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I first came across Harold Visiak's name in Colin Wilson's essay on David Lindsay in Eagle and Earwig. Visiak had been a friend of Lindsay's and had supplied Wilson with some fascinating information on Lindsay's life and work. However there was more to it than that. Wilson had been sufficiently impressed with Visiak's novel Medusa to write a postscript to the Lindsay essay about it. It certainly sounded an intriguing novel and I promised myself I would read it one day. My more immediate concern was to get hold of Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus which, if Wilson's description was to be relied on, sounded like one of the most extraordinary novels ever written.

I eventually became so fascinated with Lindsay that I wrote a booklet about his work - David Lindsay's Vision - and it was while I was researching this that I read The Strange Genius of David Lindsay by Wilson, Visiak and J.B Pick. Visiak's biographical contributions were intriguing but his interpretations of Lindsay's novels were less than wholly convincing - particularly his attempts to see Christian dogma in A Voyage to Arcturus - and the result was that I felt no particular urgency to read anything else by him.

Life's Morning Hour

My Lindsay booklet was already finished when I discovered Visiak had written an autobiography - Life's Morning Hour - however; I decided to read it anyway to see what he said about Lindsay. In fact he doesn't say anything about him but the autobiography turned out to be so moving and impressive that I didn't care. Visiak's main aim is to record his very happy childhood and in this he succeeds brilliantly. What he does is to write about the childhood as experienced by the child. Thus he doesn't start the book by saying he was born on such a date in such a place to parents who were called whatever. He simply starts with his earliest memory.

'All of a sudden, one night, I was lifted up in front of a bedroom window with vehement exhortations to look.

'Yet I did not observe anything particular - not until I was on my feet again, gazing upwards. I saw lovely little glittering coloured lights in a cluster, high up in the night sky. They had such a limpid deep splendour that I seemed to myself to be looking right into them.'

The descriptions continue in this vein for over half the book and what impresses again and again is Visiak's ability to capture the mood of childhood.

'Soon after, I enjoyed the delightful sensation of shuffling along the pavement through drifts of fallen leaves, and discovering among them a glossy new chestnut...

'There followed a time when there were frost-white pictures of ferny trees on the window-panes in the mornings; when the puddles in paths were ice that made a white flaw if I stamped on them.'

Of course we all know that ice makes a white flaw when we stamp on it. But the child doesn't. The child is fascinated by the effect. Similarly, finding a glossy new chestnut hardly qualifies as a major event in one's life but the child's priorities are different. Chestnuts have not become the boring, commonplace objects they are to the adult and it is precisely Visiak's ability to capture the way the child responds to everyday things and events that makes Life's Morning Hour such a moving book.

Life and Background

Impressed by Life's Morning Hour I decided to try to find out more about Visiak's life and work. He was born Edward Harold Physick in London in 1878. His parents seem to have been very comfortably off and, at one point in Life's Morning Hour he states that his father is a sculptor. He had an older brother but seems to have had little in common with him. Consequently, Life's Morning Hour tells of an idyllic but largely solitary childhood. However, the Youth section of the book ends with an account of how he was seduced by a pretty young girl while on holiday in Pakeham and was permanently scarred by the experience. However, Visiak comments that repression transmuted can empower the mystic faculty. If Visiak's childhood was a kind of Paradise, then this episode marked his expulsion from that Paradise but with the hint that mystical experiences may enable occasional returns to that Paradise.

In 1897 he got a job with the Indo-European Telegraph Company. He seemed to find the work and his colleagues pleasant enough but things suddenly deteriorated when he was transferred to Manchester. Here homesickness made him very unhappy and his depressed state of mind was exacerbated by his reading about the Zulu Massacres and the horrors of vivisection in Elizabeth Power-Cobbe's The Inquisition of Science. He contemplated suicide but fear of 'infernal retribution' stayed his hand he tells us. Around this time he had a remarkable mystical experience. He saw indescribably bright arcs of light on a wall and then what he calls a Form which, although contained in a four foot space was of infinite stature. He comments that the effect of this vision was this: 'because such sublimity as I had witnessed existed, matters which appeared of profound grievous concern, such as death, loss, bereavement, were unimportant. This was the burden clearly divined, although the logic was obscure.' (Visiak's italics) In due course he was moved back to London. However, happy as he was about this, what he really wanted to do was write.

