Underground Folklore Talk Rescheduled

It is with great regret that, following medical advice, I have had to reschedule the talk on Underground Folklore of England due to take place this Thursday 27 February at Kensington Central Library. It will now take place the following Thursday 5 March. See here. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this will cause to those who were booked.

One good thing about this is that 5 March is St Piran's day. St Piran is the patron saint of tin miners and the legend of St Piran and some of the beliefs and superstitions of the Cornish tin miners will be covered in the talk.

Decadent London News

News about the revised and expanded edition of Decadent London.

It's now stocked by the following bookshops:

Treadwells

Watkins

Gay's The Word

The Brick Lane Bookshop

Tate Britain will be stocking Decadent London in their bookshop. As there is a major Aubrey Beardsley exhibition about to open this is wonderful news and I would hope that sales will be good if the book is prominently displayed.

It's the largest exhibition of Aubrey Beardsley drawings for 50 years and runs from 4 March to 25 May.  As well as his own distinctive works the exhibition includes artworks that were important inspirations for him including those by Edward Burne-Jones and Gustave Moreau.

More about the Beardsley show here.

I'm doing some talks about Decadent London:

Thursday 20 February   Treadwells Bookshop here

Thursday 9 April City of Westminster Archives Centre (details to follow)

Also a non-decadent talk about underground folklore of England

Thursday 27 February Kensington Central Library here (part of Fantasy February)

Netherwood and Night Tide

Finally managed to get round to buying a copy of Netherwood by Stephen Volk - it's the last part of  The Dark Masters Trilogy of novels. It's a strange experience reading it, as I can see how much background material has been used from Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley. The author remains very faithful to much of the detail about the house and characters such as Vernon Symons, while introducing a sinister villain of his own invention. It should also be said that Dennis Wheatley had met Crowley, but never visited him at Netherwood. Very flattering really and I have to thank the person who alerted me to it at my Treadwells talk last year.

In the acknowledgements in the back Stephen Volk thanks me and my co authors for the book, which he bought from a 'dingy' bookshop (I know the one) in Hastings Old Town on a research trip. It's great to know that some of one's work is inspiring or being used by other writers, artists and musicians. I know that a play has been written about Netherwood (not sure if it has ever been performed) and it has been used in the work of Gareth E Rees. Subterranean city has been an inspiration for a number of artists including Stephen Walter (see here), fiction writers and a dancer.

Also this week I watched a newly reissued film called Night Tide (1961) starring a young and handsome Dennis Hopper. See here. Once more a Crowley connection that I hadn't been aware of when I bought it. Director Curtis Harrington was a friend of Kenneth Anger and appeared in his film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), together with Marjorie Cameron about whom he later made a film called Wormwood Star (1956). See here. She also appears in Night Tide. Harrington was obviously mixing in the LA occult circles chronicled in The Unknown God; apparently he financed his final short film Usher by selling a signed Crowley book he owned. He was obsessed with the work of Edgar Allen Poe and it's interesting that a version of The Fall of the House of Usher was made at Netherwood by George Ivan Barnett during the time that Crowley was living there (see previous posts).

Cameron (she was often known just by her surname) had been the lover of Jack Parsons  and the sex magic partner for his infamous Moonchild operation, about which Crowley wrote to Karl Germer: 'Apparently Parsons, or [L Ron] Hubbard, or somebody is producing a Moonchild ... I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these goats.' To Parsons Crowley wrote 'I cannot form the slightest idea of what you can possibly mean.'

I haven't seen the American television series about Parsons called Strange Angel (some episodes were directed by Ben Wheatley). As it was cancelled after season 2, maybe it will emerge on DVD.

Incidentally, Crowley still manages to generate shock horror headlines over 70 years after his death - see this Daily Mail article from this week.

Publishing Projects

One day I'm going to write a long post about the pros and cons of setting yourself up as a publisher and being a modestly successful writer who has to have a 'proper' job to survive.

But, for now, briefly, what I wanted to say was that if any (larger) publisher out there is interested in bringing out the third revised edition of Subterranean City then please get in touch or leave a comment.

Last year I tried two mainstream publishers - one commissioning editor was very keen until the bean counters got involved and that was that. The whole process of dealing with just two publishers served to remind me of the benefits of being one's own publisher - it does save a massive amount of waiting around, frustration and disappointment. It's not something I intend to do for months at a time this year, so if anyone is interested they can contact me. I've already been engaged on the updating and revision process since Christmas.

I'm perfectly prepared to publish it through Accumulator Press, but it has to be said that the distribution and publicity (the biggest problems for a small press) available to a large established publisher would hugely benefit sales of a book of this type - as it did in the past, when it was selling thousands of copies each year. The subject is still of great interest and since Subterranean City was first published a small industry of books on underground London has flourished.

The rights to all my early books have reverted to me, so I am free to do what I like with them - I've already published a new edition of Decadent London for example (about which I may soon have some exciting - for me - news). I would also like, when funds allow, to publish the work of other non-fiction writers.

