Gormenghast chapter 17 · 9:43pm Aug 16th, 2015
I'm almost halfway thru the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. This is the astonishing series that inspired my short write-off story "The Last Page," which will either show up as a chapter of "Twilight Zone", or turn into a longer story in which Sombra tries to incite a rebellion against himself.
The individual books are Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. There's also a fourth book, Titus Awakes, which I did not know until this moment when I searched Amazon for "Mervyn Peake". Gormenghast wasn't supposed to be a trilogy; Peake died of Parkinson's before he published the fourth book, the manuscript of which was allegedly discovered in 2010. So I guess book 3 won't wrap things up neatly.
(This time, I bought a copy myself before giving you all the link and seeing you drive the Amazon price up to $60. 
)
It isn't heavily plotted, and what plot there is isn't tied to any heroic narrative. In other fantasies, the hero might need to save the kingdom. Gormenghast is a "kingdom" (technically, a county) that needs to be destroyed. It faces no threats other than its own barren devotion to empty tradition. Our hero, Steerpike, is a youth who uses his cunning, strength, discipline, and lack of enfeebling human feelings to insinuate himself into the upper echelons of the castle staff, from which he plots his takeover of Gormenghast. Meanwhile, the sensitive, snivelling Titus, the new Earl of Groan, plots his un-takeover of the same.
(Well, that's how I see it, anyway. 
)
But a big hunk of the plot in book 1 concerns a vendetta between the cook and the steward, which everyone else is unaware of. This is a discursive book that spends entire chapters on minor characters rather than one that drives some central quest or threat forward.
So why do I call it "astonishing?"
In answer, I'm quoting chapter 17 and some of chapter 18 of book 2 below. They show that the book shifts unpredictably back and forth between the grotesque, the ridiculous, and the sublime. (Only the first 2 in chapter 17. This selection has little I'd call sublime, but that is harder to excerpt.) The relationship between a peasant's work and his art, or the desperation of a schoolteacher to be loved by his students, are treated as seriously as questions of rule and succession. Even some of the book's secondary characters, though they appear at first to be merely impossible caricatures, fantastic grotesques, grew to be as intriguing to me as Tolstoy's characters. Even the flat characters have psychological depth. Swelter, the cook, is wholly corrupt, but unlike villains who exist only to advance the plot, you eventually understand how he thinks. He exhibits emotions that we might call, say, "being indignant". A lesser writer might then project the thoughts he has when feeling indignant onto Swelter. Peake does not. Swelter isn't trying to be villainous; he is a completely natural, instinctive man, whose thought processes are those of, say, an extremely clever lion.
So what is the Gormenghast trilogy for? Why would you want to read it?
C.S. Lewis said these books "are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."
I think that's... going in the wrong direction entirely. I don't think Lewis could understand Gormenghast. Lewis was disappointed with life as it is, and humans as they are. He constructed fantasy worlds in which the sublime is the tip of a supernatural iceberg poking into our world, and the heroic is a single clear ideal from that perfect world. He wanted to see things bigger, brighter, and better than reality in his fiction. Peake, by contrast, is fascinated with the small heroisms of real people, and sees the sublime and the fantastic as part of everyday life.
Gormenghast shows people in all sorts of fantastic situations, many of which are horrible once you understand them. But it doesn't do this to "enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." It does it to show us how all these people try to normalize their bizarre circumstances, how they adapt their own expectations to bring them back into the same ordinary internal experience. How surprisingly normal most (but not all) of these strange freaks are, and how orthogonal the things that we think will make us happy are to the things we really need. In chapter 19 we see Bellgrove has achieved his life's ambition and become the new headmaster, yet is unhappier than he ever was before, and finally finds joy in a game of marbles with a student.
It's perhaps not coincidence that Steerpike, the only person who refuses to adjust and has the independence of mind to fight against and overcome his lot in life, is the most twisted and least human of them all. The underlying message about humanity may be more disturbing than its author intended. (If Tolkien had written Steerpike, he would simply be a warning against liberal ideas. But Peake is no Tolkienesque ultra-conservative; conservatism is the fatal flaw of Castle Gormenghast.)
But you can find plenty of more socially-acceptable themes to approve of: that tradition should serve rather than be served by people, the ultimate pointlessness of power, the importance of art and personal expression.
I think that by alternating between the ridiculous, the grotesque, and the sublime, it gets across the message that life is stranger, more wondrous, and its ordinary people more heroic than we give them credit for. It's a fantasy that takes us inside the minds of its characters and shows us how normal it seems to them, and perhaps by analogy, how fantastic our own lives may be, if we could really see ourselves.
Chapter 17
The morning classes had begun. In the schoolrooms a hundred things were happening at the same time. But beyond their doors there was drama of another kind: a drama of scholastic silence, for in the deserted halls and corridors that divided the classes it surged like a palpable thing and lapped against the very doors of the classrooms.
In an hour's time the usher would rattle the brass bell in the Central Hall and the silence would be shaken to bits as, erupting from their various prisons, a world of boys poured through the halls like locusts.
