‘The Adventures of King Pausole’- illustrated editions before 1930

Pierre Vidal

The Adventures of King Pausole (Les Aventures du Roi Pausole) was the fourth major novel written by Pierre Louys. It was published in 1900, two years after his modern romance, La Femme et le pantin (Woman and Puppet) and it returned to his habit of constructing fantasy lands, or utopias, although in this case he imagined a Pyrenean kingdom in the present day rather than a simulacrum of the Greek past.

Carlegle, 1901

King Pausole is the monarch of a modern day pagan kingdom. He rules benevolently and encourages a relaxed and carefree lifestyle amongst the population. The king himself has a wife for every day of the year and young people in his realm go around naked except for shoes and headwear until they marry; polygamy and polyandry are both permissible. The adventures of the novel’s title concern the king’s rather short journey from his palace to his capital in search of his daughter, Aline, who has fallen in love with a dancer called Mirabelle and has eloped with her.  The two are found and matters are resolved, with Aline pairing up with a courtier called Giglio and Mirabelle meeting the young woman who will become the love of her life, Galatee.

As with his other major books, Pausole ran through over a dozen and a half illustrated editions. Just like my review of the illustrators of Bilitis, I have divided my discussion quite arbitrarily, looking at books issued before and after 1930. The date of Louys’ death, 1925, might have been more logical in terms of chronology and the book trade response, but one post would have been much bigger than the other; likewise had I split the material between and after the Second World War.

The first illustrated edition of Pausole was by Carlegle in 1901; this was reprinted in 1908 and then again in 1924, as we shall see. Charles Emile Egli (1877-1937) was born in Aigle in Switzerland and studied engraving in Geneva before moving to Paris in 1900 to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He took the professional name Carlegle, at first working as a humorous illustrator; he contributed to many comic and satirical newspapers and journals and his work often featured nudity and sex. However, in 1913, having provided wood blocks for an edition of Daphnis et Chloe, Carlegle switched solely to the illustration of literature, to which he felt he was better suited. As well as Louys, he illustrated Virgil, Paul Valéry, Blaise Pascal, Paul Verlaine, Sappho, La Fontaine, Diderot and Anatole France.

Pierre Vidal, The Minister Taxis confronted by the harem

The artist Pierre Vidal illustrated a further edition in 1906 (see head of page). Marie Louis Pierre Vidal (1849-1913 or 1929) was known for his images of French life during the Belle Epoque. Like another Louys illustrator, Morin-Jean, Vidal originally trained as a lawyer, but then took engraving and drawing lessons. His illustrative work included Flaubert’s Salammbo, Merimee’s Carmen, Balzac, Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant as well as Louys. For Roi Pausole, he designed a remarkable 82 colour plates, which were decorated in a style clearly of the first decade of the twentieth century. Lucien Metivet, whose illustrations of Louys have been mentioned before, also worked on a version of Pausole in the very same year, but the plates have little notable about them.

Simeon

There then seems to have been a lull in demand for the text, as it was only two decades later, after the end of the Great War, that interest revived. In 1923 an edition with woodcuts by Fernand Simeon (1884-1928) appeared. Simeon was a painter and watercolourist, but he specialised in the wood-block printing of book illustrations and was renowned for his skill in the technique. The Simeon edition was quickly followed in 1924 by a new edition again illustrated by Carlegle, who provided a generous 87 colour illustrations, all reflective of the then current fashions. The bright, primary colours of the 1924 edition contrast pleasingly with the austere black and white drawings from 1906, emphasising the cartoonish elements of the draughtsmanship.

Carlegle, 1924

Carlegle 1924

With the death of Pierre Louys in 1925, publishers saw an opportunity and further editions followed over the succeeding five years. The first included designs by Clara Tice, whose work we have encountered before. She created a full colour frontispiece and nine other two colour full-page plates for an English language translation in 1926. As we saw in her illustrations for The Twilight of the Nymphs, there is the rich use of gold coupled with bright pinks and greens and a childlike innocence to the drawing.

