by Colin Wilson
I replied that I had read in the Epistle to the Corinthians of St Clement of Rome that the phoenix is a symbol of Christian resurrection, but the good man replied that this is Popish bedevilment, and that everyone knew that St Clement had been tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea as a punishment for his enormities. I thereupon offered to relieve him of this symbol of Popish degeneracy, and we settled upon the sum of three thalers.
This was the end of the passage—no mention of what became of the carved phoenix. I copied out the whole section in long-hand. Then I went into the library and asked Miss Tina if she knew of a carved phoenix in the house—it seemed to me that it would be an appropriate symbol to place on the cover of the projected volume of Donelly’s Memoirs. She said she had never heard of it, but that she would ask her sister. Before I could stop her, she had left the room. I sat on the arm of a chair, and idly glanced through the Observations. It slipped off my knee and fell on the floor, standing on end with its pages open. As I picked it up, it struck me that its back cover was thicker than the front one. Moreover, the flyleaf did not appear to be properly attached; unlike the front flyleaf, it was not glued to the last page of the book. I bent the cover slightly, to see why it was loose, and realised that there was a pocket between the cardboard cover and the flyleaf, which had been made by glueing only the edges of the flyleaf to the cardboard. Inside this pocket there was a folded sheet of paper. I drew it out and opened it. The paper was of excellent quality, very white and very thin. It contained only a fine drawing of a phoenix, rising from its nest of flame, and the inscription: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, which I recognised to be a tag from Virgil meaning ‘Happy the man who has been able to discover the causes of things’. What impressed me was the bird itself; the wings and tail feathers were of gold, as were the flames rising from the nest; the rest of it was as exquisitely tinted as a Blake drawing. In the lower right-hand corner, in the unmistakable writing of Esmond Donelly, was the sentence: ‘Received, September 1, 1771’. If it had not been for this date, I would have found it difficult to believe that the drawing was not far more recent, for the paper was whiter and finer than any I had previously seen from this period, and showed no sign of ageing.
I heard Miss Tina coming back, and I slipped the paper into the book. She told me that there was definitely no wooden phoenix in the house, unless it was hidden in one of the attics. I thanked her, and apologised for giving her trouble. Then I returned the Observations to its place on the shelf. Miss Eileen came in and asked me how I was getting on, and was obviously disappointed when I said I would have to leave. I assured her that I had found a great deal of valuable information among the papers, and showed her my notebook to prove it. The two sisters both accompanied me to the door, and told me to come back any time.
I drove back to Limerick in a very thoughtful mood. It might be said that the afternoon had been wasted; but this was not entirely true. I had learned that Esmond had two sides to his personality: the dutiful son and writer of travel diaries, and ‘the erotic traveller’, to borrow a phrase of Sir Richard Burton’s. And no scholar, studying the material at Castle Donelly, would have suspected the existence of the erotic traveller.
And then there was the minor puzzle of the phoenix. I talked to Diana about it as we drove back to Galway. The letters established that the Observations upon France and Switzerland had been printed in July 1771. The Heidelberg episode—when he had bought the phoenix—took place in August of the previous year. For some reason, Donelly had used the phoenix as a symbol on the cover of his book—perhaps an exact copy of the one he had bought from the Reverend Kries. On September 1, he had received the beautiful drawing of the phoenix I had seen, with its Latin tag about discovering the causes of things. Presumably, this meant received in the post. Diana objected that he might have ordered it to be engraved and received it from whoever had tinted it. I disagreed. If that was true, why had he bothered to write ‘Received, September 1’? If I receive through the mail a book I have ordered, I may well write my name and the date inside it; I do not write ‘Received’, because it is obvious that I have received it. We use the word ‘received’ to acknowledge payment of bills, or in speaking of a letter or parcel. My own theory was that Esmond had received the drawing of the phoenix unexpectedly, and that it came anonymously—otherwise, he would surely have written ‘Received from So-and-so’, or even enclosed the covering letter with the drawing?
Then who could have sent the drawing? Someone interested in the phoenix as a symbol? Or—I suppose it is just conceivable—some member of the ‘Sect of the Phoenix’ mentioned by Kries? The latter was an exciting possibility, although only remotely conceivable. Diana thought it far more likely that some lady had sent him the drawing as a souvenir, perhaps with a billet doux. I wished I had examined it more closely. The paper might have had a watermark that would give some notion of its origin; a paper so expensive would surely have the symbol of its manufacturer embossed on it? I should also, of course, have compared the drawing closely with the phoenix on the cover of the book. If they were identical, then it would certainly argue that Esmond had commissioned someone to make a drawing of the bird he had bought from the Reverend Kries.
There was also the curious fact that Esmond reported that the whole edition of the Observations had been destroyed less than two weeks after receiving the phoenix. And it may or may not have significance that he never again used the symbol of the phoenix on his books—at least, it was not on the edition of the travel diary I had seen in Louisiana, or the one at Castle Donelly.
I had no idea how one could check whether such a fire had occurred; presumably it would mean finding out what had become of the firm of J. J. Johnson, and trying to trace their records. I found this notion discouraging; I have no particular talent for this kind of detective work. Boswell, unfortunately, was in Edinburgh practising law from 1769 to 1772, or he might well have mentioned the fire—since J. J. Johnson was also Dr Johnson’s publisher.
