The Hidden Library

This is where you’ll be able to find our books …

Forbidden tomes, incendiary tracts, seditious literature, books of shadows, rantings of deranged minds, grimoires, bestiaries, codexes, chapbooks of forgotten poets, penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers. 

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Devlin’s Account of The Long Night

Nov. 1^st 1894

So it begins. The Game is underway, the seeds are sown, the dice are cast. And, despite some rotten looking bruises around the face and head, I’ll hazard that I’m winning already. Crowe can stuff it in his pipe. He told me, “a full report, Stephen, a full report !”; I said I’d sing it to him if he liked, but he’s a man prefers the written word, oh yes, for his accounts, his tallies ; he keeps a record in a ledger of all I owe him, and scrupulously writes down his dreams, his readings, his experiments, his bloody bowel-movements for all I know (and I bet they’re bloody, now I mention it, for he eats far too frugal fare, full of roughage and bland, saw-dusty Vegetarianist Vileness[1]). So then, off we go, and here we are :

The Ballad of the Long Night, (Being the Adventures of Messrs. Devlin and MacGilpatrick, Out on the Town in Gay Parys, with Assorted Felons, Floozies, and Fabulists, on the Night of Samhain Eve, in this Year of Disgrace 1894).

Dull enough to begin, we were to call on Crowe in his rooms in the Rue du Bac. I dawdled in the courtyard of the Irish College while waiting for Himself, Young Thomas, to make an appearance. Eyed up suspiciously by the Dirty Old Monk, Pierre, who keeps the gate. My, he has a rheumy, squinty Eye ! I twandled my ashplant, strolling and whistling, oozing insouciance and je-m’en-fouting left and right. Some priestly young pale-faces glanced me askance, and I sparked a cigar, the better to make mock at them. I think one strapping young Mayo man would have had at me, when I began to sing Joy to Great Caesar soft-loudly to myself. Surprised he knew what I was on about. But they have a nose for Anti-Popery, these little Ultramontane Bookworms. Not a minute soon enough, he arrived, and whisked me off before I could get in any more trouble. Scoldy Thomas, chiding me like a child. What larks.

To Crowe’s, next. The Crowe’s Nest, or Sanctum, is in a dullish stretch of dull aul’ street, though I hear the Musketeers once used to drill there. Rue du Bac, D’Artagnan at one end, and the Chapelle de la Medaille Miraculeuse at the other ; Crowe, needless to say, favours the Holy, and not the Swashbuckling end. As we entered through the coach-way into the courtyard, a great brute of a man was swinging himself up to the box of a pretty wee rig, two white horses and all. He gave me a grunt and a grudgy tip o’ the hat. Fine evening, Abel, I cried. He whipped up his horses, and near ran us down. Thomas, though, I’m sure, caught a good old glimpse in the carriage window as it passed, and saw – a blondey head, and sad blue eyes. Good, good. Her timing is exquisite. Though her lug of a man-servant, Abel Guest, is not one to be tangled with, I’d say. Thomas only looked on as they passed out under the gate. I asked, why the sheepy eyes ? He said nothing, only, he thought he saw someone he knew. I know well. Of course he did.

Welcoming us, if you can call it that, Crowe’s man Scully took our coats, and my hat and stick, and mumbled that the Master was above, and we were to go right up. Damn but he’s a gloomy one ! How is it that they all have servants, and not a one is jolly, not a one is comical ? Have they seen no Shakespeare, no Molière ? If I had servants, I’d employ only gay young blades, and dainty damsels, all ready for a bit of rough-and-tumble, a fight or a flirt, at the drop of a hat. My hat, needless to say. But the question is unlikely to pose itself, as the wages of sin are scanty at best, and allow little margin for the maintaining of a household.

In the sitting-room above, Crowe waiting in an armchair by the window, a heavy volume on the low lectern by his elbow, seemed to start out of a reverie as we entered. Pshaw, he was waiting. I know, for his window looks down at the approach, and he would have tipped off the young Miss that it was time to be going. Thomas, dubious, asked nothing about her, but they exchanged the pleasantries they are both so attached to. So Crowe must take it up.

“Do you know,” he says, “That I have just been speaking of you with a young acquaintance of mine ?”

There was a little start from Thomas. Hooked. Well, I may have put her in play, but she’s Crowe’s piece, really. Wait’ll he sees what I have in store, though. He’ll soon lose interest in Little Miss Silver’n’Gold. Crowe told him he’d had a Young Lady come to him for advice and instruction. He mentions her and Thomas’s meeting a few weeks ago, says she was asking for him, the futur curé. Says she wishes she’d had time to talk, hopes she was not rude, is so pleased that he’s made the acquaintance of Master Crowe now, and wouldn’t it be delightful for them both to come to tea with her one of these days, for to continue their most interesting discussions. She’s a Seeker after the Truth, Crowe lets drop. She’s a Sheep as has Lost her Way, he heavily intimates. She wishes she’d a Faith as strong and sound as yours, Thomas. Thomas, affecting indifference, or polite interest, saunters awkwardly round the room, picking up books he can’t see, objects he can’t feel. His ears are bright red. Oh-ho now ! She’s made a hit, there’s for sure. Her name ? Oh, Crowe goes, Naughty Devlin didn’t introduce you ? She is Mrs Sophia Walker. Come to Paris for study and rest, after the death of her dear husband, in this Time of Trouble of her Faith. Yes, yes, a Catholic. One can always tell, can’t one ? I snorted. Crowe glared. He rang for tea.

