The Centenary of 'The Green Lacquer Pavilion' by Helen Beauclerk

  

The Green Lacquer Pavilion by Helen Beauclerk celebrates its centenary around now. The author was 32 when she completed the book in 1925, and it was published in the Spring lists of the following year. In 1924, she had met, and become the partner of, the artist Edmund Dulac, who illustrated the book. This graceful fantasy is written in a light pastiche of early 18^th century prose, somewhat modernised, and it is set at the cusp of the Queen Anne/Georgian period. Its framework is not dissimilar to a Thomas Love Peacock satire of a century later: a group of genteel eccentrics gather at a country house for conversation, fine dining and dalliance.

 On his journey there, we are privy to the thoughts of one guest, Mr Valentine Clare. He is “naturally of a speculative turn of mind” and thinks the house he is to visit holds a “spiritual mystery” , though he cannot quite define what this is. Taveridge Hall, near Guildford, Surrey, seems to him to be under a spell, “as though behind every door, concealed behind every curtain, or hidden in the grass of the garden, there was an enigma you could not understand”. This spell is enhanced by the presence of Miss Julia Cherrivale, whose acquaintance he hopes to cultivate. Among the party also is the saturnine Mr Horace Gilvry, “sage and philosopher”, a Luciferian “known for his great interest in astrology and all magical arts”, who believes there are spirits in trees and stones and flowers.

While his robust, horsey host and a similar guest talk politics and Mr Gilvry murmurs on arcane matters, Clare falls into a reverie in which he sees objects with a heightened sensibility: “the very room was turned to some dream chamber”. This is a prelude to a more dramatic vision, this time seen by all the party, when a Chinese lacquer screen in the drawing room opens out and becomes the pavilion of the title. This in turn gives onto an unfamiliar landscape, and the group are now beguiled into another world. Once in this domain, each of them meets adventures that seem, as E.F. Bleiler observed, especially suitable to their character, and in particular their foibles, whether rumbustious or delicate, bluff or visionary.

The author indulges in a fairly freewheeling exotic fantasy of the Arabian Nights type, involving pirates, a Sultan, a Grand Vizier, a King, Princess, a Sacred Phoenix, scheming courtiers and flourishes of magic. There is perhaps a hint of Lord Dunsany or of Ernest Bramah in this polished, semi-facetious, and somewhat distanced cavalcade. 

Critics didn’t quite know what to make of it. A contemporary review in The Spectator said: “An air of easy artifice suffuses the book, which provides much gently agreeable reading, and would make a most acceptable gift out of season, or birthday present at a reasonable price.” This is pleasant enough, but a bit diminishing. The New York Times appeared rather bewildered: “If everything were as good as Miss Beauclerk's style, “The Green Lacquer Pavilion” would be a notable book”. It was written with “the utmost grace and ease . . . But her subject matter is by no means so good, is sometimes bearable only because of the style. She has attempted romantic fantasy in the modern manner, . . . lightly freaked with satire and irony, and she has somehow not quite succeeded with it.”

Helen Beauclerk went on to write five more novels, of which the most noted is The Love of the Foolish Angel (1929), a fantasy about a fallen angel, again involving a Luciferian theme. The Green Lacquer Pavilion has some affinity in its rich style with such books as Ronald Fraser’s Flower Phantoms of the same year, Robert Nichols’ Under the Yew (1928), John Rosenberg’s The Desperate Art (1955), and similar rococo fantasies. It is a beautifully sustained conceit, rather as if Jane Austen had sent her characters to the court of the Chinese Emperor rather than Bath. The prose is perfectly balanced, the characters tart and persuasive, and the bold fantastical dimension is deftly introduced. It used to be quite common to see the title in shelves of old hardback fiction (it went into several editions), but it seems to be less visible now.

(Mark Valentine)

Tea and Gargoyles

   

Tea and Gargoyles is a seventh selection of essays from Tartarus Press, just announced. I start by discussing stories and novels that are ‘on the margins’ of the uncanny, which are often more interesting than more overt treatments, looking at several obscure or overlooked examples, as well as work by Robert Aickman, Walter de la Mare, and the witchcraft novels of Gladys Mitchell.   

