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)

 

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) 

 

'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)