Evening Standard 1988 April 19- Fogeytalk
An interesting newspaper article from mid 1988 pops up if you do a little search for "Amelia Bingham", you find this little blurb about a ""cult" named, apparently, "Fogeys".
A little further research seems to indicate that "fogeys" was a kind of subculture that popped up in the mid 1980s where people were just being a bit nostalgic and romantic about the past and borrowing the Victorian aesthetic. It seems like this article is perhaps attaching a broad cultural aesthetic to what the proto Aristasians were doing in The Romantic, not necessarily that the proto Aristasians were calling themselves Fogeys. Although, I have always wondered if the proto Aristasians were calling on, then well known, trends by calling their magazine The Romantic. As if to harken to the concept of the type-3 Bongo New Romantic movement.
All quite interesting.
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The Romantia Controversy And Their Connection To The Far-Right
Sometime in the middle of last year, some folks involved in the far-right British parties were sharing some memories of their times spent in the parlors of Romantia. Since I have been running this blog, these sorts of interactions with the far-right and those who were involved in Romantia keep popping up. At first it was just a vague rumor, then archived articles began turning up, and now we have actual accounts of the Romantia salon by someone who appeared to be well-known in the far-right sphere of influence.
When I first stumbled across these particular stories, they were just entries in a blog, but it appears that they have been compiled into a printed book, a book that very quickly found its way onto the internet archive! Now, I will say that this book is a biography of a man who seemed to be incredibly prone to outright lies, so the details of the events can probably be taken with a grain of salt. However, I do not believe it was a lie that he mingled with the Aristasians, as we have so much other proof that they were quick to invite these types to hang out with them.
The following is lifted from this particular book, you may view the whole thing here and judge for yourself how much is to be believed. It's a read of a few pages, and my comments follow the screen shots.
Now, there are a few things simply incorrect about this, first of which is that, while I believe the list of Miss Martindale's alternate identities is mostly correct, I believe that the Countess Raysendyll was Miss Langridge, as there are a few references to a Countess that seem to be describing Priscilla. This chapter seems to confuse Miss Martindale with Miss Langridge, but this was something that was frequently done by those remembering these days. The little blurb about the history of Aristasia appears to be lifted straight from Against The Modern World, which is straight from the horses mouth (But the horse seems to have disagreed with what was written after it was published) and much of the other information about what they did and believed in seems to be lifted from other sources, instead of first hand accounts. And, I, of course, disagree with the statement "They divided themselves into Brunette (masculine) and Blonde (feminine)". The information about the group names is fairly jumbled, as they certainly didn't change their name to St. Bride's School in the mid 1990s. That was more of a mid 1980s thing that only lived into the 1990s via their computer game publishing.
Now that all of the wrong, confused, and lifted things are out of the way, we are left with a few interesting bits.
This chapter mentions that they were hosting Anti-Metric Society meetings, which appeared to be frequented by far-right people of interest as late as 1999! If this date is correct this puts these antics right in the thick of Aristasia-in-Telluria, when they were hosting Aristasian nights in London, burning pantyhose as a publicity stunt, and inviting girls to their embassies. They also say that these meetings were held on Iffley Road in Oxford, which is quite a different location from their infamous house in Whipps Cross in London, which is where the Weekend At Miss Martindales documentary was filmed. Other sources seem to say they operated in both Oxford and Whipps Cross post-1993.
Another item of note is their system of dating, which I don't believe is something that was commonly noted. This chapter claims "a letter written in 1999 would be dated 1959", which is very similar (but off by 4 or 5 years, I could never decide which!) to something I have picked up reading their earliest forum archives. So, I do feel that this shows a genuine level of interaction with the Aristasians of the 1990s, making note of such a minor, largely unnoticed, quirk.
Ultimately, there is very little new information in this chapter. No great insights into what went down behind their closed doors or no new mysterious names to cross check. Just the uncomfortable fact that the leaderesses of Aristasian were happily hosting far-right spokesmen in their parlors.
A few more copies of The Governess by the Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society have popped up on the UK Ebay. I have no plans to buy these, but the listings that have some inside scans can give us some clues about how the Aristasians of this time were interacting with this particular Silly Monkey Society.
The Winter 1993 issue includes an article we got to see a page of in a compilation issue that I suspected was written by Aristasians. The compilation issue just cited "Issue 4" but now we see that was Winter of '93, which seemed to be happening concurrently with Romantia, and quite a bit before Miss Martindale was appearing on documentaries as a spokestress for The Wildfire Club.
This is all just helpful information in compiling the Aristasian timeline.
The Concise Pippsie Dictionary is a little glossary of Romantia terms, I recall some of these making their way to the Elektraspace era, particularly "Striped Cusion", which I am still baffled by, although this particular glossary certainly makes it more clear that it's a bit of an absurd expression. So as not to forget how apparently influential these particular publications were among the radical right, we can see a similar, but not nearly as fun and silly, simile under "D".