In the classrooms of Gormenghast, as in the Masters' Common-room, the walls were of horse hide. But this was the only thing they had in common, for the moods of the various rooms and their shapes could not be more various.
Fluke's room, for instance, was long, narrow and badly lit from a small top-window at the far end. Opus Fluke lay in an arm-chair, draped with a red rug. He was in almost total shadow. Although he could hardly make out the boys in front of him, he was in a better position than they were, for they could not see him at all. He had no desk in front of him, but sat there, as it were, in the open darkness. One or two text-books were littered about the floor beneath his chair for the sake of form. The dust lay over them so thickly that they were like grey swellings. Mr Fluke had not yet discovered that they had been nailed into the floorboards for over a year.
Perch-Prism's room was deadly square and far too well lit to please the neophytes. Only the leather walls were musty and ancient, and even they were scrubbed and oiled from time to time. The desks, the benches and the floorboards were scoured with soda and boiling water every morning, so that apart from the walls there was a naked whiteness about the room which made it quite the most unpopular. Cribbing was almost impossible in that cruel light.
Flannelcat's room was a short tunnel with a semi-circular glass window which filled in the whole of the near end. In contrast to Fluke, sitting in the shadows, Mr Flannelcat perched aloft at a very high desk presented a different picture. As the only light in the room poured in from behind him, Mr Flannelcat might as well, in the eyes of his pupils, have been cut out of black paper. There he sat against the bright semi-circular window at the end of the tunnel, his silhouetted gestures jerking to and fro against the light. Through the window could be seen the top of Gormenghast Mountain, and this morning, floating lazily, over its shining head, were three small clouds like dandelion seeds.
But of the numerous classrooms of Gormenghast, each one with its unique character, there was, that morning, one in particular. It lay upon one of the upper floors, a great, dreamy hall of a place with far more desks than were ever used and far more space than was ever (academically) needed. Great strips of its horsehide hung away from the walls.
The window of the classroom faced to the south, so that the floor which had never been stained was bleached, and the ink that had been spilt, term after term, had faded to so beautiful and wan a blue that the floor-boards had an almost faery colouring. Certainly there was nothing else particularly faery about the place.
What, for instance, was that sacklike monster, that snoring hummock, that deadweight of disjointed horror? Vile and brutish it looked as it lay curled like a black dog on the Professor's desk; but what was it? One would say it was dead, for it was as heavy as death and as motionless; but there was a sound of stifled snoring coming from it, with an occasional whistle as of wind through jagged glass.
Whatever it was it held no terror, nor even interest for the score or so of boys who, in that dreaming and timeless hall in the almost forgotten regions of the Upper School, appeared to have something very different to think about. The sun-beams poured through the high window. The room was in a haze of motes. But there was nothing dreamy about the pupils.
What was happening? There was hardly any noise, but the tension in the air had a loudness of its own.
For there was in progress a game of high and dangerous hazards. It was peculiar to this classroom. The air was breathless. Those not taking part in the peculiar battle squatted on desks or cupboards. A fresh phase was about to begin. Their ingenuous faces were turned to the window. Seasoned creatures they looked, these wiry children of chance. The veterans moved into position.
Everything was ready. The two loose floor-boards had been taken up and the first of them was propped against the window-sill so that it slanted across and towards the floor of the classroom at a shallow angle. Its secret underside had been scraped and waxed with candle-stubs for as long as could be remembered, and it was that underside which was facing the ceiling. The second of the long floor-boards, equally polished, was placed end to end with the first, so that a stretch of narrow and slippery wood extended some thirty feet across the schoolroom from the window to the opposite wall.
The team which was standing close by the open window was the first to make a move, and one of its number - a black-haired boy with a birthmark on his forehead - jumped on to the window-sill, apparently without giving a thought to the hundred-foot drop on the other side.
At this movement, members of the enemy team who were crouching behind a row of desks at the back of the schoolroom, marshalled their paper pellets, as hard as walnuts, which they proposed to let loose from small naked catapults, worn to a silky finish by ceaseless handling. There has been a time when clay - and even glass marbles were used; but after the third death and a deal of confusion in the hiding of the bodies, it was decided to be content with paper bullets. Those were by no means gentle substitutes, the paper having been chewed, kneaded, mixed with white gum, and then compressed between the hinges of desks. Travelling as they did with deadly speed, they struck like the lash of a whip.
But what were they to fire at? Their enemies stood by the window and were obviously not expecting anything to fly in their direction. The firing party were not even looking at them - they stared fixedly ahead, but at the same time were beginning to close their left eyes and stretch their strands of grim elastic. And then, suddenly, the significance of the game unfolded itself in a sharp and rhythmic whirl. Too rapid, too vital, too dangerous for any dance or ballet. Yet as traditional and as filled with subtleties. What was happening?
The black-haired boy with the birthmark had flexed his knees, hollowed his back, clapped his inky hands and leaped from the window-sill out into the morning sunlight, where the branches of a giant plane tree were like lattice-work against the sun. For a moment he was a creature of the air, his head thrown back, his teeth bared, his fingers outstretched, his eyes fixed upon a white branch of the tree. A hundred feet below him the dusty quadrangle shone in the morning sun. From the schoolroom it looked as though the boy was gone for ever. But his pards by the window had flattened themselves against the flanking wall, and their enemies, crouched behind the desks, had their eyes fixed on the slippery floor-boards that ran across the classroom like a strip of ice.
