A New Edition of 'Twice Lost' by Phyllis Paul

The New York publisher McNally Editions has published a new edition of Twice Lost by Phyllis Paul, often thought of as one of her most impressive novels. It has a foreword by Jeremy M Davies and a commendably brief and enticing blurb: 'Who could have been so cruel as to do away with poor Vivian Lambert? And why oh why couldn’t she just stay dead?' 

The catalogue of the press is also worth exploring for other titles, including by Margaret Kennedy, whose work is beginning to attract renewed appreciation. They each have a stylish design too.

(Mark Valentine)

 

Guest Post: Phyllis Paul: A Few Glimpses of Her Meaning by Dale Nelson

Miss Paul maintains a pervasive sense of mystery, even though much in her books may be mysterious only in the conventional sense, that is, mysterious until more information is gathered, which then resolves some of the questions that have accumulated. 

In her work mystery remains; it is as if, when the earthly mysterious has been cleared up, something of unearthly mystery remains untouched.  Her imagination tends to the quasi-Gnostic.  References to the Cathars (in The Lion of Cooling Bay) and so on suggest Miss Paul may have studied heterodox religious history. 

However, her ideas and her beliefs may have changed over time.  And whatever she believed at a given point, she may have borrowed elements of some system that she herself did not believe for its imaginative, literary possibilities. 

Here are some observations about matters of the spirit in Miss Paul’s fiction.

In the seven novels that I’ve read so far, Miss Paul allows only a weak connection between English religion and the world of the spirit.  She doesn’t seem interested in a thoroughgoing satire of parish religion, but nor does she endorse it. 

Thus, in Twice Lost, Christine’s mother, Mrs. Gray, maintains a spiritual atmosphere with Scripture texts on the wall at home and with feelings of spiritual communion that she cultivates.  And she is no fool; when Keith Antequin intrudes upon this atmosphere, she knows he is a fake.  Unfortunately, when elderly Thomas Antequin brought himself forward as a suitor for Christine’s hand, he seemed to Mrs. Gray a convenient – perhaps, fatally, a providential – protector for her troubled young daughter. 

Rachel in A Cage for the Nightingale is an Anglican happy with the round of parish life, but she doesn’t understand the more spiritual Victoria.

For Roman Catholicism Miss Paul has a strong aversion, which, as I understand, she particularly indulges in Pulled Down, which I haven’t read yet.  In Cage, several of the worst characters are Catholics. In Twice Lost, Thomas Antequin’s historical play concerns the Inquisition and the theme is cruelty. 

Detail from Breugel's Triumph of Death

Ricky in The Lion of Cooling Bay is attracted to Romanism and to sexual perversity. In the same novel, the narrator refers to the “torture-wheels of the Spanish devils” as painted by Bruegel (see his Triumph of Death), and the Catholic boy Francis dreams of a ceremony in which “the crowd was surrounded by a circle of lofty poles, each of which had a wheel fixed horizontally on its summit; objects which he felt he had seen before, perhaps in some old picture, without understanding their significance.”  (There is a curious reference, in Twice Lost, to a “clubbed tree [that] was crowned with a huge wheel” in a Kensington square.) 

Miss Paul worked within the Gothic tradition, where portrayals of Roman Catholic cruelty have a long pedigree.  However, the anti-Catholic curate Treadworthy, in Rox Hall Illuminated, is rather creepy.

Miss Paul evinces some respect for certain 17th-century Protestant authors who had a keen sense of the reality of spiritual evil.  In A Cage for the Nightingale, Victoria’s imagination was “darkly stirred” when, as a child, she read Hall, Baxter, and Browne. 

Richard Baxter, the Puritan, quoted Bishop Joseph Hall about “Satan’s prevalency in this age” being evident from the numbers of witches.  (Hall is better known for his Anglican Neostoicism.)
Baxter may still be remembered for The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, which has a section on ghosts, and was also author of The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits.  And Consequently of the Immortality of Souls.  Of the Malice and Misery of the Devils, and the Damned.  And of the Blessedness of the Justified.  Fully Evinced by the Unquestionable Histories of Apparitions, Operations, Witchcrafts, Voices, &c.  Written as an Addition to Many Other Treatises, for the Conviction of Sadduces [sic] and Infidels (1691). 

Sir Thomas Browne is best known for Urn Burial and especially Religio Medici, wherein the point is made that it is not in the devil’s interest to reveal himself to those who profess disbelief in the devil and in God.

