Well, Bless My Ash

I’ve been interested in the career of ‘William Ashbless’ since at least the last years of high school; I remember him being quoted in The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock. I learned much more about him, first in Blaylock’s The Digging Leviathan (1984) and then in The Anubis Gates (1983) by Tim Powers. They had created Ashbless in their college years in the early 70’s and had unwittingly had him as a major character in their novels, only finding it out when their editor pointed it out to them. Ashbless has appeared in various degrees in more of their works; Tim Powers in fact tries to mention him in one form or another in all of his books (sometimes as Ceniza-Bendiga) as a form of good luck charm.

I’ve been trying to get all of ‘Ashbless’s’ published works, and I have On Pirates, The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook, and Pilot Light. But one item has eluded my grasp: Offering the Bicentennial Edition of the Complete Twelve Hours of the Night: 1785–1985, a prospectus for a non-existent collection of Ashbless poetry, published by Cheap Street Press in 1985. It is a tiny sliver of a thing, just a cover and a single sheet of paper, and only 100 copies, printed up as a joke and handed out for free at the 1985 World Fantasy Convention. I’ve seen copies of it going out now for in excess of $200, way out of my price range, especially for such a slight thing.

Still, I always kept looking around for a copy I could afford, so curious was I about the work. Imagine my surprise when I found it sold at an auction for $50. It was gone, of course, but there were pictures of it, clear as a bell, at least the poem part of it. At last, I could at least read it. I quickly downloaded the pictures and transcribed the lines for easy reading. Then I transcribed the text describing the proposed book, the description itself an interesting fiction. This was a little more difficult as it was printed on dark, sometimes folded, pages. But eventually I had the whole thing, more or less.

And now I faced a quandary. I wanted to post the thing, to share it with anybody who might be in my same position. After all, it had already been published, as it were, on the auction website. It wasn’t the complete thing; there were still unguessable (well, kind of guessable) lacunae in the text. And the value didn’t completely reside in the words, but mostly in the artefact itself, with its history and provenance, signed by both authors and William Ashbless himself (Powers and Blaylock both signing one part of his name). To own such a thing people would still need to buy it. I don’t think I’ll be doing any harm to any sellers, and certainly none to the authors, I hope; the pamphlets have long since passed out of their profit-grasp, though I’m sure they still have the copyright. If any one asks me, I will certainly remove it. Well, anyway, here it is, as far as I can tell.

The Twelve Hours of the Night

 

"Yonder the ebon sails approach, in sight

Of hells made brighter by comparison;

Under this dead men’s sky the sun god’s boat

Rocks on the tide that surges blackly from

Eternity, and ebbs dawnward despite

Rude parliaments of ghosts upon the shore

Intent on begging passage … What dread thing

Ghastly in form, is this, though, rising up

Hideous to behold, from this necrotic stream?

“Take me hence!’ cries Osiris, when the dire

Insatiable serpent lifts its ovoid head –

No more shall these shadows show obedience,

Though, to this ungerminating king,

Howe’er unhappily he wave his parts.

Even as he cries, in fact, Apep the snake

Grabs him upon the fundament; bites it

Right off his body, then spits it aside.

“Oh no!” Osiris does complain, and then

Osiris is himself spat to the shore.

Vanquished for now, grievous asunder bit,

Evolving piecemeal, stoic Osiris lies

Knowing it all before – and now content,

Implacable through this undignified

Division, to await reassembly."

-William Ashbless

 

ANNOUNCING

"In late December of this year the [International William Ashbless] Society will publish the first complete [version of The Twelve Hours] of the Night, to commemorate the [200^th anniversary of its author’s] birth. This historically important volume [has been anxiously anticipated by] scholars and reviewers ever since its announcement [about 4 words, including ‘at’?] the Society’s annual gathering in London.

ABOUT THE BOOK

"This deluxe edition will include an introduction [----------] and [--- --] annotations by the noted historian and Ashbless [expert William Hastings]. Besides being a published poet himself, [he is chairman of The] Eleventh Hour, the Los Angeles chapter [of IWAS]. [This is an excerpt] from his insightful introduction:

"Lord Byron once described the time [minor Romantic poet] [Ash]bless as “a damned improbable character”, [and the details of] Ashbless’ life are hard to establish. It [----------] born somewhere west of the Blue Ridge [ -----------] Craig County Virginia, in late 1785, and [in 1810 moved to England] where he spent most of the rest of his life. In 1811 he married Jacqueline Tichy, who died in 1839; Ashbless [was killed in 1846], presumably by some enemy out of his [colorful past]. Among [-----] his obscure works are The Twelve Hours of the Night. [3 words]

An Account of London Philosophers, and its companion volumes An Account of London Madmen and An Account of London Scientists. There is some circumstantial evidence that portions of these last [works] were actually written after his death, and Stevenson, in a letter to Henry James, cites Mayhew as a possible collaborator. His reasoning is [---in] at best.

"Included in this version will be the notorious “suppressed two-dozen [lines]” Hazlitt refers to in his essay “Two Inconsequential Poets.” First published in the PMLA in 1940, these are the flimsy basis of scholar Brendan Doyle’s contention that the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein may have borrowed from The Twelve Hours of the Night to [con]struct his famous short story “By His Bootstraps.” Brendan Doyle disappeared [under?] mysterious circumstances in England in 1983, though, and whatever basis he had for this theory seems to have disappeared with him.

"As a footnote, and flying in the face of common sense and of the reliable [---] account of Ashbless’ death in the Woolwich Marshes in [1846], there surfaced in Los Angeles, California, between 1935 and 1940, a [po]et named, preposterously, William Ashbless, who had clinging to [him] bits and pieces of evidence that suggested that he was Ashbless the Ro[mantic] poet, prodigiously old. A founding member of the Cahuenga [poets? school? school of poets?], his own literary reputation is, of course, fairly solidly established, [---]ly on the strength of his Amazon Moon sonnets and his long im[pene?]trable Rippling England Bleeds. He disappeared beneath the city [-- Rancho? Pa]los Verdes twenty years ago after a series of half understood misadventures.

"The notion of the two men being one and the same is, of course, [---]ess, as almost certainly, is the rumor that this false Ashbless has [resur]faced, and that a collection of recent poems is to be published in [the P]aris Review next year."

                             William Hastings, The Maze Shed

                             Eagle Rock, California May, 1985

A DESCRIPTION

"The definitive edition will be printed in hand set types upon pure linen paper handmade in France especially for the IWAS edition of The Twelve Hours of the Night. This volume will be bound in three-quarter levant with vellum over boards and vellum doublures. The books will be encapsulated in handcrafted mahogany drop-back folding boxes. The binding was designed and executed by world renowned binder Rummondo Hardcase whose fine bindings have been exhibited in the Louvre.

"There will be 100 copies of The Twelve Hours of the Night printed of which 90 copies are available to the public for L500.00. Remittance or inquiries should be directed to the nearest IWAS society chapter.

"Further inquiries may be made of the nearest chapter or branch of the International William Ashbless Society. I-W-A-S London/Los Angeles/Sydney. Printed in London."

Here is an interesting talk that goes into the Ashbless phenomenon in more detail; his character seems to have taken on a life of its own, spreading to other authors and works. I hope someday Powers and Blaylock will publish a complete collection of their work as Ashbless, including their student work. I hope it will be before either passes away, so 'Ashbless' has another chance to sign another book.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwWRNitEOAI