Late Reviews Page 9
The Cauldron of Annwn was inspired by Ellis’s reading of Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation of The Mabinogion, but it is only loosely based upon it. The plot is complicated. The characters include Gods and mortals. The Gods are Nodens, God of the Abyss; Caridwen, Goddess of Passion; Lyd, the Sea God; and Don, the Earth Goddess; and the mortals include the three children of Don, Gwydion, and his brother Govannion and his sister Elan, in addition to Math, King of Arvon; Arawn, King of Annwn; and some druids and priests.
Gwydion steals the Cauldron of Caridwen from Arawn, killing him, and the other gods debate what to do. Don has had a premonition of the doom to fall upon Arvor should Gwydion take the Cauldron there. Benevolent Nodens was long ago bound upon a rock, but believes it is through the adventurousness of man that his dreams of human destiny might be achieved. Lyd agrees with Nodens, and safely guides Gwydion in his coracle to the shores of Arvon.
There Math and the druids take the Cauldron for their own use, causing resentment from Gwydion. Math tempers this by appointing Gwydion to be Guardian of the Temple, where the Cauldron is kept. Govannion, Gwydion’s brother, is in love with Goewin, who was compelled by Math against her will to be one of the vestal virgins of the Temple, and Gwydion allows them to tryst, bringing disastrous results when they are later caught. Meanwhile Gwydion’s own sister Elan seeks to have him father the hero-child the priests had foretold that she was to bear. Everyone’s emotions have been dramatically heightened by the fumes from the Cauldron. Math and the druids banish Goewin, and doom Gwydion and his brother to be turned into wolves. In the last hour before their transformation, Elan and Gwydion drink some of the magic liquid from the Cauldron. Elan forgets her love of Gwydion, and is drawn away by the song of the Sea-King, while the ghost of Arawn appears to taunt Gwydion, just before the brothers transform.
Three years pass, and the savage wolf-brothers return to the Temple. The outcast Goewin is devoured by her former-lover Govannion. Afterwards, Govannion and Gwydion are returned to human form, though Gwydion retains a wolf’s heart. Govannion finds their sister Elan, who was deserted after motherhood by her Sea-King lover. Elan is taken to the Temple where her secret is discovered, and her son Dylan appears. Math and the druids believe Gwydion to be the father of the child, and call down curses upon him, but Gwydion, calling upon Nodens for aid, kills Math with his spear. Gwydion adopts Dylan as his own heir, and the heir of the race of men. This infuriates his brother Govannion, who battles with Gwydion, but Gwydion tells him to take his revenge out on the druids for the death of Goewin. Thus the powers of magic in the world became diminished, and the dreams of Nodens are fulfilled at last.
The lengthy synopsis above is really only the bare-bones of the story, which has further significant complications, but it gives a taste of how Ellis has reframed the stories from the Mabinogion into the first of his three poetic dramas. The style of the verse may seem difficult to impatient modern readers, but it has many excellent passages. As one example, here the ghost of Arawn threatens Gwydion, in a memorable taunt:
There are no gods, only the coming night
And we in darkness waiting. Death shall blight
All hardness in you! and naked clean
Shall you run down the darkness with the keen
And whining laughter of revenge at heel. (p. 60)
Though they are at times demanding, Ellis’s dramas reward the patient reader. And they stand among the first of the modern attempts, in the wake of Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation, to rework the Welsh mythological tales into a more coherent and artistic whole for modern readers.
L’Épine, Chas. The Devil in a Domino (London: Greening & Co., 1897) and The Lady of the Leopard (London: Greening & Co., 1899).
Two books appeared in the late 1890s under the pseudonymous byline “Chas. L’Épine.” Both were published by the relatively new publisher, Greening and Company, run by Arthur Greening. The first was The Devil in a Domino, a treatment of serial murders, published in December 1897. The second and more substantial book, The Lady of the Leopard, appeared in April 1899. The title page of The Lady of the Leopard lists L’Épine as also being the author of The Miracle Plays, but no contemporary book of that title has been found. A small note in the 7 July 1899 issue of The Literary World notes that L’Épine had written another book called No Excuse for Them, which Messrs. Greening & Company “will publish at an early date”; but, again, no contemporary publication of that title has been found. (A Canadian author, Edouard Narbonne, born in 1849, used as one of his pseudonyms “Charles L’Epine,” with the first name spelled out in full. Though sometimes conflated with “Chas. L’Épine,” the two usages are clearly unrelated.)
