki, the dreaded leader of the Black Triangle, and The Lion-Faced Man turns out to be Kit Temple in disguise!  What’s more, when THE TERROR’s identity is revealed he throws himself into the vat of acid rather than face justice.

The play was cleared by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, though with some provisos: according to Nicholson’s Censorship of British Drama: “In 1927 [the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of] Cromer reluctantly licensed a touring melodrama on condition that “the lion-faced man must not be made too monstrous or like an animal,” that his fight with the blind mute “must not be too realistic”, and that “the appearance of the ‘terror’ as described on page 11 must be modified.”  Typically he also attempted to absolve himself from possible criticism by making the manager responsible for ensuring that it must not be staged in such a way as to cause offence to the audience.”  You can still see the pencil marks on the passages in the typescript that the Lord Chamberlain's Office had problems with.

There are several parallels with the R.R. Ryan novels - freaks (though in this case they are disguised men) with animal characteristics and named accordingly,  vats of acid, nefarious laboratories, Morse code, are all in Freak Museum, while using capitals to emphasize the name of a creature was used in Echo of a Curse.

The play was the subject of an article in the Sheffield Independent on 13 October 1927, titled "Too Much Blood: Super-Thriller Banned."  

"'The Black Triangle,' presented as the most thrilling of all thrillers, which was to have been presented by the Imperial Players in the Mexborough Hippodrome to-night, to-morrow and on Saturday, has been banned by the censor because it is too thrilling.

"Mr Rex Ryan, who owns the company, has received a wire from the censor forbidding the play to be produced in its current form.

"'I suppose it is the realities to which objection is made,' he said to the 'Sheffield Independent.'  "'The Black Triangle', the name of the author of which I cannot divulge, is a super-thriller.'

"There are ghosts, a deaf mute, two murders, a hanging, a head showing apart from its body, an iron face and plenty of blood and tears.  In addition to making ones hair stand on end it is mysterious.

"'The censor is a new man and I suppose his pet aversion is blood.  The old censor was concerned more about bare legs, but this one won't allow a hanging.  The play is not banned altogether, and when the censor has done we shall be able to produce it in its revised form.'"

The Last of Aickman?

Possibly the last writing Robert Aickman did for publication was a foreword to a book of canal poems, Echoes of a Canal Travelling Man by J.H. Burman (1981). His contribution is dated December 1980 and a note from J.H.B. follows: “On February 26th, when this booklet was still only in proof form, Robert Aickman died. Tributes to his inspiration and zeal for the waterways have been most adequately expressed elsewhere. He never saw this booklet complete, but I hope he would have approved. I add it, as my personal tribute, to those, from the thousands of waterway enthusiasts who will remember him.”

I came across this when I picked up a book of poems called Excalibur Immersed at the excellent bookshop at Gatehouse of Fleet, Galloway, thinking it was on some Arthurian theme. It was in fact a book of canal poems by J.H. Burman, and the writer of the foreword remarked that he was following an illustrious predecessor, since the previous volume by this poet was foreworded by Robert Aickman. There proved to be two other titles by J.H. Burman: one was Scantlings – Yet More Soundings from a Canal Travelling Man, but the first, which I soon sought out, was ‘Echoes…’. Mr Burman seems also to have written books of local Warwickshire history.

Aickman’s foreword begins in his characteristically opinionated and somewhat lofty style: “Strong links with general and universal culture have always seemed to me of the first importance to the waterways campaign, which has regularly tended to drift into the parochialism of minutiae.” Here he briefly makes it clear that he is not of the hobbyist or special interest approach to the canals: he wants them to be recognised as part of the very fabric of the country, and its arts and traditions.

He goes on to note that “Beyond doubt, the turning point in the entire escapade was the Market Harborough Festival of 1950”, since this brought together drama, art exhibitions, films, “a grand ball and a fireworks display” and “persons, often of eminence and influence, were attracted from far and wide”. This commentary illuminates Aickman’s approach to the campaign: to get the attention and support of those who could make a difference, by putting the canals in a wider context, and, incidentally, ensuring these movers and shakers had a good time. “No one who attended, prominent among them the present President of the Royal Academy, will ever forget the raree show,” he avers, in another characteristic Aickman assertion.

Perhaps recalling at this point the particular occasion for his foreword, Aickman next speaks of Mr Burman’s poems. These, he says, combine the knack of the “technicalities and the quasi-gypsy (but not gypsy) lingo of the cut” with that wider culture he has praised, for the poet has written parodies, for example of Masefield and de la Mare, of which “Max Beerbohm would not have been ashamed”. Like this leading figure in the field of the spoof, Mr Burman “enters into the original author’s inner life, going far beyond surface mannerism”.

This is perhaps a surprising observation to make of what may seem at first sight simply light-hearted imitations of the masters, substituting canal themes for theirs. But in fact Aickman’s observation is acute. The parodies get not only the particular lilt and rhythm of the originals but something of their innate quality. ‘Spring Fever’, for instance, after Masefield’s famous poem ‘Cargoes’ (“I must go down to the sea again”) doesn’t miss the shortened end-line of each stanza, deflating the more sonorous swing of the lines before.

And ‘The Old Mill’ (“with apologies to Walter de la Mare”) understands exactly how this dreaming poet’s work proceeds from impressions of loneliness and decay. “If ghosts exist,” Mr Burman says, in a brief note accompanying this piece, “they ought to be found in canal tunnels, or in long, dripping, overgrown, narrow cuttings. There can hardly be a lone steerer, who has not experienced the feeling that he is not alone.”

Aickman concludes his tribute to the poet and his book, apart from a conventional commendation, by commenting that they “capture to precision the waterways amalgam of physical effort, often a consequence of mere neglect on the part of authority; bliss in natural things; the curious joy of almost all boating in itself; nostalgia; and, impregnating the whole, crusade, all too much of it, when viewed down the years”. In this he was no doubt summing up, too, his reflections on his own long involvement with the waterways.

Mark Valentine

LEAVES OF ASH - John Howard

“I’ve discovered something they don’t know. Or they do know and are hiding it.”

John Howard’s Leaves of Ash returns to Steaua de Munte, a timeless place in Central Europe, where a janitor at the university has pieced together the secrets of the city. Under the shadow of the authorities, he devises an unusual way of alerting the townsfolk to the results of his researches. The author’s previous titles with this setting include The Silver Voices, The Defeat of Grief, Numbered as Sand or the Stars, and The Lustre of Time.

Jo Valentine’s design responds to the story’s theme with a Coptic-stitched concertina book cased in boards with ash grey buckram. The miniature book is concealed in a ‘matchbox’. The endpapers and ‘matchbox’ label depict mascarons from a Romanian castle, photographed by Jo Valentine.

This is the latest handmade publication from the Valentine & Valentine imprint. It is in a limited, numbered edition of 25 copies only (+ iii not for sale).

Update 2 August - all copies have now been taken. Thanks for the very keen interest in this book.