I returned home from England in June, toting a few books I picked up—forty-four, to be exact. Some of them were waiting for me upon my arrival there—either shipped to my address in North Yorkshire, or, in this case, waiting for my pick-up. We no longer have much in the way of individually-owned used bookstores in the U.S. I have fond memories of them from my youth—just wish I had been looking then for what I am searching for today. Fortunately, the tradition survives in the British Isles (the essential guide is found here.)
My first book stop was in a market town just into West Yorkshire from Lancashire. It was not so much a book store as a book house. The bookseller sells some books online, but they are a drop in the bucket of his overall collection, which is open only by appointment. My friend Mark V. gave me the tip on this proprietor, so we had arranged to meet on my day of arrival. A succession of delayed flights put me seven hours behind schedule, so I ditched everything else on my itinerary for that day and made straight for the bookseller.
The establishment was like something out of a gothic film. I believe it is what they call over there a semi-detached home; what we would term a duplex, only much larger. I would guess that it is late Victorian or Edwardian, a heavy stone and brick residence boasting an impressive front bay window, two full stories, a full attic, and probably a full basement to boot. Entry was not at all straight-forward, as the house, while in good repair externally, is looking a bit derelict. After making my way through the overgrowth to the front door, I saw a small sign saying “No entry.” So, I regrouped, and attacked the situation from the alley behind. Steeping over the recycling to reach a small stoop off the tiny kitchen, I was able to make my presence known.
The kitchen seemed to be somewhat devoted to its intended function, though the table doubled as a packing center. The entire rest of the ground floor, however, was devoted to books: shelves of books everywhere, with each shelf two books deep. I was to learn that the upper floor was exactly the same way. I suppose there was some attic space devoted to actual living. Narrow passageways wound through this bookish maze. In one corner, I discovered, surrounded on three sides by stacks of books, a modern computer/printer set up, enabling this literary reliquary to interact with the twenty-first century.
By appearances, I would guess the proprietor to be an octogenarian, or nearly so. A tall man, he seems to walk with a bit of limp, making this living arrangement all the more incredible. I understand that he has never driven, but gets around by public transport to sniff out books. I had ordered four books online and they were stacked and ready to go for me. A quick scan of the shelves resulted in my walking out with six additional volumes. My current enthusiasms run towards the offbeat and more obscure English authors, and so I left with works by authors who are not exactly household names these days: Edgar Jepson, Wilfred Childe, Robbie Ross, L. H. Myers, St. John Lucas, Peter Bell, Lord Dunsany, Robert Aickman, Walter de la Mare, and Luigi Motta. Bell is the only contemporary author; the others have all been deceased for many decades.
I have been recently working my way through all my purchases, and have read about half of them, my most recent being Masques and Phases, published by Robert Ross in 1909. He is an interesting character, best known for his association with Oscar Wilde. He is generally accredited to have been Wilde’s most loyal friend, supporting him in prison and afterwards, right up to the end. A Catholic himself, Ross facilitated Wilde’s deathbed conversion to Catholicism.1 Importantly, he was Wilde’s literary executor, and along with Christopher Sclater Millard, preserved and protected the author’s legacy.
Ross (1869-1918) was an early acquaintance of Oscar Wilde’s. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it was Robbie Ross who introduced the author to the path in life which ultimately led to his professional and legal downfall. Unlike Wilde, Ross did not draw attention to himself, and perhaps because of this, was from his college days able to live openly as a homosexual (a word only just coming into usage). He went on to become a respected writer, essayist, and art critic. As Ross is most often mentioned in connection with Wilde, and as his books are quite hard to find, I was interested to read what he wrote himself. And I found this unread book to be an unexpected treasure.
I was surprised to find that the book contained many uncut pages. I suppose it had something to do with how some older books were printed. Sometimes you find a volume where the ends of pages are connected, making unavailable the pages between. In such cases, you have to carefully cut or pull the pages apart at their exterior edge. What it also means is that the book has been unread. Such was the case with Masques and Phases. It had sat on bookshelves for decades, unread. In cutting the pages I felt as though I was setting the book free from a bondage lasting 114 years. And perhaps because of this, I was determined to give it a full hearing, to read every word.
The book begins with a macabre short story, followed by a pleasing mix of satire, reviews, and essays. Ross has a clever way with words. He observed that bad writers and bad artists had a happy home in England. When good mediocrities die, if they do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair chance of burial in Westminster Abbey.
