Peter Brooke By Any Other Name

When I find a book by an author I am unfamiliar with, it is a good thing.  A chance to fill in the blank space of my seemingly ever increasing ignorance.  A Rose by Any Other Name by Anthony Carson (Penguin Books No. 1847, published in 1962, originally Methuen, 1960).  Who in the world is Anthony Carson I wondered?  The cover art was by the familiar and ever whimsical Quentin Blake.  Perhaps the only cover of a Penguin Book that extends over the edges of the center panel (prior to the Marber grid), but then again, my knowledge of Penguin covers is of course not complete.  Quentin Blake has drawn a circle around the Publisher's device and made radiating lines outward to suggest a sun.  Brilliant.  The Penguin looks rather surprised, is brought into the drawing and confronted with a mad poet on a bicycle.  It suits the text very well.  Short chapters of humorous autobiographical tales involving much travel and experience.  Experience with a capital "E" perhaps.

Anthony Carson, Anthony Carson?  I couldn't place the name.  It is a good feeling to find something new, but the other side of the coin--there's generally one--is that I felt at once rather shaky in my knowledge. Luckily no one in the past has ever asked me whether I liked the work of Anthony Carson.  "Anthony who?" I would have replied honestly; or if I was dishonest, which I'm not, I could have faked my way saying "Oh, yes, wonderful stuff.  Didn't like his last book though.  Losing it mate, losing it," and then changed the subject to an author I did know something about.

His real name was Peter Brooke.  Well, it was the name given to him by his 'preparatory school headmaster' when, at the age of seven, during the WWI, his family name of 'von Bohr' was deemed rather inconvenient as the other children began to accuse him of being a German spy.  Peter Brooke it was.  Such is the past. During the twenties he was a sort of remittance man in New Zealand and Australia where many of his tales of vagabondage are derived.  His days as a swagman in the outback, and trying to shear sheep as a pseudo-Kiwi, and that sort of thing.  Experience with a capital "E." Truly.

It seems he was a denizen of Fitzrovia and Soho, raising elbows at the The Wheatsheaf pub with Dylan Thomas, Julian Maclaren-Ross, George Barker, Peter Vansittart, Mulk Raj Anand, Fred Urquhart, the Canadian poet Paul Potts, Meary Tambimuttu, and later, Quentin Crisp, who were all perhaps trying to live up to the earlier denizens of the Fitzroy Tavern, Roy Campbell, Anthony Powell, Jack Lindsay and Patrick Hamilton.

Peter Brooke published his first novel, Our Lady of the Earthquakes (London: Cresset Press, 1940), but it was not successful.  He did achieve some financial success co-writing a song however: Violin: Sweet and Low Played the Bow written by Allan Gray and Peter Brooke, (Sydney: J. Albert and Son, 1941.) After WWII, he was involved in various jobs and began to write humorous travel books under the name "Anthony Carson."  I don't know how he came to choose this name.  Another blank space. Perhaps it came to him on an index card as he worked at the Income Tax Office.  Possible.

The author, Rupert Croft-Cooke--another author I am less than familiar with, though under his pseudonym, Leo Bruce, he wrote many an interesting mystery--was extremely prolific, and wrote over 20 autobiographical works known as 'The Sensual World Series,' and in The Wintry Sea (1964) he wrote of his meetings with Peter Brooke:

I used to meet him at a pub called Wheatsheaf in the 1940s. Solemn, dedicated and ponderous, he hungered after two things--publication and food.  .  .  He talked of 'experience' as though it were a commodity in which he had invested, of which he now held a large stock ready to put on the market.  .  .  Nearly everyone who came to the Wheatsheaf in those days had an inkling that he himself and the rest of us were somewhat laughable figures, even Julian Maclaren-Ross who wore a disintegrating teddy-bear coat, carried an ornate walking-stick and bagged the corner place at the bar so that he could lecture the rest of us from a vantage point....But not Peter Brooke.  He could see nothing funny in himself, or in not being able to get his work published when it was so full of experience, and nothing funny at all in having a perpetually unassuaged appetite.

Croft-Cooke later wondered over the transformation of Peter Brooke, the serious writer, into the comic writer Anthony Carson, whom Colin MacInnes described in the Observer as 'one of the few great English humorous writers of the century.'

It appears that all of Brooke's 'experience' was well exploited for the humor rather than for the drama.  Whatever works.  Each short chapter of A Rose by Any Other Name shows the signs of having debuted in Punch or the New Statesman with their sharp wit and comic hook at the end. I imagine he is better known in England and Europe than here in Canada. His popular humorous travel works have perhaps dated and time has faded the spines of his works into dusty obscurity (though all are available on those obscure hidden shelves of on-line book sellers). Still, a light read and enjoyable.  Nice cover art too.

His other works under Anthony Carson are:

A Train to Tarragona (Methuen, 1957)
On to Timbuctoo (Methuen, 1958)

Looking For A Bandit (Methuen, 1961)
Poor Man's Mimosa (Methuen, 1962)
Carson Was Here (Methuen, 1963)
The Sin of Summer (Methuen 1965)
The Golden Kiss (Methuen, 1966)
Any More for the Gondola (Hurst & Blackett, ?)

