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The Complete Firbank
The Complete Ronald Firbank
- GenresFiction
768 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1961
2 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Firbank
45 books55 followersBritish novelist Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907. In 1909 he left Cambridge, without completing a degree.
Living off his inheritance he travelled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. Ronald Firbank died of lung disease while in Rome.
Living off his inheritance he travelled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. Ronald Firbank died of lung disease while in Rome.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 22, 2012
I've read everything published by Ronald Firbank! I understood what was going on for about 60% of the time.
The Princess Zoubaroff: It's a play. In fact, I should remember the title for Christmas charades. It starts fun, very Noel Coward's "Private Lives" I thought. But then he goes mad with nuns again. 3 stars.
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli: A Spanish Cardinal is in trouble for christening a puppy. Which is mildly amusing. The choirboys business is rather inappropriate, however. Let's leave the kids alone, Ronald. 2 stars.
Prancing Nigger: In a Caribbean colony, Mr and Mrs Mouth and their three children are relocating to the capital, Cuna-Cuna, and the better society they hope to find. The head of the family has his reservations and Miss Miami will be leaving Bamboo, at whose red loincloth her fingers have been itching, but the mother is insistent.
They arrive and, sadly, aren't welcomed into white society. Miss Edna is seduced and becomes a rich man's mistress; Charlie, the son, falls in with other attractive young men who admire each other in the sunshine; and Miss Miami misses Bamboo too much. He's eaten in a shark attack and Miss Miami takes to religion. Mrs Mouth is finally invited to a society earthquake fundraiser (at which Ronald Firbank is a guest!), but falls out with the Duchess of Wellclose.
On Charlie:
"Ever so lovely are the young men of Cuna-Cuna ... but none so delicate, charming, and squeamish as Charlie Mouth. 'Attractive little rose...' 'What a devil of a dream...' the avid belles would exclaim when he walked abroad, while impassioned widows would whisper 'Peach!'"
"Charlie was fast going to pieces, having joined the Promenade of a notorious Bar with its bright particular galaxy of boys."
On the Archbishop:
"Rumour had it he was fond of negresses, and that the black private secretary he employed was his own natural son, while some suspected indeed a less natural connexion."
4 stars.
The Flower Beneath the Foot: Simply the best! 5 stars.
Location: Wikipedia says that the Kingdom of Pisuerga (capital, Kairoulla) is in the Balkans. I don't think that is exotic enough. I imagined a sort of Egypt ruled for the past two centuries by the Habsburgs.
Firbank invents voguing!: Eva Schnerb's a society columnist who writes stuff like: "Among the many balls of a brilliant season, none surpassed that which I witnessed at the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and jewels..."
She's very popular at court, and everyone keeps voguing at her! "Voguing" is an expression of "shade", and "shade" is like "reading". I think. Anyway, "Kairoulla is Burning":
"'...the Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was scribbling busily behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the head. For noblesse oblige, and the correspondent of the Jaw-Waw, the illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied. ... 'There,' the Archduchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a sneeze: 'she has said quite enough now I think about my toilette!'
But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire."
Plot:
Her Deaminess the Queen of Pisuerga is worried about the future of her son, His Weariness Prince Yousef. He is not-so-secretly banging Mademoiselle Laura Lita Carmen Etoile de Nazianzi. But the court and the nation is hoping for his betrothal with Princess Elsie. She is a daughter of King Geo and Queen Glory of England. Their ambassadors to Pisuerga are Sir Somebody Something and his wife Lady Rosa Something. She is being prosecuted by the Ritz. King Jotifa and Queen Thleeanouhee are also visiting from further East. An Archduchess who has a fondness for designing elaborate public conveniences dies.
Madame Wetme is desperate to be presented at court and tries to bribe the favours of the Duchess of Varna. But the Duchess flees to Dateland. The Hon. "Eddy" Monteith, son of the Lord Intriguer, arrives with his Italian "valet" to join the archaeological dig at Sodom and Gomorrah. He is an old chum of
Lionel Limpness, Lord Tiredstock's third son and an attache at the Embassy where he works with Harold Chilleywater whose wife writes rather scandalous fiction. The Countess of Tolga and Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast sail a boat over to a lake island where Count Cabinet lives in exile with Peter Passer, a former choirboy who now entertains by diving naked. Dr Cuncliffe Babcock seduces Mrs Montgomery, the governess to His Naughtiness, the youngest son of King Willam of Pisuerga and his wife, Her Deaminess the Queen.
