Before Arcturus: David Lindsay's Lost Novels

  

In July 2025 I acquired from James Fergusson Books & Manuscripts an archive of papers related to David Lindsay compiled by the writer Hugh Cecil. He corresponded with Lindsay’s family, friends and admirers, and also interviewed some of them. The collection consists of a dozen or so ring binders full of letters, interview notes, press cuttings and other items.

At first, Cecil may have hoped to write a Lindsay biography, but later he seems to have decided there was no market for this alone, and so he intended to write a book of two parts, one on L.H. Myers and one on David Lindsay, or else a study of ‘David Lindsay & His Admirers’, with specific reference to the writers E.H. Visiak, L.H. Myers and J.B. Pick and the artist Robert Barnes.

‘A book on Lindsay would never sell . . .,’ he wrote to J.B. Pick in 1967, ‘A book on Myers would however . . . and a book on Myers and Lindsay is a possibility – a book in 2 halves.’ His reasoning was that Myers had a more eventful life, and he may have also thought that Myers had more acceptance in the literary world.

Though there is a quantity of research material, a tribute to Cecil’s thoroughness and persistence, there is very little continuous text at all, only notes, so it appears the biography was never written. However, there are several interesting sidelights.

When I began to look through the papers I found an enigmatic reference that seemed to reveal something of importance previously unknown, to me at least, about Lindsay’s career as a writer. At the back of a red binder labelled ‘Writings, Reviews etc on Lindsay’s work by—’,  followed by a list of names, there was a single sheet of typed paper, which began ‘P.S.’ The letter to which it was apparently a postscript did not precede it and was not in the same file, nor was there any indication of the author. But Cecil clearly thought it was important, and all credit to him for finding and preserving this information.

It reads as follows:

P.S. Reading University sent me copy report on Devil’s Tor, which calls it ‘a very ponderous pudding’ and adds ‘The author is a bird of passage and has published with both Methuen and Long.’

            The books submitted to Chatto & Windus were called ‘Altheus’ [sic] and ‘The Confessions of an Egoist.’

            Aletheus [sic] submitted in 1902, Egoist in 1908.

            The first is simply described as ‘an excessively long tale’ and the second as ‘The confessions of an intellectual young man who traces the progress of his mind from rank materialism to an exalted idealism.’ Says it won’t interest the general reader but ‘the book is promising and shows considerable intellectual vigour.’ There is then the comment ‘The book is very well written.’ One wonders, so one does.

With reference to the word ‘Aletheus’ there is a manuscript note, ‘Alethius?’

There are no books with either of these titles in the catalogues of the major libraries. The clear inference from the context was that these two novels were also by David Lindsay and submitted to Chatto & Windus: no other author is named. I wished this was more explicitly stated in the note, but it seemed the most natural reading. If so, this meant that Lindsay wrote at least two earlier novels before the novel thought to have been his first, his masterpiece A Voyage to Arcturus (1920). The first of these would have been when he was about 26, the other when he was about 32.

This inference was reinforced by a point in the Chronology of David Lindsay that Hugh Cecil compiled. Under the year 1919, Cecil notes that Lindsay started his ‘first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus’. But he has then inserted in manuscript the word ‘published’ so that the entry reads ‘first published novel’. This implies Cecil knew there was earlier but unpublished work.

Unfortunately, the Reading University Library document quoted in the P.S. does not seem to be in the Archive. There is a folder of photocopies of contemporary press reviews of Devil’s Tor, but the publisher’s report is not included in this.

I therefore turned to the source cited by Cecil. Reading University’s Special Collections has a major holding of Chatto & Windus papers, which it acquired in 1982 (so the postscript must post-date then). This includes a number of ‘Manuscript entry books’, essentially a log of manuscripts received by the publisher, typically listing ‘Date received, title, author and address for each manuscript received, reader's report number, dates received and returned, note of acceptance or decline, comments.’

