The Centenary of 'Harvest in Poland' by Geoffrey Dennis

Geoffrey Dennis was the author of five novels under his own name and at least one other, a thriller, as one of a shared pseudonym. He also wrote a most unusual prose work, The End of the World (1930), which has attracted connoisseurs of the stylish and recondite.

This month marks the centenary of the first publication of his Harvest in Poland (1925), a rather overlooked but powerful novel of the supernatural. A new and revised edition was issued in 1931.

The novel follows the spiritual journey of a young man, Emmanuel Lee, who has psychic sensitivity. It falls in two parts. In the first we are introduced to his background and time in provincial England, including a fairly sympathetic, open-minded portrayal of spiritualistic circles. Then he makes the acquaintance of a Polish aristocrat and accompanies him to his family estates in Poland, where hints of shadowy forces begin to emerge. These are subtly conveyed in careful details, building an atmosphere of the sinister and uncanny involving opposing dualistic forces. There is some affinity to Middle European fantastic literature of this period, for example by Gustav Meyrink and Leo Perutz.

E F Bleiler describes Harvest in Poland as: ‘A long psychological novel portraying in supernatural terms both the degeneration of European society just before World War I and the spiritual odyssey of a sensitive young man . . . Somewhat reminiscent of the novels of E. F. Benson in its concept of spiritual evil, but much more powerful and grotesque’ (The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, 1983). Bleiler did, however, think the novel over-long.

The Neglected Books Page website quotes a passage from a review by H L Mencken in The American Mercury, which said that Dennis was: ‘[A] story-teller of unusual talent, with a great deal of originality.’ The novel was an ‘… impossible story told in terms of the most meticulous realism…His prose has a Carlylean thunder in it; he knows how to roll up gorgeous sentences.’

A distinctly different and frankly cruder occult novel by Dennis is The Devil and X Y Z, a collaboration with Hilary Saint George Saunders under the joint pen-name of Barum Browne. This is a crime thriller but with rather garish black magic elements. The Spectator (26 June 1931) reviewed it as follows: ‘In The Devil and X. Y. Z., Mr. Barum Browne gets most of the way towards writing a good thriller by creating a bad villain. Le Cure is the suave agent, not of those rather nebulous Powers who are always so pathetically anxious to import secret treaties and lethal inventions, but of the Powers of Darkness, and this treasure-hunting demonologist, with a past in the penal settlements of Guiana, makes a genuinely impressive figure when he holds the stage alone. Mr.Browne knows how to suggest evil. Unfortunately, the Forces of Light are represented by two insufferable undergraduates . . .’

To the extent that Dennis’ work is noticed at all, it is for The End of the World (1930), which was my own first encounter with Geoffrey Dennis’ books after it was recommended to me by the literary friar Fr Brocard Sewell, ‘equally for the manner as well as the matter’, he said. He admired the author’s  prose style. It is not a novel but a fantasia evoking the various ways that apocalypse might come: fire, flood, ice, etc, with great imaginative force. It was awarded the 1930 Hawthornden Prize. It has probably suffered from not being in any obvious category: not fiction as such, yet not a factual study. The nearest equivalent, I suppose, might be the work of Olaf Stapledon, in subject though not in style.

The Neglected Books Page notes this was selected by Morris Bishop for a feature in The American Scholar, Autumn 1956, on ‘The Most Neglected Books of the Past 25 Years’: ‘It treats of the greatest of subjects: How? When? Which first? What after? It does so by means of a glorious space-time imagination, prickling humor and strange learning, sounded forth in mighty organ-tones, its diapason sounding full on man. And it has one of the finest last lines in literature.'

Geoffrey Pomeroy Dennis was born in Barnstaple, Devon on 20 January 1892. His novel Bloody Mary’s (Heinemann, 1934) describes a young boy’s abusive and sordid boarding school experiences. It is not clear whether this is at least partly autobiographical. He took a M.A. in Modern History at Oxford and then became an international civil servant, working as a League of Nations official in Geneva from 1920-1937. 

His book Coronation Commentary (1937), which must surely have been purely a piece of commercial work, incautiously repeated rumours that led to a libel action by the Duke of Windsor (Edward VII), which was settled out of court when the publisher and author agreed to pay “substantial damages”: the Lord Chief Justice said they ought to be horsewhipped. Dennis’ career at Geneva ended around this time, perhaps not coincidentally. The row may also have affected Dennis’ literary career: no other book appeared from him for twenty years, apart from the history of World War Two that he edited. His memoir of childhood, Till Seven, was published in 1957. He died on 15 May 1963.

There is no doubt that Harvest in Poland at least should be better-known as visionary occult novel and that The End of the World will appeal to those who like oblique literary originals, but there is probably more to be found too in most of his books.

Checklist of books by Geoffrey Dennis

Mary Lee (Heinemann, 1922)

Harvest in Poland (Heinemann, 1925). Revised edition (Heinemann, 1931).

The End of the World (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1930).

Declaration of Love. Undiplomatic correspondence between Paris and Berlin (Heinemann, 1931)

The Devil and X.Y.Z. (Victor Gollancz ,1931). With Hilary Saint George Saunders, as ‘Barum Browne’.

