Tolkien and Scott: a Brief Note

David Demaret, 'Éowyn versus the Nazgul' (2019)

 

Like everyone of his generation who read, Tolkien read Walter Scott (it’s really remarkable actually how far Scott has fallen, from being one of the most popular and widely read authors in the world to today’s obscurity). And when Tolkien came to write his own fiction he worked a basically Scottian template. In this old blog, I discuss [you need to scroll down a few paragraphs] some of the ways in which The Lord of the Rings is an exercise in Scottian writing, with its leisurely, peripatetic narrative, it’s middling, ‘wavering’ (that is, ‘waverley’) protagonist caught between opposing forces at a moment of great historical interest (fictional history in Tolkien’s case, but still), its narrative set against a backdrop of deeper time, and its textual strategies of prose and inset verse — in all this, Tolkien as writer was working in the idiom established by Scott. But I think he took various other, more specific things from Scott too. Small things (the name Proudfoot for a bourgeois family from Fair Maid of Perth, say) and some bigger things.

1. In this post  I argue that Tolkien's Black Riders, or more specifically the scene where the Black Riders chase Aragorn and Frodo across the landscape to the Ford of Bruinen, is drawn from Quentin Durward, where Scott's Black Riders chase Quentin and Isabelle across a spacious medieval landscape of field, forest and river.

2. And here, at greater length, I argue that the episode in which the fellowship passes over the snowy pass of Caradhras reworks a very similar scene in Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist (1829)

Here's another small thing. At the end of A Legend of Montrose (1819), Allan M’Aulay, pitiless warrior, an individual possessed of magical abilities, strikes down the Highland Lord, old Ranald MacEagh, on the battlefield. ‘M’Aulay, setting his foot on him, was about to pass the broadsword through his body, when the point of the weapon was struck up by a third party, who suddenly interposed’. The intervention is by a humble—that is, non-noble—character, the mercenary Dalgetty. Then we get:

“Fool!” said Allan, “stand aside, and dare not to come between the tiger and his prey!”

But Dalgetty defends Ranald. In the great battle towards the end of The Lord of the Rings, the Witch King of Angmar, pitiless, possessed of magical abilities, strikes down the Lord of Rohan, old Théoden, and is about to finish him when Éowyn suddenly interposes. Then we get:

“Begone!” A cold voice answered: “come not between the Nazgul and his prey! … Thou fool.”

What Is The Earliest "Egyptian Mummy" Story?

I have several times encountered the claim that the earliest story of undead mummies is Jane C. Loudon's The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827): a novel in which an Egyptian mummy named Cheops is brought back in to life in 22nd century Britain. But is it really the earliest example of the Mummy sub-genre? It seems Loudon may

have drawn inspiration from the general fashion for anything pharaonic, inspired by the French researches during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt; the 1821 public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies in a theatre near Piccadilly, which she may have attended as a girl; and, very likely, the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. As Shelley had written of Frankenstein's creation, ‘A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch,’ which may have triggered her later concept. In any case, at many points Loudon deals in greater clarity with elements from the earlier book such as the loathing for the much-desired object and the immediate arrest for crime and attempt to lie one's way out of it.

There's been some work on the way Loudon writes in reaction to Frankenstein. But I'm curious about prior stories of, specifically, mummies.

Here's one, from Gabrielle de Paban's Histoire des fantomes et des démons (1819).

This volume includes a story called ‘Les Deux Momies’:

Le prince de Radziville, dans son voyage de Jérusalem, raconte une chose fort singulière, dont il a été le témoin:

Il avait acheté en Egypte deux momies, l'une d'homme et l'autre de femme, et les avait enfermées fort secrètement dans des caisses, qu'il fit mettredansson vaisseau, lorsqu'il s'embarqua à Alexandrie pour revenir en Europe. Il n'y avait que lui et deux domestiques qui le sussent, parce que les Turcs ne permettent que difficilement qu'on emporte ces momies, croyant que les chrétiens s'en servent, pour des opérations magiques. Lorsqu'on fut en mer, il s'éleva une tempête, qui revint à plusieurs reprises, avec tant de violence, que le pilote désespérait de sauver son vaisseau. Tout le monde était dans l'attente d'un naufrage prochain et inévitable. Un bon prêtre polonais, qui accompagnait le prince de Radziville, récitaît les prières convenables à une telle circonstance; le prince et sa suite y répondaient. Mais le prêtre était tourmenté, disait-il, par deux spectres, (un homme et une femme), noirs et hideux, qui le harcelaient et le menaçaient de le faire mourir. On crut d'abord que la frayeur et le danger du naufrage lui avaient troublé l'imagination. Le calme étant revenu, il parut tranquille; mais la tempête recommença bientôt; alors ces fantômes le tourmentèrent plus fort qu'auparavant; et il n'en fut délivré, que quand on eut jeté les deux momies à la mer: ce qui fit en niême temps cesser la tempête.

The prince of Radziwiłł, in his Travels to Jerusalem, recounts a very singular thing, which he personally witnessed:

He had purchased two mummies in Egypt, one of a man and one a woman, and had locked them very secretly in boxes, which he had stowed in his ship when he embarked from Alexandria to return to Europe. Only he and two servants knew about this, because the Turks are disinclined to permit these mummies to be taken away, believing that Christians use them for magical operations. When they were at sea a storm arose, which returned several times, with so much violence that the pilot despaired of saving his ship. Everyone was expecting an imminent and inevitable shipwreck. A good Polish priest, who accompanied the Radziwiłł family, recited the prayers appropriate to such a circumstance; the prince and his entourage responded. But the priest was tormented, he said, by two specters—a man and a woman—black and hideous—who harassed him and threatened to kill him. At first it was believed that the fear and danger of the shipwreck had disturbed his imagination. Calm weather having returned, the priest seemed himself to settle down; but the storm soon began again; then these ghosts tormented him more than before; a terror from which he was only relieved when the two mummies were thrown into the sea: which at the same time caused the storm to cease.

