The Attic Nights of Crispinus Quintius

The Honest Men

2009-05-14T19:55:35Z

1923

‘So I told Molly to move the chair away from the radiator and we just carried on.’

The assembled company in the railway car chortled and murmured comments of ‘that’s the way’ and ‘don’t you just always’. Sitting still in the midst of this was Fitzroy, who stared into the embers of his cigarette and began to speak in that dreamy voice that always made the others go silent.

‘When did this happen, I wonder? When did we become people, adults, instead of those strange sexless clouds of existence we were before?’

The others just blinked at him. Sensing their confusion, he continued.

‘Until about a year ago, I never thought of myself as owning furniture. It was always just…there.’

Continued silence. Mosley furrowed his brow. ‘Crispin, I daresay you are particularly odd this evening.’

Fitzroy scoffed, blowing out one final plume of smoke as he snuffed out his cigarette. ‘We just learned that Eugenia est enceinte.’

Suddenly, a general exclamation of surprise went up. ‘Hooray for Fit-zay!’ Feet stamped. Bodies shifted. A glass was knocked over and uprighted.

‘Oh, my boy!’ warbled Bromley, pulling Fitzroy to his chest with a shaking arm that was almost motherly in it’s intensity, squeezing him tighter by the minute. ‘I’m so glad to see that you came out of intercourse alive. I thought the very act would kill you. Oh! But in fact you have created life.’ Giving him a final shake, he kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m so proud of you!’

The other echoed Bromley’s hysterics, cooing and flapping their hands. All except Mosley, who suddenly seemed very interested in the brass fittings on Brand’s suitcase.

‘Sit up and stop slobbering,’ muttered Fitzroy in a low voice, a smirk playing at his lips as he stood up. ‘You’re all being very mean. I’m leaving now, to find some company who will treat me more kindly.’

The crowd hooted. ‘It will have to be company who doesn’t know you at all, Fitzy! Ta-ta! Godspeed!’

He did not travel far; instead he just dug his heels into the carpet of the hallway and watched the nighttime scenery whisk by, the rocking of the car adding to the strange, unsteady feeling of staring out into the dark and nameless ephemeral shapes visible though the window, occasionally outlined with fans of light.

It wasn’t long until the door slid open again and he turned his head to see Mosley stepping out to join him.

‘Congratulations,’ he murmured. Fitzroy smiled wanly. Mosley jerked his chin towards Bromley’s compartment, empty now that they had all crammed themselves in next door. He passed behind Fitzroy and Fitzroy followed, closing the door behind him.

Mosley already sat on the empty bench, rearranging his scarf. ‘Lock it,’ he said.

Doing so, Fitzroy stepped over and settled next to Mosley.

Finished with his scarf, he crossed his legs and put his hand on his knee, moving it one inch down and one inch over, as if it had an exact place it must be. He cleared his throat. He stared at the opposite wall, neglecting to even grace Fitzroy with a glance. ‘Good God, man.’

Fitzroy breathed sharply through his nose. ‘You of all people, Rupert. You of all people.’

‘What?’

Fitzroy picked imaginary lint from his trousers. ‘You should know. You know better than anyone.’

Scowling, Mosley shifted in his seat to face him, turning his bent arm out. ‘Oh, should I? Do I know better than your wife?’

Fitzroy seemed startled. When he finally spoke again, it was with less cold reserve than before. ‘You have a wife, too.’

‘She disgusts me. They all disgust me. I can’t bring myself to the task any more often than is strictly necessary.’

This admission took Fitzroy by surprise. What Mosley could not do, dared not do, had always seemed to him to be beyond the scope of human achievement. ‘Well,’ he said and having nothing else to add followed it up with another ‘well’.

‘So what of it?’ Mosley twitched his shoulders, drew his mouth into a fleeting sneer. ‘Are you finally done with me?’

Where is this coming from, Fitzroy wondered. ‘Done? I was done with that on my wedding day.’

‘Oh, you would have grown tired of that in time. No man can keep it up, not even you, Crispin.’

Fitzroy looked as though Mosley had just slapped him. ‘I love her!’

Winding up his face into a wounded scowl, Mosley brought his fist down on the seat of the bench, the blow echoing with a dampened, furling sound. ‘Shit!’