Scully lit us our way upstairs, and we bypassed the main library, up the narrower winding stair into the tower above. I rubbed my hands in glee, for Crowe has kept me from up here for years. Fears I’ll nobble his favourite grimoires, no doubt. I would, it’s true, but for their monetary rather than arcane value. How more sorry would he be were I to make off with a treasured incunabulum, only to have it turn up in one of his esoteric book-dealer’s lists ? Though at least then he could buy it back. Must study this question, for circulation of wealth is a laudable goal, as long it circulates through my pockets …

Above, in the Hidden Library, Scully busied himself with lighting the thick waxy frozen waterfalls of candles around about, to dispel the gloom of the late afternoon, though watery light filtered through from the glassy dome above us, in the round tower room of this folly. Thomas glanced around politely, but I ran, panting, to the shelves, and ducked side to side like a hound on the scent at the rich fruit of plunder there ! His books on alchemy alone, they had me slavering : he had the works of Avicenna, of Lully, of Nicolas Flamel, who, with his wife Pernella, is rumoured still to wander among the Dervish tribes of the desert, the Elixir achieved ; he had the Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi’l-sihr, the Clavicula Salomonis, an Abramelin ; he had the false – and the true – works of Hermes Thrice-Great, displayed in such a way as to show he knew the difference ; Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia was there, with Paracelsus ; the great connoisseurs of the Legion Spirits of the Abyss, Fr Michaelis and Dr Dee, alongside the Daemonolatreia of Remigius ; the herbals of Culpepper, the Inquisition’s Malleus Malleficarum, and such subtle delvers as Trithemius, Pico della Mirandola, Olaus Wormius, Joachim of Flora, and Qabbalistic confectioneries a-plenty[2]. Oh, but it was a rich and rare collection he had amassed, Old Bill. He took Thomas by the arm, and showed off some of the beautiful illuminated volumes.

The boy’s brow furrowed, and he seemed to catch a whiff of the sulphurous nature of the forbidden books sitting blasphemously on the shelves. Un véritable Enfer ! he exclaimed. Crowe smiled, smugly. Had not Thomas seen such rooms, in his erring in the great libraries of the Vatican ? For surely, it was not an innocent the Church was meaning to make of him ? Thomas nodded an uncomfortable assent. What did they mean to make of him, one wonders ? And if they succeeded, would we not find ourselves on opposite sides of a Great Divide ? That thought, unspoken, passed between myself and Crowe, with a conspiratorial look.

The stripling’s eyes were elsewhere, for he now addressed himself to the study of the objects and curiosities that were set on plinths around the corners of the round room, or in alcoves and niches among the books. A many-breasted Isis, and a leering little Priapus had their places, and he lingered to look close at what – as he soon noticed – was a most Odious Grecian Urn, its men and boys, red on black, engaged in athletic embraces, in the manner of the symposiasts of that Grand Epoch. Crowe hurried him away from this one, perhaps wishing to distract him from thoughts of the induction rites of Athenian youths. He displayed with pride his Bell of Saint Patrick – one of the dozens the holy man had made, Crowe said, cast in iron, then dipped in bronze in case men’s eyes would be blinded by their sanctity. Stranger still, there was : the mummified head of some unfortunate from the dawntimes, his flesh blackened but preserved by the action of the bog in which he’d fallen, or was thrown.

            “Only think !” Crowe cried, transported. “This doughty warrior walked the earth while Moses tended his flocks in Midian, or before …”

Thomas was suitably impressed. I took the opportunity, while their eyes gazed into some legendary past, to slip out a quaintly typeset volume of Rétif de la Bretonne’s Les Nuits de Paris, ou le Spectateur nocturne, which I had heard was full of terribly instructive illustrations, but Crowe darted sideways and snatched it, tutting and clucking over it like it was a darling child who’d had a fall. Wounded, I took my pride off to the other side of the room, and there saw a thing of astounding beauty. I had discussed with Crowe the plans for this table, but this was the first time I had seen the finished product. As I flitted into the tiny side-chapel that contained it, I let whoop a cry of joy, and the others followed me to see this little wonder.

