Ella D'Arcy Reminisces

Ella D'Arcy Reminisces Benjamin F. Fisher The University of Mississippi CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING The Yelfaw Book and its contributors have won repeated attention since it flourished during the middle 1890s. Even throughout a long season of what might be thought great neglect, the famous quarterly and those who made it were recalled, time and again, in affectionate or hostile terms, until Katherine Lyon Mix's A Study in Yelfaw appeared in 1960. Mix unearthed many published sources of information, but she was also fortunate enough to meet several of those whose productions attracted attention and added luster to John Lane's experimental publication. One of these persons, Ella D'Arcy, prepared but left unpublished her reminiscences of the people who came to the gatherings hosted by Henry and Aline Harland in their CromweU Road home. These memories were set down in the mid-1920s, if we are to trust D7ArCy1S phrasing about "thirty years ago" in one passage. Not every one she mentions contributed to The Yelfaw Book, however, but all mingled socially, and in their own ways these people numbered among the prestigious or colorful (or both) dramatis personae who came forward onto the cultural stage of the 1890s.1 Therefore her bird's-eye view is certainly worth our attention. Although no full-scale biography of EUa D'Arcy exists, we know enough about her to realize that she had an observant mind, as weU as a knack of deft portraiture, when it came to presenting personalities and their surroundings. At times the facts may have eluded her. For example , what she names as Harland's "Uttle sketch 'White Lilac'" cannot be identified positively by title, although Harland's writing of his fantasy life was confined to no single piece.2 Although she erred as well in remarking that Frederick Rolfe, "Baron Corvo," was a defrocked priest, her knowledge of the group she surveys is in the main reliable. Consequently "Yellow Book Celebrities," as D'Arcy^ reminiscences have been 28 ELT 37 : 1 1994 titled, should not be overlooked as an important primary document for 1890s studies, and so it is printed below. The manuscript in her own handwriting consists of five-and-one-half pages of graph paper, without watermark or date, bound in a plain paper cover. The document is part of the Martyr Worthy Collection, which came from England to Columbia University in 1984. D'Arcy's opinions are decisive, her expression concise. They are set forth much in the manner whereby her captivating short stories draw us into atmospheres of fascinating word-pictures. Given her own early training as an art student at the Slade School, this talent was inherent in D'Arcy and one which imparted depth to the texture of her writings. The same tart humor which enlivens her fiction and letters surfaces more than once in these remembrances. The extended descriptions we find of Henry Harland and Frederick Rolfe may be read as emblematic of the intense feelings each aroused in her. From the former she received cordial friendship and critical praise. From Rolfe, who expected better treatment than he got from John Lane (and thus his circle of intimates), D'Arcy was subjected to extremely unflattering satiric treatment—along with Lane and Harland—in his novel, Nicholas Crabbe (1958). Although this book was not published until years after all the targets were dead, D'Arcy must have known Rolfe's designation of her as "a mouse-mannered piece of sex." The manuscript of the novel had been circulated when it was still fresh, only to draw threats of suit from Lane.3 Interestingly, the character of Francis Underhill, the young American in D'Arcy's last story for The Yelfaw Book, "Sir Julian Garve" (April 1897; reprinted in Modern Instances , 1898), is a caricature of Henry Harland. The physical features —hair, eyes, beard, glasses—and the emotional traits (particularly UnderhiU's woman-like quality) dovetail with those set forth in "Yellow Book Celebrities." In more condensed vignettes D'Arcy recreates the pathos that surrounded the disappearance and subsequent announcement of the death of Hubert Crackanthorpe—whose association with The Yelfaw Book was to dog his footsteps down the pages of...