The Centenary of Ronald Firbank's 'Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli': A Guest Post by John Howard

Ronald Firbank’s biographer Miriam Benkovitz declared that ‘No one in the history of English letters has been more dedicated to the literary vocation than Ronald Firbank. Until his ninth novel was published in 1924, he had got back not “one farthing piece” for all his work, and even then he received less than a thousand dollars’ (Ronald Firbank, 1969). Benkovitz did not speculate on the earnings, if any, that would have accrued to Firbank for his tenth novel, Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli, which was first published one hundred years ago in July 1926. Benkovitz had reached the final page of her biography. Time and space had run out, for Firbank had died, aged forty, six weeks before. This centenary of an appearance is also that of a departure.

Of anecdotes concerning the eccentricities of Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank there seems no end. Benkovitz described how Firbank would saunter through London’s streets, ‘skirting Covent Garden to void the “massacre of flowers” and holding a handkerchief before his eyes when he passed a butcher’s shop’. In Charing Cross Road he would examine the books in the bins in front of the shops. H would frequently visit Cyril Beaumont’s bookshop and ask: “Have you anything in my line today; you know, something vague, something dreamy, something restful?” Did Firbank perhaps have his own novels in mind? The description could fit – but it is far from entirely accurate. Benkovitz considered Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli to be, in its way, ‘a masterpiece of morality and technique’. While it carried Firbank’s ‘deepest and most mature convictions, it is in fact a wholly imaginative creation inspired by the “rose coloured palace” of the Archbishop of Seville and the “giddy flight” of the “Giralda-tower”. She also wondered whether in his ‘compulsion to seem wicked, a feeling which recurred throughout his life, might not Firbank have presented in Pirelli a perverse apotheosis of himself and then, as he was almost ready to do with his own artificial temperament, stripped the Cardinal of his gaudy trappings?’

In the great cathedral of the Andalucian city of Clemenza, Cardinal Archbishop Don Alvaro Pirelli conducts a baptism – of the Duquesa DunEden’s new pet, a police-dog puppy called Crack. Pirelli’s latest eccentricity has not gone unnoticed – or unreported. There have been many previous ‘frolics’ and the ‘consequences of cutting too dashing a figure’. Perhaps the Pope will be asked to decide the fate of the figure responsible for the ‘scandals of Clemenza’… In the vast cathedral sacristy the Secretary of the Chapter, Don Moscosco, ‘a burly little man, a sound judge of women and bulls’, sits at his bureau and holds court ‘with tactful courtesy, at the disposal of anyone soliciting information as to “vacant dates,” or “hours available,” for some impromptu function.’ The sacristy serves as the place where information – gossip – is received and exchanged amid the backbiting.

In Rome Pope Tertius II, ‘out-of-doorish, as Neapolitans usually are’ strolls in his garden, contemplating the possibility of having to condemn or even unfrock Pirelli: ‘a snarl, a growl, a bark, a yelp, coming from the font, would be quite enough…’ In the ‘decaying monastery of the Desierto’ Pirelli is on retreat, ‘idly considering his Defence. “Apologia, no; merely a defence”’. Chicklet, a favoured young acolyte from the cathedral, is with him ‘serving both at Mass and table’. Lingering after dinner, Pirelli imagines that ‘the great Theresa herself would flit in from the garden […] seeking, it was supposed, a lost sheet of the manuscript of her Way of Perfection.’ After drinking bumper after bumper of wine he begs her to teach him (once again?) that Way.

In his palace Pirelli prepares to leave for Rome. While packing he muses on the punishment he has given Chicklet for chasing mice in the cathedral: ‘It must have been love that made me do it.’ The Cardinal, ‘his sensitiveness hurt by the lad’s disdain and frivolity’ had locked him into the cathedral in the dark, with the mice. Deciding to relax his punishment, Pirelli goes to release the boy. Their verbal fencing becomes a game, accompanying pursuit and evasion. No innocent, Chicklet keeps out of reach until dawn is near, when he escapes from the church. The chase ended and now alone, ‘dispossessed of everything but his fabulous mitre, the Primate was nude and elementary now as Adam himself’. Pirelli collapses before a painting of Christ’s crucifixion. Unknown to him, he had been observed by Madame Poco, his faithful housekeeper: ‘It looked as though his Eminence was far beyond Rome already.’ She coils her chaplet about him: ‘“It’s wonderful what us bits of women do with a string of beads, but they don’t go far with a gentleman”’.

