EXCERPTS FROM A LECTURE TOUR BY MS CELIA FISTING

“Appleby boasts some spectacular estates, but Glansview House is surely the jewel of the Bottom of Westmorland. In addition to an original Norman lintel, this palatial residence – still occupied by the Baronets Coquemarch – holds a spacious priest hole. This installation once communicated with a nearby seminary, for the evacuation of recusant rectors by night, but the seventeenth Baronet had it converted into a Buggery Nook, to accommodate the discreet assignations of his guests. Ever the Francophile, the Baronet is said to have modelled it on the Buggery Nook of Versailles, where Madame de Pompadour was made to moo like a cow.”

“When I say ‘the Lonsdale hundred’, you may think of steam-launches on Windermere, or perhaps of the notorious gang of political kidnappers, but you probably won’t think of wild parties. Nonetheless, the small but exceedingly charming estate of Littlethrush Abbey was said to be the hottest in High Furness, and its owner – the Marquess in Absentia of Berkshire – was a great favourite of the Hellfire Club, and was once considered as a host for their annual Nameless Orgies. A devoted patron of music and dance, the Marquess installed a Bacchanal temple in the grounds, where he would hold his balls in the summer months, to the delight of the local gentry.”

“The best-known home in Craven, and indeed all of the West Riding of Yorkshire, is, of course, Uffington Keep, but for the scholar of Rude Follies, the most interesting is Goodfellow Manor, historic centre of the Staincliffe Wapentake and ancestral home of the Pleasances of York. The Fornicatorium of Goodfellow Manor, once considered its finest feature, was during the last century determined not to be a Gropability Brown original, but an addition by a later ancestor. Academic consensus following this revelation was that the Fornicatorium was a modern invention, based on a popular misreading of certain Silver Age Latin texts. However, a monograph recently published by the Fisting Foundation for Ribald Architecture disproves this theory, with the location of a functional description of a Fornicatorium in the chamber-writings of Chaucer proving once and for all that the style represents a genuine mediaeval mode which saw one or more subsequent revivals, and which was likely a descendant of the Saxon fickshuld or “relations shed.”

“This concludes our tour of the Rude Follies of the North-West. Please return your See-D Goggles to the attendant at the front of the coach, and exercise caution when exiting, as the floor is quite damp. If you wish to learn more about our nation’s valuable naughty heritage, extracts from the tour, up to and including this announcement, are available as an informative pamphlet from Bucking and Cump, Picture Publishers, in association with the National Thrust.”

First Swell: I say! Noodle, is that you?

Second Swell: Eh, what? Puffin, my dear fellow, is that you up there?

First: Yes! I’m sorry, I can’t come down – I’m in a deal of bother!

Second: Y’don’t say – anything I can help you with?

First: Well, I was hoping you’d offer – y’see, we’ve just had a chap in to install the new telephone-

Second: Oh, very smart!

First: Yes, I was keen on it, and so was Millie. But the chap’s been and gone, and I can’t find where he’s put the bally thing!

Second: You’ve lost your new ‘phone? That’s a deuce of a problem, old horse. What can I do?

First: Well, I thought if you stuck your head into the post office on the corner, and asked them to put a call through to my place, I might be able to locate it by the sound of the ringing bell.

Second: Damn good idea. Alright, Puffin, stay put, I shan’t be a jiff. (A little over a jiff passes.) Alright, they’re putting the call through now! Can you hear it?

First: I can definitely hear something… it seems to be coming from downstairs. (Head disappears; reappears at a middle-floor window.) The ringing seems to be coming from the butler’s pantry.

Second: Ah, so you’ve found it, then – excellent!

First: Only problem is, I’m not quite sure how to get into the butler’s pantry – I’ve only ever glimpsed it through the serving-hatch when he’s got me a sandwich at night. There are an awful lot of doors… I think I’m going to have to try climbing down the dumbwaiter.

