One of the perks of being a bookworm is that it can sometimes allow you to discover the unexplored corners of life. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, so much as the avenues that got overlooked by time. It doesn't happen often, however my own experience is that if you dig around the forgotten corners of the great library known as the world, you can come upon a text, or a name that can sometimes be so worth your time it's a wonder (and almost something of a crime) that there was never at least some kind of recognition. That said, it's also possible enough to uncover a bunch of junk that probably should have stay in the trunk. I'm not sure where the subject of today's post fits into this scheme.
I've talked about him once before. From what I've been able to uncover about him, he never seems to have been one of the Big Names. However, that didn't stop him from knowing at least some of them, and of making a few artistic contributions of his own.
Talking about someone like Roger Lancelyn Green can be a challenge. It's one I've discussed before, here and there, on this blog. One of the hazards of being an author is that even the the promise of publication can't guarantee any kind of Brand Name recognition or longevity in and of itself. That's all up to how much the reading public decides whether it likes you or not. Some of these scribbling types are able to garner a small handful of the audience. This minor sort of fame might give off a brief sense of satisfaction. At least there's someone out there who likes what you do. The trouble with that type of circumstance is that there's no real assurance that even the best word of mouth reputation will grow from there. Many of them never get beyond that initial step. An author like H.P. Lovecraft, for instance, got lucky in that sense. He started out as a sensation among a small circle of fans and friends, only to gain worldwide fame after his death. A lot of the others who followed in his train are barely on the tip of the tongue anymore. Who, for further instance, has ever heard of a moniker like Clark Ashton Smith? That's got to be too fanciful to be real. Right?
Then of course, you have authors so obscure that part of the problem is being able to find any reliable background information on them. The best example of this latter type is H.F. Arnold. If the name sounds unfamiliar, that's no real surprise. He's remembered today for publishing a short story called
The Night Wire, and his reputation is kept alive mainly by fans of the
Weird Circle of Cosmic Horror authors that center in and around the works of HPL. The trick is a lot of folks know what Arnold wrote, and it's almost impossible to find any reliable info on his life. The man himself remains a total enigma. It's almost as if the story itself appeared out of thin air, complete with byline, and nothing else. As a result, Arnold could be thought of as one of the most famous authors who wasn't there.
Roger Green seems to have escaped that level of literary fate. It's possible to dig up some information on him, though what little there is remains patchy and scarce in places. His date of birth can be traced to somewhere right around the end of the First World War, on Nov. 2nd, 1918. This all happened in Norwich, to a couple listed as Helena Mary Phyllis and Maj. Gilbert Arthur Lancelyn Green. The Green family itself is, or was part of the landed gentry of the English Upper Class. It's lineage is reported to trace back all the way to the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First (web). As is the typical case with most families of the nobility, there was a deeded and titled estate on which generations of the family grew up. Roger appears to have been no exception. His childhood was spent living in Poulton Hall. It's was and remains one of those old English manor houses that can sometimes contain a storied history.
It's nowhere near as vast or impressive as any of the old royal households, such as Hampton Court, and to be fair, that's kind of in its favor. Unlike the grand, forbidding presences attached to an estate such as
Beverston Castle, Poultan Hall's compact appearance tells of a more expansive and generous nature. It's atmosphere is less that of the genuine Nobility, and more in the line of the Old County Squires. It is just possible (once you've scaled the whole thing down to an appropriate size) to imagine a family of Hobbits emerging from its doors, maybe one of the Tooks or Brandybucks. Perhaps that's why it seems fitting to discover that the old place has become the kind of setting that various artists like to arrange their projects in. The house and grounds even
served as a backdrop for a children's series known as The Owl Service. This happened back in 1969, when its last owner was still alive. It's somewhat telling about Green himself that he was willing to allow or open his own home to such a production. It's also the dwelling that served as his first great window onto the world.
Being the scion and heir of an old, established, military family was often viewed as being born into a fairly conservative milieu. In England, that same framework still appears to be in operation today, at least among the ruing classes. It is just possible to expect that Green would have experienced the same difficulties as those faced by a writer like E.A. Wyke-Smith. The opening setting is almost so prototypical that it won't be too much of a surprise to learn that Roger grew up in the shadow of a strict, and authoritarian father figure. Instead, the truth itself seems to amount to a more or less complete subversion of the trope. Far from being a strict disciplinarian, Arthur Green comes off as unconventional by the usual standards of the gentry. His own son is able to provide the best possible snapshot of his upbringing in Poultan Hall through a brief snippet of memoir found in the opening pages of his later critical survey, Tellers of Tales.
"Being myself a rather bookish child, more often at home than at school owing to ill health, my reading played a very important part in my life. It had always done so, as I was fortunate in having a father who delighted in reading aloud, began to do so long before I could read, and continued the custom, when occasion permitted, right up to the last year of his life when I was nearly thirty. My own reading of children's book went on longer perhaps than is usual, and was succeeded by a delight in the story-tellers of the Nineties that I never lost; but it did not exclude other tastes, and I remember when I was fifteen or so reading Shakespeare plays and
Tarzan stories alternately, and my reading lists of the time show an amazing variation between Stevenson or Haggard and Thackeray or Greek drama (8)".
