Faunus - Arthur Machen Essay Prizes

The Friends of Arthur Machen have announced a competition for essays on Machen submitted to their journal, Faunus. There will be a £200 prize for the best essay, and two runner-up prizes of £100 each. All three prizes will also include a year's free membership of the Friends. It is open to non-members: anyone except Committee members of the Friends may contribute.

Essays should be a minimum of 4000 words, and may concern any subject likely to be of serious interest to members. The Faunus Editors, James Machin and Timothy Jarvis, will be the judges, and submissions should be made to:

faunus(dot)editor(at)gmail(dot)com (replacing the words in brackets by the relevant symbols)

MV

The True Story of Lord Jim - Petronella Elphinstone

Turnstile One (1948), edited by V S Pritchett is an anthology of contributions to the New Statesman and Nation, mostly from 1931 onwards. It contains, under ‘Essays and Reviews’, a piece entitled ‘Tuan Jim’ by Petronella Elphinstone, from 1932.

This is an unusual piece of Conradiana. The five page sketch is an alternative version of Lord Jim (1900) in which the title character did not, as in the original story, abandon a ship full of pilgrims, but instead steered it safely into port, won praise for his coolness, continued his career in the merchant navy, and eventually settled on shore to run a ship’s chandler’s. It concludes, ‘This is the true story of Tuan Jim, as told me by himself.’ It is very nicely done.

The mystery is, who was the author? There is no Petronella Elphinstone in the catalogues of the major public libraries, so she probably never published a book. Her surname is that of an eminent line of Scottish nobles: but she does not seem to appear in the extensive peerage records for that house.

Her name, however, does occur in an unexpected context. A poem by Guy Davenport, ‘The Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard’, on Stanley Spencer’s celebrated painting of that scene (1924-7), lists in resonant phrases some of the supposed figures emerging from their graves. It includes the beautiful lines: ‘In pleated light and diamond bone/Comes Petronella Elphinstone.’

Most of the other characters in Davenport’s poem are well-known: they include the Tudor judge Sir Edward Coke; Karl Marx; John Ruskin; and Edward Lear. But no annotator, to my knowledge, is able to explain where he got the name of Petronella Elphinstone. Spencer’s painting does include portraits of some friends and contemporaries, and possibly Elphinstone was one of these. Or perhaps Davenport had read the New Statesman piece or some similar literary work and decided to make use of the author’s memorable name in his poem.

I have a feeling I am missing something obvious either about the author or her enjoyable piece of Conradiana. Any information or speculation will be welcome.

MV

Carcosa Revisited

In the early 1980s, I discovered to my liking a number of recently published stories bylined "Galad Elflandsson." I'm not sure which exact story I first encountered, but it seems likely to have been "Night Rider on a Pale Horse," published in The Phoenix Tree (1980), edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski.  The blurb about the author told me of other stories to look for, in various (often Canadian) small press magazines, and also of the short novel The Black Wolf, published by Donald M. Grant in 1979, and illustrated by Randy Broecker.  I picked up the stories as I could find them, exchanged several letters with the author (who kindly supplied more information and more stories), and I looked forward to more publications in the future. But around 1987 Elflandsson ceased writing and publishing.

One of his early projects had been a series of stories (and a few poems) based on Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow.  He had submitted the collection to Donald M. Grant in 1978, and from it Grant asked him to rewrite and expand one longer story, "The Cave of the Hill Beast." Minus the Carcosa references, and adding some Lovecraftian ones, it became The Black Wolf.  Some of the other Carcosa tales appeared in various magazines.

Late last year, Graeme Phillips with his Cyaegha Press resurrected most of the Carcosa tales in an elegant trade paperback volume, Tales of Carcosa, with a cover and interior illustrations by Steve Lines.  It contains two poems and five stories (one a previously unpublished short, "An Augury") and a new "Afterword" by the author.  The edition is small (four lettered and fifty numbered copies), so act quickly if you are interested.  There is no web page specifically for Tales of Carcosa, but the Cyaegha magazine web page (hosted at Glynn Owen Barrass's Strange Aeons site), with contact email for Cyaegha in the short introductory paragraph, can be found here.  Send Graeme an email for ordering details. 

