In Violet Veils - collection of nine short stories by British author Mark Valentine featuring the Connoisseur, a gentleman explorer and detective extraordinaire of all things artistic and aesthetic. To share the distinctive flavor of these tales, I'll focus on two of my favorites. Note: all nine of these stories are included in The Collected Connoisseur published by Tartarus Press.
THE LOST MOON
The Connoisseur tells his friend of a time when he paid a visit to a workshop of a highly skilled repairer and restorer of clockwork like mechanisms, things like music boxes, gramophones, mechanical toys and other intricately constructed devices.
At the moment he enters he could see Thomasina working on an orrery - but there's a problem: this particular model of our solar system she's attempting to construct is undoubtedly off, that is, the planets and moons do not appear to follow the correct pattern revolving around the sun. How odd!
Over the next several days, the Connoisseur conducts a bit of research on the organization that sent this orrery to have Thomasina assemble, an organization calling itself "The Trustees of the Most Ancient & Sublime Society." The deeper the Connoisseur digs, the more evidence he gathers suggesting there are good reasons the orrery will not fit together in an orderly way: going back to the 18th century, a number of individuals and groups despised their "age of reason" and set about to overturn order with chaos. And one tool for their confounded intention: an orrery where the planets and moons move in counter and convoluted rotations. Sinister? Diabolical? The Connoisseur returns to the workshop.
He discovers Thomasina arrived at the very same conclusion when she reconstructed the model in all its intricate detail. Do they dare try out the orrery? They dare. Thomasina watches as the Connoisseur steps forward toward the fiendish apparatus.
As he turns the handle of the orrery, the Connoisseur relates, "I began to be oppressed by an overwhelming sense of loss and extinguishment, as if every remotest chink of light, even the wan flicker through the pale stained glass, even the dim subdued lustre on the old oak furnishing, was giving up its glimmer to an all-pervading pall of black."
Aghast, the Connoisseur becomes painfully aware he's incapable of halting his turning or releasing the handle. And the more he turns, the more frightful his visions right up until the point where, "I began to see great spans or arms of darkness reaching out beyond the walls of the old chapel, crusting and fossilising all growing things, turning trees at a touch into stark black skeletons, blighting grasses and crops into myriad stalks and rigid ash, striking the few autumn flowers into dark simulacra. Even great old rivers seemed to stop and solidify into a vast slime."
What happens next is for Mark Valentine to tell. A gleaming dark jewel of a tale.
THE CRAFT OF ARIOCH
The Connoisseur recounts a most singular encounter he and his cousin Rebecca had during his walking holiday along the rustic byways of Sussex. At a small country tea shop, he spots a business card pinned to a notice board: "Arioch Woodley - Rocking Horses - The Old Barn." His interest is piqued, he asks directions and, in addition to all the left turns and right turns, the tea shop owner informs him that Arioch keeps his own hours but never minds if folks just wander in on their own whenever they want. Perfect! He and Rebecca are off on the next leg of their hike.
When they finally arrive, the Connoisseur opens the unlocked door, calls out a hello (no answer) and then leads Rebecca into one of the two rooms down a hallway. They catch their first glimpse of Arioch's creations: "Yet we both gasped at what little we could see in the shadows: for here we gathered a chamber-full of beasts on curved rockers, yet not one of them purely a horse."
Rocking horses for children? How ghastly! The aesthetic duo peers closely at each rocker: "We saw all around the room at chest height the shapes of curious heads, curved, rearing, bristling, flaring up; we caught in the wan, embered light, the glinting of wild eyes; our bewildered stares encountered the forms of wings, claws, couched limbs, tensed jaws."
Now a careful inspection of these bizarre grotesques and chimerae is one thing but both Rebecca and the Connoisseur feel a special inspiration - they must try them. Rebecca hoists herself on a cross between a horse and a white dragon while the Connoisseur picks out a winged cat with pointed ears and gleaming green eyes.
Mystical journey or occult crossing? Here's a snip from Rebecca's time on her dragon-horse: "She had seemed to ride through wavering wefts of light, like the frailest skeins of amber, and through falling motes of purest illumination, like a soft slow rain of silver." And the Connoisseur riding his strange cat: "I felt a white chill wind sweeping through my limbs, alerting my flesh to a new awareness of the air and our headlong passage through it."
The Connoisseur treats his friend (and us as readers) to a more detailed account of both their rocking horse visions and a batch of Arioch Woodley revelations once this artist makes his appearance. A sparkling Valentine, for sure.
Coda: Some years back at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, I had occasion to attend a Folk Art exhibit where an artist created a rocking horse-style carousel with four ghastly wooden horses representing the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I vividly recall each horse - war, famine, plague, death - constructed in natural wood with frightful, shocking faces. One of the museum guides told me that kids could sit on the horses and, with a good manual push, the carousel spins. Such an extraordinary work of art, among the most memorable I've ever beheld, the combination of charming carousel and hideous rocking horses of the apocalypse.
In similar spirit, take a gander at the below photo from American artist Carrin Welsh's The Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse. Echoes of Arioch Woodley.
British author Mark Valentine, born 1960
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