It is possible that Loudon was aware of this story from this 1819 French retelling, but the story itself is much older. The Prince to whom de Paban refers is Mikołaj Krzysztof Sierotka Radziwiłł (1549-1616), who travelled widely in the Holy Land, Syria, Egypt, Crete, Cyprus, Italy and Greece, and afterwards wrote an account of his voyaging: Hierosolymitana peregrinatio illvstrissimi domini Nicolai Christophori Radzivili (1601). It's from this volume that de Paban has sourced her story.

Indeed, Radziwiłł's book has quite a lot to say about mummies.

Et nos ad pyramidem quandam altiorem in soramen decem & ampliùs ulnas profundum nos eâdem ratione demisimus; ubi in petra reperimus plura alia antra ad longum excisa, in quibus multa hominum cadavera erant sepulta, è quibus mumia, quam vocant, petitur Affirmant ea corpora sive balsamo, sive aliis diversarum herbarum unguentis condita fuisse; que qualia suerint, discurrant medici: apparet certe aliquid egregium & singulare fuisse, quandoquidem à tribus annorum millibus absque, minimi alicuius membri putrefactione eiusmodi corpora integra in hanc usque diem conservantur. .

So we descended into a certain pyramid, to a depth of ten and more cubits; where we found in the rock several other long-cut caverns, in which many corpses of men were buried, and where the mummies, as they are called, are to be found. Let the doctors hurry to examine how they are stitched together and with what balsams and unguents they are preserved. It certainly appears that there is something excellent and unique about the process, since after three thousand years, without the slightest putrefaction of any member, these bodies are preserved intact to this day. [Hierosolymitana peregrinatio, 190-91]

Radziwiłł records that he took two mummies away with him (Emeram tunc temporis ab iisdem Arabibus duo corpora maris & femine duobus Cecchinis, quæ ibidem in tumbis reposita inueneramus: de quibus quid actum fit posteà, cùm Alexandriâ nauigaremus, dicetur inferiùs; ‘At that time I purchased from these same Arabs two corpses, a man and a woman, both of the Cheops era, which we had found there deposited in tombs. What happened afterwards, when we set sail from Alexandria, will be told below.’) What did happen? Read on and find out:

Quamobrem diligenter admonentur ij, qui res in nauem inferunt, ne Mumiam secum accipiant: cuius rei ca redditur ratio. Quandoquidem Mumia, Ethnicorum sunt cadauera, in quibus idola, vt dictum est superiùs, reconduntur: dubium non est, quin in cura & potestate Dæmonum, prout & animæ ipsorum, sint constituta: qui numquam ab eis, etiamsi de loco in locum transferantur, recedere solent. Cùm Cairi in antrum, ubi eiusmodi cadauera sunt condita, me demisissem, duo integra corpora, vt iam diximus, maris & feminæ, pretio empta acceperam ... que ut commodiùs deferri possent, quodlibet in tres partes divulsum, in capsas maiores ex corticibus arborum siccatis confectas, imponendum curaui: ita ut sex eiusmodi capsas Mumia refertas haberem: in septima verò erant idola sitilia iisdem illis corporibus copulari solita. Cùm igitur de periculo deportationis ex nautis intellexissem, consului negotiatores mihi notos, quid mihi agendum suaderent, et num vera essent, quæ nautæ dicerent. Multi affirmabant rem ita se habere: multi pro fabulis hæc ducebant, affirmantes, quòd ipsimet in Italiam sæpissimè Mumias per mare deportarunt, neque tamen in vllum periculum hoc nomine inciderunt. Persuasione igitur illorum adductus decreui corpora hæc mecum asportare, vt in Europa ostenderem, qua ratione condîta reperiantur. Quamobrem nihil ea de re cum nauclero communicans, septem capsas illas Mumiarum, cum rebus aliis in nauem inserri iussi. Sed parum absuit, quin statim in magnas difficultates incidis sem. ...Cùm itaque priori tempestate iactaremur, nullus nostrûm de Mumia hac meminerat. Erat mecum in eadem navi Sacerdos Polonus Simon Albimontanus, qui patentes Regis Stephani literas habebat, & sepulchrum Dominicum visitauerat. In Mumiis illis viderant, nec de illo Sacerdoti indicare poterant, mirari accuratiùs cœpimus. Certissimum enim erat, neminem servitorum de cadaueribus istis sciuisse, præter duos illos, qui secretum hoc nemini proculdubiò, extraneo præfertim, aperuerant. Sed nec tunc quidem Mumia nobis in mentem venerat. Postremò totus conturbatus, pallidus, & tremens Sacerdos ad me accurrit, exposuitque quàm họrret.dum in modum à spectris hisce inter orandum exagi tetur, immò laceretur. Tandem incidit mihi, fortè illum hæc pati occasione corporum istorum Mumiaticorum. Misi itaque ad nauarchum, ut inferiorem Saitiæ nauis partem nobis recludi iuberet, caussam tamen reticendo: volebam siquidem capsas illas Mumiarum clàm in mare proijcere. Sed nauarchus respondit, se id facere non posse propter ingentes fluctus, qui Saitiam ita operiebant, ut omnes madesieremus ... Et videbamus quidem apertè periculum maximum instare; si nauis aperiretur: ex alia parte Presbyter de spectrorum vexatione mirum in modum lamentabatur. Nefciebamus itaque quid nobis agendum effet. Ubi verò S. Germanus apparere, & ventus contrarius subsidere cœpit; cùm iam illucesceret, nauem aperiri iussi. Et spectris nihilominùs Sacerdoti molestiam inferentibus, septem capsas illas in mare proijci iussi. Quod vbi factum, nauarchus statim ad me accurrit, percunctans quidnam abiecissemus: numquid Mumiam? Fassus sum. Expauit illicò vehementer; sed posteà se recolligens erat recreatus; & certò promittebat, nos tempestatem ampliùs non habituros. Et non frustrà hæc prędixit. Nam licet apud insulam Carpathos insurrexerat, minùs vehemens tamen fuit, & S. Germano semel apparente, statim cessauit. Dixit mihi posteà nauarchus, quo tempore ad eum mittebam ut nauem aperiret, etiamsi illi dictum fuisset, id propter Mumiam fieri, numquam tamen aperturum fuisse, propter undarum infurgentium impetum: & quod iam certò nos interituros credebat, momentum tantùm demersionis expectans. Quærebat & Sacerdos, quidnam in mare proiectum fuisset. Cumque illi dixissem, maiore etiam timore correptus, tamquam vir Ecclesiasticus arguere me cœpit, quòd Ethnicorum corpora circumferre veritus non fucrim, propter quæ tantum vexationis pertulerit; nec aliam spectrorum apparentium caussam fuisse. Ego reprehensionem boni Sacerdotis grato animo suscepi

