“‘Oh yes, he has wonderful temples,’ replied Eric. ‘And can Eros give you everything you ask him for?’ ‘I never ask for anything,’ said Eric; ‘I just adore him’ and he crossed his arms in front of his chest and took a deep bow. Next he showed them a sign above his bed, ‘have a look here, this sign keeps Satan away, when he sees this sign he is too scared to come.’ ‘Who is Satan?’ demanded Violet. ‘He is the Bad One responsible for all evil in life.’ ‘Have you seen him already?’ ‘A few times, yes.’ ‘What does he look like?’
The Idiot Club of London. Left to Right: Stenbock, Alys Whittal Smith, Mary Costelloe and Logan Pearsall Smith. Photograph by Frederick Hollyer.
“‘Almost like a big ape, horned with a long tail. If you do something bad, he will come!’
“Violet felt cold shivers down her spine; so there really was a devil, which she feared much more strongly than ghosts. She couldn't sleep that night; maybe Heinz would calm her—perhaps Cousin Eric had only been joking. ‘Heinz, is there a Satan?’ ‘Well, so I'm told,’ Heinz answered, quite serenely. ‘Does he really have horns and a big long tail?’ ‘Yes, I believe so.’ Violet was thinking of a prayer she had been taught, only now did she fully understand and would say the words with passion every night:
“‘Spread both your wings
Oh Jesu my joy
And take good care of your young chick
If Satan wants to devour me—
Let the angels sing’”
“Until the day break, and the shadows flee away”
(The Song of Solomon II:17)
A dedication by Stenbock
to Frank Costelloe, written
in Eric's first book of poems,
Love, Sleep, & Dreams.
However, it was clear that Eric was not drawn to live the life of an Estonian nobleman. Two years later, he returned to London, as the decadent movement began to blossom there. Eric himself was to bloom, too, but perhaps not quite in the way he had hoped.
Amongst others, he got to know Aubrey Beardsley, and purchased drawings by him, on some of which Eric wrote the titles in his own hand, and sent to a young composer, Norman O’Neill, whom he had met on a bus and whose career he was to help. There is just one account that suggests Eric was an acquaintance of Oscar Wilde, though they certainly shared many friends; it was told by the editor, Ernest Rhys. Rhys had met Stenbock at a mutual friend's salon, where he saw Stenbock enter the room:
“…he looked most unusual: very fair hair beautifully curled, and a blond, round, blue-eyed face, with yellow eyebrows. He waved his head as he paused at the door, and took a little phial out of his pocket, from which he anointed his fingers, before passing them through his locks. He was like a magnified child; it took me a moment to believe he could be real, and there were other guests in the room who were yet more puzzled.”
Rhys went on to write—and it must be noted that he had something of a reputation for inaccuracy:
“whether it was… Stenbock's eccentric reputation as a poet with a ‘familiar’ in the shape of a magic toad, which had inspired his curiosity, Oscar contrived, after many ineffectual attempts, to be asked one day to tea at Stenbock's rooms in Sloane Terrace. You have heard of his upstairs sanctum with the sacred lamp burning between a bust of Shelley and a little ebony image of the Buddha. Unluckily, Oscar was an addict of the cigarette, and when he reached the room and saw the sacred red flame, his first impulse was to stalk across and light the cigarette at its ray. Stenbock, hearing of his arrival, appeared at the door just as this horrid act of desecration was committed and with a shriek, fell to the floor in a real or histrionic swoon. Whereupon Wilde stood a moment over the prostrate figure, spurned it with his foot, took two or three puffs at the accursed thing, and made his exit.”
Stenbock certainly did know Arthur Symons, a decadent poet as well as a versatile man of letters. Symons suffered a terrible breakdown in 1908, from which it seems he never fully recovered. In a powerful essay entitled “A Study in the Fantastic”, Symons remembers some of Stenbock's characteristics. He lived:
“in a bizarre, fantastic, feverish, eccentric, extravagant, morbid and perverse fashion… There was in him something fascinating, disconcerting… he was one of the most inhuman beings I have ever encountered; inhuman and abnormal; a degenerate, who had I know not how many vices.”
