Synopsis
In his delightful Collected Tales and Fantasies, the legendary eccentric English writer and composer Lord Berners (1883-1950) maintains a quiet grace, razor-sharp wit and unique sense of the absurd that is entirely sui generis. Berners offers an unforgettable cast of characters in these gem-like works of short fiction collected here. In "Far from the Madding War," set in Oxford during wartime, the heroine, Emmeline Pocock, looks "like a nymph in one of the less licentious pictures of Fragonard, " while in "Count Omega" we read of composer Emanuel Smith (based on William Walton), who becomes infatuated with a young giantess named Madame Gloria, who is guarded by a jealous millionaire's eunuch, and whose virtuosity on trombone seems to offer the perfect climax to the symphony Smith is composing. In "The Camel," a baroque Victorian tale with utterly macabre undertones, a humped quadruped takes a Fancy for a vicar's wife, while in "The Romance of the Nose," Cleopatra herself appears. And these are only some of the fanciful creations that populate these literary treasures!
Reviews
A flamboyant, wealthy aesthete, the 14th Baron Berners (1883-1950) was, in no particular order, a composer, writer, painter, musical collaborator with Sacheverell Sitwell and Gertrude Stein, and friend of John Betjeman, Rosamond Lehmann and Nancy Mitford. This omnibus of six of his arch, epigrammatic stories and short novels recalls H.H. "Saki" Munro in their light comedy, displayed in such disparate situations as that of a disruptive camel who adopts a village vicar's wife; palace intrigue set in a late-Ptolemaic kingdom; an inheritance-sabotaging lapdog; or academic life during wartime. The most amusing of these, "The Romance of a Nose," features a young Cleopatra seeking proto-plastic surgery to alter her profile and change the face of the Roman world. There is always an air of pastiche in Berners's style, and his characters are often parodic studies of British high society; in "Count Omega," the mercurial title character's hapless prot?g?, Emanuel Smith, is a lightly fictionalized version of Sitwell-crony and composer William Walton. Berners lances (and not without homoerotic tension) the masculine anxiety in and around one "Percy Wallingford," an exasperatingly perfect young man of whom a worshipful classmate says, "The Greek God had descended from Olympus but had lost nothing in his transition to earth." As the aesthete-at-loose-ends, Lord FitzCricket in the WWII academic soft-satire "Far from the Madding War," confesses, "I'm... fundamentally superficial. I am also private spirited." Readers may find this also applies to the eccentric aristocrat Berners's writings, but for those who like their short fiction light, the sugary surreality of these whimsies may provide amusement. (May) FYI: Berners's two-volume autobiography, First Childhood and A Distant Prospect, was released in 1998 by Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Bernerss follow-up to his memoirs (First Childhood; A Distant Prospect; both 1998) displays his gift for pleasantly campy patrician fiction in the form of the short novel. His real name was Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (18831950). He was called ``the English Satie'' (composer of an opera with Gertrude Stein, a ballet for Diaghilev); he painted capably in the manner of Corot; he was lampooned by Nancy Mitford, in The Pursuit of Love, as the whimsical Lord Merlin; and he kept hundreds of brightly dyed pink pigeons on his lavish country estate at Farringdon. The winking little comedies here (apparently in their first US publication) at times present the authors young male friends as naughty schoolgirls with Berners himself as their headmistress. ``Percy Wallingford'' draws a picture of the perfect specimen, a male of absolute accomplishment on the playing field and everywhere else, whose supreme charisma can draw guests to an otherwise dull weekend gathering. The infallible Wallingford, who cant stand to be bested at anything, marries Vera, who, alas, can see in the dark and observe Wallingford while he sleeps. This so torments, disorders, confuses, and cramps him that he begins to suspect that everyone else has at least one secret gift superior to his. When Vera dies of accidental suffocation, Wallingford falls into suicidal remorse on the eve of WWI. In The Camel,'' a humped four- legger appears on a vicarage front porch and becomes a surreal good fairy. When Antonia, the vicar's wife, begins riding the camel about the parish, the thankful animal makes all her wishes come true, though its absurd abilities lead at last to tragedy. ``Count Omega'' finds Berners lampooning fellow composer William Walton, who falls in love with Gloria, a larger-than-life trombonist who, like the archangel Gabriel, emits a golden light when she plays. Should lead to a gala Berners rebirth among cultists of the ultra-elegant. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This fiction collection is Turtle Points follow-up to Bernerss two autobiographical volumes, published last year (Classic Returns, LJ 10/15/98). Selections range from a novella (Percy Wallingford) to a collection of stories (Far from the Madding War). All of the pieces feature Bernerss understated irony.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gerald Tyrwhitt, a.k.a. Lord Berners (1883^-1950), was a legitimate English lord who dyed the pigeons on his estate fanciful colors. He wore many amusing hats in his lifetime: diplomat in Constantinople and Rome; composer hailed by Stravinsky as one of the twentieth-century's best; and painter who traveled in the company of Picasso and Dali. He was also the author of hilarious, campy, and compelling fiction, as shown by these six delightful novellas. In "Mr. Pidger," a woman's giddy devotion to her Pomeranian claims her inheritance, her marriage, and, ultimately, the life of her stupefied husband. "Count Omega" chronicles the dreamlike rise and fall of a composer whose muse comes from an elusive and sinister patron. And in the DeMille-worthy "Romance of a Nose," a well-known Egyptian queen seeks political success through a modern medical procedure: "What is this plastic surgery?" the queen asks hopefully. The sharpness of Berners' prose and the fullness of each story elevate the work to more than clever stunts. Last year, the same publishers rereleased two of Berners' autobiographical volumes, First Childhood and A Distant Episode. James Klise
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