AFFAIRS IN POICTESME

James Branch Cabell

The earliest series of comic heroic fantasies were the satirical ‘Poictesme’ books by the American writer James Branch Cabell, which began with The Eagle’s Shadow (1904) and continued at the rate of one title a year for almost twenty years, concluding with The Lineage of Lichfield in 1922. Known by the generic title of ‘The Biography of the Life of Manuel’, the stories are all set in a medieval world—which the author based loosely on thirteenth-century Provence—and followed the supernatural adventures of Manuel the Redeemer, a giant young swineherd who sets out on a quest to advance himself and is aided, first, by a great magician, Miramor Lluagor, and then by Niafer, a young woman he meets dressed in boy’s clothing. According to Cabell, Manuel is either a great national hero destined to save his nation or—and I quote— ‘a sleazy rogue who reels blunderingly from mystery to mystery, with pathetic make­shifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with poltroonery’.

Notwithstanding such conflicts of opinion, Manuel began to build up a following among readers while at the same time puzzling and occasionally outraging certain American literary critics: all of which marked Cabell out as a highly individual writer of heroic fantasy who has, in his turn, influenced later writers including James Blish (who for a time edited the Cabell Society journal) and Philip Jose Farmer in his tetralogy, The Maker of Universes (1965-1970).

James Branch Cabell (1879—1958) was born in Richmond, Vir­ginia, where he lived for much of his life, working during his early years as a local newspaperman. He developed a particular interest in genealogical charts which became the inspiration for his first sardonic fantasies written in the early 1900s. From his research Cabell also evolved the make-believe world of Poictesme, although the series did not really take off until the appearance in 1919 of the controversial bawdy volume, Jurgen. In this, the exploits of a pagan sex goddess named Anaitis in a town called Cockaigne so enraged the authorities that Cabell was prosecuted for obscenity and the book was banned in Boston. At once Jurgen and Cabell became a cause celebre—with supporters like H. L. Mencken declaring the volume to be a ‘work of genius’—which made the author famous overnight and turned his Poictesme series into best-sellers. Today the erotic elements in Jurgen seem tame, consisting mainly of double entendres that are certainly amusing but never offensive.

What Everett F. Bleiler has called ‘a foundation work of satirical fantasy’ was Figures of Earth, published in 1921. Here is a self-contained episode from it, which I believe captures the flavour of what is undeniably another of the landmarks in comic fantasy.

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They of Poictesme narrate how Manuel and Niafer travelled east a little way and then turned toward the warm South; and how they found a priest to marry them, and how Manuel confiscated two horses. They tell also how Manuel victoriously encountered a rather terrible dragon at La Flèche, and near Orthez had trouble with a Groach, whom he conquered and imprisoned in a leather bottle, but they say that otherwise the journey was uneventful.

‘And now that every obligation is lifted, and we are reunited, my dear Niafer,’ says Manuel, as they sat resting after his fight with the dragon, ‘we will, I repeat, be travelling everywhither, so that we may see the ends of this world and may judge them.’

‘Dearest,’ replied Niafer, ‘I have been thinking about that, and I am sure it would be delightful, if only people were not so perfectly horrid.’

‘What do you mean, dear snip?’

‘You see, Manuel, now that you have fetched me back from para­dise, people will be saying you ought to give me, in exchange for the abodes of bliss from which I have been summoned, at least a fairly comfortable and permanent terrestrial residence. Yes, dearest, you know what people are, and the evil-minded will be only too delighted to be saying everywhere that you are neglecting an obvious duty if you go wandering off to see and judge the ends of this world, with which, after all, you have really no especial concern.’

‘Oh, well, and if they do?’ says Manuel, shrugging lordlily. ‘There is no hurt in talking.’

‘Yes, Manuel, but such shiftless wandering, into uncomfortable places that nobody ever heard of, would have that appearance. Now there is nothing I would more thoroughly enjoy than to go travelling about at adventure with you, and to be a countess means nothing whatever to me. I am sure I do not in the least care to live in a palace of my own, and be bothered with fine clothes and the responsibility of looking after my rubies, and with servants and parties every day. But you see, darling, I simply could not bear to have people thinking ill of my dear husband, and so, rather than have that happen, I am willing to put up with these things.’

‘Oh, ah!’ says Manuel, and he began pulling vexedly at his little grey beard, ‘and does one obligation beget another as fast as this! Now whatever would you have me do?’