I imagine there may be others...

P.S.  I believe there is a photograph of  Anthony Carson / Peter Brooke in a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Famous in the Fifties: Photographs by Daniel Farson

Words, and Numbers, and Rhyme

Weeding papers, shedding years as fable,

Years of numbers, dollars, gross and net;

Riffling ordered files upon the table,

Measurements like music, of love, regret.

Rain was seeping mist, my tea was cold,

A pinching darkness lay upon the room.

Feeling less than able, feeling, old.

Dieffenbachia and Spathiphyllum gloom.

Then, appeared the poet. Not in a dream

Distant, yet so near, asking for a light,

But on the cover of a McGill magazine,

Dapper, poised, looking at the camera's sight.

How he came to be within “Utilities”

I don't know. But out he slipped fresh as print.

Nineteen eighty-two, “Scrivener” volume three,

Slightly yellowed, nick or two, not quite mint.

Memories arose, cross-hatched with thought,

Bookshops, cafés, parks and mountain shade;

Mezzotint musings in nostalgia caught.

Halcyon days. Perhaps. The dues were paid.

Purchased at The Word, the source, the stream,

Captured by the poet's poker face.

Chosen over Pynchon, or a Henry Green,

Two bucks proffered for a soul of grace.

Twenty-four in nineteen eighty-two,

Blind, adrift, still plodding in the maze,

(Rereading books like Soren's 'Point of View.')

Did I see a way within his Zen-like gaze?

Ladies' man at forty-seven, lover,

Troubadour poet, and singer of fame.

Thirty years have not quite seen another

Suit and cowboy boot on la rue Saint-Urbain.

Forty-four years I lived in the city,

Happenstance never once crossed our ways,
Sharing a bench, and views of women so pretty,

Feeding dry bread to the birds and the strays.

Would it be too late if this native returned

Recognitions faltering dense with time,

New steps, old paths to movements long adjourned,

Papers in pockets, words, and numbers, and rhyme?

ralph patrick mackay, april 30, 2012.

In for a Penny, In for a Powell

I know very little about Anthony Powell.  Although, I do believe he was rather tall and possibly forbidding.  Well, I guess I am being disingenuous for I do know a bit more about him than that.  I know he was fond of figs.  No, I am just making that up.  From his pictures he doesn't look like a fig fancier.  More a Banbury cake fancier I think. Although he may not have wanted anyone to know of his predilection for pastry.  

I am sorry, I must be in a whimsical mood, or perhaps merely hungry, or both. I am sure I know what anyone can know about Anthony Powell by looking up his information on wikipedia, reading an obituary or two, a few critical works and essays.  Or best of all, perhaps, by reading his Memoirs (4 vols.), his Journals (3 vols.) and his Novels (20 vols.) and miscellaneous plays and essays. I am not, however, a Powellite or whatever the followers and devotees of the man and his work call themselves, but I have read a few of his novels. 

Faced with the stack of Anthony Powell's  Dance to the Music of Time does seem a rather forbidding reading task (although, perhaps not as forbidding as the seemingly forgotten ten volumes of Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe.)  All that clever wit and subtle satire in volume after volume after volume. To be a reader in 1951, and pick up the first novel in the sequence, A Question of Upbringing, would be the easier task. To read one Anthony Powell book every odd year or so, and enjoy the anticipation and uncertainty of when the next one would arrive in the bookshops, would be the ideal reading pattern.  I imagine even the author himself would find the complete sequence to be a daunting challenge to read all at one go. To see and hear through the eyes of Nicholas Jenkins for so many pages would likely drive one to read a Ross Macdonald hard-boiled mystery, an Alice Munro short story collection or a Samuel Beckett novel (in French) for a change of style and subject matter. Reading one a month would be more feasible. Such a schedule would likely save one's sanity and would limit the influence of his style--enjoyable though it is--from seeping too deeply into one's conversation and letter writing.

The different cover art for his novels over the years can be a source of interest. The original illustrator for his twelve volume sequence published by William Heinemann was James Broom-Lynne, who was certainly a talented and prolific (a word that is beginning to loose its power, shall we say, fecund, creative, cornucopian, yes cornucopian seems apt for his dustjackets, illustrations, novels and plays) artist and writer.  His covers are heraldic in design with the use of a rather dour grey punctuated by various bright colours with the details hinting at, in a general way, the content. The size of the books, crown octavo, small by today's standards, make them easy to read and the original red cloth bindings and gilt titles make them handsome enough books. It is an achievement in design continuity since the first book was published in 1951, and the last in the series, in 1975.  Broom-Lynne also designed the four volume set by Heinemann using the lower portion of the painting by Poussin and overlaying vertical colour strips, a design which was then modified by the American edition published by Little, Brown and Co., and more recently by the University of Chicago Press.

The Penguin Books paperback editions which came out in the 1960s sported cover art by Osbert Lancaster and they were a mix of finely detailed exterior architecture, like Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, and finely detailed interiors, such as A Question of Upbringing. Some of the covers featured interiors or exteriors with groups of people but without a defining representation of any one character. There is a lightness that reflects Lancaster's style and to a certain extent, the satire and situations within the novels.

