James Branch Cabell's Precious Balms

In 1924, Arthur Machen published a small volume entitled Precious Balms, collecting bad reviews his works had received over his publishing career.  The title came from Psalm 141: 

Let the righteous rather smite me friendly, and reprove me. But let not their precious balms break my head

Machen was not the first to be entertained by disseminating his own bad reviews. James Branch Cabell did it, in a bunch of pages at the back of his book Beyond Life (1919), where the pages look just like advertisements for Cabell's other works, until you start reading the copy.  And in various printings of the book Cabell added to the pages, and changed some of the reviews. When he compiled the Storisende edition of his works, he put the reviews within a different title, Straws and Prayer-Books (1930).  I copy a some examples below, including the early version of the Jurgen page, and the final version.  At that end of this post, I post the details for the bibliographically inclined.  Thanks to Bill Lloyd of The Silver Stallion website for helping me with details on the various printings. 

Gallantry (1907) 

In Gallantry the characters, their costumes, manners, ideas and actions have about the naturalness of a modern costume ball. The author tries hard to maintain a stilted style, but frequently loses patience with it and relieves himself with the most modern of slang. --New York Sun

 The Cords of Vanity (1909)

 About as poor stuff as one can find in a book put out by a reputable publisher. The whole thing is slushy and disgusting. --Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio

The Certain Hour (1916)

A collection of "romantic" tales about poets dead and gone, prefaced by a fatuous essay on literature. Two poems, far from poetic, are included in the book. --The Independent

From the Hidden Way (1916) 

From the Hidden Way was published by Robert M. McBride & Company, in 1916. The rest was silence. --Louis Untermeyer, in the Literary Review

Beyond Life (1919)

Theses as devoid of interest as they have been, these last hundred years, of mportance. --Floyd Dell, in The Liberator 

Straws and Prayer-Books (1924)

Oh! are we never to hear the last of Jurgen--must this stupid, stilted, silly book be forever flaunted in our reluctant face? Mr. Cabell goes on descanting about his experiences with the vice squad in New York, or wherever it was, as if he were a decadent small boy, proud of being haled into the police court for chalking dirty words on a wall. The Jurgen episode seems to have gone to Mr. Cabell's head, it would seem to have developed in him a sort of megalomania. He writes with a fatuous self-exploitation which arouses, in a sensitive reader, something akin to the curious personal sense of shame felt when a speaker or singer or player makes an absurd display before an audience. --Hartford Courant, Connecticut

Domnei (1913)

Jurgen (1919)

Jurgen (1919)

Notes:

Beyond Life

New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1919

“Published January, 1919”

“Second Printing, March, 1919”

“Third Printing, August 1920”

“Fourth Printing, May, 1921”

“Fifth Edition” 1924 [year on title page]

“Sixth Printing, December, 1930”

In Storisende edition, the reviews are moved to Straws and Prayer-Books (1930), pp. 279-297

Beyond Life

In the first printing, the rear pages are numbered as follows:

p. 359. “Some Other Books by Mr. Cabell (With Tributes of the Press)”

p. 360. The Cream of the Jest

p. 361. The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck

p. 362. The Certain Hour

p. 363. The Cords of Vanity

p. 364. The Soul of Melicent

p. 365. Chivalry, Gallantry, The Line of Love

p. 366. The Eagle's Shadow

The second printing retains the same text, but the page numbers have been removed.

The third printing has twelve (unnumbered) pages of such reviews:

[1] “Some Other Books by Mr. Cabell (With Tributes of the Press)”

[2] The Cream of the Jest

[3] The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck

[4] The Certain Hour

[5] The Cords of Vanity

[6] Domnei

[7] Beyond Life

[8] The Line of Love

[9] Gallantry

[10] Chivalry

[11] Jurgen

[12] The Eagle's Shadow

The fourth printing has fourteen pages of such reviews, adding these two after Jurgen and before The Eagle's Shadow:

[11+1] Figures of Earth

[11+2] From the Hidden Way

The Fifth Edition and Sixth Printing match the fourth.

