A Pretty Mouth (38 page)

Authors: Molly Tanzer

BOOK: A Pretty Mouth

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The first piece in this collection, “A Spotted Trouble at Dolor-on-the-Downs,” I transcribed after discovering that Oliver’s documents contained several pages torn from the Junior Ganymede Club for Gentlemen’s Personal Gentleman’s “Club Book.” (NB: I have since returned those pages to that club for re-inclusion.) The Junior Ganymede Club is, of course, best known for its most celebrated member: Reginald Jeeves, valet to Wodehouse’s beloved subject, Bertram Wilberforce “Bertie” Wooster, Lord Yaxley. The only addition to Jeeves’ record of those strange events at the Marine Vivarium is the title, which I hope would please both Mr. Wodehouse and Jeeves himself. I know the content of this piece may disturb Jeeves fans, for he fails to liberate those unfortunate victims of Cirrina’s diabolic schemes. I, too, was surprised by his actions; I can only conclude that despite his powerful brain, there is only so much even that paragon of English virtue could do when faced with some of the stranger realities of this world. Yet his legacy is not a small one: He did singlehandedly end the Calipash family’s legacy of petty horrors, and that is no mean feat.

The second piece, “The Hour of the Tortoise,” was compiled largely from the diaries of the unfortunate Chelone Burchell, though I have modernized Chelone’s spellings and included some exposition explaining the conclusion of that young woman’s sad fate. I have also expanded the sections of her aborted pornographic novella based on her own writings in surviving editions of
Milady’s Ruby Vase
. I believe my passion for the excellent, unusual—and sometimes unusually disturbing—pornography produced by writers in the late 19
^thcentury put me in a unique position of doing her some justice in this regard, and I hope readers who enjoy her passion and voice will investigate the delights, disturbing and titillating alike, of her contemporaries. Titles published by William Lazenby, including the magazine
The Pearl
, are a good start, as they contain excellent work by Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Jack Saul,” and other fine authors.

Regarding “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins,” several errors have been corrected in this revised second edition. The original piece was my first effort at recording the Calipash family’s sordid past, and when I submitted it to the editors at Innsmouth Free Press for their anthology
Historical Lovecraft
(2011), I never expected them to take it, much less for it to be reprinted in Night Shade Book’s
The Book of Cthulhu
(2011), much less inspire my dear editor Cameron Pierce to request an entire collection of the family’s history be brought to the public’s attention by this humble scholar. For that reason, I felt free, for the purposes of storytelling, to bend, or tinker with, certain details, such as Rosemary’s use of her foremother Honor’s alchemical texts to switch bodies with her mother. Additionally, to the father Calipash I originally gave the name St John, as it is a Calipash family favorite. His actual Christian appellation appears in only one surviving document, and it is smudged. The name on the register may well be St John, but to keep things clear in this manuscript I have reassigned him as Clement, another popular family name.

A Pretty Mouth
is one of the two pieces in this collection I had to do the most outside research for, and thus it consists of mostly my own extrapolation, collation, and, if I may, writerly voice. I had at my disposal only Honor’s treatise on soul-exchange via blood transfusion—written, I should mention, entirely in ancient Greek, so I must here thank Dr. John Marincola, department chair and Leon Golden Professor of Classics at Florida State University, for his exemplary instruction in the fundamentals of that wonderful language—and a bundle of Henry’s letters, all of which had been returned to Calipash Manor by their recipients due to their perceived insanity. That it is recorded by later Calipashes that “Mrs. Godfrey Vincent” was sent to live out her days “away from any potentially exciting influences” (a delicate way of, I suspect, conveying that she was sent to Bedlam or a similar institution) after producing two female children, and, finally, one male heir, is indeed sobering.

Henry’s letters provided the backbone of
A Pretty Mouth
, but his bombastic style and poor grammar forced me to choose a different way of presenting his story. I also had to fill in the cracks, as it were, with such books as
Blood Work
by Holly Tucker and
A Profane Wit: The Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
by James William Johnson. Details of student life at Wadham, during the Restoration, were supplied by the latter of those two, as well as
Wadham College
by Jane Garnett and C.S.L. Davies.

The final piece of the Calipash puzzle, “Damnatio Memoriae,” is also largely extrapolated, though hints as to what really happened during that blighted mission to build a lighthouse across the channel from Portus Itius appear in
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
, or
Nameless Cults
. In particular, there is mention of a “Queen Barbara,” of whom it was said bravely slew some sort of winged horror, and of her consort, a once-famous warrior by the name of Spurius Calipash, who became outcast for abandoning Rome and living as a barbarian. Additionally, comparisons between the Germanic peoples and a tribe of rather unusual Britons that seem to have died out during Caligula’s reign exist in a variant copy of Tacitus’
Germania
I was able to obtain via interlibrary loan from Colorado State University (many thanks to a certain good friend and scholar at CU who facilitated this, and several other research-related
coup d’états
). This helped flesh out The Thing’s tribe; Petronius’ character I have extrapolated from the tone of his only work,
The History of Sicily
, which was part of Oliver’s collection. The rest is my own.

There are, of course, other generations of Calipash twins who do not appear in this collection; thoroughly researching this family will be the work of a lifetime. Despite its omissions, inaccuracies, and depravity, I hope
A Pretty Mouth
is as enjoyable to read as it was to research and write. It is truly a pleasure to be able to finally present this work to the general public.

***

I would like to thank the following people for their help with
A Pretty Mouth
, be it encouraging me during the writing process, reading or editing the manuscript, advising or believing in me, or inspiring various parts of it: My supportive, wise, and hunky dreamboat of a husband John Gove, my personal cheerleading squad (and hunky dreamboat friend) Jesse Bullington, my tolerant, brilliant BFF Raechel Dumas, Cameron Pierce, Nick Mamatas, Cameron McClure, Livia Llewellyn, J.T. Glover, Brooke Ehrlich, Alan M. Clark and Gina Guadagnino, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Ross E. Lockhart, Michael Nyman, Sarah Grand, the fine folk at Folsom Street Coffee, H. P. Lovecraft, Candace Ward, P. G. Wodehouse, Kirsten Alene Pierce, and, of course, my parents.

About the Author

Molly Tanzer lives in Boulder, Colorado along the front range of the Mountains of Madness, or maybe just the Flatirons. She is a freelance writer and editor by trade, and also works as the administrative overlord for Clockpunk Studios, and as the assistant to the publisher at Prime Books. Her work has appeared in, among other venues,
The Book of Cthulhu
(Volumes 1 and 2),
Future Lovecraft
, and
Running with the Pack
, and is forthcoming in
Fungi
and
The Starry Wisdom Library
. She blogs—infrequently—about hiking, vegan cooking, movies, and other stuff at http://mollytanzer.com, and tweets as @molly_the_tanz.