Nick Brook presents … William Beckford. An English Romantic, Decadent and Exile. *

* (restored)

 

Introduction.

First up I don’t know too much about William Beckford apart from reading one biography and his novel Vathek. I have structured the post to include:
—-1. Biography of William Beckford
—-2. A summary of his famous novel Vathek with two links to the whole book and two additional links to videos containing readings from the first chapter.
—-3. The history of Fonthill Abbey his home after to returning to England having been forced to travel abroad after an alleged friendship and love affair with an eleven old boy.
—-4. Lansdown Tower his resting place.
—-5. A small section on William Courtney his alleged lover. Incidentally the current descendants of William Courtney recently had their license to conduct civil partnerships withdrawn after they refused to hire out their mansion to same sex couples…skeletons in closets maybe.

Why William Beckford?….well he was a forerunner for the English romantic movement that included Keats and Byron, he is in a long line of English gentleman (at 19 he was the richest man in England) to have suffered exile for his love and anyone who writes like this deserves our attention and finally it could be argued that much of Huysmans character Des Esseintes in A Rebours (Against Nature) is based upon William Beckford’s life making him a forerunner of the decadent movement. So decadent, romantic exile…what better life could there be…..now read on…..

 

1. William Beckford. Biography

William Thomas Beckford (1 October 1760 – 2 May 1844), usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England. He was Member of Parliament for Wells from 1784 to 1790, for Hindon from 1790 to 1795 and 1806 to 1820. He is remembered as the author of the Gothic novel Vathek, the builder of the remarkable lost Fonthill Abbey and Lansdown Tower (“Beckford’s Tower”), Bath, and especially for his art collection.

Beckford was born in the family’s London home at 22 Soho Square. At the age of ten, he inherited a fortune consisting of £1 million in cash, land at Fonthill (including the Palladian mansion Fonthill Splendens) in Wiltshire, and several sugar plantations in Jamaica from his father William Beckford, usually referred to as “Alderman Beckford”, who had been twice a Lord Mayor of the City of London. This allowed him to indulge his interest in art and architecture, as well as writing. He was briefly trained in music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but his drawing master Alexander Cozens had a much greater influence on him, and Beckford continued to correspond with him for some years until their falling-out.

Despite his wealth and education, Beckford was ostracized from polite English society and his hopes for a peerage were dashed as a result of the scandal caused by his love affair with a youth, William Courtenay, later 9th Earl of Devon, and its exposure in the papers by Lord Loughborough, the boy’s uncle and a bitter political enemy of Beckford’s tutor, Lord Chancellor Thurlow. Beckford had fallen in love with the boy in 1779. To silence ensuing rumors of homosexuality, he was pressed by his family into marriage with Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the fourth Earl of Aboyne, which took place on May 5, 1783. The following year, however, the scandal of his affair with Courtenay reached such proportions (possibly as a result of the exaggerations and fabrications by Loughborough) that the two were forced apart and Beckford chose exile in the company of his wife, whom he grew to love deeply, but who died in childbirth at the age of 24.

Beckford’s fame, however, rests as much upon his eccentric extravagances as a builder and collector as upon his literary efforts. In undertaking his buildings he managed to dissipate his fortune, which was estimated by his contemporaries to give him an income of £100,000 a year. The loss of his Jamaican sugar plantation to James Beckford Wildman was particularly costly. Only £80,000 of his capital remained at his death.

Having studied under Sir William Chambers and Alexander Cozens, Beckford journeyed in Italy in 1782 and promptly wrote a book on his travels: Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents (1783). Shortly afterward came his best-known work, the Gothic novel Vathek (1786), written originally in French; he boasted that it took a single sitting of three days and two nights, though there is reason to believe that this was a flight of his imagination. Vathek is an impressive work, full of fantastic and magnificent conceptions, rising occasionally to sublimity. His other principal writings were Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (1780), a satirical work; and Letters from Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1835), full of brilliant descriptions of scenes and manners. In 1793 he visited Portugal, where he settled for a period.

