Fellow writer Johnathan Curling is even more obscure than Jocelyn Brooke, relegated to the footnote within a footnote of JB’s life. When I first started scratching the surface of Jocelyn’s life, it was Curling who initially loomed large with a notable dedication in his biggest hit The Military Orchid and an appearance in Brooke’s will (leaving behind £9136). These two snippets alone had me convinced that Curling was the great love of Brooke’s life. That still may be true in a sense, but the ‘bestie’ accolade seems a better fit.

They met at Worcester College, Oxford and became what was to be lifelong friends. The vibe is – and I have zero evidence for this – that they fucked then failed to sustain the sexual chemistry and settled for friendship. There is generally an ease with which gay men can have sex first and check for feelings later. I know and have plenty of gay male friends who have started out as a romantic interest and very quickly fizzled into a much more compatible friendship. I don’t think I’ve ever followed the Hollywood template of suddenly realising that I’ve been in romantic love with a close friend, all this time… Straight people, eh? Anyway, Curling and Brooke became besties, boozing and trying to come up with as many synonyms for the word ‘prostitute’ as possible1. They also got into trouble in Oxford by both writing a literary periodical which was “considered sexually subversive by the university proctors, who ordered Flux to be withdrawn from sale” according to an article for JocelynBrooke.com by Jonathan Hunt.

That other Jonathan made the connection between Curling and Brooke’s “fictional” creation Eric Anquetil who appears in The Goose Cathedral (also put together by The Sandgate Society biography which is also great). So you could take the following description by Brooke as a summary of their relationship:

“Our friendship dated from Oxford: he was the only person I had 'kept up with' from that period, perhaps because we made so few demands upon each other. Our relationship, in fact, was of that enduring kind which is grounded firmly on a basis of frivolity, dissipation and a shared sense of the ridiculous. We were quite unable to take either each other or (when we were together) our respective selves au grand sérieux. It is, I suppose, as good a foundation for friendship as any other; better, perhaps, than most.” (TOT, p.367)

On the same page Brooke goes on, “I should like, Eric had said, on another occasion, 'to fish up some unknown dix-huitième poetaster, and write a "definitive" biography of him - with lots and lots of footnotes.” (TOT, p.367)

Which is exactly what real life Jonathan Curling did, writing two full length biographies, starting with a poetaster (an archaic term for a bad poet) and moving on to a dix-huitième subject. He would also become a poetaster himself with a terrible selection of children’s verse.

The first biography he wrote, of Janus Weathercock aka Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, was published while Curling was at the tender age of 28. To give his subject the Daily Mail treatment, Weathercock was A FORGERER! And DEADLY POISONER! Curling’s biography kicks off with a striking scene of a twenty something Janus walking down the street marvelling at the wonders of spring (and includes a detail from 1820 where ‘a living insect of considerable size was reported to have been extracted from a tumour of two years’ growth on the neck of an Aylesford woman’. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, your turn.) It’s a slog to read, and Curling is woefully faithful to the telling of a life as he sees it happened. Each development is backed up by proof, and the reality is far duller than any wild speculation or hysterical reportage. Curling unpicks the work of Oscar Wilde to make corrections, doing a great job of draining Wainewright’s life of villainy and melodrama, sucking the excitement out of the biography. He didn’t murder as many people as was reported, and ultimately he did what he did all for one thing: money.

I have managed to salvage some interest in Curling’s output as Wainewright’s duplicity feels like something Curling secretly covets. When Janus/Thomas went through his writing phase, he would publish columns and articles writing about himself through his various guises. This is something Curling takes up when he publishes children’s poetry under a pen name, that of Nicolas Husk. After a whole series of uninspiring little children’s ditties, Jonathan Curling appears as the interviewer for himself as Nicolas Husk. In a Letter to Western Mail in 1952 the publication is described as ‘obviously the product of a deranged mind’ recommended for ‘those who admire literary eccentricity’. If only it were that good. I can imagine Curling wrote this himself as a publicist drumming up attention, pre-empting the Joe Orton school of PR.

