A very happy (or should that be grim?) birthday to the Gothic novel...

Three Hundred years ago today, on the 24th of September 1717, Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto, was born.

     One would like to imagine that his birth occurred on as dark and stormy a night as any envisioned by Edward Bulwer-Lytton but, alas, I have no knowledge of what the meteorological conditions were on that auspicious day. What I can say for certain is that young Horace, son of Britain's first Prime Minister, Whig MP and designer of Britain's frothiest Gothic revival house Strawberry Hill was also the man who put pen to paper and concocted the very first Gothic novel.
     So, one might say that today also marks the 300 birthday of the Gothic novel. After all, from that first slim volume and the sensation it caused sprang an unstoppable genre littered with classics; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Monk to name but a few. Without The Castle of Otranto we wouldn't have Gothic fiction; and, without Gothic fiction, we wouldn't have Jane Austen's satire Northanger Abbey or the dreadfully delicious TV series Penny Dreadful. Without Gothic fiction we wouldn't have Hammer Horror films and the pleasant thrilling chill of Bela Lugosi donning fangs and cape to call out to the children of the night. In short, without Gothic fiction we would be missing some wonderful cultural and pop cultural highlights. For bestowing upon us the first work of a new genre we should definitely raise a glass to Mr Walpole.
      Of course, The Castle of Otranto should not be known by it's legacy alone. Without giving away too many spoilers, I'm going to say that this is definitely a book everyone should read at least once (especially if you love all things Gothic). The first and, in many ways, possibly the weirdest, The Castle of Otranto is a wild, windswept romp through Shakespearean prose and uncontrollable passion. Giant helmets plummet from the sky, divorces are sought (in ways reminiscent of Henry VIII legendary divorce from Catherine of Aragon), children are reunited with parents they didn't even know they had, fair maidens and gallant young knights fall in love, spectral hands appear and there's even a "knight of the gigantic sabre". A thousand plot twists and complications mount and mount and finally come to a surprisingly neat conclusion. However, this is one book where it's not the destination but the journey which is most thrilling.
      So, pick up a copy of The Castle of Otranto, pour yourself a glass of something suitably decadent and settle down, autumn is already upon us and there could be many a dark and stormy night to wile away in good literary company.

A Rose by any name.... Part 2

As the cavalier poet Robert Herrick wrote:
‘The rose was sick and smiling died;
And (being to be sanctified)
About the bed there sighing stood
The sweet and flowery sisterhood.’

It’s a beautiful poem, and a perfect illustration of the more morbid side of the rose. Yet, even at their darkest and most morbid, roses never forgo their romance or beauty. Think of the showers of bright rose petals in Alma Tadema’s famous painting: the roses of Heliogabalous; who wouldn’t want to nuzzle their way deep under that fragrant shower? The Emperor’s swooning guests certainly seem un-bothered by their rather picturesque fate. Perhaps they simply appreciate Alma-Tadema’s attention to detail: each petal was, legend has it, painted from life and one can well believe it when one looks at the vivid, lightly veined petals which seem to almost pulsate with life in contrast to the emperors hapless victims, suffocated as much by their perfume it seems as by the weight of so many flowers.
Darker roses can be intoxicating and delicious; these are the roses which follow us into autumn and winter, whose sharp thorns puncture the snow and whose red petals blaze through a haze of falling snowflakes.
So, here is a brief introduction to my two favourite perfumes in a darker genre of rose. Two different sorts of deeper, darker, delicious rose.

If you desire an immortal rose with just a hint of the gothic and a large dose of romanticism then none could fit the bill better than Frederic Malle Une Rose. Tuber notes give this perfume the qualities of an earthy kiss and red wine entwined with the roses throughout Edouard Flechier’s composition give the whole perfume a velvety intensity that few perfumes can match. It’s an utterly unique and deeply memorable example of the perfumers art. You dab this on and you instantly feel as if you have been wrapped in a velvet cloak, as though you are about to sit down to a rich dinner of truffles and wine, as if you are about to dance the tango and the feeling is sensational.

