Gormenghast
Contents
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
TITUS GROAN
The Hall of the Bright Carvings
The Great Kitchen
Swelter
The Stone Lanes
‘The Spy-Hole’
Fuchsia
‘Tallow and Birdseed’
A Gold Ring for Titus
Sepulchrave
Prunesquallor’s Knee-Cap
The Attic
The Frivolous Cake
‘Mrs Slagg By Moonlight’
Keda
‘First Blood’
‘Assemblage’
‘Titus is Christened’
Means of Escape
‘A Field of Flagstones’
‘Over the Roofscape’
‘Near and Far’
‘Dust and Ivy’
‘The Body by the Window’
‘Ullage of Sunflower’
Soap for Greasepaint
At the Prunesquallors
A Gift of the Gab
While the Old Nurse Dozes
Flay Brings a Message
The Library
In a Lime-Green Light
Reintroducing the Twins
‘The Fir-Cones’
Keda and Rantel
The Room of Roots
‘Inklings of Glory’
‘Preparations for Arson’
The Grotto
Knives in the Moon
‘The Sun Goes Down Again’
‘Meanwhile’
‘The Burning’
And Horses Took Them Home
Swelter Leaves His Card
The Un-Earthing of Barquentine
First Repercussions
Sourdust is Buried
The Twins are Restive
‘Half-Light’
A Roof of Reeds
‘Fever’
Farewell
Early One Morning
A Change of Colour
A Bloody Cheekbone
The Twins Again
The Dark Breakfast
The Reveries
The Reverie of Cora
Reverie of Alfred Prunesquallor
Reverie of Fuschia
Reverie of Irma Prunesquallor
The Reverie of Lady Clarice
Reverie of Gertrude the Countess of Gormenghast
Reverie of Nannie Slagg
Reverie of Sepulchrave, 76th Earl of Gormenghast
Here and There
Presage
In Preparation for Violence
Blood At Midnight
Gone
The Roses Were Stones
‘Barquentine and Steerpike’
By Gormenghast Lake
Countess Gertrude
The Apparition
The Earling
Mr Rottcodd Again
GORMENGHAST
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Spiregrain, Throd and Splint
Chapter Fourteen
Irma Wants a Party
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
TITUS ALONE
Dedication
Titus Alone: Publisher’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Chapter Ninety-Five
Chapter Ninety-Six
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Chapter One Hundred
Chapter One Hundred and One
Chapter One Hundred and Two
Chapter One Hundred and Three
Chapter One Hundred and Four
Chapter One Hundred and Five
Chapter One Hundred and Six
Chapter One Hundred and Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Ten
Chapter One Hundred and Eleven
Chapter One Hundred and Twelve
Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen
Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen
Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two
COPYRIGHT
About the Book
Enter the world of Gormenghast. The vast crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is Lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this Gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons, cloisters and corridors as well as the eccentric and wayward subjects. Things are changing in the castle and Titus must contend with a kingdom about to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation and murder...
About the Author
Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, Central Southern China. He was educated at the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. A gifted book illustrator, he is remembered for Ride a Cock Horse, The Hunting of the Snark, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Grimm’s Household Tales and Treasure Island. He is best known for his fictional masterpieces Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959). Mervyn Peake died in 1968.
MERVYN PEAKE
THE ILLUSTRATED
GORMENGHAST
TRILOGY
Titus Groan
Gormenghast
Titus Alone
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
China Miéville
Introduction
‘Gormenghast’.
With its first word the work declares itself. Establishes its setting and has us abruptly there, in the castle and the stone. There is no slow entry, no rabbit-hole down which to fall, no backless wardrobe, no door in the wall. To open the first book is not to enter but to be already in Peake’s astonishing creation.
So taken for granted, indeed, is this totality, this impossible place, that we commence with qualification. ‘Gormenghast’, Peake starts, ‘that is, the main massing of the original stone’, as if, in response to that opening name, we had interrupted him with a request for clarification. We did not say ‘What is Gormenghast?’, but: ‘Gormenghast? Which bit?’