The twenty-nine essays also explore 17^th century booksellers’ signs, a forgotten Edwardian poet of the fantastic, a mid-Victorian prophet and crystal-gazer, esoteric books and records of the Nineteen Seventies, the early literature of mah jongg books and the game’s links to a ring-tailed lemur, and liminal, otherworldly landscape.

There is an affectionate pastiche of the fiction of Barbara Pym, a celebration of imaginary books in fiction, and a treasury of odd facts and incidents found in passing in a wide miscellany of books. As usual, there are several reports of bookshop expeditions and the odd volumes encountered on these. 

About a dozen of the pieces are previously unpublished, and others have appeared only in small edition journals.

Tea and Gargoyles is first published in a limited hardcover edition of 350 copies.  

(Mark Valentine)

Farewell to Aardvark Books

One day, about seventeen years ago, I was on one of my second-hand book quests in the Marcher country between England and Wales when I saw a sign on the main road reading 'Aardvark Books', with an arrow pointing along a minor turning. It happened that not long before I had followed a similar enticement, only to end up at a warehouse selling (new) text books to schools, so I ignored this one, reasoning it was probably the same kind of thing. This was a mistake, leading to one of my several rueful book-collecting mottoes: 'Always Follow Signs to Books'. 

Because when I did, some months later, on another expedition, I discovered a very large second-hand bookshop in a converted barn with, it said (and it certainly looked it), some 50,000 books. On that visit, I remember swooping on some Algernon Blackwood, some E.F. Benson, some Michael Innes, and quite a lot else. No subsequent visit, it must be confessed, was quite as rich, as no doubt other collectors got wind of this new trove, but there were usually some titles to make a visit worthwhile, often unusual and obscure.

In any case, the book barn's setting, in deepest rural Herefordshire, was charming. Around the village churchyard was a remarkably serpentine topiary yew hedge, for all the world like some green dragon slumbering here in between ravaging the countryside. Above the little settlement was a mysterious, Machenesque hill, with a wooded grove on its crest, from which I always expected to see smoke from some secret shrine arising. The village is also a focus for artists and craftspeople, including a hand-printing fine press, a potter, a jeweller and a watercolourist. 

The bookshop's website explains its origin:  

'Aardvark Books was founded in January 2004 by Sheridan Swinson and the late Edward Tobin, two career publishing professionals who decided to start a book business that reflected their love of books, and their combined half-century of experience in the book trade. Begun in some disused pig sheds on the outskirts of Leominster in Herefordshire, Aardvark Books quickly moved  to Brampton Bryan where they found a home in one of the buildings on the Harley Estate, The Oxford Barn. In the autumn of 2007 they moved to their existing premises on the edge of the village in the old Manor Farm Buildings.'

The bookshop later added a cafe, serving good quality coffee, fine loose-leaf teas, soup, croques monsieur and highly tempting cakes. For both the books and the food, the book barn became an essential resort on any visit to these parts, a waystation on the way to Hay-on-Wye, and it has often featured in my essays on book-collecting tours in this region. When presenting our selections at the till, there would usually be the opportunity for a chat with the affable proprietor, Sheridan, about our choices or his own recent reading.

In February, though, came the announcement that he and his wife Sarah were to give up the business, and today (4 April) was the last day, going out with a big Easter sale, music, crafts stalls and visits from well-wishers. Bookshops and their proprietors often come to seem like old friends, even if we only see them a few times a year and pass the time of day for a few minutes. This is part of the reason why I often wistfully remember where bookshops used to be, and look out for them, as if they might somehow still be there.

There are, it seems, plans in train for new owners to take over the business in some form, perhaps from the end of this month, so it will be interesting to see how this develops, hopefully still involving books and food. In the meantime, all good wishes to the team at the Book Barn. And - remember to follow the signs!

Update:  hurrah! A new business, Elderwood Books, is to open at the book barn on 29 April 2026, continuing as a bookshop (new and second-hand) and cafe. 