But those who bring things onto their ship should be carefully warned not to take a mummy with them: the reason for this is given here. Since mummies are the corpses of the peoples of this region, in which idols, as has been said above, are worshipped: there is no doubt that they are placed in the care and power of demons, and their souls have never withdrawn from them, even when they are transferred from place to place ... When I had let myself down into the cave of Cairo, where such corpses were buried, I had taken two whole bodies, as we have already said, of a man and a woman, bought at a price ... which, in order that they might be conveniently carried, each was torn into three parts, and placed in large boxes made of the dried bark of trees, I took care to put them in these containers: so that I had six such mummy boxes filled: and in the seventh were the various idols associated by custom with those same bodies. But when I had heard, from certain sailors, of the danger of shipping these items, I consulted the businessmen known to me, asking of them what they advised me to do, and whether what the sailors said were true. Some affirmed that this was the case: others insisted the stories were mere fables, telling me they had often brought mummies to Italy by sea, and yet they had not run into any such peril on that account. Therefore, being persuaded by them, I resolved to take these bodies away with me, that I might show them in Europe, just as I had found them preserved. So, communicating nothing of the matter with the shipowner, I ordered those seven boxes of mummies to be loaded onto the ship, along with my other things. But it was not long before we ran into great difficulties ... When, therefore, we were tossed about in this storm, none of us thought of the mummy. 

Simon Albimontanus, a Polish priest, was in the same ship with us, carrying letters from King Stephen, in order to visit the tomb of Dominicus. It was most certain that none of the servants knew of these corpses, except those two, who doubtless had revealed this secret to no one, especially to a stranger. But not even then did we think of the Mummy. Then the priest, very troubled, pale, and trembling, ran to me, and told me his story. At last I realised that he was suffering these hauntings because of the bodies of these mummies. I therefore sent to the captain to order the ship's hold be opened for us, although I did not tell him why: of course, I wanted to throw those boxes of mummies into the sea. But the sailor replied that he could not do so, on account of the size of the waves, which did indeed crash over the decks in such a way that we were all wet ... And truly we could see it would be a grave and pressing danger if we were to open the hold of the ship. At the same time, here was the priest, lamenting in a most strange way about being harassed by these ghosts. When at last St. Germanus became visible, and the contrary wind began to subside, and dawn had broken, I ordered the ship's hold to be opened. And since the spectres were continuing to cause great trouble to the priest, I commanded those seven boxes be thrown into the sea. When this was done the captain immediately ran to me, inquiring what exactly we had thrown away. Was it a mummy? I admitted the truth. He was at first utterly terrified; but afterwards, recollecting himself, somewhat regained his good senses; and he promised me with absolute assurance that we had seen the last of the great storm. In this he proved correct. For although the storm had risen near the island of the Carpathians, it lessened in ferocity once we approached St. Germanus, and then abruptly ceased. The captain told me afterwards that when I first told him to open up the ship, even if he had been informed then that I needed this done to dispose of the mummy, he could not have opened the hold, owing to the onslaught of the raging waves, and that he now believed we would certainly have perished, with capsize inevitable. After that the priest came and asked me what it was we had thrown into the sea. When I had told him, he was seized with even greater fear, and began to lecture me, in the way priests will, that I ought never to have carried the corpses from those lands with me, since doing so must have been the cause he had had to endure so much harassment. I accepted the good priest's rebuke with a grateful heart. [Hierosolymitana peregrinatio, 233]

This 1601 story is, surely, the earliest Mummy tale. Or is there an earlier?

Did Wells Read Kepler's "Somnium"?

 

It seems as if the answer must be: yes, because Wells uses a quotation from Kepler as the epigraph to War of the Worlds (1898), and incorporates references to the Somnium into The First Men in the Moon (1901). Bedford and Cavour are discussing the likelihood that the moon is hollow, as they travel there in their anti-gravity spacecraft.

“Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.

“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should be different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course——”

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discovered a pretty sequence of reasoning.

“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all.” [First Men in the Moon, 143]

The Subvolvani are one of two alien species mentioned in Kepler's Somnium (1634). So maybe Wells did read Kepler's strange little proto-science-fiction novel.

But how? Somnium was written in Latin, and not translated into English until the twentieth-century. It was little discussed in nineteenth-century: an obscurity, copies of the (posthumously published) 1634 edition very rare. David Lake is puzzled:

Since 1965 we can all read Kepler’s marvellous work in John Lear’s English translation; but I am puzzled to know how Wells read him. There was a German translation by Ludwig Gunther, Leipzig 1898; Wells may have read this, or the original Latin, or possibly some popularizing summary of the work. But he certainly had some contact with the Latin text, for he makes Cavor say “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all”. Subvolvani is Kepler’s invented Latin name for the inhabitants of Subvolva, the nearside hemisphere of the Moon; they are so called because they live under Volva, which they see revolving. Science fiction always delights in neologisms, even in Latin. [David Lake, ‘Mr Bedford’s Brush with God: Fantastic Tradition and Mysticism in The First Men in the Moon,’ The Wellsian (1990), 4-5]

I'm puzzled too. Wells had a little Latin, something he picked up under the tutelage of Horace Byatt, at Midhurst Grammar School in 1883: he took these lessons because Latin was considered needful for a dispensing chemist, and Wells at that time was apprenticed to Samuel Cowap in his Midhurst chemist's shop. But the education he received was rudimentary, and I do not believe Wells had the fluency or range in the language to be able to read Kepler's novel right through, even were he able to get hold of a copy of what was, at this point, a rare and expensive volume. Nor do I see him reading Ludwig Gunther's German version, a book not published in the UK, in a language Wells did not speak. So this must mean Wells encountered Kepler's dream-moon, with its hollow, inhabited body and subvolvan aliens, at second hand. Where, though? Despite Lake's speculation, there weren't any popularizing summaries of the work published in the nineteenth-century. There are references to the Somnium here and there, but nothing very detailed.