In the years before the Great War he published four volumes of poetry and a novel. Here is one of the poems:

The Haunted Island

He also published his first novel The Haunted Island. This describes a sea voyage to an apparently haunted island. During the journey the crew pick up two sailors who tell them the island is ruled by an evil genius called Dr Copicus. Presently they reach the island but a huge white ghost appears on the water blocking their path. (This later turns out to be a projection created by Copicus to keep unwanted visitors away). Clayton - the narrator - and the others travel to the island. What they encounter confirms the brutality of Copicus - one man has had his arms branded with red hot irons and another his tongue cut out - but also his genius both in his inventions and his writings. They discover that Copicus is working on a kind of bomb to destroy England in revenge for the way the country ignored his genius. He finally creates the bomb and tests it. Then a strange thing happens. Having finally found the means to destroy his enemies, he finds his desire to destroy them has suddenly vanished. However his testing of the bomb has triggered the island's volcano which starts to erupt. Clayton and his crew flee hastily but Copicus remains and is killed.

It sounds a strong story but unfortunately the telling of it is oddly unfocussed. The first half reads like an adventure story but lacks the kind of pacing of tension and release such stories need. Copicus is an interesting character but we don't learn nearly enough about him. Nor does Visiak help us to understand his sudden change of heart. Presumably Visiak is trying to make a point about the futility of revenge or perhaps the sudden revelation that makes a person a pacifist but it is hard to be sure. Still, it is an interesting and unusual first novel.

When the first world war started Visiak was 36. Given that he was in a reserved occupation at the beginning of a war expected to last only a few weeks and - at 36 - too old to fight anyway, one might have expected him to simply keep his head down. But Visiak was not that sort of man. He decided to register as a conscientious objector. He was eventually accepted as such but had to go through no less than five tribunals. He admits that these were not unjust but that they were political. On a lighter note he mentions that at one of the tribunals he got so carried away when arguing his case that he absent-mindedly drank the judge's coffee! In the end, he left the Indo-European Telegraph company and became a school teacher.

In The Strange Genius of David Lindsay, Visiak gives an amusing account of how he first fell under Lindsay's spell. Lindsay's The Haunted Woman was serialised in The Daily News in 1921. On the day the story got to the first visit to the haunted rooms, Visiak was late for an appointment but so gripped by the story that he rushed through the busy London streets to his appointment with the paper spread out in front of him. He was sufficiently impressed to write to Lindsay - Lindsay's first fan letter - and they became friends. We catch some glimpses of Visiak in the 1920s through Lindsay's letters - an article on Coleridge, a lecture on Tieck, a trip to America and the publication in 1923 of Visiak's first book on Milton.

Medusa (1929)

However, Visiak had published no poetry or fiction since before the war. Then, in 1929, his most famous novel, Medusa was published. Like The Haunted Island, Medusa concerns itself with a sea voyage. This sea voyage is organised by Mr Huxtable. His son has been kidnapped by pirates and he is sailing to meet them having raised the ransom. With him is the narrator - a boy called Will - who has run away from school and been befriended by Huxtable.

When they find the pirates' ship, all the pirates are missing although there is no sign of a struggle or any damage to the ship. All they find on the ship is a man called Vertembrex. He won't speak but spends his time happily playing with coloured beads. Will and Huxtable both notice that Vertembrex has a curious ability to make people feel happy and remember their childhood.

Presently they discover Vertembrex's notebook and see in it references to a black rock island. Earlier one of the sailors - Falconer - had told them an odd story concerning the island. Long ago there was a people who lived in a state of mystical bliss. In due course they began to lose this state. Two teachers arose among them to explain how they could regain it. One said they must abandon their increasing preoccupation with illusory pleasures while the other made machines that heightened these pleasures. They followed the second teacher and, in due course their land sank leaving just the black rock island and they themselves degenerated into sea monsters.

Huxtable becomes convinced they must find this island. They soon do and, at this point Huxtable tells Will the Greek myth of Psyche's Lamp. Psyche was a beautiful ethereal creature and, out of jealousy, Aphrodite sent Cupid to burn her wings. Cupid, however, fell in love with her and took her to his palace in Paradise. Psyche was forbidden to ever look at Cupid with her mortal eyes but one night, out of curiosity, she disobeyed this rule and was banished. Commenting on this stories, Huxtable points out that he has always been interested in the child's ability to see the world with mystical intensity and that this ability is lost when body and spirit start to get into disharmony.

At this point the ship is suddenly pervaded by a strange green light and the sea monsters board the ship and take the crew to the black rock island. Will faints and when he awakes he discovers that he is trapped in a hole on the island with the rest of the crew who are still asleep. A huge octopus type creature is approaching. Vertembrex throws down a rope and tells Will to wake the crew and escape. Will can't wake them and has to leave without them. When he looks back the octopus has caught Falconer in one of its tentacles. Falconer, however, far from looking frightened looks extravagantly joyful. Will and a few others sail away and the book comes to an end.