Beckford was a compulsive and restless collector, who also frequently sold works, sometimes later repurchasing them. In terms of today’s taste his collection was most notable for its many Italian Quattrocento paintings, then little collected and cheap. Despite his interest in Romantic medievalism, he owned few medieval works, though many from the Renaissance. He was also interested in showy Asian objets d’art such as Mughal hardstone carvings. But though he avoided the souped-up classical marbles typical of the well-educated English collector, much of his collection was of 18th century French furniture and decorative arts, then enormously highly priced compared to paintings by modern standards. He bought an isolated Turner in 1800, when the artist was only 25 (The Fifth Plague of Egypt, £157.10s), and in 1828 William Blake’s drawings for Gray’s Elegy, as well as several works by Richard Parkes Bonington, but in general he preferred older works.

By 1822 he was short of funds in debt and put Fonthill Abbey up for sale, for which 72,000 copies of Christie’s illustrated catalogue were sold at a guinea apiece; the pre-sale view filled every farmhouse in the neighborhood with visitors from London. Fonthill, with part of his collection was sold before the sale for £330,000 to John Farqhuar, who had made a fortune selling gunpowder in India. Farqhuar at once auctioned the art and furnishings in the “Fonthill sale” of 1823, at which Beckford and his son-in-law the Duke of Hamilton were heavy purchasers, often buying items more cheaply than the first price Beckford had paid, as the market was somewhat depressed. What remained of the collection, as it was maintained and added to at Lansdown Tower, amounting virtually to a second collection, was inherited by the Dukes of Hamilton, and much of that was dispersed in the great “Hamilton Palace sale” of 1882, one of the major sales of the century. The Fonthill sale was the subject of William Hazlitt’s scathing review of Beckford’s taste for “idle rarities and curiosities or mechanical skill”, for fine bindings, bijouterie and highly-finished paintings, “the quintessence and rectified spirit of still-life”, republished in Hazlitt’s Sketches of the Picture Galleries of England (1824), and richly demonstrating his own prejudices. Beckford pieces are now in museums all over the world. Hazlitt was unaware that the sale had been salted with many lots inserted by Phillips the auctioneer, that had never passed Beckford’s muster: “I would not disgrace my house by Chinese furniture,” he remarked later in life. “Horace Walpole would not have suffered it in his toyshop at Strawberry Hill”.

 

2. Vathek

 

Vathek (alternatively titled Vathek, an Arabian Tale or The History of the Caliph Vathek) is a Gothic novel written by William Thomas Beckford. It was composed in French beginning in 1782, and then translated into English by Reverend Samuel Henley in which form it was first published in 1786 without Beckford’s name as An Arabian Tale, From an Unpublished Manuscript, claiming to be translated directly from Arabic. The first French edition was published in 1787. A notable modern edition was issued in paperback by Ballantine Books as the thirty-first volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June, 1971. This edition, edited by Lin Carter, was the first to incorporate into the main text ‘The Episodes of Vathek’, scenes omitted from the original edition that had later been published separately.

Vathek capitalised on the 18th (and early 19th) century obsession with all things Oriental (see Orientalism), which was inspired by Antoine Galland’s translation of The Arabian Nights (itself re-translated, into English, in 1708). Beckford was also influenced by similar works from the French writer Voltaire. His originality lay in combining the popular Oriental elements with the Gothic stylings of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). The result stands alongside Walpole’s novel and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) in the first rank of early Gothic fiction.

William Beckford wrote Vathek in French in 1782, when he was 21. He often stated that Vathek was written as an emotional response to “the events that happened at Fonthill at Christmas 1781,” and that it took him two days and a night, or three days and two nights. He gives two accounts of how long it took him. Vathek was written during a time when the European population was entranced by orientalism. It is both an Arabian tale because of the oriental setting and characters and the depiction of oriental cultures, societies, and myth, as well as a Gothic novel because of the emphasis on the supernatural, ghosts, and spirits, as well as the terror it tries to induce on the reader.