The boy in mid-air had clawed at the branch, had gripped its end, and was swinging out on a long and breath-taking curve through the foliaged air. At the extremity and height of this outward-going arc, he wriggled himself in a peculiar manner which gave an added downlash to the branch and swung him high on the up-swing of his return journey - high into the air and out of the leaves, so that for a moment he was well above the level of the window from which he had leapt. And it was now that his nerves must be like iron – now, with but a fraction of time to spare before his volition failed him, that he let go the branch. He was in mid-air again. He was falling - falling at speed, and at such an angle as to both clear the lintel of the window and the sill below it - and to land on his small tense buttocks - to land like a bolt from heaven on the slanting floor-board; and a fraction of a second later to thump into the leather wall at the far end of the schoolroom, having whirled down the boards with the speed of a slung stone.
But he had not reached the wall unscathed for all the suddenness of his reappearance and velocity of flight. His ear buzzed like a nest of wasps. A withering crossfire from the six catapults had resulted in one superlative hit, three blows on the body and two misses. But there had been no cessation in the game, for even as he crashed into the dented leather wall another of his team was already in mid-air, his hands stretched for the branch and his eyes bright with excitement, while the firing party, no less on the move, were recharging their weapons with fresh ammunition and were beginning to close their left eyes again and stretch the elastic.
By the time the birthmark boy had trotted back to the window, with his ear on fire, another apparition had fallen from the sunny sky, had whizzed down the sloping board and skidded across the schoolroom to crash into the wall where the leather was grimed and tom with years of collision. There was a schoolroom silence over everything - a silence filled with the pale sunshine. The floor was patterned with the golden shadow of the desks, of the benches, of the enormous broken blackboard. It was the stillness of a summer term - self-absorbed, unhurried, dreamlike, punctuated by the quick, inky handclap of each boy as he leapt into space, the whizz of the pellets through the air, the caught breath of the victim, the thud of a body as it collided with the leather wall, and then the scuffling sound of catapults being recharged; and then again the clap of the boy at the window, and the far rustle of leaves as he swung through a green ark above the quadrangle. The teams changed. The swingers took out their catapults. The firing party moved to the window. It had a rhythm of its own, this hazardous, barbaric, yet ceremonial game - a ritual as unquestioned and sacrosanct as anything could be in the soul of a boy.
Devilry and stoicism bound them together. Their secrets were blacker, deeper, more terrible or more hilarious through mutual knowledge of the throat-contracting thrill of a lightning skid across a mellow schoolroom: through mutual knowledge of the long leaf-shrouded flights through space: of their knowledge of the sound as the stinging bullet spins past the head or the pain as it strikes.
But what of all this? This rhythm of stung boys? Or boys as filled with life as fish or birds. Only that it was taking place that morning.
What of the ghastly black huddle on the Professor's desk? The sunlight streaming through the leaves of the plane tree had begun to dapple it with shimmering lozenges of light. It snored - a disgraceful sound to hear during the first lesson of a summer morning.
But the moments of its indulgence were numbered, for there was, all of a sudden, a cry from near the ceiling and above the schoolroom door. It was the voice of an urchin, a freckled wisp of a thing, who was perched on a high cupboard. The glass of the fanlight above the door was at his shoulder. It was dark with grime, but a small circle the size of a coin was kept transparent and through this spy-hole he could command a view of the corridor outside. He could thus give warning not only to the whole class but to the Professor, at the first sign of danger.
It was rarely that either Barquentine or Deadyawn made a tour of the schoolroom, but it was as well to have the freckled urchin stationed on the cupboard from first thing in the morning onwards, for there was nothing more irritating than for the class to be disturbed.
That morning, lying there like a toy on the cupboard top, he had become so intrigued by the changing fortunes of the 'game' below him that it had been over a minute since he had last put his eye to the spy-hole. When he did so it was to see, not twenty feet from the door, a solid phalanx of Professors, like a black tide, with Deadyawn himself at the fore, out-topping the others, in his high chair on wheels.
Deadyawn, who headed the phalanx, was head and shoulders above the rest of the staff, although he was by no means sitting up straight in his high, narrow chair. With its small wheels squeaking at the feet of the four legs, it rocked to and fro as it was propelled rapidly forwards by the usher, who was as yet invisible to the wisp at the spy-hole, being hidden by the high, ugly piece of furniture - ugly beyond belief - with its disproportionate feeding-tray at the height of Deadyawn's heart and the raw little shelf for his feet.
What was visible of Deadyawn's face above the tray appeared to be awake - a sure sign that something of particular urgency was in the air.
Behind him the rustling darkness was solid with the professors. What had happened to their various classes, and what on earth they could want on this lazy floor of the castle at any time, let alone at the beginning of the day, was unguessable. But here, nevertheless, they were, their gowns whisking and whispering along the walls on either side. There was an intentness in their gait, a kind of mass seriousness, quite frightening.
