Wentworth Day at Borley

Another character who has appeared in these pages before was also briefly involved with Borley Rectory.  For insight into the true nature of this ardent patriot, sportsman and naturalist with a 'love of old houses and old traditions' see this interview by our friend Dan Farson.  Maybe it should be shown on one of those current tv shows where stand-up comedians sit smugly open-mouthed at the appalling nature of much of the old telly, although it's probably too offensive even for that.  Wentworth Day's prose is almost beyond parody, for example the chapter from which this extract is taken begins:

'There died on Monday, March 9th, 1936, an old friend whom I mourn.  He was a man unique - the best storyteller and the best cricketer, one of the best shots and, after Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart [who he?], the most picturesque soldier of his world and time - Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Foley.'  [Here are] Ghosts and Witches p.58  

Here is his experience at Borley (pp.70-71):

'I spent a night under a harvest moon of 1939 in Borley Rectory, which is on the Suffolk-Essex border.  It is they say "the most haunted house in England".  The late Mr Harry Price, who was the Honorary Secretary of the Psychical Research Society [no he wasn't], wrote a book about it under that title.  They will tell you that an uneasy spirit throws things about in the rectory.  Doors open and shut.  Footsteps ring where no feet walk.  Bloody fingermarks appear, suddenly, on the dining-room walls, oozing blood. [I've read a lot about Borley this year and I've not come across a single report of this phenomenon.]  And there are one or two lighter sides.
Some years ago Borley Rectory was burnt out.
I went into the roofless room, taking a friend and a double-barrelled gun.  We found no bloody fingerprints downstairs.  We stood at the foot of the staircase and looked up it to a landing and passage where wallpaper flickered in  tattered streamers and the moon made shifting shadows.
"Let's go upstairs" I suggested to my friend, who is young and a soldier.  He shuddered.
"Not for anything."  There's Something up the top of those stairs.  it's watching us.  I can feel It.  I can damn nearly see It - huge and black.  Something squatting. "
I raised my gun.
"Come outside" he said.  "For God's sake, don't shoot.  I don't like it.  In any case, you'll fetch the neighbours, and we shall get into trouble for being here.
Now there are no neighbours near to Borley Rectory, but an old empty church and a farmhouse.  But we went outside.  We stood under a tree in the bright moon and looked at the black, staring, empty windows of the house that no one could live in for long.  And Something seemed to be watching us, malevolently, from those eyeless windows.
Then it shot between my legs.  I felt its harsh bristles, its snaky undulating muscles.  It was a black cat.  It went into the house with a bound.  And it did not come out again.
Now one can put what construction one likes on that.  Harvest mice are the likeliest.  But when, a year later, I met a man whose London newspaper had sent him to spend an inquisitive night at Borley he said:
"I wouldn't go up those stairs for a fortune in the dark.  There's Something very odd in the upper regions.  I stood outside and watched the house - and do you know a damn great black cat came between my legs like a bullet and went into the house like a shot out of a gun.  It never came out again.  And when I asked at the farm they said they had no black cats.  No one round there has a black cat.  But anyone who stands in that garden at night always [always??] sees that cat go into the house.  It's a spook!  That's what I think."
So do I.'

Another unreliable ghost 'researcher' Elliott O'Donnell has been honoured with a biography this year by Richard Whittington Egan that I must get round to reading at some point.

Censorship Ain't Wot It Used T'Be

Reading a short book by Frank Norman Why Fings Went West about the London theatrical scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the letter reprinted in its entirety (pp.66-68) from the Lord Chamberlain's Office amused me.  It may seem strange to many that the Lord Chamberlain was able to censor plays from 1737 up until the Theatres Act of 1968.  Frank Norman had an interesting life of real struggle (it's unlikely he would manage to escape from the precariat these days) and was part of that whole Soho scene chronicled by Dan Farson in his highly entertaining books.  Norman was co-author with Jeffrey Bernard of one of the definitive works of that genre Soho Night and Day (I only have the paperback, the hardback is an expensive collector's item).

Incidentally, during the summer we spent a week staying at a cottage in the Devon village of Georgeham.  One morning I went for a wander, as I tend to do, around the village church and churchyard; I came across a gravestone for Negley Farson, which nagged at me, as I was sure I'd heard the name somewhere.  It was only later that I realised that he was Dan Farson's father and had once been a well known author and correspondent.  Apparently Dan inherited his father's alcoholism and both men died in the house at Georgeham.

The Norman book was one of a series called Time Rembered issued in the 1970s by Lemon Tree Press, based in Bedfordbury and named after the still-popular pub nearby.  The press owner Allen Synge sounds like another of those admirable small publishers of the period.