The Devil in the Domino was inspired in part by the Whitechapel murders in London in the late 1880s, but it is no Jack the Ripper spin-off. Here, Aleck Severn is born with bad genes from his wastrel father and drunkard mother, who is herself driven mad by her husband so that she kills him. Aleck is born in prison, where his mother dies in childbirth. From there, Aleck leads a private battle with his tainted genes, distinguishing himself in some good ways while isolating himself in others. He is rescued from his solitude by Marianne Talbot, whom he marries with disastrous results. Aleck has meanwhile taken up with a young murderer named Jem Pate, with whom he perpetrates a few killings of women in order to study the details of life. The first murders take place a year apart, and the author leaves many of the details to the imagination. There is a Dorian Gray influence in that the sins of Aleck Servern are visited upon young Jem Pate, who grows old and ill at an accelerated rate. This short novel has some interesting patches of writing, but it is structurally unbalanced and the writing has the feel of hastiness found in a first draft. The reviews were mixed. Some, like that in The Edinburgh Evening News, called it “a peculiarly repulsive piece of writing, indicative of the low and morbid type of so-called literature which is purveyed to a half-educated constituency,” while The London Star noted that “it is a gruesome, ghastly, blood-curdling, hair-erecting, sleep-murdering piece of work, with a thrill on every page. Read it.”
Like The Devil in a Domino, The Lady of the Leopard received widely varying reviews. Of the former, The Sketch noted that: “It is a well-written story. An admirable literary style, natural and concise construction, succeed in compelling the reader’s attention through every line.” Contrastingly, The Glasgow Herald declared: “The writer who hides his identity behind the pseudonym of ‘Chas. L’Épine’ is another of those misguided individuals who think they have found a suitable subject for sensational fiction in the nameless atrocities perpetrated a few years ago in the East End of London. . . . There is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. It is unmitigatedly horrible.” With The Lady of the Leopard, The Liverpool Mercury noted that “lovers of the marvellous will enjoy it, for it is cleverly and dramatically written” but The Register (Adelaide) countered “the book is mostly a jumble of crude horrors—suicide, vivisection, incest, and nameless mutilations—without evidence of the skill even to make the reader’s flesh creep at their recital. To be morbidly sensational is bad, and so is to be dull: but to be both at once!” The truth, predictably, lies somewhere between these extremes, and the exaggerated hostility of the bad reviews make the books sound even more interesting to the modern reader.
The Lady of the Leopard begins with the story of the rightful disinheritance of Arthur Grevil of St. Angela in Devon, after evidence is produced at a trial that his true father was not Julian Grevil but another man. The scene shifts to Cuba, a few decades later, where the widowed Arthur, now surnamed Herries, lives with his daughter Karen, who is the lady of the novel’s title. As a young woman, Karen had encountered in the hills of Cuba a negro medicine man named Timon, who was a natural and skilled mesmerist. Timon had a leopard with whom Karen is found to have an unusual affinity. Karen becomes Timon’s pupil, and eventually, when the leopard dies, Timon tattoos its likeness in Karen’s palm.
Since childhood Karen had heard the story of her fath
er’s disinheritance as a wrong inflicted upon him, and his fabulous tales of his childhood home St. Angela have evoked in her a determination to reclaim it. Karen travels to England to attain that goal, and eventually learns that her father’s version of the story is untrue.
The fantasy elements of this novel are often shrouded in vagueness. Timon’s and Karen’s powers are defined as mesmerism or animal magnetism (as Dr. Franz Mesmer originally termed it in the eighteenth century). In one early scene, presented from the point of view of the subject affected by mesmerism, Karen seems to shift back and forth into a leopard, and could be considered a kind of were-leopard, but the actuality of any transformation is deliberately left vague in the text. On the other hand, the powers of illusion and mind control accorded by Karen’s use of mesmerism are decidedly occult. And later in the novel, Karen seems to be at times accompanied by a familiar in the shape of a leopard, and in the denouément the mark of the leopard tattooed on her palm vanishes.
