'The Goat and Compasses' - Martin Armstrong

Martin Armstrong’s The Goat and Compasses (1925) is set in a decayed south coast town which is being eroded by the sea and now seems isolated from the rest of England. There are summer visitors but few outside the season, except the odd artist. The title refers to the pub which is the hub of the little community. Armstrong is a clear, concise prose stylist who swiftly sketches in the leading characters of the fallen town, many of whom have quirks and obsessions. 

One, a dilapidated charwoman, visits the churchyard regularly to converse with her late husband, and steals flowers from other graves to put on his, to appease his spirit, which knows a secret about her. The other dead call to her as she passes. Another, an impoverished gentlewoman, communes with an unknown sailor whose body had been washed ashore without any clue to his identity: she invents his character and conversation, and imagines trysts with him.

The flavour of the local characters is similar to that of a John Cowper Powys or even T F Powys book, but Armstrong preserves a slightly greater artistic distance from them. It is not that he is aloof exactly: he clearly finds them interesting, even endearing, but there is a touch more ironic observation in his approach. 

According to Cecil Gray, the friend and first biographer of the composer Peter Warlock,  D H Lawrence wrote a work c.1916 with a similar title, Goats and Compasses, 'a bombastic, pseudo-mystical, psycho-philosophical treatise'. He entrusted the manuscript to the musician, but when the two fell out Warlock put the pages to 'a humble but necessary' use, probably not as kindling.

Armstrong's work could not be further from this. It is a precise, succinct, observant, and evocative book, carefully crafted. The way in which the living are influenced by the presence of the dead is presented matter-of-factly, and in one delicate, ethereal scene in the middle of the book the spirits of the living dreaming sleepers of the town are interlaced with the phantoms of the churchyard. But the author is not striving after a macabre or even particularly eerie effect: these are ‘naturalistic’, everyday ghosts.

It is notable that the parson and the Church (as distinct from the churchyard) are almost completely absent from the book and play no part in the characters’ lives. Instead the townspeople are influenced by a sort of informal folk religion of superstition and personal belief. Similarly, politics, education and the professions do not seem to impinge much on them. They have their own hard-earned wisdom.

Apart from this folkloric theme, the novel mostly concerns the awkward love affairs of a handful of the inhabitants, who face practical and emotional obstacles, though in the end, mostly, the author rewards loyalty in his characters. As for the little settlement itself, we have been warned early on that it will inevitably be inundated, but Armstrong resists the tactic of making this a dramatic conclusion to his book. 

There is indeed a fierce storm at the end, as foreshadowed, which leaves much damage, but it is not a finally devastating one, so that he leaves the town and its characters still a little more time to thrive. The Goat and Compasses is a well-rounded, mature, nuanced work, but perhaps lacking just that spark of real difference and individuality which would mark it out more. Nevertheless, it offers a gallery of characters, well-portrayed, whose fates we find gently compelling; the forlorn town itself is fully-realised so we feel we know its streets and shoreline well; and the presentation of the restless, rather querulous spirits is unusual and oddly convincing. 

Martin Armstrong was at first mostly known as a poet in the Georgian mode of the 1920s, published alongside Edmund Blunden, Francis Brett Young, Walter de la Mare and others, and indeed his prose shares some of their qualities too. The Goat and Compasses was his first novel, issued when he was in his early forties. He went on to publish others, often of decent people negotiating complicated relationships, as well as short stories (some with a macabre or uncanny aspect), essays and anthologies. 

His writing is always clear, lucent, distinguished but has a sort of modesty and restraint about it which perhaps prevents his work being better-known compared to more vivid and eccentric authors. He was well-regarded and respected in his time but does not seem to have all that many keen collectors now.

Note

The Goat and Compasses is one of the many curious inn signs in England whose origin is unknown. I used to collect and research these as a teenager and am still looking into them now. This example has been explained as deriving from a colloquialising of the motto ‘God Encompasseth Us’, but this may be more ingenious than likely.

Another explanation given is that the sign derives from the arms of The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, a City of London livery company. Their badge depicts three goats’ heads between a golden chevron, which it is suggested came to be taken as an open pair of compasses. But while that might possibly account for a few signs in central London, it does not explain those in the provinces, where the Company had no sway.

A third view is that the Goat (alone) is known as an agricultural inn sign, in the same way as the Bull, the Ram, the various hued Horses, and so on: and to this might have been added the compasses by Masonic landlords. But this again sounds a bit contrived and does not anyway explain why there are no examples of a Bull & Compass or Horse & Compass. The sign itself therefore remains enigmatic, suitably for Armstrong’s obscure little town.

 (Mark Valentine)