The Library of the Lost: In Search of Forgotten Authors

by Roger Dobson

  Contents

  CONTENTS

  ROGER DOBSON: A REMARKABLE MAN

  INTRODUCTION

  THE MYSTERIOUS MONTAGUE SUMMERS

  W.B. YEATS AND THE GOLDEN DAWN

  SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE LAST MYSTERY

  M.P. SHIEL AND ARTHUR RANSOME

  A PALIMPSEST OF THE THREE IMPOSTORS?

  JULIAN MACLAREN-ROSS: THE KING OF FITZROVIA

  BLACK MAGIC AGAINST THE BEAST: EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF THE ‘STRANGE RED-HAIRED GIRL’, ALTHEA GYLES

  ‘A WEIRD AND MARVELLOUS PURSUIT’: A TRIBUTE TO FATHER BROCARD SEWELL

  EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON: THE PIONEERING NOVELIST WHO BECAME A LITERARY JOKE

  JOHN GAWSWORTH: KING OF REDONDA

  DWELLER IN THE TOMB OF MAUSOLUS: THE RETURN OF PRINCE ZALESKI

  REMEMBERING RENJIE: THE WRENNE JARMAN MYSTERY

  TERROR BY NIGHT: THE SLEEPING PARTNER

  THE BOOK IN YELLOW: HOW DORIAN INSPIRED LUCIAN

  NEW ARABIAN FRIGHTS: UNHOLY TRINITIES AND THE MASKS OF HELEN

  MADAM SATAN: ANCESTOR OF HELEN VAUGHAN

  ‘A TRADE OF THE DAMNED’: TWIN TOILERS IN VICTORIAN GRUB STREET

  LUCIAN IN THE LABYRINTH: LONDON LOCATIONS IN THE HILL OF DREAMS

  HE WROTE OF DARK FORCES: THE WEIRD WORLD OF DENNIS WHEATLEY

  CARTOGRAPHER OF MYTH: JOCELYN BROOKE AND THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT

  ROGER DOBSON: A FIRST, INCOMPLETE CHECKLIST OF PUBLISHED WRITINGS

  NOTES

  Acknowledgements

  THE LIBRARY OF THE LOST

  In Search of Forgotten Authors

  by

  Roger Dobson

  Edited and with

  an Introduction

  by Mark Valentine

  Published by Caermaen Books and Tartarus Press 2015 at

  Coverley House, Carlton-in-Coverdale, Leyburn,

  North Yorkshire, DL8 4AY, UK

  All Essays © The Estate of Roger Dobson, 2015

  A Remarkable Man © Javier Marías, 2015

  Introduction © Mark Valentine, 2015

  ISBN 978-1-905784-72-1

  Limited to 250 copies

  Many thanks to Dr Gail-Nina Anderson for photographs pps. xiv, 84, 87, 241, to Iain Smith pps. viii, xvi, 150, 279, Mike Butterworth pps. 117, 220, and Rosalie Parker p.278.

  The publishers would like to thank Jim Rockhill

  CONTENTS

  A Remarkable Man by Javier Marias

  Introduction by Mark Valentine

  The Mysterious Montague Summers

  W.B. Yeats and The Golden Dawn

  Sherlock Holmes: The Last Mystery

  M.P. Shiel and Arthur Ransome

  A Palimpsest o The Three Impostors

  Julian Maclaren-Ross: The King of Fitzrovia

  Black Magic Against the Beast: Episodes in the Life of ‘The Strange Red-Haired Girl’, Althea Gyles

  ‘A Weird and Marvellous Pursuit’: A Tribute to Brocard Sewell

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Pioneering Novelist Who Became a Literary Joke

  John Gawsworth: King of Redonda

  Dweller in the Tomb of Mausolus: The Return of Prince Zaleski

  Remembering Renjie: The Wrenne Jarman Mystery

  Terror By Night: The Sleeping Partner

  The Book in Yellow: How Dorian Inspired Lucian

  New Arabian Frights: Unholy Trinities and the Masks of Helen

  Madam Satan: Ancestor of Helen Vaughan

  ‘A Trade of the Damned’: Twin Toilers in Victorian Grub Street

  Lucian in the Labyrinth: London Locations in The Hill of Dreams

  He Wrote of Dark Forces: The Weird World of Dennis Wheatley

  Cartographer of Myth: Jocelyn Brooke and the Land of Lost Content

  Appendix

  A Checklist of the Writings of Roger Dobson by Mark Valentine

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  ROGER DOBSON: A REMARKABLE MAN