"I feel his books are all written in hotels with the bed unmade at the back of the chair."
"I'm scarcely astonished. Looking back, I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger."
"do you know those cheap hotels where the guests are treated like naughty children?"
Santal: Best yet! North African boy following a holy man to God. Nails the "local flavour", it's probably better than Elias Canetti's "The Voices of Marrakesh". 5 stars.
Valmouth: A Romantic Novel: Rich old women flock to Valmouth to live forever. It's the waters and the massaging and treatments of Mrs Yajnavalkya. Mrs Yaj's customers include two dowagers, Mrs Eulalia Hurstpierpoint and Mrs Elizabeth Thoroughfare, who live at Hare-Hatch House. I like to imagine Mrs Yaj as Mammy, Mrs Hurstpierpoint as a very elderly Melanie, and Mrs Thoroughfare as a very elderly Katie Scarlett.
Mrs Throughfare's dashing son is a sailor and is currently at sea with his boyfriend, Lieutenant Whorwood. However, Captain Thoroughfare is secretly betrothed to Niri-Esther. She is Mrs Yaj's niece (I think, we weren't very clear on this). I didn't imagine Niri-Esther as Prissy. Niri-Esther is sexy and demure and not squeaky.
Another local family are the Tookes. David Tooke stands around in fields looking sexy. Lady Parvula de Panzoust, another centenarian, lusts after him. His niece, Thetis Tooke, is in love with Captain Thoroughfare.
There's a genuflect of priests and cardinals. They keep buggering the young men on Mrs Thoroughfare and Mrs Hurstpierpoint's staff.
More Firbank names: Mr ffines (sic), Bobby Jolly, Quentin Comedy, Victor Vatt, Lord Castlebrilliant, Thisbe Brownjohn, Almeria Goatpath, Fanny Beard.
Parlour games that have fallen out of fashion include: gleek, bi-ri-bi, ombre, lansquenet, spadille and brelan.
"'Nowadays,' she murmured, 'a man ... to me ... somehow ... oh! he is something so wildly strange.'
'Strange?'
'Unglimpsable.'
'Still, some men are ultra-womanly, and they're the kind I love!' Mrs Thoroughfare chirruped.
'I suppose that none but those whose courage is unquestionable can venture to be effeminate?' Lady Parvula said, plunging a two-pronged fork into a 'made' dish of sugared-violets served in aspic.
'It may be so.'
'It was only in war-time, was it, that the Spartans were accustomed to put on perfumes, or to crimp their beards?'
'My dear, how your mind seems to dwell upon beards.'
'Upon beards?'
'It's perfectly disgusting.'"
5 stars.
"Caprice" – Three cheers for a beginning, a middle, and an end! We follow one young woman, Sally Sinquier, as she abandons her parents' parsonage for a life on the stage. Harold Weathercock is her Romeo, but only literally (as they are doing the play together). Sadly for her, he's sleeping with Noel Nice. Other names I liked include: Judy Jacock, Llewellyn and Lydia Tird, Lupin Petrol and Lord and Lady Lonely. I hope the rest of Firbank is like this! 5 stars.
"Inclinations" - EM Forster on Firbank: "On we read, confusing the characters with the incidents and neglecting the outcome, but tickled by the images and the turns of the talk." I'm glad he said that, as I completely lost "Inclinations". I didn't know where we were in Europe, let alone who was in the room having the conversation. They all (or only some of them?) were in a boat at one point, and someone (who?) was killed in a shooting accident.
It was a bit like someone coming on the radio and reading all of the characters in a Wilde play in the same voice and with none of the stage directions. The lines are funny; but who said that? And where are we? 2 stars.
"Vainglory" - Firbank's work calls to mind a frieze with figures of varying heights trotting all the same way. The start of Chapter VIII gives a good idea:
"'How fond I am of this sleepy magic place!'
'In town,' Mrs Shamefoot said, 'the trees so seldom forget themselves into expressive shapes.'
'Well ... you haven't answered my question yet.'
'Because I don't know!'
Lord Blueharnis looked bored.