The title character is inspired by Al-Wathiq, an Abbasid Caliph who had a great thirst for knowledge and became a great patron to scholars and artists. During his reign, a number of revolts broke out, and he joined the parties to quell these revolts personally. He died of fever on August 10, 847.

Vathek’s narrative uses a third person, omniscient, semi-intrusive narrator. While the narrator is not omniscient in the sense of knowing what the characters feel (he hardly talks about the feelings of the characters), he is omniscient in the sense that he knows what is happening everywhere; and while it may not be intrusive to the point of telling the reader how to feel, it is certainly intrusive in the way it takes the reader from place to place, the most obvious instance being on page 87 when, after a narrative focusing around Gulchenrouz, the narrator tells us, “But let us return to the Caliph, and her who ruled over his heart”. The narrative is often made up of lists that chronicle the events one after the other, without emphasis on character development. Characters and events are introduced forcefully at times. One such example is the introduction of Motavakel, Vathek’s brother. Up to the point when he is introduced in the novel as the leader of a rebel army, the reader is not even aware of Vathek having a brother. The reader is also never treated to Motavakel’s character, except through Carathis mentioning him. The novel, while it may lend itself to be divided into chapters, is one complete manuscript without pause.

The novel chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek (a fictionalized version of the historical Al-Wathiq), who renounces Islam and engages with his mother, Carathis, in a series of licentious and deplorable activities designed to gain him supernatural powers. At the end of the novel, instead of attaining these powers, Vathek descends into a hell ruled by the demon Eblis where he is doomed to wander endlessly and speechlessly.

Vathek, the ninth Caliph of the Abassides, ascended to the throne at an early age. He is a majestic figure, terrible in anger (one glance of his flashing eye can make “the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly [fall] backwards and sometimes [expire]”), and addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. He is intensely thirsty for knowledge and often invites scholars to converse with him. If he fails to convince the scholar of his points of view, he attempts a bribe; if this does not work, he sends the scholar to prison. In order to better study astronomy, he builds an observation tower with 1,500 steps.

A hideous stranger arrives in town, claiming to be a merchant from India selling precious goods. Vathek buys glowing swords with letters on them from the merchant, and invites the merchant to dinner. When the merchant does not respond to Vathek’s questions, Vathek looks at him with his “evil eye,” but this has no effect, so Vathek imprisons him. The next day, he discovers that the merchant has escaped and his guards cannot account for him. The people begin to call Vathek crazy. His mother, Carathis, tells him that the merchant was “the one talked about in the prophecy”, and Vathek admits that he should have treated the stranger kindly.

Vathek wants to decipher the messages on his new sabers, offers a reward to anyone who can help him, and punishes those who fail. After several scholars fail, one elderly man succeeds: the swords say “We were made where everything is well made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful and deserving, the sight of the first potentate on earth.” But the next morning, the message has changed: the sword now says “Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasses his power”. The old man flees before Vathek can punish him. However, Vathek realizes that the writing on the swords really did change.

Vathek then develops an insatiable thirst and often goes to a place near a high mountain to drink from one of four fountains there, kneeling at the edge of the fountain to drink. One day he hears a voice telling him to “not assimilate thyself to a dog”. It was the voice of the merchant who had sold him the swords, Giaour. Giaour cures his thirst with a potion and the two men return to Samarah. Vathek returns to immersing himself in the pleasures of the flesh, and begins to fear that Giaour, who is now popular at Court, will seduce one of his wives. Some mornings later, Carathis reads a message in the stars foretelling a great evil to befall Vathek and his vizir Morakanabad; she advises him to ask Giaour about the drugs he used in the potion. When Vathek confronts him, Giaour only laughs, so Vathek gets angry and kicks him. Giaour is transformed into a ball and Vathek compels everyone in the palace to kick it, even the resistant Carathis and Morakanabad. Then Vathek has the whole town kick the ball-shaped merchant into a remote valley. Vathek stays in the area and eventually hears Giaour’s voice telling him that if he will worship Giaour and the jinns of the earth, and renounce the teachings of Islam, he will bring Vathek to “the palace of the subterrain fire” (22) where Soliman Ben Daoud controls the talismans that rule over the world.

