George W. M. Reynolds And The Many Novels In The Mysteries Of The Court Of London
by
R.E. Prindle
One may think that the ten volumes of George W. M. Reynolds’ Mysteries Of The Court Of London is one long novel, which of course it is, yet in that one novel are many others. In this essay I would like to discuss that of Prince George, Tim Meagles and Lady Lade.
Let us start with a chat about the changing times and change of consciousness occurring in the revolutionary age that existed from1789 to perhaps, gosh, I don’t know, perhaps 1860 or even 1880, at which time the revolutionary Benjamin Disraeli cast off his mortal coil. At least that phase of revolution which metamorphizing from shape to shape is continuing today and into the future,.
Now, I’m just discussing in the next few passages an idea I find interesting. Philip Jose Farmer, a twentieth century American novelist, noted that a comet fell on the town of Wold Newton in England in 1795. Musing from this point he dates modern popular literature as a unit he denominates the Wold Newton Universe. There is also an interesting French version of the Wold Newton Universe.
Now, it just so happens that 1795 was the approximate year that modern consciousness consolidated and emerged. As an indicator of its accuracy I point out that the Monthly Magazine of England changed it typography from the late Medieval style to the modern following the year 1795. Typeface did a transfiguration to the new fonts, most significantly changing the ff for ss to ss.
The changed fonts is a more significant event than one might think, because along with it went a change of consciousness. Men thought differently.
Of course, the evolution of consciousness was deeply affected by the emergence of the Industrial Revolution as well as the social, religious and political revolutions and the evidence became apparent in 1795.
This first act of modernity, Revolutionary Age, continued through the novelistic pen of George W. M. Reynolds. When he set down his novelistic pen c. 1860 England, at least, was passing into the second stage which we may say was initiated by Charles Darwin’s declaration of human evolution in 1859.
There is no coincidence that the Gothic literary period c. 1795, surfaced at the time of the Wold Newton comet. The post-Medieval period that ended in 1795 was one of mysterious supernatural happenings. At that period leading into the modern period the novelists began their tales on a supernatural, mysterioso basis of inexplicable circumstances then reduced them to understandable events by eliminating the supernatural mysteries through reason or rationality. Everything was made clear through the application, as it were, of scientific knowledge thus exemplifying the change in consciousness.
The world of mystery was left behind and writers began to write in rational terms. The writer GPR James neatly straddles this evolution of consciousness in his psychological outlook.
The Industrial Revolution solved certain societal problems and created others. At that time the population was expanding rapidly causing problems and creating opportunities. The population could not be absorbed under the pre-1795 conditions. Unless means could be devised to incorporate the new masses starvation must have resulted as Malthus predicted. But, the application of scientific principles and their technological application made the railroads a means of creating a massive number of jobs thus absorbing the surplus population; the change of scale from X to X+1 demanded additional workers.
However, as the under classes multiplied faster than the aristocrats this tended to make the aristocratic position untenable. This was the situation when George Reynolds came to maturity and exploited as a novelist. Thus he became a revolutionary or Red Republican attacking the aristocracy and monarchy while championing the underclass. His take was eminently successful.
.2.
Let us consider for a moment George’s place in the hierarchy of great novelists. In my estimation he belongs in the first rank whether eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth century. The times were changing rapidly although not at the warp speed of today. George’s popularity was based perhaps on a more parochial approach than a universal one. It was more closely identified with his specific time period.
I rank his Mysteries of the Court of London amongst the great literary achievements of the post-1795 modern period, as great or greater than Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Times as examples. Further, I would say that Reynolds was a significant influence on English writers who succeeded him. If he was in fact the most successful novelist of nineteenth century literature as is claimed, his contemporaries and successors had to take note of him. Just as one example in Vol. IV, Mrs. Fitzherbert, in the tale of the Monster Man he lays out the complete plot of Stevenson’s Jekyll And Hyde. It is well known that when as a child Stevenson was laid up with his illness he read the Penny Dreadfuls and obviously this stories of Reynolds. Seriously, Stevenson lifted the complete story. While he says that the story appeared to him complete in a dream, he must mean that his subconscious retrieved it from his early reading.
I think that W.M. Thackeray in his epic novel Vanity Fair, that has survived two hundred years being still read today, is very dependent on Reynolds style, as well as Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. And others. Victor Hugo, the French writer gives indication of having read Reynolds most especially in Jean Valjean’s episode in the sewers of Paris. A couple of Reynolds more startling passages are his characters mucking about in the sewers of London before Hugo wrote Les Misérables . If Hugo wasn’t influenced by Reynolds in that respect then Reynolds definitely takes priority in sewer episodes.
Bear in mind that things are rapidly changing now and almost the whole of the last two hundred years is being discarded as inapplicable to current consciousness, as well as what went before. When the older people now existing are gone a curtain will fall between the old and the new. The past will have become irrelevant. But, as the past is still relevant I will speak of it as timeless.
Hugo has two of the great novels of the period, Notre Dame De Paris, or under the movie title, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables. Court of London easily surpasses Les Misérables and measures up to Notre Dame De Paris. The latter is in a special category of genius. Reynolds has greater genius than Marcel Proust and I think is substantially superior. Proust’s style did produce excellent results but in a peculiar way. Reynolds easily matches Cervantes. I’ve only read a few pages of Tolstoy but I have no respect for his premise. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is another in the special class of genius. It’s not really a very good novel but Dostoyevsky penetrates to the heart of the matter.
And then, as George was hanging up his pen in the Sixties the style began another change. Along came the beginning of Science Fiction with the Frenchman Jules Verne and on top of Jules the Empire writer, H. Rider Haggard, emerged with his tales of African adventures along with the real life adventures of Samuel Baker, Richard F. Burton and the immortal Henry Morton Stanley. Fiction could barely stand up to those guys. The pursuit of the source of the Nile is one of the three great Western epics: The Iliad, The Arthurian saga and The Source of the Nile. What a trilogy, but, that’s another story. So-called Literary fiction continued apace under numerous other writers, interesting but not exciting. With this change the Wold Newton Universe began in earnest.
Back to George Reynolds. As I intimated earlier the Court of London as a whole is built around the character of George IV. He is the central character of all the sub-novels. One also has to include London as Central character after the manner of Hugo and Notre Dame. Reynolds much admired Notre Dame De Paris in which Victor Hugo examines architecture as an indicator of civilization making his story revolve around that churches structure. Reynolds follows that method with the city of London.
As I indicated the first of these sub-novels of Court of London first series, I’m undertaking is the story of Tim Meagles and his companion Lady Lade.
The Court of London is essentially a historical novel taking place from 1795 to 1820. Can it be a coincidence that George’s unhappy marriage to Caroline of Brunswick occurred in 1795? Boy, that Wold Newton comet was some comet wasn’t it? As a historical novel many of the characters are historical or based on historical characters.
Having read the novel twice before, this third reading I was surprised to find that Lady Lade was a historical figure and presented fairly accurately while Tim Meagles appears to be an amalgam of the very interesting Beau Brummel and perhaps an Irish character, maybe Daniel O’Connell, I’m just guessing on the latter.
Meagles seems to be a favorite character for Reynolds. Meagles model Beau Brummel was also a hero to Reynolds. The Beau was the premier Dandy at the time while in Reynolds’ pictures he also appears as a Dandy.
Tim Meagles
Tim Meagles is one of the very best characters George Reynolds created. He, Lady Lade and George IV would make a wonderful movie or a terrific streaming series.
We don’t have access to the depth of Reynolds knowledge for his fictional history of George IV was, but he has obviously studied George’s life. Reynolds is very knowledgeable about history. His reading sources would be much different from ours; while at the same time he would have had conversations with knowledgeable people who may have lived through the times as well as bull sessions with associates and friends. Much of that would have been gossip and much would be fact.
Much that he writes may seem preposterous to our eyes, but the times, customs and possibilities were different from our times but still amazingly similar if you look behind the façade.
One telling point he made concerning George IV’s times compared to his was that there were no New Police back then. One was virtually free to do what one wished, that there were no police means that it was a wide open society while the influence of Rabelais and his famous dictum in Gargantua and Pantagruel: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law while diminishing still prevailed. The spirit of the Hell Fire Clubs slumbered in the embers.
Two law standards existed, Rabelais for the aristocracy strict morality for the common people. Reynolds repeatedly calls this out.
George IV according to George Reynolds held that there was a third law that existed for him alone: The King, or heir apparent, could do no wrong. George IV was a libertine Rabelaisian of a high order in the spirit of the Hell Fire Clubs. That particular past weighed heavy on the mind of George IV.
The only difference was that the power of the English kings was being rapidly usurped by the Parliament; he was under scrutiny while the Hell Fire Clubs operated with impunity. Therefore, in Reynolds’ fictional history Tim Meagles’ function was to do dirty deeds dirt cheap. Tim found the ways to bail George IV out of difficulties.
Beau Brummel, Tim’s model was merely an arbiter of fashion having a hand in shaping men’s fashions at the time. He was the son of a successful entrepreneur who died leaving him with twenty thousand pounds and a burning desire to be ennobled. Thus the Beau had to try to enter high society with no title and inadequate means; he was a simple Mr.
Assuming the pose of the Dandy he succeeded in making himself the arbiter of fashion while insinuating himself into George’s favor thus succeeding to make himself the arbiter of fashion, the King of the Dandies, Men About Town and Men of the World.
George IV allowed him to live in his private residence, the Carlton House, whileTim Meagles had a key to a private entrance directly to George’s quarters so that he could come and go as he pleased without being observed.
The Beau unfortunately failed to remain in his subordinate place foolishly trying to make himself greater than George, while actually he was a mere hanger on. The crisis in the relationship came and the Beau was expelled. While the Beau had been badgering George to be ennobled he had failed. Out of favor then, he had no status.
Desponding, the Beau ran through his inheritance, ran into debt, and had no choice but to exile himself to Calais. He died a shattered man.
Lady Lade
If George Reynolds liked Tim Meagles, he loved Lady Lade, she was the woman of his heart his belle ideal. She appears in many forms and under many names is this fabulous work. Lady Letitia Lade was a very real person, as significant as Beau Brummel, that George presents almost unfictionalized. She was very notorious in her time being avoided by respectable ladies. She came from the bottom stratum of society working her way up. She was said to have been married to the notorious highwayman Sixteen String Jack Rann who lived fast, loved hard and died young, 24 years old, at the end of a rope.
Apparently a strong minded woman, she worked her way up, marrying a Lord, John Lade. Reynolds has her surviving her aged husband but in reality she died in 1825 while her young husband strung his life out to 1838.
George also makes her a transvestite wearing men’s clothes exclusively whereas John Stubbs, the painter, in his portrait of her, pictures her wearing a voluminous dress sitting side saddle on a rearing horse. Her athleticism was masculine.
George also relates her mythologically with the Roman Goddess Diana, in Greek Artemis, Our Lady of the Animals, or the huntress. George gets fairly deep here as he is inferring a deeper knowledge of European Mythology than one expects. I also think that this links him with the European Faery religion that still has a subterranean existence.
If you remember, Shakespeare in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream revives the Faeries and their king Oberon who was said to have abandoned his role in Bordeaux at the end of the story of Huon. Elizabeth I was known as the Faerie Queen and the heroine of Spenser’s poem of that name. The transition from Elizabeth to Charles I represented a significant break from the past.
If you have delved into the massive work of King Arthur you will remember that Lancelot was abducted by the Faerie Queen, Vivian, in France and reared beneath the Lake in preparation of reestablishing Faerie rule. Lancelot then when he turned eighteen was sent by Vivian/Diana to challenge Arthur for the Faerie kingdom of Camelot. He rode forth from the lake dressed in flowing white satin, his horse caparisoned the same. It appears that Vivian sent her acolyte to usurp the kingdom of Arthur, thus Arthur unknowing sent Lancelot to escort Gwenivere his future queen to Camelot. Well trained in Faerieland Beneath the Lake by Vivian/Diana, the Queen of the Faeries, Lancelot had no trouble winning Gwenivere’s heart from Arthur. There began the last stand of the Faeries that resulted in the destruction of Camelot.
This story resonates strongly with Homer and Troy. Guinevere taking the place of Helen and Lancelot Paris, the battle before Lancelot’s Beau Regarde, that of the sacred city of Troy.
How much of this Faerie lore George Reynolds might have known isn’t clear to me but Meagles wins the heart of the Huntress, the Amazon, the desirable, the fascinating Lady Lade/Diana, the Faerie Queen, from John Lade. Could be true, nevertheless the Meagles/Lady Lade story is a most enchanting tale, my favorite of the Mysteries of the Court of London, first series..
.3.
The story has more than one center and at the center of each is George IV, the origin of all the stories is closely related to the Page and Julia Lightfoot story. It’s hard work but you have to keep all the stories in your mind at the same time. A clue mentioned off hand is realized a hundred or a hundred fifty pages on. Sometimes he refreshes the reader’s memory, sometimes not.
George III was thought to have been married to a Quaker woman named Hannah Lightfoot in his youth so this novel centers on the proofs of the marriage. Reynolds believes the story, constructing his story on the ‘facts.’ The facts, rather fictional or actual, consist of a couple documents and ultimately on a packet of letters written by George III. Reading George’s representation I conclude that there was no wedding ceremony but according to the old dodge he and Hannah were married ‘in the sight of heaven.’ That dodge was universal in its application then as now. No matter, Reynolds says they were married. As it’s his story he should know. Meagles and Letitia have come into possession of one half of the document while Page and Julia Lightfoot have the other half. Page plays a large role in the novel but I will deal with him separately in another essay. Here he had been captured and imprisoned by some villains. He escapes by digging through a wall entering the adjacent unit where Hannah Lightfoot’s brother lies dying. Julia Lightfoot, the brother’s daughter, Hannah being her aunt, returns from an errand to find Page sitting next to the now dead brother rifling through his wallet. Not particularly disturbed by her father’s death she and Page team up. A paper refers to some treasure secreted in the basement to which the two unite to find. The treasure seems to be six bags of sovereigns.
The papers have provided the proofs of George III’s marriage to Hannah Lightfoot, Julia’s aunt, and a seeming pile of gold if handled correctly. Ever scheming Page sees a fortune looming. He and Julia immediately marry. The marriage, a real one, seems made in heaven as destiny is apparently involved here.
Page learns that Meagles and Lady Lade have the other half of the document proving the marriage. They then sell their half to Meagles and Lady lade for a thousand pounds real money, the gold having been discovered as counterfeit as Julia’s father was a coiner.
The bold Meagles then makes his way to George III in an interesting scene to extort a peerage, you can read it for the details.
My first thought was that the scene was impossible but as I read into the history of the period I thought it could have been.
After the restoration of the crown after the Cromwellian intermission the Stuarts tried to restore the absolute power of the king. Charles II held on but under James II the magnates rebelled offering the crown to William and Mary of Holland. Now, the future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who studied the era said that the Whigs wanted a ceremonial king after the fashion of the Doge of Venice. William refused the crown on those terms, he had no wish to be a powerless king, so an accommodation was arranged.