Two other English translations were published in the United States during the 1920s. Firstly, the ‘Society of Sophisticates’ issued a version in 1920 illustrated by Lotan Welshans (1905-85). Then, in 1929, a new edition with plates provided by satirical draughtsman Beresford Egan (1905-84) appeared. Both books seem to have been reprinted a number of times. As you’ll see, Welshans’ designs are attractive, but they can’t compete with the colourful and highly stylised plates from Egan.

Welshans, 1920

Beresford Egan- Diane a la Houppe & Aline & Mirabelle

Two further French editions came out in 1930. The first was a lavish, limited-edition printing illustrated by the Italian artist Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949) with seventeen pouchoir (stencilled) colour illustrations. Brunelleschi moved to Paris in 1900, where he worked as a printer, caricaturist, book illustrator, set and costume designer. These are gorgeous, full-page plates, in a striking art deco style, which bring out the full erotic nature of the text, although the artist makes the king look rather younger and more vigorous than Louys’ text would suggest.

Galatee & Phylis, Brunelleschi 1930

Brunelleschi, King Pausole dispenses justice

The second edition of 1930 was rather less ambitious and extravagant. It was illustrated in a more conventional style by Nicolas Sternberg (1901-1960). Like another illustrator of Louys, Marcel Vertes, Sternberg was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. Little is known about his early years, but he spent some time in Munich, where he may have been influenced by Expressionism, before arriving in Paris. There he established a career as a prolific artist and illustrator of books and magazines such as Elle. Sternberg survived the Second World War by hiding under a false identity. 

Sternberg, ‘The king holds his court,’ 1930

Sternberg is known for his nude studies, as well as for his portraits of women, dancers and theatre actors. He also provided illustrations for the erotic and fetish novels for which Paris was famed during the interwar years, something which may have recommended him for work on Louys’ novel. Sternberg’s faces are always expressive, something of which can be seen in his work on Pausole. The characters’ faces, with their pouting lips, have a charming innocence at odds with the nudity that pervades the text. His King Pausole is again rather more youthful and virile looking that Louys suggested; he has a harem of 365 wives and Sternberg’s rendering suggests that the king is fully up to the challenges that might present to him.

Sternberg, ‘Aline & Mirabelle’

As stated, the review of editions of Roi Pausole will be continued in a further post. For more information on the writing of Pierre Louys, see my bibliography for the author and my own essays and books on his work.

Sternberg, Pausole and all his wives

For a complete discussion of the illustrated editions of the works of Pierre Louys in their wider context, see my book In the Garden of Eros, available as a paperback and Kindle e-book from Amazon.

Two Less Well Known Illustrators of Pierre Louys

Vertès, Blond Girl

Marcel Vertès (1895-1961) was a costume designer and illustrator of Hungarian-Jewish origins. He was born in Budapest and his first commercially successful works of art were sketches of corpses, criminals and prostitutes he made for a sensationalist magazine in Budapest (he subsequently published a portfolio of this work as Prostitution in 1925). Vertès later provided illustrations for many of the clandestinely printed publications opposed the continuation of the Hapsburg monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the aftermath of the First World War.

After the Great War, Vertès moved first to Vienna and thence, in 1925, to Paris, where he became a student of fine art at the prestigious Academie Julian. He quickly established himself on the Paris art scene, concentrating on illustration, painting and printmaking, especially lithography. He became a close friend and disciple of fellow émigré Jules Pascin, with whom he shared many tastes and interests.