Vathek agrees, and proceeds with the ritual that Giaour demands: to sacrifice fifty of the city’s children. In return, Vathek will receive a key of great power. Vathek holds a “competition” among the children of the nobles of Samarah, declaring that the winners will receive “endless favors.” As the children approach Vathek for the competition, he throws them inside an ebony portal to be sacrificed. Once this is finished, Giaour makes the portal disappear. The Samaran citizens see Vathek alone and accuse him of having sacrificed their children to Giaour, and form a mob to kill Vathek. Carathis pleads with Morakanabad to help save Vathek’s life; the vizier complies, and calms the crowd down.

Vathek wonders when his reward will come, and Carathis says that he must fulfill his end of the pact and sacrifice to the Jinn of the earth. Carathis helps him prepare the sacrifice: she and her son climb to the top of the tower and mix oils to create an explosion of light. The people, presuming that the tower is on fire, rush up the stairs to save Vathek from being burnt to death. Instead, Carathis sacrifices them to the Jinn. Carathis performs another ritual and learns that for Vathek to claim his reward, he must go to Istakhar.

Vathek goes away with his wives and servants, leaving the city in the care of Morakanabad and Carathis. A week after he leaves, his caravan is attacked by carnivorous animals. The soldiers panic and accidentally set the area on fire; Vathek and his wives must flee. Still, they continue on their way. They reach steep mountains where the Islamic dwarves dwell. They invite Vathek to rest with them, possibly in the hopes of converting him back to Islam. Vathek sees a message his mother left for him: “Beware of old doctors and their puny messengers of but one cubit high: distrust their pious frauds; and, instead of eating their melons, impale on a spit the bearers of them. Should thou be so fool as to visit them, the portal to the subterranean place will shut in thy face” (53). Vathek becomes angry and claims that he has followed Giaour’s instructions long enough. He stays with the dwarves, meets their Emir, named Fakreddin, and Emir’s beautiful daughter Nouronihar.

Vathek wants to marry her, but she is already promised to her effeminate cousin Gulchenrouz, who she loves and who loves her back. Vathek thinks she should be with a “real” man and arranges for Babalouk to kidnap Gulchenrouz. The Emir, finding of the attempted seduction, asks Vathek to kill him, as he has seen “the prophet’s vice-regent violate the laws of hospitality.” But Nouronihar prevents Vathek from killing her father and Gulchenrouz escapes. The Emir and his servants then meet and they develop a plan to safeguard Nouronihar and Gulchenrouz, by drugging them and place them in a hidden valley by a lake where Vathek cannot find them. The plan succeeds temporarily – the two are drugged, brought to the valley, and convinced on their awakening that they have died and are in purgatory. Nouronihar, however, grows curious about her surroundings and ascends to find out what lies beyond the valley. There she meets Vathek, who is mourning for her supposed death. Both realize that her ‘death’ has been a sham. Vathek then orders Nouronihar to marry him, she abandons Gulchenrouz, and the Emir abandons hope.

Meanwhile, in Samarah, Carathis can discover no news of her son from reading the stars. She conjures the spirits of a graveyard to perform a spell that makes her appear in front of Vathek, who is bathing with Nouronihar. She tells him he is wasting his time with Nouronihar and has broken one of the rules of Giaour’s contract. She asks him to drown Nouronihar, but Vathek refuses, because he intends to make her his Queen. Carathis then decides to sacrifice Gulchenrouz, but before she can catch him, Gulchenrouz jumps into the arms of a Genie who protects him. That night, Carathis hears that Motavakel, Vathek’s brother, is planning to lead a revolt against Morakanabad. Carathis tells Vathek that he has distinguished himself by breaking the laws of hospitality by ‘seducing’ the Emir’s daughter after sharing his bread, and that if he can commit one more crime along the way he shall enter Soliman’s gates triumphant.

