So we made a visit, not exactly a pilgrimage, not exactly not a pilgrimage, to The Robert Aickman Collection, inexplicably located in a tall monument of a library in a smallish college town in northwest Ohio, U.S.A.
The first thing that happened was that we immediately felt out of place. This is a place for the professional researcher, we felt, and we are only a 'fan' with a web page. Nevertheless, we had a 'mission', and we pressed on.
The second thing that happened over the course of the few hours we were there, was that all hope of an encounter with the spirit of Robert Aickman was sadly destroyed by the reality. Perhaps you imagined an historic rare book room like someone's study in an old house, or your favorite ghost story. The reality is a modern, impersonal, professional environment that is not conducive to such encounters.
At least for us, it was so. Perhaps we lack imagination. The major feeling we were left with was one of sadness that the man is gone and most of the people who live in Bowling Green not only have never heard of the archive, but have never heard of the man.
Why here?
How did the papers of Robert Aickman come to be housed at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio? This is a place that RA himself never saw in life. We don't think he ever set foot in the United States, though he was an avid traveler.In Folder 4, in Box 4 of The Robert Aickman Collection, (MS 294), there is a thin single sheet of paper on which RA typed his reminiscences of a failed attempt to visit the United States in 1980. The date is an estimate, since the paper is undated. When Aickman found out that a visa was required, and further, when the visa was actually denied, he was appalled. He declined the further interviews necessary to state his case, to explain that after delivering one lecture at a conference (not named) he planned to return to England. He states, “I cannot pretend that I do not feel extremely resentful,” and refers to visas as “a Communist technique.”
Nevertheless, Robert Aickman chose Bowling Green as the place for his archives. Why? Perhaps the place was chosen for him.
In April 1974, Dr. James Harner of the BGSU English Department wrote to Robert Aickman in response to Aickman's letter in the (London) Times Literary Supplement, seeking information on the English playwright, Clifford Bax. A friendly correspondence ensued, which is preserved in Folder 4 of Box 1. It was not until November 1979 that RA brought up the subject of bequeathing his library. He was redrafting his will, and sought Dr. Harner's advice.
In a letter dated 19 November 1979, RA averred that, “American universities seem to like collections such as this,” and felt that, “a small university might be the best to think of, and perhaps the most appreciative.” On 21 January 1980, he added, “I simply do not know, and merely wish to do the best I can for mankind in the matter.” Of course, Dr. Harner was quick to suggest Bowling Green, a 'medium-size' university, and arrangements were duly made. One cannot help wondering about the reaction in Great Britain to all of this.
The last preserved letter here from Robert Aickman is dated 27 October 1980, in which he mentioned that he had recently spent several weeks in Greece. He died of cancer on 26 February 1981.
There is a late interview in Waterways World, September 1980. Michael Pearson, the publisher of The River Runs Uphill, the second volume of Aickman's autobiography, says in his introduction to that book, “I met Robert Aickman only once, some months before his death. He had consented to a rare interview... All that hot afternoon in his South Kensington flat I was acutely conscious of being in the presence of A Great Man...”
A Poignant Moment
The most poignant moment of our visit to the archives did not occur while holding the actual papers on which Robert Aickman wrote out in longhand one of his strange stories. The most poignant moment occurred upon opening a smallish torn envelope containing The World Fantasy Award, that RA received in 1975 for “Pages from a Young Girl's Journal”. (We do not know what happened to the bust of Lovecraft). A little metal plaque fell out onto the table. That is all there was-- a two-inch by roughly six-inch metal strip with the minimum of engraved words denoting the award for Best Short Fiction.We could not help thinking of the disappearing figure (is it from Star Trek or some cartoon?) where a character dissolves away (slowly or abruptly), leaving behind a small solid object, to fall to the ground with a clatter. The object remains, but the man it was given to is gone. [Now here is where words escape us to describe this feeling of the absence of someone who was so vitally alive but a short moment ago, and now is where? what? And this humble little object remains, to commemorate? to mock? to what? A real writer, of course, could make you feel this right now in your gut - but we will merely continue.]
Survivors and Casualties
In The Attempted Rescue, first volume of his autobiography, Robert Aickman writes about his early humongous literary effort, which substituted for a life over the course of a year, in which he solved “lucidly and forever” some but not all of the problems besetting human life. This was called Panacea, and in 1966, RA thought it was lost forever. Would he be pleased or chagrined, (did he know or not?), that it was duly found and preserved in The Robert Aickman Collection ?There are hints here and there that if RA did not want something preserved he would have seen to it, but maybe he never again found the “hideous heap of holograph” in the “furthest, darkest corner” where he assumed he must have hidden it.
