I think the time has come for me to acquire a team of naked somersaulting emissaries…

In 589, a man went insane after being surrounded by flies in a forest near Arles., in France; two years later, he dressed himself in animal skins and made his way down to Gevaudon, in the Cevennes, declaring that he was Christ, and that he had the power to heal the sick… He began to accumulate an army of followers, which reached three thousand, and towns they approached were asked to acknowledge that he was Christ – which most of them did to avoid trouble. Approaching the town of La Puy, he quartered his army in halls and churches, and sent naked messengers to announce his arrival to Bishop Aurelius.

When the bishop saw these emissaries turning somersaults, he had no doubt that they were inspired by the devil, so, hiding his disgust, he sent some of his men to welcome the man who called himself Christ. They bowed as if to kiss the messiah’s knees, then dragged him to the ground and stabbed him to death. Without their leader, the followers quickly dispersed… but St Gregory of Tours, who records the story, adds that the messiah’s followers continued to believe in him until the day they died.

From The Devil’s Party : A History Of Charlatan Messiahs by Colin Wilson (2000)

Wilson, who knocks out books at a Pebbleheadian rate, can’t be bothered to provide us with footnotes and references (other than that allusion to St Gregory of Tours). I think by “Gevaudon” he means Gévaudan, which, intriguingly, was terrorised by man-eating wolf-like creatures between 1764 and 1767. Could it be that, clothed in his animal skins, the fly-maddened Christ returned after twelve hundred years as the Beast of  Gévaudan? I suspect this is highly likely, for as we all know, the Lord moves in mysterious ways His flies to swat away wonders to perform.

“In Britain, any book about a gull or a duck, no matter how stumbling or inane, is an automatic bestseller.” – Alan Whicker, Death In The Morning, BBC 1964

The Rev. Dr Opimian – Why, Lord Michin Malicho, Lord Facing-both-ways, and two or three other arch-quacks, have taken to merry-andrewising in a new arena, which they call the Science of Pantopragmatics, and they have bitten Lord Curryfin into tumbling with them; but the mania will subside when the weather grows cool…

Miss Gryll – But pray, doctor, what is this new science?

The Rev. Dr Opimian – Why that, Miss Gryll, I cannot well make out. I have asked several professors of the science, and have got nothing in return but some fine varieties of rigmarole, of which I can make neither head nor tail. It seems to be a real art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business. Nothing practical comes of it, and, indeed, so much the better… Like most other science, it resolves itself into lecturing, lecturing, lecturing, about all sorts of matters, relevant and irrelevant; one enormous bore prating about jurisprudence, another about statistics, another about education, and so forth; the crambe repetita of the same rubbish, which has already been served up “twiës hot and twiës cold”, as at many other associations nicknamed scientific…

[Lord Curryfin] had been caught by the science of pantopragmatics, and firmly believed for a time, that a scientific organisation for teaching everybody everything, would cure all the evils of society.

 

Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange (1860)

As a doctor his bedside manner was startling. He seemed more intent on reducing his patients to gibbering mental wrecks over the state of their souls than curing their bodies. Here is an example, the victim being a Mrs Cooper who is on her death bed. She seems to have been cheerful enough until Dr Prince arrived.

“I frequently visited her, and spoke to her most solemnly of her awful state, which I put before her in the most appalling picture of death and eternal damnation.”

The good lady replied that she was very happy, and prayed to God to take her out of her misery. Prince was not impressed; as the illness continued he observed that Mrs Cooper appeared to become more wicked and to yield to the most “horrid passions”. These horrid passions were directed at the lady’s husband who, for some reason, irritated her.

“She would damn her husband to hell and swear she would tear the eyes out of his head, if she could get out of her bed; but the palsy of her legs prevented her… About three weeks ago, when passing her door, I went to see her. I used to have a strange sensation of dread when I went into her chamber, as if I realised the presence of Satan about her bed, waiting for his prey… On this occasion I was about to leave her in despair, when I thought she seemed to take a little more interest in what I said, when explaining the reason that she did not fear death; viz. her own blindness.”

Sensing victory, he pressed on, tormenting the wretched woman with visions of hell and damnation. A few days later he announces triumphantly in his journal:

“The truth appeared to have flashed upon her suddenly, and was accompanied with such conviction and terror, that she quite trembled in bed from fear; to use her own words, she ‘had the horrors’. What a wonder-making God! How full of faithfulness and love! ‘Worthy is the lamb that was slain.’ Amen.”