Second: Is that entirely wise, old sausage?

First: I fear not, but it’s the only plan I’ve got. If you don’t hear from me within a quarter of an hour, er…

Second: Shall I call for Millie?

First: Heavens, no; if she found me in the dumbwaiter, she’d probably eat me. You stand watch, and if you don’t hear from me… you use your discretion and better judgement!

Second: Right-ho; best of luck and all that. …Puffin? Are you still there? Can you hear me? …I think what I ought to do is run and ring up the fire department. That all right? Tell you what, I’ll go do that, and if you’re fine and don’t need help… give me a call.

A dense and smothering heat had settled over the city. By the second day, noted barristers were seen soaking their wigs in ice-water before appearing before the courts. After five days, the national passion for talking about the weather had receded almost to nothing. At the end of the first week, it was reported that a town-breeder’s hen had laid a hard-boiled egg, and the general grumbling high and low was that something really ought to be done about it. In certain quarters, though, the atmosphere that was generally stifling instead had a stimulating effect, and certain fashionably intellectual suburbs in the West End were demonstrating that sort of fractious energy usually associated with funfairs or peasant uprisings.

Some of this excitation was purely administration. While the Braedon Arts Club were largely abroad, indulging in plein air excursions or less productive pastimes, their opposite neighbours – the Philistines Gallery – were involving in preparing their annual Great Purge (not to be confused with the Emetic Exhibition of their Continental rival, the Cabaret Calomel.) This popular event would see the opening of the Gallery’s large collection, representing a number of modernist schools – given by artists in default of bills, or seized by landlords in their reclamation of garrets and cellars whose rents, though modest, had nonetheless fallen arrears. Year by year, the stolid public were brought in to witness this display of painting and sculpture, and, should any patron observe, for instance, that their five-year-old child could have done a better job, they were invited to produce the infant and demonstrate the proof of their claims. If successful, parent and child together were awarded the original artwork, solemnly congratulated by the Chief Curator, and then kicked down the front stairs.

Not far away, a modest suite of offices leased by the Society for Farcical Research was buzzing with fresh discoveries. Years of research into the power of mind over matter had borne fruit. Dr Celia Flappevöte had, under controlled laboratory conditions, mentally envisaged a given action – in this case, the decanting of a bowl of peaches into an iron kettle – and then, using only the muscles and other tissues connected by the nervous system to the brain, succeeded in translating this notion into physical reality. This breakthrough – published alongside reports from Berlin that mental communication or “telecognition” had been achieved by method of inscribing the intended message on paper with a stick of graphite, and then passing its reflection through the recipient’s optic nerve – was thought to confirm absolutely the fundamental unity of the intellectual and phenomenal spheres, and, incidentally, to have quite exploded Professor DeRinje’s theory of sweet/savoury dualism and his maxim to “act according to the custard of perception, for the noumenal soup acts only upon itself.”

Far beneath the feet of these worthy luminaries, less virtuous interests were finding the weather suited their purposes. “Areaway” Cole relied on warm evenings – and the open windows and general lethargy they brought – for his career of burglary and cellar-pepping. This dishonourable practice involved gaining access to the below-stairs of a house and making off with the staff’s jewellery and petty cash. This was a step down in the world for Cole – once he had run for the Tite Street Boys, marking or “salting” these same cellars to the gang to use as entry-points for raids. The world had moved about him, though, until he only had himself to rely upon, reduced to stuffing his pockets with trinkets for the pawnbroker and the rag-and-bone merchant, and he was lucky if he could afford one manicure a month. Still, he thought himself thankful that he could earn a dishonest living, when so many of his compatriots had turned to cocoa, prayer, and charitable works.

But, of course, these examples were very much the exceptions, and, further, the exceptions to the rule of exceptions proving the rule. As a whole, the city lolled, languished, and demanded ice-lollies, and waited for the mud and noise and welcome misery of the cooler months to return.