‘Obviously, you must get troops from King Ferdinand, and drive that awful Asmund out of Poictesme.’

‘Dear me!’ says Manuel, ‘but what a simple matter you make of it. Shall I attend to it this afternoon?’

‘Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not possibly reconquer all Poictesme this afternoon.’

‘Oh!’ says Manuel.

‘No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get troops to help you, both horse and foot.’

‘My dearest, I only meant—’

‘Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill off all the Northmen.’

‘Niafer, will you let me explain—’

‘Besides, you are miles away from Poictesme. You could not even manage to get there this afternoon.’

Manuel put his hand over her mouth. ‘Niafer, when I spoke of subjugating Poictesme this afternoon I was attempting a mild joke. I will never any more attempt light irony in your presence, for I perceive that you do not appreciate my humour. Meanwhile, I repeat to you, No, no, a thousand times, no! To be called Count of Poictesme sounds well, it strokes the hearing: but I will not be set to root and vegetate in a few hundred spadefuls of dirt. No, for I have but one lifetime here, and in that lifetime I mean to see this world and all the ends of this world, that I may judge them. And I,’ he concluded decisively, ‘am Manuel, who follow after my own thinking and my own desire.’

Niafer began to weep. ‘I simply cannot bear to think of what people will say of you.’

‘Come, come, my dear,’ says Manuel, ‘this is preposterous.’

Niafer wept.

‘You will only end by making yourself ill!’ says Manuel.

Niafer continued to weep.

‘My mind is quite made up,’ says Manuel, ‘so what, in God’s name, is the good of this?’

Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big champion sat looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He viciously kicked at the heavy glistening green head of the dragon, still bleeding uglily there at his feet, but that did no good whatever. The dragon-queller was beaten. He could do nothing against such moisture, his resolution was dampened and his independence was washed away by this salt flood. And they say too that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he acknowledged.

‘Very well, then,’ Manuel says, by and by, ‘let us cross the Loir, and ride south to look for your infernal coronet with the rubies in it, and for your servants and for your fine home.’

So in the Christmas holidays they bring a fine burly squinting grey-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the royal palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo and his goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The King was delighted by the change in Manuel’s looks, and said that experience and maturity were fine things to be suggested by the appearance of a nobleman in Manuel’s position. But, a pest! as for giving him any troops with which to conquer Poictesme, that was quite another matter. The King needed his own soldiers for his own ends, which necessitated the immediate capture of Cordova. Meanwhile, here were the Prince de Gâtinais and the Marquess di Paz, who also had come with this insane request, the one for soldiers to help him against the Philistines, and the other against the Catalans.

‘Everybody to whom I ever granted a fief seems to need troops nowadays,’ the King grumbled, ‘and if any one of you had any judgement whatever you would have retained your lands once they were given you.’

‘Our deficiencies, sire,’ says the young Prince de Gâtinais, with considerable spirit, ‘have not been altogether in judgement, but rather in the support afforded us by our liege-lord.’

This was perfectly true; but inasmuch as such blunt truths are not usually flung at a king and a saint, now Ferdinand’s thin brows went up.

‘Do you think so?’ said the King. ‘We must see about it. What is that, for example?’

He pointed to the pool by which the lemon-trees were watered, and the Prince glanced at the yellow object afloat in this pool. ‘Sire,’ said de Gâtinais, ‘it is a lemon which has fallen from one of the trees.’

‘So you judge it to be a lemon. And what do you make of it, di Paz?’ the King inquired.

The Marquess was a statesman who took few chances. He walked to the edge of the pool, and looked at the thing before committing himself: and he came back smiling. ‘Ah, sire, you have indeed con­trived a cunning sermon against hasty judgement, for, while the tree is a lemon-tree, the thing that floats beneath it is an orange.’

‘So you, Marquess, judge it to be an orange. And what do you make of it, Count of Poictesme?’ the King asks now.

If di Paz took few chances, Manuel took none at all. He waded into the pool, and fetched out the thing which floated there. ‘King,’ says big Dom Manuel, sagely blinking his bright pale eyes, it is the half of an orange.’

Said the King: ‘Here is a man who is not lightly deceived by the vain shows of this world, and who values truth more than dry shoes. Count Manuel, you shall have your troops, and you others must wait until you have acquired Count Manuel’s powers of judge­ment, which, let me tell you, are more valuable than any fief I have to give.’