About the size of a billiard table, the surface was of carefully worked hazel-wood, and growing up the middle, a representation of a great branching tree of ash. From its root to its crown, and in sets of branches in between, were discs the size of dinner plates, ten in number, four up the middle, three along each side. Between the discs, were marble paths ; around them, runes and symbols, inscriptions, diagrams. Crowe watched me, as I ran my hands along the surfaces, traced the patterns with my fingers. Did it meet with my approval, he asked. I could only sigh. Thomas looked on, puzzlement and wonder in his eyes, and some trace of terror, as if he felt the Trembling of the Veil. What was it, he asked. As Crowe began to speak, the underwater light above was fading, and the candle flames seemed to burn pure and high. I became aware of tumbling blue tendrils of smoke snaking around us, hanging in whorls and clouds below the low ceiling of the alcove : some incense of Crowe’s, some powder, ground from fossilised basilisk tears, perhaps ; I saw this sweet, heady perfume tumbling from a Byzantine thurible that hung from its chain in another alcove.

            “This, my young friend, is the Tree of the Cosmos, the Tree of Life[3]. You might think of it as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fruit of which, plucked in Eden, has made us Fallen. The Norsemen knew it as Yggdrasil, on which hung the worlds of men, of giants, of elves, of gods. The Jewish mystics, students of the Qabbalah, have named these ten sephiroth, the spheres, emanations of God, and traced the paths between them. With Devlin here, and after many years of study, I have combined these, and other cosmologies, to make this that you see before you. Each disc is a symbol, a complex one, in alchemical, theological, and mystical terms. You see here … at the bottom the Stone Circle, Kingdom of the Earth. At the top, there, in gold inlaid with diamond, is the Purest Spirit. Between are the Realms of the Iron King, on the right hand, beneath him lead and lodestone, in the form of the Compass Rose, for wealth and learning, and then yew wood, for the Romance of the Forest. On the left is the Star of the Sea, the Queen of Heaven, her disc of the ivory of a narwhal’s tusk, then bronze for the Warrior’s Ordeal, and the fire of purification, and then the Labyrinth, of glass and quicksilver, for wit, insight, and science. In the middle, between the Earthly Kingdom, and the High Holy Spirit, there is the Silver Moon, for dreams, and the Brass Sun, where men’s lives become the lives of heroes, and where gods die, and are reborn.”

The Spheres and Paths seemed to glitter and pulse with the presences of Gods, Daemons, and magical powers, Chthonic and Ouranian. Thomas stared, his eyes drinking thirstily, greedily. He could almost decipher the charged names, could make out the terrible energy that the mere juxtaposition of such symbols and materials creates. Crowe said something to him, in what tongue ? Ancient Greek ! And Thomas responded, an automatic antiphon, in a sing-song dreamy voice. Blast it ! Not fair ! Little Latin have I, and less Greek,[4] and Crowe was surely cheating now. These riches, and this learning that they share, the darker learning he would share with our young novice. I couldn’t have it. We must out.

            “Christ’s toes !” I sang out. “The pair of you ! … One thinks of Homer … Pff ! Come, Thomas, let’s out of this stuffy study. We’re keeping the old bachelor from his dusty books, no doubt, and two young bucks like us, we should be off, we should be out !”

Thomas shook his head, as if waking from a dream. I strode back towards the stairs, chivvying him, harrying him, trying to ignore Crowe’s black looks. I’d disrupted his ambiance, and ruined his moment, it seems. All the better.

            “Go back to playing with your toys, Sweet William ! And damn your Special Table ! As balls to wanton gentlemen are we to the Gods : they play billiards with our souls !” I cackled and shouted this back over my shoulder, dragging Thomas stumbling in my wake down the narrow winding stair. Crowe called back, crestfallen, that he had been about to show us the playing pieces. Those, on the contrary, I had seen. I knew that he would now set them out, on the Table of the Tree, mine on the left side, his on the right. I knew that he would put in play four pieces, three at Malkuth, the Kingdom of the Earth, the Beginning : his piece, the Knight of Pentacles, with his scholar’s robes, and book and bell ; my piece, the Knight of Wands, of Wanderers, which we had fashioned with a vagabond’s staff and a minstrel’s harp ; Thomas’s piece, the Knight of Cups, the Grail Knight, the poor doomed would-be Galahad, preparing to be tested. And at the Disc of the Moon, at Yesod, there would be the Silver Maiden, for he had played her as his opening. The Board will change tonight, I told myself, oh yes !

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[1] It is none of my concern if you think this may offend your Vegetarian and Vegan readers, Mr Oates. I refuse to edit the text itself to conform to your idea of this vast ‘readership’ you keep talking about. When was the last time you sold over 100 copies of one of your books, anyway?

[2] Very well. Again, I had thought my footnote a model of scholarly elucidation, but if you’re sure that all of your readers will be so well-versed in what you term this ‘Occult Bibliography For Beginners’, then far be it from me to stick my oar in.

[3] [if you insist] See Margery Davenport’s Introduction to the Mysteries of the Tree of Life (Savage House, 2008).

[4] I know you know the quotation, but some people might not. What do you have against Shakespeare?

[I see. Which one is it then, Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe?]

Excerpted from Unreal City, by Martin Caulder, writing as Florence de la Tour. Originally published under the title “The Devil in a Woman’s Form”, by Olympia Press in the Traveller’s Companion Series, 1963. New edition prepared and annotated by Thomas Mulholland, PhD.