  by Javier Marías

  El Pais, 6th June 2013

  translated by Margaret Jull Costa

  One Sunday morning, he appeared at my house and rang the doorbell. He explained that the owners of a bookshop called Titles had given him my address because, they said, I was a collector of Machen’s books, and he was an expert on Machen (he was unaware, however, that Machen was also one of Borges’ favourite writers). In my now oldish novel All Souls, I described a similar conversation between the narrator and the character Alan Marriott, who turned up accompanied by a three-legged dog. Roger Dobson—for that was his name—had no dog, but he was the first person to tell me about the legend of the Kingdom of Redonda and about its drunken beggar king, John Gawsworth, and both kingdom and king have had a certain importance in my life.

  . . . We would always greet each other whenever we met in bookshops and would exchange information and discoveries. Later, however, over the years, we did write to each other from time to time, and when the former ‘King of Redonda’, Jon Wynne-Tyson, decided to ‘abdicate’ in my favour, Dobson, perhaps the greatest ‘Redondologist’ in the world, was happy to accept me. I ‘bestowed’ on him the title Duke of Bridaespuela—the Duke of Bridlespur—as a homage to Machen and his work Bridles and Spurs.

  . . . One does occasionally meet people like him, recondite, bookish, silent enthusiasts for the things they choose to study or do, or to which they decide to devote themselves, often someone or something that no one else much cares about. People who put all their energies into rescuing from oblivion someone who has been unjustly forgotten, even at the risk that they themselves may become even more forgotten in life as in death. I will not forget that remarkable man, Roger Dobson, for unwittingly and almost unknowingly, he, in some measure, played a part in my own literary fortunes. Thank you, Alan Marriott. Thank you and goodbye, Roger Dobson.

  Roger Dobson, 1990.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mark Valentine

  Roger Alan Dobson was an author, journalist, actor, and bookman who loved to explore the stranger margins of literature and its most outré characters. He wrote with learning and enthusiasm about the lost souls of the 1890s and those writers who moved among the ways of magic and mystery. He liked nothing better than to visit the old haunts of these arcane characters, walking among obscure streets and overgrown graveyards to find their homes and their tombs. When he was not out on such pilgrimages, he liked to be writing, working prodigiously at essays, radio and television scripts, letters and contributions to newspapers and periodicals. He also enjoyed bookish conversation, always ready to share his latest discoveries or to learn more from other bibliophiles and scholars.

  Roger was born on 7th December 1954 in Manchester. He was always proud of his Manchester upbringing, and wrote a study of Ann Lee, The Manchester Messiah (1987), about a local prophetess who founded the Shakers religious movement. His writings show a continued interest in several of Manchester’s other literary figures, including Thomas De Quincey and Anthony Burgess.

  He was orphaned at the age of nine, and his later childhood was spent with foster parents who recognised his potential and secured his admission to the local grammar school. He was educated at Stretford Grammar School for Boys from 1966-1973. On leaving, he worked for eighteen months as a clerk in a tax office, but left to join the Stretford and Urmiston Journal, a local newspaper, as a trainee reporter. Here he covered the typical range of news stories at a provincial paper. In his first couple of weeks, for example, he was asked to write reports on an elderly couple with an early flowering azalea, a woman police constable who played the bagpipes, the induction of a clergyman,
and an inquest into a man blown up at a petrol station. He stayed at the paper for six years, becoming a deputy editor and features writer.

  At the same time, during his schooldays and after, Roger was developing an interest in fantasy and supernatural literature. The works of J.R.R. Tolkien were highly popular in this period, and Roger was part of a group of friends who met to discuss the books, and even adopt names from them—Roger was Gandalf. He also read enthusiastically in the Weird Tales group of writers, especially H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

  Roger Dobson, journalist, 1977.

