The Mail Boat by Alexander Randolph

London : Heinemann, 1954

Told through a series of twenty-four letters, The Mail Boat is the story of Martha Baker and Oscar Tower's meeting in Rome at a bar catering to artistic people (read gay) on the Via Babuino, their relationship, and their subsequent time together on a tiny Tyrrhenian island where Oscar plans to work on his next novel. The mail boat that stops twice a week at the island anchors the activities of daily life.

Oscar corresponds with his friend Andrew (André) MaCloy, initially in Paris and later in Venice. Martha writes to her mother, Olga Baker and Janet Picard, a friend in New York, as well as Thomas Purdon, a former love interest and a professor at Yale. The recipient of the letter seems to determine the level of candor about the happenings on the island and Martha and Oscar's relationship.

Martha is deeply in love with Oscar and certainly has plans for their future. Oscar is much cooler and more casual about the relationship. He enjoys spending time with Martha but tends to ignore Martha when she suggests a more committed situation. Oscar is also distracted by a 13-year-old boy named Mario, the most beautiful of the local boys, with whom he would much rather spend his time. Martha is incensed at being ignored in favor of this street kid but also knows Oscar isn't really that way because he isn't effeminate at all. While Oscar won't admit it, even to himself, Martha is very clear in her understanding of Oscar's relationship with Mario, even going as far as telling Thomas in her letter that if Oscar would "just do something with the boy...it would be over in no time at all." (p.87)

Oscar's nature, although seemingly invisible to himself, is made clear by the author when friends visit from America, a literary agent and his 'esthetic' boy friend who plays tennis. In Martha's letter describing the visit and the dinner, she says, "They argued about a French poet who sounds like rainbow," (p.76) clearly a reference to Rimbaud. Later in passing, she also mentions that Oscar was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, which belonged to Martha.

Randolph is a bit coy in describing the island as Tyrrhenian. About half way through the book, when Martha is describing the day she and Oscar went to see the lighthouse, the description, while not a perfect match, comes very close to describing the Punta Carena Lighthouse on Capri. Given the long history of gay artists and authors on Capri and their relationships with the teenage locals, it seems fitting that Randolph would suggest this location. 

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (OTP, c**); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (3197)

Pagan Light : Dreams of Freedom and Beauty in Capri by Jamie James

New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019

Beginning with the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, Capri has a long history of accepting the eccentric and exiled from the less permissive parts of Europe. After establishing Capri's history in the Roman era, the author focuses primarily on the period from the Wilde trials through the mid 1930s during which time many sought artistic and sexual freedom there. The rise of the fascists, the focus of the final quarter of the book, brought significant change, not only to Capri, but to the world in general.

Pagan Light is a reference to maybe the most well known novel set in Capri, Norman Douglas' South Wind. Part travelogue, part literary and art history, James' book is difficult to define. It offers a series of vignettes of varying length connecting a veritable who's who of famous (and not-so-famous) literary and artistic expats. The minor players are offered as mere asides and provide a more complete sense of Capri's expat society. Pagan Light is anchored with biographical accounts of the little known novelist and poet, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen and the artist Romain Brooks.

Adelswärd-Fersen flees Paris after his proclivities run afoul of the law. Interestingly it wasn't his sexual interest in teenage boys that was the problem, it was his use of them in his theatrical 'messes noires' (a supposed satanic ritual) to which he invited his friends. The details of this scandal would later be memorialized in his 1905 novel Messes Noires : Lord Lillian. An English translation of the novel, issued by Elysium Press, was published in 2005.

On Capri, Brooks was able to become an independent woman and present herself the way she was most comfortable. She cut her hair short and styled herself in trousers and jackets instead of dresses. She interacted within the society of lesbians of the time including Radclyffe Hall (author of the classic lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness), Lady Una Troubridge (Hall's longtime lesbian partner), and American poet, Natalie Barney (Brooks' great love). Brooks is known for her portraits of important women in this lesbian circle as well as an early portrait of Jean Cocteau.

Adelswärd-Fersen and Brooks make for interesting subjects in that what we know of their lives is largely based on less than reliable depictions of them in their own and others writing. Adelswärd-Fersen's story is mostly known through The Exile of Capri, a roman à clef by Roger Peyrefitte, while Brooks' story largely comes from her own unpublished memoir as well as Compton Mackenzie's novel Extraordinary Women.

Ricardo Esposito, who runs the Capriot small press Edizioni La Conchiglia, sums up the importance of Capri nicely when he says, "Capri was an international laboratory for the avant-garde, a place where ideas were born, a new artistic vision, and given to the world." (p.288)