books would disappear far more rapidlyrnfrom the shelves of my favorite bouquinistesrnthan those of other writers presumablyrnin fashion.rnConsiderations of Cabell are todayrnsadly limited to Wilson’s excellent essayrnin The Bit between My Teeth, the thirdrnvolume of his chronicles, and to VernonrnParrington’s thoughtful assessment inrnMain Currents in American Thought. Forrnthe rest, we have enthusiastic one-linersrnby George Bernard Shaw and other writersrnand H.L. Mencken’s extravagantrnpraise of one who was more discussedrnthan read in the days of Smart Set andrnThe American Mercury. Mencken, ofrncourse, was mainly interested in Cabell’srnironic comments on the Southern scene,rnthough the Cabellian assessment dealt inrnhistorical perspectives and not in thumbingrnits nose at the booboisie. Menckenrnwas appalled by the vapidities andrnturgidities of the Erskine Caldwells andrnWilliam Faulkners to their recapitulationsrnof the New South—and he was alsornpleased to contemplate a gentlemanrnwriter interested in writing rather than inrnmental self-abuse.rnCabell was a gentleman—and I mustrnbe forgiven for using what has become arnpejorative word—and a writer who, asrnhe asserted in These Restless Heads,rnwrote principally for his own diversion.rnHe was indulging himself, less devotionallyrnthan Balzac, in la comedie humainern—comedy in its Renaissance connotation.rnAnd though Cabell denied repeatedlyrnthat he was in any way arnparticipant in the pages of his books, thisrnwas reverse modesty on his part. For ofrnall the writers since Michel de Montaigne,rnJames Branch Cabell was involvedrnin what he set down on paper, thoughrnthe involvement was almost never autobiographical.rnHe walks through his pagesrnunabashedly, the small smile over thernepigram or the sly sexuality dominant.rnCabell was writing of a South that,rnhaving spent its treasure, its elan, and itsrncultural currency in a war it could notrnwin, against a brash, industrial, and economicallyrnpredatory north, was attemptingrnin the 20th century to preserve itsrncrinoline manners, its Jeffersonian pretensions,rnand the frayed class system itrnhad salvaged from the War of Independence.rnThe South was psychologicallyrndepleted and could not contend againstrna new breed of carpetbagger or a risingrnredneck lower-middle class, which hadrnseized the political establishment. Traditionrnhad degenerated to pose, andrnsymbolically the South could be likenedrnto Toledano Street in New Orleans,rnnamed after the hrst Spanish governor ofrnwhat would be Mr. Jefferson’s LouisianarnPurchase, which the middle-class whitesrnwould snigger to visiting northerners asrnbeing “in the niggah redlight section.”rnIn the Virginia where Cabell lived andrnwrote—to be precise, Richmond, therncapital of the Confederacy—hypocrisy,rnwhich La Rochefoucauld characterizedrnas the tribute vice pays to virtue, flourished.rnThere was honor, trivialized tornprotect the reputation of women andrnthe manhood of their spouses, and a virginityrnthat lived in song but not in story.rnThe Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck, Cabell’srnmost poignant title, captures the decayingrnSouth that would collapse under therntwin blows of Depression and democracy.rnThe mythical world of Poictesme,rnCabell’s dream kingdom of irony andrnnonromantic romance, does not enterrninto this novel of a perishing and discouragedrnregion—and the furbelows ofrnthe period hardly matched the vigor ofrnthe Restoration ditty, “Adam catchedrnEve by the furbelow, and that’s the oldestrncatch we know.” That was left forrnPoictesme, not the Musgroves and thernCharteris of this novel. Even MispecrnMoor (that anagram of “compromise”)rndoes not exist outside of Richmond’srncity limits, whatever the South’s endlessrncompromises.rnThe elaborate medieval world Cabellrncreated—as alive and articulate as thernthronging streets in Rabelais—was appropriaternto the time and place of itsrnwriting. His style is sui generis—rich,rnbeautifully contrived, and sometimes euphuistic,rnbut always a delight to thosernwho contemplate the infinite facets ofrnEnglish. The ironies, and they are everywhere,rnoften creep on you unawares asrnin the last pages of The Cream of the jestrnwhen Felix Kennaston realizes that thernmagical sigil that has been transportingrnhim back in time to Poictesme is but arnflattened bottle cap.rnIn his lifetime, indeed from the timernhe gave up popular fiction for a long seriesrnof “comedies” and commentaries,rnCabell was praised by some as Shavianrnand Chestertonian and berated by othersrnas cheap and shallow in his comments onrnthe human condition. His best knownrnbook, jurgen, was banned in Boston asrnobscene for some quiet ribaldries andrnjeux that would have gone unnoticed in,rnsay, Voltaire’s Candide. His formal verse,rnwhich did not seek to challenge the poetsrnof his time, was taken as his true measurernas versifier, though the real poetryrnwas in his beautiful and cadenced prose.rnEncased in his Chaucerian strophes andrnRabelaisian sallies was a shrewder assessmentrnof his contemporaneity than thatrnof novelists who, as Somerset Maughamrnquipped, found philosophy in calling arnspade a damned shovel. He did not findrnit necessary to invade the bathroom orrnthe bagnio to observe sex and the bodilyrnfunctions, and his wit and laughter inrnobserving them was more perceptive andrncertainly healthier than that “rubbing ofrnthe dirty little secret”—D.H. Lawrence’srnformulation—which so occupied thernwriters of his and later times. He pokedrnfun at a common sense which was morernsenseless than common as he scratchedrnit delicately or broadly.rnThe problem and the dilemma forrnthose who once read Cabell deeply, andrnfor those who may do so in the future asrnliterature recycles itself, is suggested byrnsome of his titles: the philosophical workrnBeyond Life; the altar at The High Placernon which he lays his dreams; The Creamrnof the ]est, which is not in the sigil but inrnthe dialectics of life; and the acres ofrnPoictesme, in which the ape-man “strivesrnblunderingly, from mystery to mysteryrn. . . not understanding anything . . .rnhoneycombed with poltroonery, and yetrnready to give all, and to die fighting” forrnthe sake of an “undemonstrable idea”rnthat he is a symbol. Cabell responds inrnhis dreams, and it is overwhelming andrnsignificant that the early pages of ThesernRestless Heads are both an adumbrationrnand an explication de texte of Prosperornand Shakespeare’s most engaging play.rnThe Tempest.rnIn his concept of Woman and womenrn—what he calls “the essence of domnei”rn—Cabell starts with the concepts ofrncourtly love (accurately limned for somernof my generation in the lectures of RaymondrnWeaver at Columbia though neverrnunderstood by writers of pseudo-rnDECEMBER 1994/45rnrnrn