(Mark Valentine) 

 

 

Plague Dogs - The Heartwood Institute

The Heartwood Institute, the name used by Jonathan Sharp for his retro-electronica music, has previously released highly evocative imaginary soundtracks to Penelope Lively's children's novels Astercote (1970) and The Whispering Knights (1971), among other haunted and beguiling work. I greatly enjoy these wistful and atmospheric compositions, with their affinities to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and all those ancient mysteries books of the Nineteen Seventies. 

His latest release, from Folk Police Recordings, is a tribute to Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs (1977). In an interview for the label, the musician explains that with The Heartwood Institute he is 'trying to capture a mixture of melancholy, hauntology and rural darkness'. The inspiration for the new album came from an enthusiasm for Adams' work but more particularly the setting for the novel in rural Cumbria, remembered from his own childhood, 'from the craggy and mysterious fells to the gentle hills and pastoral farmland.' The pieces make use of field recordings made at some of the locations in the book. 

Plague Dogs is available as a compact disc in a limited edition of 200 copies and also as a digital download. Pre-orders are available now for late April release. 

Proceeds from the album will go to Animal Rescue Cumbria.

'New Worlds to Conquer': Vortex and Vargo - A Guest Post by John Howard

  

Not long before I discovered old science fiction magazines, I found a new one. It must have been a Saturday morning in the spring of 1977. I was in W.H. Smith’s with my pocket money, and looking to spend it on sf. For some reason my gaze must have wandered to the magazines – where one of them caught my eye. It was clearly an sf magazine: title and cover painting proclaimed it. This was Vortex, subtitled ‘The Science Fiction Fantasy’ (that subtitle confused me even then – where was the final what?). I picked out and bought the issue, Vol. 1 No. 5, monthly: the first I had seen – had I missed the previous four, or had the local Smith’s not stocked them?

Large-size but slim, heavily illustrated, Vortex contained only three stories, one of which was the first part of a serial by Colin Kapp, The Chaos Weapon. I remembered Kapp from his remarkable story “Lambda I” which I had read in John Carnell’s anthology of that name, which I had recently bought from the small independent bookshop in our town, rushing down there one afternoon after school to browse the several shelves of sf paperbacks it offered. Then there was “Due West: Vermillion Sun On Horizon: Dying” by Mark Ambient, which baffled me as much as its title allured. It was the interview with artist Eddie Jones that interested me most. He had painted the cover for this issue; his work was soon to become familiar as my sf collection slowly began to expand. But I was not to see any further issues of Vortex. That fifth issue was to be its last.

My discovery later that summer of Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed, the London bookshop entirely devoted to sf, fantasy, and horror, was to provide the first four issues of Vortex. There was a pile of unsold copies, with gorgeous covers by Rodney Matthews (the first three issues) and Eddie Jones (the fourth). They were beauties, and I could understand why the magazine had failed. The production costs must have been enormous – and completely unsupportable without the vastly higher sales that never materialised. Not for the first time a new sf magazine blossomed briefly – and vanished.  

I kept an eye on the new and back-issue magazines stocked at Dark They Were, and if there was never a new Vortex I made up for it by buying Amazing, by then edited by Ted White and published only quarterly. Together with its companion Fantastic, White produced lively, attractive and entertaining magazines on a minute budget – and told us everything. It was like being in on a show. When the publisher sold the magazines in 1979 and Ted White left, I stopped buying them. I would have to make do with the shop’s small shelf of second-hand copies of old magazines.

Among these were two issues of The British Science Fiction Magazine (which called itself the Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine inside and proclaimed itself ALL BRITISH). Published between 1954 and 1956, it ran for 19 issues under several names – but always maintained a connection with ‘Vargo Statten’, who was also credited as editor. Vargo Statten was the hyper-prolific Blackpool writer John Russell Fearn (1908-60) the popularity of whose sf novels under the Statten name led to the publisher, Scion, bringing out a magazine edited by Alistair Paterson (Fearn would later take over). I found the stories – nearly all written by Fearn, E.C. Tubb, and Kenneth Bulmer under a range of pseudonyms – entertaining and fun, even if often rather old-fashioned (Fearn’s were mainly reworkings of stories he had first published in American magazines during the 1930s and 40s). But as ever Ted Tubb provided good work, and the non-fiction features were interesting. There was one writer who made his debut in the magazine and was to become one of Britain’s best: Barrington J. Bayley (1937-2008). Still a teenager, he published his story “Combat’s End” in No. 4, an issue I found in 1978.