So, I don't think Wells knew Kepler's novel. Which is to say, my answer to the question posed in this blogpost's title is: no. Cavour's reference to Sub-volvans, with that hyphen, is a tell (Kepler doesn't hyphenate the name) as is the fact that he mentions only one of the two alien peoples in Somnium but not the other:

Though the fixed stars appear everywhere in Levania, just as they do to us, nonetheless there are such pronounced differences in the motion and the magnitudes of the visible planets that the inhabitants of that world have an entirely original system of astronomy. So, just as Earthly geographers divide the world's globe into five zones depending on their astral phenomena so Levania is divided into two hemispheres: Subvolva and Privolva. The Subvolvans are eternally blessed by the light from Volva—which is to say, from our Earth—which assumes the role of a Moon to them. But the Privolvans are forever deprived the Earth. The circle dividing these hemispheres, which is called the divisor, is not unlike the Earthly meridian passing as it does through the solstices and the poles. [Kepler, Somnium]

Why no Privolvani in First Men in the Moon? Wells knew of Kepler's work, that it posited a moon inhabited by alien beings, but he did not actually know the work itself.

One source for his knowledge of Kepler is certainly Richard Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I mentioned that the epigraph to War of the Worlds is a quotation from Kepler, but Wells is clear that he's not quoting Somnium directly:

“But who shall dwell in these Worlds if they be inhabited?
... Are we or they Lords of the World? ... And how are all things made for man?”
Kepler (quoted in “The Anatomy of Melancholy”).

So Wells clearly read, or at least browsed in (the best way to read it) Burton 1621 miscellany. Here's the passage that supplied Wells' epigraph:

Kepler will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compassing planets, yet the said Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, et somnio suo, dissertat. cum nunc. sider. [ie. the Somnium] seems in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets, he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their vastity and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, “if they be inhabited? rational creatures?” as Kepler demands, “or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?” [Anatomy of Melancholy, II. 2.3]

You can see how Wells slightly alters the original for his purposes. But Burton doesn't mention Subvolvans, or Privolvans; he talks of Kepler's ‘Saturnine and Jovial inhabitants’, the saturnine presumably being the (sad) Privolvans, deprived of Earth overhead, and the Jovial the Subvolvans.

I think the source for Wells's reference in The First Men in the Moon is Thomas Gwyn Elger. I think Wells read Elgers The Moon: A full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features (1895) in preparation for writing his moon-set fantasia. Indeed, we know that Wells did read this book, because he quotes from it in an article he published in 1895: ‘The Visibility of Change in the Moon’ Knowledge 18 (Oct 1895), 230-31. [The article is about the possibility of volcanoes on the moon, and Wells addresses the fact that nobody has observed any such eruption by saying that such activity might very well go on unobserved: ‘As Mr. Elger has pointed out, objects as large as Monte Nuovo or Jorullo might come into existence in many regions without anyone being the wiser, and a catastrophe as extensive as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii might still escape detection.’ This is from Elger's The Moon, p.37: ‘might not objects as large as Monte Nuovo or Jorullo come into existence in many regions without any one being the wiser? It would certainly have needed a persistent lunar astronomer, and one furnished with a very perfect telescope, to have noted the changes that have occurred within the old crater-ring of Somma or among the Santorin group during the past thirty years, or even to have detected the effects resulting from the great catastrophe in A.D. 79, at Vesuvius; yet these objects are no larger than many which, if they were situated on our satellite, would be termed comparatively small, if not insignificant.’]

One of the things Elger discusses are lunar rills:

The significance of the word rille in German, a groove or furrow, describes with considerable accuracy the usual appearance of the objects to which it is applied, consisting as they do of long narrow channels, with sides more or less steep, and sometimes vertical. They often extend for hundreds of miles in approximately straight lines over portions of the moon's surface, frequently traversing in their course ridges, craters, and even more formidable obstacles, without any apparent check or interruption, though their ends are sometimes marked by a mound or crater. Their length ranges from ten or twelve to three hundred miles or more (as in the great Sirsalis rill), their breadth, which is very variable within certain limits, from less than half a mile to more than two, and their depth (which must necessarily remain to a great extent problematical) from 100 to 400 yards.

What are these rills? Elger doesn't know:

Of the actual nature of the lunar rills we are, it must be confessed, supremely ignorant. With some of the early observers it was a very favourite notion that they are artificial works, constructed presumably by Kepler's sub-volvani, or by other intelligences. There is perhaps some excuse to be made for the freaks of an exuberant fancy in regard to objects which, if we ignore for a moment their enormous dimensions, judged by a terrestrial standard, certainly have, in their apparent absence of any physical relation to neighbouring objects, all the appearance of being works of art rather than of nature. The keen-sighted and very imaginative Gruithuisen believed that in some instances they represent roads cut through interminable forests, and in others the dried-up beds of once mighty rivers. [Elger, The Moon (1895), 22]

Here is sub-volvani, with the egregious hyphen, in a context in which it is clear that the word is the name for an alien species dwelling in Kepler's moon. It tells us nothing more, doesn't mention Kepler's privolvans, but it's enough for Wells to be able to drop the word into his novel.