Amongst the work Vertès undertook were forgeries of Toulouse-Lautrec’s works, which helped him earn his art tuition fees. His illustration commissions included working on various erotic books, which included several works by Pierre Louys. Amongst the titles Vertès illustrated were La Semaine Secrete de Venus, 1926, which was written by Pierre Mac Orlan, a leading author of erotic and spanking fiction during the interwar period in Paris (and another friend of Pascin’s); also Collette’s Cheri in 1929 and the collection of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poems, Ombre de mon Amour, in 1956. These may all have led to his commissions to work on several books by Louys, but it may also have helped that Vertès (like Toulouse Lautrec and Jules Pascin before him) seemed to have a good knowledge of the world of Parisian brothels, as demonstrated by his album of colour lithographs, Dancings (Dancing Halls) which he produced soon after his arrival in Paris in 1925. This showed gay as well as straight bars and clubs. It was followed up, in 1932, by a portfolio titled Dames seules (Women Alone), which comprised fifteen lithographs by Vertès illustrating aspects of lesbian life in the capital: couples together in their homes, women’s bars, women cruising for sex in the Bois de Boulogne and, in one case, a woman catching her girlfriend with some else.

Harper’s Bazaar, October 1940

The artist first tackled Pierre Louys’ novel Trois Filles de leur mere in 1927. His seventeen dry-point prints were graphically faithful to the text; Vertès depicted all the perversities of the family at the heart of the novella. Next, Vertès illustrated Pybrac in 1928, unflinchingly recording the highly varied sex and sexuality that features in the hundreds of short poems that make up the collection. The artist also contributed plates to an edition of Les Aventures du Roi Pausole in 1932, which faithfully detailed the incidents of the story in thirty-eight pen and ink drawings. Six years later, he tackled Pierre Louys’ Poésies érotiques. Much like Rojan’s version of the previous year, Vertès provided thirty-two pencil and watercolour plates that fully portrayed all the lesbian and other incidents narrated in the verses.

Vertès, Three Girls

In 1935 Vertès made his first trip to New York in search of business contacts. Two years later he staged his first one-man exhibition in New York. That same year, in Paris, he provided the fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, with advertisements for her new perfume called Shocking, work that was considered rather suggestive and a little shocking by some in the industry, with their hints of dryads and discrete nakedness. Schiaparelli herself obviously liked the artist’s work, for the campaign ran for seven years.

Harper’s Bazaar, October 1944

At the start of Second World War, Vertès returned to New York with his wife, escaping the Nazi invasion of France by just two days. Ten years later, he returned to live in Paris but still maintained his lucrative professional contacts in the USA. These led his work on the 1952 film Moulin Rouge about the life and times of artist Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, for which Vertès won two Academy Awards; in addition, he painted the murals in the Café Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel and in the Peacock Alley at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.  Furthermore, he designed the sets for Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1956, contributed illustrations to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and was a jury member at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. In France, his work was recognised when he was made an officer of the Legion d’Honneur in 1955, after designing sets for ballets at the Paris Opera. Vertès also published a number of books himself, including The Stronger Sex, Art & Fashion in collaboration with Bryan Holme, It’s All Mental, a satire on psychoanalysis, and Amandes Vert, an illustrated biography.

As his enormously eclectic output will indicate, Vertès was able to work in a variety of styles and media, turning his hand to almost any commission he received.  In this, he resembled many of the illustrators I have described in my postings: whilst they may have regard themselves as painters or engravers, earning an income demanded that they were constantly flexible over subject matter and materials.

Reynard the Fox

Kris de Roover (born 1946) was an artist from Antwerp, Belgium. He studied architecture before becoming an illustrator and, during his career, worked on illustrating a wide range of subjects, including erotica, with his designs being published across Europe and in the USA. De Roover employs revived the ligne claire style of comic art, which was pioneered in Belgium by Herge and other artists at Tintin magazine.

De Roover illustrated a comic strip version of Marcel Russen’s retelling of the medieval tale of Rynaert de Vos (Reynard the Fox, 1999), Die verhalen uit het kasteel der lusten- het verboden boek (1984- which was translated later as ‘The Chateau of Delights,’ 1990) and Pierre Louys’ L’Histoire du Roi Gonzalve et des douze princesses (1990). He also created the children’s comic De Tocht der Petieterkees (The Tour of the Petieterkees, 1989).

