Haunts of the Black Masseur

I recently read an autobiography by Jeremy Lewis called Kindred Spirits: Adrift in Literary London (Harper Collins, 1995), chronicling his adventures in London's publishing world of the 1970s and 1980s, a landscape that has since been transformed by mergers and takeovers, so that most if not all the small publishers he worked for are now defunct or part of huge corporate conglomerates.  

It's very readable and offers an insight into a closed world, dominated by an Oxbridge and public school intake - there are many comparisons to various publishers' offices resembling prep schools. It's also quite amusing, although the self-deprecation gets a bit wearying after a while. It introduced me to some new names and books, the most interesting sounding being Haunts of the Black Masseur (1992) which I am currently reading. It was written by a good friend of Lewis, Charles Sprawson, who he accompanies on some of his swimming expeditions around Europe, attempting to discover the sites of ancient springs mentioned in classical literature, often to find polluted horrors or tourist travesties. 

Sprawson's book is recommended: a chronicle of swimmers through literature and history, again revealing the dominance of the public-school educated writers who wished to relive the epic feats of Leander and other classical natators; Byron naturally features heavily. From my present perspective it's a model for how to write about a single subject without becoming too repetitive and boring - Sprawson must have had a large file of quotations gleaned from prodigious reading, before the days of Google. A number of figures familiar from this blog put in appearances - there is a substantial section on Fr Rolfe/Baron Corvo for example - as well as Percy Shelley, Rupert Brooke, Goethe, George Borrow and many others. Swimming also provides a plethora of useful metaphors and analogies for writers, which Sprawson beautifully illuminates.  

Much of the swimming described takes place in lakes, rivers and the sea, what would be called 'wild swimming' today and a lot of it during the winter months, which has recently regained popularity. A few years ago I read Roger Deakin's wonderful Waterlog, which I believe encouraged many people to swim in less frequented places. After years of never swimming, and persuaded by my wife, I started to swim in lakes when we were on holiday in Switzerland and France, the reedy and fast-flowing Rhein at Stein-am Rhein and other less frequented spots. I still find swimming is helpful for the various aches and pains of middle age and we try to swim in the nearby sea, although recent discharges of sewage into the English Channel by Southern Water are discouraging. I think it unlikely that I'll ever swim in the Hastings sea in the winter.   

A review here.

Sprawson's obituary can be found here.

Jeremy Lewis is also sadly no longer with us, an obituary here.

Strychnine

 

One of the books I took along to read in our Devon holiday cottage last week was In Love With Hell by William Palmer, a series of short biographies of modern writers who were very heavy drinkers or alcoholics. The usual suspects are present and correct: Patrick Hamilton, John Cheever, Dylan Thomas, Kingsley Amis  etc. The chapter on Malcolm Lowry (see earlier post) contained some information that shed light on a passage that I often include in my talks on Decadent London.

In a letter from July 1894 dipsomaniac decadent poet Ernest Dowson wrote about a journey to alcoholic oblivion with his friend the actor Charles Goodhart: 

'Goodie and I met in the evening, he had a charming man with him, a twenty-ton opium eater, who had run away with his cousin and is now to marry her. We met at 7 and consumed 4 absinthes apiece in the Cock till 9 [in Shaftesbury Avenue - demolished]. We then went and ate some kidneys- after which two absinthes apiece at the Crown [now a KFC in Charing Cross Road]. After which, one absinthe apiece at Goodie's club. Total 7 absinthes. These had seriously affected us - but made little impression on the opium eater. He took us back to the Temple in a cab. This morning Goodie and I were twitching visibly. I feel rather indisposed; and in fact we decided that our grief is now sufficiently drowned, and we must spend a few days on nothing stronger than lemonade and strychnine.'