This explains why the days following my visit to Castle Donelly were completely uninteresting as far as this narrative is concerned. The Donelly letters had been my chief hope; now I was not sure what I should do next. I phoned or visited every public library between Cork and Sligo. Some of them had a copy of the Travel Diary; none of them had anything else. Kevin Roche tried to be helpful, suggesting various acquaintances in the academic world who might know something about Donelly; none of these leads came to anything. I wrote to Tim Morrison in the British Museum, and to every antiquarian bookseller I knew. And although Tim was unable to unearth any more references to Donelly, he was able to add one more item to my file on the Sect of the Phoenix. What he wrote was as follows:
I’ve spoken to Ted Malory, who is our expert on the mediaeval church, about your Sect of the Phoenix, and he has some useful bits of information. He tells me that there is no evidence that the Sect of the Phoenix and the Brethren of the Free Spirit are the same thing. The latter were a heretical sect, founded by Almeric of Bena, who was expelled from the University of Paris in 1204, and died in 1209. Their doctrine, apparently, was that man becomes united with God through love, and that when this has happened, man is incapable of sin. So they practised a great deal of sexual licence, and a lot of them were burnt at the stake, including Marguerite of Hainault, a beguine nun, who seems to have been also a nymphomaniac.
The only reference Ted can find to the Sect of the Phoenix occurs in St Nilus Sorsky (1433-1508), at the end of his third tract on spiritual prayer. My translation (from the German edition of 1903) is a very rough one:
‘It is often believed that heretical notions are a danger only to those who hold them, and to others who come into contact and are contaminated through them. But St Theodosius tells us that they are hateful to God for their own sake, and may result in suffering (or punishment) for the innocent. The case of the Sect of the Phoenix in the province of Semiriechinsk provides the most terrible example of
this. They believed that men and women may grasp the divine revelation through carnal delight rather than prayer, and their village (settlement) near Lake Issikoul was full of abomination and harlotry. Then the Lord God sent a disease that destroyed them all, and subsequently spread through the country of the hyperborean Scythians, and subsequently to all the world. This was in the year of our Lord 1338.’
Incidentally, you may be interested to know that the Russian archaeologist Chvolson believes that the Black Death may have started in a Nestorian settlement near Lake Issyk-Koul in Semiriechinsk—which is Kirghiz territory, near the borders of China and India. This view is supported by Professor R. Pollitzer, Plague, World Health Organisation Publication, Geneva 1954, p. 13.
All this was fascinating, of course; but it raised so many unanswerable questions that it was also very frustrating. Who had founded the Sect of the Phoenix, and why? What were its doctrines? The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time in which many heretical sects were founded: the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Khlysty—the latter have often been accused of holding frenzied religious ceremonies that turned into sexual orgies. If the Sect of the Phoenix was regarded as sufficiently dangerous to be responsible for the Black Death, why was it not better documented?
This was not as irrelevant as it sounds. If I could not find out much more about Esmond Donelly, then I might at least pad out my Introduction with such material. As to the text itself, it could consist of excerpts from Of the Deflowering of Maids and Fleisher’s spurious MS, as well as the undoubtedly genuine manuscript I had obtained from Colonel Donelly, together with the Refutation of Hume. This meant that my main problem was still to find more material for my Introduction.
On the Saturday after our return from America one of those coincidences occurred that I have learned to take for granted in matters involving any kind of obsession. Diana and our daily help, Mary, were sorting through an old box of letters, with a view to burning as many as possible. Mopsy picked up a letter with a rather elaborate woodcut across the top, showing the serpent twined around an apple tree, whispering to Eve. In the way that children have when they feel they are not getting enough attention, Mopsy came across to the study where I was writing, and said: ‘Look what I’ve brought you, Daddy.’ Thinking Diana had sent it, I glanced at the signature: Klaus Dunkelman, then at the letter. It was dated 1960, and was a ‘fan letter’ about the Sex Diary, which had been published early that year. The writer asked me if I was familiar with the work of Wilhelm Reich, and went on to quote the titles of books I ought to read. It was a familiar kind of letter, even to the suggestion that the writer might have a great deal to teach me if I cared to listen, and that we ought to inaugurate a long correspondence. Diana had scrawled on it: ‘Answered, 9/11/60’. I presume I had thanked him for his suggestions, and promised to read the books he mentioned. I was now about to drop the letter into my waste-paper basket when my eye caught the name ‘E. Donelly’. The sentence read: ‘Körner’s ideas have, of course, been anticipated by several other thinkers: de Sade, Crowley, E. Donelly, Quérard, Edward Sellon, etc.’ Körner was apparently a disciple of Reich’s, who believed that the orgasm held the secret of psychological health.
The address on the letter was Compayne Gardens, West Hampstead. It seemed unlikely that the writer would still be there after nine years, but it was worth trying; so I dropped him a line, mentioning my interest in Donelly.
