There’s something mouldy going down in Amsterdam. You don’t need a pair of binoculars to see that intrigue and rumour are stalking the Dutch literary world like a couple of especially long-legged herons with repugnantly ruffled feathers. Eleven months after the death of the famous biographer Thomas Rawls, some papers have come to light proffering new information on one of his largest projects: the 1976 Life of Jerome de Villeon. Why it took nearly a year for someone to remove these four pieces of paper out of the bottom drawer of his desk we shall never know. But we must live with the consequences – managed as it was, I am told, by his one-time assistant Rebecca Fröensbek (whose paper-from-drawers-removal technique is, according to all the best critics, second to none).
That biographers can go through periods of withdrawal following the completion of their work has already been well documented. We have long known about the ‘tepid chicken’ phase, a sad situation which can last from days to months to years, depending on the constitution of the biographer in question. And the most recent cases are proof enough that it is a continuing crisis. Despite a strong German disposition, Wolfgang Heizler revealed only days ago that he still writes ‘pathetic love letters’ to his biographical subject Johannes Speyer, even though Speyer died in 1984 (Georgy Riecke, you’re not alone). ‘I am deeply attached to the bastard,’ wrote Heizler: ‘We are tied by string as hard as diamonds. He has set up a camp in my heart and I keep tripping over the guy ropes in the night’. It was a similar, if not more pronounced obsession that led the writer Gwen Nidoré to be the first person to divorce a dead person to whom she had never been married (the judicial system is Luxembourg has its idiosyncrasies, to say the least). Her grounds for divorce were that he (the sculptor Gustav Lauderin: subject of her biography Chip Off the Old Marble Block) ‘haunted her incessantly’. Since the bogus divorce papers came through, it is said that this haunting has all but vanished: as if Nidore needed public recognition of the psychological strain put on her by the biographical process. If she did, she got it.
If Thomas Rawls was ever as deeply attached to his biographical subjects, then he was by rights a polygamist. And a busy one at that. For Rawls wrote no less than seventy-one biographies over his career, with subjects as diverse as the Angolan archaeologist Gwanda Wooman and the Polish archbishop Konrad Heckel (not to mention every member of the Mongolian women’s rowing crew that didn’t quite make it to the 1978 Olympics). It may be safe to say, however, that Jerome de Villeon was still his most high profile subject: a man of equally prolific output, having authored no less than sixty-five novels, all of them admired for their impressive (and sometimes oppressive) moral content. No self-respecting Dutchman or Dutchwoman has scrambled through their lives without the necessary exposure to de Villeon’s classic works, The Lady of Ghent, The Golden Cow Under the Green Tree, Tessa of the Dirty Hills and the cathartic epic to end all cathartic epics, Pain. And whilst Peggy Grounter may be right to have described his lesser works as ‘biliously mawkish’, de Villeon must yet be commended for proving that the milk of human kindness can taste as good as the deep red wine of depravity. In short, de Villeon teaches us that morally motivated literature needn’t amount to a mountain of maudlin muck.
Meanwhile in his biography of de Villeon, Thomas Rawls taught us that something that most of us knew (but didn’t mind hearing again), which was that de Villeon’s own moral conduct was as spotless as a model on a face-cream advert. Except that his wasn’t – at least we thought it wasn’t – a digitally enhanced view of things. De Villeon really was the ultimate ‘good egg’: the prince of kindness, or (as Nicolette Faust once put it) ‘a fearsomely friendly fellow’. He modelled his heroes in his own image. And good old-fashioned heroes they were.
Of course, everybody was aware of it at the time. That is, the strain that writing the biography of such a nice man must have had on Thomas Rawls. Surrounding himself in all those good deeds must have been tough. Too true, said Rawls at the time, receiving the ingenuousness of such queries with refreshing honestly. It was ‘hard work’ he said, ‘but rewarding’. ‘Sometimes I am a little frustrated’, he went on, ‘but always I am respectful’. This viewpoint was repeated two years ago in Rawl’s short study Fond But Not In Love which – alongside Hans Belimus’ maddeningly candid Naked Snail Looking For a Shell – must be one of the best ever books about writing biographies.
End of story? Until last week, yes. But now – thanks to Miss Fröensbek and her paper-finding skills – it seems that we are being asked to think again. The discovery of four pieces of paper containing hitherto undisclosed comments by Rawls on the subject of de Villeon has thrown everyone into quite unnecessary confusion. Now, while there’s no doubt that the papers are authentic (the intense eccentricity of Rawls’ handwriting is beyond the powers of even the most talented forger), I do think that we should hold back from reading too much into them. Still, I’ll let you be the judge of that.