Fitzroy gaped at Mosley before closing his mouth with an audible click, cocking his head and bringing the line of his jaw to a more taut, regal angle. He drew himself up tightly. ‘If you’re going to be like that, I’m going to leave.’ When the other man just folded his arms across his chest and remained silent, Fitzroy pursed his lips. ‘You are acting like a child.’

‘You’re having one,’ he spat. ‘Consider it good bloody practice.’

‘Really, Rupert. Really.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘You act as if no one ever denied you what you wanted before. And you always said I was sheltered.’

‘No one. No thing. Nothing,’ he replied cryptically. Fitzroy was wondering what that could mean when he heard a roar from next door, cries and calls of ‘Father Fitzy!’ making their way though the wall behind his head.

He looked quietly at the man beside him for a few moments, before tilting his head towards the door. ‘Let’s go.’

‘It’s not me they want.’ Mosley leaned miserably in his seat, pulling his shoulder away from any touch that may or may not have been coming.

‘Fine; I will leave you to your thoughts’ Fitzroy said, rising easily. ‘I do hope they are good ones.’

Mosley watched him as he approached the door, his view blurred by the mist settling over his eyes that he was becoming increasing helpless to stop.

‘If only you had been born a woman, Crispin.’

Fitzroy paused, running his thumb along the edge of the doorway. Mosley could see his thin shoulders outlined against the night, the bony wings of his scapulae ghosted under his cardigan. They fluttered as he turned and shook his head.

‘If I had, I would only disgust you.’

Quotes of interest

2009-01-13T09:40:25Z

“I am still haunted by the curve of your back, cutting a disdainful line across my lawn that last day of your visit all those years ago. How I wished you would turn to at least look at me, if only just so I could see your face. Perhaps I flatter myself to think that my refusal was the cause of your scorn. I did not mean it as a slight against your beauty. To me, you will always be the English Adonis. But I cannot spilt my time as you do. My body is no longer mine to do what I please with; it belongs to my wife.” -- Letter from Lord Crispin Fitzroy to Rupert Mosley, 1928

“I met Crispin in Eton and as long as I knew him, he never changed. He always combed his hair the same way, always had the same boyish face and angular body, always the same reserve and obedience tempered by a wild imagination and a blushing naiveté. He was a schoolboy when I met him and, to me at least, he was a schoolboy until the day he died.” -- Rupert Mosley, Memoirs, 1953.

“Went to Covington Thursday. More whispers about Mosley and Fitzroy. Can’t be true. Fitzy is too polite for sodomy. Far too clean. Mosley just sees him as a lock he can try to pick. I said as much to Robbie Brand, the big idiot.” -- Alistair Bromley, diary, 1922.

“He [Crispin] is neither as straight nor narrow as he pretends to be. Still, I know he is true to me. He has chosen me. And I love him all the more for it. I love every part of my husband, even the parts which may not love me.” -- Lady Mary-Eugenia Fitzroy, diary, 1930.

“amandolo è dolce agonia [loving him is sweet agony]” -- written in the margin of a sketchbook kept by Lord Crispin Fitzroy, 1921.

Family Tree

2008-12-22T01:27:31Z

The Fitzroy name goes back to Charles II of England, who created it and the titles of Earl of Euston and Duke of Grafton Henry Fitzroy, his illegitimate son by Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland.

My mother’s surname is also Fitzroy, although Her line is considerably more watered down than my father’s though, which probably keeps us all from falling over with blood loss after pricking ourselves with the letter opener. Her mother’s surname, Lennox, was given to Charles II’s illegitimate son by Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, along with the titles Duke of Richmond in England, Duke of Lennox in Scotland.

This would make Charles II my Five-Greats-Grandfather. On both sides. Or something. I don’t know, once it starts getting into back into the 18th century and second cousins once removed start getting involved, I start to get confused. I can, however, draw you up a simple diagram of the more important (i.e. alive) members of my family and how they relate to each other. I’ll even use the fancy paper.

Well, that was a disaster. The paper wasn’t big enough for us all to be in a line. And I had no idea where to put my eldest brother’s wife and child.

This is silly.

Home

2008-12-21T02:46:53Z

Here is Euston Hall, what I think of most often when I think of ‘home’.

And here is my sister Lillian in her garden, perhaps my favourite part of home.

This is part of the house in Berkley Square, where we stay when we are in the city. Personally I think my mother’s décor is a little much.

I often feel most at home in my room at school. Although this is not me; it’s Aylesworth. He’s the only person I know who can smile while tending to a fireplace.