My interest here is de Roover’s work on Roi Gonzalve. His previous work on Het kasteel der lusten, had indicated a talent for erotica, but the uncompleted novel by Louys represented a challenge to his representational skills. The origins of the story itself are unclear; the king seems to be an invention of Louys, taking his name from the eleventh century king Gonsalvo of the counties of Sobrabe and Ribagorza in the Pyrenees (and, as such, being a neighbouring realm to the imaginary kingdom of Trypheme in Louys’ Les Aventures du Roi Pausole). The twelve princesses of the full title, and their unnatural relationship with their father, may be an echo of the twelve children that the god Uranus had with his sister Gaia in the Greek myth of the Titans. Moreover, one of these offspring, Cronus, had six children with his sister Rhea and two of these, Zeus and Hera, became husband and wife, although Zeus previously was married to his aunt, Themis, sister of Cronus and Rhea. Rather like cartoonist Georges Pichard in his earlier work illustrating Louys’ Trois filles de leur mere, it seems that the Spanish publisher of Roi Gonzalve considered that a graphic novel style would be the best way of tackling the adult content of the story, thereby creating some distance and unreality. De Roover accordingly seems to have depicted the king as a louche, Lothario-like figure in a dinner jacket with a large seventies moustache, a slightly dodgy looking monarch whose character was well suited to the plot of the unfinished text, such as it is. 

De Roover’s choice of style for the book involved emphasising elements in his previous work: his plates feature strong outlines and very brightly coloured designs, using blocks of colour for each figure or item and depicted in a very simple manner (a style that might be very suitable for a children’s book- although primary tones are distinctly stronger than those he used for Reynaert de Vos in 1999). De Roover surrounded these with a pen and ink border design of female nudes which closely resemble his delicate work in the Kasteel der lusten. These elements further help to reduce the challenging nature of the content and to lighten the mood, by making the novella seem more like an action comic. It’s notable too that de Roover, like Paul-Emile Becat before him, chose to depart from the text of the book and overall raised the ages of the princesses he drew, lessening some of the potentially controversial impact of Louys’ narrative, although his plates are still explicit and are clearly tied to the text with quotations of the passages depicted.

We may well wish to reflect upon the fact that the two most recent illustrators to work upon the posthumously published works of Pierre Louys felt that such a style was more suitable or acceptable. For more discussion of these issues, see my Pierre Louys bibliography. For more discussion of work of Vertes and de Roover and of the illustrated editions of the works of Pierre Louys in their wider context, see my book In the Garden of Eros, available as a paperback and Kindle e-book from Amazon.

The sniper in the brain- time and memory

When I was born in 1960, the Second World War had been over for just fifteen years.  By the late ‘60s I was old enough to register something of these past events and to know that the Tommies fought the Jerries- and won, and that this was what should happen too when my Airfix soldiers faced each other.

I knew my dad had served in the war, but even so, it was something that was past, that was over and done with.  It wasn’t ancient history, not like the Romans or the Battle of Hastings; it wasn’t the ‘olden days’ like Cromwell or the Battle of Waterloo, but, nevertheless, it was finished and gone.

My own daughter was born in 1995.  That means that, for her, the Thatcher years- the Falklands invasion, the Battle of Orgreave- stand at the same distance to her birth as WWII does to mine.  She probably even covered some of these things in history at school.  But to me, just as would have been the case with my own parents, these things weren’t past or gone.  They still seemed as vivid and as immediate, as significant and important, as when they’d happened.  Time is an elusive thing; it’s can be gone and irreversible, but endlessly replayable in our heads.  Events long past can be relived- and reworked- endlessly if we choose.

