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Jan. 15th, 2005 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickYesterday I got my copy of The Vesuvius Club, a novel by Mark Gatiss that's what James Bond (the Connery Bond) would be like if he had been an equal-opportunity rake living in the early 1900's. Kind of. I don't reckon it's available in the States yet, because I can't get shit when searching for it at regular Merkin amazon.com. I ordered mine from amazon.co.uk because, as we are all aware from the nekkid french rugby players, ordering from foreign amazons is just like ordering from the local amazon, except that the weak dollar abroad means that your copy of The Vesuvius Club will cost you, including shipping, on the close order of two tanks of gasoline. I still think it was worth it. It's a delightful read.
I have always been an appalling judge of character. It is my most
beguiling virtue.
What, then, did I make of the Honourable Everard Supple whose
likeness I was conjuring on to canvas in my studio that sultry July
evening?
He was an imposing cove of sixty-odd, built like a pugilist, who had made
a fortune in the diamond mines of the Cape. His declining years, he'd
told me during the second sitting -- when a client begins to thaw a mite
-- were to be devoted entirely to pleasure, principally in the gaming
houses of the warmer and naughtier parts of Europe. A portrait, in his
opinion (and his absence), would be just the thing to hang over the vast
baronial fireplace in the vast baronial hall he had recently lavished a
hundred thou' upon.
The Supples, it has to be said, were not amongst the oldest and most
distinguished families in the realm. Only one generation back from the
Honourable Everard had been the less than honourable Gerald who had
prospered only tolerably in a manufactory of leather thumb- braces. Son
and heir had done rather better for himself and now to add to the title
(of sorts) and the fake coat of arms being busily prepared across town he
had his new portrait. This, he told me with a wheezy chuckle, would
convey the required air of old-world veracity. And if my painting were
any good (that hurt), perhaps I might even be interested in knocking up a
few carefully aged canvases of his ancestors?
Supple blinked repeatedly, as was his habit, one lid lingering over
his jade-irised glass eye (the left one) as I let myself imagine him
tramping into the studio in doublet and hose, all in the name of family
honour.
He cleared his throat with a grisly expectoration and I realized he'd been
addressing me. I snapped out of my reverie and peeped around the side of
the canvas. I've been told I peep rather well.
'I do beg your pardon, I was absorbed in the curve of your earlobes.'
'I was suggesting dinner, sir,' said Supple, flipping a half-hunter
watch from his waistcoat. 'To celebrate the successful conclusion of me
picture.'
'I should be delighted,' I lied. 'But I feel it only right to warn
you that I have a peculiar horror of artichokes.'
The Honourable Everard Supple rose from the doubtful Louis Quinze
into which I'd plonked him, sending a whisper of paint flakes to the
dust-sheeted floor.
'We might try me club, then,' he suggested, brushing the sleeve of
his frock-coat. 'Or do you have somewhere you artistic-types
favour?'
I rose and ran one of my long, bony hands through my hair. They are long,
white, and bony, I cannot deny it, but very fine. Waistcoat and face
flecked with paint, I shrugged.
'As a matter of fact, I do,' I said. 'Charming little spot in
Rosebery Avenue. Come back at eight and we'll drive over.' So
saying, I suddenly turned the easel on its squeaking castors,
revealing the portrait to the golden light washing through the
skylight. 'Behold! Your immortality!'
Supple creaked forward on his expensive boots and fixed a monacle,
rather unnecessarily, into the orbit of his false eye. He frowned,
cocked his head to left and right, and grimaced.
'Well, I suppose you get what you pay for, eh, Mr. Box?'
My name is Lucifer Box, but I imagine you know that. Whether these
scribblings eventually form the core of my memoirs or are found
secreted in oilskin wrappers at the bottom of a lavatory cistern
years after my demise, I have no doubt that, by the time you read
this, I will be most terribly famous.
I handed Supple his soft kid-gloves with as much brusqueness as I
could muster. 'You don't like it?'
The old fool shrugged. 'Just not sure it's terribly like me.'
I helped him into his overcoat. 'On the contrary, sir, I believe I
have caught you.'
I smiled what my friends call, naturally enough, the smile of
Lucifer.
Ah! London in the summertime! Hellish, as any resident will tell
you. Even in those first few innocent years of the new century it
smelled of roasting excrement. So it was with 'kerchiefs pressed to
mouths that Supple and I entered the dining rooms I had selected. They
were alarmingly unfashionable but, in the long light of dusk, the
white-panelled plainness could have been called Vermeeresque. Not by me,
you understand. A flypaper above the hearth twisted lazily, amber and
black like a screw of ear-wax.
This place, I told Supple, was owned and run by a woman called
Delilah whose crippled daughter I had once painted as a favour.