The devil is a dreadful presence – seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8) -- in The Lion of Cooling Bay.  Anne described to William a drawing she saw in Julian’s room, with a great shadow on the landscape, and an inscription naming “The Lion – the King of beasts – God of this world – Ruler of the darkness of this world.”

With particular clarity, A Cage for the Nightingale exhibits a threefold Gnostic-type spirituality.

1.Most of the characters are examples of the sarkikos anthropos, the fleshly person.  They are concerned with this world, its silly or base pleasures, its bogus values.  Herve, Tonine, Janet, Pat, Maurice, and Constantine belong to this category. 

2.Rachel is an example of the psychikos anthropos, the soulish person.  She isn’t worldly like the fleshly characters.  She has some awareness of spiritual reality in sometimes detecting sinister atmosphere, and she is intrigued by Victoria, who is on a higher spiritual level than herself.  Miss Paul makes Rachel an artist who draws without genius.  She would like to go to a Christmas Eve service.  Gnostics would see Christians such as Rachel as satisfied by family life and a conventional religion inadequate for finer spirits.

3.Much-tormented Victoria is the exemplar of the pneumatic or spiritual person.  Though she has felt that she is “all light inside,” she is the imprisoned nightingale, fluttering against the bars of the cage – that is, the trammels of earthly embodiment.  Unlike Rachel’s drawings, Victoria’s artwork has an impressive, real quality.  Paul uses art as a symbol of spiritual life. 

In Gnosticism, God exists but is remote from this world.  As Victoria says, “‘The fall of a sparrow!  God sees it and lets it fall.’”

The phenomenal world hides the realm of spirit, which is associated with light, e.g. in The Lion of Cooling Bay with sunlight burning through leaves.

Christine in Twice Lost thinks of God as absent in one’s time of spiritual anguish – not nonexistent, but not concerned. 

Christine is a superb study, from a classic Lutheran point of view, of a person bowed down under the “curse of the Law.” The two great commandments are to love God with all one’s heart and mind and strength and one’s neighbor as oneself. 

Christine knows that she did fail the unattractive, unwinsome little girl Vivian Lambert, when she didn’t wait to make sure the child got inside her house late one evening, but left her on the doorstep.  She is haunted by part of this passage (St. Matthew 18:6): “whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Vivian disappeared and was presumed to have been murdered.  Thereafter, Christine suffers, a prisoner of inner condemnation.  She deals with her guilt in two ways, by doing good works (she is a volunteer at a clinic for the poor, as I recall) and by hoping desperately that Vivian didn’t die, but only disappeared; if Vivian didn’t die, then she, Christine, is not guilty of her death.  There is no suggestion in the novel that she could have opened her tormented heart to a pastor and received the comfort of Gospel absolution, the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake.

A severe spirituality – characterized by Glen Cavaliero as “steely puritanism” -- is integral to the atmosphere and meaning of the novels discussed here.  It deserves further exploration.
Note: I consulted Edwyn Bevan’s Symbolism and Belief for a discussion of Gnosticism’s threefold anthropology.  Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest is often issued in abridged form without the section on ghosts – which I know of but haven’t seen.

© 2019 Dale Nelson

The Last, Lost Novel of Phyllis Paul

Phyllis Paul (1903-73) published two early novels with Secker, We Are Spoiled (1933) and The Children Triumphant (1934). These were followed, after a fifteen year gap, by nine from Heinemann: Camilla (1949), The Lion of Cooling Bay (1953), Rox Hall Illuminated (1956), A Cage for the Nightingale (1957), Constancy (1959), Twice Lost (1960), A Little Treachery (1962), Pulled Down (1964), and An Invisible Darkness (1967). These later novels show a marked increase in sophistication and nuance. There is, however, also a last, still lost novel.

In his study Charles Williams – Poet of Theology (1983), the poet and Cambridge academic Glen Cavaliero included a brief end-note about the novels of Phyllis Paul. This was probably the first time anyone had given them any attention for some years. Later, in his study The Supernatural and English Fiction (1995) he devoted seven pages to her work, and indeed has said it was largely for her sake that he wrote the book, as an opportunity to write further about her.

(Edit: and Doug Anderson kindly tells me that Glen had also written even earlier about this author, in 'Neglected Novelist: Phyllis Paul', in Little Caesar no. 12 (1981): pp.23, 25-30.)