The last of the Stuarts was Queen Anne who succeeded William. When she died in 1720 a new dynasty had to be established. Avoiding a civil war, the Whigs went to Germany and recruited the Hanoverian sovereign George making him George I. He was ideal. He spoke no English, cared little for English affairs, spent most his time in Hanover, leaving the way open for the Whigs to usurp monarchical powers. Perfect for this Whigs. This continued under George II who was also considered a foreign intruder. Still perfect.
When George III, who was born and bred in England but was still considered something of a German intruder by the Whigs, became king he refused to be ceremonial and sought to recapture monarchical powers at which he ultimately failed. George IV, now thoroughly English rebelled at being ceremonial but royal powers were beyond redemption.
So, while George III was still king it might have been possible for someone like Meagles to gain access and extort benefits from the King of England. This is Reynolds portraying it so he must have thought it possible.
In an important episode Meagles, who did dirty deeds dirt cheap for George IV, at George’s insistence that he must have 15,000 pounds, found a dupe named Foster, a merchant, to proffer the money. Lending money to George IV was like sending a light beam into a black hole; it went in but never came out. Nevertheless, time passed, the merchant needed the money in an emergency. George said: Help me, Tim. Tim went to work.
Meagles and Lady Lade turned London upside down finally finding a French expatriate, this is during the French Revolution remember, French expatriates abounded, who was willing to advance his cache of 20,000 pounds to George. Taking the money George refused to give the 15,000 pounds back to Foster. At the climax, unable to meet his obligation, the now bankrupt Foster went home and shot himself in the head leaving his wife and daughter destitute. This ‘heartless’ attitude of George absolutely disgusted Meagles and the Amazon. Rose Foster subsequently turns up at Mrs. Braces House of Assignation under the name of Rose Morton. George is a regular patron of Mrs. Brace, (quite another novel) desiring Rose. Adventures ensue, Rose escapes Mrs. Brace, is recaptured and offered once again to George. Skipping details, George is about to rape Rose when Meagles and James Melmoth break into the room. The police arrive but since they cannot possibly arrest the Prince, George has them arrest the two knights errant. The Prince in his rage at Meagles has him exiled to America. Reynolds has a regular conveyer belt of criminals going to America.
James Melmoth will later appear as the Monster Man, another story, but the interest here is that it indicates that Reynolds has read the Irish author, Charles Maturin, who wrote his fabulous Gothic novel Melmoth, The Wanderer, flashes of which appear in Reynolds’ work, as here.
In a spectacular sequence of events the exiled Meagles is returned to England. Now this is interesting. The ship that carries him is named the Diana. Thus this whole sub novel of Meagles and Lady Lade is related to the Faerie and mythical kingdoms. Reynolds knows a lot more than he openly reveals. I would dearly love to know the books he read.
Leaving out the details leading up to Meagles’ success in extorting a Marquisate and 10K pounds a year from George III, then marrying Lady Lade whose aged husband had been frightened to death by George’s agents as they searched his house for papers relating to Hannah Lightfoot. Those important papers were a packet of love letters from George to Hannah Lightfoot.
The corrupted banker Ramsay had the packet. As that story evolved Ramsay determined to flee to, where else, America to try to begin a new life. As a last foray he intends to blackmail Lady Desborough. Meagles is onto him following him to Aylesbury on a hunch.
Having already despoiled the Desboroughs of thousands of pounds they are fearful that this will be a continuing situation so they determine to kill the parasite which they do. Meagles is in the bushes observing. he rushes out to offer aid in concealing the body. He thus discovers the Lightfoot letters in Ramsay’s pocket.
Bingo! Back to George III. Meagles and Lady Lade extort a Marquisate from George to gratify his desire to be ennobled and a bundle of cash, next getting married, then fleeing London for the shires.
Reynolds sums up Meagles’ career: Thus enriched, our sporting friend was enabled to cut a fine figure in the West End; and in due course it was announced in the newspapers that Mr. Meagles had laid claim to the dormant Marquisate of Edgemore. The matter was brought before the House of Lords; no opposition was offered, and behold! The dashing, gay, and unprincipled Tim became elevated to the peerage. He soon afterward married Lady Lade and the remainder of their days were passed happily enough. Thus George culminates his little fairy tale of Tim the faerie king and Diana the faerie queen.
This is unlike Beau Brummell who broke and depressed lived his last days in misery as a common man…
I think I will next review the sub-novel concerning Page the Commercial Traveler. Page apparently had no need of a first name and if Reynolds mentioned it, I missed it.
Pt. II Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
May 20, 2019
Pt. II: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
G.W.M Reynolds On Vice And Virtue
by
R.E. Prindle
This essay will concentrate on the novels, Robert Macaire or, The French Bandit In England, The Mysteries Of London, Faust, and Wagner, The Wehr Wolf. Their respective dates were 1840, 1844-48, 1845-46 and 1846-47. As can be seen the latter two novels are encompassed by the dates of The Mysteries Of London and they must be related to the greater novel- two side excursions, so to speak.
We know that Reynolds went out on his own in a foreign country at the age of sixteen, going immediately to take up residence in France with a fair sized sum of money in his pocket inherited from his father as he hints in his novel Faust; then in 1833 at the age of nineteen he inherited a bit more through his mother. He was a natural scholar so that he studied extensively in many fields including literature and history. For such a young man, twenty-five and twenty-six in 1839-40 he writes with an astonishing, indeed, unbelievable maturity and knowledge both experientially and from study. Apart from being fictionalized his history seems to be accurate.
He is especially interested in vice and virtue in humanity. The configurations of his interest were formed by his reading of the Marquis de Sade; he read and internalized de Sade’s novels Justine, Juliette and Philosophy of the Boudoir. While de Sade, from whom the term Sadism is derived, is probably known by name only to most. I append here a short biography so that the reader knows how I understand him. De Sade was born in 1740 and died in 1814, the year Reynolds was born so we may assume that de Sade was still something of a sensation when Reynolds hit Paris in 1830.
De Sade’s fame as the source of the term Sadism was well earned although somewhat stale in the 21st century as films and novels have far surpassed his exploits. There is no longer anything to astonish in his novels. His problems began when his parents denied him marriage to the woman of his choice thus causing an extreme reaction. His reaction was so extreme and notorious, causing his parents such grief, that they had him imprisoned where he began writing his novels. Released by the French Revolution, which was crazier than himself, he functioned well. Napoleon, not so tolerant, had him committed to the famous insane asylum of Charenton. This aided immeasurably in making him a cult figure which he remains to this day.
He committed his grief to two most read novels, Justine and Juliette. He posited as a universal reality that a life of virtue led to unhappiness, pain and failure as characterized by Justine; and a life of libertinage and self-indulgence characterized by Juliette led to happiness and self-fulfillment.
When Reynolds read de Sade’s novels between 1830 and 1837 isn’t known. My guess is that he read them sooner than later and the antitheses between virtue and vice worked in him as he began writing.
Author of Mysteres de Paris and The Wandering Jew
An echo of Justine and Juliette can be found in the Mysteries of London. Reynolds transposes the sexes and has two male brothers Eugene and Richard Markham as protagonists. They are associated with two trees. (The symbolism of the two trees isn’t yet clear to me.) A financial disaster hits the Markham family leaving it and them destitute. Eugene, following the path of Juliette’s example opts for a life of crime to repair his fortunes while Richard decides to pursue virtue. They are to meet by the trees twenty years on to compare results.
This gives Reynolds the means to display his knowledge of vice and virtue. He certainly seems to know the ways of criminality. This investigation is continued in the first two novels written in conjunction with Mysteries titled Faust and Wagner the Wehrwolf. The first of his crime novels was Alfred de Rosann, quite astonishing as a novice novel, I will deal with it later, followed by Grace Darling, the Heroine of the Ferne Islands and the Robert Macaire or the French Bandit In England. After a hiatus of two years from 1842 to 1844 when he wrote nothing Mysteries began. Faust and Wagner were written in succession.
The third of his crime novels was Robert Macaire or the French Bandit In England.
One imagines that Reynolds first heard of the famous French bandit at the theater either in 1833 or ’35 or perhaps he saw both. Macaire was a famous French highwayman, but as Reynolds has Macaire tell his sidekick Bertrand, times were changing and the place of the highwayman was becoming as obsolete as buggy whips would in the twentieth century. Thus while Macaire was involved in stagecoach situations his milieu was shifting to swindling and financial crimes. The future was clear. Reynolds has his ear to the ground.
Published in 1840 Macaire was his third effort following Pickwick Abroad. By this novel he has pretty well learned his craft although his powers will grow exponentially by Mysteries. Macaire is tightly plotted and well written with every evidence of Reynold’s powerful mind. It shows little evidence of de Sade, clear evidence, even borrowing, from Frederic Soulie. Soulie was a French writer of ghastly crime/horror fiction who was, at least, an early model for Reynolds.
As in Mysteries of the Court of London an inspiring incident carried throughout the story ends it. The novel involves an enmity between the practitioner of virtue, Charles Stanmore, and the follower of vice, Robert Macaire. Close to the plots of de Sade’s Justine and Juliette.
The novel opens with Macaire in France holding up a stage containing Stanmore and killing two people while sadistically tying Stanmore to one of the large wheels. If the horse hadn’t remained still as Stanmore remarks he would surely have been killed by the revolving wheel. A sadistic crime in itself.
Papers taken from Stanmore tell of a banker in England who looks ripe for the plucking so Macaire and Bertrand head for England. It is not clear how these two desperadoes pass themselves off as businessmen, especially the clownish Bertrand but they do and Pocklington, the English businessmen invites them in, indeed, ask them to take up residence while in London. He has a beauteous sixteen year old niece, Maria, who falls head over heels for the forty some year old Macaire. As she is to inherit a large fortune Macaire plays the swain.
It so happens that Stanmore also has his eyes on Maria so he develops an inveterate hatred of his rival not realizing that the French bandit and Macaire are the same. Now, it also happens that Stanmore’s father had disappeared on a journey to Lyons in France where he was to establish a new business five years previously. He had waylaid by Macaire, robbed and murdered in a town thirty some miles from Paris on the way to Lyons as will appear later in the story. Macaire was acting as a member of an organized ring of criminals to which he still belongs being one of the leaders.
After mentioning that Macaire is posing as the financial agent named LeBeau who he learns is now on his way to London the two bandits determine to kill him before he arrives to prevent his ruining their plans. Using old skills they waylay his stage on his way to London, brutally drag him from the stage and stab him to death. These two are thoroughly evil men. This is important because while Reynolds is contrasting virtue and vice, he also holds that virtue and vice are equally mixed in a person so that after a life of vice, Macaire will very improbably turn to a life of virtue. But, Reynolds believes he can and it’s his story.
Stanmore becomes suspicious of Macaire and more especially Bertrand so he returns to France to investigate them. His findings lead him to an inn in the town in which his father was murdered. He is directed to the out of the way inn in which the murder occurred. The innkeeper intends to kill Stanmore for his money, but the latter overhears the plot being discussed and in the ensuing struggle kills the innkeeper. Questioning the innkeeper’s wife about his father she points out the place in the inn where Stanhope’s father’s body was immured. Concentrating on opening the wall Stanhope fails to notice that the wife has set the building on fire and fled.
The wife runs for some woods where Stanmore overtakes her. Then borrowing an incident from Frederic Soulie (pronounced Souliay) he ties the woman to a tree while he goes back to main road and inn and forgets her in the rush of events. By the time he gets back to her she is dead, half eaten by varmints.
Macaire has to return to France to account for Lebeau’s absence. Macaire gets into financial schemes and is recognized by the police and arrested. He would have been a goner except for his criminal network. Having pulled off a couple successful escapades Macaire does the necessary repairing to the gang’s den to distribute their share of the booty. This gets an immediate reward when his confederates help him escape from two different prisons.
This brings up the question of Reynolds’ own relationship to the law. Reynolds provides such exact descriptions of various prisons, police quarters, court affairs and prison customs that one wonders how he obtained his knowledge and familiarity. As a newspaperman he would have perhaps entered the various criminal retreats but that doesn’t seem a satisfactory explanation. Dick Collins, an eminent researcher of Reynolds and the period of Penny Dreadfuls gives Reynolds a questionable character.
Collins seems to have ransacked official sources for his information but fails to reference them. In addition to cheating at dice, that rather indicates that Reynolds was one of the shifty hangers on in Paris that he mentions in Pickwick Abroad.
Collins says: Quote: It is alleged- on poor evidence- that Reynolds stayed at the expensive Long’s Hotel in Bond Street and was arrested for trying to steal jewelry to pay the bill.
Unquote.
And there were a series of bankruptcies. One in France in which he was arrested in Calais trying to flee. Then in England in 1939 he spent six months in the Queens Bench Prison for unpaid debt. After becoming a leader in the Chartist movement he displeased the leadership because of unnamed financial schemes. So, let us say that Reynolds was probably flexible in his attitude toward strict probity. One does get that feeling.
One wonders then, was Reynolds personally aware of these criminal hangouts; did he actually mingle with them? His knowledge seems too precise for sheer invention. Also he seems too complimentary of the gendarmes who he says have absolute integrity and are the only upright characters in his novels. Was he trying to stay on their good side just in case?
In any event his descriptions of the prisons from which Macaire escapes are described in minute detail. Having once been caught in the meshes of the French police Macaire seems doomed to remain there as the police are hot on his trail after his last escape.
Now, at the inn at which Macaire had murdered his father, a beautiful young orphan girl, Blanche de Longville, had been placed there by Macaire who for some reason had been made her guardian. She had captured Stanmore’s heart, making him forget Maria, and resulting in a marriage. They were living in a posh area in Paris.
Macaire, quite desperate to escape finds his way to Stanmore and Blache’s mansion to throw himself on her mercy after maltreating through her teen years, expecting what that mercy might be wasn’t clear. Stanmore returns home to find police combing the area and Macaire, his arch enemy, in his wife’s boudoir. However Blanche manages to placate him explaining that if Macaire escapes the police and finds his way to Switzerland he is going to change his ways and end his days as the archetypal French bandit.
So, this Macaire, who had robbed him, possibly condemned him to death by tying him to the carriage wheel, actually murdered and robbed his father, beat him out for the love of the delectable Maria and other crimes too numerous to mention as well as heading up organized crime in France, throws himself on the mercy of Stanmore.
Well, love conquers all, doesn’t it? Rather than offend his wife, Blanche, Stanmore forgives all, gives Macaire traveling money, lets him out the back door and directs the police in the opposite direction, and sententiously pats himself on the back for redeeming a hardened criminal. Reynolds has Macaire living out his days living quietly in Switzerland and that redeems his murders and crimes, for you see good and evil are equally mixed in men. No one is totally bad.
His next novel, Master Timothy’s Bookcase concluded his first period and after a two year hiatus when, one presumes, Reynolds was recharging his batteries, perhaps searching for a more successful approach, organizing himself for the grand charge he began his magnum opus The Mysteries of London, that was a great compendium of crime. He was in fact inspired by Eugene Sue’s Mysteres de Paris but Mysteries of London doesn’t reflect much derivation from that work, however, this was apparently because he couldn’t fit much of it into his story.