Berkley Books issued a series of paperbacks with odd covers which were still-lifes with objects that reflected the content, including a small pocket watch being one object that appeared in each design.

Fontana Books first issued a series in the late 1960s with rather stilted paintings of characters from the novel.  The effect is weak.  They followed this up in the early 1970s with richly defined photographs of still-lifes reflecting the subject matter within.  Then in the late 1970s they brought out a new series with cover art by Mark Boxer.  These depicted characters from the novels in a more idiosyncratic manner, being essentially caricatures. Boxer's black ink sketches with a colour wash to various details are certainly interesting, and although they represent specific characters in the books, they don't subvert the reader's own imagination of what the characters may look like.  The caricatures evoke character rather than define their appearance. (Although I have to admit that the caricature for Temporary Kings makes me think of Martin Amis in his mod, long-hair years--the image on the back of his novel The Rachel Papers for instance. Martin Amis was friends with Boxer and their lifestyles did have a certain resonance with the books. It is just that the caricature on this book is of a woman, Pamela Widmerpool. My perception only I am sure.)

The paperback covers, in tending to represent the time of the novels, also reflect their own time in their style of illustration or design. If someone were to redesign the covers for the 21st Century, I wonder what they would come up with.  There is a modern tendency to have the art work span all the spines in a multi-volume work to create one visual image. That could be one possibility. Using the painting by Poussin seems too easy. Something fresh would be needed.  I wonder what.

Sham on You: Reflections on Dummy Book Titles

There is the occasional pastime on Twitter where twitterites participate in making up humorous book titles based on existing book titles. One I recall was under the hashtag 'Junk Food Novels.' My wife came up with quite a few such as The Spoils of Poutine, The End of the Eclair, and The Hors d'oeuvres of Gilbert Pinfold among many others. Such a pastime can find its roots not only in basic word play, but in sham book titles created for dummy books for library doors in English historic country house libraries. Doors that would be camouflaged in bibliographic detail in order to hide a main entrance, a passage to another room, a hidden staircase, or merely a closet where the owner might keep the cigars. Booksellers were often requested to provide interesting titles for these curiosities, perhaps even changing them from time to time when the titles became rather, old.

I can imagine that the bookbinders would enjoy arriving at humorous titles and plying the gold leaf on to these more than decorative bindings. The library doors of Chatsworth and Gad's Hill have some interesting examples. (The picture is of Oxburgh Hall.)

Lamb on the Death of Wolfe.
Cursory Remarks on Swearing.
John Knox on Death's Door.
Boyle on Steam.
Lever on Lifts.
The Scottish Boccaccio by D. Cameron.
Dr. Kitchener's Life of Captain Cook.
Mr. J. Horner on Poet's Corner.
On Sore Throat and the Migration of the Swallow.
The Corn Question by John Bunyan.
The Art of Turning by Handle.
Bleak Houses.
The Male Coach.
Lochs and Quays of England.
Plurality of Living With Regard to the Common Cat.
Nine Tails by a Cat.
On Cutting off Heirs with a Shilling.

For additional titles, my old blog Postman's Horn has a letter by Thomas Hood which provides a few.

In Aldous Huxley's early novel, Crome Yellow (1921) there is a scene in a country house library which I shall leave off with a quote:

For their after-luncheon coffee the party generally adjourned to the library. Its windows looked east, and at this hour of the day it was the coolest place in the whole house. It was a large room, fitted, during the eighteenth century, with white painted shelves of an elegant design. In the middle of one wall a door, ingeniously upholstered with rows of dummy books, gave access to a deep cupboard, where among a pile of letter-files and old newspapers, the mummy-case of an Egyptian lady, brought back by the second Sir Fernando on his return from the Grand Tour, mouldered in the darkness. From ten yards away and at a first glance, one might almost have mistaken this secret door for a section of shelving filled with genuine books. Coffee-cup in hand, Mr. Scogan was standing in front of the dummy book-shelf. Between the sips he discoursed.

"The bottom shelf," he was saying, "is taken up by an Encyclopaedia in fourteen volumes. Useful, but a little dull, as is also 'Caprimulge's Dictionary of the Finnish Language.' The 'Biograhical Dictionary' looks more promising. 'Biography of Men who were Born Great,' 'Biography of Men who Achieved Greatness,' 'Biography of Men who had Greatness Thrust Upon Them,' and 'Biography of Men who were Never Great at All.' Then there are ten volumes of 'Thom's Works and Wanderings,' while the 'Wild Goose Chase, A Novel,' by an anonymous author, fills no less than six. But what's this, what's this?" Mr. Scogan stood on tiptoe and peered up. "Seven volumes of the 'Tales of Knockespotch.' The 'Tales of Knockespotch,' he repeated. "Ah, my dear Henry," he said, turning round, "these are your best books. I would willingly give all the rest of your library for them."

The happy possessor of a multitude of first editions, Mr. Wimbush could afford to smile indulgently.

"Is it possible," Mr. Scogan went on, "that they possess nothing more than a back and a title?" He opened the cupboard door and peeped inside, as though he hoped to find the rest of the books behind it. "Phooh!" he said, and shut the door again. "It smells of dust and mildew. How symbolical! One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expecting some miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, only darkness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still--the 'Tales of Knockespotch'...."