27th July 1918

2008-08-19T23:46:50Z

The evening was eventful, but the intricaties involved are beyond my ability to explain and longer than my hand could bare to write. But it ended with Bromley becoming so drunk he couldn’t walk and I had to quietly look for someone to help me get him to his room. All I could find was Haverly and although he is quite old and moves a quite bit more slowly and carefully than he used to, we were able to do the job together.

But as I reached to adjust his blanket, he grasped my forearm, his fingers bunching up the fabric of my shirt and I saw that he was crying. Everything seemed to freeze then and perhaps it was lucky, for I think if I would have had the ability to move, I would have jerked my arm up and away, pulling it back towards me, and pulling myself all far away from the sorry scene. But horror and fear of being a coward stopped me, and so I just waited, staring at the fold in the sheet by his left shoulder for what seemed like ages until I felt his fingers loosen and I was able to fold his hand neatly over his chest. I then thanked Haverly and retired.

I stood and looked out the window, out over the yard and up to the sky, but also in my mind I looked at myself from without, making a picture in my head of how I would appear to anyone watching. And all I could think is that I looked awfully strange for a child. I was far too big, far too tall and absurdly serious, with that knitted brow we see on children and smile thinking about how such looks are a waste, that they don’t really know yet how hard the world can be. How did I come to inhabit this strange body? What happened to the one I knew before? How do people live, I thought, after growing up? How does one even survive?

I felt damned, and angry at being damned by something so small. No grave sin, no major transgression I could set up in my mind and run over again and again down to the smallest detail; it was simply the combined weight of many small sins which had planted in my mind the seeds of decadence and cynicism and unhappiness. And with that I had been thrust outside the realm of Christian love and forgiveness forever.

I had the briefest desire to throw myself from the roof, but even that seemed useless. All those stairs…all that mess. It was better that I should have never had been born, but there was nothing to be done for it. So, instead I went outside and sat on the stairs overlooking the same view I had just left in my room.

The night sky in the country seems different from that in the city. I thought of what the people in London or Eton must be doing now, going about their lives without me. And then I tried to think of all the people in the world, now lying in the dark fast asleep, or working under the sun, adults, children, men, women, in Europe and Asia and Africa, in all different clothes speaking all different languages, laughing, crying, dying, being born. How dense and impossibly complex it looked from far away, so disorienting and dizzying in fact that I had to close my eyes and try to get closer to it in my mind.

Everything then appeared to me in spheres, the lives of these people grouped by the manner of their living. Some similar, some different, but all shared, none completely unique. And as I began to categorize them in my head, I could see how easily one could sometimes move between them and, in fact, how one often had to.

Tilting my head back, I smiled up at the cosmos.

There is not just one way to live. How stupid of me not to realize sooner.

I then stood up and went to bed and did not arise until noon. I do not know what this means. Most of these strange feelings were gone when I awoke, but still I feel fundementally changed in someway.

Until next we meet,

T. C. L. F.

From anson_greene

2008-04-03T02:05:06Z

1) Go here to generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 100. (Generate a different set of numbers for each character you pick.)

2) Then I will answer the corresponding questions from here

2 April 1918

2008-04-02T19:12:50Z

Dear diary,

O Suffolk! O Euston Hall!

It is rather good to be home.

Well, except I'm not exactly there yet, being as I'm on the train. Ashy alighted early in Surrey and Bromley has just taken his leave at the desolate Marks Tey station, and as I now sit alone and watch Essex fly by my window (it looks loads nicer when you're going though it; once this was all I knew of it, but I have since been disillusioned by standing stationary within it), I know Suffolk and the dear Bury St Edmunds station can not be long in coming.

Yes, I take a rather twisty way of getting home, but the extra time spent with Ashe and Bromley, outside the confines of the school, is worth the trouble. Of course, after a week, Bromley will be coming up to join me at home for what is officially a stay of only a fortnight, but what we will try to stretch into most of the spring holiday through a well planed subterfuge of missed trains and reports of poor weather and illness. Knowing Bromley, we will likely endeavor to spend most of the time potted up to our ears.