Wonderful details preyed on his imagination so that at the same time he was writing Mysteries he also wrote two longish novels, Faust in 1845-46 and Wagner the Wehr Wolf in 1846-48.
Faust is rather an extraordinary novel. Here his inspiration was derived from the European myth of the man who sold his soul to Satan. He combines this story with the story of the German criminal organization called the Holy Vehm. As an adjunct to all he gives an exciting account of the Borgias, Pope Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucretia, or Lucreza as he spells it, Borgia. An amazing novel.
In this novel Reynolds extends his field from France and England to encompass Central Europe—Germany, Austria, Carniola and Italy. Eventually he will draw a circle from England into the Mediterranean touching the Africa of Homer’s Lotus Eaters, through the Dardanelles to Mingrelia or ancient Colchis where the Golden Fleece was kept through the Crimea thus encircling historic Europe. Interesting conception.
Whether he visited these parts during his period in France isn’t clear and his details are fairly sketchy although fairly sharp for Italy. Carniola is an Alpine province of Austria along with Styria and Corinthia. Reynolds probably chose this province for a couple of reasons, the first because as no one had probably heard of it, it was therefore exotic and secondly because a ferocious sexual pervert who lived there in a castle as recorded by de Sade in his novel Juliette. This guy was so incredible that even de Sade hastened away.
Murder, crime and gore in profusion, Reynolds seems in a frenzy to outdo de Sade, Frederic Soulie and Eugene Sue combined and a fine job he does of it too.
Eugene Sue in his magnificent Wandering Jew, that great Armageddon, as his story unfolds the great march of Cholera out of the East that advances at the rate of thirty miles a day closes in on the Paris of 1830 and its revolution of that year. Sue knew how to erase millions of people at a time. What a story, and it goes on for over a thousand pages. Now, if Reynolds did reach Paris in 1830 he must have witnessed the devastation caused by the Cholera epidemic or, at the very least, its aftermath which would have been a topic of conversation. If as Collins suspects he arrived in 1833 he still would have heard stories of the great Cholera terror. If the hints in Reynolds novel, Grace Darling, are correct he places the time of that novel in 1833 so he might likely have still been in England at that time. His descriptions of the Revolution of 1830 in Alfred de Rosann are so sketchy that he may not have arrived in France in 1830 on the heels of the action as he claims.
In Faust he replicates the Cholera epidemic of Sue when Faust orders Satan to create an immense bubonic plague in Vienna and Europe that like the Cholera epidemic rises in the East and rolls over Europe. Thus the spectre derived from Sue’s Rodin makes its appearance in Reynolds. Further both the Cholera and bubonic plague are accurate history. Reynolds’ Faust takes place from 1480 through the first decade of the sixteenth century. Reynolds is very careful with his dates so that events actually occurred in the years he indicates. The bubonic plague he mentions occurred between 1500 and 1503. Interestingly he doesn’t blame fleas from rats in Genoa but, like the Cholera, has it arrive from the East. Current theories indicate that that may have been the case. The first plague of mid-fourteenth century swept through Europe so quickly that there must have been another source than ship rats. In the first place no crew would have been immune to the flea bites hence the Med would have been filled with ghost ships while the spread would have been slower and the diffusion more easily traced. Reynolds always appears to have read and thought deeply.
Faust is essentially a historical novel so that the eruption of Vesuvius in 1485 is accurate but the accuracy of the description of the actual eruption must be fictional. The eruption was however a major one.
So also Reynolds account of the Borgias is historically accurate allowing for description and motives to be interpretations. The villains of Sue’s Wandering Jew are the religious sect of the Jesuits, Reynolds replaces them with the German organization of the Holy Vehm whose description is accurate given a little novelistic license. What we have here, then, in this story is a magnificent contrast between virtue and vice, good and evil. The contrasts are carried out on many levels. The Vehm operates as a government within the government just as the Jesuits were a church within the church. In this case the Austrian government is upright but the Holy Vehm is not. Faust once he has sold his soul to Satan is the representative of a blend of virtue and vice with vice having the upper hand. Faust as the story develops is guilty through his machinations of the deaths of millions. As the representative of vice Faust’s counterpart is Otto Pianella who represents undivided virtue. Faust’s wife represents virtue, or Justine, while Faust’s mistress, Ida, Otto’s sister, represents Juliette or vice. Of course, she is as nothing compared to the mighty Lucreza Borgia, the scariest woman who ever lived.
Reynolds while considered a feminist is, actually, a realist. In general, he deplores the manner in which women are treated but he isn’t so silly as to believe all women are above reproach, thus one has a variety of female types. Lucreza Borgia in the novel is a willful completely evil woman while Nisida in the next novel, Wagner the Wehr Wolf is a ‘strong’ woman but a blend of good and evil. Thus, Reynolds avoids the sappy feminist sentiment of the present.
He was perhaps overawed b Lucreza’s ruthless exercising of her will so that there is no good mixed with her evil. Lucreza was not going to go to Switzerland and while away her time after the Borgias’ power was destroyed.
Mortally offended by de Sade’s dictum that vile living always succeeds on this Earth while virtue always leads to unhappiness, in this novel practicing virtue succeeds while vice fails. Perhaps in Sue’s breathtaking Armageddon in which all the characters but one are immolated, Reynolds changes the end so that each virtuous character lives happily in the end while all the vicious characters die or end unhappily.
The Holy Vehm is destroyed, Ida checks out early, the Borgias seemingly on the way to success are thwarted, first their power is broken, then as fugitives Caesar Borgia after a number of failures is killed in an ignominious battle in Spain while Lucreza suffers a horrible death at the hands of her husband on the island of Lissa belonging to the Duke of Ferrara near Venice. This is one of the most terrifying depictions in the novel. Disregarding Lucreza’s terrible reputation the Duke of Ferrara espouses her with the assumption that she will reform her wicked ways, that is, give up vice.
Apparently, she has until Otto Pianella and his family are marooned on the way back to Vienna by snowstorms in the Julian Alps of Carniola. They put up on Lissa which comes to Lucreza’s attention. She arrests Otto and places him in the Iron Coffin. I won’t replicate the entire story that Reynolds makes as suspenseful as possible, but the Iron Coffin is a large room made of iron shaped like a giant coffin. The walls are moveable and gradually compress down to the size of an actual coffin in which the victim is entombed, where he gradually dies of starvation and dehydration.
As Otto’s situation grows dire Satan appears offering him the Faustian deal. No, no, says Otto, never, never, I put my faith in a higher power. So, in a choice between vice or virtue Otto remains true to God, or virtue. Well, one of Lucreza’s retinue finks to the Duke who is outraged that Lucreza has violated her oath so, at the last moment he releases Otto, justifying Otto’s trust in God, while condemning Lucreza to what would have been Otto’s fate. Thus, the terrible end of the truly vicious Lucreza Borgia.
Now, we are down to Faust himself. Faust had driven a lousy bargain with Satan receiving only twenty-six years of seeming prosperity and unlimited power. Now both hands of the clock, or clysidra, clocks hadn’t been invented yet, are pointing straight up. Remembering Reynolds’ description of the 1485 eruption of Vesuvius Satan takes Faust to the edge of the boiling caldera and after a lengthy triumph and lecture Satan pushes Faust in.
De Sade is repudiated, the results of Justine’s and Juliette’s lives are reversed and Reynolds triumphs over the Marquis de Sade.
While the main novel, The Mysteries Of London, raged on in its contests of virtue and vice, Reynolds began another rather lengthy novel he titled Wagner the Wehr Wolf.
And why not? While good and certainly interesting it doesn’t quite toe the mark made by Faust. Faust was well above the average while Wagner is closer to average but still with all of Reynolds’ inventiveness.
Too few people die and Nisida the villainess is a pale reflection of Lucreza Borgia, but still no slouch as a ‘strong’ woman. Nor is there a Jesuit Order or the Holy Vehm, just a highly organized criminal gang that is terrorizing Florence Italy. Reynolds may have lifted that idea from Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo and the gang in the Italian catacombs. The main story takes place in Florence but changes location to more exotic places including Constatinople, name not yet changed to Istanbul, and Sicily.
Reynolds’ geography embraces a rather large area from England, France, Central Europe, the Balkans, Italy to just off the coast of Africa to include the Greek Islands, Western Anatolia and Mingrelia on the East Coast of the Black Sea, formerly the Colchis of the Argonauts then turning west to the Crimea following in the tracks of the Argonauts and that pretty well encompasses the parameters of historical Europe. One wonders how Reynolds is writing all these novels, maintaining a growing family, keeping up on his reading and accumulating fairly detailed historical studies and he wrote several historical novels, Faust being one.
The adoption of a fantastic Werewolf story seems strange, but then, James Malcolm Rymer, his contemporary Penny Dreadful author was scoring big with his novel Varney The Vampire and would soon after write the classic story of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney Todd, a hit musical fifty years ago was the barber who turned his customers into sausages and sold them to another set of customers. Who would believe cannibalism in nineteenth century England?
Varney the Vampire, an incredibly long novel must have nudged Reynolds’ interest in that supernatural direction so he chose to explore another of the great medieval myths or legends of Medieval Europe, that of the Wehr Wolf. So, really, this era produced the subject matter for the next hundred and fifty years or so, Frankenstein, Faust, Varney the Vampire, Sweeney Todd and Werewolves and organized crime. The Curse of the Mummy would come later.
Wagner has a highly organized criminal gang that is central to the story maintaining its connection to the main frame of Mysteries of London. It is a true underworld inhabiting caverns deep into the earth. Whether meant intentionally or not by Reynolds its lower levels rest next to the lower levels of the Catholic nunnery that has an extensive underground. The doings in the nunnery in its underworld are as criminal as those of the criminals only a few feet awaythrough the rock. The two worlds are blended when the crime world is attacked, and the walls accidentally broken through and down. Thus, both the criminal underworld and the equally criminal nunnery were destroyed.
Reynold’s religious interests are intriguing. At this time in his life Reynolds was thirty-two. The Mysteries had solved his financial problems to this moment so his mental comfort zone was probably elevated. He had every reason to believe he could continue his success although the success of his future blockbuster, Mysteries of the Court of London might have astonished even him. At any rate he was relieved of youthful anxieties; he was successfully launched.
How he developed, or found time to develop his religious ideas isn’t obvious to me. Collins alleges that he did write a book of biblical criticism in 1833 when he was only 19 years old and would have had to have been in London at that time. At this point he has the North European abhorrence of the Catholic Church although an apparent strong belief in the existence of God or a deity, however, that could have been a front so as not to offend the reading public. His attitude toward the Moslem world seems to be a tolerant affection. Wagner makes a visit to then Constantinople, now Istanbul, a mere twenty-five years after the Christian capital fell to the Moslems. He forms connections and in order to free Florence from the dominion of the criminal gang he marches a Moslem army to Florence to do it. I must say I read that episode with a certain amount incredulousness.
One imagines that his fantasy was that he could unite the two worlds. The novel was placed in the years following 1516, a mere twenty-four years after the Moorish expulsion from Spain and the completion of the Reconquista. The Moslem slave raids probably hadn’t begun and from this time to 1830 when the French annexed Algeria and wiped out the Corsairs, the Moslem predations on the Mediterranean coast was constant. Eugene Sue’s The knight of Malta is a good representation of the situation and reads as well as Reynolds.
Sue, as Reynolds, was entranced with Byron’s epic poem The Corsair; the sentiments seem to coincide with their own. Indeed, The Knight of Malta can be read as Byron’s poem in novelized form. The opening lines of Byron establish the mental state:
Quote:
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their sway—
Our flag the scepter all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Unquote.
To a large extent The Corsair forms a part of the mental equipment of all these early Victorian authors.
In addition to Christian and Moslem concerns one considers his evaluation of the Jews as an independent nation living in and on its host; this is difficult because Westerners have been indoctrinated and conditioned to believe that Jews are innocent victims. They are not, not in Hellenic times, not in Roman times and not in Medieval times and certainly not now. During early Christian times they were given the greatest boon that could be imagined: the monopoly of loaning money at interest. Christians, the Catholic Church, laid its congregation at the feet of the Jews to be exploited.
Do not believe that the Jews became money lenders because they were forced to. They have always been money changers. They did so on the porches of the temple where Jesus overturned their tables as sacrilegious. As usurers, even the simplest mind could easily figure out that the entire money supply must inevitably be in their hands. Nor did they loan on reasonable terms but at expropriatory rates of forty or fifty percent for a single day. The West was impoverished so that in Florence first, a State pawn shop was instituted to save both the State and its people financial grief. Other cities followed Florence’s example.
Thus Reynolds introduces us to the Jewish money lender, Issachar. Now, both Reynolds and Dickens had had their run in with Jewish damage controlmen. Dickens was disciplined over his Jewish character in Oliver Twist, Fagin. Reynolds had been dressed down for some remarks in Grace Darling.
Jewish emancipation from the rule of the Catholic Church had begun in France by Napoleon after 1800, by 1840 it was working its way through Central Europe. The Jews qua Jews didn’t become powerful until after Napoleon’s defeat and Nathan Rothchild’s capture of the English currency in 1815. As a result of England’s victory the Rothschilds were in the early stages of consolidating their power. Naturally one of the first steps was controlling the press and publishing, at that time the only effective means of disseminating information. By the time of Wagner Disraeli had published most of his novels and was becoming a power in the State. Both Dickens and Reynolds had heeded their chastening, Dickens submissively and Reynolds with his usual cheek.
Issachar is portrayed as the archetypal Yiddish money changer living in dirty squalid quarters but above the physical portrayal of the usual Jewish caricature he is lauded as the long suffering noble victim, a man of virtue unfairly maligned and Jews so for millennia. Thus Reynolds has fulfilled his obligation to laud the Jews. He describes Issachar as a man of integrity however Issachar is the biggest cheat and crook alive. Nisida’s mother had pawned the family diamonds with Issachar, however, Issachar without hesitation steals the diamonds replacing them with paste. The father being something of an expert immediately discovers the imposture. Issachar justifies himself in some unsatisfactory way and Reynolds blithely goes on about the long suffering Jews.
It is generally thought therefore that Reynolds was genuinely sympathetic to the Jews. I’m not sure that’s true. I think he was just doing to wise thing so he could go on publishing.
For story continuation, we have Wagner, a ninety year old man, living deep in the Black Forest of Germany with his beauteous grand-daughter. Reynolds is very keen on sixteen year old beauties. They abound in his stories. According to Dick Collins Reynolds married his wife Susannah when she was seventeen. Collins says Reynolds may have been her second husband, she having already been taken to wife at 14.