'She was not, perhaps, the bonniest thing,' I confided as we settled down
to eat. 'Lost both hands to a wasting disease and had them replaced with
wooden ones. And -- oh! -- her little legs were in horrid iron rings.' I
shook my head despairingly. 'Ought to have been exposed at birth, her
father said.'
'Nay!' cried Supple.
'Aye! But her dear mother loved the little mite. When I came to
paint the portrait I did my best to make little Ida look like an
angel. Prophetically enough. Though it turned out she had some
pluck.'
Supple wiped soup from his pinkish lips. Sentimental old Victorian
that he was, a tear sprang to his one good eye. Most probably the
Death of Little Nell had been like mother's milk to him.
'Poor Ida,' I sighed, picking idly at a chicken leg. 'Grabbed from
her bath-chair by a gang of dacoits and sold into bondage.'
Supple shook his head mournfully. No doubt an image of the doe-eyed
cripple had flashed into his silly old brain. His fingers tightened on
the fish-knife. 'Go on. What happened?'
'She made a bolt for it, God bless her,' I continued. 'Took off
across the rooftops with the fiends in hot pursuit.'
Blink-blink. The jade glass eye regarded me steadily. 'And then?'
I closed my eyes and steepled my fingers. 'She got as far as Wapping
before her brittle little legs gave out. She fell through the roof of a
sugar merchant's and into a vat of treacle. Of course, with those wooden
hands, she could get no purchase on the rim and she drowned. Very, very
slowly.'
Drinking the last of an indifferent burgundy with an air of finality, I
clapped my hands and turned the conversation to more cheerful matters.
Now I had Supple's trust, it was time to betray that of others. I wanted
the practice.
I regaled Supple with what I know to be an inexhaustible supply of
anecdotes (not many of them true, certainly not the best ones)
concerning the greatish and goodish who have paid yours truly not
nearly enough to be immortalized in oils.
'You are very indescreet, sir,' laughed the old man, cheering up. 'I am
glad not to have confided any secrets in you.'
I smiled my wide smile.
Supple, for his part, talked at length about his time in South Africa and
the great adventure a young man like me might have there. He told me
about his own daughter -- a great joy to the old man by his account -- and
I nodded and smiled with the air of sagacity I like to assume for such
occasions. I put on a good show of being fascinated by his colourful
account of dawn over the Transvaal as I took out my watch and stared at
the second hand racing over the porcelain dial. I could hear the soft
action of the tiny spring.
It was midway between the fish course and the pudding, as Supple
opened his mouth to begin another interminable tale, that I did the
decent thing and shot him.
The book overleaf says "A bit of fluff" and it is that. Some novels try pretty hard to impress you with their seriousness. This isn't one of them. It's not particularly Lit-Tra-Chure, but that's not a crime and sometimes it's positively an endorsement. The first chapter of the book is entitled Mr. Lucifer Box Entertains and y'know what? He does. I have laughed aloud (No, I will not use the horrid internet designation LOL in any way, shape, or form. Sorry. "Teh" is about as good as it gets around here. ROTFL is also verboten in my book. People cheapen those through overuse, damn it, and I'll not say I laughed out loud if all I did was smirk. I smirk a lot.) more than ten times at the sheer effrontery of the prose in this book. It's honestly the most fun I've had in ages. (This says a great deal about the amusement potential of the book or a great deal about the lack of amusement in my everyday life. Possibly it says both.)
The novel gets a bit uneven about three-quarters of the way through, but as far as I'm concerned, it redeemed itself with the ending. I was planning on being *very* upset with the author, but since things worked out properly in the end, I forgave all. This particular novel is written to suggest that there may be more of them, should this one sell. I do hope that further adventures come to pass. It'd make my day, anyhow.
Besides reading The Vesuvius Club, I also put the final coat of polyurethane on the dining room table. The finish looks as good as I could have possibly hoped for, considering that it was painted in the living room of a house containing two longhaired cats and a running woodstove. Personally, I'm amazed at how well it came out and flat out stunned that the little shits didn't jump on the damn thing when the finish was wet. Apparently they're smarter than I thought they were... two hours after it's painted, though, they jump on it. Can they read the instructions that say "allow to dry for two hours'? Enquiring minds want to know...
I also made pickled beets-n-eggs, a cuisine of my ethnicity. Because I was boiling eggs anyway, for dinner I had egg salad and celery. (Omit the celery in the egg salad recipe, then use the celery stalks to scoop up the egg salad, see. It's how to eat egg salad when you haven't any bread. Grocery day is three days off. Celery, I have. Bread, no.)