The Idiot Club of Kolk; Left to Right: Karin Stenbock, Stenbock with his dachshund Trixie, Richard von Wistinghausen, Theophile von Wistinghausen. Photograph by Frederick Hollyer.
There is much more in the same vein:
“He was obsessed by the immense sense of Death who might leap on him unawares, by the visions of those who, while they are supposed to lie hid in their secret sins, are scattered under a dark veil of forgetfulness, being horribly astounded, and troubled with sights… Morbidly fascinated by a fantastic attraction towards the ‘violent delights’ of horror and the nervous exasperation of his senses, he became a kind of Judas Iscariot to himself.”
There is some tenderness to be found in Symons’ essay, however. He praises one poem as achieving “a perfect lyric”; Studies of Death he describes as “amazing”; and he remembers him “carrying with real reverence the palm branches” at church on Palm Sunday. But Symons returns again and again “to what was most bestial and reptilian in Stenbock's character”. His judgment seems very harsh indeed against Eric; no other descriptions of him are as critical as those Symons made. Perhaps Symons was reacting against something in Eric's nature that appalled him—something plainly referred to in a letter sent by Frank Costelloe, Stenbock's business manager, to Eric's stepfather, Frank Mowatt, on 23 January 1892. He says that Mowatt's belief that:
“when certain unnatural courses were charged against Count Stenbock I had not in your opinion regarded it as a serious matter… you are doing me a monstrous injustice… I simply abhor anything of the kind… That I remain his friend is true… As far as my relations to Count Stenbock are concerned the fact is that there is none who knows my views on these subjects as well as he.”
As mentioned previously, that bright star fallen, Simeon Solomon, shared Stenbock's homosexuality. Eric collected Solomon's astonishing paintings and supported him financially. However, like many of the other friends who continued to support Solomon—though some, such as the poet Algernon Swinburne and the essayist and writer Walter Pater were to ostracise him—Eric found Solomon—alcoholic, homeless, and in desperate need of money—to be a difficult man to deal with. And Stenbock himself was increasingly despondent. In an undated letter, he writes to his family in Estonia, “I'm quite well off for money here—but I'm very lonely—I have no real company at all—especially I miss children and animals—Simeon Solomon is in the worst condition and is the bane of my life.”
Meanwhile, despite Theophile's belief that Eric had been cured of his opium addiction whilst still in Kolga, it was still with him, and growing stronger. Shortly before his twenty-fifth birthday, the Reverend William Pomeroy Ogle, son of a Reverend too, visited Eric in London, and then they both returned to the Reverend's home in Brentwood, and spent the night together. In the morning, he was found dead by Eric in the bed they had shared. The report in The Essex Herald of August 4, 1884, gives a fascinating account of Stenbock's—whose name is misspelled as “Steinbock”—opium addiction, and the amount he was taking. In Eric's deposition to the court, he states:
“We went to bed when on reaching his house, and I slept with him… about seven o’clock, I was awakened by his dog coming into the room; it came to the bedside and licked his hand and afterwards his lips; I thought it strange that he should not wake and I got up and shook him to wake him; at that time his lips were blue… I slightly shook him and then a brown fluid came to his mouth and nostrils; I was frightened and called the housekeeper, who came up and said he was dead.”
Shorter Stories from Balzac, Walter Scott, London, 1890.
In response to the coroner, appropriately named W. Bindon Blood, asking him whether the Rev.