Vathek continues on his journey, reaches Rocnabad, and degrades and humiliates its citizens for his own pleasure.

A Genie asks Mohammed for permission to try to save Vathek from his eternal damnation. He takes the form of a shepherd who plays the flute to make men realize their sins. The shepherd asks Vathek if he is done sinning, warns Vathek about Eblis, ruler of Hell, and asks Vathek to return home, destroy his tower, disown Carathis, and preach Islam. Vathek’s pride wins out, and he tells the shepherd that he will continue on his quest for power, and values his mother more than life itself or God’s mercy. Vathek’s servants desert him; Nouronihar becomes immensely prideful.

Finally, Vathek reaches Istakhar, where he finds more swords with writing on them, which says “Thou hast violated the conditions of my parchment, and deserve to be sent back, but in favor to thy companion, and as the meed for what thou hast done to obtain it, Eblis permitted that the portal of this place will receive thee” (108). Giaour opens the gates with a golden key, and Vathek and Nouronihar step through into a place of gold where Genies of both sexes dance lasciviously. Giaour leads them to Eblis, who tells them that they may enjoy whatever his empire holds. Vathek asks to be taken to the talismans that govern the world. There, Soliman tells Vathek that he had once been a great king, but was seduced by a Jinn and received the power to make everyone in the world do his bidding. But because of this, he is destined to suffer in hell for all eternity. Vathek asks Giaour to release him, saying he will relinquish all he was offered, but Giaour refuses. He tells Vathek to enjoy his omnipotence while it lasts, for in a few days he will be tormented.

Vathek and Nouronihar become increasingly discontented with the palace of flames. Vathek orders an Ifreet to fetch Carathis from the castle. When she arrives, he warns her of what happens to those who enter Eblis’ domain, but Carathis takes the talismans of earthly power from Soliman regardless. She gathers the Jinns and tries to overthrow one of the Solimans, but Eblis decrees “It is time.” Carathis, Vathek, Nouronihar, and the other denizens of hell lose “the most precious gift granted by heaven – HOPE” (119). They begin to feel eternal remorse for their crimes.

“Such was, and should be, the punishment of unrestrained passion and atrocious deeds! Such shall be the chastisement of that blind curiosity, which would transgress those bounds the wisdom the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge; and such the dreadful disappointment of that restless ambition, which, aiming at discoveries reserved for beings of a supernatural order, perceives not, through its infatuated pride, that the condition of man upon earth is to be – humble and ignorant.”

 

Two videos containing a reading of the first chapter from Vathek

 

Links to full versions of Vathek

http://www.fullbooks.com/The-History-of-Caliph-Vathek1.html

http://www.fullbooks.com/The-History-of-Caliph-Vathek2.html

 

3. Fonthill Abbey.

 

Fonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford’s Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built at the turn of the 19th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford. It was constructed near the site of the Palladian house, later known as Fonthill Splendens, which was constructed by his father, William Beckford, to replace the Fonthill Abbey was a brainchild of William Thomas Beckford, son of wealthy English plantation owner William Beckford and a student of architect Sir William Chambers. In 1771 when Beckford was ten years old, he inherited £1,000,000 (around £320,000,000 in today’s amounts) and an annual income which his contemporaries then estimated at around £100,000 (around £32,000,000 in today’s values) a year, a colossal amount at the time, but which biographers have found to be closer to half of that sum. The newspapers of the time described him as “the richest commoner in England”.

VR Fly over of the Fonthill Abbey

 

4. Beckford’s Tower

 

Beckford’s Tower, originally known as Lansdown Tower, is an architectural folly built in neo-classical style on Lansdown Hill, just outside Bath, Somerset, England.

Standing 120 feet (37 m) high, the tower was completed in 1827 for local resident William Beckford to a design by Henry Goodridge. Beckford, who wished that he had built it forty feet higher, but admitted that “such as it is, it is a famous landmark for drunken farmers on their way home from market”, used the tower as both a library and a retreat, located at the end of pleasure gardens called Beckford’s Ride which ran from his house in Lansdown Crescent up to the Tower at the top of Lansdown Hill; he made it his habit to ride up to the tower, view the progress of gardens and works, and walk down to breakfast.

