B007TB5SP0 EBOK Read Online Free Page A

recognized for his artistry. The literal attempt to impose oneself upon the fabric of a church may hint too at the Vatican’s supposed snubbing of Firbank, when he offered to serve the Church.
    Shamefoot is also – if discreetly – the first of Firbank’s Sapphic heroines. Interestingly, a fragment of Sappho’s verse features prominently in the novel. Shamefoot is devoted to Lady Castleyard, of whom she asks, pointedly: ‘Do you suppose, if there were no men in the world, that women would frightfully mind?’ ( p. 125 ). Her diet resembles her author’s: Shamefoot finds champagne more refreshing than tea, and drinks Veuve Clicquot in quantity. Firbank so desired to become a recognized author that he also created a version of what he wished to become in a character in
Vainglory
called Claud Harvester, an established novelist, playwright and author of
Vaindreams
( p. 150 ). The narrator’s estimate of Harvester as ‘almost successful’ is startlingly prescient of Firbank’s later status as an author: ‘His books were watched for … but without impatience’ ( p. 11 ).
    Later, in Oxford, Firbank would prove disciplined, spending months in isolation on his manuscripts. Again, this is like Shamefoot, who ends up as a hermit, confessing to Lady Castleyard: ‘You wonder I can isolate myself so completely. Dear Georgia, just because I want so much, it’s extraordinary how little I require’ ( p. 177 ). In 1913, however, Firbank lacked this application. By mid-July he was in France, where he secured an invitation to come to Paris from Tony Landsberg. Landsberg was a Cambridge friend with whom Firbank developed an epistolary relationship. He probably hoped for more. One letter – dripping with missed opportunities, and sent after several days together in the capital – informed Landsberg: ‘You are romantic! Somehow I find it very romantic to drive along the Quai Voltaire (three times … ) at four in the morning. I hope you realized
at the time
how romantic you were.’ 38 By August, though, Firbank was travelling through England, so extensively that the fictional cathedral city, Ashringford, could be drawn from Salisbury, York, Lincoln, Ely, Norwich and/or Bath. 39
    Firbank’s need for society and culture lured him back to London in 1914. By that summer, he was often seen at bohemian favourite, the Eiffel Tower Restaurant, in Percy Street, Fitzrovia, dining with Evan Morgan. ‘Dining’ could be euphemistic in Firbank’s case. He sometimes ordered as little as a single pea, only to ignore the plate once it arrived, keeping to his preferred, wholly liquid diet. Augustus John recalled often seeing the couple together, Firbank ‘struggl[ing] almost manfully with his asparagus and a bottle of wine, while following intermittently the bird-like flights of the Hon[ora]ble Evan Morgan’. 40 Seven years his junior, Morgan dabbled in all the arts, later publishing a number of poetry pamphlets and even one execrable novel. Like Firbank, he adored his mother, had difficult relations with an authoritarian father, and had an adolescent, impulsive temperament. He had been born into Roman Catholicism, unlike Firbank, yet, while a believer, remained fascinated enough by the occult to later grow intimate with Aleister Crowley, promoter of Satanism, orgies and more.
    No character in
Vainglory
is based on Morgan. They probably met as Firbank was making last manuscript revisions.(After their falling out, however, Morgan would be subjected to a brutal fictional portrayal as the Hon. Eddy Monteith in
The Flower Beneath the Foot.
) Their meeting, however, is glanced at in
Vainglory
. In 1940, Morgan recalled an encounter in the British Museum with a
tall Sherlock Holmes-like figure, the face characteristically half covered with the coat collar held up with the right hand and one long hand in an Aubrey Beardsley attitude pointing out towards infinity, [who] suddenly whispered in my ear ‘Your name is Rameses’. 41
    Firbank took the