Ronald Firbank's Magical Fantasies - Part Deux
Aug 09 '02 (Updated Sep 02 '02)
The Bottom Line My whole premise in writing this piece was to get into describing the Firbank stories, so for all of Part One, I thank Brigid Brophy for her defense of fiction,
I'm placing this review in the "Writer's Corner Non-Fiction" section because I can't add a second part to the last review I wrote. If this is a problem for you, I'm sorry and you will just have to deal with it!
The Firbank books are listed in order of publication with additional comments made by Brigid Brophy and a few by yours truly. For those of you who might think I’m pulling a fast one by reviewing all these books in one review, you’re wrong again!They were all included in Brophy’s book Prancing Novelist: In Praise of Ronald Firbank.
Anyone who is possibly considering looking for a Firbank novel on one of the rare and out of print sites, be forewarned - they ain’t cheap. I’ve included a few prices - the more outrageous ones! If you have one and think it’s not worth anything, read on!
Odette D’ Antrevernes, A Fairy Tale For Weary People. - 1905.
This book was dedicated to his mother, Lady Firbank, and is only five and-a-half pages long. Ronald published it in large format similar to the size and shape that Oscar Wilde used. I saw a copy of it for sale on the Internet for anywhere from $244 to $741, so if you should find a copy lying around the attic of your home don’t say. “Oh, this old thing,” and toss it.
The story is about a precocious little girl (probably an imaginary self-portrait) who lives in an imaginary castle. One night, after listening to her Creole nurse and the servants talk of saints, Odette decides she wants to have a vision of the Virgin, like the one little Bernadette had.
One misty evening she leaves the garden and walks to the river where she finds a woman “with painted cheeks and flaming hair” (actually a prostitute) who is about to drown herself. The woman thinks she has seen an angel. Odette tells her that the Virgin has sent her to save her and gives the woman her silver cross. The woman takes it and goes off to find “honest work.” Odette leaves feeling somehow changed since she passed the castle gates.
I mean wow, wouldn’t you? Talk about daydreams. The language is extremely flowery and overly descriptive, but there’s a prelude to the kind of writing this man will produce.
Vainglory. 1915
This story uses the famous Sappho fragment in the London setting and then switches to the countrified setting of Euston, the fictional cathedral city of Ashringford. Firbank’s story depicts the life story of Mrs. Cresswell an Anchoress of the church. (I saw copies of this book available on the Internet for anywhere from $59 to $478).
In the opening London scene Lady Georgia Blueharnis and Mrs. Henedge (the widow of the Bishop of Ashringford) discuss a forthcoming wedding. Lady B. informs her friend, “I don’t know what I shall wear yet. But it will be very plain.” To which Mrs, H. replies, “the cake . . . is to be an exact replica of the Victoria Memorial.” If that doesn’t set you up for some Firbankian high camp, nothing does. Among the furnishings are a painting of Lady Georgia by Renior, Persian miniatures, Flemish tapestries, a Stations of the Cross by Tiepolo and Oriental cushions. It’s too much in every respect.
Another character, Mrs Cresswell, has saintly aspirations and her friend, Mrs. Shamefoot, does the unheard of by having a stained glass window installed for the not quite canonized saint. Even the young men of the town seem quite struck by it and kneel. It’s all quite magical and fulfills the requisite “daydream” qualification Brophy mentions for fiction.
Here, I learned that Firbank made a characterization of Rupert Brooke and Winston Churchill by conjuring up a character named Winsome Brookes, a pianist and composer with “the most bewitching hair.” Brophy says that this portrait is not “pressed from sour grapes. . . . Firbank is not expressing envy of Rupert Brooke but overcoming it.” Winsome is given one of Firbank’s most comic characterizations, a concern for his diet through the concern for his figure. The send-up is of Rupert and Ronald.
Inclinations. 1916
The story opens in Ireland with biographer Gerald(ine) O’Brookomore planning to travel to Greece to write about a woman she admires named Mrs. Kettler . . . she says she will walk in her footsteps. She is also taking Mable Collins along. Gerald(ine) is a lesbian and she is planning to seduce Mable Collins. This novel introduces the first mention of Firbank’s many Negro characters; a Negress that Gerald refers to as a Gaugin. I think that Ronald has his East and West Indies screwed up.
Mable is 16. Mable says she wants to l-i-v-e! She meets a Senior Oio Pastorelli and between Oio and Gerald, the famous Chapter XX, consisting of Mable’s name being repeated eight times and it leaves everything up to your imagination. That’s it kiddo! I have a distinct feeling I didn’t even know what Firbank was getting at when I first read this one. Maybe I still don’t. Brophy hints a Gerald’s anguish. I thought it was passion.