This gives us another pointer to the novel. Where do Bedford and Cavour land, when they land on the moon? This is what we are told:

For a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor craters grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor flung our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the sun’s attraction as a brake ... There came a jar, and then we were rolling over and over.

The Moon contains Elger's own lunar map, in four sections, with a diameter of 18 inches: ‘It is much less complex than the maps of Neison, Schmidt, Mädler, and Lohrmann, and for that reason, one of the most usable lunar maps ever produced. Printed with the maria in green, and with easily legible type, it is still an ideal reference map (Ashworth).’ I picture Wells poring over this map looking for a place to land his adventurers. He chooses an Eastward location because he wants to describe the lunar sunrise immediately after they land. Copernicus catches his eye:

So that's where they come down: a large crater with a rough cross of smaller craters around it. Also, who is this little chap, with his surprised expression and large right hand, emerging nervously from behind the ink blot?

Looks like one of Wells's picshuas.

Proximus Caesar

 

Proximus Caesar is the big villain of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the fourth instalment of the Planet of the Apes reboot franchise. He is the tyrannical king of the Coastal Ape Colony, a rogue clan of apes that claim to follow the ways and teachings of the late Caesar—the Moses-figure, who in the first trilogy led the apes to their promised land, played by Andy Serkis in a mo-cap suit. The new movie is set many generations after Caesar's death, and Proximus is claiming to inherit Caesar's mantle. Hence his name, which the movie clearly thinks means ‘the next Caesar’, Caesar's successor, next-in-line.

It doesn't, though. Proximus means next in a purely spatial sense: nearest-to, alongside, adjoining. But the name, or title, invented for this character isn't supposed to mean that this new Caesar occupies a physical propinquity to the long-dead original Caesar. It is clearly intended to point to a temporal succession. Heir to Caesar. Caesar's rightful successor. What the film wanted was Successor Caesar, or perhaps Hereditarius Caesar. But the scriptwriter presumably typed ‘next Caesar’ into Google Translate or equivalent and copied-down proximus from the list of options. This is indicative of a larger problem with online resources like Google Translate, of course; although one might think that a budget of $160 million dollars for the making of a movie might mean there was a modest fee available to pay someone to check the script's Latin. 

Chris Foss, “Diary of a Spaceperson” (London: Guild Publishing 1990)

 

Foss, born in 1946 on Guernsey, trained as an architecture student before becoming a professional artist. He produced many deftly realist black-and-white illustrations of copulating couples for Alex Comfort's erotic manual The Joy of Sex (1972), and also produced a large number of full colour paintings as book covers through the 1970s and 1980s, mostly science fiction. He worked with an airbrush, an adapted air-operated tool that atomizes and sprays paint with varying degrees of spread and focus, enabling him to create very fine gradations and shadings, mist effects and sheens, spotlights and starbursts. His architectural training is evident in the structural solidity and scale of his spaceships, the extrapolated flying-building quality.

By and large Foss did not attempt actually to illustrate the specific action of the book. He was not a fan of science fiction and preferred not to read the works he was commissioned to paint, working instead purely on his own inspiration. The lack of fit between cover and story has puzzled some readers, although I would say it adds to the mystique and glamour.

His fame grew through the 1980s, with Foss illustrating album covers, working on visualisations and designs for Jodorowsky’s celebrated, unmade Dune and also on the Traveller games. His work as cover-artist continued. Then, in 1990, he produced Diary of a Spaceperson.

There’s a moment in Monty Python’s Holy Grail film when Arthur and his kerrniggetts encounter the enchanter Tim, played with a exaggerated Scots accent and much wide-eyed mugging and scowling by John Cleese. Tim mops and mows, warns the group of the monstrous rabbit that awaits them, and shoots flames and explosions from his magic staff. Then Graham Chapman's Arthur turns his head to his men, and comments, sotto voce: ‘what an eccentric performance’.

That’s how I feel about this book.

One can imagine the publisher’s meeting out of which the idea came: ‘Hey, how about a large format full-colour book that reprints some of Chris Foss’s most magnificent SF cover artworks, blowing them up to full-page and double-page spreads!’ ‘Great idea!’ ‘And interspersed with those, we could bung in a bunch of soft-core pencil drawings of attractive young women with their tits out!’ ‘We could—wait, what?’ ‘And to tie it all together, a storyline—about a lovely young woman called J, just the letter, travelling the galaxy having various adventures! With her tits out! The stories can all take place inside Chris’s artwork!’ ‘Well ... I mean—shall we get a proper SF author to write the text?’ ‘No, no, I’m sure Chris can handle that himself.’ ‘Really? He’s on record as saying he’s no great fan of SF.’ ‘No matter! Art by Foss! Text by Foss! Naked breasts by Foss! It’s a winner!’

 And that is what we have. The story is told in the form of diary entries, printed in an irksome handwriting font that is genuinely hard to read. J moves from place to place, locations and plot determined by pre-existing Foss art. So, for example: there are a couple of Foss canvases of gigantic structures or spaceships against oceanic background. Therefore the story sends J to ‘New Venice’, a water-world.

By way of adding a little dramatic tension here, J is given an aversion to water: ‘I don’t believe it!’ she confines to her diary. ‘Assigned to Venice! That land of DIVS, PEABRAINS and NO HOPERS. What’s more I can’t stand water.’ Arriving at New Venice, this sentiment is reiterated. ‘WATER, at least Venice’s version of water—I DO NOT LIKE IT.’ In what ways the water of New Venice differs from regular H2O is not disclosed to us. J's water aversion has no narrative consequences. Indeed there is no real story on Venice. Peabrains, no-hopers and divs, oh my!

Then there’s this great Foss painting of a spaceship hauling ice through space, so the story sends J there, as a space-lumberjack, ‘marshalling in the Berg Park. Frozen water—YUGH!’ A page later and she's off to a planet upon which 10km tall cities, in constant motion, roll around a planetary railway track, ever keeping under the planet’s two suns to fuel their solar power.