'Is it grey,' Lady Castleyard wondered, chiming in, 'or white or would it be blue?'
She settled herself reposefully as ever.
'That Sacharissa style,' Atalanta remarked, bending forward, 'of rolling your hair is so enslaving.'
'I wish you would not look down my neckline like an archer of Carpaccio.'
'Tell me what you are guessing.'
'The colour of the cuckoo's egg...'
'If I recollect, it's a mystic medley of mauves.'
Mrs Shamefoot prepared to rise. 'We shall get appendicitis,' she exclaimed, 'if we sit here long.'
Lord Blueharnis prevented her. 'Oh, what charming hands! ... Don't move.'
'If you admire them now,' Mrs Shamefoot said, sinking back, 'you would worship them when I'm really worn out. My hands never look quite so marvellous as when I'm tired.'"
and on and on it goes like this.
Highlights:
"'I can hardly imagine anyone,' Lady Georgia observed, 'setting out deliberately for Brussels.'"
"'The effort of having to look more or less like one's photographs is becoming such a strain'"
"Mrs. Shamefoot's principal portmanteau was a rose-coloured chest, which, with its many foreign labels, exhaled an atmosphere of positive scandal. No nice maid would stand beside it."
"'Teresa married a menial. She went away with a chauffeur.'
'How very disgraceful!' Aurelia observed.
'I suppose it was. Particularly as he wasn't their own.'"
"'Russiaphobia; what is that?'
'Wearing one's rubies and emeralds at the same time,'"
"'And he's so unbearably mean. Why, the collar of pearls he gave his first wife strangled her!'"
The names: Miss Wookie, Lord Susan, Atalanta, Mrs Fulleylove, Miss Chimney, Charley Chalmers, Lord Brassknocker, Miss Compostella, Mrs Mountjulian, the Duchess of Overcares, Mr Sophax .... 4 stars.
"The Artificial Princess" - This was only published after his death. It's a telling of Salome, but set in one of those middle-Europe kingdoms that were so popular before the Great War. Very sophisticated, not very sexy. The devil appears as a crow. 4 stars.
"Odette: A Fairy Tale for Weary People" - Of what are these people weary? It's obviously not their fin-de-siecle, absinthe, art nouveau, chaise longue, smoking jacket, Japanese screen, aestheticism. 2 stars.
The Princess Zoubaroff: It's a play. In fact, I should remember the title for Christmas charades. It starts fun, very Noel Coward's "Private Lives" I thought. But then he goes mad with nuns again. 3 stars.
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli: A Spanish Cardinal is in trouble for christening a puppy. Which is mildly amusing. The choirboys business is rather inappropriate, however. Let's leave the kids alone, Ronald. 2 stars.
Prancing Nigger: In a Caribbean colony, Mr and Mrs Mouth and their three children are relocating to the capital, Cuna-Cuna, and the better society they hope to find. The head of the family has his reservations and Miss Miami will be leaving Bamboo, at whose red loincloth her fingers have been itching, but the mother is insistent.
They arrive and, sadly, aren't welcomed into white society. Miss Edna is seduced and becomes a rich man's mistress; Charlie, the son, falls in with other attractive young men who admire each other in the sunshine; and Miss Miami misses Bamboo too much. He's eaten in a shark attack and Miss Miami takes to religion. Mrs Mouth is finally invited to a society earthquake fundraiser (at which Ronald Firbank is a guest!), but falls out with the Duchess of Wellclose.
On Charlie:
"Ever so lovely are the young men of Cuna-Cuna ... but none so delicate, charming, and squeamish as Charlie Mouth. 'Attractive little rose...' 'What a devil of a dream...' the avid belles would exclaim when he walked abroad, while impassioned widows would whisper 'Peach!'"
"Charlie was fast going to pieces, having joined the Promenade of a notorious Bar with its bright particular galaxy of boys."
On the Archbishop:
"Rumour had it he was fond of negresses, and that the black private secretary he employed was his own natural son, while some suspected indeed a less natural connexion."
4 stars.
The Flower Beneath the Foot: Simply the best! 5 stars.
Location: Wikipedia says that the Kingdom of Pisuerga (capital, Kairoulla) is in the Balkans. I don't think that is exotic enough. I imagined a sort of Egypt ruled for the past two centuries by the Habsburgs.