Glen also wrote a masterly analysis of Phyllis Paul’s work for Wormwood 9, ‘Mysteries of the Thirteenth Hour: The Enigmatic World of Phyllis Paul.’ He began: ‘Phyllis Paul (1903-1973) was that rare creature, a puritan with a passionate and colourful imagination', and noted that 'running through all her novels is an undercurrent of the supernatural: her concern is not so much with psychological issues as with those of the spirit.’

Alerted by his interest, a few collectors had begun to look for her books: it was the note in the Williams book that started me on my own quest for them. They are not at all easy to find. Even though they were issued by major publishers this must not have been in very large numbers, or else (or as well) they were not the sort of books people kept. I remember my joy at finding two of them in a bookshop in St Helier, Jersey, but they remained difficult to discover and her last, and rarest, still eludes me. And that is not the only elusive aspect pf Phyllis Paul's work.

When he first became interested in Phyllis Paul’s books, Glen wrote, via her publisher Heinemann, to her solicitor to enquire about her estate. Her main legatee, aside from a substantial donation to a campaigning animal charity, the League Against Cruel Sports, was a friend, Miss Lydia M Lee of Tadworth, Surrey. The solicitor also gave the very interesting information that Phyllis Paul had left an unpublished novel, 'Hedera', which had been rejected by Heinemann and Chatto & Windus. The title appears to refer to the botanical name for ivy. He had sent the manuscript to Miss Lee. Glen therefore wrote to her in January 1980 to ask about this, but sadly his letter was returned 7 days later, stamped 'return to sender' and 'deceased'.

Naturally this was tantalising. Could there still be an unseen novel by this remarkable writer in existence? Guided by Glen’s previous research, I have spent some time trying to trace Miss Lee’s own estate, which I established had been left to a niece, the heir (so to speak) of Phyllis Paul’s heir. With a clue discovered by Doug Anderson, I was recently able to make contact with them and received a kind reply. Unfortunately, Miss Lee’s legatee regretted to advise that they did not know anything about the lost book: it did not survive among her effects.

The bleakness and pessimism of Phyllis Paul’s work ought perhaps to have prepared us for such an outcome, but I continue to nourish the slim chance that perhaps Miss Lee might have entrusted the manuscript somewhere else – some library or university or even church or chapel perhaps, where it may still reside, obscurely catalogued. It is, to be frank, unlikely, but we can hope.

Mark Valentine

Wormwood 31

Wormwood 31 (Autumn 2018) has just been published.

Reggie Oliver on Robert Aickman:

“Aickman might be said to be exploring not so much Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” as the evil of banality.”

Doug Anderson on Phyllis Paul:

“What does keep the reader going is the eccentric cast of minor characters . . .”

John Howard on Mack Reynolds:

“In Reynolds’ utopias an element of subversion—revolution—is also necessary . . .”

Colin Insole on Hope Mirrlees:

“The ghosts parade and strut on the streets and bridges”

Ibrahim Ineke on book-collecting in Den Haag:

“My passion has a slight resemblance to the rawer and aesthetically less satisfying habit of gambling”

Paul M Chapman on the Decadent Conan Doyle:

“His work often echoed Poe's ‘love for the grotesque and the terrible’”

Tony Mileman on the golden age of Czech fantasy:

“What if reading were a dangerous activity? What if you could, literally, disappear into a text?”

Mat Joiner on Jocelyn Brooke:

“And who are the other lot? ‘I only wish I knew’”

Phyllis Paul in paperback

Hardcover editions of the eleven novels of Phyllis Paul (1903-1973) are increasingly elusive, and increasingly costly.  All eleven came out in British editions, while four appeared in hardcover in the U.S.  These four include her first novel, We Are Spoiled (William Morrow, 1934), and three of her later and more characteristic novels, Twice Lost (1960), A Little Treachery (1962), and Pulled Down (1965), all published by W.W. Norton. Two of these latter titles achieved publication in U.S. mass market paperback editions, though one was retitled. These paperbacks serve nowadays as more affordable reading copies for those interested in sampling Phyllis Paul.

The paperback publisher was Lancer Books of New York, a firm founded in 1961 which went bankrupt in September 1973. Lancer Books is notable for its many science fiction and fantasy titles, including Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

In 1966, Lancer launched a series of Lancer Gilt-Edge Gothics, presumably so-called because of the gold-colored edges on the books.  The first two books in this series were by Phyllis Paul, Twice Lost  and Echo of Guilt, the latter being a retitled edition of Pulled Down. 

