At the court of Sir Francis Needlespleen

    If I should seem to have neglected my duties as editor of this journal in recent weeks, let me assure you that any time I have taken off has, like the proverbial penny, been well spent. But do not take this as an apology. For it is not so. Otters above! I hope I shall never find myself in the position of apologising for failing to correspond to a pattern rudely imposed on me by those for whom true knowledge is nothing unless it has been broken up, watered down and neatly catalogued. As even the least punctilious reader should know, Underneath the Bunker has never been the kind of journal to insist on strict patterns and rules. Even in the days of the printed journal (now, sadly, past) we were loath to correspond to any precedents; to bathe like translucent sugary jellies in the wretched mould of the British literary scene. Indeed, one could almost say that our approach has, at times, tended towards the ‘needlespleenian’.

    More of that later.

    From the depths of sorrow into a more salubrious setting. The almost simultaneous arrival of art historian D H Laven from his Australian hermitage has presented me with a more positive reason not to be busy typing at my desk. Laven, as any reader will know, has been engaged on his magnum opus – The Story of Forgotten Art - for some time now. If this project represents a tunnel, however, there is not only a lack of light at present, but the sort of darkness that reminds one of the inside of a stomach of a bat in a black box in a cave on a moonless night. As Hercules learnt in Lerna, when one chops the head off a beast, it is not always defeated: two more grow in its place. Which is to say: the more you know, the more you know you don’t know - as I know so well, from my experience of collecting European folk-tales (ongoing, I add, to all those who idly suppose that I have given up on what is very much the work of a lifetime). Still, the brave Laven continues to face his mammoth task with diligence and duty. It would take a dedicated researcher to find a more dedicated researcher than he. Nevertheless, though he understands like the best of us that the writer sometimes needs to live in a shell, he also perceives the need for a break every now and again. The mind responds to physical movement. Communication between other minds, even lesser minds, can sometimes provide a spur to fresher ways of working. Etcetera, etcetera.

    And so, like a weary bear rising from hibernation, D H Laven has crept out from his Melbourne bunker and embarked upon a short European lecture tour (sold out, I’m afraid) presenting parts of his research to scholars from Poland to Portugal. I saw him speak in Hamburg, on the subject of Laetitia Blauman (on whom he will in time be contributing an article to this journal). I also saw him speak in Boulogne, on the subject of the tombs at Khum Tash, with which you are no doubt already familiar. Both speeches were characterised by Laven’s unusual charm, and ability not only to step, but to charge beyond the tired old boundaries of art criticism.

    I will see him speak for the last time later this week, when he lectures in London. The title of this talk will be ‘The Art of the Needlespleen Chronicles’ – a subject close to my heart, on which I have already exchanged more than a few words with the great Australian. And I trust he will forgive me for sharing some of these words with you now - not as an art historian (I have, alas, no training in this highly complex field of study) but in my role both as a literary critic and, dare I say it, pure fan.

    To begin at the beginning: what are the ‘Needlespleen Chronicles’? A fine question, dear sir – a fine question indeed. And it would be a deception for me to claim that I am absolutely sure of the facts – for I am not. Nobody is. The key to the door is not resting in the lock. Replica keys appear to work just as well. But do they really? I am brave enough to say that I cannot say for certain. Nonetheless, let me tell you what I, and many others, think, starting with the most solid details.

     When we (that is, Needlespleen critics) say ‘Needlespleen Chronicles’ we refer to a set of drawings, accompanied by text, of which (as far as we know) only eleven exist. Dating from the late eighteenth century (of which we are now sure) it is believed – with thanks to contemporary reports - that these eleven pages are part of a much larger whole, thought to have been in the region of somewhere in-between eighty seven and ninety four pages. Together these pages formed the ‘Needlespleen Chronicles’ - so called on account of their telling stories related to a character whose name is Sir Francis Needlespleen, in whose presence (and, indeed, front room) almost all of the tales take place. Sir Francis is a fictional character, existing only in text and in image, the two mediums which the Needlespeen Chronicles unite so gloriously.

