The Girl Green as Elderflower

Randolph Stow's The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) is one of the oddest novels I have encountered in years. And I do not mean the term "oddest" to be a putdown. Rather, it's a bit of an attraction, for how often does one encounter a book, a personal vision, that is completely unexpected to the reader at almost every turn? For me the oddness of this book extends from its contours to its incidents and its plot.  Meaning: I never knew in which direction the story might turn, nor did I feel secure in knowing where the story had been. Details unfold slowly and often subtly 

The author, Randolph Stow (1935-2010), was born and raised in western Australia. He wrote poetry and novels, settling in the 1960s for over a decade in Suffolk, England, where his ancestors had lived. During this time he wrote The Girl Green as Elderflower, which takes inspiration from many elements in Stowe's own life. 

On the surface, the novel is centered on a young man Robin Clare, who after some time in the tropics, settles for a while in Suffolk, near some very distant cousins who befriend him. He is recovering from some kind of illness, possibly after a suicide attempt. In playing with his young Clare cousins, he learns of an invisible sprite named Malkin who knows all sorts of local secrets. Clare himself is also enamored with Suffolk's medieval past, which includes stories of a similar sprite at Dagworth, a wild man at Orford, and the more famous story of the two green children of Woolpit. The novel is mainly set in the early 1960s, with four sections dated January, April, May and June. In between these four sections are three historical sections, interlacing the modern Clare family with the medieval legends. The reader gradually comes to understand that these are writings by Robin Clare. The dislocations in time, both in the modern sections as well as the legendary ones, gets a bit confusing, and the story really only comes to vibrant life in the long, penultimate section, "Concerning a boy and a girl emerging from the earth," reworking the green children story.  Stow helpfully includes as an Appendix four of his own translations of the twelfth or thirteenth century legends--three from Ralph of Coggeshall, one from William of Newburgh. 

A second reading of The Girl Green as Elderflower would doubtless help to better understand what Stow was up to, but for now, the first of his eight novels, The Haunted Land (1956) looks intriguing, as does his final novel, The Suburbs of Hell (1984), after whose publication Stow ceased writing. Perhaps these will afford clues to a better understanding how Stow's art worked.  
 

 

 

Corvo's Icicle: A Guest Post by Fogus

Of particular interest among the items in the “Frederick W. Rolfe, Baron Corvo Collection” at Georgetown University are a pile of letters in which Corvo fanatic Donald Weeks describes his adventures in the U.K., engaging in research for the biography Corvo (1971) and hunting for ephemera related to the Baron. While skimming the letters, I happened upon a fascinating claim by Weeks in a letter to “Stan & Joan” dated October 25, 1970: ‘An inventor, Rolfe may have “invented” the disappearing murder weapon in the form of the icicle (Toto story, 1898-9).’

Although I can’t recall ever reading a story using a melting murder weapon, I’m familiar with the plot device, having first encountered it many years ago in the Colombo episode “The Most Crucial Game." I was astonished at the prospect that the device may have originated with Corvo, and so I decided to go on a hunt to prove it.

I found an early lead in an appendix entry in Weeks’ aforementioned biography. Weeks mentions the Baron’s use of the device in the Toto story “About Our Lady of Dreams” published in the collection, In His Own Image (1901). Julian Symons notes in the same entry that the earliest use of the plot device that he knew of was published 10-years later in Anna Katherine Green’s locked-room mystery Initials Only (1911). Indeed, Green’s novel is generally credited with utilizing the first instance of the icicle weapon, specifically in the form of an exceedingly impractical bullet.

By contrast, Corvo’s icicle was the cause of the mysterious death of the butcher-boy Aristide via stabbing under a secluded cliff summit. In the story, Aristide’s friend Diodato, charged with murder, was eventually exonerated thanks to an angelic dream vision visited on Frat’ Innocente-of-the-Nine-Quires. It’s unknown if Ms. Green had read the Toto story before writing her novel and thus impossible to determine if she found any inspiration there. Therefore, I determined that another angle of attack in my quest was needed to determine if there were any earlier icicle uses than Corvo’s.

I’d be a liar if I said that the prospect of finding an earlier example in the infinity of literature prior to 1901 didn’t intimidate me. However, there was one potential investigative trail immediately available. As I mentioned earlier, Julian Symons mentioned Green’s novel in the Corvo endnote, but he closed with an interesting aside: ‘The actual use of an icicle has been attributed to the Medici’.