He paused, and thoughtfully drummed with his fingers on the backs of the non-existent, unattainable books.

On Second Thought

The bookseller smiled, or so Cinnabar thought as he paused while cleaning himself.

Through the window of the bookshop, another day's uncertainty passed with growing agitation, casting bright reflections or dark shadows within. Cinnabar sighed. He was rather tired of being the emotional draw for customers. Tired of being ogled and talked to in a baby voice. Tired of customers touching him while he was in deep meditation. Humans, he wondered, did they ever wash? How greasy and oily were their fingers. How unfortunate their habits. Nicotine, perfumes, hand lotions, food, all combined with the dust from all these old books was, at times, trying.

Cinnabar looked up at the bookseller whose glasses reflected the day. He sniffed. Things could be worse. Those cat shelters for instance. The utter horrors of the shared litter box. Those imbeciles putting their paws in his water dish as if they saw another cat reflected there. Idiots. Cinnabar scratched his side with his right foot. It could be worse. Like being a stray on the street, hungry, cold and vulnerable. There were stories of large-eyed bird creatures who could swoop down and carry you off. Or vicious humans who would toss you to see how you would land on your feet. Barbarians. It is a forest of fears out there.

He stretched ever so gently, extending his arms out before him in the sun's warmth. Or he could be suffering from ill-health. That's no catnip. The stories of kidney problems,pink eye, and worms were common around the cat shelter dinner dishes. Cinnabar sighed again. The bookseller looked down at him and winked with his right eye and after a pause, Cinnabar reciprocated with a calm slow movement of his eyelids. He remembered Jasper. Jasper, what a stupid name for a cat he thought. Really! Humans, what are they thinking? The bookseller had been buying books at a rich country house when the owners offered him Jasper. For free. Really, what was he thinking? Well, Jasper wasn't all he appeared to be. A slinky pure-bred who turned out to be so sickly that it cost the bookseller any profit he might have managed at that sale. Honestly.

He heard his mother's voice, "Cinnabar" she would say, "high or low, your health is all you have." Cinnabar raised himself and stretched deliciously, and as he sat looking up at the bookseller, he made a vow to rub up against a prospective customer at least once a week. After all, things weren't that bad. Hundreds of cats would give up their first mouse for such a position, and with that he wandered into the back room for his morning siesta.

Group Pose Tilting into the Future: Musings on Old Family Photographs

This is a family photograph from 1952. (I seem to be revisiting the 1950s of late.) My maternal grandfather on the right with a jacket over his arm, his younger brother Ivan beside him, my great-uncle's son beside him on holiday from Cambridge, and then two older ladies unknown to me, possibly sisters of my great-aunt on the extreme left. This photograph seems to evoke an Agatha Christie group of characters to me. Miss Marple is there I am sure. They are on an outing in the Peak District not far from their origins of Macclesfield. They have obviously stopped at The Marquis of Granby Hotel for refreshment before continuing on their sightseeing venture with a stop at Chatsworth. Who was behind the camera I wondered.

The name of the Hotel derives from General John Manners, Marquess of Granby, who had many, many pubs and hotels named after him in the late 18th Century. This particular one, however, evolved out of an old farm and later public house or coaching inn and was renamed the Marquis of Granby in 1880 or 1881, a name which may seem like a nostalgic choice, or perhaps one that would provide a certain veiled historic patina. Something like a mantle to bolster its prestige.

Looking at the photograph, all my relatives now long deceased, I began to wonder if at least the Hotel still existed. A quick search and I discovered that the answer was yes, and no. It seems after many years of operation, and latterly as a meeting place for two Masonic Lodges in the area, it closed and became derelict, no doubt a sad sight to all who had memories of having visited the establishment. A Google street view revealed an even sadder sight, as most of the Hotel has been torn down, leaving the original building bereft of its details:



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There does seem to be some recent development and a new Marquis of Granby brought to life. Perhaps it has been completed. And life goes on.

My relatives did get to visit Chatsworth on what looks like a lovely day. Mygrandfather must be the photographer of this one as my other great-uncle, Sydney, stands to the right, the group pose tilting into the future.

Chatsworth of course has stood the test of time. Presently there is a retrospective exhibitionof sculptures by Anthony Caro on the grounds of Chatsworth, sculpture that would have left my relatives in 1952 with looks of disbelief and possible dismay, but life moves along as it does. It is interesting to think that while my relatives were basking in the glorious sun while viewing the grounds and classical sculptures of Chatsworth, Anthony Caro was working as a part-time assistant to Henry Moore in the village of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Old and new ever in juxtaposition.