We’re told that if a city in any way slows down it must be blown up, blasted off the track so as not to get in the way of the cities coming along behind. This perhaps doesn’t seem the most efficient use of resources, but there we go. J is there for a page and a half and then, away.

The randomly peripatetic adventures—kidnapped, topless, by space pirates! Marooned on a jungle planet, also topless! Caught in the middle of a space battle! Inseminated by an alien! (‘the reactor’s white hot, we’re pumping lead and my stomach has definitely got something inside it!! For God’s sake, humans are not supposed to be able to be fertilised by aliens’ ... stomach?)—is too bitty and inconclusive to hold the attention. Foss’s space-art is magnificent, but is demeaned, rather, by being forced to dance attendance on this piddling episodic story. And the many pencil-sketches of topless young women are just skeezy. You can see the lubricious cynicism of the pairing: you know who likes science fiction? Teenage boys. You know what else teenage boys like? Boobies. Let's combine them! It'll be a smash! It's Flasher Gordon. It's The Empire Strips Off. It's Book of the New Page-3-of-the-Sun. It's The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Nudity.

Foss’s grasp of science-fiction manifests a rather charming ineptness. At one point J travels to ‘Stasco 3, one of the biggest planets in this part of the sky, twice the size of the Earth’s sun’. Big! The sun's equatorial surface gravity is 274 m/s^2, 28 times earthly gravity, so one would assume Stasco 3 is going to be a squash and a squeeze. But no: J arrives, wanders happily around, although it takes her a little while to adjust to the new atmosphere (‘I tried a few breaths and had to have medication for my lungs’). This is how people dress on Stasco:

And that’s the one constant. On more than one occasion, J, wandering through some space-port or metropolis, is mugged at gunpoint, the thieves stealing all her money and all her clothes from the waist up. You think I’m joking, but I’m honestly not. It happens repeatedly. It’s like Kenny Everett’s flamboyant film-star being interviewed by Parkinson: ‘…and then suddenly all my clothes fall off!’

It's all done in the best Foss-ible taste.

Our 1862 Correspondent Writes: ‘War In The Air? It'll Never Take Off’

 

An article, from Littell's Living Age (13th September 1862), ‘A Voyage in the Air’, reports on two Victorian scientists, Henry Tracey Coxwell and James Glaisher, who ascended in a hot-air balloon to a height of some five miles.

These two gentlemen have ascended farther from the earth than any of their aëronautic predecessors; and Mr. Glaisher comes to the conclusion that “five miles from the earth is very nearly the limit of human existence.” Assuredly both he and his friend approached very closely the limit of their existence. Mr. Glaisher became utterly unconscious; Mr. Coxwell retained consciousness, but his hands were rendered black and powerless by the intense cold, and he could only turn the balloon downward by opening the valve with his teeth.

But the author of the article is unimpressed by this. The achievement is null, the stratosphere is a pointless arena for discovery, it will never be the site for trade or war.

It may be doubted whether Mr. Coxwell and Mr. Glaisher are doing much good by what, in newspaper English, are called their “Scientific Balloon Ascents.” They are incurring far greater risk than Blondin or Leotard. Their object is far nobler, for they desire to obtain some scientific information concerning the earth's atmosphere. But, is the game worth the candle? What real benefit can humanity possibly obtain from the knowledge that water freezes and pigeons cannot fly at five miles above the earth's surface? Luckily, we are none of us expected to live so far above that level. We are permitted to exist at a reasonable distance above the level of the sea. Notwithstanding Mr. Tennyson's rash prophecy, we cannot venture to believe that our posterity will do their trading and their fighting in balloons. They will suspect they will find the firm soil the most convenient place for a shindy. England has for many a year held mastery of the main

Ubicunque pontus est ibi Britannia est―

but we do not foresee a future of the nation which shall have the mastery of the air.

We do not know what special value may be attached to Mr. Glaisher's aërial observations; but, while we heartily admire the courage of himself and his companion, we doubt whether they have any substantial justification for their enterprise. Human life should not be foolishly risked. Risk it as you will for any heroic purpose-upon any enterprise whereby mankind shall profit. Is it, however, worth while to risk it in order to ascertain that the temperature is very cold at five miles above the earth? We cannot pretend to prejudge the effect of Mr. Glaisher's observations; but surely there is nothing of much consequence to be expected from them. Such balloon ascents as these appear to us to rank with our arctic expeditions; they show that there is nothing which a true Englishman fears to do; but they are entirely useless and futile so far as result is concerned. The temperature at six miles above us cannot be important to science, cannot certainly compensate the risk of the lives of two courageous and intelligent men. Messrs. Coxwell and Glaisher deserve admiration for their pluck, and reprobation for their foolhardiness.

That's them told. In other news, don't sign The Beatles in 1962: guitar bands are on the way out.

The Latin quoted is by Walter Savage Landor (from 1858's Dry Sticks, Fagoted) and means: ‘wheresoever is the sea, there is Britain.’

‘Wonka’ (2023; directed by Paul King)

Wonka was OK, fine, funny, though the plot didn’t make any sense. But then the film coasted along on the understanding that the plot didn’t have to make sense—it’s a whacky, whimsical world of *sings* pure imagination, so there's no need for its story to parse logically. And talking of singing: the new songs were weak-beer, and rather shown-up by the fact that, in addition to commissioning the new pieces, the production had also cleared the rights for three of the songs from the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie (directed by Mel Stuart, with Gene Wlder as Wonka): the trilling ‘Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka We Love You’, the aforementioned ‘Pure Imagination’, and the choric song:

Oompa loompa doompety doo
I've got a perfect puzzle for you
Oompa loompa doompety dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

What do you get when you reboot a film
Is there a chance that it will underwhelm?
Flogging your franchise just like a dead nag
Hoping to fill your moneybag.

... which rather showed-up the new songs as the unmemorable noodling they were.

Instead of coherent storytelling and character development, we get a jumble of CGI-heavy (rather gloopy CGI, much of it) set-pieces and song-and-dance numbers, strung together with the winsome charm of Chalamet—the film leaned a little too heavily on this, really—and a range of stalwart British comic actors gurning and looning, plus various globs of glucouse-sentimentality.