This seemed like a promising path for progress as the Medici factored prominently in Corvo’s book Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901). Alas, I couldn’t find a single mention of icicles there at all, and even tracing a significant portion of the reference material listed in the first edition proved fruitless. That said, there are dozens of references that I was unable to gain access to, so there’s a possibility that the Medici icicle simply awaits future discovery. Despite this possibility, the path forward appeared daunting indeed.

However, in my explorations I came across a story of the son of a parish clerk of Brampton in Devon who died from a wound inflicted by an icicle that fell from the local tower in 1776. The epitaph to the child reads:

Bless my i.i.i.i.i.i.

Here he lies

In a sad pickle

Kill’d by icicle

Did Corvo know of this epitaph? Was this the inspiration for his Toto story? These are unanswerable questions of course, and so I found myself back at the beginning. However, during my work as a programming language designer I’ve found value in a powerful technique for problem solving – reframing the question. I determined that it was too much to try and trace the vague idea of “mysterious death by icicle” and instead convinced myself that it would suffice to place the Baron’s use in a historical context instead.

Reframing the problem led me to John Dickson Carr’s famous locked-room mystery novel The Hollow Man (1935). Carr wrote many locked room mysteries in his time, but The Hollow Man is arguably the preeminent example of its kind. The novel itself contains a metanarrative element in which the investigator Dr. Gideon Fell holds a “locked room lecture” enumerating the classes and their instantiations of locked-room murders. In the lecture, Fell outlines two main branches of locked-room murder: one, no murder was in the room;  two, murder was in the room.

Like much of the historical analysis around locked-room mysteries, I’ll play fast and loose with the term “room” and liken it to the solitude of an icy summit. The primary type of “no murder” described by Fell are ‘a series of coincidences ending in an accident which looks like a murder.’ Interestingly, Fell outlines particular literary instances of death involving icicles, but they all involved either suicide or murder. Therefore, I think that Corvo’s Toto plot fits nicely into Fell’s accidental death category and occupies a unique niche within it.

I was happy to claim a small victory, but I’m not one for half-measures. Therefore, I decided to read the rest of the “locked room lecture” to see if I could gain more insight into avenues for further exploration. Imagine my surprise when I soon came across an aside on icicles by Fell: ‘To continue with regard to the icicle; its actual use has been attributed to the Medici.’

It was at that moment that the boulder of my free time again slipped from my grasp and rolled back down the proverbial hill. It dawned on me that perhaps trying to trace the lineage of literary firsts was a futile effort and I now consider myself fortunate that I managed to stumble on a fixpoint. Truly, doing so allowed me to take a step back and accept the fact that although I’d like to think that there are deep and finite connections to find, I’m now of the mind that perhaps ideas are hanging in the aether, waiting to embed themselves into the skulls of unsuspecting authors passing underneath.

(Fogus)

  

 

The Centenary of 'May Fair' by Michael Arlen: A Guest Post by John Howard

  

Mayfair is that part of the West End of London bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Piccadilly. It was a grid of fine streets with cobbled mews behind and narrow lanes such as those of Shepherd’s Market; a village of townhouse terraces and aristocratic mansions set in their own gardens; the grandeur of Grosvenor Square as well as the sloping irregular space of Berkeley Square. Historically Mayfair was a part of London where the very rich and those of more modest means lived next to each other: an impecunious writer could inhabit a shabby room a few yards from the residence of a duke.

Some writers seem to stake out their territories and define their times. They make them their own. Such an author was Michael Arlen (1895-1956) who chronicled the lives of a set of inhabitants of his – even then – disappearing Mayfair during the Prohibition-free British version of the Jazz Age.

Arlen’s first novel, The London Venture (1920), was autobiographical, describing a young man’s ‘assault on London’. These Charming People (1923) was subtitled ‘being a tapestry of the fortunes, follies, adventures, galanteries and general activities’ of the recurring characters who connect the stories, set against the background of Mayfair. Arlen’s Mayfair seems a place somewhat apart, as if behind invisible barriers. There the ‘right’ people loved, lost, and had their being in a London of sunshine, fog, rain, moonlight and stars. Strange things can happen; the supernatural and uncanny are never far away in Arlen’s stories. There can be intrusions anywhere, and the ordered streets and fine houses of Mayfair were no exception.