Update 6/28/19: Tales of Carcosa is now officially out of print.

Guest Post - 'The Dangers of Nostalgia' by R B Russell

Nostalgia is not necessarily one of the worst vices. It is possible to fondly recall aspects of the past without resorting to romanticism and inaccuracy. In book collecting, nostalgia often manifests itself in re-acquiring much-loved volumes from childhood, which means that the most avid collectors of children’s books are often adults. However, ‘nostalgia’ isn’t quite the word to describe grown-ups buying children’s books that they never owned or read themselves. Perhaps this phenomenon deserves another name? The Brazilian/Portuguese ‘Saudade’ comes close (a melancholic longing for something absent), as does the German ‘Sehnsucht’ (a yearning for an ideal, alternative experience), but neither are quite adequate.

I understand the power of nostalgia: re-reading the blurb from an Armada paperback edition of one of Anthony Buckeridge’s ‘Jennings and Derbyshire’ books is enough to transport me into the past—to the pleasures of sitting in my bedroom on sunny summer days when I should have been outside playing. However, re-reading such books usually fails to recreate for me any of the pleasure I experienced as a child—exposing villains with the Five Find Outers and the Hardy Boys, or going on adventures in foreign lands with Biggles.

Among the books I had as a young teenager I can still re-read Ian Fleming’s ‘James Bond’ books with (a guilty) pleasure, but Leslie Charteris’ ‘Saint’ books now seem terribly dated. Likewise, H.P. Lovecraft’s overwritten stories do not hold my interest as they once did, although the cover art on those Panther and Ballantine paperbacks still promises eldritch horrors. How, though, did I ever read the appalling ‘John Carter of Mars’ books by Edgar Rice Burroughs? (Perhaps, the cover art was an incentive.)

Some of the books of my childhood have come back to me through my family, and I am pleased to give up a little precious shelf space for Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by Terrance Dicks and The Tomorrow People in The Visitor by Roger Price and Julia Gregory. To make sure they don’t lose their power, I don’t attempt to read them. They are all later printings of tatty paperbacks and have no value to collectors, but I can’t see the point in upgrading them to pristine first editions (in dust jackets, where appropriate.) To do so would be to own copies of books that were not really a part of my history—it was those particular paperbacks that I knew and loved.

At book fairs I often see copies of old Rupert annuals that I had as a child. I occasionally flick through them, receive the nostalgic ‘hit’, and replace them on the shelf. (I know that dealers are annoyed by customers doing this!) One good reason for not buying them is the price, but I have noticed that they are not quite as expensive as they once were. There also seem to be more examples on offer. Perhaps they are going the way of books and comics by Frank Richards.

When I first started compiling my Guide to First Edition Prices in 1996, I valued Richards’ ‘Bunter’ books at between £20 and £75, and was immediately taken to task by a number of dealers who said I had undervalued them. (The Times Literary Supplement called me ‘Parsimonious Russell’ in a review.) Perhaps the Bunter books were usually priced a little higher by dealers than I had suggested, but over the various editions of the Guide, dealers admitted to me that Richards’ books were becoming more and more difficult to sell because those who remembered them from their youth were becoming increasingly elderly. Not only was the demand diminishing as collectors died, but the supply was increasing as their collections were sold by uninterested heirs.

Prices have continued to increase for serious rarities by Richards in pristine jackets, presumably by collectors nostalgic for a childhood they never experienced, but those collectors can expect to cut a better deal now that much of the committed competition has left the scene. Basic economics ought to mean a fall in prices, but dealers are always unwilling to reduce the pencilled price on the front free endpaper, even though a book may have been on the shelves for year after year.