From The Reverend Prince And His Abode Of Love by Charles Mander (1976)

Doctor, later Reverend, Prince was Henry James Prince (1811-1899), founder of the Agapemonites, whose Abode of Love was established in Spaxton in Somerset.

Yesterday postie delivered From The Atelier Tovar : Selected Writings by Guy Maddin. Readers may recall I enthused about Mr Maddin last year. I am looking forward to reading this collection of journals, journalism and film treatments by the Winnipegite, but for the time being there are two phrases from the back cover blurbs of which I am inordinately envious. How can one not delight in a book of which it is said: “his treatments are deadpan whatsits of the highest order” and “you have arrived there, at the Atelier Tovar. Galoshes recommended”?

There is an obituary in today’s Guardian of ornithologist David Snow, who died in February, You can read the whole thing here, but I have helpfully extracted the more arresting bits:

[He] pioneered studies of three of the world’s rarest birds: the lava gull, the nocturnal swallow-tailed gull and the flightless cormorant.

His father also gave him a pair of pocketable first world war German Goerz binoculars.

The nearby birding hotspot of Slough sewage farm was a favourite destination, and resulted in muddy shoes in chapel on Sunday evenings.

He maximised his ornithological shore leave by having his bicycle sent ahead by train to suitable British ports.

in 1958, [he] married Barbara Whitaker. Between them, they pioneered studies on such species as hermit hummingbirds, the bearded bellbird and the extraordinary cave-dwelling oilbird which emerges at night to feed on fruit, navigating by echo-location, using audible clicks.

he was active to the end of his life: a scholarly little note about the feeding of blackcaps wintering in his Wingrave garden appeared in the January bulletin of the Buckinghamshire bird club.

Bela Tarr’s Sátántangó sounds like my kind of film. Indeed, I’m astonished that it has only just come to my attention, given that it was released in 1994. Clearly I am not keeping up with things as energetically as I ought to be. Sátántangó is seven and a half hours long, in black and white, set on a collapsing collective farm in Hungary, and the opening shot, which lasts for almost eight minutes, follows a herd of Hungarian cows trudging around a collapsing collective farmyard. I have not yet seen it, but I suspect I will adore it.

CARVING – Wynkyn de Worde printed in the year 1508 “The Book of Kervinge”. Some of the words are curious, and throw light on the names of dishes which have been corrupted by process of time. Where the meaning is quite plain the spelling is modernised, but not otherwise.

“The terms of a carver be as here followeth. Break that deer – lesche (leach) that brawn – rear that goose – lift that swan – sauce that capon – spoil that hen – frusche (fruss) that chicken – unbrace that mallard – unlace that coney – dismember that heron – display that crane – disfigure that peacock – unjoint that bittern – untache that curlew – alaye that felande – wing that partridge – wing that quail – mine that plover – thigh that pigeon – border that pasty – thigh that woodcock – thigh all manner small birds – timber that fire – tire that egg – chine that salmon – string that lamprey – splat that pike – sauce that plaice – sauce that tench – splay that bream – side that haddock – tusk that barbel – culpon that trout – fin that chevin – trassene that eel – tranch that sturgeon – undertranch that porpoise – tame that crab – barb that lobster. Here endeth the goodly terms of Carving.”

From Kettner’s Book Of The Table by E S Dallas (London, 1877)

Pansy Cradledew draws to my attention this title from a small collection of Victorian Yellowjackets*. Alas, I have never read Misery Junction by Richard Henry, and I find myself wondering if the story is set in one of the notorious junctions and sidings of the Hooting Yard to O’Houlihan’s Wharf Branch Line. There, Misery Junction is the foul rainswept junction between two other junctions, one called Moral Squalor Junction and the other known as Pretty Little Dandelion Junction. It should be noted that the pretty little dandelions growing so profusely around the railway lines at that spot were contaminated with some kind of toxin, and the pretty little ponies which cantered up to them for a lunchtime chew were swiftly carted off to the knackers yard, stone dead.

* NOTE : Pansy quite rightly points out that I have confused a series of 19th century paperbacks (Yellowbacks) with a type of wasp (Yellowjacket). Such an easy mistake to make.