If the interactions with his father were his first big influences, the second most important element in Green's introduction to Literature was the library housed on the estate. This is one of the salient facts that marks Green's trajectory out as yet another type. One of the commonalities to be found in the public statements of a lot of famous writers is how they all tend to go on, sometimes at a length which must seem absurd to casual reader, about the importance of libraries, or any kind of booksellers in their lives. It seems to be one of the few, constant, real-life tropes that is able to unite an ongoing series of lives that are different in most every other respect. Stephen King, for instance, noted that his education in books got started from at least two places. One was the Stratford Library, in downtown Connecticut. The other were the occasional bookmobiles that would drive through his hometown neighborhood of Durham, Maine. For Ray Bradbury, meanwhile, it seems to have been the public library of Los Angeles that initiated him into the broader arena of world literature (Weller, 9).
Green's own experience of this same process appears to be a Victorian -
Edwardian spin on the same process as that undergone by the other two
mentioned above. If his father wasn't there to read for him, the young
Roger could often be found browsing through the volumes contained in the
house. From the sound of it, that library appears to have been an
example of one of those old, private collections that some of the higher
nobility could afford to compile for their own amusement, leisure, and
in some cases, a genuine interest in literacy and learning. The results
could sometimes amount to several whole rooms given over to the
shelving and stocking of various assorted tomes. It is from this age
old enterprise that we owe the by now still somewhat familiar image of
the classical library; a vast and echoing hall lined with shelves of
various leather-bound volumes of forgotten lore; most of which tend to
alternate in color from red, to green, to brown, and always with the
titles highlighted and bordered in gilt-edged gold. Green seems to have
been lucky enough to have inherited a variation of this image. As
first Bradbury, and then King would later do, once the young lad was let
loose in that living image, he seems to have taken to it with the
natural skill of a salmon running in its main stream.
It is from this experience both of parental bedtime reading, combined with the discovery of the library that shaped the contours of Roger's mental architecture. This is where his story conforms to type, as it fits in with an established pattern that may have begun as far back as the Renaissance. It would often be the custom for middle and upper class families in England, before the advent of public education, to pass on their learning to both heirs and descendants by introducing them to the contents of these private libraries. The practice probably isn't as widespread now. However, at least before the beginning of the 20th century, this household practice of educating through the library remained more or less the sole means of giving a future to one's children. In addition to Green, other names like John Ruskin, William Morris, Prime-minister Arthur Balfour, and Oxford scholars like R.G. Collingwood were able to achieve as much as they did because of their exposure to this tradition.
Just like Morris and Ruskin, Green's introduction to the library (just as a type, or thing in itself) fostered a love of the written word. The passion grew enough to the point where it determined his future career. The rest of it is surprisingly available in the public record. That said, the record itself is scant, almost constipated. If that counts as a fault, then it's mainly down to the lack of curiosity shown to the writer's own output. The fact that he's remembered enough at all is something of a small miracle. The relevant data is here laid out in full, as it provides a decent enough beginner's summary of all the salient points of Green's life and his once and future career. The following is taken verbatim from the back of the book promotional material of the Puffin Books edition of Myths of the Norsemen.
"Roger was a man who loved storytelling and was fascinated by traditional fairy tales, myths, and legends from around the world...Roger was often ill, though, and couldn't go to school - so he spent lots of time at the family's manor house in the country of Cheshire. His family had been wealthy, and there was a huge library in their house. He spent many hours reading the old books in there, and this is probably where his love of myths and legends started...
"...Roger loved reading adventure stories and fairy tales, and as he grew up he became fascinated by the myths of ancient Greece and Egypt, and the legends of the Norse countries of Scandinavia. He went on to retell their ancient stories in his books Tales of Ancient Greece, The Tale of Troy, Tales from Ancient Egypt and Myths of the Norsemen - a continuous story gathered from the ancient Norse folktales, ballads and poems...He was well known for his retellings of traditional stories. Including those mentioned above, he wrote The Adventures of Robin Hood and King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, all published as Puffin Classics. He also wrote many books for adults, including a biography of...J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan (262-3)".
That is the extent to which the public knows him. In all, Green was responsible for six of these compilations from world mythology. They comprise the sole number of his books that remain in print to this very day. The result is an author who exists as sort of like an anomaly. Very few people seem to know he even existed at some point in time, and so his books are never taken off the shelves. The result is that they continue to make a steady enough profit to keep restocking their places in the racks. The whole thing sounds like a series of impossibilities that keep happening with a persistent regularity. The whole or complete truth, meanwhile, remains in obscurity. It's like what the Puffin blurb observes above. Green's life as an author encompassed a lot more than just a series of folklore collections. He wrote material of his very own, for a start. The fact that all of it has vanished from memory is what accounts for the length of this opening. When you're dealing with an unknown quantity, first introductions tend to take a bit more time. That's what this entire article amounts to, in a way.
If Roger Lancelyn Green is an unfamiliar name on the lists of published authors, then it just leaves one question. Where do you start? Perhaps the best way to begin is to take things slow, and not all at once. It's with this in mind that I think the best place to start is by looking at one of the first entries in his career as a writer. He'd published just one other book before this one.
The Luck of the Lynns appeared on the shelves two years later. The tale goes as follows.