In the next chapter (also one page) Mable (now Mabina or Mabs) sends Gerald a wire telling her she has run away to Athens and married Oio. She then returns to Ireland with her husband, who spends most of his time in bed. She spends the rest of this pastoral novel taking care of her child. Gerald is off to Tibet to make another conquest.
Caprice. 1917
This book picks up Firbank's theatrical thread from Valmouth. Only given two words: “intensely interesting” by one London reviewer, this novel takes Miss Sinquier into the theater where she plays out the role of Juliet. In the course of playing the role of Juliet, Miss Sinquier gets killed at the end of the story by a mousetrap. As with many of Firbank’s novels this one has no particular plot except Firbank's actress-motif, and is a vehicle for the author’s fanciful descriptions of the places he visited and the people he observed.
Valmouth 1919
Called romantic by the author, this novel was produced as a play in New York by Sandy Wilson (The Boyfriend) in 1958-59. It introduces another of Firbank’s famous and flamboyant Negress characters: Madam Yajñavalkya, an exile at the English seaside health-resort of Valmouth, where the accent is on longevity.
The characters are of inestimable age; Mrs Hurstpierpoint has had a portrait painted by Ingres. Mrs. Yaj is a masseuse. She not only speaks French, she also speaks in Firbank’s invented exotic patois. Brophy says that Mrs. Yaj is “the whole extra-European spectrum of exotic color.”
This is a portrait of “royalty down on its luck.” Mrs. Hurstpierpoint seeks comfort from her collection of sacred relics during a thunderstorm. Her maid asks if she wants “the toe of the sister of the Virgin, the one who ran a restaurant?” Firbank displays his penchant for splendid names when the Mayor reads out “Congratulations . . . Peggy Laughter, Ann and Zillah Bottom, Almeria Goatpath, Thisbe Brownjohn . . .” and on to a classier catalogue of names: “Sir Wroth and Lady Cleobulina Summer-Leyton, Sir Victor Vatt, and Master Xavier Tanoski.”
The great centerpiece of this novel is the wedding of Niri-Esther, the child-niece of Mrs Yaj. Her Naval-officer bridegroom stands her up because “he preferred the affections of a junior-brother-officer.” He describes his middy-chum as “to me, what Patroclus was to Achilles, and even more. At the end of the story the bride, still in her bridal gown, with her bouquet of Malmaison Roses and Vanessa-violets runs into the garden in pursuit of . . . a butterfly! This delightful book runs $563 at the highest price.
Santal 1921
This tale is transposed from the story of Odette. Even the prostitution motif is changed to “Ibn Ibrahim who, rumor had it, had amassed great wealth in the traffic of handsome youths.” Firbank wrote to his mother, “I want to rewrite Odette in an Arab setting--a child seeking Allah.” Here Firbank’s favorite saint/prophet is translated into the mental furnishings of Mohammedanism, not Firbank’s own Catholicism. You can pick up a copy for around $267.
He named the story after a perfume of the East, with an odor composed of sandalwood. Brophy says “he borrowed from and Arabized Colette’s Chéri.” The orphaned North-African Mohammedan boy, Cherif, is “prompted by his aunt’s blood lust to leave his foster home and enter what becomes a limitless quest of a hermit known only to him by pious hearsay and ‘thought by some even to be the Prophet himself.’ “
No Firbankian novel has been more snubbed than this one. Brophy says that some Firbankian readers are probably unable to recognize his world in its North African trappings, thereby making the mistake of believing that Firbank’s world was observed rather than imagined.
The Flower Beneath the Foot, Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi and the Times in which She Lived 1923
I couldn’t resist putting in some of Firbank’s own words here. This was published in a facsimile of his own handwriting in Brentano’s 1924 edition. “I suppose The Flower Beneath the Foot is really Oriental in origin, although the scene is some imaginary Vienna. . . . One evening (or it may have been early morning) just as the lights were being extinguished . . . a woman, almost assuredly an American, sailed unconcernedly in, & sank down with a charming composure at a table not far from mine & to myself I murmured: ‘her Dreaminess, the Queen!’ ”
After describing more of the same, he stoped writing his novel of Islam (Santal) and turned his thoughts to Vienna and the “formation of my Flower, which really is as much a country-buttercup as a catalya orchid!” Now, that tells you as much as I could about the whole life of Laura de Nazianzi, “who lived a death in life caged in a convent. . . . Laura’s chastity is the chastity of the flowers in their pots.” This book is in the $350 range.
Prancing Ni*ger 1924
This book was originally titled Sorrow in Sunlight. Copies of it run up to $274. Firbank described the book as “a little bit like a Gaugin painting, primitive and extremely gay! . . .” The locale is an imaginary Cuba, and focuses on a family named Mouth. The parents, son and two daughters are presented lined up in a row, like a family in a painting by a child.”