Firbank invents voguing!: Eva Schnerb's a society columnist who writes stuff like: "Among the many balls of a brilliant season, none surpassed that which I witnessed at the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and jewels..."
She's very popular at court, and everyone keeps voguing at her! "Voguing" is an expression of "shade", and "shade" is like "reading". I think. Anyway, "Kairoulla is Burning":
"'...the Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was scribbling busily behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the head. For noblesse oblige, and the correspondent of the Jaw-Waw, the illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied. ... 'There,' the Archduchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a sneeze: 'she has said quite enough now I think about my toilette!'
But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire."
Plot:
Her Deaminess the Queen of Pisuerga is worried about the future of her son, His Weariness Prince Yousef. He is not-so-secretly banging Mademoiselle Laura Lita Carmen Etoile de Nazianzi. But the court and the nation is hoping for his betrothal with Princess Elsie. She is a daughter of King Geo and Queen Glory of England. Their ambassadors to Pisuerga are Sir Somebody Something and his wife Lady Rosa Something. She is being prosecuted by the Ritz. King Jotifa and Queen Thleeanouhee are also visiting from further East. An Archduchess who has a fondness for designing elaborate public conveniences dies.
Madame Wetme is desperate to be presented at court and tries to bribe the favours of the Duchess of Varna. But the Duchess flees to Dateland. The Hon. "Eddy" Monteith, son of the Lord Intriguer, arrives with his Italian "valet" to join the archaeological dig at Sodom and Gomorrah. He is an old chum of
Lionel Limpness, Lord Tiredstock's third son and an attache at the Embassy where he works with Harold Chilleywater whose wife writes rather scandalous fiction. The Countess of Tolga and Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast sail a boat over to a lake island where Count Cabinet lives in exile with Peter Passer, a former choirboy who now entertains by diving naked. Dr Cuncliffe Babcock seduces Mrs Montgomery, the governess to His Naughtiness, the youngest son of King Willam of Pisuerga and his wife, Her Deaminess the Queen.
"I feel his books are all written in hotels with the bed unmade at the back of the chair."
"I'm scarcely astonished. Looking back, I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger."
"do you know those cheap hotels where the guests are treated like naughty children?"
Santal: Best yet! North African boy following a holy man to God. Nails the "local flavour", it's probably better than Elias Canetti's "The Voices of Marrakesh". 5 stars.
Valmouth: A Romantic Novel: Rich old women flock to Valmouth to live forever. It's the waters and the massaging and treatments of Mrs Yajnavalkya. Mrs Yaj's customers include two dowagers, Mrs Eulalia Hurstpierpoint and Mrs Elizabeth Thoroughfare, who live at Hare-Hatch House. I like to imagine Mrs Yaj as Mammy, Mrs Hurstpierpoint as a very elderly Melanie, and Mrs Thoroughfare as a very elderly Katie Scarlett.
Mrs Throughfare's dashing son is a sailor and is currently at sea with his boyfriend, Lieutenant Whorwood. However, Captain Thoroughfare is secretly betrothed to Niri-Esther. She is Mrs Yaj's niece (I think, we weren't very clear on this). I didn't imagine Niri-Esther as Prissy. Niri-Esther is sexy and demure and not squeaky.
Another local family are the Tookes. David Tooke stands around in fields looking sexy. Lady Parvula de Panzoust, another centenarian, lusts after him. His niece, Thetis Tooke, is in love with Captain Thoroughfare.
There's a genuflect of priests and cardinals. They keep buggering the young men on Mrs Thoroughfare and Mrs Hurstpierpoint's staff.
More Firbank names: Mr ffines (sic), Bobby Jolly, Quentin Comedy, Victor Vatt, Lord Castlebrilliant, Thisbe Brownjohn, Almeria Goatpath, Fanny Beard.
Parlour games that have fallen out of fashion include: gleek, bi-ri-bi, ombre, lansquenet, spadille and brelan.
"'Nowadays,' she murmured, 'a man ... to me ... somehow ... oh! he is something so wildly strange.'
'Strange?'
'Unglimpsable.'
'Still, some men are ultra-womanly, and they're the kind I love!' Mrs Thoroughfare chirruped.
'I suppose that none but those whose courage is unquestionable can venture to be effeminate?' Lady Parvula said, plunging a two-pronged fork into a 'made' dish of sugared-violets served in aspic.