Firbank was a cardinal of camp and snobbery whose ‘wholly imaginative creation’ in Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli crafted a succession of set pieces or sketches, highly pictorial and brightly coloured, into a slim novel. Each scene is enacted within what is, effectively, a stage set where everything is bathed in heat, sunshine, or moonlight. All are packed with sensual detail, snatched incident, and dialogue at a slant. Even if there is ‘no story’ there are happenings – a gradual progression. Events, one thing after another hazily and partly revealed, lead to the surely inevitable conclusion. The narrative flows, switching scenes and characters as a dream does. In terms of dream it holds together and coheres – but purely on its own terms. To expect anything else in a Firbank novel is to look in the wrong direction.

Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the way Firbank wrote. Often on the move, he kept notebooks which he filled with single words, odd phrases and sentences, and cartoonish drawings. He would then select, assemble, and expand these into a string of pearl-like episodes – his new book. Firbank conceived Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli while staying in Seville, made notes in Lisbon, and wrote it in Rome. During that time his beloved mother died, and he suffered a ‘psychic and physical collapse’ – yet he continued to write. Ronald Firbank proved that nothing could prevent him from remaining true to his literary vocation. At the end there was a man alone, naked before death and his God – and a brutally funny novel.

(John Howard)

 

Charades: A Jane Austen Rarity Revived

Withnail Books of Penrith, renowned for their chapbooks of literary rarities, have just announced a facsimile edition of Charades, Written a hundred years ago by Jane Austen and Her Family, originally published in 1895. 

This charming collection of riddles devised by the family for their own amusement and that of guests includes an introduction, family tree, illustrations, and the solutions to the charades: all except one, where the solution was unaccountably missing from the Austen family papers, allowing readers to make their own guess. 

The A5 booklet, printed on silk paper stock, comes with a hand-numbered print of the famous silhouette of 'L'amiable Jane' by an unknown artist, reproduced in the same size as the original in the National Portrait Gallery. This new edition is limited to 250 numbered copies, and Withnail's issues tend to go out of print pretty quickly. 
 

The Centenary of 'The Dancing Floor' by John Buchan: A Guest Post by John Howard

First published one hundred years ago in July 1926, The Dancing Floor by John Buchan was the third book in which his recurring character Edward Leithen played a prominent role. A man with a strong work ethic and social conscience, Leithen always seeks to do the right thing by his friends, those for whom he has responsibility, and his country. He is a high-flyer who excels at his profession and in the skills of sportsmanship. A barrister and politician, Leithen moves through the corridors of power and the London clubs and country house gatherings of the Establishment. Although part of a small and exclusive society where everyone knows each other or can be acquainted at one move – as are several of Buchan’s other recurring characters – he is not limited by it. Leithen is an assiduous networker: his professional career and wartime experiences enable him to know people from a wide range of backgrounds and all social classes.

Returning from a shooting holiday, Sir Edward Leithen sits back and tells a story. The Dancing Floor is a retrospective adventure, unfolded in secure and relaxed surroundings that contrast greatly with the immediacy of the risky and often violent events recounted. It all begins in January 1913, when Leithen takes his nephew Charles to dinner and a ball. He notices one of the other guests, a man who seems ‘so completely detached, so clothed with his own atmosphere’. This is Vernon Milburne, one of Charles’ friends.