I shall update on any developments ...

Ghostland

Just finished reading Ghostland, In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell (William Collins, 2019) a psychogeographic journey around the country seeking out the places where various classic ghost stories were set, or places associated with the authors' lives.

All the usual suspects are present and correct: James (M R), Blackwood, Machen, Aickman, E F Benson, Walter De La Mare etc. The book also covers the recently fashionable 'folk horror' genre and the classics - many of them mentioned in posts on this blog - Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man, The Owl Service and Penda's Fen. While I had read or seen most of them, there are a number of ghostly novels and short stories I wasn't familiar with, some of which I shall now seek out. For example I'm now reading Nine Ghosts by RH Malden who is considered one of the better MR James imitators. See here.

The book's most obvious debt is to W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn (which supplies the book's main epigraph - the layout of text and pictures is very similar). Obviously, that's a hard act to follow and it's interesting that Parnell tests out some of Sebald's text by revisiting locations and finds much of it more fictionalised than he (and I) had imagined. He also gets down to Cornwall and visits the area around Zennor associated with Crowley and the 'mysterious' death of Katherine Arnold-Foster that I wrote about in recent blog posts. Ghostland is also a meditation on illness, loss, grieving and memory - the journeys were undertaken as a form of nostalgia for the author's boyhood and places visited on family holidays.

I really enjoyed reading it and you might do too. A review from the TLS here.


It's also worth mentioning a recently-uploaded large archive of 'occult' recordings freely available here that also includes recordings of Aleister Crowley and the perennially disturbing Enfield Poltergeist.

Netherwood and Father Divine

Watching the recent harrowing BBC4 documentaries on Jonestown (I remember buying a cassette of the 'Jonestown  Death Tape' from a street vendor in New York many years ago), reminded me of my interest in younger days in religious cults and charismatic cult leaders (Anthony Storr's Feet of Clay is an excellent introduction) - of course Crowley also fits perfectly into this category.

It also brought to mind an episode in the history of Netherwood before the arrival of the Great Beast, that I discovered by laborious wading through microfilm editions of The Hastings & St Leonards Observer (it wasn't digitised until after the first edition of Netherwood was published).

Netherwood under the ownership of Vernon and 'Johnnie' Symonds played host to a series of radical, stimulating and varied events that drew famous speakers and enthusiastic audiences to the Hastings guest house. In January 1939 The Daily Mirror proclaimed that Netherwood was to host: 'Europe's first "Extension Heaven" according to the style of America's Father Divine, the negro who calls himself "God"'.

Father Divine (c1876-1965), probably born George Baker - his early life is shrouded in mystery, he later called himself Reverend Major Jealous Divine - was a charismatic African American spiritual leader who from around 1912 claimed he was God. He built up a significant following amongst African Americans (around 25% of his followers were white) and from 1932 to 1942 was based in Harlem, New York.

Disciples purchased several hotels there, which became known as 'Heavens', where followers could live cheaply and practice his teachings; other local businesses were also bought up - further 'Extension Heavens' were soon established elsewhere. Dogged by controversy and scandal (much of it no doubt racist-inspired), Father Divine relocated to Pennsylvania, where his following and health gradually declined, although he continued to preach in favour of certain civil rights and against bigotry. He died in 1965 and was succeeded by Mother Divine (his Canadian wife Edna Rose Ritchings (c1925-2017). An obituary of Mother Divine here.

Feastings and lavish banquets were part of Father Divine's form of worship and celebration and it was this aspect of a 'Heaven' that was to be emulated at the Netherwood gathering, together with 'all night dancing and singing'. There's a very useful article about the Father Divine and the feasts here.

The 'rally of Father Divine's English disciples' centred around a Mrs Joyce Newton from Fulham who, having spent two weeks in Harlem, returned converted to the doctrine of Father Divine - her husband and three sons were also followers.

In the article Vernon Symonds is quoted as telling the Mirror reporter: 'that there must be something in the doctrine that has attracted so many people black and white' and had therefore, 'agreed to make his home the starting point of a national campaign'. He added 'I have no financial interests in the venture, but believe that these well-meaning people should be given a chance to make their faith known in England.' On the evening of 4 February 1939 around 40 people were to arrive at Netherwood, where 'disciples of Father Divine will mingle with those who want to learn something of the new religion.'

A few days before the event was due to take place the Hastings & St Leonards Observer carried an article with the headline 'Father Divine Party -"Misleading" Newspaper Publicity' in which Vernon Symons commented: 'The statements alleged to have been made by me to newspaper correspondents over the weekend are completely fictitious and should be disregarded.' He explained: 'I do not know anything about the teaching of Father Divine. From what I have been able to gather from the popular press, I imagine I shall have little sympathy for his message, but I am anxious to know all I can about any movement that achieves wide publicity.'

Despite the fact that Vernon's political and religious views would probably have made him sympathetic to Father Divine's cause, the event was cancelled, owing to the 'very unpleasant publicity' (his words) it had received in advance; Vernon Symonds had no plans to rearrange it.