Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb

Author:Antal Szerb [Antal Szerb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906548513
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2013-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

1932

FIN DE SIÈCLE

THE CHESHIRE CHEESE PUB in London is famous for having remained exactly as it was when the great Dr Johnson, that commanding figure of eighteenth-century English literature, sat there and delivered his immortal banalities, so faithfully recorded for posterity by the assiduous Boswell. The most distinguished poets of the age have met there ever since. Towards the end of the last century, for example, it was here that Tyrconnel, Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson and John Davidson held their weekly reunions.

On this particular occasion only three of the quartet were present, Tyrconnel, Dowson and Johnson. Tyrconnel was holding forth. He was a languorous, deeply unconventional Irish poet, as signified by the single curl of silky black hair that strayed so casually over his forehead. Hardly a week went by without his having made some new mystical discovery, some fresh instance of telepathy, perhaps, or some interesting notes he had come across inserted by an archangel into a piece of Old Irish prose. He chatted away about such things with the easy familiarity and volubility with which others might discuss a football match. This was in marked contrast to Lionel Johnson, who would deliver his observations about the weather in the manner of a revelation: “There was a thick fog in Chelsea this morning,” he would regularly announce, and glare balefully around the room, his hand clapped on some invisible sword.

“You deal out a pack of cards marked with mystical symbols,” Tyrconnel was saying. “The important thing is the square grid on the back of the card. It gives you the matrix in which the secret meaning is contained. Then, if an adept studies the cards at a particular hour of the night, his visions will correspond directly with the symbols. If the card stands for Public Esteem, he will be looking at his future career. If he draws the symbol for Heaven, he will learn the nature of the greatest happiness that lies in store for him…”

“Very interesting,” observed Lionel Johnson, with his customary decisiveness.

Tyrconnel’s face reddened slightly.

“I wouldn’t be telling you all this, Johnson, if I hadn’t seen some extremely convincing experiments carried out in our little group.”

“In our little group” was a regular saying of his, though it was never quite clear in what species of secret institution or laboratory these improbable researches were conducted. Johnson and Dowson never asked. They were afraid that he might already have told them, only they hadn’t been listening at the time.

After this, Johnson spoke about his new Tractatus, in which he would show once and for all that Bloody Mary had been quite right to send the Protestant martyrs to the stake. Tyrconnel listened with great interest. He did not for a moment believe in Johnson’s Catholicism, any more than Johnson did in his mystical anecdotes. He knew that it was all part of the business of being a poet, the licensed eccentricity of the poet’s view of the world. The precise nature of the world view didn’t matter—what did

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