Sale by Auction (Heinemann. 1932)

Bloody Mary’s (Heinemann, 1934)

Coronation Commentary (Heinemann, 1937)

Till Seven (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957)

As editor

In Memoriam Harold Parry, Second Lieutenant, K.R.R.C. Born at Bloxwich-December 13th, 1896; fell in Flanders-May 6th, 1917, etc. [Letters and poems by H. Parry. The editor's preface signed: G. P. D., i.e. Geoffrey P. Dennis. With a portrait.] (W. H. Smith & Son, [1918?])

The World at War. A history dealing with every phase of World War II on land, at sea, and in the air, including the events which led up to the outbreak of hostilities. Written by eminent authorities and edited by G. Dennis. [With plates and maps.] (Caxton Publishing Co, 1951)

Images:

The cover of the Knopf edition of 1925.

Signed inscription by the author in the New and Revised Edition of 1931.

(Mark Valentine)

The Centenary of 'The Shining Pyramid' (UK edition): A Guest Post by John Howard

The early 1920s were fruitful years for Arthur Machen. Fuelled by a heightened interest in the United States his work was in demand, with publishers scrambling to bring out new books and reprint old ones. Machen provided introductions and prefaces for these editions, some of which were limited and signed, aimed at collectors and priced accordingly. An American edition of The Shining Pyramid appeared in 1923; the British version (Martin Secker), with greatly altered contents, was published one hundred years ago in February 1925.

The new edition reprinted eight pieces. The mixture was as before, fiction and articles originally published in various magazines and newspapers over some thirty years. It was a varied assortment – but came with underlying connections too. Machen wants to show the ‘pattern in the carpet’: that there is a distinction to be made between seeing and perceiving; between mere sight and the perception of meaning and significance. In the essay “The Mystic Speech” Machen particularly amplifies his thesis that ‘great things can be and are before the eyes of men for countless ages, and yet are not perceived’ with lively and vivid examples. For example: ‘From 1620 to 1820, one may say, nobody had seen Gothic at all. It is interesting to look at eighteenth century prints of cathedrals…you might almost say that the artist had been gazing not at Peterboro’ or Lincoln Cathedral, but at a clever model made by a boy with wooden bricks and bits of wire’ (130, 134).

In the stories, things and events, although seen, may not be truly perceived except after thought and study, and through insight and understanding apparently not given to all. In “The Shining Pyramid” Vaughan invites his friend Dyson to visit him at his peaceful home in Wales. At first Dyson resists: “London in September is hard to leave. Doré could not have designed anything more wonderful than Oxford Street as I saw it the other evening; the sunset flaming, the blue haze transmuting the plain street into a road ‘far in the spiritual city’” (14). But an account of a young woman vanishing and some mysterious signs found on a wall convince Dyson to go after all. Vaughan’s quiet district proves to mask a dreadful reality as Dyson uncovers the meaning of the symbols and so the reason for the disappearance.

“Out of the Earth” (1915) is thematically connected to The Terror (1917) and the Great War pieces collected in The Bowmen (1915). Machen – enjoying himself – begins with a recitation of what we might now call the misinformation concerning the ‘Angels of Mons’ and his original authorship of “The Bowmen”. Machen explains that what many regarded as fact was really fiction, while revisiting his journalistic voice in a further fiction presenting as fact something else that humanity was not able to see for what it truly is, and thus perceive. “In Convertendo” (1908) is straightforward. An episode in the life of Ambrose Meyrink, it chronicles his ecstatic liberation from public school and journey to the West. As Meyrink glimpses a certain house from the train he ‘felt as though a voice cried to him from that place; the Cup seemed to summon him to kneel once more and to behold new visions’ (161). The piece was one of several incorporated in The Secret Glory (1922).

In his introduction Machen did not simply discuss The Shining Pyramid and explain that its contents differed from those of the American edition – even though some overlap was acknowledged by reuse of the title. He also revealed something of the reason for the changes: hinting at the tangled international saga of misunderstanding that had led to the appearance of the new work. And as was so often characteristic of Machen, still more lay behind the account he gave: something to be sensed but which had been left unsaid. Our view seems a partial one. We see but cannot perceive.

Machen stated that The Shining Pyramid was the result of a collaboration with an ‘American Gentleman’ who he did not identify. This was journalist and bibliophile Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) who had ‘full of industry, rummaged in old papers, magazines and manuscripts’ which had resulted in the publication of two books by Covici-McGee in the US: The Shining Pyramid and The Glorious Mystery (1924). Machen continues: ‘At length I thought I ought to take a hand in the business. […] I went through the two volumes, and reflecting a good deal, have made them into one’ (7).

Alfred A. Knopf, who had published several books by Machen and considered himself to be his main American publisher, wrote an open letter to the Trade complaining that the two books published by Covici-McGee had been pirated. Machen went along with this interpretation, disowning Starrett and claiming that he had not known about the books or given permission for them (Gawsworth, The Life of Arthur Machen 309-10). However, Starrett defended himself in a pamphlet and showed that in a letter from 1918 Machen had given him permission to ‘lift whatever you like from the “Academy” and “T.P.’s Weekly”’.

The two were reconciled when Starrett visited London in the autumn of 1924. Machen admitted that he had been foolish to give permission and wrong to have forgotten doing so. It had been wrong of Starrett to have gone ahead and arranged publication without first submitting a table of contents to Machen (Arthur Machen: Selected Letters 231-32). Machen’s new version of The Shining Pyramid became the ‘authorised’ one, not only appearing from his main publisher in the UK, Martin Secker, but also in the US through Knopf. Transatlantic and other harmonies had been restored.

(John Howard)