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be was a successful musical with music by Lionel Bart, recently revived - interesting that The Guardian review also mentions the camp interior decorator.

The Licensee
Garrick Theatre.

7th February 1961

Dear Sir,

The Lord Chamberlain has received numerous complaints against the play 'Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be', in consequence of which he arranged for an inspection of the Garrick Theatre to be made on 1st February last.

It is reported to his Lordship that numerous unauthorised amendments to the allowed manuscript have been made, and I am to require you to revert to it at once, submitting for approval any alteration which you wish to make before continuing them in use.

In particular I am to draw your attention to the undernoted, none of which would have been allowed had they been submitted, and which I am to ask you to confirm by return of post have been removed from the play.

Act I
Indecent business of Rosie putting her hand up Red Hot's bottom.

The dialogue between Rosie and Bettie.  'You've got a cast iron stomach.' 'You've got to have in our business.'

The interior decorator is not to be played as a homosexual and his remark '...Excuse me dear, red plush, that's very camp, that is,' to be omitted, as is the remark, 'I've strained meself.'

The builder's labourer is not to carry the plank of wood in the erotic place and at the erotic angle that he does, and the Lord Chamberlain wishes to be informed of the manner in which the plank is in future to be carried.

Act II
The reference to the Duchess of Argyll is to be omitted.  Tosher, when examining Red Hot's bag, is not to put his hand on Rose's bottom with finger aligned as he does at the moment.

The remark, 'Don't drink that stuff, it will rot your drawers,' is to be omitted.

Tosher is not to push Rosie backwards against the table when dancing in such a manner that her legs appear through his open legs in a manner indicative of copulation.

Yours faithfully

The Lord Chamberlain's Office,
St James's Palace, SW1

William Burroughs in London

Preparing for Friday's walk I'm reading chunks of Barry Miles' hefty William Burroughs A Life, which came out this year for the centenary.  There's a lot of information in here that's new to me and, as usual with Burroughs, a whole new group of people I'd never heard of before, even in the London years, which is the period covered by the walk.  The book is based on a massive amount of research undertaken by James Grauerholz, who couldn't finish the writing and asked Miles to take over. It's very thorough and probably the best Burroughs biography I've read - Miles also knew many of the main players.  He is supposed to be mounting an exhibition based on his archive at Westminster Reference Library next year and hopefully a talk will also be arranged.

As is often the case, unexpected intersections occur, such as Burroughs' visit to Chelsea to see Christopher Gibbs (see the posts on Blow Up Locations and Whistler below - it was Gibbs' flat that was the location for the party scene - see the photo above):

'Bill and Christopher first met in Tangier, when Mikey [Portman] took Christopher around to see Bill at the Muniria, but it was in London that they became friends, and Bill would visit Christopher at Lindsey House at 100 Cheyne Walk, a mansion dating from 1674, remodeled from an even older building.  Bill appeared very at home, lounging on the sofa smoking hashish in front of the huge bay window with its magnificent view of the Thames (James McNeill Whistler, who did many studies of the Thames in the 1870s, had lived next door), attended by his smartly turned-out boys.  The room was dominated by an enormous painting by Il Pordenone that had previously belonged to the duc d'Orleans.  A huge Moroccan chandelier cast a thousand pinpoints of light over Eastern hangings and silk carpets.  In the summer, afternoon tea was taken under the mulberry tree in a garden designed by Lutyens.' [pp.409-410]

Another intersection takes place with Mikey Portman (boyfriend of WSB in his early West London years) and Michael Wishart, the latter an artist who today is almost totally forgotten.  His autobiography High Diver is worth reading - he seemed to meet almost everyone who was anyone in twentieth century art and letters (and dance) and also slept with most of them.  I was annoyed by the usual privileged complaint of poverty ('we didn't have a bean, my dear') while swanning around the south of France swigging champagne and taking copious amounts of drugs.  Portman was one of his many boyfriends - who also included the notorious Denham Fouts and Nicky Haslam:

'He is far more beautiful, capricious and unpredictable than any of the monkeys and marmosets I have entertained and been obliged to dispose of in despair.  Michael's years in the Medina of Tangier, where he was William Burroughs' naked lunch, had hardly equipped him for terra firma.  During his occupation of my house, gramophone records became ashtrays, sheets tourniquets.  The house became a rallying ground for le tout Marseillaise (quartier Arabe).'[p.168]

Burroughs also visited, in the company of Francis Bacon, the Watermans Arms on the Isle of Dogs owned by Soho and Fitzrovia chronicler Dan Farson, who had also enticed, on separate occasions, Jacques Tati, Clint Eastwood and Judy Garland.  I've seen film of this pub (most recently in Paul Kelly's film How We Used to Live) but can't find it on YouTube