The catalog was reordered and expanded (by the last four titles) in Straws and Prayer-Books (1930), pp. 279-297

p. 279 “Books by Mr Cabell in the Order of Their Publication, with Tributes of the Press”

p. 281 The Eagle's Shadow

p. 282 The Line of Love

p. 283 Gallantry

p. 284 The Cords of Vanity

p. 285 Chivalry

p. 286 Domnei

p. 287 The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck

p. 288 The Certain Hour

p. 289 From the Hidden Way

p. 290 The Cream of the Jest

p. 291 Beyond Life

p. 292 Jurgen

p. 293 Figures of Earth

p. 294 The High Place

p. 295 Straws and Prayer-Books

p. 296 The Silver Stallion

p. 297 Something About Eve

A C.S. Lewis Mystery

In September 1966, a previously unpublished short story "Forms of Things Unknown" by C.S. Lewis appeared posthumously in his collection Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, edited by Walter Hooper.  It was later collected in The Dark Tower and Other Stories (1977), also edited by Hooper

The story is not among Lewis's best, but it poses some conundrums with regard to its composition. It is not known when Lewis wrote the story, but the plots bears a striking resemblance to a short story from one magazine and to some artwork on the cover of another magazine, both from 1958*. Basically (spoiler alert) "Forms of Things Unknown" tells of an astronaut on the moon who encounters a unnamed gorgon, presumably Medusa, and who, meeting her gaze in the final line of the story, is turned to stone.

The short story is "Island of Fear" by William Sambrot, and it first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post for 18 January 1958.  This story is not set on the moon but in a contemporary Greek island, where one man encounters a gorgon and meets her gaze in the final line of the story.

Next, the artwork.  It is a cover by Virgil Finlay to the October 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe, a science fiction magazine then under the editorship of Hans Stefan Santesson.  (Fantastic Universe was published from June 1953 through March 1960.)  The cover art, which is not associated with any story in the magazine, shows two astronauts in front of their spaceship having been turned to stone after encounter with a gorgon, again presumably Medusa.

How does one explain these similarities?  Really, one can't.  But it is interesting to note that Lewis did read American science fiction magazines in the 1950s, and even contributed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  And he also contributed to The Saturday Evening Post ("Screwtape Proposes a Toast" appeared in the issue for 19 December 1959).  So it's not outside the realms of possibility that Lewis saw the story or the magazine cover or both.


I had intended to include some account of this curious situation, and to reprint Sambrot's tale in my anthology Tales Before Narnia (2008), but my query letter to Sambrot went unanswered, and later I learned he had passed away just before my letter would have arrived.

*Credit for discovering (back in the 1970s) the story goes to Dale Nelson and the cover art to Richard Hodgens.  

Dunsany's "Episodes from The Second Book of Wonder"

Twelve tales from Dunsany's The Book of Wonder first appeared in The Sketch between December 1910 and March 1911.  Two further tales were added when the book appeared from William Heinemann in November 1912.

In May and June 1914, six more tales appeared in The Sketch under the header "Episodes from The Second Book of Wonder." These tales, plus thirteen more, were collected in book form as Tales of Wonder, published by Elkin Mathews in October 1916.  An American edition (with the stories slightly rearranged and a new Preface dated August 16th, 1916, added) appeared in November 1916 from John W. Luce & Company, retitled The Last Book of Wonder.

The retitling indicates that Dunsany, his outlook certainly darkened by the War,  would no longer write in the fabulist and wonderful style he had perfected over the course of his first seven short story collections.  One further collection of such material would appear after the War as Tales from Three Hemisphere (1919), but this book was not a gathering of newly written tales but of previously uncollected ones.  Dunsany's next two books (after Tales of Wonder / The Last Book of Wonder), Tales of War (1918) and Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919), are rather dire reading, being as the tales were written as war-time propaganda.

It's sad that in Dunsany's oeuvre there are no volumes comprising The Second Book of Wonder, The Third Book of Wonder, etc.  Dunsany's movement away from such tales of wonder is a sad loss of literature that might have been.

