More on Montague Summers

I enjoyed Brian Regal’s feature on the Reverend Montague Summers [ FT349:42-46], with its use of unpublished letters to publishers. But the overall angle – that Summers had no real dabbling with the occult, and the only ‘occult’ (punning on hidden, or supposedly lesser known) aspect of his life was his career as a writer – is not entirely satisfying. Firstly, if there was anything hidden about Summers’s career as a hard-working scholarly and hack writer then it was hidden in very full view indeed, with some 25 books and booklets including such major works as The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, The Vampire in Europe, The Gothic Quest, and A Gothic Bibliography, along with a couple of hundred contributions to periodicals.

Furthermore, Summers’s knowledge of the Black Mass seems to have been more than scholarly. “Real” Black Masses are like friend-of-a-friend stories, and the more they are examined (rumoured in Paris… rumoured in Belgium…) the more they evaporate. AE Waite’s sensationally titled investigation Devil Worship in France (1896) expended over 300 careful pages in finding that actually there wasn’t any, which may have disappointed some readers. As for Britain, the first true Black Mass for which there is any real evidence took place later than you might imagine, on Boxing Day 1918 (in Eton Road, Hampstead); and the depraved clergyman conducting it was none other than – Montague Summers.

The details can be found in Timothy d’Arch Smith’s The Books of the Beast (Mandrake, 1991). Smith’s thesis is that the later fireand-brimstone condemnations of witchcraft and Satanism for which Summers is remembered had their origin in Summers’s horrified revulsion at his earlier career. As Tim splendidly puts it, he suffered “some sort of psychic kick-back”, and “discovered (not a moment too soon) that the god he worshipped and the god who warred against that god were professionals.” Phil Baker London

Very nice to see a picture of Montague Summers’s gravestone [ FT349:46], which I was involved in erecting many years ago with my colleague Edwin Pouncey. Montie didn’t write a Life of Dryden, though he did edit an edition of his plays. As to his involvement in the occult, his bibliographer Timothy d’Arch Smith met an old actor using the stage name Anatole James, who gave details of a Black Mass Montie conducted at which he and a Catholic youth called Sullivan were present, along with Montie’s pet dog.

James also recalled how he and Summers, who was “made up to the eyes and reeking of scent” (d’Arch Smith, p.44) went out in search of companions, young Catholic lads being Summers’s prey. Tim was convinced by this testimony and so am I. If you examine Summers’s book of poems, Antinous, it is very much decadent and Satanist in nature and completely at odds with his later work. Ambivalent? Enigmatic certainly. Gay definitely. Sandy Robertson By email

Brian Regal’s article usefully discusses Summers’s trials as a working author, but fails to convey the extreme

murkiness of his life. I’ll give two examples. First, the question of Summers’s orders in the Catholic Church is extremely obscure and opens fascinating byways among the episcopi vagantes (independent bishops) and Anglo-Catholic underworld of the early 20th century. Second, when Summers was involved in the 1908 pederasty scandal, why was the clergyman accused with him sent to prison, while Summers seems to have escaped prosecution? There was a lot more going on in Summers’s life than Regal suggests. Bob Emery Albany, NY

Editor’s note: An informed source tells us that the clergyman accused with Summers was Austin Pemberton Nelson, whom he probably met at Lichfield Theological College. He was born in 1876 and ordained in 1905. At Taunton Assizes in 1910 he was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour for “a grave offence” on 18 October 1909, with a youth, Septimus Bailey (14), son of Samuel Bailey, lamplighter. He was sent to Shepton Mallet prison. Septimus may have been a fishmonger’s errand boy (he certainly was in 1911). Perhaps Summers found him a little too high-smelling for dalliance.