The Epinions BadWordFilter has spotted Firbank’s use of the forbidden “N” word. Actually, we can blame his American friend Carl Van Vechten who changed th title when it was published in America. Van Vechten picked this usually contemptuous phrase from among Firbank’s invented patios. In the novel there is a scene where it is “spoken by wife to husband, Negro to Negro.” In 1924-25 there was talk of George Gershwin’s musical version of this novel, but that came to nothing.
(Two years later Carl Van Vechten published his own novel of Harlem, titled Ni*ger Heaven. Van Vechten was a bisexual writer and a photographer who championed black artistic causes in the United States. He was very involved in the production of Gertrude Stein’s black opera Four Saints in Three Acts, mentioned in my review of Frederic Ashton. A review of Van Vechten and his life is forthcoming.)
The dialogue is unreal and I give you a sample as Mrs. Miami Mouth explains why she has taken off her sole garment, an apron of ivy leaves, to “get rid ob de skeeter-bugs dair are ‘bout dis ebenin’. . . . De begonias in de window-boxes most lik’ly draws dem.” Brophy tells us that “Prancing Ni*ger is an extended ironic play on the antithesis of black and white. . . . the idiom is enriched by a strain of pidgin or piccaninny English.”
The Mouths leave their paradise in Mediavilla and go to Cuna-Cuna, where they are amazed and corrupted by its sophistications. The book’s grand cataclysm, an earthquake coincided with the death of Lady Firbank, his mother, and the problems he had in getting the book published in London. It’s a charming idiomatic read by an author who was not constrained by political correctness.
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. 1926
The Duquesa DunEden’s dog is baptized and pees on the Cardinals vestments. Don Alvaro, the Cardinal dies (stark naked) in church while chasing an altar boy. A widow who has been in a confessional sees all and drapes her prayer beads over him “in order that he be less covered. As she leaves she says, “It’s wonderful what us bits of women do with a string of beads, but they don’t go far with a gentleman.” It’s all decadent and delicious and a great big camp! A copy will cost you upwards of $184.
(NOTE: How I would have loved to review this one during the recent Roman Catholic child abuse fracas).
The Artificial Princess 1934
This novel was written early in his career. Firbank put it away at his mother’s home and only rediscovered it after she died. It was published eight years after his death. Brophy tells us that by naming his heroine “The Artificial Princess,” he has proclaimed himself as Princess Artie. His parents called him Artie, and he probably put the story away for that reason. It was only after his mother’s death that he allowed himself to be reminded of the book’s existence. You might find a copy for around $525.
This is another of his Oscar Wilde tributes and is the story of Salomé. In this incestuous novel, the king (her father and the Herod part) married her mother (his sister and the Herodius part) and has promised the Princess anything she wished after she had dessert. The princess attempts to complete the Salomé pattern by meeting a supposedly saintly prophet.
The Baroness Rudlieb, one of Firbank’s first, and most famous, black characters is sent on an errand with a message to the supposed saint. During the passages of her “love errand” for the princess, Firbank injects surrealistic images of the Devil, “disguised as a sleek black crow.”
After riding on a number of color-coded trolleys (which Firbank took from the different colors of trolley tickets) she is waylaid by her lover Max, and the message never gets delivered. while on the trolley, the Baroness sees some schoolgirls passing by and pictures them with angels and devils flying above their heads. She also sees the Queen flash by in her motor in a blur of diamonds and pearls.
She returns to the palace where the Mistress of the Robes dances instead of the Princess. The Princess has already done a private Tarantella before her mirror wearing nothing but a bracelet and a rope of pearls. At the end we find out that the Princess has met the wrong man and doesn’t know it.
New Rythum and Other Pieces 1962
One of the main characters in his unfinished novel is a Mrs. Rosemerchant, whose name indicates Firbank’s passion for flowers. Brophy says that if Firbank had lived to finish this tale it is just possible he would have enlarged Mrs. R.’s love of Sappho into a serious relationship with Heliodora, a winner of a beauty-prize who also has a flower-like name.
In one scene Mr. Rosemerchant goes to his wife’s room where he finds his wife his wife with Heliodora. Mrs. R. refuses to send her away saying, “She is sleeping dear, tonight with me.” Mrs. R. and her young American friend disappear and cause a profound sensation. Rumors reach New York that they had been seen together in Paris or Egypt. Many believed Mr. R. had murdered them.
Firbank began to write this novel about New York (which he never saw) in Egypt. It’s a shame it was never finished, but when I found it at the New York Public library, I read it immediately . . . twice, then and there.
As far as reading these books, you’d be better off to check out your larger city’s public library. And aside from the books listed below, you should be able to find copies of all the individual books, too.
Ronald Firbank, A Memoir (1930)
By Ifan Kyrle Fletcher - about $238 and over
Ronald Firbank, A Biography (1969)
By Miriam J. Benkovitz - $58
The Complete Ronald Firbank (1961)
Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd. London - $22 and up.
© Ed Grover 2002
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