Until recently even later issues of Rupert annuals were commanding a great deal of money, but the market is not what it was. Despite periodic and half-hearted revivals, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are not collected like they used to be. Next to fall in value will be early issues of 2000AD comics. (For over a decade Prog. 1 has been stuck at a value of £100 for the first issue—with the free ‘space spinner’, of course.)

Nostalgia is all very well, especially for those who can afford it, but it is a dangerous investment. The most financially rewarding answer is to invest in books that have more than just a nostalgia value, but collecting children’s books is about a sense of wonder and excitement that has little to do with literary merit or cultural significance. Their qualities cannot be easily defined, and it is impossible to put a monetary value on their importance to us. However, if you really want to indulge, a dealer will always have a specific price in mind. Just remember to point out the jam stain on the boards, the gift inscription on the title page, and the fact that the word-search has been inexpertly filled-in. Considering these faults, the dealer ought to knock off at least ten percent.

R B Russell

Brick Index

It is possible that it has never occurred to you before that you might like a book consisting of pictures of bricks. But if this is so, I invite you to reconsider. Brick Index (from Centrecentre) offers 155 full scale photographs of bricks arranged from the palest through to the darkest, processing therefore from cream and beige into ochre, amber, rose, scarlet and crimson, shading into purple and dusk and ending almost at charcoal.

Nor is this the only visually appealing aspect. For each brick has incised lettering giving the name of the manufacturer and sometimes its place of origin, and occasionally a motif or motto. These inscriptions are in various types, from the purest Roman to the most floral Gothick. The finely-grained texture of the bricks and the vicissitudes of their history (such as dents, crusts, accretions) are fully brought out by the images (the work of Inge Clement), so that each is like looking at the battered, worn visage of some ancient sage or poet.

The names of the brick-makers are sometimes brisk, sometimes quaint: and the places where they plied their trade are also varied, and often obscure. As the book observes, the brevity of the text has a certain terse appeal, like a sort of brick haiku.

The accompanying text in the book is also brief, but sufficient, and it tells us that surreptitious collectors of old bricks are flourishing in numbers, haunting sites of dereliction and demolition for rare finds. It also predicts that readers of the index will soon find it difficult to resist becoming one of them.

I suspect there may be a sort of sub-sect of the brick collectors in which the qualities of the brick itself are not the only motive for their obsession. I speak of those who seek for bricks from curious or recondite edifices, whose walls may have witnessed mystical or momentous matters. These bricks may be sought simply as historical mementos, certainly: but also in case they should still possess, caught inside their staunch forms, secrets.

MV

Guest Post - 'Revelations' by R B Russell

Literary research can reveal information about writers that some of them might have preferred to remain hidden. For example, it was recently discovered that Bernard Heldmann (1857-1915) started to use the pseudonym Richard Marsh only after he spent eighteen months in prison for passing forged cheques. (It had previously been assumed that he adopted a pseudonym to hide his father’s German-Jewish origins.)

The conviction doesn’t really affect his posthumous reputation as the author of the Victorian blockbuster The Beetle (1897), but it must now become a part of his biography, and critics will have to bear it in mind when considering his many books. For example, does the author’s experience affect his treatment of crime and criminals? The revelation of his conviction will inevitably alter the way we appreciate the man and his writing, but it does not lessen his achievement in The Beetle. We do not overlook the crime, but, on the whole, it will have little bearing on his work — the prime interest for most readers.

Of course, there is no reason why authors should be any more honest, or dishonest, than any other section of society. A number of great writers have committed crimes and many will have served time, while others, of course, have been convicted for political reasons, or for activities that are not recognised as crimes today. A criminal past may have as much, or as little, bearing on creative writing as the author’s gender, sexuality, political views, etc: after all, we are discussing fiction. But even in composing works of ‘high fantasy’, authors inevitably draw from their own experience, offering viewpoints that are consistent with their understanding of the world.