With the Library’s kind help, I was able to confirm the manuscript entry book for the period 9 May 1907-13 Jul 1910 includes an entry for ‘Lindsay, David, p.176’, showing that he did submit a manuscript entitled The Confessions of an Egoist to them, and the report was as quoted in the postscript. Also, the manuscript entry book for 25 Jun 1901-26 Aug 1904 has a record of another manuscript, which was presumably Altheus. A later manuscript entry book, for 29 Dec 1926-14 Oct 1929 shows also that he submitted Devil’s Tor to them in 1928 (uncatalogued reader's report number 3575). This was later published by Putnam’s, in 1932, at the instigation of Lindsay’s friend L.H. Myers.

Sadly, for the pre-First World War novels, the manuscript entry book notes are all we are ever likely to know of the readers’ reports. The Library advise: ‘Unfortunately, as Chatto & Windus sent loose paper for salvage to help with the war effort in 1915, we have very few reader's reports before 1915 (only a couple for 1913 and 1914), and there aren't any original reports for the titles that you are looking for . . . [from] 1902 and 1908.’

We may reasonably conclude, though, despite this brief evidence, that there were indeed at least two earlier David Lindsay novels. What happened to them?  Lindsay’s papers were at first mostly in the care of J.B. Pick, his great admirer, and the friend of Lindsay’s wife Jacky, but were later returned to Diana Moon, the Lindsays’ oldest daughter, with the exception of The Witch, since Pick was still working on the version of the novel he edited (1976). Hugh Cecil corresponded regularly with Pick and they became friends, but I have found no allusion to the earlier novels. If Pick had them, Cecil would no doubt have obtained copies: his files do include full photocopies of Lindsay’s A Blade for Sale and of the Christmas play he wrote for his children. We have to conclude, therefore, that Pick did not have them.

Douglas A. Anderson offers a helpful insight into Lindsay’s practice with his manuscripts:

‘Lindsay's habit seems to have been to discard manuscripts once published, or once revised (e.g. the longer versions of Arcturus and Haunted Woman do not exist, nor the original version of Devil's Tor, The Ancient Tragedy).  Of The Witch, there is his working typescript, plus a version of the final chapter of a previous version of the book, most of which has a vertical cross-out over the text, though a dozen or so paragraphs do not. The Violet Apple, however, survived as a clean typescript to be published in 1976. Of his "Sketch Notes' they are reportedly compiled from his notebooks, which he apparently discarded after he compiled the notes.  So if he wasn't able to publish the two earlier novels, or became dissatisfied with them, it would not be out of character for him to discard them.’ 

It is fascinating but tantalising to learn that Lindsay was writing fiction well before A Voyage to Arcturus, which he started in 1919. It gives a different perspective on his literary career. Though it does not in the least detract from the originality and power of his masterpiece, it shows that this did not come out of nowhere. Whether either Altheus or The Confessions of an Egoist were in any sense an early run at the Arcturus theme, we shall, alas, never know. Unfortunately, it seems likeliest these apparent early novels by Lindsay are lost, and we are left only with our wondering and imagining of what they might have been.

(Mark Valentine)

With many thanks to Babs Viejo and Danni Corfield at Special Collections, Reading, and Esmé Bonner of Penguin Random House Archive & Library for their very kind help, and to Douglas A. Anderson for his insights.  

 

The Centenary of 'Colin II' by E.F. Benson: A Guest Post by John Howard

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his tales of supernatural horror and the six novels, dripping with campery and back-biting, portraying the rivalry between Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline Lucas (‘Lucia’). Benson was a prolific and efficient writer, producing books of all kinds and qualities, including history, biography, memoir, and current affairs – as well as many other novels of social comedy and satire. A number of these blurred genre labels and could perhaps be described as explorations into dark psychology, terrible secrets, and obsession, with touches of the gothic and sensational, sometimes crossing further borders and venturing into the supernatural. Many also contained strong homosexual or homoerotic elements. Several of Benson’s novels in this vein were reprinted in paperback during the 1990s by publishers specialising in gay literature. Among them were The Inheritors (1930) and Raven’s Brood (1934); others were Colin (1923) and its continuation or sequel, Colin II – which was first published one hundred years ago in August 1925.