The midget boy on the cupboard-top cried his warning with a shriller note in his voice than his schoolfellows had ever heard before.
'The "Yawner"!' he screamed. 'Quick! quick! quick! The Yawner'n all of 'em! Let me down! let me down!'
The rhythm of the hazardous game was broken. Not a single pellet whizzed past the head of the last boy to burst out of the sunlight and crash into the leather wall. In a moment the room was suspiciously quiet. Four rows of boys sat half turned at their desks, their heads cocked on one side, as they listened to the squeaking of Deadyawn's chair on its small wheels as it rolled towards them through the silence.
The wisp had been caught, having dropped from what must have seemed to him a great height into the arms of a big straw-headed youth.
The two floor-boards had been grabbed and shot back into their long, narrow cavities immediately below the professor's desk. But a mistake had been made, and when it was noticed it was too late for anything to be done about it. One of the boards in the whirl of the moment had been put back 'upside down'.
On the desk itself the heavy black dog-like weight was still snoring. Even the shrill cry of the 'look-out' had done no more than send a twitch through the jointed huddle.
Any boy in the first row, had he thought it possible to reach the professor's desk and get back to his own place before the entry of Deadyawn and the staff, would have thrown the folds of Bellgrove's gown off Bellgrove's sleeping head, where it lay sunk between his arms on the desk top, and would have shaken Bellgrove into some sort of awareness; for the black and shapeless thing was indeed the old master himself, lost beneath -the awning of his gown. For his pupils had draped it over his reverend head, as they always did when he fell asleep.
But there was no time. The squeaking of the wheels had stopped. There was a great trampling and scuffling of feet as the professors closed their ranks behind their chief. The door-handle was beginning to turn.
As the door opened, thirty or so boys, doubled over their desks, could be seen scribbling furiously, their brows knit in concentration.
There was for the moment an unholy silence.
And then the voice of the usher, Mr Fly, cried out from behind Deadyawn's chair: 'The Headmaster!' And the classroom scrambled to its feet. All except Bellgrove.
The wheels began to squeak again as the high chair was steered up one of the inkstained aisles between the rows of desks.
By this time the mortar-boards had followed the Headmaster into the room, and under these mortar-boards the faces of Opus Fluke, Spiregrain, PerchPrism, Throd, Flannelcat, Shred and Shimmer, Cutflower and the rest were easily recognizable. Deadyawn, who was on a tour of the classrooms, had, after inspecting each in turn, sent the boys to their red-stone yard and kept their masters with him - so that he now had practically the whole staff at his heels. The boys would shortly be spread out in great fans and sent off on a day-long hunt for Titus. For it was his disappearance which was causing this unprecedented activity.
How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could have stopped the occurrence, so suddenly it sprang upon them.
The scholars were still standing, and Mr Fly, the usher, who had reached the end of the passage between the desks, was about to turn the high chair to the left and to run it up under Bellgrove's desk where Deadyawn could speak to his oldest professor, when the calamity occurred, and even the dreadful fact of Titus' disappearance was forgotten. For The Fly had slipped! His feet had fled from under his perky body. His cocky little walk was suddenly a splayed confusion of legs. They shot to and fro like a frog's. But for all their lashing they could get no grip on the slippery floor, for he had trodden on that deadly board which had been returned - upside down - to its place below Bellgrove's desk.
The Fly had no time to let go his grip of the High Chair. It swayed above him like a tower - and then while the long line of the staff peered over one another's shoulders and the boys stood at their desks transfixed, something more appalling than they had ever contemplated took place before them.
For as The Fly came down in a crash on the boards, the wheels of the high chair whirled like tops and gave their final screech and the rickety piece of furniture leapt like a mad thing and from its summit something was hurled high into the air! It was Deadyawn!
He descended from somewhere near the ceiling like a visitor from another planet, or from the cosmic realms of Outer Space, as with all the signs of the Zodiac fluttering about him he plunged earthwards.
Had he but had a long brass trumpet at his lips and the power of arching his back and curling upwards as he neared the floor-boards, and of swooping across the room over the heads of the scholars in a riot of draperies, to float away and out through the leaves of the plane tree and over the back of Gormenghast, to disappear for ever from the rational world - then, if only he had had the power to do this, that dreadful sound would have been avoided: that most dreadful and sickening sound which not a single boy or professor who heard it that morning was ever able to forget. It darkened the heart and brain. It darkened the very sunlight itself in that summer classroom.
But it was not enough that their hearing was appalled by the sound of a skull being crushed like an egg - for, as though everything was working together to produce the maximum horror, Fate had it that the Headmaster, in descending absolutely vertically, struck the floor with the top of his cranium, and remained upside down, in a horrible state of balance, having stiffened with a form of premature rigor mortis.
The soft, imponderable, flaccid Deadyawn, that arch-symbol of delegated duties, of negation and apathy, appeared now that he was upside down to have more life in him that he had ever had before. His limbs, stiffened in the death-spasm, were positively muscular. His crushed skull appeared to balance a body that had suddenly perceived its reason for living.