Clara, Wagner’s granddaughter and main support, disappeared one day no one knew where. Wagner is unable to support himself and about to expire when a demon appears offering to restore him to youth. This a much better deal than Satan offered Faust in the previous novel. All Wagner has to do is spend one day a month as a wolf. He knows the day because his fate is based on the lunar calendar. The contract ends when Wagner fails to honor it. As can easily be seen this, on the face of it is good deal, what makes it a great deal is Wagner also gets a substantial guaranteed annual income. Wagner may be old but he is no fool; he signs the deal.
Now a sprout of forty with cash in hand Wagner need no longer skulk about the woods of the Black Forest where all things strange happen. Anyone who is up with German stories of this period knows there are so many desperadoes haunting these woods that they are no place for a fun loving young Wehr Wolf. Wagner hies himself to Florence, Italy where the climate agrees with his clothes.
There he runs into his granddaughter Clara. It wasn’t easy to pass himself off to her as his grandfather but like any young guy of independent means Wagner is a smooth talker.
He then finds some digs and runs into Nisida, the daughter of a Lord who, in fact, turns out to be the reason that Clara disappeared from the Black Forest. He has persuaded the virtuous and beautiful Clara to abandon her virtue and become his secluded mistress. Daughter Nisida learns this determining to kill Clara and therein hangs the tale.
Reynolds throws in the description of some of Wagners transformations which are exciting and well done. On his monthly rampage Wagner merely tears through the countryside like a tornado.
The other part of interest is at the end when Wagner establishes contact with the Rosicrucian Order in Sicily. This perhaps establishes Reynolds’ own religious position. He is a Rosicrucian. He is said to have been a Deist so that fits. I rather accept that Rosicrucianism was his faith. Having studied the religion somewhat I consider myself a Rosicrucian also if one needs a label. And we all do.
Between 1844-48 then Reynolds has launched his career successfully with his Mysteries of London, worked through his French period and examined a major legend of Germany and Central Europe.
In Part III I will deal with Dickens early output in relation to Reynolds.
Eugenics and Dysgenics Pt. 2a: Actions and Reactions
July 3, 2018
Eugenics And Dysgenics Pt. 2a
Actions And Reactions
by
R.E. Prindle
The fabulous nineteenth century progressed from Enlightenment to sound scientific knowledge with an accelerating pace that meant that what was learned in one’s youth was passé in one’s maturity. Thus the knowledge of a sixty year old was out of date for a thirty year old. The eternities were disturbed. Initially overwhelmed, by century’s end the forces of reaction had had time to realign and offer challenges to the new world of knowledge even as their reaction to the new knowledge had been surpassed by newer more current knowledge.
It was in this state of confusion that the world entered the new even more rapidly evolving twentieth century that left the nineteenth century in the dust. And, this quick evolution was very unevenly distributed. It was shared by no other place on Earth than the US/Canada and Europe, that is the Aryan race. From those locations scientific knowledge began to be distributed by the Aryans throughout the world. Assimilation to the scientific knowledge was not easy and still has not been achieved.
As the Western world entered the Post WWI years the glories of what was called the Victorian Age, once revered, became despised. But they would reemerge in the twenty-first century as Steampunk.
One of the more interesting reactions came from the re-emergence of the Romantic era as the neo-Romantic era that flowered from nineteen-nineties through the outbreak of WWI and has persisted into the twenty-first century as science fiction, horror and fantasy- three different expressions of the demolished fairy world.
To return to the nineteenth century. The neo-Romantics could not return to the Land of Faerie unaffected by scientific achievements. The literature of the neo-Romantics was as beautiful as that of the Romantics. Several seminal works were to persist in influence through the twentieth century to the present. Of first magnitude was Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Published in 1886 it incorporated elements of the psychological unconscious that were then emerging. The story ranks among the most influential. Naturally there was a great difference in the dissemination of the story between the two centuries.
In the twentieth movies had come into existence and by 1927 the talkies began to replace silent films. This was revolutionary. With sound, movies came into their own. I’m sure a silent film of Jekyll and Hyde was made but it was the first sound version that gave the story universal distribution. Many versions and variations were made of Stevenson’s story some of which distorted the original story to the point of unrecognition. The original sound version is the one most people know, or knew. As that version is now nearly a hundred years old several generations may never have seen it except for film buffs. The novel version is quite different from all film versions.
Looking back toward the late Victorian Age the movie makers make Dr. Jekyll a rather stuffy academic type who, as a chemist, or possibly an alchemist, while experimenting discovers a drug that releases him from all inhibitions letting the evil or mostly evil unconscious of Jekyll emerge as Mr. Hyde
This in itself was an expression of the understanding of the unconscious. The discovery, or examination of the unconscious began with Dr. Anton Mesmer in the eighteenth century and by Stevenson’s time in 1886 when his story was published was a well-known phenomenon among the cognoscenti. In Stevenson’s story Jekyll had been a wild and rowdy lad in his youth and longed to relive those golden days. Many drugs, including absinthe, were in use already in those days thus their effect on personality being noted so that Jekyll using some sort of concoction was able to remove his inhibitions with disastrous consequences.
Literary characters of dual personalities began to pop up everywhere. One duo, as influential as Stevenson’s was Conan Doyle’s marvelous creation of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. It isn’t noted that the two were complementary aspects of the same personality.
Perhaps the writer most devoted to the Jekyll-Hyde problem was the fantastic American late neo-Romantic writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This extraordinary writer was perhaps at one and the same time the most Romantic, scientific, fantasy and horror or proto-sci-fi author of all time. He carried the Jekyll-Hyde story to new heights and wide variations.
In his first published novel, A Princess Of Mars, his chief character, John Carter, who had survived the split personality of the US in the Civil War as a Confederate officer, while running from an Indian war band of the post-civil war Western era stumbles on a cave of strange provenance where he abandons his body to be, one assumes, spiritually transmitted to Mars. Thus, this photo-copy of himself takes up a career on Mars while his body remains in the cave on Earth.
Another novel, one that made Burroughs’ life, Tarzan of the Apes, followed a year later. In this story Tarzan, or John Clayton, to give his civilized name, was born on the coast of Gabon in Africa to noble English parents who were killed by the ‘Great Apes’. These Apes are of no known species, perhaps they were meant as the Missing Link, a great evolutionary trope of the day when it was thought there was a single link between apes and humans that was missing.
Rescued from death by the ape Kala, who had lost her own ‘balu’ or baby, the baby Tarzan was reared as an ape. His ape name Tarzan thus means ‘white skin’ as opposed to the hairy black apes. While not exactly having super powers, yet Tarzan as a boy discovers his parents tree house containing a primer or two intended for John Clayton’s future education, he teaches himself through pictures and texts how to read and thus discovers he is not an ape at all but a human being. Thus in Jekyll and Hyde terms he becomes the Man-Beast. Stevenson’s novelette had been read by Burroughs who entered into the notion of dual personality whole heartedly. Thus, when wearing civilized clothing Tarzam is a cultured English lord but when he strips to the loin cloth he becomes an actual beast. Still intelligent but a sort of noble savage. Tarzan had other dual personalities. At one time a look alike named Esteban Miranda challenges him for the love of his wife while Tarzan is repeatedly bashed in the head at which he becomes a different amnesiac personality. Dual personality was a real fixation of Burroughs. He himself was cracked on the head at the age of twenty-two which definitely changed his own personality.
Burroughs was sort of an odd duck. He was a wide reader and the stories he read seemed to take on an independent existence in his head so that he apparently couldn’t differentiate his original story from a variation on someone else’s story so that in the sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, The Return of Tarzan, he retells Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Murders In The Rue Morgue as his own. I’m not sure how his career survived that unless a very few of his readers had ever read Poe. Poe wasn’t especially well thought of at this time. However his editor Metcalf surely had. Metcalf rejected the novel but Return was later picked up by another magazine desperate for a Tarzan story.
Burroughs even titles his story ‘What Happened In The Rue Maule. Even though the source of Burroughs story is easily recognized in Poe’s story today still Burroughs manages his details in such a way that it seems a new and almost original story.
In Poe’s story the split personality is the lead character C. Auguste Dupin, the is CAD and the unnamed narrator. It should also be mentioned that Poe explored the dual personality in several of his stories of the 1830s-1840s including the remarkable William Wilson. Poe obviously suffered from a split personality.
In Burroughs’ story the suave cultured Tarzan now living in Paris, at the sight of blood reverts back to this savage upbringing among the apes, becoming a ravening beast. In Poe’s story an escaped Orang outang commits the murders, in what is essentially a locked room story and escapes.
In Burroughs story a hereditary enemy by the name of Rokoff sets up a situation to lure Tarzan into a building and apartment where there are a half dozen villains waiting to kill him. How Rokoff would know that Tarzan would be walking down the most villainess street in Paris, ask any policeman as Burroughs writes, isn’t adequately explained.
Nevertheless, hearing a woman’s screams of distress Tarzan rushed into the building, Rue Maule #27, third floor, Burroughs was always great at details, where in a sort of Badger game he discovers the woman and a roomful of villains. ‘Yoicks’ or something similar, he says, and the melee begins as Tarzan begins to demolish the mini mob out to injure him. Rokoff waiting outside quickly finds a phone, cell phones were not yet invented, while one is surprised to find one so easily available in Paris at this time. The point is that Rokoff calls the police to tell them there is a riot going on at #27, third floor. Still a savage beast although dressed in the height of fashion Tarzan flattens the cops, blows out the candle, phones being available in #27 but not electricity, and leaps out the window onto an adjoining telephone pole not unlike Poe’s Orang, scampers across the rooftops of Paris, as the telephone pole is taller than the third floor, similar to swinging through the jungle trees, drops to the ground, steps into a corner drug store to use the toilet to tidy up and wash his hands then, this is the word Burroughs uses, saunters, down the block just like any bored boulevardier. There you have Poe rewritten into a story only slightly inferior to the original.
Amazingly Poe’s story served as a basis for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes and Watson replacing Poe’s Dupin and narrator.
In this tremendously creative period another of the great genres persisting down till today was Bram Stoker’s incredible version of the vampire Dracula on which today’s versions of vampires are based. Stoker did not create the vampire character, there are earlier examples including Polidori’s short story that set the rage off. Among other versions Varney The Vampire a long novel by Rymer in mid-century really developed the theme and from blood sucking vampires, the psychic vampire also emerged. Our times’ Anne Rice had made a career out of vampire stories.
A creation of the first Romantic period, Mary Shelley’s man created life, Frankenstein and his monster, evolved into a whole genre of androids, robots and various forms of artificial humanity. Interestingly the ubiquitous Edgar Rice Burroughs offered his contribution of The Monster Men, as he covered almost all the modern genres adding The Mastermind Of Mars to the catalog of artificial life in the 1930s. He even managed to attach Henry Ford’s mass production methods to the process.
The reaction against the nineteenth century scientific revolution was epitomized by the Pre-Raphaelites of England. They were called Pre-Raphaelites because they rejected all society after the artist Raphael. Following in their tradition William Morris wrote a number of haunting nostalgia novels that are quite charming but overly sentimental.
Perhaps my favorite of the neo-Romantics is the English writer George Du Maurier and his three novels, Peter Ibbetson, Trilby and The Martian. Du Maurier himself was a Frenchman who was removed to England in youth causing a sort of split personality in himself. For a couple decades he made a name for himself writing and drawing for the great humor magazine of the period Punch. Then he was passed over when the editorship opened up; that was more than he could he bear. He quit and began writing his novels. Apparently his talents had been under appreciated at Punch as his great success took the magazines contributors by surprise.
The first novel, Peter Ibbetson was well thought of but didn’t establish him. His second, Trilby, was a smash mega seller influencing the Mauve Decade of the Nineties to its roots. His villain Svengali is still widely used to describe a person who seems to control another under the influence of hypnotism. Du Maurier died as his last novel, The Martian, was published. It is a lovely book. I like it, but it does not have the concentration of the first two. However it’s proto-sci-fi fantasy theme is very interesting for the right minds, overall the three are a great trilogy. A fourth was projected dealing with politics but the Grim Reaper came between it and Du Maurier.
George might be considered the arch-typical neo-Romantic. His influence is probably greater than realized. His themes have been reopened by writers like the great American novelist, Richard Matheson.
For Du Maurier memory was everything, and in his mind, that necessitated life after death or as he thought, what good was having accumulated them. His novels are monuments to memory. Born in 1834 he spent his childhood in France a childhood he turned into a fairyland; he was removed to England as a youth and the two national characters lived side by side in him as two almost distinct personalities. The writers of the first Romantic period fueled his memories, most notably the English poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron and the Frenchman Charles Nodier.
Nodier was the composer of the interesting short novel Trilby. In the 1890s Du Maurier would rewrite the story in his novel of the same name. In Nodier’s novel Trilby was male fairy who visited the girl Jeannie in Scotland. As Nodier was writing in the Romantic period that was a revival, a last gasp itself, as fairies had been disproven by science. So Jeannie having revealed the visits of the fairy Trilby to her, she was treated as deluded and compelled to give up her friend Trilby. Then she sickened and died.
In Du Maurier’s novel, Trilby, his middle or second novel, he reverses the sexes of the duo making Trilby a young woman and turning Trilby into the evil hypnotist, the Jewish Svengali.
The story is placed in Paris in the 1850s where Du Maurier was an artist living the Bohemian life in the classic age of Bohemianism. Du Maurier portrays an ideal beautiful fantasy life with boon companions and a carefree Bohemian existence. Trilby is a grisette or what might have been called a ‘hippie chick’ in our own 1960s, an artist’s model or whatever but virtuous unlike the other grisettes.
She and the Little Billee character of Du Maurier fall in love. Little Billee is modeled after his namesake in Thackeray’s poem of the same name. The romance is scotched when Little Billee’s aristocratic mother visits him and rejects Trilby as a daughter-in-law.
Another regular visitor to the atelier was a beteljew named Svengali. He was also a musician and musical theorist who played piano well. He noted that Trilby’s oral cavity was perfect for a great singer however Trilby couldn’t carry a tune and could scarcely hit a note. After her rejection by Billee’s mother, the gang breaks up with Billee and his friends returning to England.
A few vicissitudes find Trilby at the hypnotist Svengali’s door. Her oral cavity now belongs to him. Returning to his native precincts in Poland Svengali after hypnotizing Trilby makes her sing like a bird. To shorten the story, in a Jenny Lind like career, Trilby and Svengali take Europe by storm.
While visiting Paris Billee and friends reuniting for the moment, watch Trilby and Svengali’s triumphant entry into Paris. Svengali spots them watching and gives Little Billee a hard look. The shows were sold out so the trio missed them but were first in line for the London shows in the first box. Trilby could only sing while making eye contact with Svengali. He made the mistake of looking up to see Billee. A jealous rage overcame him, his eyes popped, he went apoplectic, croaking on the spot. Without eye contact Trilby returned to herself and could only croak off key and out of tune. The audience was merciless.
Trilby became sick and withered away. Her dying words were Svengali, Svengali, Svengali.
Thus, Nodier’s story was reversed and told in the most charming manner, neo-Romantically.
In the telling Du Maurier wove a lifetime of memories, musical and literary, reincorporated Bohemian Paris at its peak, a Jenny Lind type story at the end and the then current fascination with hypnotism. A thoroughly pleasing mix. He transfigures his life into a fairy tale.
Nearly the same fairy tale he used in his first book, Peter Ibbetson. I’m not sure I could call Ibbetson a great book but the three novels together are a sui generis. Events fit into a sci-fi context but yet are more ethereal, other worldly. Du Maurier’s inventions are really quite daring as he seeks to relate to reality yet evades it as much as he can, blending the inner with outer world in a tantalizing manner. Memory, always memory but a memory made immediate.
E.T.A. Hoffman’s introduction to his tale ‘A New Year’s Adventure’ explains the feeling better than I can:
Quote:
The Travelling Enthusiast from whole journals we are presenting another “fancy flight in the manner of Jacques Callot ,” apparently not separated the events of his inner life from those of the outside world; in fact we cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. But even if you cannot see the boundary very clearly, dear reader, the Geisterseher may beckon you to his side, and before you are even aware of it, you will be in a strange magical realm where figures of fantasy step right into your own life, and are as cordial with you as your oldest friends.
Unquote.
Du Maurier captures that feeling perfectly and if you enter into his fabulous story of memory and reality co-existing together seamlessly you will be carried along to a supreme adventure. E.T.A. Hoffman himself was from the first Romantic era, one of its stellar authors. The divine muses, Calliope and Clio, not only sat on his shoulders whispering, but entered his head and dictated his stories. I have no idea whether Du Maurier read Hoffman but Hoffmann was in the same time frame as Charles Nodier who wrote the first version of Trilby.
Du Maurier was familiar with the Romantic oeuvre. As with many nineteenth century writers Du Maurier was fascinated with the poems of Byron. He makes frequent references to the Giaour, one of Byron’s tales. The poem seems to be a central fixation guiding Du Maurier’s pen.
Peter Ibbetson tells the story of Ibbetson’s crime, his incarceration, his descent into madness and removal from prison to the Colny Hatch, where he lives his life out. In France Ibbetson grew up with a little girl named Seraskier. He loved her greatly and the separation from her when he was taken to England was quite painful to him. And then, as if by magic, as a grown man living with his cruel uncle he attends a ball to discover Seraskier as a grown woman, the Duchess of Towers. Of course, a married woman, she is unobtainable but they begin a platonic love affair.
But then, Peter’s nasty uncle raises Peter’s ire and in a fit of anger Peter bludgeons him to death. He himself is condemned to be hanged but through the efforts of the Duchess of Towers and her powerful friends his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. It is in prison that he loses control being transferred to the insane asylum.
It is while there that he discovers that he can enter the Duchess’s dreams and she can enter his, and this is done on real terms and not imagination. They actually physically interact. He now lives to sleep and enter the alternate reality of his dreams shared with the Duchess. In a carefully elaborated system the two can travel anywhere they know having been there or do anything they have done in the outside world in the past. Thus memory is everything. The inner and outer worlds become one.
She is still married so that the relationship is platonic until her husband dies, and Peter and the Duchess can be lovers. Happy in his insane asylum where his sanest dreams are realized. Peter is supremely happy but then one night as he snuggles into bed drifting off to dreamland a terrible thing happens, as he reaches the portal from his dream to hers he finds it blocked, boarded up. With a cold shiver he realizes the truth, the Duchess has died.
Having completely entered this world of Du Maurier’s I broke down in tears along with Peter. Of course his sanity or insanity is jarred and he collapses. But whatever gods may be had pity on Peter. As in ancient days they let the Duchess return to Peter’s dream to console him and promise him that they would be together eternally. One assumes then that in death Peter found the happiness that had eluded him in life.
Today the theme has been explored in many variations, notably in Richard Matheson’s Somewhere In Time and also his What Dreams May Come. I have no idea whether Matheson read Du Maurier but it is not improbable. Time has passed now and Victorian literature no longer holds the place it then did but Matheson was born well before me and for my age cohort there was no literature taught written after 1914 so there’s no reason Matheson wouldn’t have been familiar with a range of Victorian authors unread today.
Du Maurier’s story at the time was as original as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written a few years before. While The Martian, the last of the trilogy, is perhaps the weakest of the three it too is very innovative in a proto-sci-manner. It too is a memory capsule centered around the loss of vision in one of George’s eyes. The loss seems to have been the result of a torn retina. Given the knowledge of the time there was no hope to save the eye but even then he fell in with a medical quack.
But, just as Ibbetson went to prison and the asylum and in the process discovered how to meld dreams with the Duchess of Towers, in this story he is contacted by a little fairy from Mars, the Martian of the story also named Martia. She attaches herself to the protagonist Barty Josselin. She is sort of a female Wandering Jew (another great European legend) who for centuries has been attaching herself to men as a sort succubus.
Her term as a Wandering Fairy is up. She is intensely in love with Barty so she arranges to become his next child who is a little girl he names Marty. At a young age Marty dies and Barty dies both souls are released at the same time so that together with Barty’s memories they continue the journey after death to the heart of the sun.
Beautiful story, longingly told.
The neo-Romantic period coincided with the apex of European power in history as Europe had conquered the seas and continents of the entire world; all its peoples were its subjects. But, as always happens the moment of triumph begins the descent. Even in the first decade of the twentieth century there were those who knew that European power was in decline and then the Great War cut it short. The passing was commemorated in the American Madison Grant’s great book: The Passing Of The Great Race. Before it did a great literature was written, written in the neo-Romantic style, in a sort of fair land style. The scramble for Africa had brought nearly the whole monstrously huge continent under European control, a blessing and a curse. In European writing it is depicted as a sort of wondrous fairyland.
Europe produced three great epics over its two thousand year span, the sprawling epic of which the Iliad and Odyssey are part, the huge Arthurian cycle and finally the search for the source of the Nile that embraces the discovery of Africa. Why the last should be true isn’t clear.
The real life adventure was looking back at it the incredible search for the source of the Nile. England bent its energies on the search for the exact spot from which the flow of the White Nile trickled. Huge sums were spent and men devoted their very lives in the search and it produced a great literature. The solo adventures of Samuel Baker and his slave, also his wife, purchased in Hungary. The fabulous safaris of Henry Morton Stanley spanning tens of thousand of miles, his books reading like improbable adventure novels even far surpassing them while his own life was stranger than fiction. Perhaps his life is only believable as fiction. Disparaged now because they speak of a far gone time and even more ancient expectations and attitudes.
Kipling wrote of the Indian Raj when a few thousand Englishmen controlled a sub-continent. Joseph Conrad wrote his tales of the daring adventurers who seized Asian kingdoms.
Perhaps the greatest of all were the novels of the English writer H. Rider Haggard. He, the author of two of the greatest neo-Romantic adventure novels, King Solomon’s Mines and single word title She. The title in full: She-who-must-be-obeyed.
The neo-Romantic period also saw the re-emergence of esotericism. It burst into full bloom in Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled and her creation of Theosophy. It burst too late to be an influence on Haggard, at least his early career but Haggard seems to be fully conversant with its ideas. The novel She itself is said to be a perfect expression of Theosophy and that from Madame Blavatsky herself.
African romance after African romance rolled out of his pen, all of very high quality. Haggard commemorated the notion of the Elephant’s Graveyard that fascinated generations up until perhaps the 1950s when the legend lapsed into infinity. One doesn’t hear of it anymore.
The Imperial novels of that time while still heard of are definitely out of favor. More people wish it had never existed than care to remember it and explore its remains. More people would rather visit holocaust museums and gaze at the ashes of dead bodies.
However, Romanticism has continued to evolve. Many of the best stories of the pre-WWI era passed into the realm of boys’ stories laying their riches at the feet of a couple three or four generations of lucky boys. Many also were preserved in the nascent talkie film industry, versions preserved on reels of film.
And still the need for the Land of Faerie persisted and Romanticism took a new turn scarcely recognized for what it was. Science had left that empty space that had to be filled. The Land of Faerie had to be reorganized. At first Mars replaced the Land of Faerie, seemingly safe at least 30 million miles distant from Earth and at other time half across the solar system. Martian stories began to make their appearance precisely during the neo-Romantic period. There was still room to speculate as high powered telescopes were still to be perfected. Camille Flammarion and Perceval Lowell could still write of dead seas and canals on Mars. The last of the neo-Romantics, Edgar Rice Burroughs, could still exploit faerie kingdoms on Mars but that could only last until the killer telescopes were developed.
The Universe began to expand rapidly through the twenties and thirties. As late as 1950 it was thought that the Universe was as small as 450,000 light years. But then it exploded through millions and hundreds of millions of light years and on into the billions. Mars was no longer tenable as a Fairy refuge. Ray Bradury wrote his Martian Chronicles and in the last chapter all the fairy tale characters were driven from their last refuge into oblivion.
About this time however Flying Saucers made their appearance. Is there anything more Fairy than Flying Saucers? Think about it. The alien abductions began; we discovered that we were being watched by little green men from distant planets and galaxies. Little green fairies? In the wonderful sci -fi of the Fifties writers worked up incredible scenarios. It was imagined that aliens from perhaps billions of light years away had exhausted their own mineral resources and wished to remove ours to their planets. The most imaginative of the sci-fi writers going by the name of William Tenn even posited that the inhabitants of the star Betelgeuse were building a bridge, a sort of conveyer belt from there to here to convey the resources. The logistics of that were too much for my young mind.
At that time also, the first few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki radio active fall out was creating all kinds of monsters, human and otherwise, Giant Crabs came forth, fifty foot men, even the greatest of them all, matching Frankenstein, The Creature From The Black Lagoon. After Bikini and Eniwetok anything was possible.
Aliens landed, as in The Day The Earth Stood Still, to check out Earth’s suitability to join the Intergalactic Peace League. This was shortly after WWII and during the Korean War so naturally the savage earth people were found wanting and not needed to disturb the peace prevailing throughout the intergalactic League. So, aliens, in this case Klaatu and Gort, hopped back in their Saucer leaving us with the admonition that they would check back in a few thousands of years to see if we had evolved.
Meanwhile, perhaps hundreds of saucers hovered over Earth from near space carefully observing us, occasionally crashing, once near Roswell, New Mexico where the search for the wreckage still goes on. Abductions continued.
A parallel development that was as influential as the space operas was the development of the super heroes. Perhaps the first of the super heroes were creations of the redoubtable Edgar Rice Burroughs with his creations of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Carter coming from the heavier gravity and atmosphere of Earth had actual super powers on Mars while if Tarzan didn’t actually have super powers he could certainly do what no other human beings could do.
But, Time does not have a stop, or even stand still. Science and technology were rapidly moving ahead, especially in the print medium. Comic strips in the newspapers had been around from the 1890s but in the early thirties some genius invented what would become the graphic novel today, that is comic books. The comics were turned into illustrated four color folders at a dime a piece. How the comic book would have developed isn’t clear. Since super heroes such as the Shadow and the Man of Bronze, Doc Savage had arisen to compete with the like of John Carter and Tarzan something extra was needed for the comic books, fortunately for the idiom a man named Adolf Hitler had assumed he governance of Germany. Adolf Hitler was a bete noir of the Jews and he stimulated their imagination in the US so that in 1938 the first issue of Superman (original title Action Comics) was released and the super hero with truly upper human powers and the very latest scientific gadgets came into existence. Batman, Capt. America and a host of others followed on the heels of Superman while WWII which started supplied prime grist for the comic book mill. The comics were a Jewish enterprise and the super heroes were therefore Jewish. And under the care of the very Jewish Stan Lee have remained so down to this day.
Aiding the super hero phenomenon since translated to film was the emergence of more science in the form of CGI (Computer Generated Images). With that addition the impossible could be made visible so that the human mind no longer had to grapple with mere reality. It conquered reality. Neo-Reality had arrived. Perhaps Faerieland had won after all.
Put all the above together and a new alternate reality or Land of Faerie had been created to fill he void left when Science had destroyed the possibility of the old Land of Faerie, even on Mars. The Universe was huge and there was no way to either prove or disprove the universe of Star Trek, a place where no man had gone before or was likely to go in the future. So, that fairyland is secure.
The Land of Faerie was only one imagined realm that had to be dealt with, there was also the imagined kingdom of God or the gods that was challenged out of existence. That in Part 2b to follow.
Magic, The Land Of Faerie And The Liberal Mind
April 4, 2018
Magic, The Land Of Faerie
And The Liberal Mind
The March-April Issue Of Foreign Affairs:
A Discussion
by
R.E. Prindle
-1-
The March-April issue of Foreign Affairs arrived and once again it is dedicated to the denunciation of President Trump. As is well known Foreign Affairs is the propaganda arm of the Council On Foreign Relations. The CFR is not merely an informational service, it is also a potent influence within the government of the United States. Many members have even served as President of the United States. In fact, the last four presidents covering twenty-four consecutive years, that is Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and had Hillary Clinton been placed a full twenty-eight, possible thirty-two years. Time enough to indoctrinate two and half generations.
Thus it was a bitter disappointment for them when Donald Trump made a run around end to win the White House. His mere candidacy had unleashed an unceasing barrage of hatred and since he has been under siege defending himself against innumerable CFR sappers. The March-April issue continues the assault. The five themed articles under the heading Letting Go are: Trump’s Lucky Year, Why the Chaos Can’t Last, The World After Trump, How The System Can Endure, The Rise Of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy, The Post-American World Economy: Globalization In The Trump Era and Giving Up The High Ground: America’s Retreat On Human Rights.
As is evident the Liberal ‘system’ that the CFR presidents were putting in place and which would have been completed by the election of Hillary Clinton has been disrupted by the election of Donald Trump who is, in fact, dismantling the whole Liberal CFR system. Hence, an article on how the system can endure, one imagines, behind the scene: the so-called Dark Government.
This raises the question of what beyond specific goals as outlined in Foreign Affairs is the Liberal mind set. In the larger scope of human history to what psychological reality, Weltanschauung motivates the Liberal mind.
Many theories have been advanced about the motivating forces that direct human activity. The Hegelian/Marxist view is of course based on economics. But underlying theories such as Marxism is the fundamental dichotomy of the spiritual vs. the material. The fantasy of life vs. the reality. The Liberal utopian based ‘spirituality’ vs. the Conservative naturalistic based view of reality. The soft-headed vs. the hard-headed.
In many ways the Liberal mind is magical in nature. The Liberal desires and magically creates a reality that assumes that the desire is fact.
Thus Adam S. Posen who wrote the article The Post-American World Economy: Globalization in the Trump Era projects on the one hand the desire of the Liberal post-WWII system while on the other unconsciously contrasts the reality. The very title The Post-American World Economy contradicts the assumption that the Post-WWII US world order is still in operation. So, possibly, Trump is merely destroying the Liberal mental fantasy. Negating the magic. Post-American posits an end to the US domination and, indeed, under Obama the CFR destroyed the dominant role of the US with the result that a number of more or less equals are now jockeying for position.
Mr. Posen begins his article with the illusory view of this so-called seventy year post-war Liberal world order.
In the aftermath of World War II the United States set about building a global, rules base economic order. At the heart of the order it put the Liberal values of free trade backed up by U.S. power and bolstered by its growing legitimacy among other countries, prevented most economic disputes from escalating into mutually destructive trade wars, let alone military conflict. That allowed even the smallest and poorest countries to develop their social and economic potential without having to worry about predation by strange neighbors. By taking much of the fear out of the global economy, the U.S. led order allowed market decisions to be driven by business not bullying.
Adam S. Posen, The Post-American World
Economy: Globalization in the Trump
Era, pp 28-38
Having been present at the creation and having lived through the whole period in varying degrees of cognizance, I can tell you that the above view of the seventy years is contradicted fully by my own experience and understanding.
The problems of our times have become more difficult. The fantasy of the American Century has passed. It is no longer about ‘things’ but one of attitudes of which most that are held are not realistic. There is at the base of the matter still the conflict between the ‘spiritual’ and the materialist views; that is, the longing for the magical supernatural Land of Faerie vs. Science , or the reality of matter, or put another way religion vs. science. Let us review the evolution of human consciousness.
-2-
One must assume that early man was as unconscious as are wild animals today. In other words, early man had no rational explanation for external reality. And this extends back into hundreds of thousands, millions, of years of pre-Homo Sapiens existence. Presumably the more recent nomenclature homo sapiens, wise or knowledgeable man, indicates the beginning of consciousness of the world outside the mind. As it took until the twentieth century before psychologists began to significantly understand the working of the human mind it can be easily seen that the learning process was long and slow. Man was barely conscious of either his own mind or the world outside his mind, working with very little true knowledge he came up with some pretty bizarre explanations of how things functioned.
He invested all animate and inanimate objects with life and sensation. Thus he created the supernatural and the natural. The world was filled with invisible beings both good and bad. Gods and Devils, Faeries, Elves, Gnomes, Elementals. The air was packed with demons and angels and what have you. This was true down to and including the beginning of history and well beyond, even into the nineteenth century. Gods came and went, old gods died, gods who failed in their duties were discarded or transformed. Each people had their own gods. In the clash of peoples and therefore gods, peoples went under and with them their gods.
In this mental context I would like to examine the period in European history from 1100 to 1300, a very critical and rich period in Europe and the Middle East that would eventually affect the world when the European diaspora took place from c. 1400 to the beginning of the twentieth century.
By1300 the Catholic, that is the Universal, Church was the dominant supernaturally based force in Europe and the ME- Middle East. In order to confirm its position it had to eliminate all other supernatural belief systems. This was no easy task as other supernatural beliefs systems had the same credibility as the Christian and the Catholic Church was never completely successful. This was a wonderful period and I hope I can successfully display it with some justice.
There were many competing supernatural belief systems competing at this time, many remnants of old decayed and dying gods as well as their successors trying to establish themselves against the dominant Catholic Church.
The old Greco-Roman systems still survived in out the way places and pockets and even in the popular mind. The old Egyptian systems had been mutating since the Assyrian invasions of the seventh century BC. No longer with a national State to support the religion it had infiltrated Christianity to a degree and went on mutating over the centuries but was still a potent force as an element of the Catholic faith.
Of course the backbone of Catholicism came from the Jewish religious system through Christianity. The Catholic Church took over Jewish religious sites wholesale. Thus the erstwhile Jewish capital of Jerusalem became the holiest site of Christianity in Europe. With the founding of the Mohammedan religion of Arabia the so-called Holy City fell into non-Jewish-Christian hands.
As Europe reorganized and became somewhat unified under the Carolingian kings of France, the idea of the Holy City in Moslem hands became intolerable in Church eyes and so just prior to 1100 the Church instigated the idea of liberating Jerusalem giving the period under consideration the name of the Crusades.
This was done for supernatural reasons. On the European side one was under God and on the Moslem side one was under their deity who went by the name of Allah. Thus one had the War of the Gods.
The ME had always been a hotbed of competing supernatural religious ideas. Innumerable Gods and Goddesses. Some intriguing mental projections in the bargain. Generally speaking few if any had completely disappeared. If the actual religion has been suppressed the guiding ideas lived on.
The human mind has continued to evolve, that is consciousness, so that the internal unconscious mind has been enlightened toward a correct appreciation of the external world. That is, as Freud expressed it, the personality or mind is integrated when consciousness has illuminated the unconscious. The period under consideration was an important period in the evolution of consciousness. It should be remembered that any of these imaginary beings had equal validity in the consciousness of people of the times. God or Faerie, same thing.
The Aryan Land of Faerie has as much a claim to reality as did the God of the Jews, Isis of the Egyptians, Cybele, the God of the Christians, however as Jews and Christians were dominant the other imaginary deities were not disproved but ridiculed and suppressed. Thus, in this tremendous period of the Christian crusades to recapture the religious capital of Jerusalem there were many unintended consequences. The Crusades opened the gates to admit ideas from the other suppressed belief systems. Thus, the Cathar religion of Manichean sympathies had migrated West from Iran through the Balkans to gain a firm foothold in Southern France, also known as the Occitan.
This was a large trans-Alpine area including the Aquitaine. This area fostered the romances of King Arthur and the Round Table which was a Faerie kingdom. A land of magic and enchantment both anathema to Judeo-Christianity. The wonderful romances, far outshining the dull Jewish bible, were developed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Thus the Catholic Church was confronted by a number of competing belief systems. The Cathar problem was solved in the midst of the Middle Eastern crusades by a crusade against the Cathars. A genocidal war against the unfortunate Cathars was conducted by the French at the instigation of the Church. This involved an actual man hunt to destroy the Cathars root and branch. Apparently the Church remembered the Amalekites.
That solution was really easy for the Church but the Arthurian romances that involved England, France, Germany and associated peoples could not be dealt with so easily. Indeed, when the main assault came against the Church it would come from the three countries mentioned. They required boring from within, co-opting the ideology. Catholic writers thus chose to change the direction of the romances from a warrior cult to one of a quest for spiritual perfection. This was achieved through the introduction of the character of Galahad, the son of the nearly perfect but flawed knight, Lancelot of the Lake.
At the same time a French series of works called the Chansons de Geste- Songs of Adventure- were written to discredit the Land of Faerie. A key text along this line was an amazing story titled Huon of Bordeaux. Bordeaux was a key Cathar city, sort of the Faerie capital, bordering the the key Cathar stronghold of Mont Segur. Galahad ascended to heaven from that stronghold along with the Holy Grail to lay the Arthurian threat to rest.
Huon of Bordeaux introduces the king of the Faerie Land, Oberon. Oberon and God are in a contest to see which would most successfully aid Huon in his quest to exonerate himself from a punishment imposed by the ninth century king of France, Charlemagne. Bear in mind this was a contest between two imaginarily real gods, God and Oberon, king of the Faeries.
Huon, had violated chivalric protocol by successfully defending himself against Charlemagne’s evil son, killing him in the process. Charlemagne then banishes Huon, allowing him back only if he succeeds in a number of seemingly impossible feats in the Holy Land against a Moslem king. Huon doesn’t have a prayer, however passing through a forbidden forest in the Holy Land he is confronted by Oberon, king of the Faeries. This is equivalent to running into the Catholic God. Oberon, after extracting a number of vows, gives Huon a horn which if blown in dire straits Oberon will appear with a hundred thousand troops to rescue him. Huon is cautioned to never use it unless his situation is beyond redemption otherwise.
Huon is the light-headed sort so he blows the horn to test it. Oberon appears with his 100K troops but is miffed because Huon didn’t follow instructions. In any event Huon through Oberon’s aid performs the impossible tasks Charlemagne set him and returns to Bordeaux before returning to Paris and the king’s court as instructed. Another boo-boo in a long string of boo-boos. Huon could have been the prototype of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan.
While absent from his home his brother Gerard had usurped his role and now refuses to give it up. Further adventures intervene but Charlemagne in the end comes to Bordeaux to receive evidences of Huon’s successes. Huon is unable to produce them as his brother has stolen them from him. At this time Oberon appears and magically exonerates Huon. As God had done nothing to help Huon one would think Oberon to be judged the greater than God but Huon irrationally chooses the ineffective God over Oberon even after Huon abdicates his kingship, and renounces Faerieland appointing Huon his successor. Right. Even though now King of Faerie Land Huon chooses to live happily ever after in his domain of Bordeaux while God is declared he victor in the contest with Oberon.
Meanwhile the Church was capturing the Arthurian Faerie Land so that as the fourteenth century began the Cathars, Faeries and the real life Knights Templar who had been associated with the Cathars had been disposed of. The Jews were suppressed and the Church and God were seemingly in control. However in the fifteenth century Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, was to fall to the Moslems releasing even more heretical ideas against the Catholic ideology that would result in the Enlightenment during which the European mind matured to the point where the scientific assumed prominence and scientific investigation began to reveal the true state of Nature. This development destroyed the basis of supernatural thinking placing all forms of the fantastic into defensive positions or beyond into fiction.
The Jews abandoned the idea of God, the Catholics refused to accept reality and Europeans who cherished the Faerie forced to blend the Faerie with science. That is to say, turn Faerie lands into fiction. Thus the Romantic Age took form in
Science continued to remove the Veil of Isis revealing nature to the human mind. The next big test was Darwin’s formulation of Evolution. The concept had been discussed for a hundred years previously but Darwin wrote the words that condensed evolutionary theory into fact. Romantics who had been holding on were now forced to adapt further. This adaptation produced the Second or Neo-Romantic who struggled in the face of scientific realities.
An interesting development occurred. Mankind refused to give up the supernatural. It would appear that the terrors of the real world required an imaginary refuge in which things could be controlled. Thus a transition from an imagined heaven or Faerie land began a conversion to an other world (parallel universe) that while equally unrealizable was equally comforting. The Pre-Raphaelites reached back into the past to idealize the world before the artist Raphael. From that beginning it blossomed into late nineteenth and early twentieth century novels. Among many others were the reactionary works of William Morris and the futuristic novels of the near great George Du Maurier. Du Maurier brought forward the Faerie projected into the future in a sort of science fiction.
In the US, L. Frank Baum created a modern fairy tale in his Land of Oz stories. This also meshed with the English Ruritanian novels of Anthony Hope and the US interpreter George Barr McCutcheon.
All these threads including Rider Haggard’s romantic African fantasies were brought together in the novels of the American Edgar Rice Burroughs. While not thought of as a Neo-Romantic, Burroughs was probably the greatest of the lot.
As a result of a brain injury as a young man Burroughs was capable of disappearing into his brain world to create amazing fictional realities.
His scientific background and romantic projections are nearly perfect blends. In his Tarzan series he employs Africa as a geographic reality but then transforms it into a romantic fairyland that could never exist. In his own way Burroughs character Tarzan is a reinvention of Oberon. This confused a lot of readers who insisted that the real Africa differed from Burroughs’ imaginary Africa. No contest.
For instance, Burroughs wanted to have tigers in Africa so he wrote them in to his Faerie Land. The magazine version of Tarzan of the Apes had tigers and made the story truly fabulous. However readers, being literal when their imaginations failed to embrace the flights of Burroughs’ fancy forced the writer to change the tigers to lions thereby wrecking the Faerie land Africa, this alternate reality that Burroughs wished to create. Burroughs himself was heavily influenced by the fairy tales of L. Frank Baum, with whom he became great friends, so that if you’ve read Baum and keep Oz in mind while reading Burroughs the stories take on an added dimension.
Burroughs didn’t stop with Tarzan and Africa but out of the same mind during the same period created another fairly land on Mars and another at the Earth’s core honoring the fabulous hollow Earth notion. Thus three complete Faerie lands.
Of course, there was already a fairly large body of Mars and space travel stories in existence but they took a fairly clumsy approach and turned it into a whole something else, sensational, perhaps, for the moment but without enduring appeal.
At the same time, early teens of the twentieth century, a man named Hugo Gernbach was taking science fiction to a whole new level beyond Burroughs that would result in the fantastic blossoming of sci-fi in the nineteen-fifties.
This was truly a romantic recreation of Faerie Land. Worlds beyond comprehension; the transformation of the Little Folk into space aliens of every description with their human counterparts. The true nature of sci-fi has been little appreciated.
The neo-Romantics of the second period also created the horror and fantasy genres that would dominate literature along with sci-fi. The two greatest and most enduring creations were the Frankenstein of Mary Bysshe Shelley of the first Romantic period and the greatest of the monsters, Bram Stoker’s vampire Dracula. Vampire stories had been around since Shelley’s friend Dr. Polidori wrote his short vampire piece. Varney the Vampire had made his appearance in mid-century England, attributed to Rymer but Stoker’s sensational novel formed the template for all future vampire stories including those of Anne Rice who was or is totally obsessed by the genre. Thus the supernatural transformed into quasi-scientific reality has survived to the present.
The Liberal mind evolved out of the Judeo-Catholic religious sphere, more specifically influenced by the Jewish aspects of the Old Testament, most especially by the notion of a people elected by god to rule mankind in his name. The notion is essentially amoral.
As the Jews are supposed to be creating God’s will on Earth, bringing his rule to all people they believe that means by any means necessary. That notion includes the elimination of whole peoples who may stand in the way of that realization. Thus the great Liberal novelist Victor Hugo would explain in his novel 1793 the advent of the new perfect Liberal world can never be achieved so long as ‘obstructionists’ live so that Liberals are justified in killing tens or hundreds of million or even a billion in what would be a vain attempt to eliminate differences of opinion.
Thus, today, we have the Liberals hoping, praying for the deaths of ‘old’ people who they fancy stand in the way of the realization of their utopia, while they imagine all people under say fifty are guided one mindedly by their utopian ideal.
On the other hand, Jews, Negroes and others believe that the whole White population of a billion people must be eliminated before their dreams can be realized. It was believed by them that their dream was approaching realization in this 2016 election.
This hope was upset by the maverick Donald Trump. Trump’s election set the Liberals off on a disappointed frenzy. Hence, Foreign Affairs issue Volume 97 no. 2 is devoted to expressing their disappointment by denouncing now President Trump.
Thus of the five articles under the collective Letting Go, three are definitely written by Jews, Eliot A. Cohen, Barry R. Posen and Adam S. Posen. The female contributor Sarah Margon is also Jewish. The only possible non-Jewish contributor is Jacob Sullivan, possibly of Irish derivation. As these articles are all assigned, that is written on hire, Sullivan may be assumed to be compliant.
It is evident therefore that the Jews are behind the extreme anti-Trump movement. While Trump seems to be obligated and subservient to the Jews for financial reasons their extreme opposition can only be based on the fact that Trump has taken a course independent of Jewish hopes and dreams.
The Jews, then, forming the core beliefs and fantasies of the Liberals give full and open access to the Liberal mind. The Liberals consider themselves to be justified sinners, the elect chosen by god to bring his heaven, his perfection to Earth as in heaven. There is no dissuading them, no ameliorating their extreme beliefs. They can only be quarantined or suppressed much as they hope to murder all opposition.
There is no room for discussion or compromises. Either they win or non-believers win. There is no other option.
Vol. I, Clip 3: The Vampyres Of New York
December 28, 2015
Book I, Clip 3
The Vampyres Of New York
A Novel
by
R.E. Prindle
If you haven’t experienced that kind of mental agony you don’t know. I tossed and turned all afternoon and into the night. My brain was racked but not with pain. It was like all the connections had come loose and I had no control of my mental processes. There was no way to concentrate, to organize my thoughts to possibly think or be rational. It was like three fevers without temperature racking around in my brain.
I was exhausted and then possibly at one in the morning I heard a knocking. I sat up in bed wondering who in the world it could be. Then I heard Gaines again: Hello, I’m back. Let’s talk.
Well, Gaines! Of course I knew what was happening then. I was at that level of experience and conditioning between the birth process and more conscious experience. I had already cleared out the most compelling of my childhood fixations at forty-two when I integrated my personality. That freed me from compulsions and inhibitions but I gradually learned that there was another layer of control or influence yet beyond my reach. Gaines had now shown up so it was possible to free myself from that psychological layer. Small comfort at eighty but then few if any become so clear. Freud and Jung certainly never attained it. I flattered myself that I could be unique. The first of the New Men. Don’t smile, it was a pleasant thought.
This wasn’t the first incident of interior dialogue my mind had spoken to itself. I heard what they call voices back in my early teens. Of course like St. Augustine I had been convinced that one could talk to God. Unlike Augustine I wasn’t crazy enough to persist when God couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know when I asked.
And then back then I heard voices telling me to do inappropriate things like Kill your mother and Chuckles but I shut them up; I wasn’t to going to jail for any reason. And now, here was Gaines a more or less rational entity who would try to convince me to do evil I was certain. As in primeval days I was attached to the God Principle while Gaines was representing the Satanic Principle.
He seemed to be lodged in the right hemisphere just behind and above that ear. This puzzled me somewhat as I would have thought he would have been part of my Animus or Ego that being the male side of the brain; instead he was on my female side.
Then I realized that when Gaines had taken up a primal position in my consciousness I was sitting on the back steps of the Orphanage. When my mother had put me in the Orphanage and had walked away she had created this space in my mind, this psychological layer. Gaines and his evil comic books was therefore associated with my mother. Oh yes, my mother. Sometimes I wish I had heeded those early voices and offed both her and Chuckles. Chuckles, that mean assed bastard, was her second husband. They married when I was ten and I then came out of the Orphanage.
Well, you know, as I always told myself, you have to play the hand you’re dealt. I think I can say without comment that I played that lousy hand well. Here I was in New York City, the capital of the world, in a thirty million dollar apartment. Gaines wasn’t going to be a problem, after all, he was me and I was him. I had the upper hand with the God Principle on my side while Gaines might as well have been Abe Goldbladder of the Satanic Principle. I will discuss that more in my presentation to the New Serapion Brethren.
I was inside my skull with Gaines but my mind had cleared up, I might as well get started.
‘So, Gaines, what brings you here?’ A silly question because I already knew the answer. Still, in order to extinguish him I had to play along. However I did think it necessary to call in my old psycho-analyst Dr. Anton Polarion as an assist.
Who is Dr. Anton? I’m embarrassed to say this because then you might think I really am crazy. But that’s alright, I may be.
Dr. Anton Polarion came around several years ago when I was deep in my psychological studies. I was working a number of fields of study and I needed someone to handle the psychology for me when I was working another field. It was then I thought up Dr. Anton giving him the responsibility for memorizing and developing psychology.
I know it sounds kind of crazy but it’s not. Dr. Anton was and is a memory aide. If you read up on the art of memory you will learn that in Greek and Roman times people constructed memory palaces of many rooms extensively furnished and then assigned memories to various rooms and objects in order to more conveniently record them, prodigious feats of memory are recorded. Oh alright, but I wasn’t going to wander around a Memory Palace trying to find various rooms and objects with their assigned memories so I just handed the job to an imagined Dr. Anton rather than a Memory Palace. You can understand that can’t you? Seems reasonable enough to me but you never know what other people will think. Anyway Dr. Anton knows whereof he speaks. So when it comes to hearing voices it was now two to one against Gaines and I had another Ace or two up my sleeve.
I was loaded for bear and I was sure I could kick Gaines’ ass. Still, I had to hear Gaines out.
‘So Gaines, as I said, what brings you here?’
‘I’ve got some good advice for you,’ said Gaines.
‘Knowing who you are Gaines I doubt it could be good.’
‘Oh ho, you think you know who I am do you? Who am I?’
‘This will take some time Gaines but you’ve got as much as I do. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Your showing up here, now, puts things in place. I’m going to call in Dr. Anton for support. You know who he is don’t you Gaines?’
‘Of course, of course. I know as well as you know me. Hello Anton, welcome to the conversation.’
Anton: Hello Gaines. Well, let’s get started.
Partly: The key here is the Orphanage and me sitting on the back step reading Tales From The Crypt. That was one sado-masochistic piece Gaines with a certain portrayal of women. Strangely that portrayal was reminiscent of my mother. It is between you and my mother that this psychology revolves around.
Anton: Yes, your mother transferred her hatred of your father to you after she had put him away and tried to destroy any happiness for you. It is no coincidence that after she had your father committed to the asylum she committed you to the Orphanage. Of course, she had ‘good reasons’ for doing so but they weren’t the real reasons. When you turned eighteen she thought she had you again, enlisting you in the Navy and having you shipped off somewhere where she would never have to see you to remind her of her crime against your father. Thus the association of your mother, sado-masochism and Gaines.
Gaines also provides your connection to the Jews although that application came later in life. The content of Gaines’ comics, the sado-masochism, is part of the Jewish Weltanschauung that Freud expressed so well and it is that that Judaicized you, making the Jewish culture part of your own. It is that part, this Satanic consciousness that drags your spirit down causing your chronic low depression. We’ll try to shake it here but it may now be integral to your mentality.
Leaving Gaines for a moment the pre-Gaines component was your mother’s extreme selfishness. Of course your mother was three months gone when she married your father. This didn’t create so much guilt as anger. She held your father responsible preventing her from doing whatever she thought she would be doing later. You were born in 1938 in the depths of the Great Depression.
Jobs were not easy to come by and although your father was a good provider, that is you had a roof over your head and a shack to live in, even so your father ran out of jobs so he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and went to work planting forests. He was a good man; he sent most of his money to your mother. She unfortunately as you would learn was not a good woman.
It is difficult at this point to retrieve her motivation but she got laid in the back of a Chevrolet in the parking lot of a grocery store as you know well, Perry. She became pregnant with the little bastard palmed off to you as your brother. A child of sin he has always remained so. A point came where the pregnancy could no longer be concealed.
Needless to say the realization made your father angry. In an attempt to learn the culprit he began to punch her out. In the way of women she was stout refusing to give up his name. Your father said things like ‘I am out working CCC to provide for you and you’re out, words that were unintelligible to you. Do you remember that Partly?
Partly: Yes I do.
Anton: Less than two and half and you remember! What a memory Perry. The bastard was born, your father left and you saw him only once more several months later. Do you know what happened to him?
Me: No. Never saw him again after that last time.
Dr. Anton: Your mother had him committed to the insane asylum and he lived there all his life and died there.
Gaines: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You can’t know anything he doesn’t Anton. Where’s this coming from?
Dr. Anton: Just as you have been suppressed until now Gaines so has the knowledge I’m now revealing. It came in bits and pieces and I have put it all together. Partly is just now realizing it.
Where was I? Yes, committing him was a sadistic act on the part of a guilty woman. But it didn’t stop there Partly. To assuage her guilt while indulging her sadism she had removed her husband but you, a reminder of her crime, remained. She transferred her affection to her bastard and set out to torture and frustrate you. You remember the nightmares you had in high school where your mother was constantly betraying you? That was a subconscious recognition of what you wouldn’t allow yourself to acknowledge but still you knew.
The Orphanage was just four blocks from your grandparents house where you were living. She had to know the effect it would have on your mentality, you certainly did, but just as she had put her husband away in an asylum she put his memory away in another institution, the Orphanage.
Do you remember this Partly?
Me: Sure Anton, I remember but not as clearly and well organized as you do.
Dr. Anton: You’d be a better man for learning it although at eighty who gives a shit. You’ll take it to your grave soon enough.
Me: That’s alright Anton, I’ll die, as you say, a better man.
Anton: So your mother dropped you off and you were led away just like in prison or the asylum but with slightly better conditions. And thus you began to become who you used to be before your personality integration that introduced this current phase of your life at forty-two.
You became quite independent in that harrowing situation of the Orphanage. Fate left that copy of Tales From The Crypt lying on that little porch and a pain equal to your being abandoned seared your soul again striking through your subconscious to the structural level here. You were no longer a free man but controlled from, for lack of a better term, your subconscious. I don’t know how you made it through but here you are.
Your mother’s remarriage to the maniac Chuckles who was a match for your mother’s sadism nearly destroyed you during those eight long years until graduation. Enough of that for now. Let’s deal with Gaines here.
Me: Can we get rid of him?
Gaines: Hell no!
Dr. Anton: He is unfortunately part of the warp and woof of your personality but I’m pretty certain we can modify it and reduce his Satanic level considerably.
Gaines: Over my dead body.
Dr. Anton: Preferably Gaines, that is what we’re shooting for.
With that I collapsed back into my pillow exhausted but calmer with less of a feverish feeling. I was breathing somewhat heavily. I knew that this was a significant psychological event that had not yet achieved resolution and I was afraid to lose the thread. After about an hour Dr. Polarion returned. Anton was not an alter ego as Gaines but functioned more as a guardian angel, a good spirit so I welcomed him.
‘We’ve got to handle Gaines Partly.’
‘Yes. What is your suggestion Anton?’
‘This. It seems that Gaines is functioning as a node for a constellation of similar events. The two obvious strands of the constellation are he, that is your Jewish experience, and your mother. The first step must be to disentangle your mother and put her into her own constellation to be dealt with later. You already have a decent handle on her.
That leaves Gaines and your Jewish experience which is a distinct constellation which when knowledgeable about it you’ve done a lot a preparatory groundwork but certain resolutions are still necessary. That constellation has to be distended into its planetary elements so that each can be identified and dispensed with.
In addition there may be other elements concealed within or behind the constellation of which we have yet no knowledge. Time will tell.
And then there is what Gaines wants you to do which is why he’s made his appearance now. We’ll have to listen and go from there. You and I do understand that what he wants is going to be ridiculous and dangerous.
Me: OK Anton, your analysis is good and I do have a good idea what Gaines wants; I’ve also got my arguments ready and can direct him. But, God, this is painful.
Anton: Yes Partly, self-realization can be trying and I’m sure you’re in agony. You remember Hubert Selby the fellow who wrote his novel Last Exit To Brooklyn?
Me: Oh sure, Anton. Very interesting story. He was probing his mind to write his story. That once when he came up against a particularly painful remembrance it shattered him so that he had to take to his bed for a week writhing in agony. I can’t afford the time for that now. I have things to do and fields to plow.
Anton: You may have more than you think Partly. Get some rest and I’ll get Gaines back here in an hour or so. Control your feelings.
With images of Jekyll and Hyde in my fitful dreams was the titanic struggle of the Shadow with evil and the images of Superman and Clark Kent. Good must triumph over evil although it might not be as clear cut a victory as one might hope.
Just before dawn Dr. Polarion returned and shortly thereafter I heard Gaines’ Hello, I’m here.
Me: Alright Gaines. I’m ready.
Anton had already disentangled my mother from the constellational complex so he and I were dealing with just the Gaines/Jewish constellation. In that obscured constellation other traumas wouldn’t be clear at this time.
‘What’s up Gaines?’ Anton asked quietly with an implied menace that he wasn’t going to listen to nonsense.
Gaines: Why so hostile Doctor Polarion.
Anton: We know what you’re up to Gaines. I have to tell you that we know who you are and where you’ve come from so your Satanic power is negated.
Gaines: Oh, aren’t we clever. What is my pedigree Dr. Polarion?
Anton: Simply this: You infected Partly’s mind on that stoop of the Orphanage with your sado-masochistic claptrap. Partly only semi-consciously took in the sado-masochistic sexuality without knowledge of sex, he had to repress your Satanic influence and with some few exceptions he did. As he knew nothing of Jews and your own Jewishness that puzzling aspect of your Satanity was filed away for future reference. In the meantime following Jewish propaganda he was conditioned to revere Jews and did so.
Then in winter of nineteen fifty-eight in a fit of sado-masochistic lunacy the Jews pre-empted all TV channels at the same time on Saturday prime time and broadcast the most incredible pornographic sado-masochistic program imaginable. An hour of graphic snuff films depicting naked dead bodies being pushed about by bulldozers. The sexual implications were horrendous. While secretly fascinated Partly was resentful of the Jews for pushing this atrocity on him. Without articulating it to himself he was fatally disgusted. Also without noticing it he associated the ‘entertainment’ with you Gaines.
Gaines: I’m disgusting?
Anton: Eminently. Now, there comes an incident that was let slip by almost without recognition. Partly’s wife, now deceased, came from a Jewish background on her mother’s side; the father was nominally Catholic. The mother wanted a Jewish wedding while fearing that Partly would object. The venue was unimportant to Partly, in fact, with his Jewish conditioning he got a little thrill from it.
However to the Jews the notion that a Jewish girl would marry a, what they considered Christian boy, was anathema to them. Her parents approached all the synagogues in the East Bay but there was only one Rabbi in the East Bay that would consent to marry the couple. This was brought about by the intervention of his wife’s mother’s sister whose family was a prominent supporter of the synagogue. Even so the rabbi insisted on an interview with Partly.
As I say, Gaines, Partly had no religious scruples to marrying into a religious family, not quite true, he would never have married Catholic, and thought to be amiable with the rabbi. Both Partly and his wife were above religion despising them as relics from a primitive age. While Partly tried to be amiable the rabbi didn’t. Partly talked to the rabbi man to man while the rabbi as all rabbis do exalted his position believing as a Talmudic scholar that that worthless information placed him not only above Partly or his fellow Jews but all humanity and most of the angels. Resenting Partly’s familiarity he insulted Partly grievously as not worthy of a Jewish girl while being a Christian dog or words to that effect. At that point his respect for the Jews, intense conditioning or no, vanished.
This event was constellated with you Gaines and the TV atrocity to negate any positive feeling he had for the Jews. A couple decades of propaganda was wiped out in an instant. Partly’s future unpleasant relations with Jews will appear subsequently.
So that’s who you are Gaines. Satan on a stick.
Gaines: Yeah, well Dr. Polarion I know where Partly lives. I know he has suffered insults, injuries and indignities from many quarters including the ones you mentioned and I know this: He wants revenge. Who do you go to when you want revenge? Satan, baby, Satan. And here I am.
Anton: True, Partly?
Me: No. It’s true I have a lot of resentments but they’re from assholes and assholes can’t help being assholes; if they could they wouldn’t be assholes so one has to ignore them. It’s their cross to bear and I enjoy watching them be assholes. If Gaines thinks he’s going to lure me into criminal activity he’s not here.
