ronald firbank: a memoir

Ronald Firbank: A Memoir by Ifan Kyrle Fletcher (Duckworth, 1930)

While reading Carl Van Vechten’s The Blind Bow Boy which alludes to Ronald Firbank several times, I realized it had been a while — perhaps 20 years — since I had read Firbank, and then I came across this book, published in 1930, four years after Firbank’s death, for sale on Ebay.  The fact that it was inscribed by a distant relative of Firbank added to its allure, and I decided to buy it, and read it immediately after it arrived.

The book is comprised of a long biographical essay on Firbank written by Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, and four shorter reminiscences of him written by Augustus John, Vyvyan Holland, Osbert Sitwell, and Lord Berners.  Fletcher’s biography is sympathetic and covers most details of Firbank’s short life (he died in 1926 at the age of 40), but it is not very illuminating, and neither are the affectionate memoirs by his friends, who were all in fact more of acquaintances.  Firbank was by all accounts a man as solitary as he was eccentric, and the reader does get a sense of how, despite his charm and wit, he was a difficult person to spend time with, or to know in any real personal way.  So he comes across as being mysterious and essentially unknowable, and it is difficult to discern how much of his eccentric behavior was natural and how much was affected.  The one thing that does become clear, however, is Firbank’s commitment and faith in his art, and the uniqueness of what he created.  He traveled far and wide, not only in Europe, but in Egypt and Haiti as well, and his life seems to have been as peculiar and singular as his work.

This book succeeds admirably in memorializing and celebrating Ronald Firbank, and I enjoyed reading it.  With several illustrations — all paintings of Ronald Firbank — by Augustus John and others.