It is a sly and brilliant move. Asserting the specificity of a part, he better takes as given the whole – of which, of course, we are in awe. This faux matter-of-fact method makes Gormenghast, its Hall of Bright Carvings, its Tower of Flints, its roofscapes, ivy-shaggy walls, its muddy environs and hellish kitchens so much more present and real than if it had been breathlessly explained. From this start, Peake acts as if the totality of his invented place could not be in dispute. The dislocation and fascination we feel, the intoxication, is testimony to the success of his simple certainty. Our wonder is not disbelief but belief, culture-shock at this vast strange place. We submit to this reality, that the book asserts even as it purports not to. Of course Gormenghast is.
Many more than these three books were planned: this was an accidental trilogy. Each of its parts, and each of those unborn others, has and would have had its own quiddity. Gormenghast is not only the title of the midpoint text, but the shared foundation of the three books: yes, even of that last, so-strange, scandalously neglected volume, changeling among changelings. The events it describes all occur in exile from the castle, but Gormenghast, absent presence, could hardly be more there than it is in those pages.
It is a cliché of course to insist that this or that work ‘evades classification’, is ‘sui generis’, or so on. Caution is indicated. But the sheer strangeness of Gormenghast is very real. The work is irreducible to the sum of any of the influences we can find in it. Given its brilliance and the devotion in which it has always been held, one might be surprised at how relatively restrained its overt influence has been. Of course it has always had partisans and those grateful for its shadow, but it seems rather astonishing that it has not been a taproot text, a genre-starter, spawning generations of post-, and, inevitably, sub-Gormenghast fantasies.
The particular flavour of its oddness helps explain this somewhat subterranean history. What faces us is not a radical and violent estrangement so much as a sustained sense of almost-familiarity, of not-quite-familiarity, a strong but wrong recognition. Reading The Gormenghast Trilogy can be like the moment the friend we greet turns and is not our friend at all, but an only vaguely similar stranger.
Some of the themes, for example, are hardly unprecedented: most famously the tension between tradition and change, between the antique rules of Gormenghast and the insurrectionary force of Steerpike, at whose hand so much is shattered. Even here, however, while the problematic may be relatively clear, the sides, the moral axis, are anything but. When Steerpike tugs limbs from a beetle as he says, ‘Equality is the great thing, equality is everything’, the conjunction of sadism and radicalism might read as fairly heavy-handed reactionary slander, and his ongoing sociopathic Machiavellianism might seem to underline this view. But is this really the argument? Given the remorseless ludicrousness of the rituals to which Gormenghast and Groan life are subjected and by which they are trapped, the practices’ pointlessness and powerlessness to improve anything for anybody, the panicky subservience of those in their thrall, the idea that fidelity to ‘tradition’ or ‘history’ is celebrated is utterly hollow. There is something at least as bracing as it is horrifying in the transformations Steerpike wreaks. We both take and untake sides.
It is in the names above all, perhaps, that Peake’s strategy of simultaneous familiarising and defamiliarising us is at its zenith; Rottcodd, Muzzlehatch, Sourdust, Crabcalf, Gormenghast itself. Such strange and unlikely composites clearly echo Trollope and above all Dickens. But where for them the nomenclaturic agenda worked, often moralistically, to semaphore salient aspects of the named, for Peake no such readings are feasible. This is hardly because he tones down the absurdism. On the contrary, what is merely camp in Dickens becomes grotesquerie in Peake, and splendid for it. But such names are so overburdened with semiotic freight, stagger under such a profusion of meanings, that they end up as opaque as if they had none. ‘Prunesquallor’ is a glorious and giddying synthesis, and one that sprays images – but their portent remains unclear. The doctor’s character does not help us. He is vivid, comedic, decent, but neither particularly squalid nor overtly fructine. Our minds are perpetual hermeneutic engines, and they do not stop attempting to decode, but their gears cannot get traction.
Not all the names are invented or crossbred, and where they are not, it is their context that makes them strange. Flay, Lord Groan’s taciturn manservant, and his nemesis, the murderous cook Swelter, are both named with a verb, proper-nouned. In each case the symbolic suitability is arguable, but is neither self-evident, nor, in fact, argued. Swelter has a first name: Abiatha. Its Hebrew meaning, bountiful father, is a discomforting joke, to which Swelter himself draws attention. ‘I am the father of excellence and plenty,’ he says, and makes the name a chant. Abiatha, he sings, hypnotically. Nomen est omen, but an omen of what, who can quite say?
Paradoxes like this one, of surplus yet shy meanings, abound. Gormenghast feels both claustrophobic and vast. The language is lush and dusty, organic and desiccated.