Unfortunately the magazine was betrayed, after the first two issues, by its somewhat amateurish appearance inside and out – and use of the same cover art on more than one issue – signs that the budget was small and the publisher stretched for money. Most of the issues I found carried the strapline ‘New Worlds to Conquer’ on a strip across the bottom of the cover. I had no idea whether or not it had been adapted from Plutarch on Alexander the Great: “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” At the time I thought it was a sly dig at the perceived main competition, Nova Publications’ magazine New Worlds.

Vargo Statten’s publishers did not lack ambition. In No. 4 (May 1954) there came the announcement for the ‘proposed Vargo Statten Science Fiction Fan League’. Written by editor Alistair Paterson, it ran to three pages and an expression of interest form to be filled in and returned. The League ‘would be a non-commercial membership organisation, whose aim would be the furtherance and moulding of [the readers of Vargo Statten novels’] enthusiasm into one individual and central movement, acting as the parent body to branch organisations throughout the country…’ It seems that quite some organisation was being considered, reminiscent of the Science Fiction League, which had been launched in the USA in 1934 by the editor of Wonder Stories, Charles D. Hornig, and Hugo Gernsback, its publisher. The SFL did not survive in the long term, although the local chapters served to help bring sf fans together, including in the UK.

The proposed League would produce a ‘handsome Membership Certificate’ and there would be a ‘handsomely enamelled Membership Badge which the members would wear at every possible opportunity’. A ‘list of Rules’ would be drawn up, with members agreeing that ‘at all times they would apply their enthusiastic efforts to the furtherance of Science Fiction in general, and the fiction of Vargo Statten in particular.’ A ‘covering Membership fee’ would pay for the certificates, badges, and other printed stationery, which would be supplied at cost.

It was section 6 that raised my eyebrows. ‘The V.S.S.F.F.L. would not be supported by any group of wealthy industrialists nor would it be confined in its aims by commercially inclined factions. The publishers of the V.S. Magazine have kindly placed at their disposal its organisation and the enthusiasm of its staff, to further the League’s earlier aims. But it is clearly understood that, once the League has become completely self-supporting, then its activities will be made a completely independent body. In short, the writer [Alistair Paterson] wants to see it survive alone on the enthusiasm of its members, without bowing the knee in any way to commercial influence.’

‘Wealthy industrialists’? I wondered who Paterson had in mind! Had there been, seriously, any industrialists of any sort prepared to put money into a league for science fiction fans, and Vargo Statten fans at that? Was it perhaps another dig at New Worlds? At that time Nova Publications had ceased to be a fan-led company on its absorption by a large and fully commercial publisher, Maclaren; this put Nova’s magazines on a firm financial basis and enabled them to adhere to a clockwork publishing schedule for the first time. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking from the editor of a cash-strapped magazine, not always appearing regularly, from an ailing publisher.

Succeeding issues of The British Science Fiction Magazine carried further announcements and updates concerning the proposed League. However, an ominous note was sounded in No. 8 (December 1954). Although there had been a ‘tremendous response’ to the idea of a League, the large potential membership was too scattered, with proposed chapters each having no more than three members – and frequently fewer. ‘By and large it does begin to look as though the transition from theory to fact may prove insuperable; but on the other hand we are hoping, in the nature of true science-fictionists, to somehow “pluck a miracle from the air” by the time Issue No. 9 comes.’

No doubt some readers had been on tenterhooks as 1954 became 1955. Looking back from 1978, of course I knew the result, as I had a copy of the issue. In No. 9 (January 1955) the announcement duly appeared: ‘The publishers and your Editor, in complete union, are of the opinion that the present time is not propitious for the launching of the Vargo Statten Fan League.’ But there was still hope. ‘Everything depends on the progress of the magazine itself and how much liberty is afforded your Editor in time to come. Actually, the answer lies with you. Support us to the hilt and in time we can produce the League for which there is an undoubted demand, even if not the time at the moment, to supply it…’

What a disappointing New Year’s present for a fan. I could only sympathise – and, back in my time, carry on reading.

(John Howard)