A strange and exciting story certainly, but what is Visiak trying to say? As they sail away at the end, an elderly sailor reveals that when the sea monsters came he saw a beautiful land full of alluring females calling him. If we assume that this is what the other sailors saw and if we bear in mind the Psyche/Black Rock stories, Visiak's meaning would seem to be as follows. The child sees life as a kind of Paradise until the awakening of sexuality puts body and spirit in disharmony and destroys this ability. Sex is a poor exchange for this loss but it is what Psyche and the Black Rock people chose. Falconer thinks he is in ecstasy in the arms of the alluring females but what is actually happening to him is horrific - he is being banished from Paradise. That is why the octopus is a terrifying monster to those who see this but a beautiful land of alluring females to those that don't. It is an intriguing theory and the last third of the book - from the discovery of the abandoned pirate ship onwards - is powerful and gripping. The rest is good but somehow a little less focussed. The book also shows why Lindsay regarded Visiak as a 'world mystic'. In fact Lindsay said Visiak must fully reveal himself as such in his next book.

Medusan Madness

It is not clear whether Visiak did this as his next and final novel - The Shadow - has never been published. Colin Wilson has read it and described it as 'interesting advance' on Medusa but needing 'some drastic surgery'. Unfortunately the publishers were less constructive - the rejection notes were curt according to Wilson. Lindsay urged him to 'keep on sending the script out till it will hold together no more' but, sadly, Visiak became discouraged and wrote no more novels.

The only other fiction Visiak published that I know of is his short story Medusan Madness. The unnamed narrator of this story is visiting his friend Evans who is detained in a mental hospital. Evans points out another inmate - a woman called Diomedea - and says that without her life would be unbearable.

A nurse brings them tea and when the narrator comments casually on her prettiness, Evans groans and suddenly seems very agitated. He decides to tell his story. Once when he was sailing near Japan he suddenly felt an extraordinary sense of tension. The sky became an intensely dark blue but this somehow didn't diminish the daylight. Now a strange thing happens. The narrator starts to actually see the scene Evans is describing and becomes afraid of what is going to happen next. Suddenly a 'monstrously beautiful' creature appears in the sea - an overpowering manifestation of femininity we are told. It turns its hypnotic gaze on the narrator and this drives him insane too. 'I did not leave this house. Diomedea helps us. She is coming now' is the powerfully abrupt ending that leaves the reader gasping.

In some ways this is similar to Medusa in that it describes a sea voyage that culminates in an encounter with a monster. However, there are important differences. In Medusa the sailors saw a land of alluring females and the others a terrifying monster. Here there is no imaginary land, just a creature which is itself described as monstrously beautiful and the essence of femininity. In Medusa the encounter with the monster is a 'gateway' out of seeing life with mystical intensity whereas here it is a straightforwardly damaging encounter in that it drives them insane. If Medusa combines a symbolic presentation of Visiak's first sexual encounter with his mystical theories about the way the child sees the world, Medusan Madness symbolises only the trauma of his first sexual encounter and presents it as unambiguously a damaging incident.

Not much is known of Visiak's later life. He wrote no more fiction but did publish acclaimed books on Milton and Conrad. Judging by the quantity of second hand copies of these books available on the internet compared to his novels and autobiography, it seems clear they sold substantially better.

The Wilson Connection

In the 1960s Visiak started to correspond with Colin Wilson. When they met - in 1967 - Visiak was living in a nursing home in Hove in a large room overlooking the sea. Wilson describes him as very thin with an interesting face and a lively manner but clearly bored with retirement.

Wilson encouraged Visiak to complete his autobiography and also to collaborate with himself and J.B. Pick on a book about Lindsay. Visiak's comments on A Voyage to Arcturus - particularly his attempts to see Christian dogma in it - are not very convincing but his desire to advertise the 'magic' of The Haunted Woman attests to a real love for that book.

However, Visiak's most interesting contribution is the Lindsay as I Knew Him chapter which is at once nostalgic and an authentic glimpse into Lindsay's tortured soul. We learn of Lindsay's everyday good humour but that, under the surface, he was 'radically unhappy, dissatisfied, hungry for recognition.' The only time Visiak saw Lindsay lose his cool was when Visiak failed to understand the extracts from The Witch that Lindsay was reading to him. On the other hand, when Visiak compared A Voyage to Arcturus with Kafka's The Castle, Lindsay blushed.

It would be silly to pretend that Visiak is a major undiscovered writer but Life's Morning Hour and Medusa are certainly worth reading. Moreover, towards the end of his long life Visiak found a kind of way back into the Paradise Lost of his childhood by writing about it in Life's Morning Hour. What we have, then, are moments of mystical intensity from long ago freeze-framed forever in Visiak's delicate prose. 'All of a sudden, one night, I was lifted up in front of a bedroom window with vehement exhortations to look.'

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