Which brings me back to the necessity of discussing Franklyn's book, a duty which I fear I've been avoiding. I've never seen the book, but I have little desire to do so. I refrained from consulting Brichester Central Library's copy when I went to Undercliffe's flat; I suppose I could obtain this through the National Central Library, though I suspect that in fact the copy (like all others, apparently) has mysteriously disappeared.
Although, as Undercliffe points out, We Pass from View displays marked affinities with the Cthulhu Mythos in certain passages, such Lovecraft scholars as Derleth, Lin Carter, Timothy d'Arch Smith and J. Vernon Shea can supply no information on the book. I understand that it was published in 1964 by the 'True Light Press', Brichester; references in Undercliffe's letters suggest that it was a duplicated publication, originally circulated in card covers but probably bound by libraries taking copies. I have not been able to discover where, if anywhere, it was on sale. An odd rumor reached me recently that almost the entire edition was stolen from the 'True Light Press'—actually the house of Roland Franklyn—and has not been heard of since; perhaps destroyed, but by whom?
Here is the little information I've obtained from various sources. The British National Bibliography gives the following entry:
129.4—Incarnation and reincarnation
FRANKLYN, Ronald
We pass from View. Brichester, True Light Press, 9/6. Jan 1964. 126 p. 22 cm.
However, the Cumulative Book Index, which lists all books published in English, does not acknowledge the book; at least, neither I nor the staff of Liverpool's Picton Library can trace the reference.
While correlating notes I was surprised to turn up in my commonplace book the following review, which might have been copied from the Times Literary Supplement:
PSEUDOPODDITIES
The last few decades have seen the emergence of many disturbing pseudo-philosophies, but We Pass from View must rank lowest. The author, Roland Franklyn, has less idea of style than most of his kind; however, the ideas behind the writing are expressed with less ambiguity than one might wish. His basic thesis seems to be that the number of souls in the universe is limited, by some illegitimate application of the conservation of energy principle, and that humanity must therefore acknowledge an infinite number of simultaneous incarnations. The last chapter, Toward the True Self, is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of the theory, concluding that the 'true self' is to be found 'outside space', and that each human being is merely a facet of his 'self, which is itself able to experience all its incarnations simultaneously but unable to control them. There is a suggestion of Beckett here (particularly L'Innomable), and Mr Franklyn has infused enough unconscious humour into many passages to cause hilarity when the book was read aloud at a party. But a book which advocates the use of drugs to achieve fulfilment of black-magic rites is worth attention not so much as humour (and certainly not as it was intended) as a sociological phenomenon.
Laughter at a party, indeed! I still find that remark rather frightening. What copy was being read aloud? The TLS review copy, perhaps, but in that case what happened to it? Like so much in this affair, the end fades into mystery. I doubt that many indignant letters replied to the review; those that were written probably weren't printable. In 1966, I heard vaguely of a book called How I Discovered my Infinite Self by 'An Initiate', but whether it was ever published I don't know.
Undercliffe quoted several passages from We Pass from View which, though I find them faintly distasteful, I had better include. I still have all of Undercliffe's letters; some day I may edit them into a memorial article for The Arkham Collector, but it seems in rather bad taste to write a memoir of a man who may still be alive somewhere. The letters printed here are, I think, essential.
In his letter of 2 November 1965 Undercliffe wrote: 'Here's a bizarre passage which might set you off on a short story. From the first page of We Pass from View: "The novice must remind himself always that the Self is infinite and that he is but one part of his Self, not yet aware of his other bodies and lives. REMIND YOURSELF on sleeping. REMIND YOURSELF on waking. Above all, REMIND YOURSELF when entering the First Stage of Initiation". As for this first stage, I've traced references later in the text, but nothing very lucid. Franklyn keeps mentioning "the aids" which seem to be drugs of some sort, usually taken under supervision of an "initiate" who chants invocations ("Ag'lak Sauron, Daoloth asgu'i, Eihort phul'aag"—that ought to ring a bell with you) and attempts to tap the novice's subconscious knowledge of his other incarnations. Not that I necessarily believe what Franklyn says, but it certainly gives you that sense of instability which all good horror stories should provide. I can't discover much about Franklyn. He seems in the last year or two to have drawn together a circle of young men who, from what I hear, visit Goatswood, Clotton, Temphill, the island beyond Severnford, and other places in which you're no doubt as interested as I am. I'd like to get in on the act.'
I replied that he surely didn't need drugs for inspiration and that, warnings from Dennis Wheatley aside, I didn't feel it was advisable to become involved in black magic. 'Experience makes the writer,' Undercliffe retorted. Subsequently he avoided direct quotation, but I gathered he had not joined Franklyn's circle; his own decision, I think. Then, in September 1966, when he was writing The Crawling in the Attic (I'd just started library work and sent him the manuscript of The Stocking to read, which he didn't like— 'elaborately pointless'), he quoted the following:
'Today's psychologists are wrong about dreams coming from the subconscious mind. Dreams are the links between us and the experiences of our other incarnations. We must be receptive to them. TELL YOURSELF BEFORE YOU SLEEP THAT YOU WILL SEE BEYOND YOUR FACET. The initiate known as Yokh'khim, his name on Tond, came to me describing a dream of long tunnels in which he was pursued but could not see his body. After several sessions, he managed to see himself as a ball of hair rolling through the tunnel away from the Trunks in the Ooze. The ball was known on Tond as Yokh'khim. He has not attained the stage of Black Initiate and spends his time beyond his facet, having set aside all but the minimum of his life on Earth.'