Although Colin II might seem a somewhat uninspired choice of title, it is certainly an accurate one. As Benson stated in his spoiler-friendly Preface to Colin: ‘“Colin” comprises the first part only of this romance: it will be completed in a second volume which will tell of the final fading of the Legend with which the story opens.’ Colin Stanier was not the first member of his family to bear the name; there was the ‘old Colin’ whose pact with Satan made in the late sixteenth century took him from life as a shepherd boy to becoming a close confidante of Queen Elizabeth, ennoblement as Lord Yardley, and given the riches and continuing prosperity for him and his descendants that flowed from the bargain.

This part of the story so far is summarised in the Introduction to Colin II, which makes clear that not only evil, but its redemption, will be the theme of the story. This provides an ongoing tension between good and evil, love and hate, obligation and liberty, that may only be resolved at the end: ‘Often Violet [Colin’s wife] wished he could have killed her love for him, for then would have died withal that eternal struggle within her between love and her horror of him, whose soul, whether in fulfilment of the legend, or from his inherent wickedness, was as surely Satan’s as if with his own blood he had signed the fabled bond. Yet as often as she wished that she cried out on herself at so blasphemous a desire, for she knew that by love alone, though in some manner inscrutable, could redemption come to him’ (11).

Colin divides his time between Stanier, the great house near Rye in Sussex built by his ancestor, and his villa in Capri. At Stanier he lives with his wife and young son Dennis, playing the role of an influential local grandee who is also a loving family man. His grandmother, aunt, and wife’s parents also live at Stanier, and within its walls provide opportunistic outlets – relief – for Colin’s endless store of barbed wit, sarcasm, and scarcely concealed mixture of contempt and hatred. Benson knew Capri well, sharing the lease on a villa for many years; the island was a haven for writers and artists whose lifestyles would be deprecated – if not illegal – in their own northern European countries. The ancient shadow of another regular visitor, the Emperor Tiberius, cast as a background contrast to the heat, glaring light and glowing colour of Capri, is inescapable – and necessary – as a symbol to depict Colin’s two aspects and double life. Colin is looked after by his valet Nino, who ‘had the morals of a sleek black panther’ (39). Nino is Colin’s willing accomplice – although always still a servant who can be put in his place when required.

Colin learns that Mr Cecil, the British Consul in Naples, possesses a missal of the Black Mass which once belonged to his ancestor. Now determined to build a chapel to Satan at Stanier, Colin quickly forces Cecil to give it him: ‘Never had he felt himself so truly in harmony with the spirit that inspired his life. Here, under the symbolism of the rite, was his own spirit revealed to him, his hatred of love, his love of hate. Here was the strengthening and refreshing of his soul; the renewal, mystically, of the bargain made in Elizabethan days…’ (91f).

Traditionally fathers told their sons the truth when they came of age: ‘They had, so he pointed out to them, the free choice of disassociating themselves from that bargain, and of taking the chance of material prosperity here and of salvation hereafter…’ (Colin 20). Colin begins to consider how he can influence Dennis, now in his teens, towards choosing the same allegiance that all previous generations of Staniers had, so he could initiate his heir into the ‘evil sacrament’. Disregarding all opposition from Violet, Colin decides to do so through hate and cruelty; however, no matter how hard he tries he cannot get Dennis to hate him. The novel ends dramatically with Colin, apparently a victim at last, confronted and in mental agony, asking his tormentor whether he is ‘the Lord whom I have served so well’ (254).

Benson’s novels from the years of Colin and Colin II seem to have provoked very different reactions from his biographers. For example, Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd wrote in E.F. Benson – As He Was (1988): ‘They may be a tribute to Fred’s industry, but not to his talent. He seems to have been marking time, waiting in a literary limbo, content to drift along. The seven books are either exceedingly silly or exceedingly sentimental or just dull’ (190). In The Life of E.F. Benson (1991) Brian Masters discussed Colin and other novels in very different terms, stating that ‘Fred was periodically obsessed with the notion of people who are the epitome of evil while bearing the appearance of consummate good’ (267). He went on to describe The Inheritor as combining ‘mystery, terror and a goodly chunk of healthy male beauty to make a tantalising cocktail. Beneath it all lies Fred’s serious, reiterated purpose, to demonstrate that inherent evil can only be destroyed, and the victim whose lot it is to carry evil within him be saved, by the intercession of human goodness’ (273). The same could be said of Colin II.

(John Howard)