It’s to be a full house then; Mother and Father and Lillian, of course and then me and Bromley, but also Augustus and Joanna and little Agnes, Freddie and whoever he’s managed to dupe into liking him for the time being, possibly Mary (we never know what she’s doing and likely, neither does she, until she does it) and then Lord and Lady Southampton, with their daughter. My mother neglected to mention which daughter, but as this is my diary, mirror of my heart, I can admit to hoping with a MIGHTY FEVER that it is Mary-Eugenia and also hoping that it becomes warm enough for her to want to go for a swim. (the following few sentences are obscured by heavy blots of ink)

I’ve said too much. Time to lay down the pen.

Your friend the cad,

T. C. L. F.

Freudian Inventory Test

2008-01-25T22:11:49Z

Freudian Inventory Results

Oral (30%) you appear to be stubbornly and irrationally against receiving help even when it might be the more intelligent option.
Anal (86%) you appear to be overly self controlled, organized, and possibly subservient to authority, this effectively narrows your exposure to a wider set of options and ideas lowering the odds that you will make the best decisions in life.
Phallic (10%) you appear to have negative issues regarding sexuality and/or have an uncertain sexual identity.
Latency (53%) you appear to have a good balance of abstract knowledge seeking and practicality, dealing with real world responsibilities while still cultivating your abstract and creative faculties and interests.
Genital (20%) you appear to have a conventional, closeminded, and regressive outlook on life. Change is an inevitable and positive part of life, learn to contribute to it, not fear it or oppose it

Take Free Freudian Inventory Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Overly self-controled? There is no such thing.

Just because my mind is not as filthy as a psychoanalyst’s does not suggest there is anything wrong with me. Quite the contrary.

Wikipedia page for Lord Crispin

2008-01-25T06:55:05Z

Lord Crispin Fitzroy

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

Lord Theodore Crispin Lennox Fitzroy, KBE (Nov. 23, 1900 - January 11, 1941) was the fourth son of Alfred Fitzroy, 9th Duke of Grafton and Ismay Fitzroy, daughter of the 7th baron of Southampton. He was a writer and illustrator of children’s books.

Early life

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

Unable to attend school due to severe asthma, he was taught by tutors most of his childhood. He attended Eton College before going on to Cambridge to study law.

Family

He married Lady Mary-Eugenia Clarence on May 25, 1922. They had four children:

Dorcas Marie Ismay Fitzroy (1923 - 1974)
Susanna Blanche Genevieve Fitzroy (1926 - 1998)
Margaret Lillian Elfrida Fitzroy (b. 1929)
Hugh Oliver Alistair Fitzroy (b. 1933)

Fame

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

In an unorthodox move, Lord Crispin joined the Home Guard during World War II, living in London while making sure his family sought the safety of their country home in Suffolk. He died during the Blitz, one of 56 people killed when a German bomb destroyed part of the Bank tube station.

The circumstances of Lord Crispin’s death lead to a flurry of positive public sentiment. He was knighted posthumously and interest in his works increased.

Recent Controversy

The British writer Patrick Lloyd is a maternal grandson of Lord Crispin’s and released a biography about him on January 11, 2008 entitled Here There Be Monsters. The book consists mainly of selected passages of Lord Crispin’s diary, which he kept from the age of 17 until his death, interspaced with occasional sections written by Lloyd to provide context. The diary entries detail, along with more mundane descriptions of aristocratic family life, childhood sexual abuse, his adolescent addiction to cocaine (which he was given as a treatment for his asthma), his apparent bisexuality and his sexual problems (and successes) within his marriage. Lloyd has faced heavy criticism from many fronts, stating that he is exploiting family secrets for profit and besmirching the reputation of a minor national hero. He stands by the book, stating that his grandfather wrote the diary entries with passion and care, ‘as if he were waiting for an audience’.

Categories: 1900 births | 1941 deaths | Younger sons of dukes | Old Etonians | Diarists | British novelists | Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge | LGBT people from England | LGBT writers from the United Kingdom

(ooc again: Admit it, you tried to click on the link for bisexuality didn't you?)

(ooc: No, you aren’t insane; the links are fake because I am lazy. Most of them should lead to real articles, so if you want to find out more about the Home Guard, cocaine or any members of the Fitzroy family who actually existed, GO FORTH AND FEED YOUR MIND.)

Six of the best. (omgcrackfic for anson_greene)

2008-01-16T02:04:47Z

The halls were quiet. Of course. Only prefects were allowed to wander around a night, due to being responsible older boys who could be trusted to act in accordance with school rules.

Presently, the prefects were all out in the woods, digging up a cache of beer.

Except one. He still had some sense of duty. There was something he needed to do before sneaking out.