'It may be so.'
'It was only in war-time, was it, that the Spartans were accustomed to put on perfumes, or to crimp their beards?'
'My dear, how your mind seems to dwell upon beards.'
'Upon beards?'
'It's perfectly disgusting.'"
5 stars.
"Caprice" – Three cheers for a beginning, a middle, and an end! We follow one young woman, Sally Sinquier, as she abandons her parents' parsonage for a life on the stage. Harold Weathercock is her Romeo, but only literally (as they are doing the play together). Sadly for her, he's sleeping with Noel Nice. Other names I liked include: Judy Jacock, Llewellyn and Lydia Tird, Lupin Petrol and Lord and Lady Lonely. I hope the rest of Firbank is like this! 5 stars.
"Inclinations" - EM Forster on Firbank: "On we read, confusing the characters with the incidents and neglecting the outcome, but tickled by the images and the turns of the talk." I'm glad he said that, as I completely lost "Inclinations". I didn't know where we were in Europe, let alone who was in the room having the conversation. They all (or only some of them?) were in a boat at one point, and someone (who?) was killed in a shooting accident.
It was a bit like someone coming on the radio and reading all of the characters in a Wilde play in the same voice and with none of the stage directions. The lines are funny; but who said that? And where are we? 2 stars.
"Vainglory" - Firbank's work calls to mind a frieze with figures of varying heights trotting all the same way. The start of Chapter VIII gives a good idea:
"'How fond I am of this sleepy magic place!'
'In town,' Mrs Shamefoot said, 'the trees so seldom forget themselves into expressive shapes.'
'Well ... you haven't answered my question yet.'
'Because I don't know!'
Lord Blueharnis looked bored.
'Is it grey,' Lady Castleyard wondered, chiming in, 'or white or would it be blue?'
She settled herself reposefully as ever.
'That Sacharissa style,' Atalanta remarked, bending forward, 'of rolling your hair is so enslaving.'
'I wish you would not look down my neckline like an archer of Carpaccio.'
'Tell me what you are guessing.'
'The colour of the cuckoo's egg...'
'If I recollect, it's a mystic medley of mauves.'
Mrs Shamefoot prepared to rise. 'We shall get appendicitis,' she exclaimed, 'if we sit here long.'
Lord Blueharnis prevented her. 'Oh, what charming hands! ... Don't move.'
'If you admire them now,' Mrs Shamefoot said, sinking back, 'you would worship them when I'm really worn out. My hands never look quite so marvellous as when I'm tired.'"
and on and on it goes like this.
Highlights:
"'I can hardly imagine anyone,' Lady Georgia observed, 'setting out deliberately for Brussels.'"
"'The effort of having to look more or less like one's photographs is becoming such a strain'"
"Mrs. Shamefoot's principal portmanteau was a rose-coloured chest, which, with its many foreign labels, exhaled an atmosphere of positive scandal. No nice maid would stand beside it."
"'Teresa married a menial. She went away with a chauffeur.'
'How very disgraceful!' Aurelia observed.
'I suppose it was. Particularly as he wasn't their own.'"
"'Russiaphobia; what is that?'
'Wearing one's rubies and emeralds at the same time,'"
"'And he's so unbearably mean. Why, the collar of pearls he gave his first wife strangled her!'"
The names: Miss Wookie, Lord Susan, Atalanta, Mrs Fulleylove, Miss Chimney, Charley Chalmers, Lord Brassknocker, Miss Compostella, Mrs Mountjulian, the Duchess of Overcares, Mr Sophax .... 4 stars.
"The Artificial Princess" - This was only published after his death. It's a telling of Salome, but set in one of those middle-Europe kingdoms that were so popular before the Great War. Very sophisticated, not very sexy. The devil appears as a crow. 4 stars.
"Odette: A Fairy Tale for Weary People" - Of what are these people weary? It's obviously not their fin-de-siecle, absinthe, art nouveau, chaise longue, smoking jacket, Japanese screen, aestheticism. 2 stars.
December 29, 2017
He's a dream. An ideal midpoint between Wilde and Waugh.
June 30, 2014
Read a few of the stories, though you may not know what is happening, nor to whom it is happening, Fairbank is still one of the greatest writers
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews