A Perfect Dear

FIVE NOVELS OF RONALD FIRBANK (472 pp.)--New Directions ($5).

To be dubbed "eccentric" by his fellow countrymen, a Briton must be eccentric indeed--almost out of his wits, in fact. One contemporary Briton who unquestionably deserved the title was the late Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (1886-1926). Novelist Firbank was an esthete whose behavior was so "odd" that even such a case-hardened bird-watcher as Sir Osbert Sitwell is moved to confess in an introduction that Friend Firbank must have felt a bit "hedged off" in a private world that was noticeably "different from that of others."

Born to wealth (his father was a railroad tycoon), Firbank spent most of his short life roaming around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, halting, as the whim seized him, in a tent in the desert, a palace in Portugal or an old house in Constantinople. He carried around with him a trunkful of objets d'art, including a bronze bull, his own novels bound in white vellum, some colored quill-pens, a "vast tortoiseshell crucifix" and stacks of "those large blue rectangular postcards" on which he wrote both his novels and correspondence ("Tomorrow I go to Hayti," crooned one such card to Sir Osbert. "They say the President is a Perfect Dear!").

Something Practical. Chatting with Firbank was hard sledding, because a nervous constriction of the throat reduced him to long spells of involuntary Trappism (during one such spell he spoke to only two people in two years). For the same reason, little food managed to make its way down into his stomach; once, at a banquet given in his honor, he only succeeded in getting down one green pea. Alcohol met with no such obstruction, and flowed down in imposing quantities.

Author Firbank also had his moments of practical horse sense, such as they were. He always, for instance, packed a large quantity of good Welsh coal in his traveling trunk, as a precaution against inclement weather.

In the five Firbank novels collected in this volume, readers-will find a pretty complete reflection of the Firbank private world, with only the coal and the real estate left out and no throaty constriction to impede the fluent lushness. P: Valmouth (1919) is a tale about high-society high jinks in an imaginary British health resort where the salubrious climate assures salacious longevity. The sexy heroine is a brisk 120 years old. P: The Flower Beneath the Foot (1923) tells of the unrequited love of a French girl for a royal prince (addressed as "His Weariness"). It is set in an orchidaceous never-never land of languor and burning kisses, and contains the memorable exclamation (made, of course, by a female character): "If I live to be forty, it was a moment I shall never forget." P: Prancing Nigger (1925), which has an all-colored cast, is laid in the region of a Firbankian Haiti. It tells how members of a backwoods family at last achieve their dearest ambition--to gate-crash high society in Cuna-Cuna City. Under its dancing, smiling surface run strong undercurrents of human sadness and disillusion. It is Firbank at his best. P:Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926). In which Catholic Author Firbank dwells with orgiastic relish on the sexual practices of a worldly Spanish churchman. Not for family reading. P:The Artificial Princess (1934) returns to the favored Firbank theme of palace love; but its fluffy, frail ingredients, languidly mixed and half-heartedly baked, only give it the hurt look of a tortured meringue.

Something Impalpable. "Just as in autumn," cries Sir Osbert Sitwell, casting his radiant glance back over the Firbank life work, "the silver cobwebs lightly cover the trees with a thin mist of impalpable beauty, so a similar . . . intangible loveliness hung over every page, while wit ran in, round, and underneath each word."

The verdict gushes too high. Firbank's light and dexterous hand may have "altered the pace of dialogue for the [contemporary] novel" and his work may represent a "startling technical achievement." But the proper place for his silver cobwebs is in, round, and underneath a closed circle of impalpable esthetes.

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