Allow me to reveal my hand. I own two of these eleven pages. D H Laven owns three others. The other six are split between five further owners, one of which also works for this journal. As for the other seventy or so: what of them? They are, to the best of our knowledge, missing. However, a close study of eighteenth century literature reveals that they most certainly did exist once – and formed one of the most fascinating works of art of their time. That the project was, in some senses, incomplete, seems likely. Maybe there was meant to be over a hundred drawings. Perhaps the drawings were intended to become etchings or, as others have suggested, they were copied from a set of paintings that were later destroyed in a fire. The former seems highly possible; the latter improbable. But let us not waste our time considering what we are missing. Rather, let us concentrate on what we have.

    The first of my two pages relates - and illustrates – a story called ‘The Frustrated Wasp’. This tale takes place in the front room of a man called Sir Francis Needlespleen. This man lives entirely in this room, spending all of his days in bed, wrapped out in a magnificently grand blanket that covers his whole body. His face is never seen by anyone. He exists primarily as a voice and a hand, which appears irregularly to pick up a glass of water that is always by his bedside. Though he drinks only water, Needlespleen believes himself to be eternally drunk; which suggests that either someone has informed him that he is not drinking water, or else he is deluding himself. Or perhaps his drunkenness comes from elsewhere. Perhaps he is intoxicated by something other than alcohol. Perhaps the real alcohol is his imagination.

    I am reminded, sweet memories, of my younger self. I am thinking of those days when I (like Needlespleen) was frequently drunk on literature, on art: on my imagination. I recall reading a particularly illuminating passage in Carlos Geyeu’s Pother – the one in which his hero decides he is a hedgehog (‘A small mammal with protective spines: the definition encompasses me’ he writes). I was so fond of this line (I was proud of my repressions, after all, and loved showing off my shyness) that for several days I introduced myself to friends and strangers in the following manner: ‘Hello. I am a hedgehog’. Needless to say, more than one person thought I was under the influence of a narcotic substance, or that I had been sucking the substance of a dozen whisky bottles. But no, I was (mostly anyway) merely drunk on an idea.

    In some ways, ‘The Frustrated Wasp’ is a typical Needlespleen story. In other ways, it is not. For there is nothing typical about any of these stories. They are different in different ways: predicted to be unpredictable. Sheer madness. And yet, as critics have since argued in the context of our best contemporary writer of nonsense (Vladimir Dorwindovitch) the reader is cautioned against thinking that such a nonsensical style is easily created. Is it not. From what we have, it is clear that the full Needlespeen Chronicles was a complex, multi-faceted work of art. A collection of immensely clever silliness.

    It was also, it seems, a popular work of art. How else can we explain the fact that the word ‘needlespleenian’ was commonly used as a verb in the 1790s to describe anything that was hard to describe? Whatever form it took, this was undoubtedly a phenomenon; a vibrant cult, since buried under the damp dirt of two centuries of time.

    This is all very well, but there is one question I have barely touched. Who created the Needlespleen Chronicles? Who is the author? It is just that I have left this question until late in the day, for it is a thorny one indeed: as thorny as a thousand roses, and not half as fair. The truth is, there are no easy answers. As things stand, no single figure can lay claim to the title of ‘sole creator of the Needlespleen Chronicles’. There are, however, half a dozen firm suspects.

    Eric Mayflower, 20th century cartoonist, is not one of them. His claim to have made up the whole Needlespleen affair was never anything more than self-publicity: a lazy (though aggravatingly competent) attempt to boost the flagging sales of his 1985 comic strip Renaissance Man! (In the Day he Paints Frescoes; At Night he Saves the World!). Nor is it William Hogarth, who may have been alive when the series was started, but most certainly wasn’t during the period of its pomp. Reports from the 1770s state clearly that the author of the Needlespleen Chronicles was alive at this time: Hogarth wasn’t.

    .So who might it have been instead? For the sake of time, I shall dispense with the majority of the evidence - and serve up the basics.

    First up is Joseph Friegel, a fish merchant from East London, whose etchings of trout innards show a similarity to the style of the Needlespleen drawings. His interest in natural history might explain the obsession with animals in the Chronicles. Otherwise he is a relatively weak candidate, about which we know very little at present.

    Another option, which sounds merely sensational, but can in fact be backed up with more than a few facts, is that of George IV. Known to have been interested in the arts, the famously flamboyant ex-Prince Regent was said by some to have had a sense of humour befitting the son of a madman. The possibility that this humour was channelled into the Needlespleen Chronicles has been provoked by a series of ambiguous references to ‘the king’s story projekt’ in writings by one of his courtiers (as well as other, sometimes spurious snatches of evidence).

    The next two suspects are a team: a sensible and attractive possibility when dealing with a piece of art that consists of both text and image. Lord and Lady Colney an artistically talented couple; he as a painter, she as an author of cheap romantic dramas. They  lived in a house that bears much resemblance to that in which Needlespleen resides. On top of this, Colney was said by many of his friends to have been obsessed with sleep and on good terms with Freidrich Gunz, the German scientist, whose early studies of dreams were later derided by a jealous Freud.

    Our fifth candidate is a young woman, Elisabeth Hone: a popular society figure, whose fondness for absurd conversation kept many men bemused, confused and amused. Though there is no evidence of her having any artistic or literary talent, there is no doubting that she had a needlespleenian imagination. Indeed, the fate of those characters in ‘The Frustrated Wasp’ that die from ‘the excruciating pain of self-knowledge’ is very similar to comments made in Elisabeth Hone’s diary, in which she once wrote ‘I would love to be honest more often, but I am not a murderer, nor all that prone to suicide’.

    If I often find myself veering towards Hone, I know that others (D H Laven among them) are most keen on suspect number six: John Barleycorn. Perhaps this is because there is an astounding amount of material to be found on Barleycorn - with few excuses for its existence. Barleycorn first appeared in London in 1768 and appears in texts up to the turn of the century and beyond. He is often stated as having been present at a variety of events: appearing always as prominent bystander; never at the centre of the action. One contemporary offers a valuable description of him. He was, it is said, a ‘man of the country’ who was ‘possessed of two wild eyes’ and ‘hair that grew long and curled’. It is thought that he owned 'but a single jacket, made from the skin of a purple stoat' (though I expect he wore trousers as well). His accent was ‘as strange as ever that was heard on earth’ and was said to ‘change from day to day, depending on the clouds’. This has led many to believe that Barleycorn didn’t come from the country at all, but was a Londoner putting on an act. Some even think that he was a nobleman who disguised himself as tramp. Few people, however, have any sort of theory on what Barleycorn did. Clearly he achieved certain fame – but whatever for? As one historian has written: ‘it seems the only enigma surrounding Barleycorn is how this nondescript wastrel ever got a reputation as an enigma. What did he do?’ Well, maybe he penned the Needlespleen Chronicles. This might explain his ambiguous fame. Indeed, if recent research linking Barleycorn to the Barleycorn family of Cumbria are correct, there are even more reasons for believing this. D H Laven has assured me that there are more than a few similarities between the Needlespleen Chronicles and various ancient Cumbrian folk tales, including that famously abrupt fable known to many as ‘The Lakeland Squirrel Story’. And yet I hear that at least one scholar prefers to link Barleycorn to a Welsh painter of the same name. A painter, ha! Perfect, you say. But alas, this Barleycorn spent his career fashioning weak landscapes in watercolour, revealing a sternly sentimental side that simply does not square with the sparkling imaginative brilliance of Sir Francis Needlespleen.

    And so the search goes on, both for the rest of the artwork itself, and for the author/s of it. A shame, in some senses, but not an unworthy one. After all, The Needlespleen Chronicles never tried to step along a reasonable path. Ashes to ashes, nonsense to nonsense. Thus spake the frustrated wasp.

    I have not said as much as I could. A better description of the works themselves is required. A close interpretation of the drawing style is much needed. A fuller account of the suspects is called for. This is all distinctly so. But these things can wait. And if they can’t, well damn it, they must.  In the meantime (from my second pages, in a story entitled 'Unto the peach'):

    The white bear strode under the arch, brandishing a mammoth stick of bread. ‘Upon my honour, and begetting the metaphysical mastery of the somnambulist, allow me to introduce into the conversation the following pertinent statement...’

    He or she scratched her or his hat. ‘What’s for the tea?’ said a voice.

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