Crispin’s footsteps echoed hollowly as he approached the end of the hall, stopping at the door on the far corner.

Opening it, he saw a bundled form lying on the bed in a sliver of moonlight.

Crispin cleared his throat. ‘Greene.’

14 January 1918

2008-01-14T08:00:19Z

Dear diary,

Something new for you today:

To rid the map of every trace
Of Germany and of the Hun
We must exterminate that race
We must not leave a single one
Heed not their children's cries
Best slay all now, the women too
Or else someday again they'll rise
Which if they're dead, they cannot do.

What a ghastly little poem.

I overhead one of the one of the cook’s sons declaiming it to another boy and begged him to repeat it. He said he had learnt it in school. I complimented him on his elocution (top marks, bravo) but implored him not to recite it in the house, lest my sister hear it.

You see, this is why I could never be a soldier, weak lungs aside. I could never ignore the cries of a child. I would look at them and see an English child. They look like English children do after all. They’ve a mouth and ears and everything; it’s not as if they have horns.

Yes, yes, I know, you must be logical. You must think of the future. Within those children’s hearts the seed of hatred has already taken root. They will grow up with a thirst for English blood. So you bally well better kill them, for King and country, before they knock down Nelson’s Column to build a cabbage stand.

Perhaps you must think of other children you hated as a child and carry on.

~~I wonder if those boys at school have some German blood.~~

Ghastly, ghastly!,

Fitzroy

1 Janurary 1918

2008-01-02T01:40:17Z

"The present is pregnant with the future." - Voltaire

I do not have a resolution for myself, except perhaps to pray daily for the end of war.

I do, however, have hope.

With great expectations,

T. C. L. F.

ooc: Until I write a decent one...

2007-12-30T01:29:35Z

General Information

Name: Lord Theodore Crispin Lennox FitzRoy
Nicknames: Crispin, Fitz or Fitzy
Age: 17 (as of time of writing; born 25 Nov. 1900)

Family

Parents: Alfred FitzRoy, 9^th Duke of Grafton and Ismay FitzRoy (nee FitzRoy)

Siblings: Augustus, Earl of Euston (31); Simon (deceased), Mary (25), Frederick (23), Lillian (9).

Spouse/Serious Lover: None.
Children: None.

Present Background

Occupation: Student.
Activities: Sings in the school choir, recent pledge to the ‘Brotherhood of the Form, Breath and Shade’, a secret student society.

Home: Lives at school most of the year; spends holidays at his family’s London home in Berkeley Square and summers at the country home in Suffolk.
Friends: Alistair Bromley and Hugh Campion-Ashe.

Appearance

Height: 5’3 (and a source of constant embarrassment)
Eyes: Green
Hair: Brown.
Face & Complexion: Very pale and sallow. Somewhat prone to breaking out in spots.
Build: Slight. Small for his age.
Dress Style: Neat and clean, but rather unconcerned with fashion.
Manner of Speech: Quiet.
Manner of Movement: Careful, but quick. Sometimes twitchy.

Romantic

Marital Status: Single.
Sexual Orientation: Confused
Past Relationships: None.
Present Relationship(s): None.

28th December, 1917

2007-12-28T18:56:22Z

Dear diary,

While I think you may be my favourite present I received this Chirstmas, I have not had time to write in you until today, at least not in any proper sense. My youngest and most dear sister Lillian has needed to be entertained constantly and I am only too happy to indulge her, but now she sleeps, the effects of copious sweets ingested apparently worn off, so I have some minutes to spare.

A letter arrived: I have been made a prefect! While this is a very fortuitous happening, it is, like all other things in my life, not without its problems. For one, if I learn that Bromley has not also been made prefect, I shall be of heavy heart, for not only is he my closest friend and I therefor wish him to be by my side in all my good and fun times, but he is also much more apt than I and surely more right for the job. If he has been denied, I must surely assume my making prefect was solely based on my family name, which is the only area in which I excel it seems. Certainly the only one in which I best Bromley.

And this also brings concerns about what strange amalgam of a prefect’s and junior boy’s uniform I shall wear, the details of which are too boring to record here.

Lillian stirs. I must be off, perhaps to return tonight. Until then I remain

Fondly,

T. C. L. F.

attic_nights @ 2007-12-26T22:39:00

2007-12-27T03:39:49Z

Oh wow! Latin declension! Hooray!