Gaines: Kiss my ass Partly. Social unrest is developing rapidly, exponentially day to day. There are hundreds of racial and religious, what the authorities are pleased to call murders rather than the acts of war they are happening every week.
I know Partly that you were trained by your experiences to be a serial killer. You know it. I don’t know how you’ve resisted up to this time but now is the time to indulge those resentments. Not only are the cops overburdened trying to deal with all the killing and raping going on but they’re afraid to leave the station. Whole cities are no go zones for them. They’ll never identify you, never track you down. Come on buddy, let your inner Mr. Hyde see some light. Now’s the time for your revenge.
Me: I think you’re right about the time being the right time Gaines but remember that Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. I’ve learned that it is true.
Gaines: Vengeance is mine saith the Lord? Listen to this guy. Are you putting me on Partly?
Me: Certainly not Gaines, certainly not. Remember you were kicked out of heaven for the religious offence of chutzpah. God stuck his boot up your ass and down you came. You always tempt men to their destruction by exploiting their own weaknesses. If I were to act in revenge I would surely be caught. Even at eighty I don’t want to be thought of as a criminal.
Gaines: No, you don’t want to be thought of as a criminal. Here’s a tip for you Partly…
Anton: I…
Gaines: You stay out of this Anton, this is between Partly and me.
As above, so below, right Partly? God’s will is supposed to prevail on earth as in heaven, right?
Me: I’m not religious but the Bible does say so. What’s your point?
Gaines: As a lawbreaker I was kicked out of heaven, right. If so, then it is God’s will that I be persecuted on earth also, isn’t it?
Me: Well, you have to believe the Bible.
Gaines: No, you don’t. Freud replaced the Bible but as a Jew he follows the Bible’s rhetoric. Freud and I are one and not only am I part of your mind but Freud is too. That’s one of my attributes that Anton the so-called psychologist forgot to mention. So, if it is God’s will that it is to be on earth as it is in heaven then it is permissible to punish Satanic practices as he punished me isn’t it? As a God fearing person it is imperative that you do so.
Well, there was a thought. The Jews consider themselves God’s viceroys on Earth and that they are doing God’s will by forcing his, or theirs really on the rest of mankind, punishing those who resist, that is anti-Semites. It was a tough argument to counter while Gaines had cleverly appealed to my suppressed desires. Anton was no help at this point.
Me: To punish is vengeance Gaines and as I say Vengeance is the Lord’s. Therefore I cannot punish Gaines, however there is the question of justice, lawbreakers should not be allowed the fruit of their crimes with impunity.
As we know God has no temporal means to effect his will on earth so he must use intermediaries as his chosen vessels hence the Jews claim to be that vessel. However if God spoke to the Jews then he can speak to me. Thus if like Saint Augustine I were to hear his voice enjoining me to administer His justice on earth as he does in heaven, that is kicking Satan off the earth then I could obey his will and be judge, jury and executioner here on earth as the Jews consider themselves. Well, Gaines, that is a thought I will have to give consideration.
Gaines: Yes it is. Further…
Anton: Hold, hold it, stop Gaines. Be gone. Hold up Partly, we have to think about this. Later Gaines, later. Go.
And with a sly wink at me Gaines wandered away. He would be back, of course. But he had given me something to think about. I knew I was going to think about it too and as Gaines knew I would rationalize his suggestion into reality but only in a ‘legal’ manner.
Anton just looked at me and shook his head. He knew what was coming. So did I but neither of us could as yet admit it.
-IV-
Once again I lay back exhausted. Still I had to get to work. In an agitated state of mind I reviewed the correcting of my piece for the New Serapion Brethren that I was titling The Vampyres Of New York. I had put some preliminary thoughts up on the internet so I was searching Vampyres Of New York when I was startled to find that there was an actual group called The Vampyres Of New York that claimed to be a worldwide organization. Its spokesman was some guy calling himself Father Sebastian. He was a young guy who would have been further ahead claiming to be Brother Sebastian; in another thirty years he might pass for a father.
Anything associating itself with vampirism had to be Satanic while the guy was absolutely touting himself as a religion. The crude Satanism of the nineteen sixties was obviously morphing into an attempt at a universal religion. This was a far cry from the historian Arnold Toynbee’s cry for a new universal religion to replace Christianity. Gaines was obviously right about the Satanism in Freud being a part of me but apparently the drive was to make Freudianism the basis of a new religion. Thus as Christianity as a Jewish based religion had represented the Godly Principle so Freud as a Jewish based religion would represent the Satanic Principle.
This was a revelation to me that while new I would have to try to work into my essay. I had to think about it a little so while I was thinking I tinkered around working out disguises. Having seen street activity for a couple weeks now I was uneasy walking around in my own skin; I didn’t want to become that well known.
So, as I thought I tried out mustaches, wigs, glasses, different outfits, so I could walk the streets so as not to become obvious. But, time was passing and I was driven back to my writing desk. I wanted to avoid Gaines as long as possible so I put in some long sessions hoping I would be so tired when I went to sleep that that bastard Gaines wouldn’t be called up. I was successful for the week left before going to Farquhar’s.
I was a day ahead of the deadline so I went out to get a couple two or three bottles of wine to take along. Wanted to show I was a regular guy. I am a regular guy but usually not that regular. Boy, NYC is an alkie’s paradise. What a fabulous selection of spirits. I don’t drink much but in my earlier days I could do a limited justice to the bottle. In those days I favored brandy. Really good stuff if you’re going to drink. Oh lord, if I had known then what New York showed my now I might have been the man who never returned.
I wasn’t after liquor though I wanted wine so I asked for and got bottles of Ramey’s Claret. Ramey is a good Napa Valley vintner while his claret is moderately priced and more than good enough, excellent in fact. The vintage was 2014 that particularly dry year and of small berries. Excellent, I thought it should go over. I’d had it before and it really is a great vintage.
For dress I wore a 1960 vintage sport coat I bought at a second hand store. Nothing was ready at James Carter and I had tried Lord and Taylor and other stores but none was showing other than those idiotic short jackets cut small and I thought I looked a heck of a lot better. Charles Tyrwhitt shirt, one of their higher priced dark blue and white mini stripes, black in a low light. So what’s a boy to do? Ralph Lauren had turned ludicrous after he left.
Ragnar drove me and my bottles of wine up to fifty-second street off Madison to Farquhar’s condo, very good, twelfth floor. As I entered the building an explosion went off maybe three blocks away in some direction I couldn’t determine. Somebody was acting up, hard to tell who. It was beginning to happen fairly regularly. Cops weren’t catching anybody. So many people and organizations were claiming credit for these things it must have been a nightmare investigating these things using only electronics.
As these things were getting more frequent they didn’t even make the headlines in New York while except for certain sites on the internet the rest of the country was totally ignorant of them. The permanent Obama administration was still trying to explain them away as the work of domestic terrorists, actually by now the terrorists were domestic although not so-called White Supremacists. If by Global terrorists it was only just that we should be bombed as was said and that brought the thought of Gaines back as Lessing was rattling the locks on the other side of the door.
Once that ritual was completed I was admitted into a small foyer with a second door and a number of locks which were only locked at night or when Lessing was away. The door was now open for which I was grateful.
Through the second door one entered directly into a large living room, perhaps eight hundred square feet cutting straight through the apartment to the floor to ceiling windows that looked into the windows across the street unfortunately.
The room was comfortably decorated with expensive furniture but not the costliest. The usual New York abstracts, tasteful, were on the wall facing lovely floor to ceiling bookshelves admirably stocked. Books do furnish a room, don’t they?
I was the last to arrive. Seated, looking at me with expectant bemused expressions were Max Savings, Mark Giusty and Baron Cammell the other members of the New Serapion Brethren. Lessing was apparently a bachelor or, as I was to find, a widower.
As I could see I was the oldest of the four. Lessing was seventy-two but still in his prime. How well I remember being fourteen and finding the age of seventy incomprehensible as young people still do. While even people in their thirties and forties expect people of seventy or eighty to be decrepit. Most of us aren’t. Certainly Lessing and I were in full vigor. Diet helps, three or four years earlier I had been compelled to give up my sugar diet, and I mean I love sugar, and that and an improved diet recharged me considerably.
Lessing was more robust than I being taller, probably six-two and bigger boned. He was filled out but not fat or even heavy looking, his face like mine was unlined while he had a full head of white hair as did I although mine was removable and his wasn’t. He showed a little surprise as I was nearly bald at our two previous encounters.
Lessing introduced me to Max Savings who was small, perhaps five-six, and slight. Max was the youngest at sixty-two. He was dressed like an undertaker, had a slightly weasely face with a pointed nose. He had a sharp intelligence.
Marc Giusty was Italian standing a half inch or so below me, seventy years old, still athletic looking, spent a couple hours a day in the gym as I was to learn, lean and long headed in the Italian manner, thin mustache and good features.
Last to be introduced was Baron Cammell. Baron was his first name and not a title. He would prove to be the most difficult member of the group for me.
By the time I was finished with the introductions Max had a bottle of claret open and the glasses filled. Well, you know, two fingers. One sips, this was a cultured group no full water glasses at one gulp. We accepted our glasses and looking at each other took a sip.
Lessing: Oh, very nice.
Marc: Yes. Haven’t seen the label before.
Baron: (Sniffing slightly.) Yes, quite distinctive.
Max: (Smiling.) Enough said.
Me: Yes, well, Ramey apprenticed for many years in France before setting up in Napa. I like Bordeaux style blend and claret hits the spot for me after reading all those old English novels where claret and wine were synonymous. I like this one. So, we’re all ETA Hoffmann admirers, um?
Lessing: Yes, we are that. By way of curiosity Perry, how did you come to Hoffmann.
Me: Oh, you want my origin story as the comic books say? OK Lessing, I’ve got one. I’ll do this in the best comic book style. It was a dark and stormy day back in the middle of the last century when a thirty-six year man shoulders hunched against the cold and rain looked into a shop window. Perceiving it was a book store he being a bibliophile pushed the door open. A blast of warm air hit him as heads turned to look at the stranger. The man glanced casually about at the few inside, mostly help, with no particular object in mind. His attention was caught by a slip cased set of two. Always a sucker for so-called special editions he picked it up to examine it. ‘Hmm…’ he mused to himself, ‘Selected Writings Of Hoffmann? Hoffmann who?’ Extracted, Vol. I read from the title page, E.T.A. Hoffmann The Tales. The man had heard of ETA Hoffmann spoken of most highly and of course he knew of Offenbach’s opera Tales Of Hoffmann. Twelve dollars and fifty cents. OK.
Tucking the parcel under his arm under his coat and lowering his head against the blast he proceeded down the street. I was that man.
Me: There you go Lessing and an identical copy can be found on your bookshelf right over there.
Ha, ha, ha came as a chorus from the four men: Nicely done, Perry, nicely done.
‘The lad shows promise, doesn’t he?’ said Lessing.
Max Savings: This could prove interesting.
Me: And since then then I’ve added a dozen volumes filling out, I think, what’s available in English except for that magnificent nineteenth century volume you have on your shelf.’
Lessing: That one. I’m quite proud of that find. I tramped London looking for that one. But you have never reviewed Hoffmann on your site Perry, how come?
Me. I don’t feel adequately prepared Lessing. I have added a number of Romantic writers to my library in the last four years, Kleist, Tieck and like that but nothing in the way of critical reviews so I don’t think I’m prepared to speak authoritatively. And I still have to read Goethe, the key Romantic. If you’ve read my stuff you probably are aware that I speak without concern of contradiction. I can’t do that with Hoffmann yet. So, if I may ask, give me a thumbnail of yourselves.
Lessing: I’m host so I might as well go first. The salient point is that I spent my career practicing law, mainly real estate and financial issues. That is an area where much of the money sticks to the lawyer and I am in a comfortable situation as you can see having made my share or more of the money stick to me. Although remunerative I found the law and its cases fairly loathsome so as soon as I felt financially independent I left all that behind and turned my attention to what I loved much as you have Perry. Much more rewarding.
Max Savings: I’m not quite so financially independent as Lessing and still at my desk at Chase. I certainly am not so accomplished literarily as you and Lessing but I squeeze in time in an effort to keep up.
Marc Giusty: I was a university prof all my working life, loved it at Columbia uptown here. History was my subject. Unfortunately I was just a yeoman and not a star. I wrote a few papers for academic publications and a couple slim volumes that disappeared down the memory hole but allowed me to keep my position. By the way, this is a nice wine.
Me: Glad I chose to your taste. And you Baron.
Baron: I’m somewhat of a polymath, expert in several fields. I’m working on a unified field theory to arrange the liberal arts in a chronology with commentary. That’s all you need know of me.
Me: Quite so, quite so. Now that we’ve been introduced and had a little wine what say I begin my presentation? I’m anxious for your opinion and hope to please.
Lessing: That sounds right. What is the title of your presentation Perry?
Me: I call it The Vampyres Of New York.
I noticed a little uneasiness in the Brethren at the title. Lessing spoke:
Is this a vampire story, Perry? I thought the understanding was that we present historical essays.
Me: Exactly Lessing. But lesser known aspects, other sides so to speak and that is what mine is. Don’t let the title throw you. By the way as you’re not looking at the paper I spell vampire v-a-m-p-y-r-e. I chose the spelling to indicate a difference from a Dracula type blood vampire. My essay will concern what is known as psychic vampires. When I was searching Vampyres Of New York on the internet to see if my first couple of posts had registered yet I was surprised to find that there is actually an organization called The Vampyres Of New York, spelled with a Y.
I was further astonished that it claims to be worldwide although the claim seems a little dubious. At any rate the possible leader is a guy calling himself Father Sebastian who divides his time between New York and Paris.
As you know since the first Disney version of Star Wars a recent religion has sprung up based on the concept of the Force and whatever. It seems probable that the Vampyre organization is a type of Satanic religion too. This brings to mind that after the challenge to the Jewish religion in the West after the Scientific Revolution following the Enlightenment the Western Jewish religion under the Scientific challenge dissolved into a number of splinter religions seeking a center. The center of course came from the East and was called Zionism so that Judaism with some atavism and Zion are one.
Christianity has taken longer to find a new center but under the influence of nineteenth and twentieth century Satanism we may be seeing a jelling into some form of a universal Satanic religion. It is something to bear in mind. So my historical investigation is concerned with the Jewish and Christian religious disintegration of the previous two centuries under some sort of vampiric influence. Is that alright? It won’t offend any sensibilities?
Lessing: If it is historical we have no objections.
Me: Alright. I’m pretty sure this will be a different approach to what you’re used to so I have a prologue explaining the difference between a Dracula type Vampirism and psychic Vampyrism which will concern us. This is longish but not hugely long so fill your glasses and sit back. It is written out so feel free to interrupt at any time for explanations or comments, discussions or whatever.
OK? I begin: The Vampyres Of New York.
Clip 4 following contains the text of Vampyres Of New York.
I, Dynamo 