The first movement, after the gasp of horror that ran across the sunny schoolroom, came from among the debris of what was once the high chair.
The usher emerged, his red hair ruffled, quick eyes bulging, his teeth chattering with terror. At the sight of his master upside down he made for the window, all trace of cockiness gone from his carriage, his sense of propriety so outraged that there was nothing he wanted so much as to make a quick end to himself. Climbing on the window-sill, The Fly swung his legs over and then dropped to the quadrangle a hundred feet below.
Perch-Prism stepped forward from the ranks of the professors.
'All boys will make their way immediately to the red-stone yard,' he said in a crisp, high staccato. 'All boys will wait there quietly until they are given instructions. Parsley!'
A youth, with his jaw hanging wide and his eyes glazed, started as though he had been struck. He wrenched his eyes from the inverted Deadyawn, but could not find his voice.
'Parsley,' said Perch-Prism again, 'you will lead the class out - and, Chives, you will take up the rear. Hurry now! Hurry! Turn your heads to the door, there. You! yes, you, Sage Minor! And you there, Mint or whatever your name is - wake your ideas up. Hustle! hustle! hustle!'
Stupefied, the scholars began to file out of the door, their heads still turned over their shoulders at their late Headmaster.
Three or four other professors had to some extent recovered from the first horrible shock and were helping Perch-Prism to hustle the remnants of the class from the room.
At last the place was clear of boys. The sunlight played across the empty desks: it lit up the faces of the professors, but seemed to leave their gowns and mortar-boards as black as though they alone were in shadow. It lit the soles of Deadyawn's boots as they pointed stiffly to the ceiling.
Perch-Prism, glancing at the professors, saw that it was up to him to make the next move. His beady black eyes shone. What he had of a jaw he thrust forward. His round, babyish, pig-like face was set for action.
He opened his prim, rather savage little mouth and was about to call for help in righting the corpse, when a muffled voice came from an unexpected quarter. It sounded both near and far. It was difficult to make out a word, but for a moment or two the voice became less blurred. 'No, I don't think so,.' it said, 'for 'tis love long lost, my queen, while Bellgrove guards you...' (the drowsy voice continued in its sleep)'... when lion... sprowl I'll tear their manes... awf... yoo. When serpents hiss at you I'll tread on dem... probably... and scatter birds of prey to left an' right.'
A long whistle from under the draperies and then, all of a sudden, with a shudder, the invertebrate mass began to uncoil itself as Bellgrove's shrouded head raised itself slowly from his arms. Before he freed himself of the last layer of gown he sat back in his tutorial chair, and while he worked with his hands to free his head, his voice came out of the cloth darkness: '... Name an isthmus!' it boomed. 'Tinepott?... Quagfire?... Sparrowmarsh?... Hagg?... Dankle?... What! Can no one tell his old master the name of an isthmus?'
With a wrench he unravelled his head of the last vestment of gown, and there was his long, weak, noble face as naked and venerable as any deep sea monster's.
It was a few moments before his pale-blue eyes had accustomed themselves to the light. He lifted his sculptured brow and blinked. 'Name an isthmus.' he repeated, but in a less interested voice, for he was beginning to be conscious of the silence in the room.
'Name... an... isthmus!'
His eyes had accustomed themselves sufficiently for him to see, immediately ahead of him, the body of the Headmaster balanced upon his head.
In the peculiar silence his attention was so riveted upon the apparition in front of him that he hardly realized the absence of his class.
He got to his feet and bit at his knuckle, his head thrust forward. He withdrew his head and shook himself like a great dog; and then he leaned forward and stared once more. He had prayed that he was still asleep. But no, this was no dream. He had no idea that the Headmaster was dead, and so, with a great effort (thinking that a fundamental change had taken in Deadyawn's psyche, and that he was showing Bellgrove this balancing feat in an access of self-revelation) he (Bellgrove) began to clap his big, finely-constructed hands together in a succession of deferential thuds, and to wear upon his face an expression of someone both intrigued and surprised, his shoulders drawn back, his head at a slant, his eyebrows raised, and the big forefinger of his right hand at his lips. The line of his mouth rose at either end, but his upward curve might as well have been downwards for all the power it had to disguise his consternation.
The heavy thuds of his hand-clapping sounded solitary. They echoed fully, about the room. He turned his eyes to his class as though for support or explanation. He found neither. Only the infinite emptiness of deserted desks, with the broad, hazy shafts of the sun slanting across them.
He put his hand to his head and sat down suddenly.
'Bellgrove!' A crisp, sharp voice from behind him caused him to swing around. There, in a double line, silent as Deadyawn or the empty desks, stood the Professors of Gormenghast, like a male chorus or a travesty of Judgement Day.
Bellgrove stumbled to his feet and passed his hand across his brow. 'Life itself is an isthmus,' said a voice beside him.
Bellgrove turned his head. His mouth was ajar. His carious teeth were bared in a nervous smile.
'What's that?' he said, catching hold of the speaker's gown near the shoulder and pulling it forwards.