At the start of the middle volume, Peake introduces us to a boy we’ve so far known only known as a baby. These opening pages are, uniquely for the series, in the present tense; no matter, then, what other ages Titus passes through, he is also, always, seven – a child needing succour. We open with three three-word clauses. A troika of troikas. ‘Titus is seven’. And? ‘His confines, Gormenghast’. Gormenghast, again and always. Here ‘confines’, noun and verb, underscores the oppression of all that stone. And how does Titus live? How has he been raised?
‘Suckled on shadows’.
It is an astounding phrase. A vivid Gormenghastian paradox, an impossible dialectic of nurture and imprisonment, of sustenance out of emptiness, out of darkness.
Here Peake the writer meets Peake the artist. As this new edition makes so clear, these two aspects of the man’s work were always intimately related, and it is an inextricable aspect of The Gormenghast Trilogy that these are illustrated books. For many of his admirers (and I am one) it is in Peake’s pen-and-ink work that his most remarkable talents show. In his vivid and loose working sketches; his sparse outline drawings, that render in blank space as much as in the lines themselves; in the lightly washed Gormenghast of shade-contrast, elegant brushwork and space; and above all in his astonishing cross-hatching. Scribbles and overlaid lines become vectors of shade and solidity. Through only two values – ink and not-ink, black and white, lines of the former overlapping on the latter – Peake’s figures and landscapes emerge in three dimensions. It is through this monochrome alchemy of crosshatching that all the vivid varieties of presence, all the humanely-rendered, exaggerated but never parodic features of his Gormenghastians, and of the city inhabitants with whom Titus walks in self-exile, are made. Plenitude out of nothing, substance out of shade.
‘And darkness’, Peake says a few lines on from his reintroduction of Titus, ‘winds between the characters’. It does, and it winds into each of them, and winds them together, too. One might say the same about the work of any black-nib-wielding illustrator. But the point is not only that Peake drew his own imaginings so brilliantly, it is that there is something specific about that brilliance. It is the manner in which, in his art, he captures intricacy and austerity, vividness and entropy. It is this that makes the claim of an elective affinity between his words and his images more than a tendentious fancy.
There was nothing like The Gormenghast Trilogy before it came. And despite the gratifyingly growing number of readers for whom it is indispensable, and the concomitant spread of descendant texts, such cuttings are all at a remove. Cousins, nieces, nephews, yes; but The Gormenghast Trilogy has no book-children. It and only it does what it does.
Each time the arid succulence of the prose brings us up short, each time our eyes widen at the illustrations, at Gormenghast itself emergent out of scribble and scrawl – and never more so than when at the combination, at the perfect illustrated-bookness of it all – it is we who are suckled on shadows.
China Miéville, 2011
A Note on the Illustrations
This exciting edition brings together over one hundred drawings by Mervyn Peake; from visual aide memoires which were sketched in the margins of the original manuscripts, to stage designs for an opera based on Gormenghast. While some drawings were produced in ink and others in pencil, the medium chosen for the full page portraits was highly resolved water colour. During his time at the Central School of Art, my father would produce the occasional lithograph and monoprint of the characters. Even after the books were published he felt drawn to his castle and its denizens. He seemed particularly fond of Muzzlehatch who appears more regularly in his notebooks than any other character and he continued to depict Gormenghast’s inhabitants until illness blunted the sharpness of his vision.
As can be seen from the eclectic range within this edition, fine detail predominates in several of the illustrations, while in others a more perfunctory view of the figure is observed. Humorous, evocative, poignant, even cartoon-like in style, quite a few also display that special skill my father possessed, one in which a character is brought to life in a single line. Whether it be the obsequious, scheming duplicity of Steerpike or the frail confused nature of Fuchsia, my father’s protagonists emerge from the page exhibiting all their strengths and weaknesses. Quentin Blake said of my father’s work, ‘Not least among Mervyn Peake’s virtues was his ability to be serious while involved in grotesque humour, and to be idiosyncratic while being completely professional. And that drawing was the essential of all he did.’
Ronald Searle recalls reading Titus Groan for the first time and how the strikingly visual nature of the writing affected him, ‘I started reading it and did not stop. The images conjured up the most weird visions. Images that I had not encountered since absorbing my first introduction to the world of William Blake. It is a fantastic, almost surrealistic flow of vision.’