Here are the covers of these two books. Note the glowing reviews from the Springfield Republican on the rear cover of each book. And note the series numbering (1 and 2) near the top of the spine. The cover art is uncredited.

Twice Lost had a second printing in March 1973, some months before Lancer's bankruptcy.  Here it is just labelled a Lancer Gothic, though the page count is much higher than in the 1966 printing because of the larger font used in the "Easy Eye" series.

The Two Early Novels of Phyllis Paul

Phyllis Paul (1903-1973) published eleven novels, two in 1933-34, and nine others between 1949 and 1967.  Her first novel was We Are Spoiled, published by Martin Secker of London in July 1933. It was followed ten months later in May 1934 by The Children Triumphant. Paul later felt her first two novels were of a different type than those she wrote afterwards, but they have many core similarities.

 

London: Martin Secker, 1933

We Are Spoiled is the story of the childhood and adulthood of several children brought up in Hammersing in slightly-rural England. The children include Christian Lauria, his two cousins Nancy and Louise Cloud, and neighbours Barbara Morrison and, most importantly, Jael Lingard. Jael is the central figure—an imaginative girl whose life is under the control of a Mr. Llewellyn (how he became guardian to Jael is never made clear), a distant and depraved figure who takes Jael to his life in Paris, where treats her quite openly as a cynical experiment. Though Llewellyn is a thorough rake, he is beyond sexual interest in Jael, yet he makes her take a vow of chastity. Another figure involved in the drama is Llewellyn’s son Hallam. Some years pass and Jael returns to Hammersing, now under the leash of Hallam. Old friendships, loyalties and rivalries are reignited, and the effects of growing up are shown to have taken a heavy toll on most of the children, leading in the end to madness in one case, and death in another. The underlying theme of the book is probably best expressed by Jael, who thinks: “was there any reason why life should not become quite unbearable? Considering that by the progress of its mental development humanity was enlarging its capacity for suffering, then why should not life become quite unbearable, not merely to the individual, but to the race? Why should not humanity at length utterly reject the curse of life and die away, another scrapped experiment in ‘evolution’? . . . But the mind of humanity showed signs of sickness. It was not the mind of a child at all, but a clever, self-conscious mind, tormented, and growing sicker every day” (pp. 238-239).

New York: William Morrow, 1934

To find such attitudes expressed in a first novel is unusual, but the book is especially worth reading not for such modern cynicism, nor for the characters (who are not always convincing), but for the unusually assured prose style and deft wit. The reader is pulled into the narrative by the very first sentence:

The Laurias came to Hammersing heath in the very bleakest of springs, and Mrs. Lauria, her urban spirit altogether failing at the sight of the place, went upstairs a few days after the removal with the suitable last words, “I am going to rest,” and lay down and died. (p. 7)

This odd but fresh style continues throughout the rest of the book. While there is nothing of the fantastic about the story, the manner of its telling and its moods are fairly gripping and enchant the reader. As the Times Literary Supplement noted, while “many effective chords are struck, it is not easy to discern a dominating harmony. There is music here, angelic or devilish, but hardly earthly” (6 July 1933).

 

London: Martin Secker, 1934

The Children Triumphant begins in December 1917 in the fictional hamlet of Rushmile in Kent. It tells the story of two girls, Edith Coventry and “Jemmy” [Jemima] Lacey. Edith’s father had been well-paid doing aircraft industry work for a period during the war, and the money allowed Edith to get some education.  Her friend Jemmy was not so fortunate, and both seem unlikely to marry owing to the shortage of men after the War.  Edith is soon further burdened by the death of her step-mother, after which she must raise three younger step-siblings by herself, as well as care for her father.  Edith never warms to the children, and believes “they were born to be stoned” (p. 57).  Jemmy is a curious character who seems to love Edith in a more than merely friendly way (though lesbianism is never stated), professing that she is uninterested in marrying and hopes to move away sometime with Edith.  Edith, on the other hand, grows into a cold and incommunicative woman.  She ends up surprising Jemma by marrying above her station.  Her husband, Arnold Race, is the older brother of Harriet with whom Edith had become slightly acquainted when attending school as a girl.  Jemma feels abandoned, but Edith is described (in phrases typical of Phyllis Paul) as looking “like a person in love with her own damnation” (p. 218), and it is noted that “the blaze of feeling she had had for him [her husband] at first had burnt itself out in a few weeks” (p. 221).  Eventually Arnold comes to understand Edith’s “startling disregard of other people’s feelings” (p. 252), and when, against Edith’s will yet with her consent, he brings home to raise the young orphaned son of his dead friend, the results turn tragic, as Edith feels trapped again in an impossible situation as she had been before.