From Bonds to James Bond: Reflections on Ian Fleming and his Fictional Hero

I find it interesting that three of the most prominent fictional characters in English Literature were created by authors who were of Scottish parentage: Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes; and Ian Fleming's James Bond.
Scottish? Ian Fleming? Yes, it is difficult to see him as being Scottish, brought up as he was in a privileged household in Oxfordshire, attending Eton, a brief stint at Sandhurst, a European school to prep him for the Foreign Office, his entry into journalism then stock brokerage in the city, before becoming highly involved in Naval Intelligence during World War II and having close friends in William Plomer, Edith Sitwell, Amherst Villiers, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, Lord Beaverbrook and Sir William Stephenson to name but a few. It is doubtful whether he thought of himself as other than English on the exterior, but his Scottish non-conformist upbringing remained within the core. The Fleming family owns the 80,000 acre Black Mount Estate in Argyll and Bute, and Ian's elder brother Peter Fleming died in 1971 while in Scotland out on a shoot. (After a lifetime of adventure and overseeing the squiredom of Nettlebed, Peter Fleming would probably have wanted to go with his boots on as he did.)

Ian Fleming's great-grandfather, John Fleming, escaped the family farm and Kirk in Scotland near Braemar, and began a lint mill which, unfortunately, failed. In Dundee he worked as an overseer in a jute works and sired seven children, all but two died of diphtheria. One of the surviving sons, Robert, Ian's grandfather, was good at mathematics and became a clerk with a Dundee textile firm. Sent to the United States to represent the firm, he discovered a country in need of capital investment. In 1873, at the age of twenty-eight he created the Scottish-American Investment Trust, and went on to become a very wealthy and influential financier and in 1909, formed the merchant bank, Robert Fleming and Company. In 1903, he purchased the Joyce Grove Estate in Oxfordshire which included 2,000 acres, cottages and clayworks. The original William and Mary house had taken its name from Cornet Joyce from Cromwell's day. This smaller house was demolished and the new Joyce Grove, an enormous Jacobean-style house of red brick and stone dressing boasting 44 bedrooms and the most ornate and carved interior available, took its place. He had two sons, Valentine and Philip, and both attended Eton and Oxford. Valentine, Ian's father, married Evelyn St. Croix Rose in 1906 at the age of 24. She was of Irish, Scots and Huguenot descent with connections to John of Gaunt and the physician Sir Richard Quain. She gave birth to their first son, Robert Peter Fleming in May 1907 and the following May, she gave birth to their second of four sons, Ian Lancaster Fleming, the creator of James Bond.

Their father, a Major in the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, was killed in France in 1917. His wife inherited a sizable fortune--if she did not remarry. She did have an affair with Augustus John whose sketches, paintings and portraits of family members became part of the decorative backdrop to their lives. She even gave birth, with possibly some subtle subterfuge, to a daughter in 1925, Amaryllis Fleming, by the famous painter.

According to John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966), from which I have gleaned much of the information here, Ian from an early age had always wanted to be a writer of spy thrillers. This fact does tend to take some of the mystery out of Ian's settling down in his 43rd year and spinning out Casino Royale in less than a few months. A half of a lifetime of experience, a healthy imagination, the right timing and setting all helped him as he plumbed the depths to create his fictional world.

I think that one of the many spurs to his finally settling down to write his thrillers (beside the one so publicly revealed that he wanted to get one written before his marriage, and the one provided by his future wife that she had her painting and she suggested that he do something too, like write a book), was possibly the underlying competitive experience with his brother Peter whose satiric novel of intelligence services published in 1951, may have been a gentle nudge towards his younger brother towards that lifetime goal.

Although Ian had been a great athlete at Eton, his elder brother was a high academic achiever both at Eton and later at Oxford. He then acquired a name for himself as an adventurer and travel writer with three travel books in the 1930s, Brazilian Adventure (1933), One's Company (1934) and News From Tartary (1936). He inherited the squiredom at Nettlebed, and in 1940, donated Joyce Grove to St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, to be used as a convalescent home. He wrote as "Strix" for the Spectator and continued writing non-fiction and occasional fiction up to the early 1960s. His comic novel, The Sixth Column: A Singular Tale of Our Times (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1951), was a satire of the Intelligence Services after the war involving a Russian communist threat, a novel that could be put on the shelf beside Compton Mackenzie's Water on the Brain (1933).

Peter Fleming dedicated this satiric novel: "To My Brother Ian."
In 1951, Ian had yet to gain recognition beyond his playboy journalistic lifestyle. He worked for The Sunday Times, took up the mantle of Atticus at the paper, and struck a dashing figure with his famous friends, clothes, cars and lodgings. He smoked his Morland Specials in his ebonite Dunhill cigarette holder--70 a day man--and managed to finagle a two month vacation each year to visit his spot of land in Jamaica which he acquired in 1946, and where a modest home was built which altogether was known as Goldeneye. He was interested in book collecting and actually acquired The Book Collector magazine for only 50 pounds off Lord Kemsley. He was not active in its day to day, leaving it up to John Hayward and Percy H. Muir. (It is interesting that Ian Fleming for a time had lived in a flat above John Hayward who shared a flat with T. S. Eliot in Carlyle Mansions on Cheyne Walk. Considering how much everyone smoked in those days it must have been one smokey apartment block. It is odd to think that all three of these literary figures died fairly close in time: Fleming: August 1964; Eliot: January 1965; Hayward: a few months after Eliot in 1965. Poor John Hayward, he had overseen Eliot's archive while sharing the flat for eleven years, only to have Eliot, 68 years old, eloping in the night to marry his 30 year old secretary at 6:30 in the morning. Life does tend to be stranger than fiction.)
Peter Fleming of course knew of his brother's interest in writing spy thrillers and for him to write a spoof on the genre could be seen as nothing more than friendly fun, but it could also be seen as an older brother's unconscious competitive drive to spur on his brother's desires. In the end, it may have been just the needed impetus to prove himself capable of writing the spy novel he always wanted to write. This belief on my part has been with me ever since I acquired a copy of Peter Fleming's The Sixth Column back in the late 1970s at a library sale for less than a dollar. There are some amusing parts and descriptions. Peter Fleming resorted to odd character names akin to those that can be found in Compton Mackenzie's satire (in the P. G. Wodehouse realm) and this is something that Ian Fleming did not want in his novels. He wanted to get away from the aristocratic names such as "Peregrine Carruthers" and famously used the name of the American ornithologist and author of Birds of the West Indies, James Bond, for his great fictional/fantasy hero.