As Curling is not the object of my obsession, I hold bits of his own biography with disinterest. Brooke sent letters to him in London at Russel Court, Woburn Place (where Olivia Manning was a notable previous resident). In November 1945, The Bookseller printed an article by Curling about being the Press Officer for the British Council in Istanbul. In his photographic portrait he is pristinely coiffured with a side parting, wears a pinstripe suit with perfectly aligned pocket square and has an ambiguous faint smile. He looks like a slightly more chiseled version of Jocelyn Brooke and elsewhere is described as having ‘beefy good looks’. Jonathan Curling died suddenly on Dec 9^th 1961, announced the Bookseller. I have no idea where he is buried2.

I managed to get hold of two Ghost Book collections edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith, featuring Jonathan Curling. Neither of his contributions were strictly ghostly, but the spectre of racism reared its head in both. I couldn’t bring myself to part with almost £30 to try and pick up a copy of The Uncertain Element edited by Kay Dick, to be disappointed by another one of his short stories. But if I win the lottery, you will see it on my shelf.

Out of duty, I read his second biography Edward Wortley Montagu 1713-1776: The Man in the Iron Wig, the first in The Rogues Gallery series. The book itself smells three hundred years old, but was published in 1954, I’m guessing just the once. As with all my Curling collections, it’s dust jacket free, and the green cover makes me think of arsenic every time I pick it up. The top of the book has a layer of green mould that gives it that authentic, pungent ‘Old Book’ smell. It’s almost painful to read how meticulously researched the book is, as Curling paraphrases letter after letter from Lady Montagu, parsing the supposed truth out of the lies and rewriting complex forwarding systems that the Mr and Mrs Montagu had with their ‘rogue’ of a son. I can’t help but take the side of Lady Montagu, she won me over from the start as a bored unwilling housewife etching poetry into the window with a diamond.

Again, the outrage and travesty are undermined, and in our sensationalist times, I’m frequently left wondering just what it is that is so roguish about this Edward Montagu. He kept bad company, embarrassed his rich parents, liked to gamble, ran up debts and liked ‘rioting’. I get the sense of the old meaning of rioting, but have to look it up: "dissipated behaviour". I then have to look up dissipated, which means “(of a person or way of life) overindulging in sensual pleasures.” Sign me up!

Reading Curling’s two biographies – long, detailed, thoroughly researched and ultimately, a bit boring – has made me think a lot about the nature of biography. Why they’re written, why some writers do backflips to get out of the way of the story without realising that they’re always centre stage simply by narrating. Brooke leant into his place in the text, Curling tried to dodge it. They both languish in obscurity, but without a Brooke obsession I never would have hunted down or read Curling’s books. There’s something about Brooke that makes you want to obsess about him, the way that he can go off about fireworks, or flowers, or the cut of a corduroy crotch. Sometimes there are good reasons for books to remain unread, and usually the good reason is simply they’re not good.

I’m not the only one to compare their writing, and as the fictional Brooke and Curling swap manuscripts of unpublished works in The Goose Cathedral, it’s Brooke who says:

“The difference between us, I decided, was the difference between the professional and the amateur; nor have I ever changed my opinion.” (TOT, p.368).

If this really is the case, it confirms what I have always suspected – amateurs do it better3.

Brooke, Jocelyn. The Orchid Trilogy (King Penguin, Middlesex. 1981. Original three books published by The Bodley Head 1948, 1949, 1950)

Curling, Jonathan. Edward Wortley Montagu 1712-1776: The Man in The Iron Wig. (Andrew Melrose, London. 1954)

Curling, Jonathan. Janus Weathercock: The Life of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, 1894-1847 (Nelson, London. 1938)

Hunt, Jonathan. Jocelyn Brooke: Kent Writer and Botanist (Online, Sandgate-kent.org.uk, archived 2009).

Husk, Nicholas (pseud. Curling, Jonathan). Zoo For Zanies. (James Barrie, London. 1952)