So when the spring had opened, Manuel went into Poictesme at the head of a very creditable army, and Dom Manuel summoned Duke Asmund to surrender all that country. Asmund, who was habitually peevish under the puckerel curse, refused with opprobrious epithets, and the fighting began.

Manuel had, of course, no knowledge of generalship, but King Ferdinand sent the Conde de Tohil Vaca as Manuel’s lieutenant. Manuel now figured imposingly in gold armour, and the sight of his shield bearing the rampant stallion and the motto Mundus vult decipi became in battle a signal for the more prudent among his adversaries to distinguish themselves in some other part of the conflict. It was whispered by backbiters that in counsel and in public discourse Dom Manuel sonorously repeated the orders and opinions provided by Tohil Vaca: either way, the official utterances of the Count of Poictesme roused everywhere the kindly feeling which one reserves for old friends, so that no harm was done.

To the contrary, Dom Manuel now developed an invaluable gift for public speaking, and in every place which he conquered and occupied he made powerful addresses to the surviving inhabitants before he had them hanged, exhorting all right-thinking persons to crush the military autocracy of Asmund. Besides, as Manuel pointed out, this was a struggle such as the world had never known, in that it was a war to end war for ever, and to ensure eternal peace for everybody’s children. Never, as he put it strikingly, had men fought for a more glorious cause. And so on and so on, said he, and these uplifting thoughts had a fine effect upon everyone.

‘How wonderfully you speak!’ Dame Niafer would say admiringly.

And Manuel would look at her queerly, and reply: ‘I am earning your home, my dear, and your servants’ wages, and some day these verbal jewels will be perpetuated in a real coronet. For I perceive that a former acquaintance of mine was right in pointing out the difference between men and the other animals.’

‘Ah, yes, indeed!’ said Niafer very gravely, and not attaching any particular meaning to it, but generally gathering that she and Manuel were talking about something edifying and pious. For Niafer was now a devout Christian, as became a Countess of Poictesme, and nobody anywhere entertained a more sincere reverence for solemn noises.

‘For instance,’ Dame Niafer continued, ‘they tell me that these lovely speeches of yours have produced such an effect upon the Philistines yonder that their Queen Stultitia has proffered an alliance, and has promised to send you light cavalry and battering-rams.’

‘It is true she has promised to send them, but she has not done so.’

‘None the less, Manuel, you will find that the moral effect of her approbation will be invaluable; and, as I so often think, that is the main thing after all.’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Manuel impatiently, ‘we have plenty of moral approbation and fine speaking here, and in the South we have a saint to work miracles for us, but it is Asmund who has that army of splendid reprobates, and they do not value morality and rhetoric the worth of an old finger-nail.’

So the fighting continued throughout that spring, and in Poictesme it seemed very important and unexampled, just as wars usually appear to the people that are engaged in them: and thousands of men were slain, to the regret of their mothers and sweethearts, and very often of their wives. And there was the ordinary amount of unparalleled military atrocities and perfidies and ravishments and burnings and so on, and the endurers took their agonies so seriously that it is droll to think of how unimportant it all was in the outcome.

For this especial carnage took place so long ago that it is now not worth the pains involved to rephrase for inattentive hearing the com­bat of the knights at Perdigon, or the once famous battle of the tinkers, or to retell how the inflexible syndics of Montors were imprisoned in a cage and slain by mistake; nor to relate how the Northmen burned the bridge of boats at Manneville; and how Asmund trod upon a burned-through beam at the disastrous siege of Evre, and so fell thirty feet into the midst of his enemies and broke his leg, but dealt so valorously that he got safe away; and how at Lisuarte unarmoured peasants beat off Manuel’s followers with scythes and pitchforks and clubs.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the colour is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they wave aside with undipped pens the episode of the brave Siennese and their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there, and grudge the paper needful to record the remark­able method by which gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre on every chimney in Poictesme.

It is not even possible nowadays to put warm interest in those once notable pots of blazing sulphur and fat and quicklime that were emptied over the walls of Storisende, to the discomfort of Manuel’s men. For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so.

Therefore it suffices to report that there was much killing and misery everywhere, and that in June the Conde de Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible jocosity which used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel’s forces were defeated and scattered.