  From 1981-84 he worked on the Bristol Evening Post as a news and features copy-editor. He gave this up to spend more time on literature, and made his home in Oxford, He had decided to go freelance and chose Oxford for its literary links. He first lived at 84 Banbury Road, then for some years in a bedsit in a rather Dickensian household at 50 St John Street, once Tolkien’s home, where he and I often had long chats on Arthur Machen and many other neglected authors. From 1984-88, he was trying to make his way as a freelance writer. Although he was highly creative and always pitching interesting ideas, this never quite paid enough even for his modest needs. So from 1988 to 1994 he took up office work, at Royal Insurance Ltd, Oxford, as an administrative assistant. From 1994 he resumed his brave campaign to live by his pen, and was, in the words of his CV, a ‘proofreader, researcher, editor and writer’. He was a highly conscientious editor: one of his computer files is entitled ‘Final final final’—and one pauses to wonder what important document needed so much care—‘copyright page’.

  Roger Dobson, reporter, late 1970s. Roger’s journalism sometimes involved him in some unusual interviews.

  I met Roger in Oxford around 1984. I made contact when I was told he was an enthusiast of Arthur Machen, whose work I had discovered at the age of seventeen. This proved to be a considerable understatement. Roger knew more about Machen than anyone else I ever met, and between us we started a modest campaign to revive interest in him, which was at a low ebb in the early 1980s. We met or corresponded with many who had known Machen, including his son Hilary and daughter Janet, and close friends such as Colin Summerford and Oliver Stonor: in time, we found others who were intent on celebrating him, leading to the Machen societies, journals and other publications since.

  Roger’s services to Machen studies and to his memory were immense. It can safely be said he was the leading Machen scholar of his time. He wrote the Machen entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, after rightly arguing for his inclusion: edited John Gawsworth’s biography of Machen; co-edited Machen’s Selected Letters (with Godfrey Brangham and R.A. Gilbert, 1988); introduced the Tartarus edition of Machen’s Tales of Horror & the Supernatural; and wrote about Machen, ‘the Wizard of Gwent’, as he called him, for many other publications. He was also the co-editor, with me, of several booklets about Arthur Machen (e.g. Apostle of Wonder, 1985; Artist & Mystic, 1986), of Aklo, the journal of the fantastic, and The Lost Club Journal (devoted to neglected writers).

  In an online discussion group, he reminisced about these two journals:

  Thanks for your kind words on Aklo: much appreciated. Producing the magazine in the early 1990s proved great fun, though time-consuming, and I don’t think Mark Valentine and I ever covered our production costs, since we distributed so many copies free rather than selling them. Aklo does have a successor and a companion, The Lost Club Journal, its title taken from an 1890 mystery story by Machen, which celebrates not solely the fantastic but a wide variety of obscure, forgotten, cult and collected authors. These include people such as John Gawsworth, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Count Potocki, Francis Brett Young, Charles Williams, Ernest Dowson, Althea Gyles, Rider Haggard, Richmal Crompton, Peter Vansittart, Ronald Fraser, Wrenne Jarman, Joe Gould, H.A. Manhood, Christopher Millard, Count Stenbock and many others. Quasi-veridical authors such as Enoch Soames, C.W. Blubberhouse and Ephraim Ketchell also figured in the mix.

  As this suggests, Roger was extremely well-read, and Machen was far from his only literary interest. He talked charmingly and with infectious enthusiasm about many other, especially semi-forgotten, figures. His other particular interests included M.P. Shiel; the Reverend Montague Summers, anthologist and demonologist; the 1890s poet Ernest Dowson; and George Gissing, especially his The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. He was generous in sharing his research and insights and liked nothing better than to chat about books, and films, which were also an abiding passion. In selecting the essays for this volume, I have tried to reflect most of Roger’s most notable enthusiasms.

  Roger was also a regular contributor to the Oxford-based Antiquarian Book Monthly Review (ABMR) on recondite literary subjects, including one article which made out the case that Sherlock Holmes must have gone to a Manchester college. This exhibited the sense of mischief Roger often brought to bookish matters: he was also implicated, with his friend the bookseller Rupert Cook, in the letters and writings of the hoax poet (who showed signs of coming alive), C.W. Blubberhouse. He also contributed lively and learned material to Colin Langeveld’s Doppelgänger Broadsheet, sometimes as the querulous ‘Professor Herbert Trufflehunter’. As the checklist in our appendix shows, Roger wrote over a hundred pieces about literary figures and themes, quite apart from many news stories and topical notes.

  Rupert Cook and Roger Dobson, The Hanbury Arms, Caerleon, Arthur Machen Society weekend, Sunday 1st March 1992.