I used to ask my dad about his wartime experiences, but for me his reminiscences would have been embodied as black and white photographs, or as the drawings in some of my children’s history books.  For him, though, what he described would have been unfurling in his mind like a film- the screenplay of his life; in colour and starring him as the lead.  It could be brought back to life at whatever point he wished and doubtless conjured the smells and the emotions he felt at the time: dead cows bloating in the fields of Normandy; the fearful, sewing machine sound of German machine guns.

We all replay our lives as films in our heads.  To these we add a secondary film reel and a photo-album of stills of events remembered from the TV news and from the papers. I sometimes wonder how people would have described these things before the advent of cinema.  What were their memories then to them?  A play performed in the theatre of their minds; paintings in the gallery of their imaginations?

Memory is a tenuous thing- it’s a delicate and personal thread connecting us to our individual pasts.  If we relied on our experiences and recollections alone, without the supplements of news and history books, how scanty our image of the past would be, how reliant upon rumour and hearsay and our even faultier recall.  Worse still, those memories are continually diminishing.  As parents and other family die, as friends are lost or die, your own stock of memory, all that ties you to your life that was and to that fund of experience that is your community or family, dwindles and fades.

What’s the earliest event I can remember from the TV?  The funeral of Winston Churchill in January 1965: it was a black and white set, of course, so the whole thing looked grey and depressing to me and I couldn’t comprehend why my mum seemed so rapt and why so many people were lining the freezing streets.  Later come fragmentary memories of Vietnam, the Beatles in India, the Torrey Canyon.

If I relied solely upon my own personal experience of major events to assemble a history of the late twentieth century, it’d be very thin indeed.  I saw the Queen, far off, at the Jubilee in 1977; I saw a troop ship returning to Southampton in 1982; I felt the blast wave of the Canary Wharf bomb rolling through our house five miles away from Docklands.  That’s pretty much the limit of my personal testimony.  Thank God for history, then.

The past lives with us day by day, but it’s subject to daily attrition and reshaping.  Every recollection is a reworking of that same memory.  Each remembering is a reshaping in light of present needs and thoughts.  Our memories evolve with us on a daily basis, changing imperceptibly; they are subject to reinterpretation, reassessment and misremembering.  Memory is alive in that cinema inside our heads, but it’s more like a play that’s being improvised again at each performance, subtly shifting and developing.

As David Bowie says in the song Time, “his script is you and me…”

“I had so many dreams,/ I had so many breakthroughs.”

Enjoy a video of the song- I suspect the terpsichore is a tribute to the inspiration of Lindsay Kemp- for better or for ill.

One man’s war

I am very pleased to say that I have just published my biography of my father’s experiences during the Second World War.

The book’s called The battle’s in the sky and it’s available as a paperback and Kindle e-book through Amazon.  Full details can be found on my separate WordPress blog, One man’s war 1939-45, but in summary what I try to achieve in the book is three things: an account of the military aspects of his service as an engineer with light anti-aircraft units; an account of his life and experiences during the period and how the war affected him and his family; and, a wider social history setting my father’s conduct in a broader context.  Many marriages were entered into in haste because of the war and were placed under severe strain by the opportunities and pressures of the war.  My father was no exception in this respect.  It’s been said that some of the major casualties of conflict are children, and this was certainly the case here.

Besides his own personal difficulties, my dad saw some of the great tragedies of the war.  His unit was the first to discover Belsen concentration camp in April 1945.  When the fighting stopped he was sent to the former German naval base on the island of Sylt to deal with displaced persons.  The island was full of forced labourers from many nations who had to be returned home.  They were briefly replaced by SS prisoners who were interrogated and the most culpable detained for trial.  Then came Polish refugees in their thousands who were accommodated until they could be repatriated- if they wanted, and many did not.  Here was suffering that dwarfed his own marital difficulties.

My research in the archives revealed that his war story was far more interesting and complex than I had imagined.  The version I concocted for myself as a boy was very far from the truth, but the reality was much more compelling.