I had assumed the 'lemonade and strychnine' was a joke, but it turns out that 'suitably diluted, strychnine was in the past given as a stimulant to patients suffering from the palsy from lead poisoning, beriberi, and the shakes induced by alcoholism' [William Palmer, In Love With Hell: Drink in the Lives and Work of Eleven Writers p.82] In Lowry's masterpiece Under The Volcano, based on one day, the Consul's breakfast consists of a bottle half-full of Johnny Walker and a glass of strychnine mixture. Later he mistakenly takes a second draft of the strychnine mixture and passes out. Needless to say, don't try this at home. 

For a scientific overview see here.

Also immortalised in 1965 by The Sonics (and later covered by The Fall) here

'Some folks Like water, Some folks like wine, but I like the taste, of straight strychnine.'

 

To Keep the Ball Rolling

Almost all copies of Netherwood, Secret Tunnels of England and Decadent London have now sold and decisions will have to made about any future Accumulator Press projects or reprints in the light of our 'cost of living crisis' - what a damning phrase that is.

I'm much more aware of my general health these days and don't want to take on a great deal of work. Having said that I'm still working on what I hope will be another non-fiction book, Gothic in nature, that will be published next year and I may do various talks and walks, but probably not till 2023. To promote the book I am planning an event that will feature a talk from me, films and live music, I hope an improvised soundtrack to a silent film (I've been checking out some musicians for this) to be held in quite a large venue in St Leonards. 

On the music front the following are lined up:

Hatis Noit   Church of St John Bethnal Green, London 25 August

Alabaster DePlume   Marina Fountain, St Leonards 15 September (not sure about this one)

Steve Hackett   De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 17 September - 50 years since Foxtrot was released

The Bug Club   The Piper St Leonards 29 October   

Emma Rawicz Quintet   Hastings Jazz Club 6 December. A star-studded band assembled.

In Brighton on Sunday 21 August there will be various celebrations marking the 150th birthday of the great Aubrey Beardsley. I hope to be there in the afternoon and evening and may check out the bar called The Yellow Book.

See here.

The Bloodhound

For research purposes I've been watching a lot of films in recent months - mostly horror. Some have been very bad indeed, but one that stood out as original and aesthetically pleasing was The Bloodhound, directed by Patrick Picard. It's apt that a film about loneliness and isolation should have been released in 2020 mid-pandemic. It is loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' but updated for the 21st century, even though the story eschews modern technology such as laptops and mobile phones. 

I like the fact that the house is not a creepy Gothic pile but a modernist 1930s home with restricted space that adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere - the film almost never ventures outside. This is the actual house they used, the Neutra VDL in Los Angeles.

The acting is impressive in a stylised artificial way, especially the weird looking Joe Adler as Jean Paul Luret (an allusion to Jean Paul Sartre's Huit Clos?) self-exiled in a timeless present. Essentially the film is a two-hander with JP and his old friend Francis. Lurking in a closet is a creature called the Bloodhound which to the film's advantage is never properly seen or confronted - my theory is that it's a tulpa created by JP.

A cool modernist aesthetic pervades the cinematography, composition and art direction with nods to David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick.

It will be interesting to see what Patrick Picard does next - this was his first full length film (only 72 minutes).

The Bloodhound is available through Arrow Films on Blu-ray or streaming.

An interview with the writer and director here

I've written quite a long piece about it that will surface eventually, but here are some links to online reviews.  

Variety here

Austin Chronicle here

Elements of Madness here

Aleister Crowley Talk at Electro Studios

 

As part of the Silverhill Press Presents events on 21 May I shall be promoting Accumulator Press and giving a short presentation on the book Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley.

The few remaining Accumulator Press books that I have will be on sale: Decadent London, Netherwood, Secret Tunnels of England and there will be the opportunity to crowdfund/pre-order my next book Mansion of Gloom.

Accumulator Press on Big Cartel here

Electro Studios St Leonards on Sea 11-7.

