Pilgrimage to Ronald Firbank

                                     The Firbank Beneath My Feet

    A Tribute to Ronald Firbank from Monty Dart and William Cross, FSA Scot

The Firbank Beneath My Feet is an hour length talk and illustrated presentation first given to the Newport and Gwent Literary Club's AGM on 28 April 2010.  For the last two years Monty Dart and Will Cross have been renovating Ronald Firbank's previously neglected grave in Rome's Campo Verano Cemetery. 

The Firbank Beneath My Feet

                                             A Tribute To Ronald Firbank From Monty Dart And Will Cross

Arthur Annersley Ronald Firbank 1886-1926

                                                           Writer : A teller of fairy tales for grown up people

Born in London in 1886, of wealthy antecedents, his grandfather Joseph( 1819-86) made his pile from the railways and lived at St Julians House, Newport, South Wales.  Ronald’s father was Sir Joseph Thomas Firbank, ( 1850-1910) sometime an MP, and his mother was Jane Harriette Garrett, who was of Irish descent.  He was educated at Uppingham School,  learned languages abroad and later attended Trinity College, Cambridge from 1906-9, where he was a contemporary of the war poet Rupert Brooke and Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland.

 

First known as “Arthur”  he was a sickly child, spoilt by his mother, he converted to Roman Catholic in 1907. In aduldhood Firbank  “cut a  figure as a rich, shy and utterly fastidious dandy”. He frequented the Café Royal and Eiffel Tower ( two  fashionable London restaurants ). Here he was tolerated and indulged by his artistic and literary  contemporaries including Hon Evan Morgan, Augustus John, Nancy Cunard, E M Foster, Wyndham Lewis, Alvaro Guevara and Aldous Huxley. Artists Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis and Alvaro Guevara all painted Firbank’s portrait. 

A great Romophile and close associate of Gerald, Lord Berners, he spent his last days in Rome.

The London Times records :  DEATHS : FIRBANK : On the 21 May, at Rome, ARTHUR ANNESLEY RONALD FIRBANK, eldest and only surviving son of the late Sir Joseph Thomas Firbank and Lady Harriette Jane Firbank of St Julians, Newport, Mon, aged 40.

 

Renovations of Ronald Firbank's Grave in Rome

For the last two years Monty Dart and Will Cross have been renovating Ronald's Firbank's previously neglected grave in a small corner of Rome's Campo Verano Cemetery.  How Monty and Will rediscovered the grave is a herculean tale in itself.    The transformation of Firbanks's last resting place is still continuing.

 

Ronald Firbank's Books

Ronald Firbank was a very clever young man, his books ( some mentioned below ) are long sustained and complex epigrams.

1905 : Odette  d’ Antrevernes

1915  : Vainglory

1916 : Inclinations

1917 : Caprice

1919 : Valmouth

1920 : The Princess Zoubaroff

1921 : Santal

1923 : The Flower Beneath the Foot

1924 : Prancing Nigger  ( aka Sorrow in Sunlight)

1926 : Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli.

 

Opinions on Ronald Firbank

One critic records " Nothing very much happens. There is much innuendo, much winking and leering and a sometimes fatal tendency to "naughtiness." 

Vyvyan Holland ( who knew Firbank at Cambridge ) says “ I always think of Ronald Firbank as an unhappy man who luckily for him, had the power of expressing himself through his books.”

Nancy Cunard said of Firbank “ He was like a dipping strand of willow with a nerve of steel, and that “ something” floating bending but unbreakable in him is, of course, the integrity of the good artist.”

Ifan Kyrle Fletcher ( the subject of Monty and Will's next presentation to the Newport and Gwent Literary Club, at its 2011 AGM )  shared Newport links with Firbank. He also wrote an early Memoir. “ While others thought of vice and virtue, he was concerned about vulgarity and elegance.” 