For the remainder of the evening: I need to do laundry. I have half of a samurai movie to finish watching (Samurai III, Duel at Ganryu Island). Also there's the problem of moong dal. Nobody wrote in with what the hell to do with dried whole moong dal. Come on, people, do I have to do all the heavy lifting myself? I'm a girl, damn it. Is chivalry dead, or what? (Don't answer that. Let me keep my illusions.) This isn't a seriously critical issue, but it's on the weekend activity list because generally dried whole legumes take long enough to cook that they're not a practical project on weekdays. *sigh* I will see what the internet has to say about moong dal.
I have always been an appalling judge of character. It is my most
beguiling virtue.
What, then, did I make of the Honourable Everard Supple whose
likeness I was conjuring on to canvas in my studio that sultry July
evening?
He was an imposing cove of sixty-odd, built like a pugilist, who had made
a fortune in the diamond mines of the Cape. His declining years, he'd
told me during the second sitting -- when a client begins to thaw a mite
-- were to be devoted entirely to pleasure, principally in the gaming
houses of the warmer and naughtier parts of Europe. A portrait, in his
opinion (and his absence), would be just the thing to hang over the vast
baronial fireplace in the vast baronial hall he had recently lavished a
hundred thou' upon.
The Supples, it has to be said, were not amongst the oldest and most
distinguished families in the realm. Only one generation back from the
Honourable Everard had been the less than honourable Gerald who had
prospered only tolerably in a manufactory of leather thumb- braces. Son
and heir had done rather better for himself and now to add to the title
(of sorts) and the fake coat of arms being busily prepared across town he
had his new portrait. This, he told me with a wheezy chuckle, would
convey the required air of old-world veracity. And if my painting were
any good (that hurt), perhaps I might even be interested in knocking up a
few carefully aged canvases of his ancestors?
Supple blinked repeatedly, as was his habit, one lid lingering over
his jade-irised glass eye (the left one) as I let myself imagine him
tramping into the studio in doublet and hose, all in the name of family
honour.
He cleared his throat with a grisly expectoration and I realized he'd been
addressing me. I snapped out of my reverie and peeped around the side of
the canvas. I've been told I peep rather well.
'I do beg your pardon, I was absorbed in the curve of your earlobes.'
'I was suggesting dinner, sir,' said Supple, flipping a half-hunter
watch from his waistcoat. 'To celebrate the successful conclusion of me
picture.'
'I should be delighted,' I lied. 'But I feel it only right to warn
you that I have a peculiar horror of artichokes.'
The Honourable Everard Supple rose from the doubtful Louis Quinze
into which I'd plonked him, sending a whisper of paint flakes to the
dust-sheeted floor.
'We might try me club, then,' he suggested, brushing the sleeve of
his frock-coat. 'Or do you have somewhere you artistic-types
favour?'
I rose and ran one of my long, bony hands through my hair. They are long,
white, and bony, I cannot deny it, but very fine. Waistcoat and face
flecked with paint, I shrugged.
'As a matter of fact, I do,' I said. 'Charming little spot in
Rosebery Avenue. Come back at eight and we'll drive over.' So
saying, I suddenly turned the easel on its squeaking castors,
revealing the portrait to the golden light washing through the
skylight. 'Behold! Your immortality!'
Supple creaked forward on his expensive boots and fixed a monacle,
rather unnecessarily, into the orbit of his false eye. He frowned,
cocked his head to left and right, and grimaced.
'Well, I suppose you get what you pay for, eh, Mr. Box?'
My name is Lucifer Box, but I imagine you know that. Whether these
scribblings eventually form the core of my memoirs or are found
secreted in oilskin wrappers at the bottom of a lavatory cistern
years after my demise, I have no doubt that, by the time you read
this, I will be most terribly famous.
I handed Supple his soft kid-gloves with as much brusqueness as I
could muster. 'You don't like it?'
The old fool shrugged. 'Just not sure it's terribly like me.'
I helped him into his overcoat. 'On the contrary, sir, I believe I
have caught you.'
I smiled what my friends call, naturally enough, the smile of
Lucifer.
Ah! London in the summertime! Hellish, as any resident will tell
you. Even in those first few innocent years of the new century it
smelled of roasting excrement. So it was with 'kerchiefs pressed to
mouths that Supple and I entered the dining rooms I had selected. They
were alarmingly unfashionable but, in the long light of dusk, the
white-panelled plainness could have been called Vermeeresque. Not by me,
you understand. A flypaper above the hearth twisted lazily, amber and
black like a screw of ear-wax.
This place, I told Supple, was owned and run by a woman called
Delilah whose crippled daughter I had once painted as a favour.
'She was not, perhaps, the bonniest thing,' I confided as we settled down
to eat. 'Lost both hands to a wasting disease and had them replaced with
wooden ones. And -- oh! -- her little legs were in horrid iron rings.' I
shook my head despairingly. 'Ought to have been exposed at birth, her
father said.'
'Nay!' cried Supple.