Fraud might not be too problematic for an author’s reputation (even though they may have caused others anguish through their actions), but other crimes may call for a more uncomfortable revaluation of an author. For example, it has recently been discovered that M.P. Shiel (1865-1947) spent time in prison not for fraud (as had previously been assumed), but for ‘indecently assaulting and carnally knowing’ his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Such a conviction inevitably leads us to question our appreciation and understanding of the man and his writings.

It ought not to make ‘Xelucha’ or ‘The House of Sounds’ any less effective as wonderfully over-wrought tales of horror, but it is understandable that some readers will not want to read fiction by a convicted paedophile. Nobody can now consider The Purple Cloud and not question the author’s thought processes when he describes the relationship between Adam Jeffson and the young girl who appears towards the end of the novel. But despite our new knowledge of the author and the fact that we abhor his crime, The Purple Cloud remains powerful and innovative writing.

It can be difficult for long-time admirers of an author to come to terms with unpalatable revelations. H.P. Lovecraft’s racism, for example, has caused a great deal of debate in the last decade, although his views were always present in certain published stories if one was looking for it. In ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ it is overt, but in other stories such as ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ aspects of the story we now find problematic had previously been open to legitimate multiple interpretations. Some commentators have defended Lovecraft, using the ‘man of his time argument’; that he was merely echoing widely-held beliefs of his era, but in the 1920s not everyone was racially prejudiced. Moreover, Lovecraft cannot be excused for ‘unthinking’ or lazy prejudice, because he appears to have considered issues of race in some depth.

Lovecraft’s undeniable racism was a facet of his personality and illuminates both his character and his writing. He was much more a ‘man out of time’ than a ‘man of his time’, suggesting that he would have been far happier as an eighteenth-century gentleman who was able to devote himself exclusively to literature. His inability to come to terms with many aspects of the modern world probably influenced his fiction just as much as it fueled his racism, and there are parallels between both. Lovecraft is an endlessly fascinating subject for study, not least because of the contradictions in his views, and the fact that he may well have been ameliorating them in the years before his early death at only forty-six.

It is entirely natural that some readers will not want to read Lovecraft because of his racism, just as others will shun Shiel. Readers often tend toward writers whose beliefs, attitudes, etc accord with their own, but we can still appreciate the work of those with whose world-view we fundamentally disagree. One does not have to be a High Church Tory to appreciate the writing of Arthur Machen, or a Communist to enjoy Sylvia Townsend Warner’s work. Finding interest, even enjoyment in a writer does not necessarily mean we endorse all of their views. But when one is forced to look again at an author, as Lovecraftians have had to, it makes as little sense to completely turn one’s back as it does to insist that there is nothing to discuss. Admitting to problematic aspects of an author’s biography and allowing for discussion has to be preferable to either censorship or denial.

R B Russell

Illustration: from a dustjacket design for 'The Beetle'.

Faunus - The Decorative Imagination of Arthur Machen edited by James Machin

Strange Attractor Press have just published Faunus - The Decorative Imagination of Arthur Machen, edited by James Machin, an anthology selected from over twenty years of issues of the journal of The Friends of Arthur Machen, with a new introduction by Stewart Lee.

This handsomely produced book surveys many of the Gwent master's range of interests, including the legends of the Great War, the Celtic Church, the “real” Little People, the occult, the byways of London, and a myriad other investigations into Machen’s life and legacy. The contents include rare pieces by Machen himself as well as items from the Faunus archive by writers including Tessa Farmer, Rosalie Parker, Ray Russell, Mark Samuels, and Mark Valentine.

(Picture: James Machin)

Lawrence Durrell's Cricket by the Book

The smugglers, at their risky work, were waiting at the rendezvous, an obscure harbour with an old abandoned jetty. Some slept, some darned socks, some played cards. But the skipper was consulting the Bible.