The novel begins a bit clumsily, presenting the back-story in the form of old letters, but it quickly comes to life when the narrative shifts to Cuba. Once the story returns to England, a more formulaic element of romance enters. Overall, The Lady of the Leopard is an interesting and engaging read, even with its flaws in structure and conception.
So who was “Chas L’Épine”? It was clearly someone close to the publisher, Arthur Greening, for The Lady of the Leopard is “Dedicated to A.C. An Old Friend.” Arthur Greening was in fact the adopted name of Arthur Collins, who when becoming a publisher took on his mother’s maiden name of Greening so as to avoid confusion with another Arthur Collins already in publishing. Chas. L’Épine was likely one of the stable of writers who published regularly with Greening, some of whom (like the elderly drama reviewer Clement Scott) can be ruled out as unlikely. One of these writers stands out as a likely candidate: C. Ranger Gull (1875-1923), who also wrote as “Guy Thorne.” Gull’s first two books for Greening were anonymous: The Hypocrite, a satire on Oscar Wilde,. published in November 1898, followed by Miss Malevolent in October 1899. Other Gull books were announced but not published, including a book of criticism, Richard Le Gallienne (c. 1899), and The Barge (c. 1900). The first book signed “Guy Thorne” was The Oven (1902), but Thorne made a real mark with When It Was Dark (1903), a sensational tale of a hoax perpetrated to deny the foundations of Christianity. L’Épine shares with Gull/Thorne both a taste for sensational topics as well as ambitious plans, some unrealized. Their respective writing styles are also comparable: assured, polished and at times witty, while the structures of their books also share similar flaws, including ambitious beginnings with less-satisfying endings. The fact that the “épine” is French for “thorn” may or may not be significant. Though Gull claimed the “C.” in his byline stood for Cyril, it was in fact another adopted name, for he was born Arthur Edward Ranger Gull. Of course all this evidence that C. Ranger Gull might be behind the “Chas. L’Épine” pseudonym is circumstantial, and it really could have been someone else, like Gull’s close friend and sometime collaborator Reginald Bacchus (1873-1945), or even an unknown person. Unless some actual evidence turns up, this must all be considered conjectural.
Ewers, Hanns Heinz. Edgar Allan Poe. Translated by Adele Lewisohn (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1917). Original German edition published in 1905.
Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) is today an undeservedly neglected figure in the field of macabre literature, remembered mainly for his trilogy involving the semi-autobiographical character Frank Braun, Das Zauberling (1910; translated as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, 1927); Alraune (1911; translated 1929; filmed in 1918 (twice), 1928, 1930 and 1952); and Vampir (1921; translated as Vampire. 1934; v.t. Vampire’s Prey). During the First World War, when this short essay was first translated, Ewers was in America working as a German propagandist. As a result of this work Ewers was interred for many months, returning to his native Germany only after the war had ended. Later he became involved with the Nazis, writing the (fictionalized) biography of Horst Wessel (1933), an early Nazi martyr. Ewers’s unusual pro-Jewish views soon brought him into disfavor (he had even written an essay “Why I Am a Philosemite”), and his works, once immensely popular and selling many thousands of copies, were banned. He died in 1943.
Ewers’s essay on Poe tells us very little about Poe but rather more about Ewers, and his hero-worship of Poe. It is an extremely peculiar mixture of arrogance and sympathy. Ewers believed that the Anglo-Saxon (meaning British and American) preoccupation with morality has prevented a true appreciation of Poe’s genius; thus, the establishment has said that because Poe drank he was not a great artist. Ewers counted himself happy to be a German, because Germany’s great men were permitted to be immoral. Ewers extends his happiness to a prediction that the time will come when intoxication and art are inseparable ideas, and people will recognize the distinction in art brought forth by intoxication, whether by alcohol, drugs or other “poisons.” For, to Ewers, a true artist was “a pioneer of culture in the newly discovered land of the unconscious.” And by his definition, among the few true artists are to be found the names of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Baudelaire, and Poe. This essay rambles on in a circular manner about this point, without much direction or much lucidity. Mainly it is a paean to Poe—or rather, to the image Ewers has created of Poe. Those interested in insights into Poe and his writings with find nothing for themselves herein; those interested in Ewers will find a few more clues into his elusive character but little that helps to explain the larger enigma of what made him tick.