Here is the banner heading that prefaced "Episodes from The Second Book of Wonder" when they began appearing in The Sketch on 13 May 1914. It's nice to hear Dunsany's early voice again, even as he hawks his own wares.

Early Caitlin R. Kiernan

Caitlin R. Kiernan was born in 1964 as Kenneth Robert Wright.  Before she transitioned around 1990,  two early stories appeared in The Freshman Sampler (1985), edited by Peggy B. Jolly, a compilation written by students in the Freshman Composition Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The first story is "The Burning" (pp. 18-20, signed as by Kenneth Robert Wright), and it concerns a fire encroaching upon the narrator's grandmother's house.  Some of the descriptions anticipate Kiernan's later lyrical prose.  Here's a sample of the narrator watching the fire:

The sky was clear as spring water, dotted with a million sparkling specks of starlight and an orange sickle of moon, building toward the bloated roundness of harvest. The fire was little more than a red halo in the darkness, moving deliberately down the eastern slope of Double Oak Mountain. We sat and watched, and listened to the strange stillness in the air. No crickets. No katydids. A dry breeze rattled the last of summer's leaves from the limbs, like the plaything of some phantom child.

The second story is "Another Christmas Carol (p. 42, signed as by Kenneth Wright) tells of an adult's disillusionment with childhood memories of Christmas.

Wright also published three professional articles in the field of paleontology (a few abstracts of Wright's work also appeared in the Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science in 1986 and 1987).  I will merely list the references to the articles here.

March 1988, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 8(1): 102-107. "Selmasaurus Russelli, A New Plioplatecarpine Mosasaur (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from Alabama" by Kenneth R. Wright and Samuel Wayne Shannon.

September 1988, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 8(3): 343-345. "The First Record of Clidastes Liodontus (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from the Eastern United States" by Kenneth R. Wright.

January 1989, Journal of Paleontology 63(1): 126-127. "On the Taxonomic Status of Moanasaurus Mangahouangae Wiffen (Squamata: Mosasauridae)"

In 2002 Kiernan contributed one further professional article:

March 14, 2002, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22(1): 91-103. "Stratigraphic Distribution and Habitat Segregation of Mosasaurs in the Upper Cretaceous of Western and Central Alabama, with an Historical Review of Alabama Mosasaur Discoveries" by Caitlin R. Kiernan.

The Freshman Sampler had three further editions, in 1988, 1990, and 1994 (co-edited with Linda B. Moore).  I have not seen any of these later editions and do not know if Wright's contributions reappear in any of them. 

Dunsany in the early 1910s

The Sketch also has some nice photographs of Dunsany, at the time he was writing the tales for which he would become famous.  Here are two, the first from the 4 January 1911 issue, the second from the 13 May 1914 issue.

Sime in 1910

A nice photograph (by E.O. Hoppé) of S.H. Sime appeared in The Sketch for 28 December 1910. The demonic face, with lighted eyes, peering down at Sime is a nice touch, but what is Sime holding in his hands?  It looks perhaps like a figurine of a couple embracing, but I'm not sure.  Any thoughts? 

A close-up of Sime's hands

A Lost Sime Illustration for Dunsany's Book of Wonder

Dunsany's Book of Wonder was published by William Heinemann in November 1912.  It contains fourteen tales, twelve of which originally appeared in a different order (and with texts abridged) in The Sketch between December 1910 and March 1911. The book reprints ten illustrations by S.H. Sime, while the serialization had eleven illustrations.  The Sime illustration in the periodical but not in the book was for the story "The Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the Idolator." I copy it below (click on it to see a larger version).  One wonders if it might have seemed too dark to print in the smaller book-sized format.

If you zoom in you can see what I presume to be the high-priest of Maharrion ("who is neither bird nor cat") to the left of the center, and to the right of it a boy (Pombo?) before "the little idol Duth." I suspect the figure (?) to the left of the base of the stairs is Maharrion "the god of flowers" and the aureoled growth hanging out over the abyss is supposed to be some kind of unearthly flower. Of course for The Book of Wonder, Dunsany and Sime reversed their usual process, and Sime made the illustrations first, and Dunsany then made up stories to fit the illustrations.