For his Easter vacation Leithen takes a walking tour in Westmorland. Spraining his ankle, he finds help at nearby Severns Hall – the home of Vernon Milburne. They become good friends. Eventually Milburne tells Leithen about his recurring dream of a room with a door that led to a ‘second room just like the first one; he knew nothing about it except that opposite the entrance another door led out of it. Beyond was a third chamber, and so on interminably. […] He thought of it as a great snake of masonry, winding up hill and down dale away to the fells or the sea. […] Yes, but there WAS an end. Somewhere far away in one of the rooms was a terror waiting on him, or, as he feared, coming towards him.’

Milburne’s dream recurs annually, around Easter. When he had been fifteen he had fixed its date as the night of the first Monday in April, and had realised that were twelve rooms – and so years – left. Milburne, a staunch Calvinist, explains that it is ‘foreordained by God. No caprice of our own can alter the eternal plan. Now, why shouldn’t some inkling of this plan be given us now and then – not knowledge, but just an inkling that we may be ready? […] It is a reminder that I must be waiting with girt loins and a lit lamp when the call comes.’

The following spring Leithen takes a holiday in the Aegean on his friend Lord Lamancha’s yacht. Milburne was invited too, as Leithen wanted them together on the first Monday of April. While the yacht shelters off an island, they hear a ‘human voice, sweet and high and infinitely remote, a voice as fugitive as a scent or a colour’. It is the Spring Song, which ‘has probably been going on here since the beginning of time.’

War intervenes. November 1918 finds Leithen and Milburne convalescing – in neighbouring beds. Milburne has continued to dream – there are just two years left. At a ball, Milburne meets Koré Arabin, who turns out to be the granddaughter of the first English owner of Plakos – the island where they had heard the Spring Song. The family has a dark reputation, and Milburne is both attracted and revolted by her.

Further circumstance and coincidence ensure that Leithen, Milburne, and Koré come together on Plakos. The spring rite is to be celebrated at the Dancing Floor – but Koré will be in danger. The islanders ‘have suffered, and they blame their sufferings on the Arabins, till they have made a monstrous legend of it.’ A medieval account of the spring festival is unambiguous: ‘The boy and the girl had to die before the Gods could be re-born. You see, it was a last resource – not an annual rite, but one reserved for a desperate need.’

Milburne’s call had come. The story switches to his account, narrated by Leithen at second-hand. Determined to play her part, Koré had rejected with scorn Milburne’s offer to take her from Plakos. He decided to pass himself off as an islander returned from the wars so he could go onto the Dancing Floor and win the race to possess the goddess. ‘These peasants are keyed up to a tremendous expectation. A belief has come to life, a belief far older than Christianity. They expect salvation from the coming of two Gods, a youth and a maiden. If their hope is disappointed, they will be worse madmen than before. To-morrow night nothing will go out from this place, unless it be Gods.’ Milburne and his helpers resolve to ‘give them their Gods.’

Observing from a vantage point, Leithen sees how the festival ends: ‘I do not think that Koré and Vernon saw anything – they had their own inward vision. I do not know what the people saw in the presences that moved out of the darkness above them. […] The people of Plakos had gone after strange gods, but it was only for a short season that they could shake themselves free from the bonds of a creed which they had held for a thousand years. The resurgence of ancient faiths had obscured but had not destroyed the religion into which they had been born. Their spells had been too successful. They had raised the Devil and now fled from him in the blindest terror. […] The priest of Kynaetho would presently have his fill of stricken penitents.’

Buchan took time through much preparation and a leisurely build-up to bring the story to its climax. This does not matter, as there are so many good things along the way. The Dancing Floor is intelligent, thinking person’s adventure: suspense and action are mixed, smoothly, with theological stances and Classical learning and allusion. They exist for each other and never slow the pace. Buchan was a Calvinist, a cradle Protestant who had a fascination for paganism – especially the ‘old religion’ that darkly endured into the present day of modern civilisation. Partitions are thin and fragile. The rapturous descriptions of landscape and light, the colours of spring, were in his nature – as seemingly were the Nature mysteries. For John Buchan the sacred and divine are to be met with caution: there are also survivals and revivals. When the Gods come – whatever they are – be prepared. 

(John Howard)