You can see why the papers have attracted attention. The heavily underlined title given by Rawls on page one says it all: A Confidential Paper on de Villeon’s Moral Irregularities. Sorry, could you run that past me again? Did you say moral irregularities? Of de Villeon? Mr cleaner-than-clean? The man once described as ‘the sort of guy that makes you think Jesus was a bit of a scamp’? Say no more: this is sensational enough! Well indeed – but there was plenty more to be said. The controversy more than continued over the remainder of these four pages; pages which consisted of no less than a list of immoral acts in which de Villeon was said to have taken part, expressed in a curious semi-poetical manner, like so:
‘He doth munch raw slugs in the morning
Sitting in a bath of dog-spit, he cleans with a hedgehog’s bristles
his blood-stained teeth.
With his mid-morning tea he sips
a cup or two of water from a stagnant pond
spiced with grass
passed through the digestive system of a pregnant goat’.
Pausing only to admire the interesting association of ‘pregnant’ and ‘stagnant’, we continue:
‘When patting orphans
it was not merely charity but
the oozing guilt, deriving from
the fact that they might be his own.
Yes! The golden hearted writer
was indeed a great creator.
Sixty something novels was a start alone,
for greater were the children of his loins’.
And this was not the end of it. Following a lengthy digression on de Villeon’s habit of ‘pouring buckets of worms over young girls’ heads’ and ‘writing on the walls of lavatories/the most unsavoury things’, we hear of how:
‘the largest of his fancies was
to bite the dirty fingernails
off friends and family while they slept’
and how:
‘for nerves he carried in his suit
a bottle full of rabbit’s blood
on which he supped most frequently’
to be followed by a passage of such scabrousness that it does not bear repeating (needless to say the very thought of it makes me queasy). All in all, a exceedingly impressive line-up of so-called ‘moral irregularities’ and eccentricities, the like of which would make some of Europe’s greatest dictators think again about their freak-of-nature status.
But who’s to say there’s even a milligram of truth in these accusations? Aside from the fact that De Villeon was, by all accounts (including Thomas Rawls’), an extremely well-behaved gentleman, these are all ludicrous claims. Drinking rabbit’s blood? Having more than sixty illegitimate children? Writing rude messages on toilet walls? These are, at best, bizarre allegations. The otherwise stainless reputation of Thomas Rawls should not, nay can not, lead us to the conclusion that de Villeon led this sort of second-life.
Or I am being too conservative? After all, some Dutch critics seem convinced that these pages are sprinkled with candour; that they prove, once and for all, the existence of a plot to stop Rawls from telling the truth about de Villeon. These men argue that de Villeon did indeed have moral irregularities, but that the fear of besmirching a national hero (supported by pressure from the government) prevented Rawls from pointing them out in his biography. There was a cover-up – and only now has the real de Villeon been revealed, in all his ghastly glory.
It’s a nice idea, but I’m disinclined to lend my support in the face of no real evidence (save these four pieces of paper). So it’d be nice to think that de Villeon did have a few bad habits, of course it would – who doesn’t want to know that nice people can do nasty things? But it doesn’t take a genius to see that the real meaning behind Rawls’ lyrical denunciations of de Villeon must lie in his need to exorcise his irritation over the perverse decency of the great Dutchman’s personality.
‘Sometimes I am a little frustrated’ Rawls admitted. Alas, a ‘little frustrated’ doesn’t quite cover it. Clearly, he was intensely affected by de Villeon’s all-encompassing benevolence – so much so that he was led to invent a compendium of mad crimes, written for the benefit of himself (and no one else, or so we ought to presume). These are cruel contentions indeed, but they cannot be real. Contrary to some critics’ suppositions, there was never any need for Rawls to suppress information. He wasn’t writing in the Victorian age. If there had been any moral irregularities in the story of de Villeon, it may well have been in his best interests to have written about them in the biography: it would have aided sales, no doubt, and maybe even enhanced the reputation of the novelist, in a weird sort of way. As for the government being involved, this is highly fanciful thinking. Any fool knows that the government don’t care about literature.
No, what this whole episode really does is to reinforce the fact that the lot of the biographer is not necessary an easy one. One is lucky to escape from the job with one’s wits. And if one is to manage this, something in the line of Rawls’ faintly comic ‘fake’ accusations may well be in order. Just remember to throw them away when you’re finished with them, or make sure before you die that they’re out of reach of Rebecca Fröensbek’s overactive fingers. For no matter how ridiculous an accusation one might make, there’s always someone willing to fall to their knees and lap up the cream of utter nonsense – especially if it’s attractive nonsense. Sadly for some, the truth will out. Of course, more truth can often mean less people drinking rabbit blood, or biting their brother’s fingernails at midnight. It’s tough, I know. But in the end – it’s true.
T E Heeman