He reviewed a collection of particularly bad poetry by Victorian Calvinist evangelist Georgiana Farrer. By Ross’ time, her poetry was so absolutely forgotten that she even failed to make the anthologies of his London publisher friend who devoted a lifetime to scouring the country for obscure poets. An example of her work: Then hundredfolds to sinners, must be repaid in Hell. If you think such men winners. We disagree. Farewell. Indeed. But Ross was gentler with her than I would have been, noting that in her own way, she was kind to children and animals. He imagined what her home must have looked like, with a shelf containing “a few artly books bound in the style of the Albert Memorial.” I am on the same page with anyone who finds humor in that Victorian architectural grotesquery.
Ross was not above passing along the occasional Wildean bon mot. Once the very serious Walter Pater had just delivered a scholarly lecture. He ended by expressing the hope that the audience had heard him. Oscar Wilde, in the audience, replied, “we overheard you.”
Ross also treated his friend, the unfortunate Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon, with great sympathy. “For poor Solomon there is no place in life. Casting reality aside, he stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius.” I made a point last summer to visit his grave during my short stint in London.
In another essay, he described his visit, along with other Catholics, to Westminster Abbey to venerate the tomb of Edward the Confessor. With barely concealed relish, Ross sarcastically noted that he engaged in “overt acts of superstition,” specifically in defiance of Article XXII of the Church of England “by law established,” in which same act curates in the East End had been suspended. He concluded that the Abbey had long since passed from church into the status of a museum, and should be treated thusly. I agree.
His best essay was a lengthy one at the end of the book, entitled “There is No Decay.” This is something I needed to hear, for I a convinced, thorough-going Declinist. As I have clarified before, this in no way implies either joylessness, hopelessness, or pessimism. I am as happy as the next guy, content with my lot in life, and at ease with the lengthening shadows. I maintain a fixed Hope, one that does not change. And what might be called pessimism by those bright-eyed optimists with the sunlit uplands always in their sights, I characterize as realism.
The author’s point is that there was never a Golden Age from which we are in Decline. I agree completely, even though I label myself a declinist. What I mean is that I look back to no Golden Aged past from which we have fallen, nor do I see salvation in any Utopian future ahead, whether it be the technological escape fantasized by the Right, or the social evolution envisioned by the Left. I do not worship at the Cult of Progress, in any of its guises; realizing that there is nothing lasting in our creations, and that it all ends in dust. Indeed, in the song of my Georgian friends, Our Lifetime is the Color of Dust.2
Ross contends that mankind always believes they are in a state of decline from a more noble past. When we compare our world with what went before, we find our current age comes up short. I had never thought of the persistence of this very human trait, but he makes a convincing case. Ross approaches the argument from a different angle, but we arrive at the same place: human nature remains a constant from which there is neither progress nor decay, not “since the days of Tubal Cain.”
He rightly criticizes Gibbon who, of course, popularized the idea of “Decline and Fall.” Ross concludes that he draws false conclusions from the undisputed facts,” drolly noting that “it is safe enough to prophesy about the past.” He continues that he does “not consider old age decay,” nor does he “think exuberant youth immature childhood.” And contra Gibbon, “the great intellectual ideal of the Roman dominion…philosophically never decayed.” His aside that one should “always regard the deductions of the historian with the same skepticism that you regard the deductions of fiscal politicians,” reminds me of the quip of Dr. Clyde Wilson: “Any fool can write history. And many do.”
Like I say, Ross was a clever wordsmith. A few choice aphorisms:
only iconoclasm need annoy us…
The past was very like our present; it nearly always depreciated itself intellectually and materially…
The putting up of ugly buildings is merely a sign of growing stupidity; not of declining intellect or decaying taste…
The history of stupidity and the history of bad taste must one day engage our serious attention.
The Reformation…directed the intellectual capacity of the nation towards literature, politics and religious controversy, rather than to art and religion.
Even the existence of America does not depress me…
The Greeks…preserved their youth by cultivating the superb gift of curiosity, delightful anxiety about the present and future.
Youth is sometimes crude. It is better than being rude.
Do not great the dawn as though it were a lowering sunset.
In the glen of Parnassus there are hidden flowers always blooming; though to the binoculars of the tourist, the mountain seems unusually barren…For us they may stand as the symbol of realisation and the immortality of the human intellect, in which there has been no decay since the days of Tubal Cain.
“The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners only. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” Oscar Wilde
This was in 2013, I think. Preceding this song, my friend related a tale about a wise woman who lived alone in a hut, high in the mountains. When the narrator tried to visit the following summer, he discovered that she had died in the interim, and then there was something about flowers growing on her grave. In a later Georgian journey, I listened to this friend relate the same story, followed by the same song. I turned to my American-Georgian friend who had organized the tour and asked, “I think I’ve heard this before; is it true?” He replied, “Oh, who knows.” I took his meaning exactly. Whether the story was literally true did not matter. This was because it was True.
Thank you for ALL your help