On the following Monday, I had to reconsider the embarrassing problem of the Misses Donelly of Castle Donelly. A letter arrived, signed by them both, but presumably written by Miss Eileen. She said how pleasant it had been to meet me, and how she had been able to see at a glance that I was trustworthy and that Esmond’s reputation would be safe in my hands. I groaned with embarrassment as I read it. She was glad that a writer of my reputation had at last become interested in Esmond, and felt that I would be the right person to do the standard biography. . . . I dropped the letter on the bed and drank my tea; my first inclination was to throw it in the waste-paper basket and forget it. I thought she was a damned nuisance and ought to let me alone; I had better things to do than writing a standard biography. Of course, a revival of interest in Esmond would be greatly to her advantage; she might sell his papers to some American university at a comfortable figure.
But the problem nagged me. I had intended simply not to contact them again. After all, I had not made use of any of their materials; I owed them nothing. Now I had to plunge further into deception, or commit a breach of good manners by ignoring her letter. Suddenly, I decided that there was only one simple course: to tell her the whole truth. I slipped on a dressing-gown and hurried into my study, anxious to get it over with. It was a long letter—it was bound to be, since I was determined to unburden myself. I began by pointing out that she must be aware that the book Of the Deflowering of Maids was attributed to Esmond—that I had even seen a copy in the home of a professor in Galway. I told her about the New York publisher, and explained that he was determined to go ahead anyway, whether I co-operated or not. I explained that Fleisher’s manuscript was a fake, and that, in my own opinion, the only way of vindicating Esmond, under the circumstances, would be to publish as much of his genuine work as possible. I also told her frankly that there was nothing in her Donelly papers that could be of the least use to me, since his letters home were as blameless as one might expect.
On my way down to the post box, I told myself that this was probably a stupid thing to do; I had not mentioned it to Diana, since she was sure to try to dissuade me. Miss Donelly might even write a letter to the T.L.S. denouncing my project and drying up all sources of information. But it was a risk I had to take. I dropped the letter into the box with the feeling of a man pointing a gun at his own head.
The next morning, I was still dozing when the telephone rang. Diana picked up the bedside extension, then said: ‘Miss Eileen Donelly for you.’ I groaned. I was tempted to tell her to say I was out; but my conscience won through. If she quarrelled with me, at least I could go ahead without hating myself.
Her voice barked: ‘Hello, Mr Sorme?’
‘Speaking.’
‘I’ve just had your letter. I’m jolly glad you’ve been so frank with me. Most decent of you. I rang you up to say I quite see your point.’
‘You do?’ I was breathless, and wondered what she was leading up to.
‘Look here, from what you say, there’s nothing much we can do about this publisher chap.’
‘I’m afraid that’s so.’
‘Right. Then the next best thing is to make sure things don’t get out of hand. We’ve got to keep a close eye on him. Tina and I agree that we ought to give any help we can.’
I said that I was delighted, of course. In fact, I didn’t know what to think. I needed time to collect my thoughts. But she gave me no time.
‘We’d like to talk this over with you. When could you come over here?’
‘Any time that’s convenient.’
‘How about later today?’
I said all right, and felt a wave of relief as the line went dead.
By the time Diana had made tea, I had begun to understand what had happened. The Donelly sisters had nothing to lose by the publication of Esmond’s ‘sex diaries’, particularly if they managed to sell the house. I had assured them that the diaries were not mere pornography; that they would cause a steep rise in Esmond’s reputation; that in these days of sexual frankness, no one would bat an eyelid. I had cited Boswell’s journals and so on. Miss Eileen had decided they might as well be on the bandwagon. And full access to her papers would indeed be useful in writing the biographical part of the Introduction. But if she was hoping to persuade Fleisher to disgorge another fifteen thousand dollars for the use of her material on Esmond, she was due for a disappointment.
I was feeling pretty gloomy as I drove to Limerick shortly after midday. I had called on Kevin Roche and borrowed
Of the Deflowering of Maids, and I now had the other fragments of the ‘sex diary’ with me, including Fleisher’s original typescript. But it was a beautiful day; the air smelt fresh, and everything looked so green that it was impossible not to enjoy it. And as soon as I relaxed and decided to forget the Donelly sisters, I experienced a great sense of warmth and richness, of the immense potentialities of the world that are obscured by our tendency to remain jammed in our petty motives. It crystallised further as I sat drinking a beer outside a grocer-tavern a few miles south of Gort, listening to the rippling of water as it flowed under a bridge and ran towards Lough Cutra. It was suddenly unimportant whether I drove on to Limerick, or sat here. The stream would go on flowing; that tree with its lime-coloured leaves, that overlooked the stream, would remain itself. And it struck me that here is one of the strangest and most important things about human existence: this capacity of the mind to detach itself from people and events, to stop identifying with human emotions, and to identify instead with the timeless, the world of Nature. What happens? I stood on the parapet of the bridge and watched the water reflecting the sunlight, and it seemed that something in me followed the flow of the water, ran away towards the lake. When I returned to the car and drove on, I had the odd sensation that my soul was free of my body and was flying alongside like a bird, taking occasional swoops and dives. When my mind came back to the Donelly sisters, I had ceased to feel foreboding.