A less earthy but equally warm, dark and intense rose is Hatria by Angela Ciampagna. This perfume is a sensationally delicious blend of warmth and spice. Cloves and caramel wrap around this rose and the most notable initial notes before the rose starts to come through in earnest were, for me at least, saffron and sandalwood. A beautiful combination, the saffron floats away, whilst the sandalwood retreats into the background.   It’s a courtesan’s kiss of a perfume, it would be fabulous on the legendary Cora Pearl. This also feels like the perfume which should be wafting among Heliogablous’s unfortunate guests. Perhaps, the reason for the mysterious smiles on their lips and that delicious sense they give off that this really is the best party they’ve ever attended.

Capturing a mood...

Once again this week I am wrestling with the short story. No specific short story but rather the genre as a whole. I love reading short stories, don't get me wrong, they are utterly beautiful works of economy which should be more widely available (it's a tragedy how few magazines and newspapers outside of the literary sphere publish short stories these days and an equal tragedy that so many genre magazines which do have to reach out for crowdfunding).

No, my specific problem with short stories is with writing them. I want to, I love to but they seem to either stick firmly on the page and work or swell hopelessly towards a less than satisfactory conclusion before I stick them in the drawer (often metaphorically since so much writing takes place on computers these days) to return to when I am ready. Well, this week, I decided to pull out a few and rework them, clearing the desk before NaNoWriMo begins in November (yes, I do do NaNo but we'll come to that in a later post). I had ideas for endings and plans drawn up. All I had to do now was get myself into the right mood for rewriting, which meant getting myself into the crisp Autumnal mood which pervades so many of my stories, no matter what time of year I write them in. This seasonal repetition may have something to do with the fairy tale influence I spoke of a few weeks ago for in the land of fairy tale it is almost always Autumn or Winter, the leaves or the snow are always falling, the land is in the midst of a perpetual transformation.

Conjuring a mood for writing is not dissimilar to conjuring the mood of a character, after all, when one writes, one writes from within the world ones characters inhabit. The autumn leaves which crunch beneath their feet are leaves from your own memory, the hot spiced tea they drink you drank once; for those elements which one cannot experience first hand, a visit to the Great Exhibition or life in Stuart England one must plunge into research and imagination until you feel confident enough to imagine the scent of smoggy air, the exhilaration of seeing new inventions, the feel of velvet doublet and hose.

Tea is always a good place to start when getting into a warm writing mood, Assam, Chai, English Breakfast: whichever you pick you are bound to need a boundless supply beside you as you write (unless you favour coffee), scent is just as important: but I would say that, with my love of perfume. When I spoke of Gothic writing I said I could well imagine my character's wearing YSL Opium or L'Artisan's Fou d'Absinth because they fitted with their personalities, but the perfume of autumn may be even more subjective, heavy and rich, crisp and spicy, the scent holds the memories of the season or of the season as you've fictionalised it. So, I plucked one story from the pile and tried to imagine what that setting would smell like: a small European village at the end of the 19th Century. A village trying to carve out a place for itself as a desirable holiday destination with a twist.
The perfumes I came up with were: Etat Libre d'Orange's Like This, a perfume of Pumpkin, musk, and Spice inspired by the beautiful Tilda Swinton and designed to capture "a magic potion of home"  . It's a beautiful scent which one can easily imagine wafting through cottage windows, out of inns and from bonfires where sweet treats were roasted and toasted.  The orange spiciness of Chanel's Coco, the incense of Caron's Parfum Sacre and the woody warmth of Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet added the intense and ancient aroma of the castle overlooking the village. All those centuries of cedar wood fires and ladies arriving for dinner parties in the latest fashionable blend must have sunk into the tapestries on the walls and lingers in the smooth wood floors. Even when abandoned the castle, I imagined, would have been busy accumulating scents, indolic jasmine, lavender from the gardens; all waiting to flood into the nostrils of anyone who opened the door and stepped inside.

