I once gave my best friend an obscene postcard.
This was not necessarily my intent when I flipped through the racks of postcards in the little souvenir stand near the Mercato Nuovo in Florence. I'd just been to Palazzo Davanzati, a 14th century townhouse that contains frescoes of a patchwork wallhanging, and figured this was as good a time as any to purchase some fun, inexpensive tchotchkes to commemorate my visit.
This I was able to do, in spades. The stand near Mercato Nuovo sold enough guidebooks, postcards, shot glasses, pamphlets, t-shirts, flags, joke books, stickers, etc., to choke Il Porcellino, never mind that he's a bronze statue. Florence is a miracle of art, culture, and history that everyone should visit even if the crazed locals zipping past on Vespas are enough to make one go full Mad Max, and what better way to remember her bounty than buying a weird little church key bottle opener that doubled as a refrigerator magnet?
Among the delights I found that day, some of which I actually purchased and brought home, was a postcard of a portion of Michaelangelo's masterpiece David. This was not necessarily a surprise - half the cheap souvenirs in Tuscany reference David in some way, shape, or form - but the image itself was truly...special.
That's because it was a close-up of David's - how do I put this nicely? - reproductive organs, cleverly adorned with eyebrows, sunglasses, and a word balloon reading "CIAO."
Needless to say, I was enchanted. This risque but weirdly charming little frippery was a Postcard So Bad It's Good, and being the connoisseur of the ridiculous that I am, I promptly bought several copies. I didn't attempt to mail them back to the United States - Bush was still President and I wasn't sure if current obscenity laws would allow Little David to reach his destination(s) - but I carried them back in my suitcase and gave them to various friends.
One of those was my BFF, Beata. She's not as enthused about the weirdly bad as I am but she knows me better than anyone else, and I figured that if nothing else, she'd find the postcard a typical bit of Ellid humor. This proved to be the case - it would have been hard not not to smile at the thought of a cheery greeting from Little David – and once she'd finished laughing over the postcard, she tucked it away into a book as a keepsake. Occasionally one of us would mention it, the other would giggle, and we’d move on to something else. We’ve known each other for over our half our lives, and talking genitalia is fairly low on our list of priorities.
There the matter might have rested had not Beata, casting about for a Hanukkah gift for her mother a while back, picked up that selfsame book, wrapped it in appropriately festive paper, and presented to the woman who’d carried, labored, and birthed her as a token of her esteem. Mrs. Beata, who loves her daughter very, very much, then removed the said festive and appropriate paper, exclaimed her delight at receiving such a nice present, and opened the book –
To be greeted by Little David saying, “Ciao!” in his best winsomely Italian manner.
I don’t know precisely what happened next – I was in Massachusetts when Mrs. Beata learned that her firstborn child had thoughtfully given her a postcard depicting someone’s genitals – but it’s probably just as well. I do want to be able to look Mrs. Beata in the eye at some point in the future, and the less she knows about my taste in postcards, the better.
Little David is scarcely the only strange postcard available at finer European souvenir stands and t-shirt emporia. Apocryphal legends about local heroes, less than accurate recipes for local specialties, cartoons satirizing local tourist attractions – all of these and much, much more can be purchased for only a few coins. There are even postcards depicting the equivalent of famous albeit non-existent American fauna such as the jackalope, the bunyip, and the Jersey Devil; as recently as the 1970’s cards depicting lederhosened huntsmen coming across nests of winged chamois, or Alpine antelopes, were for sale in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
These curiously disturbing little images, sepia-toned and hand-drawn, did not look modern, even to my less than experienced eye. The art was in a distinctly prewar style, ditto the huntsmen’s clothing and equipment, and it was easy to imagine mid-century travelers on the Grand Tour purchasing those selfsame postcards to send home to Flossie, Mossie, or baby Algernon with an appropriately humorous greeting about the quaint customs of the less than modern natives of Mittel Europa.
As odd as these little postcards may seem today, they were but part of a larger tradition of viewing Central and Eastern Europe as exotic and unusual. Books like Dracula (set in Transylvania), music like Brahms' Hungarian Dances or Smetana’s Ma Vlast, countries and individuals with names lacking the normal complement of vowels – all were immensely popular at the turn of the last century. Safely on the major rail lines, yet peopled by colorful locals in unfamiliar costumes, the principalities, duchies, and petty empires to the East of Berlin and Vienna were close enough for the average English-speaker to contemplate an enjoyable visit, yet far enough away to hint at the possibility of swashbuckling romance.
Tonight I bring you two books that seem to promise such grand and glorious fun. One, the sequel to an adventure classic, is a melancholy and ultimately tragic inversion of its predecessor. The other, first in a series of increasingly pedestrian chronicles of a land that never was, is an uneasy combination of exoticism, unlovely names, and nods to modern geopolitics:
Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope - Anthony Hope, the pen name of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, wrote one of the greatest, most influential adventure novels in English. The Prisoner of Zenda, dashed off in 1893, truly had it all: a dashing, honorable English nobleman, Rudolf Rassendyll; his distant cousin, the King of Ruritania, a vaguely Germanic monarchy set somewhere near the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the King’s fiancee, the beautiful, strong-willed Princess Flavia; the evil Prince Michael, and his scorned mistress; and Michael’s henchman Rupert of Hentzau, crafty, sly, and seemingly invincible. Rudolf, who looks enough like the King to be his twin, finds himself forced to impersonate the King to foil a kidnapping plot and attempted coup by Prince Michael. Along the way he falls in love with Princess Flavia, battles the evil Rupert, and is faced with the temptation of assuming the Ruritanian throne and marrying his beloved in place of the feckless, alcoholic King.
The book, which ends with Rudolf nobly returning to England in hopes that his cousin will mature enough to be a good husband and ruler, was immensely popular. Briskly written and surprisingly entertaining, it was filmed repeatedly (most notably with Ronald Colman, Madeline, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in the 1930s, and Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, and James Mason in the 1950s), became a TV movie with Christopher Plummer and Inger Stevens in 1961, was adapted for Bollywood the same year, and has never been out of print. Its theme – a double recruited to serve in the place of a rightful if unworthy ruler – has reappeared in works as disparate as Robert Heinlein’s novel Double Star and Richard Dreyfus’ film Moon Over Parador. It’s a minor classic, and every bit as enjoyable now as it as a century ago.
If that weren’t enough, The Prisoner of Zenda soon was more than a book, or even a trope. It was so popular that it launched an entire school of adventure fiction, the so-called “Ruritanian romance.” These tales, which promised adventure, derring-do, romance, and enjoyable Byzantine political machinations in cleverly disguised versions of the Balkans and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were immensely popular, with The Prisoner of Zenda was quickly followed by a rash of novels, plays, operettas, etc., that promised similar delights. George Bernard Shaw satirized the genre in Arms and the Man, Dorothy Sayers had a murder victim believe he was the lost heir to a Ruritanian country in Have His Carcase, and Belgian cartoonist Herge sent his boy journalist Tintin to the suspiciously Zenda-esque lands of Sylvania and Borduria.
Even today, there are echoes of Ruritanian romance in novels (The Mouse That Roared, set in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick), films (much of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang takes place in Vulgaria, ruled by the feckless Baron Bomburst), and comic books (Marvel Comics’ Latveria, ruled by pompous villain Doctor Doom). As recently as last year, The Grand Budapest Hotel was a film version of a Ruritanian romance, with some of the fun and froth of the turn of the century original
The same cannot be said for this sequel, which is sadly lacking in The Prisoner of Zenda’s panache, romance, and joie de vivre. Narrated by Ruritanian courtier Fritz von Tarlenheim, Rupert of Hentzau achieves the rare feat of undoing almost everything that had been resolved at the end of The Prisoner of Zenda. The King has relapsed into bad habits, Flavia is miserable as wife and queen, and the political unrest that had only been hinted at the first book has Ruritania on the verge of full-blown revolution. The King is assassinated, Rupert of Hentzau is finally dispatched after wreaking even more mayhem upon country and crown, and Rudolf, who finally agrees to serve as King for the good of his beloved adopted country, is himself murdered almost as soon as he dares to reach above his proper station. The book ends with poor Flavia, who’s been widowed both legally (by the death of the King) and emotionally (by the death of her one true love), reigning in lonely despair while Rudolf is buried in place of the rightful King in Strelsau Cathedral.
It’s a curiously flat, unsatisfying way to end the Zenda books, and it’s little wonder that Rupert of Hentzau failed to approach the popularity or lasting impact of the original. It’s not clear why Hope wrote it all – he certainly didn’t need the money – let alone why he chose to kill off his hero seemingly at random. It may be that he was tired of demands for a sequel, but as much as killing off Rudolf would seemingly ensure that he got his wish, the grim tone and tragic ending came perilously close to ensuring that the original book also disappeared into obscurity.
Either way, it’s a huge disappointment, especially since The Prisoner of Zenda is so much fun. One has to wonder if Rupert of Hentzau, evil to the end, was behind it all.
Graustark: The Story of the Love Behind a Throne, by George Barr McCutcheon - one of the earliest Ruritanian knock-offs was this “story of a love behind a throne.” Written in 1901 by American novelist George Barr McCutcheon, Graustark tells the story of an American lawyer, the less than euphoniously named Grenfell Lorry, and his romance with a beautiful European girl saddled with the even less euphonious moniker “Sophia Guggenslocker.” They meet rather cutely thanks to a missed train connection in, of all places, West Virginia, then are reunited in Europe when Grenfell and his buddy Harry Anguish (yes, that’s really his name) go in search of Sophia after our hero can’t forget the lovely young lady.