'Aye! But her dear mother loved the little mite. When I came to
paint the portrait I did my best to make little Ida look like an
angel. Prophetically enough. Though it turned out she had some
pluck.'
Supple wiped soup from his pinkish lips. Sentimental old Victorian
that he was, a tear sprang to his one good eye. Most probably the
Death of Little Nell had been like mother's milk to him.
'Poor Ida,' I sighed, picking idly at a chicken leg. 'Grabbed from
her bath-chair by a gang of dacoits and sold into bondage.'
Supple shook his head mournfully. No doubt an image of the doe-eyed
cripple had flashed into his silly old brain. His fingers tightened on
the fish-knife. 'Go on. What happened?'
'She made a bolt for it, God bless her,' I continued. 'Took off
across the rooftops with the fiends in hot pursuit.'
Blink-blink. The jade glass eye regarded me steadily. 'And then?'
I closed my eyes and steepled my fingers. 'She got as far as Wapping
before her brittle little legs gave out. She fell through the roof of a
sugar merchant's and into a vat of treacle. Of course, with those wooden
hands, she could get no purchase on the rim and she drowned. Very, very
slowly.'
Drinking the last of an indifferent burgundy with an air of finality, I
clapped my hands and turned the conversation to more cheerful matters.
Now I had Supple's trust, it was time to betray that of others. I wanted
the practice.
I regaled Supple with what I know to be an inexhaustible supply of
anecdotes (not many of them true, certainly not the best ones)
concerning the greatish and goodish who have paid yours truly not
nearly enough to be immortalized in oils.
'You are very indescreet, sir,' laughed the old man, cheering up. 'I am
glad not to have confided any secrets in you.'
I smiled my wide smile.
Supple, for his part, talked at length about his time in South Africa and
the great adventure a young man like me might have there. He told me
about his own daughter -- a great joy to the old man by his account -- and
I nodded and smiled with the air of sagacity I like to assume for such
occasions. I put on a good show of being fascinated by his colourful
account of dawn over the Transvaal as I took out my watch and stared at
the second hand racing over the porcelain dial. I could hear the soft
action of the tiny spring.
It was midway between the fish course and the pudding, as Supple
opened his mouth to begin another interminable tale, that I did the
decent thing and shot him.
The book overleaf says "A bit of fluff" and it is that. Some novels try pretty hard to impress you with their seriousness. This isn't one of them. It's not particularly Lit-Tra-Chure, but that's not a crime and sometimes it's positively an endorsement. The first chapter of the book is entitled Mr. Lucifer Box Entertains and y'know what? He does. I have laughed aloud (No, I will not use the horrid internet designation LOL in any way, shape, or form. Sorry. "Teh" is about as good as it gets around here. ROTFL is also verboten in my book. People cheapen those through overuse, damn it, and I'll not say I laughed out loud if all I did was smirk. I smirk a lot.) more than ten times at the sheer effrontery of the prose in this book. It's honestly the most fun I've had in ages. (This says a great deal about the amusement potential of the book or a great deal about the lack of amusement in my everyday life. Possibly it says both.)
The novel gets a bit uneven about three-quarters of the way through, but as far as I'm concerned, it redeemed itself with the ending. I was planning on being *very* upset with the author, but since things worked out properly in the end, I forgave all. This particular novel is written to suggest that there may be more of them, should this one sell. I do hope that further adventures come to pass. It'd make my day, anyhow.
Besides reading The Vesuvius Club, I also put the final coat of polyurethane on the dining room table. The finish looks as good as I could have possibly hoped for, considering that it was painted in the living room of a house containing two longhaired cats and a running woodstove. Personally, I'm amazed at how well it came out and flat out stunned that the little shits didn't jump on the damn thing when the finish was wet. Apparently they're smarter than I thought they were... two hours after it's painted, though, they jump on it. Can they read the instructions that say "allow to dry for two hours'? Enquiring minds want to know...
I also made pickled beets-n-eggs, a cuisine of my ethnicity. Because I was boiling eggs anyway, for dinner I had egg salad and celery. (Omit the celery in the egg salad recipe, then use the celery stalks to scoop up the egg salad, see. It's how to eat egg salad when you haven't any bread. Grocery day is three days off. Celery, I have. Bread, no.)
For the remainder of the evening: I need to do laundry. I have half of a samurai movie to finish watching (Samurai III, Duel at Ganryu Island). Also there's the problem of moong dal. Nobody wrote in with what the hell to do with dried whole moong dal. Come on, people, do I have to do all the heavy lifting myself? I'm a girl, damn it. Is chivalry dead, or what? (Don't answer that. Let me keep my illusions.) This isn't a seriously critical issue, but it's on the weekend activity list because generally dried whole legumes take long enough to cook that they're not a practical project on weekdays. *sigh* I will see what the internet has to say about moong dal.