A spray of each, a little tea, a moment to absorb the mood and...

The scented spell woven by the perfumes worked and I was soon typing away, weaving new scenes and sharpening others. At the end of all of this, the short stories I was working on are nearly completed and there are ideas for two or three more maturing in my notebooks. Colder winter short stories which will require their own perfumes.

Writing Wednesday... Immortal words (hopefully)...

October is upon us, the air has turned chill, the leaves are falling and Halloween beckons to us from months end. 

What better time then to whisper of the Gothic?

I mentioned once before that, although my most recent book was more in the genre of fairy tale it's predecessors were Gothic novels, so let me add a little more detail on that.

Three or so years ago when I was still studying for my degree in English Literature, and taking modules in Creative Writing, I happened to watch a film which will remain nameless in which saccharine creatures of the night emoted boldly. I'd  read Dorian Gray and Dracula by this stage and was beginning to immerse myself in the works of Gautier and his fellow flaneurs of the Parisian dusk. This may help to explain why I emerged from that viewing experience with a rueful shake of the head, certain that these were not my creatures of the night. In the morning I plucked one of my notebooks from the teetering to be written in pile (like a TBR pile but blank) and put pen to paper. I wrote the first four chapters in one day before being pulled away by the task of writing an essay, then of revising. For a few months the novel slept until the years exams were over and I could return myself to it's pages in earnest. 

The rest just flowed after that, as it turned out a large cast of flamboyant immortals living in my head who wanted to make their presence felt. 

Their home was the 19th century, their habits not dependent on the moon and their lust for life and love quite extravagant. Theirs was a Gothic existence complete with stone arches and peacock feathers.

The research was as pleasurable as the writing, books on the Exposition Universal of 1889, the art of the Baroque, the English Civil War, Oscar Wilde and Victorian fashion were greedily devoured. Museums were visited and notes were taken. At the risk of sounding pretentious (always a danger for me) I wanted to immerse myself as deeply as possible in as atmospheric a world as possible.

Spending time reading anything and everything Gothic was no hardship to me. Every book was a delight and the Gustave Dore prints pinned to my notice board for inspiration were (and still are) a pleasure to look at. 

Even my perfume choices took on a Gothic edge with plenty of heavy, musky and alluring scents taking up space on my dressing table; my scent of the day today is Yves Saint Laurent's delicious Opium. Heavy folds of sensual amber, myrrh and vanilla sharpened by  by mandarin orange. It's not a perfume easily overlooked, it announces itself with a seductive fanfare and keeps on radiating. It wants, above all, not to be forgotten. What could be more appropriate for immortals?

The characters I wrote would also admire the scandalous idea of a perfume inspired by the 19th Centuries most mythologized vice: opium itself. I suspect they would also have adored my current favourite: Fou d'Absinthe by L'Artisan Parfumer too, such a sharp tribute to their green tipple of choice (they have a reverse colour wheel thing going on in their drinks cabinets). 

  Unlike other immortals I'm afraid my creations could never make it in the 21st Century, the harsh brightness of electric light has none of the glamour of gas and candle, the car can never be a sensitive or easy to talk to as the horse. They would admire the great steps forward humanity has made, yes. By necessity they long ago abandoned the default prejudices of their own eras and are sublimely glad to see that such shadows are fading, slowly, but fading. However, the 1980's with their plastic fantastic show glamour were their Waterloo. Not for them white powder with red braces; no, they would far rather be sipping Absinthe with Wilde and since that is not an option they have faded back into the shadows. You might see them occasionally, on a winters evening, wrapped in velvet as they scurry from a museum or stroll along the banks of the Seine. The hat of a hipster might make them shake their heads and smile because they remember when such things were new and bold. In many ways my creature are not so different from myself. But that's the nature of the Gothic, it should possess our dreams and our inner selves. 

The book I began three years ago is now the first of a series and currently out looking for an agent to represent them whilst i keep writing and, of course, I'm still reading gothically.