Peter Fleming has some perceptive views of society at the time and some amusing parts in his satire as well, such as his description of the rival to M15 named H.2.O, or in real life the SIS, MI6:

The initials do not stand for anything in particular. The organisation is, theoretically, of so secret a nature that the mere fact of its existence must never be mentioned; and its designation was selected in the hopes that, if anyone ever did let it slip past his lips, those who overheard him would, or anyhow might, suppose that he was merely talking, in a rather pedantic way, about water. (p. 167)

In this satire there is a character named Archie Strume who lives in a similar fashion to its author on an estate after having given over the enormous family home to the government for their Welfare Department, and he writes adventurous thrillers under the name of J. Coverley Grendon. His fictional hero is a Colonel Hackforth who appeared to great success in Hackforth of the Commandos and is currently being written about in Doom from Caucasia. Peter Fleming writes:

Almost any form of exciting fiction provided, of course, a welcome antidote to the restrictions and frustrations of life in England at that time; but the streak of anarchy, the pseudo-American toughness which the writers of thrillers had come, at this period to regard as a more or less obligatory part of their heroes' make-up, was not wholly to the British taste. The size of the stakes for which Colonel Hackforth, the resourceful protagonist of J. Cloverley Grendon's novels, invariably played made an irresistible appeal to a nation which, not very long ago, had been thinking in terms of big risks, mighty endeavours and prizes of a cosmic consequence. The enterprises to which Hackforth was committed did not have as their goal the recovery of a prima donna's necklace, the rescue of a millionaire's niece, or the dispersal of a dope-ring. He operated on a higher level altogether, and when he was called in you could be sure that it was to save from imminent peril one of his country's better-known assets, such as the Home Fleet, or Hongkong, or the Houses of Parliament. People liked that sort of thing. They derived, also, a particular pleasure from Hackforth's relations with Authority. They spent so much of their own lives in petty and seldom successful controversies with the junior branches of His Majesty's Civil Service that Hackforth's brusque handling of the Powers That Be came as balm to their souls. (pp. 28-29)

And here he describes his hero:

Gratified though they were by Colonel Hackforth's discomfiture of the King's enemies, the results obtained by his cavalier and peremptory treatment of the principal servants of the Crown afforded them an equal pleasure. Combining as he did the sober, clear-eyed resource of Captain Hornblower with the urbane, faintly swashbuckling sangfroid of Raffles and Rupert of Hentzau, Colonel Hackforth made an instant, and, as it seemed, enduring appeal to a nation consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, deservedly or undeservedly, gravitating towards Pooterdom. (pp. 29-30)

These descriptions of England at the time and his fictional protagonist do rather ring true with Ian Fleming's creation, James Bond. People wanted to escape their slide towards Pooterdom and Bond's attitude to his overseers is rather spot on with Peter Fleming's "cavalier and peremptory treatment of the principal servants of the Crown."

Peter Fleming created characters with names out of the P. G. Wodehouse and Compton Mackenzie scrapbook, such as Major Foxley-Ebbe, Sir Gurney Copfoss, Hilary Sibthrope, Brigadier Pigham and a subtle self-effacing H.2.O character named Boy Endover described as follows:

Boy Endover was a tall, rather stooping young man in his middle thirties. With his thinning hair, his horn-rimmed spectacles, his well-cut clothes and his air of deferential solemnity, you might have placed him in the Foreign Office or in the more intellectual strata of the Conservative back-benches; he looked a serious, hardworking, conventional sort of person. In point of fact, a more frivolous, idle and unorthodox member of the community would have been hard to find. "Idle" is perhaps not the right epithet to apply to a man of great physical energy who spent most of the winter hunting in Ireland and most of the summer sailing a small boat in different parts of the world; but from the standpoint of the economist or the sociologist Boy Endover's contribution to the material needs of society was negligible. (p. 173)

This reminded me of a passage out of Compton Mackenzie's satire on Intelligence Services, equally full of odd names such as Major Blenkinsop, Mr. Pinches, Miss Houldsworth etc., and this rather amusing insight:

Blenkinsop saw seated at a desk a spare grizzled man of middle age, the most conspicuous feature of whose countenance were the large dark horn-rimmed spectacles which made his aquiline nose look absolutely owlish. Before long Blenkinsop was to learn that all senior Intelligence officers wore large dark horn-rimmed spectacles and that the first step to advancement in Intelligence work was a pair of dark horn-rimmed spectacles. (Water on the Brain / London: Chatto & Windus, [1933], 1954, p.9.)

