‘ARROW, Simon’ (pseud., i.e. George Granville HOPE-JOHNSTONE?). Count Fanny's Nuptials

Death, Decay & Desire

‘ARROW, Simon’ (pseud., i.e. George Granville HOPE-JOHNSTONE?). Count Fanny's Nuptials [London:] Printed for private circulation, and published by G.G. Hope Johnstone. [1907.]

4to. Original navy blue bevelled cloth, spine lettered in gilt; pp. 68, [1], [3 (blank)]; 7 plates attributed to ‘Alastair’ (see below); extremities lightly rubbed; the odd spot; a very good copy.

First edition of this anonymous erotic story, likely authored by the publisher, with illustrations thought to be by ‘Alastair’ (i.e. Hans Henning von Voight) frequently misattributed to Beardsley.

Count Fanny’s Nuptials describes the eponymous nobleman’s wooing of the young Lucy Birchman, set against a backdrop of decadent sensuality: he woos Lucy with gifts of ‘a cage of strange silk-worms that wove strange tapestries in two colours’, French erotic drawings, a copy of Les Fleurs du mal, ‘a rare pamphlet attributed to the Marquis de Sade upon the cover of which dwarfs engaged in unthinkable pleasantries’, a ‘pair of frail drawers [...] broidered in pink thread with a design of horned satyrs’, and much else. There are scenes at the Grand Ballet and discussions of Turner, Manet, and the shops of Burlington Arcade; all the while, Lucy’s mother flirts ‘in the most outrageous manner with Erotion (Fanny’s manservant?), allowing ‘her bodice to slip aside with studied carelessness and display the ample zones of her bosom’.

In 1913 Hope-Johnstone appeared before the King’s Bench Division, having been brought to court by the Princess of Formosa for alleged slander and false imprisonment (Hope-Johnstone had turned her in to the police for purportedly stealing £6 from him).

Their relationship, which had started around 1911, was evidently tumultuous: the court case notes that Hope-Johnstone persuaded her to briefly run away with him to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where they ‘lived as man and wife’, makes mention of several mercurial letters varying from desperate (‘In Paris after you left I kissed the cat instead of you’) to defamatory (calling her ‘the most despicable creature I have ever known’), and refers to an incident in which he turned up at her flat in Paris, pulled the tablecloth from the table, ‘moves the whole of the dinner, breaks a bottle of champagne against the wall, goes to the door and insults a lady who is coming in, strikes the lady’s escort in the face, and then shuts the door on them’. The case was settled for £500 (see ‘Sicilian Princess’ Suit’, in The Advertiser, 28 July 1913, p. 19).

Samuels Lasner 221 (‘The text has also been attributed—with little evidence—to Ronald Firbank’).

SKU: 2126088