These Charming People was successful, and Michael Arlen became a literary celebrity. His novel The Green Hat (1924) was a bestseller, as was May Fair, the book that followed. My copy is from the seventh impression – still from the month of original publication, which was one hundred years ago in June 1925.

May Fair was a sequel to These Charming People and boasted a similarly lengthy subtitle: ‘…purporting to reveal to Gentlefolk the Real State of Affairs…together with Suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures, and galanteries…’. Unlike the earlier stories those in May Fair do not rely as much on recurring characters to link them. It is more Mayfair itself, as the common setting and background, that emerges as the main character. Brick and stone complement the flesh and blood.

May Fair consists of ten stories, together with a long Prologue and Arlen’s ‘au reservoir’ “Farewell, These Charming People”. The stories are written in the rather convoluted and circumlocutory style that Arlen had developed: a leisurely pleasure and indulgence after the initial challenge of settling into it. Appropriately, its Baroque quality was modern and reflected the contemporary rebuilding of the West End and its transformation from the domestic and elegant brick and stucco of the Georgian and Regency eras to the large-scale Portland stone and concrete of the new commercial ‘Georgian Imperial’ age. May Fair was as much a valediction as a celebration of London.

The titles of the stories are evocative and enticing, for example: “A Romance in Old Brandy”, “The Battle of Berkeley Square”, “The Three-Cornered Moon”, and “The Ghoul of Golders Green”. Some stories include ‘novels’ reminiscent of those in Arthur Machen’s The Three Impostors. As the older writer had, Arlen wrote of a small group who ‘cannot remain commonplace’: ‘In my life, as you know, I have not had many dealings with the grotesque. But the grotesque seems lately to be desiring the very closest connection with me (116)’. Although Arlen’s flaneurs also stroll up and down Piccadilly, they live in Mayfair and dine there, rather than maintaining their rooms in Bloomsbury and patronising the restaurants of Soho.

For all Arlen’s fame and wealth, he seems never to have been quite accepted by many – perhaps those he wished to impress most. Did his success breed envy? His persona seemed at times to be an attempt to answer un-named disparagers and critics and prove himself at least as English as the native-born. Michael Arlen was originally Dikran Kouyoumdjian, born of Armenian parents in Bulgaria. He was brought to England as a child and received an exemplary public-school education. The young man had not been allowed to fight for King and Country in World War I: the country of his birth was one of the Central Powers and so an enemy, and he had not yet changed his name and become naturalised, which Arlen did in 1922.

Following the run of successful books during the 1920s Arlen still produced work that glittered, but which also reflected the continued ambiguities of his status. The novel Hell! Said the Duchess (1934) was reminiscent of The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, while the effective combination of supernatural horror with a darkening view of London high society was Arlen’s own. He left for Italy and France before moving to the United States, returning to England at the outbreak of World War II to take a position in the Civil Defence organisation. Yet Arlen’s loyalty came under question again; he resigned and returned to the USA, where he lived until his death.

But Arlen and Mayfair could not be separated. The novelist and man of letters Anthony Powell was a decade younger than Arlen and outlived him by over forty years. Powell’s grand sequence of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-75) frequently used Mayfair and West End settings for the exploits of the coterie of exotic characters from across the class spectrum he found there – and chronicled throughout in an appropriately unhurried mannered style. In the second volume of his memoirs (Messengers of Day, 1978) Powell recalled that his arrival in London in 1926 had been influenced by Arlen: ‘…I might not have admitted to everyone that the Shepherd’s Market seduction scene which opens Michael Arlen’s novel, The Green Hat, chiefly caused me to set my sights on that small village enclave so unexpectedly concealed among the then grand residences of Mayfair’. Thirty years later Powell was to give Arlen luncheon, remembering him as ‘Small, slight, neat, infinitely sure of himself, yet somehow set apart from other people…’ (2).

Michael Arlen seems to have been a humane and urbane man, thoughtful and generous, who did not wish to reject his heritage but found himself marked by it as an incomer, the eternal outsider. And yet, perhaps, it takes such a one to perceive most sharply something of the veracities of the places they have chosen to inhabit and explore, rather than just the superficialities visible to all.

(John Howard)