The Collected Connoisseur by Mark Valentine & Howard John

Author:Mark Valentine & Howard John [Valentine, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tartarus Press
Published: 2011-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

The Black Eros

When I made my way one evening to the rooms of The Connoisseur, collector of the recondite, I was surprised to hear music emanating from within, and as I entered I heard its brittle crackle peter out. My friend carefully raised a gramophone recording from its place on a green velveteen-coated turntable below a great brass horn, and replaced it in a frail brown paper sleeve. He sighed, then, beckoning me to be seated, he stirred the surly coals in the grate to a hissing life with a gargoyle-handled poker, and began this account:

‘You remember that cubist-influenced arts house in Worcestershire, which I helped to restore? Lucifer Hall. Well, after a while, we looked about for other events to put on, in keeping with its past reputation and its unusual design. Word got around, and as a member of the Trust, I had a visit from Julian Griffin, the author of Wild Men in Wing Collars, the best history of the British dance bands of the 1920s and 30s. He took his title, incidentally, from an irascible remark made by a guardian of morals in those days, who could not understand how such immaculately-dressed and exquisitely-groomed youths could give themselves over to what he termed “primitive rhythms and the hubbub of savages”. It is perhaps difficult for us to imagine now, but the frivolity and the abandon of that music was seen by some as a threat to the very civilisation of the day—that same civilisation, incidentally, that had just wiped out thousands of men in the mud-holes of the Front.

‘Griffin, it seemed, had been researching some of the stranger shores of the dance bands’ tunes and wanted to put on the premiere concert of these with his own revival orchestra, The Midnight Room—named after a notorious jazz club which Scotland Yard closed down due to its rather too avid licentiousness. I put this proposal to the trustees, and we thought it was just the thing—we knew that Barwick-Fowkes, who founded the Hall, was an admirer of all that was new and bold, and we thought it likely that concerts of this kind had once been held there.

‘We held the recital in the upper floor, with a greenish dusk stealing through the slanting windows, dim prisms of light on their angular standards lurking in corners of the room, the trapezoidal tables and sleek, slim chairs set out in a haphazard way. There were cocktails in tall white conical glasses, and glistening olives in silver crescent dishes. Griffin’s Septet soon made itself heard above the excited babble, with a set that comprised all the most curious numbers that he had been able to find from his assiduous researches. Leading, intoning the nonsensical or fanciful words in faultlessly precise diction, or coaxing sinuous melodies from his soprano saxophone, his crest of golden hair giving him something of the appearance of his heraldic namesake, he was a great success. We heard “Bolshevick Rag”, a frantic tribute to the Russian Revolution, “The

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