Paint My Death Portrait In Mauve
I’m currently reading “The Flower Beneath the Foot,” a novella by Ronald Firbank. Here’s what W.H. Auden, the plagerizer of himself, said about Firbank’s work:
“A person who dislikes Ronald Firbank may, for all I know, possess some admirable quality, but I do not wish ever too see him again.”
(I had to grammar check myself like three times when re-typing that sentence, because I glanced at it briefly, and then transcribed the verb order completely wrong. “Dammit, why do you always break up infinitives with adverbs,” I screamed when comparing the two versions.)
I must say, I’m quite enjoying Firbank myself, whose work could benefit from the kind of family tree you see at the beginning of fantasy novels—I can’t remember who any of the characters he writes about are, or where they came from—but is nevertheless very funny.
There are also passages that are exquisitely written.
“Poised flatly against the vase’s sculptured plinth, she would have scarcely been discernible but for the silver glitter of her gown,” he wrote of Olga Blumenghast, “whose exotic attraction had aroused not a few heart-burnings.”
“The bitter odour of the oleander flowers outside oppressed the breathless air and filled the room as with a faint funereal music. So still a day. Tending the drooping sun-saturated flowers, a gardener with long ivory arms alone seemed animate,” he said of a death bed.
“I want mauve sweet peas,” he placed in the mouth of her Dreaminess, the Queen of Pisuerga.
Basically the story is a comedy of manners about a royal court somewhere between England and Persia. Given the reference to mauve, which was Queen Alexandra Romanov’s favorite color—so much so that all of her rooms were decorated with it—I assume the court is, at least vaguely, Russian. I haven’t quite finished the novella yet, but given the association, I’m hoping for a bloody ending.