'Get a grip on yourself,' said the voice, and it was Shred's. 'This is a new gown. Thank you. Life is an isthmus, I said.'
'Why?' said Bellgrove, but with one eye still on Deadyawn. He was not really listening.
'You ask me 'why'!' said Shred. 'Only think! Our Headmaster there,' he said (bowing slightly to the corpse) 'is even now in the second continent. Death's continent. But long before he was even...'
Mr Shred was interrupted by Perch-Prism. 'Mr Fluke,' he shouted, 'will you give me a hand?' But for all their efforts they could do little with Deadyawn except reverse him. To seat him in Bellgrove's chair, prior to his removal to the Professor's mortuary, was in a way accomplished, though it was more a case of leaning the headmaster 'against' the chair than seating him 'in' it, for he was as stiff as a starfish.
But his gown was draped carefully about him. His face was covered with the blackboard duster, and when at last his mortar-board had been found under the debris of the high chair, it was placed with due decorum on his head.
'Gentlemen,' said Perch-Prism, when they had returned to the Common-room after a junior member had been dispatched to the doctor's, the undertaker's and to the red-stone yard to inform the scholars that the rest of the day was to be spent in an organized search for their school-fellow Titus – 'Gentlemen,' said Perch-Prism, 'two things are paramount. One, that the search for the young Earl shall be pushed forward immediately in spite of interruption; and two, the appointment of the new Headmaster must be immediately made, to avoid anarchy. In my opinion,' said Perch-Prism, his hands grasping the shoulder-tags of his gown while he rocked to and fro on his heels, 'in my opinion the choice should fall, as usual, upon the senior member of the staff, 'whatever his qualifications.''
There was immediate agreement about this. Like one man they saw an even lazier future open out its indolent vistas before them. Bellgrove alone was irritated. For, mixed with his pride, was resentment at Perch-Prism's handling of the subject. As probable headmaster he should already have been taking the initiative.
'What d'you mean by "whatever his qualifications"... damn you, 'Prism?' he snarled.
A terrible convulsion in the centre of the room, where Mr Opus Fluke lay sprawled over one of the desks, revealed how that gentleman was fighting for breath.
He was yelling with laughter, yelling like a hundred hounds; but he could make no sound. He shook and rocked, the tears pouring down his crude, male face, his chin like a long loaf shuddering as it pointed to the ceiling.
Bellgrove, turning from Perch-Prism, surveyed Mr Fluke. His noble head had coloured, but suddenly the blood was driven from it. For a flashing moment Bellgrove saw his destiny. Was he, or was he not, to be a leader of men? Was this, or was this not, one of those crucial moments when authority must be exercised - or withheld for ever? Here they were, in full conclave. Here was he - Bellgrove - within his feet of clay, standing in all his weakness before his colleagues. But there was something in him which was not consistent with the proud cast of his face.
At that moment he knew himself to be of finer marl. He had known what ambition was. True, it was long ago and he was no longer worried by such ideas, but he had known of it.
Quite deliberately, realizing that if he did not act at once he would never act again, he lifted a large stone bottle of red ink from the table at his side and, on reaching Mr Fluke and finding his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his strong jaws wide open in a paroxysm of seismic laughter, Mr Bellgrove poured the entire contents down the funnel of Fluke's throat in one movement of the wrist. Turning to the staff, 'Perch-Prism,' he said, in a voice of such patriarchal authority as startled the professors almost as much as the ink-pouring, 'you will set about organizing the search for his Lordship. Take the staff with you to the red-stone yard. Flannelcat, you will get Mr Fluke removed to the sick-room. Fetch the doctor for him. Report progress this evening. I shall be found in the Headmaster's study. Good morning. Gentlemen.'
As he swept out of the room with a bellying sweep of his gown and a toss of his silver hair, his old heart was beating madly. Oh, the joy of giving orders! Oh, the joy of it! Once he had closed the door behind him, he ran, with high monstrous bounds, to the Headmaster's study and collapsed into the Headmaster's chair - his chair from now onwards. He hugged his knees against his chin, flopped over on his side, and wept with the first real sense of happiness he had known for many years.
...
Once in their wine-red gowns it was the usual custom [of the professors] to step out of their rooms on to the terrace of rose-red brick, where, leaning on its balustrade, the professors would spend one of the pleasantest hours of the day, conversing or ruminating until the sound of the supper-gong called them to the refectory.
To the old Quadman, sweeping the leaves from the mellow brickwork of the quadrangle floor, it was a sight that never failed to please as, surrounded on every side by the glowing cloisters and above them by the long wine-red line of the professors as they leaned with their elbows on the terrace wall, he shepherded the fluttering leaves together with his ragged broom.
On this particular night, although not a single mortar-board was sent skimming, the staff became very flighty indeed towards the end of their evening meal in the Long Hall, when innumerable suggestions were propounded as to the inner reason for the Prunesquallors' invitations. The most fantastic of all was put forward by Cutflower, to wit that Irma, in need of a husband, was turning to them as a possible source. At this suggestion the crude Opus Fluke, in an excess of ribald mirth, crashed his great, raw ham of a hand down on the long table so heavily as to cause a 'corps de ballet' of knives, forks and spoons to sail into the air and for a pair of table legs to do the splits; so that the nine professors at his table found the remains of their supper lying at every angle below the level of their knees. Those who were holding their glasses in their hands were happy enough; but for those whose wine was spilt among the debris, a moment or two of reflection was occasioned before they could regain the spirit of the evening.