The illustrated Crowley at Netherwood talk will begin at 1pm 

A Talk in St Leonards on Aleister Crowley at Netherwood

 

Small Press Fair in St Leonards

 

I shall be representing Accumulator Press at a small press publishing event in St Leonards on Saturday 21 May 2022, organised by Silverhill Press.

It will take place at Electro Studios.

Arrangements are still being made, but it looks as if I will have a stand/table and will be giving a talk at some point about Netherwood. There will also be talks, music and poetry during the day from other publishers.

I imagine it will be free - more details when I get them.

Whistler Talk March 2022

I have agreed to do an online talk about Whistler, which will go out on the evening of Tuesday 15 March.

Details here.

It's free to book and over 300 people have already made a reservation.

I also hope to sell some copies of Decadent London via Big Cartel and eBay on the night.

Above photos from a recent exhibition of recreations of famous paintings including Whistler's Mother by ethical taxidermists Field and Young. More details on them here.

Back in Action

It's time that I returned to this blog, now that I'm feeling better - not 100% but enough to get out and about and do stuff. Obviously COVID has also had a big effect on limiting the boundaries of life.

I've been working for some months on a new book - more in due course. I hope to publish it later this year.

I've been able to keep the Accumulator Press sales going, although Netherwood is out of print and there are only around 30 copies of Decadent London left. I'm hoping to have a stall at a small press fair that has been planned for St Leonards in the spring. News to come.

There may also be some talks - in person and online and maybe one or two walks, if I feel up to it.

There's a lot of catching up to do. I had plenty of time to read a great deal and watch many films (partly as research for the book).

From late autumn I felt well enough to go back to live concerts:

11 September 2021  The Catenary Wires The Piper, St Leonards see here

9 October Steve Hackett Genesis Revisited De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 

31 October  The Nightingales Con Club, Lewes here

21 November Hedwig Mollstad Trio Cafe Oto, Hackney see here

24 November 2021 Black Midi Chalk Brighton see here

Coming Up in 2022

22 January  Porridge Radio  Marina Fountain St Leonards here

1 March   Hastings Fat Tuesday

5 March   Henge The Piper St Leonards here 

27 March  Gong The Forum Tunbridge Wells here 

16 April  Sparks De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill here 

29 April - 2 May Hastings Jack in the Green here

Layer Marney and Catacleuse

I haven't been posting much this year, as an illness (not Covid), diagnosed in January, has tended to affect my energy levels - hopefully things should be better in a couple of months time when treatment has finished. I have plans for events next year and I've recently started work on what may turn into a new book.

Despite the paucity of new postings, I see that this week the number of total views exceeded 250,000 and there are plenty of other posts to read.

We recently enjoyed a short break in Maldon, Essex, a pretty town, well situated for visiting local sights, one of which was the beautiful church of St Mary the Virgin, Layer Marney. Inside I was impressed by the tomb effigies of the Marney family, but had a problem identifying the unusual stone from which they had been carved. As always, Alec Clifton-Taylor came to my rescue on page 156 of his excellent and comprehensive The Pattern of English Building, an indispensable guide to the building materials: 

 'Akin to dolerite, and another member of the group of rocks loosely termed greenstone, is catacleuse, a rare material deriving its name from the only place where it occurs, Cataclew Point, west of Padstow (so perhaps originally Cataclew's stone?). This can also look greenish in some lights, but normally it is almost black, slightly mottled, and with many spangles of a dark material known as augite. Since it is of finer grain and not as hard as most of the basic igneous rocks, it can be tooled and even carved, as can be seen, surprisingly enough, in the effigies of the first Lord Marney (d.1523) and his son (d.1525) at Layer Marney in Essex. The explanation is that Lady Marney came from Mawgan-in-Pydar, a few miles south of Padstow. It was also chosen for the fine effigy of Prior Vyvyan (d.1533) at Bodmin. As a building stone it is best seen in the church closest to the quarry, St Merryn, and was used for the font and much of the window-tracery at Padstow.'