William Ogle had taken “any medicine or pills”, Stenbock replies: “Oh yes; at my house; I am in the habit of taking opium… I had some opium pills in a sort of glass bottle; the deceased went to my room, saw the pills, and said he would take some…” Eric said that he replied, “You had better not take them, as you are not accustomed to them… I think he took three… He certainly took two… I said, ‘Do not take them;’ I thought taking so many would make him ill, but I had no idea that they would have any fatal effect; before I could stop him, he had swallowed them… the opium pills contained two grains each; I believe four grains is considered sufficient to cause death in the case of persons not accustomed to opium”.
‘Pre-adamite elephant adoring sunflower’, a drawing by Stenbock in a guest-book owned by the Berensons.
Mr. James Larkin, a member of the jury, asked Eric “How many of the pills can you take at a time?” Stenbock answered, “As many as 10; here is a pill”, and he produced what the reporter described as “an ordinary-sized silver pill”. The inquest continued, and other witnesses were called. The reporter's last comment on Stenbock was that “this witness was in a terribly nervous and excited condition and was a painful example of the effects of opium”.
An odd little event, four years later, which has the shadow of a link to Jack the Ripper, who is generally believed to have committed his first murder on April 3 1888, shows more about Eric's company and habits. On 24 September 1888, James Henderson, the owner and driver of a hansom cab, was arrested for being drunk and threatening whilst driving his vehicle. It is perhaps understandable that the police were especially on the watch for aggression and acts of violence at that time. Henderson called Count Stenbock as a witness. The Daily Telegraph, in its September 29 edition, states:
“Count Stanislas [sic] Eric Stenbock, residing at 11, Sloane-terrace, Chelsea, deposed that the defendant had been in the habit of driving him daily, and on the night in question he drove witness home from the Solferino Restaurant, Rupert-street, about eleven o’clock. He asked the accused to get change at a neighbouring public-house, and to purchase some brandy. Henderson was perfectly sober at this time, and directly witness heard he was locked up he proceeded to the station. The inspector there was grossly uncivil, refused to allow him to communicate with the accused, or even to take to him a card, on which the mere announcement was made that he (witness) would see that the cab was sent home, and that defendant's wife was informed of what had occurred. A doctor was also refused, for which witness offered to pay.
—Mr. Rymer: It has been kindly suggested that you, Count, were under the influence of drink.
—Witness: It is most absolutely false. I was angry, and might have been flushed in consequence.
—In answer to questions from the magistrate witness said that Henderson was really a friend of his whom he had known at Oxford in different circumstances.
—Mr. Francis James Carroll, who gave the address 20, Powis-square, Brighton, said that he accompanied Count Stenbock to the police-station, and could corroborate his statement.”
The Shadow of Death, The Leadenhall Press, London, 1893.
The newspaper report also noted “The Count said that he sent the cabman for some brandy and to get change, but [Stenbock] was himself very excited, threatening to write to the newspapers.”
It would be fascinating to know what the “different circumstances” were under which Eric had known James Henderson at Oxford, and who, too, was James Carroll of Brighton. A man also named James Henderson had attacked a woman, Rose Goldstein, in London's East End and threatened he would “rip you up the same as a few more have been done”. So both James Hendersons are now to be found in online resources specialising in the details of the crimes of Jack the Ripper, absurd though it seems for Eric's cabman to be numbered in that unpleasant list.
Although Eric had carried on writing poems and stories after 1883's Myrtle, Rue, and Cypress, the next published work by Eric was to be two translations made by him, in Shorter Stories from Balzac (1890). Eric, like Aubrey Beardsley, was a great admirer of Honoré de Balzac, and Ernest Rhys requested translations from Eric as well as from one of Wilde's close friends, More Adey, who was credited under the pen-name “William Wilson” for the nine translations he supplied for the project. The small volume was published in Walter Scott's Camelot Series.
Nothing of Eric's was to be published again until 1893, when his third and final book of poems, The Shadow of Death, was published, in which he included a touching sonnet to St. Stanislaus Kostka, whose first name he bore. His darkest and saddest collection, it received a withering review from The Pall Mall Gazette, who called it “an elaborate and screaming parody of that latterday literary abortion, the youthful décadent”. It went on to say, “The slipshod versification, the maudlin sentiment, the affected preciousness, the sham mysticism and sham æstheticism, the ridiculous medley of Neo-Paganism and Neo-Catholicism, Verlaine and the Vulgate—all the nauseating characteristics of the type, in short, are here reproduced in lively burlesque.”
Also published that year in The Spirit Lamp, the Oxford literary magazine edited by Oscar Wilde's doom, Lord Alfred Douglas, was Eric's short, lycanthropic, Uranian fantasy, “The Other Side”, “a powerful story, all about were-wolves, witches, blue flames, and moonshine”, according to the poet Lionel Johnson, to whom Eric had read his tale.
Eric's only collection of short stories, Studies of Death, subtitled Romantic Tales, appeared in 1894, the year before his death, and a respectable review appeared in The Glasgow Herald. In the same year, he had submitted his strange supernatural time-slip play, “La Mazurka des Revenants”, to that decadent bible The Yellow Book. It was rejected by the editor, Henry Harland, “owing to the great pressure on our space.” Nothing else he wrote was to appear in his lifetime. His work, like his life, was coming to its end.
W.B. Yeats based the character of Count Sobrinski, in his posthumously-published novel The Speckled Bird, on Eric, characterising him in that book as looking “half like an old man, half like a very young baby”. In an account he wrote of their dinner together shortly before Eric died, Yeats quoted Eric as saying “I have only six months to live… I am exceedingly dissipated, but I do not neglect my religious duties, I assure you… I see my confessor frequently.” Yeats observed that “Stenbock himself had been forbidden to eat anything but bread and milk, but drank limitless champagne… He was like a gay clever charming child, finding amid death and decay an exquisite innocence, and with the petulant angry fits of a child.”
The Spirit Lamp, Vol. IV, No. II, 6 June 1893, James Thornton, Oxford, 1893.
Theophile von Bodisco also related that in Eric's final years, he had travelled around Europe. One of his aunts, Mili von Tritthoff, accompanied by two of her children, had visited him in Italy, where they encountered Eric:
“with a so-called friend, one Mr. Edy, in Northern Italy. And he had been surrounded by even stranger individuals. They found out that Mr. Edy was a Jesuit and that he was trying to persuade Eric to sign over Kolk to the Order of the Jesuits. Once they would call Kolk their own, they would not let go of it again so easily. The Tritthoffs learned about this plan from Eric only bit by bit. The poor fellow had converted to Catholicism and seemed to actually believe in everything he used to ridicule. He prayed and was very superstitious on top of that. He was very afraid of Mr. Edy. Eric was addicted to some narcotics and he drank, too. He was entirely dominated by these people and had become a different man altogether. Aunt Mili was terrified by what she saw. And my mother thought it was incredibly sad.”
It may be that “Mister Edy” was Father Edward Ignatius Purbrick, S.J., (1830-1914). Eric would often mention, whilst living in London, a close Jesuit friend he had called “Eddy”, who was in charge of the entire “English Province” of the Society of Jesus, and then Instructor to Tertians, while Eric was living in London.
It is from this period too that one of the strangest stories that the family told concerning Eric comes. He was said to trave
l everywhere with a life-sized wooden doll, whom he called “le petit comte” and whom he believed to be his son; he would send constantly for news of his “son” when he was absent. Sadly there is no other corroboration for this curious and evocative story.
One of the last accounts we have of Stenbock is given by Ernest Rhys. He visited Eric for supper, and observed; “how changed from the mercurial boyish Count Stenbock I once knew! His curly locks were gone, his lips bloodless, and there was no sparkle now in his china-blue eyes.” Not long after, Rhys was to see the Count for the last time, meeting him for dinner at the famous London public house, much frequented by artists and poets, The Cheshire Cheese:
Of Kings and Things Page 2