Word: skipton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...UNSPEAKABLE SKIPTON (249 pp.)-Pamela Hansford Johnson-Harcourt, Brace...
This is not the tone in which an author normally begs his publisher for a handout. But Daniel Skipton is no normal author. Pamela Hansford Johnson has modeled him on that unholy terror Frederick William Rolfe, alias "Baron Corvo," who was recently reintroduced to U.S. readers in his previously unpublished novel Nicholas Crabbe (TIME, Feb. 2). Rolfe bit every hand that fed him and died penniless in Venice in 1913. Novelist Johnson has changed his name and shifted time and place to modern Bruges in Belgium, but she has kept intact his characteristics. Skipton boasts a Corvo-like title: Bulgarian...
Author Johnson's novel covers the last summer of Skipton's life. A party of English tourists comes to Bruges, and Skipton sets out to fleece them for his winter wear. He finds a whore for one of the men and snob delights for the woman in the party; for both sexes he arranges a Pigalle-type "spectacle." But by summer's end Skipton has himself been swindled out of what little money remains to him: his sole consolation is that death is close enough to save him from the agonies of another winter...