To his shock, Grenfell learns that Sophia isn’t named Sophia, or even Guggenslocker. Her real name is, I swear on my father’s grave, “Yetive,” and she’s actually the Princess of Graustark, a mountainous country located somewhere between Transylvania and Cloud Cuckooland. Alas for love, Yetive is engaged to the duplicitous but comparatively normally named Prince Lorenz of Axphain (a country, not a giftable man’s fragrance), who will pay off the millions of gavvos in war reparations Graustark owes to its odious neighbor, Dawsbergen, thanks to Yetive’s father Ganlook (????) falling in battle several years earlier. Complicating matters even further, Prince Gabriel of Dawsbergen wants to marry Yetive himself, which would cancel the war debt and spare Graustark the agony of being ruled by someone with a name like “Ganlook” or “Yetive.”
These plains come to naught when Lorenz is inconveniently assassinated during a kidnapping attempt against Yetive. Grenfell, who had helped thwart the kidnapping, is immediately suspected of eliminating the rival, and nearly loses his head (literally) when Lorenz’s father offers to pay off the reparations anyway if someone will rid of him of this meddlesome American. Eventually it comes out that Gabriel killed Lorenz, Yetive marries Grenfell, and they all live happily ever after…
At least until the inevitable sequel, Beverly of Graustark, came out three years later. This book, which includes yet more ridiculous names (“Prince Dantan of Dawsbergen,” which sounds like a brand of sugar-free chewing gum but is still better than “Baldos,” an alleged goatherd who of course turns out to be More Than He Appears), is chockfull of the mistaken identities, then-common racial stereotypes, true love, cardboard characters, and safely familiar exoticism so beloved of Ruritanian readers. It, too, ends happily, with lovely American Beverly Calhoun marrying Prince Dantan and peace between Dawsbergen and Graustark…
At least until the next book, Truxton King: A Story of Graustark, whose eponymous character is yet another American and not a weirdly named Balkan ruler. This story, which begins by killing off Grenfell and Yetive in a train accident in Belgium, involves an assassination attempt on their son, the (thank God) normally named Robin, by minions of the evil Count Marlanx (a human being, not a type of Eastern European longhaired cat). Truxton King foils the plot, Marlanx dies unheroically, and all is well until…
Robin, now an adult, needs to take a wife in The Prince of Graustark to settle yet more financial difficulties. A rich, vulgar, unheroic (for once!) American named William Blithers, emboldened by Graustark’s history of Yankee Doodle consorts, offers to pay off all the debts if Robin will marry his less than refined daughter. This less than exciting plot ends when Robin marries his true love, Bevra (not a soft drink), daughter of Dantan the Non-Dental and Beverly Calhoun. They seem all set for a happy ending…
Except that Russia now owns Graustark’s war debt and is able to force Graustark to ally itself with Russia during the Great War in exchange for finally canceling the reparations incurred by Ganlook all those years ago. Once Russia is out of the war, Graustark negotiates a separate peace. All finally, finally, finally seems well…
If it weren’t for a Communist revolution in Axphain that exiled its heir, the dweebishly named Prince Hubert. Hubert wants to marry Princess Virginia of Dawsbergen, but she’s already married to an American journalist named Pendennis Yorke (what in hell was McCutcheon smoking when he named these people?????), and after about five million complications Hubert is dead, his illegitimate half-brother Gregory is the ruler of Axphain, and the Communists heading off to infiltrate yet another country.
Phew
As ridiculous as this all sounds, the Graustark books were surprisingly popular in their day. A woman wrote to McCutcheon asking for genealogical information on Beverly Calhoun because she suspected they were related, the first two novels were turned into successful films (one starring Marion Davies, the future mistress of William Randolph Hearst, as Beverly Calhoun), and there was even a champion racehorse named Graustark. Ludicrous names and all, there was actually a short period when Graustark and its characters looked fair to be the Ruritanian (or Graustarkian) romances that would survive, not Anthony Hope’s masterpiece.
Fortunately for people who like their characters with relatively normal names, Graustark and its denizens are all but forgotten today except by Thoroughbred breeders and racing fans. Most of the books are available on Project Gutenberg in case you want to get a taste of them, but be warned: you may not recover from the laughter induced by names like “Ganlook,” “Axphain,” “Yetive,” or “John Glottal Stop Smith” (not actually a character, but he certainly should be).
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Have any of you read a Graustark book? Bet on Graustark the horse? Read Rupert of Hentzau? Crushed on Stewart Granger and/or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and/or Ronald Colman? It's a snowy night in New England, so gather 'round the fire and share....
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