“ …..the reclusive dandy-novelist Ronald Firbank, a man so consumed by shyness that he once spent a dinner party hiding under the table.”   D J Taylor ( 2009)

 

“Firbank was chained to the lost, golden and probably imaginary years of childhood.” Anon.

 

“ Very Ronald Firbank, Catholic and camp at the same time.” Anon.

Firbank wanted to join the Papal Guard because of the black, red and yellow uniform, the yellow stockings and buckled shoes, but was rejected.

Firbank’s Characters : Hon "Eddy" Monteith

In The Flower Beneath The Foot is Hon. “ Eddy” Monteith ( a parody of Hon. Evan Morgan, later Viscount Tredegar (1893-1949) ) "who dies of fright  at the  sight of a jackal while composing a sonnet before the excavations of Chedorlahomor.”

Firbank Quotes:

Hon. Eddy Monteith, son of Lord Intriguer of Intriquer House, ( a parody of the Morgan family pile at Tredegar House, Tredegar Park, Newport, South Wales )  taking his bath amid irreverent thoughts:

 

“ Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his manservant deftly bathed him, he fell into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance.  Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed with Kiki, he was St Sebastain, and as the water became cloudier, and the crystals evaporated amid the steam, he was Teresa…and he would have bee n,most likely, the Blessed Virgin herself but that the bath grew gradually cold.”

 

 

Further Reading About Ronald Firbank 

 

Ronald Firbank : Memoirs and Critques ( 1977) M Horder

( this includes  Ifan Kyrle Fletcher’s Memoir of 1930).

Brooke, Jocelyn. Ronald Firbank. New York: Roy Publishers, 1951.

Ronald Firbank : A Biography ( 1969) M J Benkovitz

Prancing Novelist : (1973)  A Defence of Fiction in the Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank;

by B Brophy.

 

 

Monty Dart and William Cross FSA Scot

Monty Dart and William Cross are based in Newport, Gwent, South Wales, UK. They  research and write together under the name of "Dartford Crossing". 

http://dartfordcrossing2.tripod.com/

 

They have recently published  " A Beautiful Nuisance : The Life and Death of the Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan "  a full length biography of the Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan ( 1895-1924), the wayward daughter of Courtenay Charles Evan Morgan (1867-1934) and Lady Katharine Agnes Blanche Carnegie ( 1867-1949), the first Viscount and Viscountess Tredegar.

http://gwyneth-erica-morgan.tripod.com/

 

 

William Cross FSA, Scot,  ( Will)  is a writer and researcher based in Newport, Gwent, South Wales, UK. He is currently writing a book about the actress Tilly Losch,  The Dancing Countess of Carnarvon. Tilly was the second 6th Countess of Carnarvon, the second wife of Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon of Highclere Castle ( the setting for TV's Downton Abbey). The book on Tilly Losch will be published in the Spring of 2013.   Will Cross is also  the controversial biographer of Almina,  the 5th Countess of Carnarvon including author of " The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon" , " Lady Carnarvon's Nursing Homes" and " The Dustbin Case:  Dennistoun v Dennistoun.",  the latter of which explores a mud raking court  case that  Almina became embroiled in during 1925, involving her second husband, Colonel Ian Onslow Dennistoun.   Almina was first the wife of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon,  the co- discoverer ( with Howard Carter  ) of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Will is also the author of " Lordy! Tutankhamun's Patron As a Young Man",  and the co-author with Monty Dart of two books on the Morgans of Tredegar House,   " A Beautiful Nuisance : The Life and Death of the Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan" ( whose body was fished from the River Thames in 1925 ) and " Aspects fo Evan : The Last Viscount Tredegar" ( which includes a transcript of Evan's Court Martial in 1943, for offences against the Official Secrets Acts).   In 2013 Monty and Will intend to publish  " The Five Lady Tredegars" a book which will sweep in further details on Rosamond's six daughters.  Please feel free to contact  Will Cross for further details on this and other projects.   williecross@aol.com

 

Make a free website with Yola