We learn Wonka’s backstory. His mother (Sally Hawkins) raises him on a longboat—her accent informs us that she is Irish, which means that she must have gone out of her way to adopt an American accent during her son’s formative years, such that he might grow up speaking like a Yank. Why she would undertake something so laborious and pointless is a little hard to fathom, but there you go. Anyway, she makes chocolate on the boat, and it’s the best chocolate in the world because of its secret ingredient, though she won’t tell young Willy what the secret ingredient is. Obviously secret ingredient is ‘love’ (the secret is flourished on a golden ticket at the movie’s end: ‘it’s not the chocolate, its sharing it with the people you love’). But we know that as soon as the matter is mentioned. Everybody knows. Everyone except young Willy, who presumably has an unusually literalist-materialist mind, and searches the world for an actual food-ingredient secret. At any rate, Ma dies, Willy spends seven years as a ship’s cook, and then lands at the coastal city—someplace European, Parisian maybe, Rome, Barcelona (the movie was filmed in that famously coastal metropolis Oxford and foregrounds all the famous Oxford tourist landmarks)—where he plans to establish a chocolate emporium. But, foolish ingénu that he is, he signs a contract for a single night’s lodging with wicked Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Coleman) and her henchman Bleacher (Tom Davis). Not having read the small print, he finds himself thrust into indentured servitude in their laundry business for a thousand years (or something), washing and cleaning, along with a clutch of other similar dupes: an accountant, a telephonist, a comedian, a cook. These four become his friends.

This abject slavery is a Dahl-y sort of touch, although it doesn’t hold Wonka. With the help of a fellow prisoner, a young orphan called Noodle (Calah Lane) he escapes daily, returning in time for roll-call every evening. In the days he somehow concocts and sells extraordinary and delicious chocolates, accumulating the money to pay off his and the others’ indentures. In this, and because his chocolates are so amazing, he falls foul of the ‘chocolate cartel’: Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Gerald Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Felix Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton). They, with the help of the corrupt, chocolate-addicted chief of police (Keegan-Michael Key), persecute Wonka: chase him off the streets, poison his chocolate, and, escalating matters, try repeatedly to kill him. But, with the help of his new friends, and a single Oompa-Loompa (Hugh Grant—playing the role as an orange-faced, super-posh Englishman), Wonka prevails.

There’s a lot to like in all this: I enjoyed it, laughed quite a bit, and came out thinking ‘yes, I can see why this film has been so well-received.’ The team behind Paddington have worked to generate a Paddington-ness of charm and warmth and humour. Wonka is not quite Paddington but it’s close enough for government work. I mean, as I say, the story doesn't make a lot of sense. Mrs Scrubitt’s enslavement is too easily escaped-from, and presents no impediment to Wonka doing whatever he wants, which renders it rather pointless. The police have to be simultaneously corrupt, in the pocket of Big Chocolate, and impartial upholders of the law, such that by presenting them with the ledger that records all the Chocolate Cartel’s delinquencies Wonka can ensure justice is served, the three rivals locked up, which is somewhat contradictory. Willy himself is both penniless and yet able to refit and stock a huge chocolate emporium with the sort of fixtures and displays and quantities of materiel that would cost millions. And the film ends in a sugary rush, so hurriedly that it doesn’t finish several of its storylines, and Hugh Grant must oompa-limp into the scrolling credits to inform us what happened to the various other characters. But it is bootless to object to these contradictions, as I say.

It's a film more in dialogue with the 1971 movie than Dahl’s original novel: and as is the way with prequels it somewhat lumpishly tips forward to what we know the character will become—Wonka leaving his walking stick standing on the ground, ‘strike that, reverse it’, him unwrapping his mother’s last gift to him, a home-made chocolate bar, and finding a message from her inside written upon a golden ticket.

Chocolate, in this movie, is pleasure; it is sustenance and it is community—friendship, love, ‘what matters is not the chocolate but the people you share it with.’ But it is also money, in some places literally so: customers at Wonka’s shop pay for what they buy with banknotes, and are offered the choice of taking their change as money or as chocolate, opting for the latter. Chocolate makes Willy rich. But chocolate is also temptation—Rowan Atkinsons’ venal priest, unable to resist the treats with which the Chocolate Cartel bribe him, moaning that he is a miserable sinner but helpless. Chocolate is corruption. This is also a way of talking about money, of course; and that Slugworth, Prodnose and Fickelgruber operate their cartel in the crypt of the cathedral links pleasure, money, corruption and religion. The cartel stores all its chocolate (a billion tonnes, or something) in a huge shared vat under the church, which, like the redemptive-baptismal moment at the end of Manon de Source, Wonka redirects to a giant public fountain, so that everybody can enjoy the somehow heated-and-liquidised stuff, delicious mugs of hot-chocolate in the snow.

Chocolate is also a commodity, and it comes from elsewhere than Oxford (or Paris, or Rome, or wherever this movie is set). Its history is bound-up with imperialism, colonialism. In a gesture towards this, we learn that Willy Wonka, presumably during his time as a ship’s cook, rowed himself ashore at the island where the Oompa Loompa’s live and stole their three cocoa beans. Hugh Grant’s Loompa is sent away by his fellows to pursue Wonka and revenge this theft: for when you steal from an Oompa Loompa they repay you a thousand times. This means that Grant’s little chap keeps stealing Wonka’s chocolate and will continue so to do until he has brought a thousand times the initial loss back to his people. Or something: this is a little obscure actually—how did Willy turn three raw beans into his entire chocolate supply? How is Grant's Oompa going to repair the loss to his island nation if he keeps eating the Wonka chocolate he steals? But there is something interesting going on here, to do with the depredations and theft of colonialism, and the logic of reparation.

This in turn foregrounds questions of race. The world of the movie is ostentatiously multi-racial, a place beyond racism, in which good and bad are judged by the content of their characters rather than the colour of their skin. But the historical structures of racism lurk behind the whole conceit.