F
Faber, Geoffrey. Elnovia: An Entertainment for Novel Readers. (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1925). Illustrated by George Morrow.
This is the only novel by Geoffrey Cust Faber (1889-1961), the well-known publisher who was knighted in 1954. Faber also published some volumes of poetry, Interflow (1915), In the Valley of Vision (1918) and The Buried Stream: Collected Poems 1908-1940 (1941), but his major works were a study of Cardinal J. H. Newman and the Oxford Movement, Oxford Apostles (1933), and Jowett (1957), a biography of the great Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett. Faber was educated at Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford. After four years of service in the war, he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, but was soon invited by a cousin to join a family brewing firm. Faber abandoned this profession after only a few years when he was appointed Estates Bursar of All Souls. In the summer of 1925, Faber, with his Oxford colleague Maurice Gwyer, founded the publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer, a successor company to the Scientific Press, which was owned by Gwyer’s wife’s family. Faber, who had served his apprenticeship in publishing before the war under Humphrey Milford at the Oxford University Press, was invited to join the board and chair the new company. Faber recruited T.S. Eliot and Richard de la Mare (elder son of Walter de la Mare) to serve with him. The imprint Faber and Gwyer lasted only until 1929, when the Gwyers withdrew their interests and the firm became known as Faber and Faber. The second “Faber” was probably only for effect, though it has been suggested that it referred to Geoffrey’s wife. Elnovia was published by Faber & Gwyer in December 1925, six months after the firm’s founding.
Elnovia is one of a handful of countries on the continent of Elnovasia, which floats in the atmosphere above the earth. Three English adventures—the entomologist (and narrator) Henry Coleopter, Captain Antony Flutter, late of the Royal Air Force and the son of an old friend of Coleopter, and Flutter’s mechanic, Mr. Stood—take the Flutterby, an airplane designed by Flutter, intending to head towards Australia. Four days into their journey, they crash into Elnovia, where they are rescued by the novelist Stephen Langridge and his neighbor Lord Plumfield, both of whom are somewhat unconventional Elnovians. The three adventurers all feign memory loss as they learn about their new surroundings. Eventually they become caught up in the politics of Elnovia, which is facing a war with New Elnovia, a country on the opposite side of the sea, and a series of farcical adventures ensue.
There is a gentle whimsicality in the
novel that is occasionally girded with some seriousness, yet amusement remains the primary goal of the book. Where the novel begins to fail is with its characters—all of the main characters are one dimensional, and it is only in one minor character, the detective Prosper le Sparrow (a humorous take on Sherlock Holmes), that the story comes to life. However, there is enough amusement and adventure for the reader to want to reach the end, where the adventurers rescue their Elnovian friends, who are about to be executed by being catapulted over the perilous Edge of the world. All head to England, Coleopter and Flutter thereby gaining their friends’ daughters as wives.
The line-drawings by George Morrow, a popular Punch artist of the time, feel mismatched with the story, and add to the feeling that the whole is slightly dated.
Fallada, Hans. Sparrow Farm: The Tale of the City Clerk who flew into the Country for a Holiday, translated by Eric Sutton (London: Putnam, 1937).
In the short and mostly off-putting “Foreword by the Diffident Author,” Fallada notes that Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann is the godfather to his “crazy tale”—and one does indeed detect hints of Hoffmann in the story, though on the whole the book is much simpler and lighter than any of Hoffmann’s tales. Sparrow Farm is primarily the story of the orphaned clerk Guntram Spratt, who, learning he has an uncle, goes to visit his new-found relations at Sparrow Farm. Guntram’s father and his uncle were twin brothers, and in the past there had been a long contention over which of the two had been born first, and which was thus the rightful heir of Sparrow Farm. The conflict reached a turning point when the twins contemplated marrying and raising families of their own. Guntram’s father noted perceptibly that “I have always believed that secret forces, and evil ones, were using us in a game of their own” (p. 64). And the game continues on into the next generation, as dark magicians and light ones contend for control. The magicians shift back and forth into owls, and one of the other evil creatures transforms into a magpie. Guntram is at times changed into a sparrow, and thus he is able to spy on his adversaries. The story comes to a conclusion in typical fairy-tale fashion, with Guntram saving the farm while also winning the heart of his attractive cousin Monika.