We hate to hear it, but some more links to the Aristasian endeavor of Romantia to fascism have popped up in recent days. It appears that the writings of a certain individual who spent some time around the Romantia crowd are working their way online, and Romantia gets a bit of an unusual, and unflattering, cameo. First, a story visiting the Oxford site of Perfect Publications, which is the Romantia publishing house.
The following is a very unflattering description of a mysterious Miss Lucia:
Now, it should be mentioned that this article starts out by saying that this individual's writings should be taken as fiction until proven otherwise, and I do believe that this is a terribly exaggerated description of this person, to say the least.
A commenter confirms who we suspect Miss Lucina is. But more shockingly, confirms that "their political publications were influential among the UK radical right in the 1990s". We cannot pretend that this was an accident, or another case of "attracting the wrong kind of person". Evidence keeps turning up, again and again, that the proto-Aristasians were more than happy to invite these types into their parlors.
Archive of the article
As is usual with these types of findings, it is worth nothing that this aspect of Romantia was buried and whitewashed in Aristasia's later Electraspace days. It was presented to the then-current girls-in-Aristasia that it was just a Victorian social club. But more and more seems to pop up that proves that the Aristasians-in-Romantia were more than delighted to mingle with fascists because they seemed to have a lot in common.
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Aristasians have had very few collaborations with outlanders, and one of the most mysterious, to me at least, is the man (?!) who illustrated much of their work in the 1980s. This man was Peter Jones, a most ordinary name that also happens to be shared with another, more well known, artist from the same time and place, just to make things even more confusing.
His style is distinct, and he appears to have started with the group illustrating the comics that would go along side the St. Bride's computer games, particularly Silverwolf and Wondergirl, which were supposed to be a joint comic and game project, although ultimately only the Silverwolf game alone was released while Wondergirl was never finished. However, the Miss Wonderful comic released by Romantia in the late 1980s bears such a resemblance to the description of the Wondergirl game, that we have to assume the comic was finished and it was simply renamed to Miss Wonderful. He also appears to illustrate some of the stories printed in The Romantic. The following are some of his illustrations.
Who was Peter Jones? How did he come to work with the proto-Aristasians? His comic works seem competent and understanding of the genre, so I would be quite surprised if this was his only endeavor in comic book illustrations.
A page from The Romantic issue 1, which was most likely published late 1986 or early 1987.
I have seen Miss Priscilla referred to as “Pip”, so one could assume that this article was written by her, it certainly is in the style she would write in. I’m unsure who Jennypops is, but the authoress of Enter Amelia Bingham / co-founder of the group that would go on to become Aristasia was at one time called “Jenny Falconer”. So perhaps it is in reference to her. Jennypops and Pippit may not necessarily be different people, however.
It wasn’t just people who had different names in early Aristasia, but houses as well! An older news article I found indicates that they also called St. Brides School “Kincasslagh House” when advertising their school in certain publications. Here is mention of the same house! Perhaps St. Bride’s School was the name only for Arcadian school girl role play, An Droichead Beo for the Madrian temple, and Kincasslagh House was the name for their slightly more grown-up Romantia role play, and even the adult role play offered at the house in certain magazines.
One of my favorite newspaper clippings about the girls from St. Bride's is this 1988 Sunday Telegraph article. It contains so many tantalizing bits of truth and half-truth, least of which is a brief interview with Miss Langridge. In it she mentions her "friend" Miss Jenny Faulkener, who is presumably the the same girl as Jenny Falconer that has popped up in much of Aristasian history.
I have gone back and forth, and back again, on whether I think that Jenny Faulkener was a distinct other person or Miss Langridge herself under a different name. I have revisited my stance and think that she was something of a shared persona that Miss Langridge and the elusive Miss Evans used. There are several stories told about Miss Faulkener that really do seem to be told as if they were a second person who attended school with Miss Langridge, the above, as well as the introduction to the Amelia Bingham book (which claims to have been written by Miss Martindale, but the tone of the introduction feels very much like a Miss Langridge story, and we simply know for a fact that Miss Martindale didn't meet this group until after the college years). We know that Miss Evans, under her Madrian name, and Miss Langridge lived together in oxford, 3rd party stories tell about visiting them, and the neighbors of St. Bride's seemed to have met her.
Now, there are many stories, especially in the Romantia era, that are written by Miss Faulkener, and I can easily believe they were written by Miss Langridge, as she was an absolutely prolific writer. But I really do think (for the moment at least) whenever a story is told about Miss Faulkener, perhaps they are stories about Miss Evans.
The one wrench thrown into these cogs is that Sophia herself, the maid who brought Miss Martindale to the courts for bodily harm, as well as Madria Olga, have both referred to Miss Langridge as "Jennifer", but perhaps that was simply because it was a shared name.