“It happens that here and there a word, or some peculiarity in using a word, indicates, in this author, a Scotchman;… the word shortcomings, which, being horribly tabernacular, and such that no gentleman could allow himself to touch it without gloves, it is to be wished that our Scottish brethren would resign, together with backslidings, to the use of field-preachers.”

Thomas De Quincey, “Protestantism”, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1847

Incidentally, Lodowicke Muggleton had a pathological hatred of Scotchmen, who often found themselves on the receiving end of Muggletonian curses. 

The Times Archive Blog tells us about the food at a party thrown by the Princess Royal in 1789:

That part of the Supper which was hot consisted of twenty tureens of different Soups, Roast Ducks, Turkey, Poultry, Cygnets, Green Geese, Land Rails, Chickens, Asparagus, Peas and Beans. The cold parts of the collation were the same kind of Poultry boned, and swimming or standing in the centre of transparent jellies, where they were supported by paste pillars not in circumference thicker than a knitting needle. This, with the lights playing from the candles and reflected on by the polish of the plates and dishes made a most beautiful appearance. Crayfish pies of all kinds were distributed with great taste, and the Hams and Brawn in Masquerade swimming on the surface of pedestals of jelly, seemingly supported but by the strength of an apparent liquid called for admiration.

De Quincey’s lieutenant-colonel might have lived had he developed a taste for Hams and Brawn in Masquerade instead of those abominable muffins.

The less variety there is at that meal [breakfast], the more is the danger from any single luxury; and there is one, known by the name of ‘muffins,’ which has repeatedly manifested itself to be a plain and direct bounty upon suicide. Darwin, in his Zoonomia, reports a case where an officer, holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel, could not tolerate a breakfast in which this odious article was wanting; but, as a savage retribution invariably supervened within an hour or two upon this act of insane sensuality, he came to a resolution that life was intolerable with muffins, but still more intolerable without muffins. He would stand the nuisance no longer; but yet, being a just man, he would give nature one final chance of reforming her dyspeptic atrocities. Muffins, therefore, being laid at one angle of the breakfast-table, and loaded pistols at another, with rigid equity the Colonel awaited the result. This was naturally pretty much as usual: and then, the poor man, incapable of retreating from his word of honour, committed suicide,–having previously left a line for posterity to the effect (though I forget the expression), “That a muffinless world was no world for him: better no life at all than a life dismantled of muffins”.

Thomas De Quincey, “On the Temperance Movement of Modern Times”, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (1845)

 

OutaSpaceman draws to my attention the story of Harry Bensley. There is much that is delightful in this wikipedia article, but for some reason my favourite bit is when “he was arrested in Bexleyheath, Kent, for selling postcards without a licence”. By the way, in the picture below, he is the one wearing the armorial helmet (with added signage).

This morning, at an ungodly hour, I began to read The Spectacles Of Mr Cagliostro by Harry Stephen Keeler. Almost five years ago, I wrote briefly on these pages about Keeler, so it behooves me to drag that postage out of the archives and draw it to your attention. This is what I had to say, including my rather shamefaced note at the end:

Reader Tim Drage has drawn my attention to the pulp novelist Harry Stephen Keeler, and I am smitten. I think you will be too. Go and visit the Harry Stephen Keeler Society, try to ignore the rather breathless tone (the site’s author is overfond of exclamation marks!!)*, and discover for yourself this writer who has already been given a posthumous Big Tin Medal by the Hooting Yard Sainthood Committee. Here is what to expect:

“In The Man With the Magic Eardrums (1939), a bookie and a safecracker run into each other in a house in Minneapolis and spend the night talking. Oh yes, there are two phone calls, and another character comes into the house and talks for a while. This takes hundreds of pages. The direct action of The Portrait of Jirjohn Cobb (1940), which has to be one of the most astoundingly unreadable novels ever written, consists of four characters, two of whom sport outrageous accents, sitting on an island in the middle of a river, talking and listening to a radio, again for hundreds of pages. And these novels were only the first volumes of two multi-novel sequences! … How about these chapter titles from The Bottle With the Green Wax Seal (1942): The Chromatic Whimsicalness of Avunculi Samuelis; Synthetic Mexican; and The Micro-Axially Condensed Typewriter.”

* NOTE : Richard Polt, author of the site [and of the above extracts], writes to say: “As for my use of exclamation marks, I can only plead corruption!–by Keeler!–himself!!” Having now spent a couple of days reading Keeler myself, this makes perfect sense!!!!