In Lawrence Durrell’s lesser-known novel Judith, begun in the early Sixties but not published until 2012, his old sea-captain Isaac Jordan is often seen with his Bible, making notes. He has been through it twice, ‘but without actually reading a word’. This is because he uses the holy book to play a form of pencil-and-paper cricket:

‘He had contracted a schoolboy passion for playing county-cricket in this fashion, letting each letter stand for a number of runs scored. The life of each batsman was determined by the emergence of the letters “O” (out), “B” (bowled), “C” (caught) and so on. . . . He was in the middle of Judges now. It looked as though Surrey was going to beat Kent.’

Durrell’s character is an engaging rogue: a decorated Royal Navy Great War veteran, he now runs a desperate old ship smuggling contraband, but also arms, through the British blockade, for Jewish settlers in Palestine. As the novel begins, the crates he loads in the deserted bay prove to contain more than he expected: in two of them are hidden refugees rescued from Nazi Germany, including a religious scholar, and Judith, a scientist with important knowledge.

Durrell had originally written this as a screenplay for a film to star Sophia Loren, but the actor thought the title part was too intellectual for her audience’s perceptions of her, and the plot was refashioned by other hands. He then turned his idea into the novel.

This brief vignette of Isaac at his book-cricket, learnt or devised in prep school days, conveys a lot with beautiful succinctness. For one thing, it suggests the character’s insouciance in a time of danger. But it is also a neat hint by Durrell that Captain Jordan cannot quite shake off, despite his rather raffish, exotic existence, his English origins.

The author himself, born in colonial India, lived most of his life abroad, either in the Greek islands or in France, and used to refer to his ostensible homeland as ‘Pudding Island’. But there were many aspects of his character which kept their English traces, and he is perhaps obliquely alluding to that in his portrait of old Issac. The irreverence of using the Bible for this playful purpose would also have appealed to the pagan and freethinking Durrell.

There were various forms of cricket in England that did not involve a bat or ball. Schoolboys used dice or six-sided pencils to score, and a popular trade version of this, Howzat!, offered specially-designed metal dice. It is possible to play cricket using playing cards: the novelist and literary scholar Timothy d'Arch Smith once sent me a version, which he used to devise matches between teams of decadent poets.

Pub or inn sign cricket, played on long car journeys, awards runs for the number of legs (eg four for the Red Lion, two for The Green Man), but other types of sign mean the batsman is out. There are also rumours of a sort of chess cricket, perhaps originating in the cathedral city of Lincoln, the home of The Circular Chess Society.

A simpler form of book cricket is apparently still current among young enthusiasts in India and Pakistan, where it involves a sort of bibliomancy. A book is opened at an unseen random page-spread and the page with even numbers is consulted. In these games, though there are probably all sorts of local attributions to the numbers, they might typically be as follows. Numbers 2,4 and 6 count as those number of runs, 8 counts as 1 or as 0 (a ‘dot ball’, no run) and 0 means out. In some versions, to make 6 less likely, as it is in cricket, it has to be scored twice in a row before it counts.

But Durrell’s version of the game is different. It does not involve opening the book at random nor scoring with page numbers. It relies on working through a book from beginning to end and deriving outcomes from the letters, either one by one or at given spans (eg every sixth one). This game was reportedly outlined in an issue of the boys’ magazine The Eagle in the Nineteen Fifties, and that will have made it better-known, but most likely it had been played for some years previously in various versions known in particular schools, clubs or youthful gangs.

Its virtue is that it more closely approximates to the actual run of play in a cricket match than all the other types of games outlined above, which are apt to be (no doubt intentionally for bored young spirits) both quicker and more eventful than the real thing. To achieve this, the rules can have an almost algebraic complexity, roughly aligning the frequency of letters in English to the likelihood of outcomes in a typical four- or five-day cricket match.

Hardly surprisingly, Durrell does not interrupt the thrilling beginning to his book to give a full account of the rules of this ‘cricket by the book’, which could of course equally be played using any other book. But he gives perhaps just enough information for us to work out how it could proceed, so that we might if we wish try to emulate his disreputable skipper in his unusual devotions.

Mark Valentine