In a letter to Dr. Harner dated 28 April 1980, RA announced the impending publication of his last collection of stories, Intrusions. He wrote that his strange stories “now number forty-eight in all - I mean, all published (there being several rejected by the author and still lying about the house”. None of these rejected stories appear to have survived. [Note: There *is* at least one copy of an unfinished story, titled “The Fully Conducted Tour”, still around.]
Reading the handwritten manuscripts, you can see every change that RA makes helping to bring the narrative to a final perfect form. So, if there is still another unpublished book, (Go Back at Once), and three plays, that were preserved in the archives, do they bear perusal? Or not?
In “A Few Small Notes upon Sub Rosa”, in Folder 2 of Box 5, we read about one of the peculiar nightmares of any writer. Robert Aickman lost a lady friend when she would never speak to him again after claiming that a character in “Ravissante” was a caricature of her. He says ruefully, “Authors beware! The unconscious does strange things, within both them and their readers”. Were some stories consigned to oblivion for this reason?
There is one tantalizing hint of something else that might once have existed. It is merely a sentence in a work of fiction, which, of course, could mean anything or nothing at all. It is from “Pages from a Young Girl's Journal”: “...there are few private occupations in this world about which I care more than inscribing the thoughts and impressions of my heart in this small, secret journal, which no one else shall ever in this world see (I shall take good care of that)...”
One of our burning research questions when we visited the Archives was to discover any references Robert Aickman might have made to the Unrelated Link, that is, the British television series, The Prisoner . (RA himself never owned a television set, but, you know, he could have watched it at a friend's house.) We requested Folder 11 in Box 18, “Clippings - TV/Radio”. Alas, there were newspaper articles about Sesame Street and various dramatic adaptations, commentaries on television's deleterious effects (especially on children), even a report of an obscure Finnish Christian sect that smashed people's television sets (their own, hopefully), but no mention of The Prisoner .However, here is an interesting bit from an Aickman story published in 1967. It is titled, “The Cicerones”, and takes place in a church:
oooOooo
“What a circus those old saints were,” commented the transatlantic youth, as he replaced the worn cloth.“I suppose they received their reward in heaven,” suggested Trant.
“You bet they did,” said the youth with a fervour that Trant couldn't quite fathom. He turned off the light. “Be seeing you.”
“I expect so,” said Trant smiling.
The youth said no more, but put his hands in his pockets, and departed whistling towards the south door. Trant himself would not have cared to whistle so loudly in a foreign church.
--The Cicerones
oooOooo
In “A Few Small Notes Upon Sub Rosa”, RA mentioned that “The Cicerones” was (more or less) based on a real experience. It happened in the cathedral at Antwerp, but RA used the cathedral in Ghent as the setting for the story.
An Obscure Comic Interlude
Sometimes one finds subtle hints of a sort of cosmic sense of humor. Admittedly, it is self-involved, in that it doesn't seem to actually care if anyone notices. It is quite enough if IT is amused.We first noticed this interesting juxtaposition while reading the handwritten manuscript of “No Time Is Passing” at the Aickman Archives:
oooOooo
“I still don't know where this is,” said Delbert.“Where is anywhere?” replied Petrovan. “What do the words mean? What answer can be given? You are on the far side. It is always strange on the far side to begin with.”
--No Time is Passing
oooOooo
BBC World Service
In Folder 4 of Box 35, there is an old reel-to-reel audio tape recording of a BBC World Service program narrated by Robert Aickman. We had to go down to the Music Library (an interesting place), to listen to the tape on an ancient machine. And thus we got to hear the actual voice of Robert Aickman.Titled “My Kind of Country”, the program is about the surviving waterways of England, and what did not survive - the working boat culture. RA's 'official' voice as narrator is all upper-crust, authoritarian, English gentleman. But his voice as he interviews the old people of the boat community, is much softer and still full of childlike wonder. He obviously respects and admires this traditional way of life.
Robert Aickman worked for “eighteen fairly strenuous years” for The Inland Waterways Association, which he co-founded. He manages here to get in another dig at “the state of the roads”, and says that a reversal of the state of public transport is necessary for “any kind of decent life” and “a new wisdom and a new future for man”. Anyone who has ever tried to feel the earth breathe or commune with the stars at night and was prevented by the omnipresent machine noise of traffic, may feel what Robert Aickman surely felt all of his life.
Conclusion
The Robert Aickman Collection consists of 270 folders, in 35 boxes, plus 2,662 books from his personal library. We did not have time to examine any of the books to see if they had secret notations by RA scribbled in the margins. We did not get to see any of the actual boxes. We had time to look at a grand total of 10 folders (including one audio tape).We hope other true respecters of the man and his work will take advantage of the nearness of this archive, and not let it lie forgotten, even if preserved.
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