Beckford’s own choice of the best of works of art, virtu, books and prints and rich furnishings from Fonthill Abbey, which he had sold in 1822, were rehoused in his double ajoining houses in Bath and at the Tower. One long narrow room there was fitted out as an “Oratory”, where all the paintings were of devotional subjects and a marble Virgin and Child was bathed in light from a hidden skylight.

The most striking feature of the tower is the topmost gilded belvedere, based on the peripteral temple at Tivoli and the Tower of the Winds at Athens, reached by a spiral staircase and offering excellent views over the surrounding countryside. With a strong spyglass, Beckford could make out shipping in the Bristol Channel.

Today, the tower is home to a museum collection displaying furniture originally made for the Tower, alongside paintings, prints and objects illustrating William Beckford’s life as a writer, collector and patron of the arts. Visitors can follow in Beckford’s footsteps and climb the spiral staircase to the beautifully restored Belvedere and experience the spectacular panoramic view of Bath.

The tower is owned by the Bath Preservation Trust and managed by the Beckford Tower Trust. The Tower is also available to rent as a holiday home through the Landmark Trust. It has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building.

A Victorian cemetery (no longer used for interments) now occupies that part of what was once Beckford’s Ride.

Views of Beckford’s Tower, Bath

 

5. William “Kitty” Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon (c. 1768 – 26 May 1835) …

William Beckford and William “Kitty” Courtenay

… was the youngest son of William Courtenay, (de jure 8th Earl of Devon) 2nd Viscount Courtenay and his wife Frances Clack. He was baptized on 30 August 1768.

Born into a family of eight sisters, William Courtenay was better known as “Kitty” Courtenay to family and friends. William Courtenay inherited the title of 3rd Viscount Courtenay of Powderham. Furthermore, he also retrospectively revived the title of Earl of Devon in 1831 for the Courtenay family, the title having been dormant since 1556.

With his new title, he led an excessively flamboyant lifestyle. He was responsible for the addition of a new Music Room in the Powderham Castle, designed by James Wyatt, which included a carpet made by the newly formed Axminster Carpet Company.

He was also a homosexual and lived in the United States where he owned a property on the Hudson River in New York, and later in Paris. He did not marry due to his sexual orientation, and thus fathered no known children.

He died on 26 May 1835 at age 66 in Paris, France due to natural causes. He was loved by his tenants, who insisted that he be buried in stately fashion. He was buried on 12 June 1835 in Powderham.

 

Conclusion.

Three fortepiano pieces written in Paris in 1789 by William Beckford

William Beckford’s life could be described as having been defined by his love for William Courtenay (Viscount Courtenay’s 11 year old son), in 1778, a spectacular Christmas party lasting for three days was held for the boy at Fonthill. During this time, Beckford began writing Vathek, his most famous novel. In 1784 Beckford was charged with sexual misconduct with William Courtenay. The allegations of misconduct remained unproven, despite being stirred up by Lord Loughborough, but the scandal was significant enough to require his exile.

Beckford chose exile in the company of his wife, née Lady Margaret Gordon, whom he grew to love deeply, but who died in childbirth when the couple had found refuge in Switzerland. Beckford travelled extensively after this tragedy – to France, repeatedly, to Germany, Italy, Spain and (the country he favoured above all), Portugal. Shunned by English society, where rumors of his bi-sexuality and affairs with boys continued he nevertheless decided to return to his native country; after enclosing the Fonthill estate in a six-mile long wall (high enough to prevent hunters from chasing foxes and hares on his property), this arch-romantic decided to have a Gothic cathedral built.

Finally …………. back to the final paragraph in Vathek where it It is widely acknowledged that Vathek is Beckford and the youthful boy Gulchenrouz is William Courtney …

‘Thus the Caliph Vathek, who, for the sake of empty pomp and
forbidden power, had sullied himself with a thousand crimes, became
a prey to grief without end, and remorse without mitigation; whilst
the humble and despised Gulchenrouz passed whole ages in
undisturbed tranquillity, and the pure happiness of childhood’.

What more tragic way to part from a lover and live life?

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! My great pleasure, as always. I don’ think I know Palace Royale, but I will rectify that. Sounds really sweet, and awesome that you and Anita maxed out your time together. My weekend was pretty all right. Other than going to an exhibit of the works/ephemera of the composer Xenakis and doing my lovely bi-weekly bookclub Zoom on Saturday and some future planning, I didn’t do a ton. But I dug it. Love and nature are a gorgeous couple. Wealthy, eccentric, snooty, somewhat closeted British love, G. ** Susie Bright, Susie! So awesome to have you here! And a briefly belated happy birthday! I’ll find and get that Phyllis Christopher book, thank you. And thank you for the props on my GIF novels over on FB. That really warmed my heart. Great to see you! I hope circumstances will allow me to see you in person again one of these not distant days! ** Ian, You’re most welcome, of course. Yay about your book, and, yes, I have interest in the pdf, thank you so much. Honestly, I read more pdfs than actual books these days what being way over here and mostly reading things from way over there. I don’t need to tell you that getting the new book formulated before the gigantic arrival of your kiddo is an awfully good idea based on similar circumstances amongst other impending parent friends of mine. You sound really good! ** David Ehrenstein, Or maybe not, ha ha. ** Jon Bailiff, Hi, Jon. Welcome! I’m so happy that the post reached as far as your heart. It’s the blog’s honor entirely. Take care, and, you know, come back anytime please. ** Ryan Wilkinson / ANGUSRAZE, Cool. Those Weil photos seemed to have been kind of the hit. I hope your cold has fully dematerialised by now and you’re back to genius carousing. French love, me. ** David Fishkind, Hi, David. Yes, the cowboy, I’m with you. Awesome. Thanks a ton to you too. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. Did Facebook warn people? I guess they would have. So much for my theory that it was my use of ‘[NSFW]’ that was causing that. I talked to the trio you mentioned on Saturday, and the reading seemed to have gone quite well. I love that store. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Interesting that Weil was in ACT-UP, etc. And that I didn’t find that when I found him. Ha re: Mr Ford and Messrs Sluts. How was the Webern concert? I saw an exhibit of Xenakis’s stuff on Sunday, and they recreated this amazing light/sound piece he’d made for the opening of Pompidou, and that was great to see. Plus the venue, The Museum of Music, has the archive of Pierre Henry, and they had a bunch of his equipment and stuff on display. ** Rafe, Hi, Rafe. Thanks, pal. If you end up sharing those drawings, do let me know where. There’s an interesting discrepancy between how Language poetry reads on the page and how it’s performed, at least in the case of Bernstein and Andrews. Maybe there are videos them reading out there. Glad you’re with me on ‘DMC’. How’s stuff on your Monday morning going? ** _Black_Acrylic, That’s very true, is it not? Your mom likes Lou Reed! That’s interesting. My mom liked Little Richard, which is maybe the equivalent for her generation? ** Misanthrope, Oh, this abandoned novel is the same one you’re doing with Leckie’s illustrations? I need my hairs cut very badly. Blerp. ** Steve Erickson, I didn’t know Roger Shepherd wrote a memoir. Huh. That does sound tasty. I’ never heard of either of those films you mentioned, but, yeah, I’ll seek them. I just made a post about Bill Morrison, so I was watching a bunch of his films, and they were pretty dreamy. ** Right. Today I hand you over an old, restored post made by lost d.l. Nick Brook who also sometimes used to go by the monikers Putthelotioninthebasket and Stoopidslappedpuppies if any of you have been around here long enough to remember. Anyway, he wanted everyone to know about a British eccentric guy, and presumably he still does wherever he is. Check it out. See you tomorrow.