An Ad from The Observer, 24 June 1934

Comparing The Children Triumphant to its impressive and self-assured predecessor, it seems a slight step downward in quality. The structure is halting and uncertain, particularly in the first half of the book, while in the second half both the writing and the narrative flow are much more carefully worked out.  One wonders, then, if The Children Triumphant, might actually have been the first novel Paul wrote, even though it was published second, for some of its flaws seem typical of an author finding their way in the process of composing a novel. Whether this is true we will likely never know. Still, the book was well-received on publication, with the Times Literary Supplement noting that “Miss Paul writes with an icicle, in a fine and distinguished way that is quite her own, concerned with a misfit in life . . . the effect is sombre, impressive, moving” (31 May 1934); and Graham Greene in the Spectator noted that Paul has “a serious claim to be judged as an artist” (14 June 1934).  It would be fifteen years before Paul published her next novel. 

NB: This text reworks a “Late Review” of We Are Spoiled that originally appeared in Wormwood no. 22 (May 2014).  The review of The Children Triumphant has not been previously published.

MORROW - Ghostwriter and Michael Paine

Here’s an unusual and unexpected work: music inspired by Phyllis Paul. Until about ten years ago, the novels of this austere and enigmatic author were lost amongst the dustiest bookshelves. But then Glen Cavaliero of Cambridge University began to write about her work, and continued with calm persistence to champion her wherever he could. It was a footnote in his study of Charles Williams that first alerted me to her. Since then, he has written about her in Wormwood 9 ("Mysteries of The Thirteenth Hour: The Enigmatic World of Phyllis Paul"), spoken of her to The Powys Society and others, and introduced a reprint of her A Cage for the Nightingale (Sundial Press).

I particularly remember listening to Glen tell about the phrase used by the motorcyclist involved in the accident that led to her death. She was blown across the street, he said, just like a sheet of paper. Her books remain hard to find and second-hand copies disappear as soon as they are discovered. A few titles have eluded searchers for years. And there remain mysteries about her life and work which several researchers are still trying to fathom. Doug Anderson has recently discovered that she probably had an earlier career as an illustrator of children’s books (see earlier post here).

Ghostwriter and Michael Paine have now released an album, Morrow (on Time Released Sound), which is inspired in part by Phyllis Paul’s books. Her readers will recognise some overt references in the titles (‘Cooling bay’, ‘Pulled down’) and less obvious ones alluding to her life or conjuring scenes and phrases in her work. The two musicians describe their work here as “English pastoral noir, drawing variously on folk, evangelical hymns, jazz, Debussy and Maurice Deebank.” (The latter was the guitarist on the smouldering songs and instrumentals made by the band Felt, a great favourite of mine.)

The music is on the surface gentle, with hints of musical boxes, fairground organs, grandfather clock chimes, and graceful ballet scores. But there are also more sinister sounds – disembodied voices, stray incursions of curious noise, off-key notes, cymbal splashes like footsteps pounding through damp streets. I was reminded of the theme and incidental music to the Seventies TV series “Thriller”, or such haunting Sixties tunes as “Windmills of Your Mind”. Morrow succeeds wonderfully in creating a pensive atmosphere of genteel peculiarity, where at any moment toys might start talking or the door of the nursery cupboard could swing open upon the abyss.

Was the Novelist Phyllis Paul also an Illustrator?

An article I wrote for the recent issue of Wormwood (no. 23, Autumn 2014) explores the idea that the novelist Phyllis Paul (1903-1973) worked as an illustrator of (mostly) girls' books from around 1925 to 1930, before her first novel was published in 1933.  My article is illustrated with some thumb-sized examples, reproduced (of necessity) in black and white.  Here on this blog I can showcase some of them better, and in color.

First, is the monogram used to sign some of the artwork, incorporating the artist's name:

Here is the color cover and one interior black and white illustration from Don-Margery, Schoolgirl (1928) by Mary Gervaise:

 

Here is the cover and an interior plate from John and Topsy (1926), by Sibyl B. Owsley: 

And finally, here is one illustration from Collins’ Fairy Folks’ Annual (1925):

More details about the issue of Wormwood containing the associated article can be found here.