The idea that anyone of them should get married seemed to them ludicrously funny. It was not that they felt themselves unworthy, far from it. It was that such a thing belonged to another world.
'But yes, but yes, indeed. Cutflower, you are right,' said Shrivell at the first opportunity of making himself heard. 'Shred and I were saying much the same thing.'
'Quite so,' said Shred.
'In my case,' said Shrivell, 'sublimation is simple enough, for what with the crags and eagles that find their way into every confounded dream I have - and I dream every night, not to speak of my automatic writing, which puts my absurd love for Nature in its place - for in reading what I have written, as it were in a trance, I can see how foolish it is to give a thought to natural phenomena, which are, after all, nothing but an accretion of accidents... er... where was I?'
'It doesn't matter,' said Perch-Prism. 'The point is that we have been invited: that we shall be guests, and that above all we shall do the right thing. Good grief!' he said, looking about him at the faces of the staff, 'I wish I was going alone.'
A bell rang.
The Professors rose at once to their feet. A moment of traditional observance had arrived. Turning the long tables upside down - and there were twelve of them - they seated themselves, one behind another, within the upturned table tops as though they were boats and were about to oar their way into some fabulous ocean.
For a moment there was a pause, and then the bell rang again. Before its echo had died in the long refectory, the twelve crews of the motionless flotilla had raised their voices in an obscure chant of former days when, presumably, it held some kind of significance. Tonight it was bayed forth into the half-light with a slow, knocking rhythm, but there was no disguising the boredom in their voices. They had intoned those lines, night after night, for as long as they had been professors, and it might well have been taken for a dirge so empty were their voices:
Hold fast
To the law
Of the last
Cold tome,
Where the earth
Of the truth
Lies thick
On the page,
And the loam
Of faith
In the ink
Long fled
From the drone
Of the nib
Flows on
Through the breath
Of the bone
Reborn
In a dawn
Of doom
Where blooms
The rose
For the winds
The Child
For the tomb
The thrush.
For the hush
Of song,
The corn
For the scythe
And the thorn
In wait
For the heart
Till the last
Of the first
Depart,
And the least
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost.
Hold fast!
I don't know if you know Solitair, but he's been reading Gormenghast lately as well.
I love Gormenghast, and I loved your fic The Last Page because of it.
I read the omnibus edition back in high-school, the one with the pictures that Peake drew to compliment the story, and the fragment of the fourth book he'd written at the back.
IIRC, the trilogy actually wraps up in a fairly complete manner; the first two books sort of make a set, I think, and the third is fairly stand-alone? But it's been a while since I've read them, and I don't remember much more than just loving the setting like crazy, and coming off with being impressed by how optimistic the whole thing seemed, despite the overall atmosphere. It's a very interesting story.
Well...the imagery's certainly vivid. It held my interest, at least through the excerpts you posted.
I'll take your word about the characters. In the passages quoted they behave in ways that seem neither logical nor emotionally satisfying nor modeled on real life. But that's probably a--call it an "artifact of truncation."
The prose reminds me of a phrase from Dunsany: "floral decadence." It's florid--that is to say, overtly and perhaps overly-ornamental. And decadent, both in the modern sense of "excessive, sybaritic" but also in the original sense of "fallen away from the best." It's as if the author leapt at Dunsany, missed, and decided he might as well do somersaults on the way down. Not a bad choice in either case.
When I was young I wouldn't have had the patience for this author. Now that I'm old and given to boring hapless young people with elaborate and repetitive (but personally meaningful) stories, I have some sympathy for what he's trying to do.
P.S.--you compared Peake to Dostoevsky, and it strikes me (from what you've said, and the passage you quoted) that Titus is like the version of Prince Mishkin that Dostoevsky ultimately rejected, the one who was more active and engaged in the narrative than the published character.
3325370
Not really. (Tho the Fly jumping out the window is not a good example.) They remain absurd and unrealistic, especially the secondary characters. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why I find them so intriguing. Possibly because they're illogical in the ways people are illogical. I could say that Dickens characters feel like they were acted out by British actors, using props and mannerisms, while these have mannerisms, but feel like they were acted out by Method actors.
The prose is florid, but I don't think a fan of Dunsany is allowed to use the phrase "overly-ornamental"
I've tried:
A couple times over the decades to read these books, but I've never made it even halfway through the first. My brother, on the other hand, enjoys them immensely: he and his girlfriend took turns reading the whole series out loud to each other over the course of several months a few years ago...
Mike
3325516
One thing I'll give him: Peake's enthusiasm never flags. You get the impression he's always engaged and always enjoying himself, so it's easy for you to do the same. It's like a fanfic that way.
3324977
Yep! I'm so happy that you're enjoying them too, Bad Horse. I'm not going to read the excerpt, because I know how Peake writes, I haven't read as far as you yet, and I don't want to spoil myself too much.