Take the representation of the Oompa Loompas in this movie. Hugh Grant, digitally reduced, is as poshly English as all get-out. But there's a history to the representation of the Oompa Loompas that contextualises the film-makers decision to write Grant's character, and cast Grant.

In the first edition of Dahl's novel (published in 1964 in the US, and a year later in the UK) the Oompa-Loompas are pygmy Black Africans:

They live in the jungle with only squashed insects and caterpillars for food; Wonka visits them, promises to give them all the chocolate they can eat if they agree to come and work for him. So they do: they travel to wherever the chocolate factory is located (England, America—the book doesn't specify). They live and work in the factory; they are never allowed to leave; they get no money for their labour; Wonka insists they are happy. That is to say, they are, straightforwardly, African slaves working for a white overlord. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a hidden-in-plain-view celebration of Western colonial exploitation.

In one sense I'm being, I know, deliberately over-literal. Wonka's chocolate factory is a fantasy realm, more like Alice's wonderland than any real factory. Fine. But the racial problematic of these Black African Oompa-loompas was sensitive enough, even in the 1960s, to mean that they couldn't stand. ‘It didn’t occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist,’ Dahl later claimed; ‘but it did occur to the NAACP and others ... which is why I revised the book.’ So in later editions they became miniature white hippies from Loompaland, although still dressed in the sort of rags more often associated with ‘savages’:

Then came 1971, and the movie (which Dahl himself hated, although it made him a ton of money and boosted his sales considerably) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, in which the Oompa Loompa's are reimagined again:

This is surely the most famous visual iteration, and it's the one 2023's Wonka copies, although it is, when you look at it, pretty damn peculiar. I suppose the idea was to remove the Oompas from racial representations altogether and reposition them as creatures of pure fantasy. But of course the repressed—here, 'race'—always returns, and with a vengeance, as Freud says it always must. Because these improbable-looking individuals are so emphatically Irish-flag in their coloration, so green, white and orange, that they shoot straight past 'vaguely leprechaun in provenance' (which, one presumes, is what the director was aiming at) and land on race again: another ethnic group, driven from their land by famine, working mostly as laborers, subaltern, subject to discrimination and so on. Irish-Americans do not have the same depths of malignity in their historical backstory as African-Americans, of course; but there's certainly been no shortage of anti-Irish racism in the West. Burton's more recent movie adaptation split the difference, racially, by using CGI to create a whole army of Oompa Loompas all played by one man, Kenyan-born British-Indian actor Deep Roy.

At least this is a mode of representation that acknowledges ‘race’ to be a salient. Quentin Blake's decision to re-imagine the baseline Oompa Loompa as, basically, an over-hair-gelled Sting looks like its trying too hard to avoid the issue of the otherness of White Western racial representation:

On the manifest level (as it were) this is a comic fantasia about how wonderful it would be to be plucked from childish poverty by an eccentric billionaire and given the keys to a chocolate factory; but we can also read it on, as it were, the latent level precisely as a fantasy of imperial domination: the sweetness (the wealth) extracted from Africa by imperial appropriation. After all, as a young man Dahl had been an agent of Empire, working for the Shell Oil company in Tanganyika (modern-day, Tanzania), living in luxury with many Black servants to cook, clean and attend him, in a large house outside Dar-es Salaam. His account of this period in his life in Going Solo (1986), though entertaining, is marinated in unconsidered racism to such a degree it makes genuinely uncomfortable reading today. The Black Africans Dahl describes are simple-hearted, loyal, bright-eyed servants to a man. When war breaks out, Dahl organises some of them against the anticipated German invasion of Tanganyika, and they reveal reserves of savagery. They could not be more representative of a particular Western imperial stereotype.

It all makes me wonder if the ‘latent’ meaning of these kids and their visit to the chocolate factory, in Dahl's novel and the 1971 film, is less hidden than we might think. Chocolate is one of the sweet fruits of colonial exploitation of Africa. The old coloniser (let's call him, ‘Willy Won-Kurtz’) must pass over his imperial possessions to a worthy heir: the material wealth, the means of production, the black slaves who labour for him, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. So, from the point of view of a dedicated British imperialist: who are the rivals for this possession?

Germany, for one: Dahl literally took up arms to prevent German expansion in East Africa. No, the Germans are not (so far as Dahl is concerned) worthy of this prize. And so it is that Augustus Gloop, the greedy ‘Bavarian Beefcake’, is the first to go, plunging into the chocolate river, and thereby choking on his own imperial ambition.

Who else's rival colonial-African ambitions might interfere with British manifest destiny in the continent? The Belgians? The French? Violet Beauregarde, with her egregiously Francophone surname, is next to go. Who else? Well there's ‘Capitalism’, wealthy but vacuous, owing allegience to no one nation but willing to despoil all for profit, and represented here by the spoiled brat Veruca Salt and her billionaire father. Mere money, without even the fig-leaf of imperial ideology, is mere rubbish, and down the rubbish chute it goes. That leaves only one global power: America, here represented by the television- obsessed shallowness of Mike Teevee, more concerned with his narcissistic desire to be on the gogglebox than anything else. One by one Dahl shoves them out of the frame, leaving only good honest Charlie Bucket: salt of the earth, incorruptible, neither too wealthy nor too foreign, the proper heir to take over all these imperial holdings when the time comes to poke our head round the door and announce ‘Mr Won-Kurz—he dead’. A-choc-alypse Now.

That was 1964/1971. What about now? This colourblind diverse metropolis, elegant and beautiful; this frolicsome, light-hearted, sentimental comedy and singalong story; this celebration of sweetness and chocolate-ness—what is unerneath it? What is stored in the cache beneath religion, beneath civilisation, the logic of money, or power: a vast choking reservoir of dark stuff. ‘When you steal from an us,’ says Hugh Grant's upper-class English character, ‘we revenge ourselves a thousand fold.’ Who is stealing from whom?