  He never lost the journalistic knack of knocking on doors to elicit information, when he wanted to pursue a writer’s homes and haunts, which included Machen’s house in the Chilterns (then owned, to Roger’s delight, by a gentleman with the Welsh kingly name of Cadwallader); and the grave of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan in an obscure Oxford village (‘the graveyard plan is on the back of a cornflakes packet’, the sexton told us).

  Author Mark Samuels recalls one memorable afternoon with Roger in pursuit of literary haunts: ‘Doubtless we all have our own special memories of times we each spent with Roger. One that springs to mind for me was a special Lost Club event organised by Roger a few years ago where we visited H.G. Wells’s former dwelling in Sandgate (now a retirement home) and Roger persuaded the staff to conduct us all on a tour. From there we went on to discover A.E. Waite’s grave in Bishopsbourne, hung around Jocelyn Brooke’s home in the same tiny village, and then got blasted in a local pub on the strongest possible Kentish ale.’

  Roger did continue with occasional freelance journalism, and made a perilous sort of living from this and other occasional jobs, including as an extra in films and television, once appearing as John Buchan working silently in his study. He was part of an informal group of friends doing similar work, OSCA (the Oxford Society of Crowd Artists).

  Roger himself was like a character out of the books he loved. In Oxford he met the Spanish professor Javier Marías, and told him about Arthur Machen, and the story of the poet John Gawsworth and the literary kingdom of Redonda in the Caribbean. Javier wrote about this in his bestselling novel All Souls, and later made Roger the Duke of Bridaespuela in his royal court of Redonda. It is welcome and appropriate that Javier Marías has kindly provided a foreword to this volume, with his recollections of that encounter. Roger wrote a BBC Radio 4 script for a programme on Redonda, and went on to do other scripts for Radio 4 with nostalgic themes.

  Stephen Garner of Radio 4 offered this tribute to him:

  Roger’s enthusiasm and passion for comic books, fictional heroes and great literary characters led to a friendship and partnership crafting three celebrated Radio 4 documentaries. Working with Roger was a very enjoyable experience. His delightful scripts, ideas and interviews for programmes on Eagle Comics, Classics Illustrated and Scream Queens, all brought beautifully to life by presenter’s Tim Rice, Bill Paterson and Reece Shearsmith, make these projects some of the finest I have produced for the network.

  Roger was a very private man: though I was among his closest friends in those Machenstruck days, I never learnt very much about him,
except his bookish enthusiasms. His independence of mind and determined character meant he was a hard man to help, and he sometimes cultivated disagreements about literary and other matters. However, he was also a great raconteur, and (what is rarer) a good listener, and much liked and respected by many people, including those with whom he disagreed. Lesser known was that he also gave quiet practical help and good company to a number of older friends in their twilight years.

  Roger was devoted to literature and, as with Machen and Gissing, it seldom rewarded him materially: but in its service he gained rarer things; the joys of scholarship, shared discoveries, and the stubborn integrity of a proud spirit.

  R.B. Russell, Mark Valentine and Roger Dobson, The Old Deep Lane, Llanddewi, Gwent, 1990.

  THE MYSTERIOUS MONTAGUE SUMMERS

  Antiquarian Book Monthly Review, July 1986

  In its obituary of Montague Summers in August 1948 The Times, with customary understatement, pronounced him ‘in every way “a character”, and in some sort a throwback to the Middle Ages’. This was accurate enough; but no short account could begin to fathom the riddle of his complex and ambiguous personality, with its echoes of Faust and Jekyll and Hyde. No other twentieth century writer was more an enigma and paradox than the Rev Dr Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers.

  A ‘mysterious figure, with his large moon-like face, wearing a black shovel hat and flowing cape’ he was a prolific editor and writer; dubious priest; homosexual; schoolmaster; theatrical luminary; bon vivant; authority on the Restoration stage and Gothic novel; flawed and gullible student of the Black Arts; and —perhaps—repentant Satanist. Summers polarised opinions: Sybil Thorndike thought him charming and witty, ‘a good, kind, generous friend’; yet Dennis Wheatley found him sinister. Being a cleric did not prevent Summers indulging his strong erotic interests. At one time he was a leading member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, exploring sexual aberrations; at his death watercolours of guardsmen pursuing most unmilitary activities were found among his effects.