3325370
To me, the prose of the series always made me feel like I was in an alien environment, looking at people who weren't human. When I read a descriptor of Titus Groan, I thought that Swelter the cook was an anthropomorphic pig, but he's just a morbidly obese man. It also helps me laugh along with the books when they want to be ridiculous (like when Steerpike's plan to separate the twins from the rest of the castle is revealed).
I feel like I'd be remiss in mentioning how fond I've grown of Fuchsia in particular over the course of Titus Groan. She went from being an OTT rebellious teenage dreamer, concerned only with escaping from the gilded cage of her family line to caring about her baby brother and father, trying in vain to comfort Lord Sepulchrave after he went mad. I felt for her, knowing that there was little chance for Sepulchrave to recover. I've barely started reading the second book, so now I'm worried about what will happen to her.
Also, the thing about Titus's characterization is that he's only a baby in the first book, not old enough to be a character in his own right. Steerpike is undoubtedly the protagonist then, albeit a villainous one.
3325866
You, and anyone else who's bounced off the books or has never tried them, might want to try the BBC Gormenghast series. It's about as good at translating the rambling, antiquated edifice of Gormenghast and its tradition-shackled, grotesque inhabitants to the TV screen as possible, and much more approachable than the books.
3334253
I tried watching the series:
When PBS showed it all those years ago, but even though I didn't know the books, the scenes on screen just seemed to echo with missing pieces. I didn't make it to the end of the first hour, I'm afraid.
I do remember reading an interview with Christopher Lee at the time in which he talked about meeting Peake several times in the library at Herrod's and getting to know him in the early 1950s, and I thought it was nice that they got an actor to be in the TV series who had actually known the author.
But this is all pretty indicative of the way in which I fail as a consumer. If I'm reading or watching something that doesn't engage me quickly in some way or another, I start fidgeting and thinking of my own stories sitting alone and neglected. That's the bar any sort of external stimulus has to cross for me: am I enjoying this more than I enjoy working on my own stories? If the answer is 'yes,' I stick with it. If the answer is 'no,' it's back to the computer keyboard for me.
Mike
3334843 3334253 I fell in love with the first page of the first book. I think it has one of the strongest openings I've seen in any book. To recap: It briefly describes the massive, decaying castle, and the mean dwellings of the peasants clinging to its ramparts "like limpets to a rock." The one joy in the peasants' life is their woodcarving, and their greatest ambition in life is to have one of their carvings chosen in one of the yearly contests, to be taken into the castle, after which the losing carvings are burned.
It then takes us inside the castle, to a vast hall that holds hundreds or thousands of these carvings, all winners from bygone centuries, where they are stored and forgotten by everyone except a caretaker who now and then dusts them off.
That may be the bleakest portrayal of human ambitions and artistic striving that I've ever read. Yet it isn't as heavy-handed as it might seem. The carvers are carving. Their art is useless and unappreciated once it's finished, yes, and yet as you read the book it seems this art keeps them more alive than all the leisured nobility.
If that doesn't grab you, then Gormenghast isn't for you, because that mixture of the bleak and the sublime, and the dual nature of art and love being useless and yet the only things worthwhile, are what the book is about.
Yep:
Definitely not for me.
Mike Again
As I walked home from work this evening:
The passage here kept trying to remind me of something. And halfway home, it succeeded.
Skywriter's "Hoardsmiths".
And I suddenly realized why I've never gotten much past this passage in the book. It makes me think of the traditional publishing industry. We huddle around its feet, crafting our little stories and novels, and send them up into its workings. The vast majority of the submissions are rejected, and even while acceptance grants a few perks--some copies of the book or magazine, a few hundred bucks, the right to join SFWA, et cetera--most everything that gets published is instantly forgotten. And seeing myself right from the beginning as one of the nameless peasants outside pretty much destroyed any chance I was gonna care about what the folks inside the castle were up to...
Mike Once More
That invocation there at the end reminds me of Ye Olde Madrigals that Walt Kelly would sprinkle throughout his comic strip Pogo. They were usually sung by a turtle in a cocked hat named Churchy LaFemme (a play on "cherchez la femme!"), to the accompaniment of a one-stringed lute (or, on special occasions, a two-string banjo):
media.fontbureau.com/images/posts/2009/churchylafemme1.jpg
Unfortunately I can't find any more examples on the Internet. The closest I can come is "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie" (which is technically a mondegreen, but to me all mondegreens are and forever shall be Boston Charlies)
(Now I want to create a ponified Mrs. Malaprop and call her Lady Mondegreen. And her husband, Earl F. Murray)
3340845 Oh, come now. You're just jealous that Peake's a better poet than Dunsany.
3340971
I somehow imagine a meeting between the two of them would go a little like this:
media.fontbureau.com/images/posts/2009/deaconmacabre1.jpg
(I deleted that last post because I found a better cartoon, that's all
)
3335793
Oh come on, Fuchsia and Titus are on your side, kind of! I mean, they don't know about the situation with the carvings, but they hate the institution and want out.