Well, all the influences of half a lifetime came together when he sat down at his desk at Goldeneye in front of his Imperial portable typewriter and began his first novel in mid-January of 1952 and went on writing till March 18th, completing the first draft of Casino Royale.
As John Pearson writes in his biography of Ian Fleming:

In his contact with the Secret Service world during the war, Fleming had been the man behind the desk. In Bond he got his own back, slipped his Beretta with the skeleton grip into his chamois leather shoulder-holster and went off to face death on his own account.

For Bond is the man who would always succeed where Fleming failed. He was not a spy--he was a man of action; and although he suffered from almost all the weaknesses Fleming pretended to despise in himself--his fear, his materialism, his drinking and womanizing--he could always turn these weaknesses to good account and always win: the ideal Mitty figure for Fleming and for all of us who watch and want but do not do. (p.200)

It is a sad moment later in his life, when recuperating from a heart attack in the south of England, his sick mother had returned to England and was convalescing just down the coast from her son. She died on July 24, 1964 and Ian passed away on August 12, 1964. A short life but certainly a full one. His smoking, drinking, and the active life of golfing, mountain climbing, and underwater swimming or snorkling caught up with him.

During his last days Somerset Maugham who was one of Ian's dearest friends wrote to him:

Forgive me for not having acknowledged it [You Only Live Twice] before but I have been very seedy and distraught. I have just returned from Venice, but with the realization that my travelling days are over--it is a great grief to me . . . I think of you with great affection and would like to see you once more. (Pearson, p. 343)

Ian Fleming would never get down to Nice to visit the older writer again, passing away from a haemorrhage a few weeks later. It must have been a shock to Somerset Maugham that he should outlive such a robust character such as Ian Fleming who only reached the age of 56. Somerset Maugham managed another year and passed away at 91 in December of 1965.

Pilish or not to Pilish

I saw that March 14 was Pi day and discovered Pilish, a language using the numbering of Pi for the length of the words. I was on twitter so I attempted to tweet something using the structure of Pilish and came up with the following within the limitations of one tweet:
Pilish Tweet
For a poet,
a nerdy wordsmith,
an absurd quark for urban gravitas;
overweary cambric fussiness
for an illusory poem
forged in fipple.
I had to forgo the punctuation and title but provided a hashtag, #pilish. This language structure may or may not keep my interest. Lately I have been paring down my verse but this may be a good exercise for the brain. A method to stir up the rich sounds of word interplay, though such a restraint may exhaust one fairly quickly. However, someone persevered and wrote a book using Pilish: Not a Wake.

divinations

divinations

were we of, from, on, like, in, by and for
would our every self be who we, you, see?

though there is or was
will
how to give full use
in that we could
must
after all
be?

were we of, from, on, like, in, by and for
would our every self be who we, you, see?

by ralph patrick mackay
march 9, 2012.

Cynically Up To Date: A Second Glance at Penguin Author Biographies

Older Penguin Books provide biographical information about the authors that tends towards erudition and concision with the occasional touch of panache. Some of them read like short entries to a Who's Who reference work. Even modern Penguins have very good biographical information. The inclusion of the author's interests and recreations as can be found in biographical reference works is interesting to read.

Raleigh Trevelyan's first book, The Fortress (Collins, 1956) was republished by Penguin Books in 1958 (No. 1263) and on the back cover beneath the author photograph and decent biographical content, it ends with the author's interests: "writing, Bristol glass, Etruscan pottery, indoor plants and photography, and he enjoys walking, travel, and underwater swimming." Such details provide enough to give the reader a sense of his home life, something to identify with as well such as the common pursuit of underwater swimming. (Well, maybe more the indoor plants.)

Edith Sitwell's Alexander Pope published by Penguin Books in 1948 (No. 636) provides a rather brief biography beneath her somewhat unusual appearance: "Edith Sitwell was born at Scarborough and is the sister of Sir Osbert Sitwell, Bart., and Sacheverell Sitwell. She was educated privately and her principal recreations are reading and thinking about poetry, listening to music and silence." (A true introvert I would think.)

The historian William C. Atkinson, the author of A History of Spain and Portugal, (Pelican, 1960) is provided with a rather odd biographical treatment: "William C. Atkinson is an Irishman--1902 vintage--who graduated through the universities of Belfast, Madrid and Durham to his present chair of Hispanic Studies at Glasgow. Having come, over the years, to know Spain and Portugal better than his homeland, he added Latin America to his parish and has thrice--1946, 1957, and 1960--made the grand tour of that Brave New World visiting every one of its twenty countries and lecturing in almost every university of note there." It ends with requisite list of the author's recreations: "his wife and four children, travel, tramping; on busman's holidays, book reviewing." (His life seemed one of great accomplishment and activity. Tramping, I think it is coming back into fashion.)

The irreverence at the beginning of a rather long biography of Aldous Huxley for his Crome Yellow, Penguin Books, 1961 (No.41) [orig. pub. 1921, Penguin Books 1936] is apt for the content and nature of the author's work: "The name of Aldous Huxley, which became known in the twenties, rapidly developed into a password for his generation. At cocktail parties, which were becoming fashionable in the same period, it was bandied about as if the mere mention of it were enough to show that one was brilliant, witty, and cynically up to date."

Just what people wanted, escape from the memories of the war that took so many lives. It wouldn't be till the late 1920s that people could begin to read about the war to any great extent. Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End which came out in the mid 1920s, was just a bit to early for the reading public. I imagine people were still "cynically up do date" as they looked back at the abyss of the recent past and lifted a glass to the void they felt around them. It makes me wonder where the popular television series Downton Abbey will go with their story lines as they face the 1920s. Will they venture into Huxley or Waugh territory? Will young people be quoting The Wasteland out of University dormitory windows and drinking to excess? Champagne, flappers and jazz? Hmm. Downton Abbey meets Brideshead Revisited?

Huxley missed out on the great war to end all wars due to very poor eyesight. The Penguin biography doesn't mention his early poetry collections which perhaps ironically have much to do with sight:

The Burning Wheel (1916), Jonah (1917), The Defeat of Youth and other Poems (1918) and Leda (1920).

From his first collection: Mole.

Like T. S. Eliot, Huxley was influenced by the French Symbolist poets; if Huxley had kept to poetry instead of prose, I wonder if he would have rivaled the American upstart? Would he have found his 'waste land' through his cynicism, satire, misanthropy and mysticism? Perhaps he did, eventually. Brave New World.

Vesicia Piscis Series

Presumably: A Glance at Penguin Author Biographies

Author biographies that are found on book covers or within books, are, one would think, matters of fact. Especially in this era when information can be so easily accessed, and triple checked, perhaps even with the author involved.

In looking at an early Penguin Books copy of a Graham Greene novel, it reveals that complete knowledge about authors was not as easily acquired in the past. There was room left for uncertainty. Perhaps even mystery.

In looking at my copy of Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear (New York: Penguin Books, 2nd printing January 1946 [1st Penguin US printing January 1944, and 1st edition hardcover Viking, 1943] ), the "about the author" on the back of the paperback drew my attention for a number of reasons. One, for the photograph of the author which looks like it was taken in the late 1920s, which would put the author at his mid to late twenties. At the time of this American paperback printing, Greene was 41 years of age. Secondly, the biographical description reveals a possibly less known fact for it refers to the initial American title The Labyrinthine Ways for his book The Power and the Glory. Thirdly, it refers to him as a gifted poet which adds a nuance of romance and literary beginnings. And finally it drew my attention for the penultimate sentence which reads:

After leaving Oxford he took up newspaper work, and by 1926 he was on the London Times, where he presumably remains today.

Presumably. That seems so fresh and laissez-faire. The hint of uncertainty leaves room for the imagination to stretch possibilities. (One can almost imagine the editor asking the copywriter if he knew if Greene was still with the Times, and saying, well, put in "presumably," that should cover us, we have a deadline after all....) Gone are the days of the "presumably" it seems. (Though that may be presumptuous of me considering authors like Thomas Pynchon and authors in extremis.)

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

This "presumably" sentence has had me looking more intently at other "about the author" features and they can be interesting. Some of the descriptions are amusing. I thought I would provide a few as examples. Penguin copywriters seem quite adept. Often with a hint of subtext.

Margery Allingham took to writing naturally; in her family no other occupation was considered natural or indeed sane. (Sweet Danger, Penguin Books, 1971.)

Jocelyn Brooke was born in 1908 on the south coast and took to the educational process with reluctance. He contrived to run away from public school twice within a fortnight, but then settled, to his own mild surprize, at Bedales before going to Worcester College, Oxford, where his career as an undergraduate was unspectacular. (The Orchid Trilogy, Penguin Books, 1981.)

Nicolas Freeling was born in London in 1927 and spent his childhood in France. Before taking up writing he worked for many years in hotels and restaurants, and from their back doors got to know a good deal of Europe. (Love in Amsterdam, Penguin Books, 1975.)

John Wyndham was born in 1903. Until 19011 he lived in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then in many parts of England. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he was at Bedales from 1918-1921. Careers he tried included farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and he first started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1923. . . In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the U. S. A. and decided to try a modified form of what is unhappily known as 'science fiction.' (Consider Her Ways and Others, Penguin Books, 1979.)

Nina Epton was born in London of a Scottish father and a Spanish mother. Brought up on self-control and hockey in England. . . . (Love and the Spanish, Penguin Books, 1964.)

Alfred Douglas was born in England in 1942. Inspired by his family's interest in arcane tradition, he began to study occult symbolism when he was still very young. . . Douglas divides his time between an apartment in London and a house in Whitby, where Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, on the rugged coast of the Yorkshire moors. (The Tarot, Penguin Books, 1979.)

The illegitimate son of an itinerant astrologer, Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. He grew up on the waterfront and was soon a heavy drinker, a fighter, and an outlaw as well as a voracious reader of books from the public library. (The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., Penguin Books, 1978.)